2019 Top Ten List – Revisited

Posted on by Roger "Dodger" Piotrowski

I’ve mentioned before that one of the troubles with viewing films with the express purpose of assigning them a numerical rating and committing your thoughts to public scrutiny is that your tastes, preferences, and opinions are subject to change, sometimes very quickly. There are many films over the years that I’ve liked in the heat of the moment, only to forget about them within a few months as my enthusiasm waned. Conversely, there are numerous movies I was dismissive of or ambivalent toward upon release, only to grow to appreciate them the more I thought about them. This can make an annual Top Ten somewhat difficult to defend and even embarrassing to revisit, especially when you realize that you’ve only viewed your number one pick exactly once. 2019’s Top Ten is one such list. Though I penned it a mere three years ago, I was amazed and slightly appalled to see how I ranked the year’s best in show. As such, I thought it would be fun to revisit what I’d easily call that last good year in cinema before the world went barmy and see which films have held up in my mind. While the films themselves haven’t changed, the order in which they’re ranked has (or… has it??).

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Let’s Talk About: Last Night in Soho

Posted on by Roger "Dodger" Piotrowski

Back in 2017, I confessed I was caught off-guard by Baby Driver’s startling deviation from the silliness, irreverence, and absurdity that had until that point defined Edgar Wright’s career. Though the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy was hardly bereft of dramatic depth (with Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End in particular conveying some surprisingly profound themes regarding maturity and responsibility, not to mention the pathetic outcome of failing to cross the threshold between boyhood and manhood), at the end of the day it was still firmly rooted in comedy territory. With Baby Driver, Wright shifted gears (heh) and delivered a fun but comparatively grounded action flick, downplaying his signature humour and rapid-fire dialogue in favour of something more stylish and altogether cinematic. In short, Edgar Wright had finally moved out of Simon Pegg’s apartment and grown up (it happens to the best of us). I eventually came around to appreciating and even admiring Baby Driver, and though I was undeniably saddened that Wright’s days of pitting a hapless Scott Pilgrim against a bonkers world were officially behind him, I found myself looking forward to what he’d come up with next.

Continue reading Let’s Talk About: Last Night in Soho