La Guerra Civil (2022) - Sundance

Full Review: spoti.fi/3rBtV4g
2022 Ranked: boxd.it/eWCVi

LA GUERRA CIVIL is a solid sports documentary that manages to both introduce a lesser sport-savant like myself to the history of a sport that discusses the nature of heritage, belonging, and collective identity through two guys punching each other. What a knockout. 

For Mexican and Mexican American communities, boxing is more than a sport. From ring walk-ins to trunks, opponents take full advantage of the theatrical spectacle, narrating their histories and the stories of their individual fanbases. In 1996, Oscar De La Hoya, the charismatic golden boy from East L.A, challenged Mexican-born boxing legend Julio César Chávez in what was billed as the “ultimate glory” fight. Mexicans on both sides of the border were forced to choose their favorite champ: the record-holding immigrant from humble beginnings, or the younger and more marketable Olympian born in the U.S. These rivals felt the pressure to prove their athletic superiority, while the fans’ choice of champion revealed the type of Mexican they aspired to be.

Eva Longoria starts her feature film debut with a boxing documentary that is more about the Mexican identity than the sport itself. With traditional interjected sit-down interviews with both the fighters and other ‘witnesses’ of the time, LA GUERRA CIVIL doesn’t change the paradigm of documentary filmmaking. Nonetheless, the story is engaging with a closer look at how one can be rejected by their own heritage and people as the parasitic US identity poisons the sense of belonging and self-identity.
This inner conflict within Oscar De La Hoya doesn’t really get explored much though and we practically get a quite basic retelling of events in a mostly linear timeline. Now, this was great for someone like me - a Swiss guy in his 20s with no real interest in boxing - this was all news to me, but in saying that I realize that this documentary lacks a bit of depth in its processing of the dichotomous ideal Mexican identity in Mexico and the US.
When addressed, all we get is: Chàvez was idealized as he represents all the good Mexican values and De La Hoya does not. And both of them just kinda go: It is what it is. 

As a quick, bit-sized historic catch-up, LA GUERRA CIVIL does its job well but I doubt that it will do much for those already familiar with Chavez and De La Hoya.
The elements of the time-old story of a new challenger De La Hoya arriving and challenging the champion Chavez are framed in an exciting way and make for an entertaining watch.

6/10

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Spider-Man No Way Home is like a thrilling theme park ride filled with references, action, and the one or other heartfelt moment that will resonate with not just MCU but just overall Marvel fans alike and sees Tom Holland fully come into his role in this third installment that somehow feels like an origin story.

Audio Review: spoti.fi/3sbEhdo
2021 Ranked

Welcome to this non-spoiler review of Spider-Man No Way Home. No worries, I will try my best to refrain from spoiling anything specific that happens in this film. However, everything that was shown in trailers already is fair game, so warning for those who really don’t wanna know anything before going in. But what are you doing listening to this review? Go see it! It’s literally out now. 

Anyways, this third or in some ways 8th installment in the Spider-Man saga comes from director Jon Watts who previously directed the first and second installment with Tom Holland as Peter Parker.

Taking place right after the end of Spider-Man Far From Home, which saw Peter being unmasked as Spider-Man by J. Jonah Jamerson, No Way Home wastes no time to get into its jam package adventure story. 
With an abundance of characters - new and old - to focus on, No Way Home can feel quite full at times, but it never runs into the issues that other overcrowded Spider-Man films like Spider-Man 3 or the Amazing Spider-Man 2. 

At its core, No Way Home is a huge fan service that packs an endless amount of references into 2 and a half-hour-long runtime, which makes for a very entertaining watch overall.
How you value and maybe appreciate these references and the all-too-familiar quippy comedic style of these MCU films is - as always - in the eye of the beholder. 
To me, although this is probably the first real Tom Holland, Peper Parker as Spider-Man centered story we get, when previously Tony Stark was quite a big preference in the first two - as an actual presence or in his legacy - it still felt like to me that we were slowly going down the list of things that needed to happen to this character.

This might be my own mistake for hoping to be presented with a movie that throws me for a few more loops and surprises than it actually did or maybe I’m just burned out from all the MCU and Marvel superhero content that I don’t care as much when Jamie Foxx’s Electro and Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin are standing in the same room.

Willem Dafoe - as always in whatever movie he’s in - steals the show with his performance and I was quite glad about his overall presence in the film. Apart from Tom Holland, he’s probably the person who manages to get the most depth out of their character, and with this story getting into the weeds of what it means to stand on your own two feet for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, there are numerous moments where Tom Holland gets to shine as well. 

MJ and Ned are also firmly implemented into the story overall and feel very involved in the over-arching story at large. The decision to focus so much on the high school lives of those characters and the attempt to ground them with their relatable and - in this world - smaller aspirations sometimes comes off a bit forced and unimaginative and lacks the scope of what I believe people would behave like in a world like this. Regardless, the dynamic of this trio is on point and even though I’m not a big fan of that quippy humor, they stick the landing more than not.

Another bigger character appearing in the film, Doc Ock, was heavily CGI-ed, not just in his physicality facially but also with his arms now being fully CGI instead of puppeteers like in Spider-Man 2. No Way Home has overall a bit of a gloss problem, where - I assume partly due to COVID restrictions but also just cause it’s easier now - practically every set feels very CGI. Even moments that are not action-heavy - which arguably aren’t that many, this movie is jam-packed with action - background feel weirdly fake and even some of the motion of characters in action scenes felt quite off. 

Another complaint I had was the frequent Deus Ex Machina way of solving hard problems, which are nit-picky in a sci-fi superhero universe, but still, a bit distracting from a narrative standpoint and are quite apparent ever since Tony Stark figured out time travel REAL FAST in Endgame.

I would love to get more into detail of moments that happen after the inciting incident, but those would definitely be spoilers but they are rather impactful for what’s to come in the near future of the MCU. If you want to hear my spoiler thoughts on No Way Home check out next week's episode on the Quiet On Set Podcast, where Lachlan and I will talk full of spoilers about the friendly neighborhood spiderman. 

Spider-Man No Way Home is like a thrilling theme park ride filled with references, action, and the one or other heartfelt moment that will resonate with not just MCU but just overall Marvel fans alike and sees Tom Holland fully come into his role in this third installment that somehow feels like an origin story.

7/10

The Unforgivable (2021)

The Unforgivable is a quite blatant attempt at using existing IP and notable, respected actors to push for the little golden boy. In that process, it fails to say or portray anything of substance.

Full Review: spoti.fi/3DGFVWd

2021 Ranked

The Unforgivable is a Netflix production from Nora Fingscheidt starring Sandra Bullock as Ruth Slater, who is released from prison into a society that won't forgive her past and she seeks redemption by searching for the sister she left behind. 
Also among that cast is Jon Bernthal and Viola Davis, in unfortunately underused roles within this rather dysfunctionally thrown-together mess of a film. 

The Unforgivable is clearly and quite transparently one of those productions that seek a nomination for its lead and maybe even some supporting players. Recently, Hillbilly Elegy comes to mind that puts amazing actors like Amy Adams and Glenn Close in a bad movie and gives them some ´acting´ moments to shine.
Bullock is no different in this, and I personally wouldn't consider her on the same level as Adams or Close, but more someone who I see chasing the little golden man ever since THE BLIND SIDE. 

Another factor is the story itself, a half-hearted attempt at telling a story of someone who is alienated by society because she murdered a sheriff. Now, this might be personal but I don't enjoy consuming media where policing is portrayed as this daily life and death job of high risk. Because that simply plays into the stereotypes of glorying police that we often get in movies. 
But even putting my own bias to the side, what we get is a melodramatic - but still - bland look at a person alienated by society.

At first, this film screams to be a ´based on true events´ type of film (which also plays nicely for the Academy - see Hillbilly Elegy) but it is rather an adaptation of a British 3 episode mini-series called Unforgiven from 2009. I have not seen that series, so I can't comment on how it compares to this 2021 film version.

What I can say though - and I´ve seen many other critics say the same thing - is that this clearly has the thematic depth of a mini-series that was now stuffed into a 2hr long film. 
Here, the issue of underused characters like Viola Davis´ Liz Ingram and Jon Bernthal´s Blake. 
Davis is probably hit the hardest from this, as she really hasn't got anything to do at all in the film apart from one scene where she gets loud. that's it. I won't be going into any spoilers in this review but even if I were - apart from her driving someone around - she really doesn't get anything to do.
Now Bernthal as Blake does get a bit more. He's introduced as a character whose intentions - apart from a romantic interest in Ruth - are somewhat unclear. Once we finally get around to getting something that could be potentially interesting through his backstory, he is completely shut out of the rest of the movie.

Instead, we focus on an idiotic, overdramatized, and a straight-up horrible third act that was set up - so incredibly obviously and without any sort of depth - by the two sons left behind from the dead cop. Their lines are just comical and feel like they were written by a kid doing a bit of quote-on-quote foreshadowing. It was laughably bad. 

But what do we actually get in The Unforgivable?
Although an attempt and showcasing the struggle to adjust to life after 20 years of imprisonment are tried, there´s close to no focus on Ruth´s struggle to find work - she actually finds two quite quickly - but instead, the narrative focuses more on her as this tragic character that has a lot of talents, like carpentry, which enables her to score a job. This sets up a theme of undercutting Ruth as a broken and flawed person and instead almost tries to redeem her and make her appear noble. 

Throughout the entire film, we are presented with flashes of flashbacks, setting this up to be a sort of thriller-like drama building towards a reveal. These scenes are also often realized in the simplest of ways by our characters remembering something in current them and a sort of flashback being provided. This gets stale and unimaginative very fast. It also grew more frustrating with me as Ruth in the current time wasn't really anything at all. She wasn't working on herself and simply had the mission to reunite with her sister. But apart from the shared tragic memory of the murder, there is not much more we get from those two characters as well. 

All in all, as you might have been able to guess, I wasn't big on Fingscheidt´s The Unforgivable. But to disregard the filmmaker entirely. Apparently her film from last year, Systemcrasher - which I have not seen yet but wanted to for quite some time - is quite great. 

The Unforgivable is a quite blatant attempt at using existing IP and notable, respected actors to push for the little golden boy and fails to say or portray anything of substance. 

3/10

The Humans (2021)

The Humans is a wonderfully captivating and devastating story of a Thanksgiving night filled with rich performances from every single actor in it. While not being conventionally shot and told, director Karem brings the best of his play onto the big screen or the slightly smaller screen to you at home.

Full Review: bit.ly/3dFaott

2021 Ranked

Transcript of audio review: 

Set inside a pre-war duplex in downtown Manhattan, The Humans follows the course of an evening in which the Blake family gathers to celebrate Thanksgiving. As darkness falls outside and eerie things start to go bump in the night, the group’s deepest fears are laid bare. 

THE HUMANS is a 2021 drama and adaptation of the play from Stephen Karam who also brings his play to the silver screen in his directorial debut.

Set among the cast are Richard Jenkins, Steven Yeun, Beanie Feldstein, Amy Schumer, Jayne Houdyshell, and June Squibb. And that's it. With its setting within a single two-story apartment in Manhattan Karam manages to make the blend between stage and screen seamlessly and often stages and shoots his scenes from a distance further away than other dramas would do. This might come off as alienating at first and refuses to make the process of caring for individual characters simple. But ultimately, that is all in service of the overall story, which is about a family gettogether and the underlying little notions of annoyance and disregard to deep feelings of empathy and love. Karam and cinematographer Crawling manage to pull the camera back further and create a captivating experience of constant perspective shift that emphasizes sound in particular.

As someone who doesn't mind the smaller scale that these stage adaptations inherently always have, The Humans doesn't let us escape from the duplex as well. We are stuck there like the characters, questioning ourselves and each other constantly and bringing the full baggage of rich family history. 

Although dramatic beats and resolutions are reached I never felt that it was all to serve a neatly constructed narrative and more to just observe this family gettogether forced upon them by the structure of traditions. 
This brings up another subject frequently brought up in the film, that being how to cope with life. and how unfair, lonely, and disheartening it can be. But instead of condemning any single character to be morally questionable, we get a full set of people all dealing with their own demons.

The Humans is a wonderfully captivating and devastating story of a Thanksgiving night filled with rich performances from every single actor in it. While not being conventionally shot and told, director Karem brings the best of his play onto the big screen or the slightly smaller screen to you at home.

My rating for The Humans is an 8/10 proved to be one of the strongest films of 2021. 

THE HUMANS is currently streaming on Showtime.

The Green Knight (2021) - Quiet On Set Podcast Review

The Green Knight tells the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain, King Arthur's nephew who embarks on a venturesome quest to hold up his side of a bargain he made with The Green Knight.

Lowery takes us on a constantly morphing quest of Sir Gawain's self-actualization. When broken down the film is not much more than a long journey in which our hero has to face challenges to get to his destination. Now, what makes The Green Knight so captivating is that (minor spoilers incoming) at the end of his journey all that is waiting for him is death.

After reading up on the legend I realized that Lowery takes quite a few liberties to adapt this story to make it his own. What initially got me so interested in The Green Knight was the incredible looking cinematography. Especially in the first act of the story, which mainly takes place inside dimly candle-lit chambres in a castle, the screen is actually very dark. I can really appreciate a director's vision that does not shy away from creating a simultaneously authentic and stylized fictional world. Palmero, the cinematographer, manages to draw me in through the numerous still shots that last seemingly forever at times but work very well to support the theme of life as this agonizing force.

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Dev Patel as Sir Gawain

Further, colors are very purposefully used to support recurring motifs and themes. Most prominently green and red. Now with all the praise that I have given the film so far, I also have to mention that I often felt quite lost with what exactly was going on. On one side I am quite content having gone into this without knowing much of anything about the story of Sir Gawain, but at the same time, I felt lost a lot.

There were a lot of details I would love to pay more attention to on the inevitable rewatch, but for now, that is all I have to say about The Green Knight without going into spoiler and a full-on analysis.

I believe that much like The Lighthouse, A24 once again has a very polarizing film in its hands. Some people are going to adore it, others will hate it oh so deeply and passionately.

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Dev Patel as Sir Gawain

Dev Patel plays Gawain with a charming naivete as he tries to fit in and find his place in the world. All of the supporting cast from Vikander to Harris and Edgerton are phenomenal in their roles. I kinda quite put my finger on it but Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight is such an imposing force that cannot go unmentioned.

At the end of the day, The Green Knight was filled with riveting themes that have crept themselves back into my mind for the last two weeks. Nature vs. civilization, responsibility & integrity, and coming-of-age.

8/10

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Ralph Ineson as the Green Knight

Cherry (2021) - Avenger vs Opioids

CHERRY is the feature film adaption of Nico Walker’s 2018 novel of the same name. The drama about an Army medic turned drug addict and bank robber is brought to your AppleTV+ screen from the director duo behind the latest two Avengers films. Tom Holland stars as Cherry, a college dropout who impulsively joins the Army after his girlfriend breaks up with him. Cherry swiftly gets back together with his ex, but it’s already too late to back out of his commitment to the Army. He returns riddled with the traumatic experience of the war in Iraq and rapidly develops an addiction to opioids and struggles to keep afloat as a war vet in his mid-20s.

Joe and Anthony Russo return to a Non-MCU-film after seven years and four movies over at the big mouse. Backed with fewer dollars in the budget but stacked with notable star power as Tom Holland once again tries his hardest to drop his London accent for an American one. Holland’s performance is quite solid and from what I can tell - being Swiss - also on point with his American accent. Cherry also stars Ciara Bravo in her biggest role to date. Whereas Holland left an overall good impression Bravo missed more often than not, resulting in a moderate amount of unconvincing scenes. 

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Arguably, this is less on her and more on the overcrammed narrative that repeatedly falls short in selling rather abrupt character developments. At almost two and a half hours of runtime Cherry is certainly not a short film and quite honestly might have been better served in the form of a mini-series. However, the long run-time would probably be shortened by over 15 minutes if the overuse of slow-motion sequences were less frequent. The sudden shifts in aspect ratios and fourth wall break alongside the few and far between Wes Anderson-like staging and framing add up to an overall tonal mess that is structured into five chapters, which I assume was taken from the novel, for no apparent reason other than those cool red title cards.

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On the whole, Cherry tries to tell an engaging narrative whilst poking fun and highlighting some of the flawed systems in the US. Although the attempt is very much noted and respected, there is not enough substance to let the narrative flow fittingly. What we get is a Coming-of-Age love story, war drama, cheeky fourth-wall-breaking character study on PTSD and drug addiction in addition to a Scorsese-esce rise and fall of a bank robber. It's just a bit much.

Conclusively, Cherry tackles PTSD and opioid addiction from a narrow field of view and rests a bit too comfortably on its bankable lead and directors creating a ball bath of cinematic ideas for them to play in to leave more to be desired. Nonetheless, it’s a big win for Apple TV+. One that will hopefully bring some new subscribers to the streaming service.  

Cherry is entertaining, easy to look at and its sweeping camera movements and charismatic lead will probably be enough to please most audiences. It uses its lack of character depth in the form of a rather fast-paced plot. 

2.5/5

Cherry releases on Feb 26 in cinemas and will be available to stream on March 12 on Apple TV+

CODA (2021) - The Big Winner of the Sundance Film Festival 2021

Siân Heder’s CODA, an American remake of the French La Famille Bélier (2014) manages to exceed the mainly comedic approach of the original and tackles the story from a more grounded and authentic angle. Whereas the original didn’t make an effort to actually cast deaf actors in the respective roles, Siân Heder did for CODA. Emilia Jones’ Ruby is the only hearing member of her deaf family who makes ends meet with fishing. She helps out each morning before school and faces social isolation in school due to her family's disabilities. When she finally jumps over her own shadow and joins the choir to act on her lifelong passion for singing, she is encouraged by her teacher Bernardo (Eugenio Derbez), who insists on rolling the R’s in his name, to aim higher than keeping up the family fishing business and to consider going to music school.

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Emilia Jones as Ruby Rossi

CODA is the type of film you can recommend to pretty much anyone without risking that they won’t enjoy their time with it. It’s a crowd-pleasing movie with several great emotional pay-offs for multiple characters and overall it is just a great time to watch. However, apart from deaf performers in deaf roles, the movie isn’t anything groundbreaking or spectacular. At the end of the day, it is a very familiar story of a young adolescent who doesn’t believe in themselves (enough) until a third party, mostly some kind of mentor figure, comes in and teaches them to harness their true potential. It even packs the ‘don’t be held back by people around you in your small town’ trope into the mix and if I’m being totally honest, I don’t mind the storytelling clichés that CODA uses. Because the film shines especially in smaller moments of situational comedy and emotional payoffs between Ruby and her parents. 

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Amy Forsyth as Gertie, Daniel Durant as Leo Rossi, Marlee Matlin as Jackie Rossi, and Troy Kotsur as Frank Rossi (from left)

Although there are a number of knit-picks I have with the film, the overall story hinders me to not enjoy this heartfelt story to the fullest. Certain dramatic tensions feel rather forced and easily avoidable mostly through communication, but I guess ultimately that is one of the issues tackled in the narrative itself so I cannot fault it too much for that.

Siân Heder’s second feature won big at Sundance taking home the award for Directing, Ensemble Cast, and both the Audience and Grand Jury Prize for best Drama Feature. 

CODA was a worthy tick-off for the Sundance Film Festival and broke records by its $25Mio. acquisition by Apple for their streaming service AppleTV+, surpassing last year’s Palm Springs that was bought by Hulu for $17Mio & 69 Cents and can be expected to be released in the next few months on Apple’s streaming service.

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Eugenio Derbez as Bernardo Villalobos

CODA sets Ruby on a familiar journey of self-discovery and combines a Coming-of-Age story with authentic and respectful portrayals of a mostly deaf family. With a healthy dose of humor, drama, and music CODA will have something for everyone.

3.5/5

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

Review on Quiet on Set Podcast HERE

Shaka King tackles the story of Fred Hampton, the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party in this historic Drama-Thriller accurately titled JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH. The Warner Bros production hits theatres on February 12 (wherever they’re open) and will be available to stream for 30 days on HBO Max. Judas and the Black Messiah focuses mainly on Bill O’Neal, an informant who is forced to work with the FBI to escape from a decade-long prison sentence for impersonating an officer and lifting cars. He soon finds himself in the midst of the already exhausted Civil Rights Movement that suffered the loss of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. just a few years prior.

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Daniel Kaluuya (left) as Fred Hampton & Lakeith Stanfield (right) as Bill O’Neal

Lakeith Stanfield plays the conflicted and often helpless Bill O’Neal with phenomenal moral ambiguity as he climbs ranks in the Black Panther Party and thereby increasing his value to the federal agencies. Stanfield has a way of portraying his multilayered and complex character with his eyes alone which does a great deal in humanizing what many simply regard as a sell-out, betrayer, or a Judas. Daniel Kaluuya IS Fred Hampton. He absolutely nails this performance on a level that is on par with Denzel Washington in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992). Hampton is young, driven, and selfless. A man on a mission. King doesn’t shy away from presenting the radical side of Hampton or the Panthers either.

It balances the ambiguity of characters’ intent and results quite effectively. As a result, whatever atrocities and injustices were committed, we have history to look back onto to judge who was right or wrong. Hoover, for instance, played by Martin Sheen, is simply a clear-cut villain from start to finish, which accurately displays this monster of a man. The far more interesting dynamic and dramatic tension comes from Fred and Bill as they grow a bit closer. To its own benefit, the film never falls into traps of sentimentality or overdramatizing events and allows this to be a thriller that has you tensed up even if you are aware of the ultimate devastating outcome of Hampton's way too short a story. Jesse Plemons as FBI agent Roy Mitchell, Bill O’Neal’s contact person, has his own smaller arc in the form reversed version of Bill’s journey.

In addition to a quite successful second feature directing effort, Shaka King furthermore delivers a fantastic original screenplay with Will Berson, Kenneth Lucas, and Keith Lucas as his collaborators. The frequent Steve McQueen collaborator Sean Bobbit (12 Years A Slave/Widows/Shame/Hunger) packs award-worthy shots into the tightly structured narrative and Sam Liscenco’s (Uncut Gems/Good Time/Eight Grade) Production Design reanimates late 60s Chicago in a stunning manner. 

Judas and the Black Messiah doesn’t take your hand along the way and avoids dumbing down characters based on real people for a simpler plot. There might not be a courtroom full of people clapping, seemingly creating a false sense of having overcome a complex and layered issue. (Trial of the Chicago 7). Judas and the Black Messiah, on the contrary, packs a devastating real ending after Fred’s already exasperating assassination that left me speechless and depleted.

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Daniel Kaluuya (top) as Fred Hampton & Lakeith Stanfield (center) as Bill O’Neal during a powerful speech

Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah packs the best performances from both Stanfield and especially Kaluuya in addition to being a thrilling portrayal and humanization of an iconic figure from the Civil Rights movement. Additionally, it’s a dire reminder of the countless criminal and ruthless acts committed by the FBI.

4/5

Duel - 52 Years of 52 Weeks

Duel tells a story of a business commuter who is pursued and terrorized by the malevolent driver of a massive tractor-trailer. Or what I’d call a BIG ASS TRUCK! 

David Mann is driving out of LA on his way to a meeting to a location somewhere past the desert highways of the US. After he overtakes a dirty oil truck he suddenly finds himself pursued by the faceless driver in a deadly cat and mouse game filled with speedometer shots and overload of internal monologues seemingly recorded with the shotgun mic version of a blue yeti. Besides a repetitive story structure, Spielberg manages to never fully let go of the tension-filled gas pedal and does a test run of sorts for his later masterpiece JAWS. The controlled, limited perspective from mostly David’s POV helps to establish an unknown, and therefore terrifying danger behind a faceless 20 ton heavy truck on its mindless and fixated pursuit that takes road rage to the utmost extreme. 

DUEL is a great jumping-off point for Spielberg’s career and an adequate start for a Director Deep Dive as we already get the Spielberg characteristic sweeping, big camera moves, and general dynamic blocking of scenes. He also shows a great sense of direction in relation to the action that focuses on both spectacle and tension. Even though our hero isn’t faceless, he quite as well could be as we don’t get anything interesting from his character. Duel is much more an adrenaline rush whenever the pursuer closes in or our helpless little red Chrysler Valiant driver and we get to feel his anxiety creep upon us. 

The biggest issues I have with the movie mainly come from the cheesy and quite unnecessary internal monologues David keeps having. I wouldn’t call Dennis Weaver’s performance great by a long shot but it’s enough to convey most of the needed information without blatantly spouting all his thoughts every few scenes. The overall story of someone being chased has its limitations and is usually reserved for a third act climax and therefore restricted in how much variety can come from it. Especially if you don’t develop the relationship between the pursued and pursuer at all. Spielberg understood that already and made a film that was roughly 15 minutes shorter in its runtime. However, Universal wanted it to be 90 minutes in order to show the TV movie in theatres too. So after production had already wrapped, Spielberg had to go back and shot additional scenes like the railroad crossing, the school bus scene, as well as the phone call at the beginning with his wife and the opening of the POV, drive through the city. I’d argue that the first pitstop for gas felt quite a filler already, but we got one of the best moments with the shoe shot from it. I guess that that scene already partly existed and only the actual phone call was added, as the shoes became an integral part of the bar scene later on. 

Most apparent is this added time in the railroad crossing scene, which felt quite out of place to me especially because the following scenes didn’t match the energy at all with that altercation between the two drivers. 

I like the simplicity of a manic driver looking for victims on the road. Spielberg said that the multiple license plates that are attached at the front of the truck suggest that the truck driver is a serial killer who ran down other drivers in other states. 

That’s pretty much The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that gave birth to a whole new type of horror genre with antagonistic characters that we never get to fully understand. It is also what makes JAWS so great. Albeit through the technical limitations at the time, but that’s something that most film fans already know. But it is there that you have to make it work and create a sense of tension and Spielberg manages to do that quite masterfully. In 12 Days mind you. He shot this entire film in 12 days. Usually, productions take months to shoot an entire feature. But I also think that due to the time crunch we got those awful narration bits. 

Nonetheless, the standout scene and by far most memorable is the standoff after David believes to have outsmarted the truck driver. Just great cinema all around. And did I spot a Psycho reference there?

Duel is thrilling in many scenes and shot in an exciting, dynamic way. The voice-over narration is superfluous and brings dramatic tension to a halt. Duel might overstay its welcome by a few minutes, nonetheless, the cinematic roller-coast-like storytelling has its low lows but also high highs and overall packs a worthwhile Action Thriller from The King of Entertainment.

So I watched every movie in 2020...

I watched a ton of movies this year. Like SO many more than I usually do.
How do your Top 10 movies of 2020 rank?
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