A Very Short List of Movies I've Seen Since 2020 That Were Actually Not Horrible

As I reported on my blogs at the time, I stopped watching movies as a regular thing way back in 2018 when Hollywood went fully into trash mode. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I honestly don’t know how you guys can still watch this slop.

I still don’t watch movies or TV and avoid both as much as humanly possible.

That being said, when I’m on long international flights and I’m trying to stay awake to adjust for destination jet lag, but I’m too tired to get any productive work done, I will watch a few new movies or TV shows just to pass the time.

And they’re usually horrible and make me want to puke.

But exceptions to the rule do exist, so I thought it would be fun to show the very tiny list of movies I’ve seen in the last five years that actually weren’t complete garbage.

So here they are, the few movies I’ve seen since 2020 that were actually good.

Blackberry

This is my favorite movie of all the movies I’ve seen since I stopped watching films in 2018.

I’ve probably watched it five times and I’m sure I’ll watch it again.

It’s a business movie about the rise and fall of the Blackberry device. Like most business movies, it takes a few liberties with the facts, but a goddamn perfect movie. Great characters, great plot, really funny, interesting business stories and events, just fantastic.

By the way, it’s no surprise this movie was NOT made by Hollywood (or else it would have sucked). It was an indie Canadian film.

1917

This movie is a masterpiece. It’s one of those movies that I’m shocked Hollywood allowed to get made. The entire movie is shot in one shot (not literally, but you get my point) and it’s about two soldiers in World War I.

Beautifully shot, immersive, no woke re-writing of history. Fucking great.

Godzilla Minus One

Of course this is good because it wasn’t made in the Collapsing West. A fantastic movie and one of the best Godzilla movies ever made. And the damn thing was made for only $15 million yet it looks as good as any $200 million Marvel movie.

Speaking of Marvel movies…

Spider-Man No Way Home

There have been 15 Marvel movies since Endgame. 13 out of the 15 were absolute shit, and will continue to be shit. One of them was okay (Deadpool & Wolverine) but amazingly, one was actually good, and this was Spider-Man No Way Home.

This one shocks me the most on this list. I have no idea how a movie of this quality and this amount of respect for legacy characters got through the left-wing poop factories of both Disney/Marvel and Sony. I’m still shocked that this movie even exists.

It brings back all of the characters from the prior Spider-Man movie franchises but it actually does it well(!). Wow. This is the only movie since 2013 or so in any franchise that has pulled this off. Shocking. But a great movie.

Boss Level

A simple, silly action movie but it works. In an era where most action movies are either pure garbage or starring 90-pound women who beat the shit out of 230-pound men, I’ll take it.

The Count of Monte Cristo (2024 version, in French)

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite stories of all time and I quote the book in my books.

The 2002 version starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce is really good and I own it. This new French version is better. It’s more serious and more accurate to the book (but still not 100% accurate; they do change a few things around to make it more palatable for “modern” sensibilities).

The music is fantastic too. I plan on re-watching this movie on my next long flight.

Extraction 1 and 2

Two Netflix movies that are actually good. Again, shocking. I think I like the second one even better. Sort of like 1917, they do really long shots, which is cool. The action is brutal and violent, which is nice (and rare these days). There is a little girl boss bullshit not not enough to ruin the movies, which again, is rare these days.

Dune 2

Better than the first Dune movie, very impressed that they didn’t radically change anything from the book to fit into a more collapsing/woke/trash era like we have now.

I’m really curious how they’re going to handle Dune 3 (which apparently is shooting now). If you’ve read Dune Messiah, you know there’s absolutely no way in hell they’ll allow what happens in that book on a big-budget modern-day Hollywood movie. It’s going to be interesting.

Nosferatu

I actually went to the movie theater to see this(!) because I wanted to see the cinematography on the big screen, and I wasn’t disappointed. Historically accurate, fantastic dialogue, looks great, no modern-day bullshit.

Robert Eggars is great. I didn’t love The Northman and The Lighthouse was not a movie made for me, but I really liked The Witch also.

Comments On Other Movies I Know You’re Going To Ask About

But Caleb, what about Top Gun Maverick???

It was good, but a little overrated. During the pandemic (the worldwide overreaction to a flu with a 1% death rate) guys were so hungry for something from Hollywood that wasn’t pure trash that when this came out, it was a breath of fresh air, but all of the movies I listed above were far better.

But Caleb, What about John Wick???

That franchise started out great, but by the third installment it started turning into a bullshit Fast and Furious thing where John Wick is basically Superman and unkillable, even if he gets shot multiple times in the torso, falls off skyscrapers, and gets hit with cars. This cartoonishness ruined it all for me. (And no, he didn’t die at the end of John Wick 4. Don’t be stupid.)

I still like the movies and will still watch them (I will not watch Ballerina, sorry) but it will never be as good as the first two.