SPECIAL: What's the best movie YOU've seen in 2020?
What's up friends! I'm coming to you all on a Thursday because I realized this week I was very close to reaching my 100th movie watched of 2020 (sheesh) and was having some trouble ranking them all on Letterboxd. For those who might be curious, here's the link to the definitive ranking I settled on -- which doubles as a recommendation machine for you.
I thought I'd try something fun for this week's newsletter, which, don't worry, will still be hitting your inboxes on Friday morning.
I want to know what the best movie YOU've seen is this year. It doesn't have to be a 2020 release, just the best or most interesting movie you've either discovered or revisited since the calendar flipped.
Simply reply to this email with the title of your movie, or if you're so inclined you can also include an explanation for your selection (if it's a movie I recommended to you, definitely let me know!). Then for tomorrow's newsletter I'll put them together so that readers can spread recommendations to each other, and I'll also add my own thoughts on each movie (assuming I've already seen it).
I'll start. And I'll give myself an extra stipulation, since the honest answer would be the same favs I seem to always talk about, that this is the best movie I've seen that I'd never seen before. It's the 2002 movie Adaptation, directed by Spike Jonze (Her) and hatched from the bizarro genius mind of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich). It's a mind-bender starring Nicholas Cage as Kaufman AND his fictional twin brother as they try to adapt an unadaptable book into a screenplay. The levels of meta are really trippy, but the result is a very entertaining adventure that provides surprises at every turn.