As you all know, 2020 has been an… interesting year. Way back in March, the threat of COVID-19 had grown too much to handle for almost everyone. The latter half of our semester was hastily shifted to online which was not ideal but we made it work. It seemed like I was going to be able to keep my job too so I was living my best life. Until one day work was going as usual and the regional manager called us into the office, asked us to sign a piece of paper, and promptly leave. His parting words to me “I hope we can call you back when this is all over”. I stormed out of the office, I’d never felt that betrayed, angry, or upset before. My silver lining: at least I’ll be able to focus on my school projects now. But what would I do after all of that was done?
All classes will be suspended on Monday, March 16 and Tuesday, March 17 and students can expect to receive further instruction via email in the coming days.
— British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) (@bcit) March 15, 2020
Twitter/@bcit
When schoolwork stopped flowing through my daily routine I found myself lost. I took up afternoon walks which would fill about an hour. Then I tried learning a new language (with very little success). Trying to teach myself Japanese was too hard so I tried Korean (still too hard) then Swedish (which is kind of a useless language). I pretty much just wasted time with this and am still a sad monolingual.
All of this could’ve been a blessing in disguise though as it allowed me some much-needed rest and relaxation. It gave me time to recuperate from not taking a single day off between work and studying in over 9 months.
After I got sick of struggling my way through foreign languages I started to find myself reconnecting with one of my former loves, film. At one point film was my dream career but you know how things can change. With my busy life, I had let this love slip away and had seen my watchlist balloon to over 350 films. What better way to fill your boredom than to escape into a fantasy world a couple of times a day?? So my girlfriend started issuing me challenges like “watch five movies with number is the title” and I would search through my list and find which movies I wanted to watch. Every morning and afternoon I’d find a film to watch. Needless to say, over the spring and summer of unemployment, I watched A LOT of movies.
While I was able to revisit classics like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, I’d like to share with you some of the best movies I watched for the first time during my time away from work and school.
Who Killed Captain Alex?
YouTube/Spoiled Childhood
Ok, this movie isn’t actually that good but the story behind the movie makes it great. The director of this movie is a film lover and makes movies on shoestring budgets in his village in Uganda. The estimated budget of this movie is around $200. Yeah, that’s it. The director never thought anyone outside of his village would see the movie so the fact that it became a worldwide viral success is so heartwarming.
The movie has horrible special effects, questionable acting, and bad writing, but the stuntwork is surprisingly good and the “VJ” is actually quite funny at times. Lots of films are described as “love letters to film” but this is actually a love letter to film. It’s bad but in all the right ways. This is a movie that everyone who loves film should watch at some point. PS: the whole movie is available for free on YouTube and it’s only an hour long so no excuses for not watching it.
Ace in the Hole
This movie is years ahead of its time. It came out in 1951 but is somehow just as relevant today as it was back then. It follows a reporter who is looking for his next big break and finds a man stuck in a cave in. What follows is a commentary on the impact that the media plays in our daily lives. When I watched it, it honestly made me question my choices to pursue a career in media. That’s how powerful it is. It makes me not want to have anything to do with news as a job for sure. It really calls into question the power we as media people have. It is an extremely important film that should be mandatory viewing by all journalists and media people. Oh yeah, it was also the first narrative movie I gave a 5-star rating to in years.
YouTube/thecoolidge
The Quiet Family
If you like dark comedy, you’ll love this movie. It’s actually hilarious if you’re into that sort of thing. If not then maybe stay away from this one as it can be pretty dark. It follows a family that buys a hiking lodge but can’t get anyone to stay there. Once they finally do get a guest, he dies in his room. After that, there’s almost like a curse on the hotel and nothing goes right for the family. You never can quite guess what the next dumb thing that happens is going to be. I think that’s why I liked it.
From all the research I’ve done, it seems like this movie didn’t perform well anywhere but in South Korea, so it would be cool if more people saw it.
YouTube/mrmuga (sorry, I could only find trailers in Korean)
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
This is plain and simple the best documentary I have ever seen. I’ve never had my emotions thrown around like they were while watching this. I laughed, I cried, I was angry, I was smiling. It was so much to handle but that’s what made this film so masterful. By the end of the movie, I felt like I knew this family, I felt like I was part of their world. And by the time you make it to the end, it feels like your emotions have just gone 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali and barely stayed standing. It is an absolutely insane ride that I would recommend to anyone (as long as they were ready for an emotional rollercoaster).
YouTube/Movieclips Classic Trailers
If you decide to check out any of these films let us know what you think of them!
And if you want to keep up with my movie watching shenanigans you can check me out here: https://letterboxd.com/draclax/