Well, one of these new movies might be taking the crown for my favorite movie of 2020, so keep reading to find out which one of these new titles is the winner!
The day after Christmas I drove myself over to a theater to sit alone and watch one of my most anticipated movies to come out in 2020, Promising Young Woman. Honestly, thank goodness it stayed on the slate! Of course, I follow a lot of critics online and they have all been raving about it since they’ve been able to see it and I’ve been itching to ever since. Also, the trailer was solid, and the cast was incredible, so those were very strong selling points. And finally, it’s been categorized as a black-comedy thriller, which is perhaps my favorite genre!
I’ll be keeping this spoiler free, so feel free to stay with me! The film follows Cassie, who is nearing 30, has dropped out of med school, and it pretending to be really drunk at bars and clubs so “nice guys” can take her home. This is obviously a revenge film, and you figure out why fairly early on, but they expertly never outright spill all the details. I feel like that’s part of what made it more thrilling! Also, Carey Mulligan really knows how to turn on the charm and the deviousness at the drop of a hat. One thing that somewhat derails her revenge mission is meeting an actual nice guy! This movie was so fun to see how it all played out, and there were plenty of twists and surprises that will have you talking back at whatever screen you end up watching it on. And I highly recommend you watch it.
Next up was the highly anticipated Wonder Woman 1984. By highly anticipated I mean that a lot of people were pumped for it and then it got a theatrical released pushed around about four times. All in all it didn’t make a difference because I watched it in the comfort of my own home. Even though I wasn’t as pumped about this as a lot of other viewers, I was still looking forward to it because I really enjoyed the first one. Yes, we got Diana, and we even got Steve back, but the very long movie just didn’t quite connect all the dots for me.
I feel like for something that was taking place in the 80s, they definitely dropped the ball on the soundtrack. Steve’s reappearance was a bit questionable, and then he sort of lacked the comic relief that made him so likeable in the first film. For Diana being such a strong badass, she seemed sort of wimpy since she spent a good deal of the film pining over Steve, who she really only knew for a couple of weeks…anyways, I do like love, so I’ll let it slide. Then there were the villains, which included a greedy businessman and a dorky co-worker who also sort of ended up being greedy. Look, I don’t read the comics, but the fact that neither one of these villains die was kind of a letdown. Now, I point out all of these flaws (there were still more), but in reality, it was a nice popcorn flick and sort of in line with most of the other superhero flicks out there.
If you only had two hours to devote to movie watching, I would no-contest tell you that the choice has to be Promising Young Women. But, if you’ve got HBO Max and you are the casual superhero movie viewer, then add Wonder Woman 1984 to your list, too. All I can say is that you can expect the former title showing up in my top ten for 2020 next week. Keep your eyes peeled!