Hacker Cinema
CODA
2021 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Sian Heder
As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), Ruby is the only hearing person in her deaf family. When the family's fishing business is threatened, Ruby finds herself torn between pursuing her love of music and her fear of abandoning her parents.
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21 comments on Hacker News
Really. You've watched Ed Wood sometime within the last 10 years? The Last Seduction? Wolf? Red Rock West? That's just from the top 10 in that list.
I don't know what the point of your second list is. It's never been the case that streamers or cable channels (their nearest antecedent) were big producers of movies. But streamers --- unlike cable channels --- did manage to produce CODA, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Irishman, Buster Scruggs, Roma, Dolemite, and Glass Onion.
This includes movies, but browsing their "originals" list, so far I (or my wife) have enjoyed (in no particular order):
Slow Horses Lessons in Chemistry Severance Ted Lasso Shrinking Mythic Quest Roar CODA The Problem with John Stewart And we are looking forward to checking out, in no particular order:
Palm Royale For All Mankind Criminal Record Killers of the Flower Moon Foundation Strange Planet The Morning Show Greyhound They're not all knockout hits. Overall we just feel safer trying something new there. If we don't like it, it's usually just because it's not for us, and less because it feels like an algorithmic, soulless cash grab.
There's some good movies based around deafness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODA_(2021_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_of_Metal
And a bad video game:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_Man_(video_game)
What I love about Apple TV+ is that the stuff on it feels like it was made for more than just "do we think this will drive some metric." I'm not saying that you'll like any given program on Apple TV+, but when I open up Netflix I'm bombarded by a bunch of low-rent reality stuff, Disney+ seems to be focused on finding new ways of churning out as many iterations of the same franchises as possible, Max (Warner Bros) is canceling their content, Paramount+ is for Star Trek, and Prime Video is all about showing me content that isn't actually included so I can buy Prime channels.
When I open Apple TV+, I get choices like CODA, the story of a child of deaf adults. Whether you like the movie or not, it's something new and different. I get things like For All Mankind which just feels so much better than anything I've ever watched before and meaningfully different from other stuff I've seen.
I love TV and movies. Not everything has to be grand or new. But there's something nice about opening up Apple TV+ and having a bit of a different experience from what a lot of the apps are pushing.
CODA (2021) is a great film I'd recommend that touches on that (stands for Children of Deaf Adults).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODA_(2021_film)
I like to check in IMDB the size of the Visual Teams in movies.
Avenger Endgame (2019) credits 2,203 names in Visual Effects. Death on the Nile (2022), credits 832. CODA (2021), credits 14 people.
It won 6 Oscars, deservedly, though all technical, but should have won Best Picture, which went to CODA. CODA had a budget of $10M and a box office take of $1.9M, while Dune had a budget of $165M and a box office take of $402M, if that tells you anything. Chalamet should have won Best Actor, he did quite well, but he is too young. He'll get one later when he's older, undoubtedly. Best Actor went to Will Smith for King Richard, and Smith is certainly talented, but Chalemet is in a class by himself. Smith probably should have forfeit his Oscar for his violent outburst at the ceremonies.
The acting in Dune is simply excellent. Everyone brought their A-game. The cinematography, special effects and soundtrack are all excellent. The screenplay is surprisingly very similar to the 1984 film.
Just a quick glance at Letterboxd....
Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Both Knives Out movies
Parasite
Nope (probably just in the "good" grouping, not great)
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That's, uh... just from the "popular this week" screen. And only the ones I've seen, so I know they're good. But I'm pretty sure all those are last five years, or close to it.
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Digging back to 2018 and later (we can say 2018 counts since 2023 just started, right?):
Annihilation
Sorry to Bother You
High Life
Midsommar
Uncut Gems (god it's so good)
Jojo Rabbit
The Lighthouse
The Green Knight
CODA
Spontaneous ([EDIT] It seems very dumb but wow is it a gut punch, when you start to think about what you're watching and make some connections to real life)
Red Rocket (small-scale brilliance)
RRR
Watcher
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I just realized I misread you as asking for 5 good ones from just one of the last 5 years, not 5 total from the last 5 years, but I think that gets the point across? Despite my leaving off a whole bunch that may be more taste-specific, not having watched even 1/3 of the films from that span I have good reason to believe are good, not exhaustively mining that timespan (I bet I could double the size of that list without changing how I was selecting them), and also omitting a bunch of more-popular movies that I think were at least decent.
[EDIT] Hell some years you could get to 2-3 good ones just by looking at what A24 produced that year, nothing else.
The Oscars often don't agree with critics, either. I don't think anyone had Ordinary People, Dances with Wolves, Titanic, Shakespeare in Love, Crash, Green Book, even CODA at #1 on their year-end best of list. Best Picture is usually going to favor something that is at least serious enough that the voters don't feel like children for loving it, i.e. they're never going to award a tentpole or franchise entry, sci-fi, fantasy, horror genre-type stuff will only very rarely even be considered, but they're also going to favor relatively inoffensive, unchallenging, often feel good work that isn't particularly novel or ground-breaking, which is more what critics will lean toward. They also have a tendency to reward message movies and films about filmmaking and Hollywood itself, even if no one likes them.
That was the thing that got me to sign up for Apple TV+ and I was shocked by what a terrible film CODA turned out to be. Just complete schlock. I put it up there with "Crash" among films that won Best Picture purely due to lack of candidates that year.
I tried to watch some of the stuff they were heavily promoting, but couldn't get into them. Shining Girls is really bad. Tehran, a 3rd-party adaptation from Israel, is Netflix-grade trash that strains one's ability to suspend disbelief. Adding Glenn Close, an elderly American WASP, as a Mossad agent, did nothing to make this weird Israeli propaganda vehicle more believable.
Anyway these are all matters of taste but objectively I believe Apple TV+ has very few subs, which was my main point. It doesn't seem like a massive advertising opportunity.
I enjoyed these TV shows: - Ted Lasso - Severance - Bad Sisters - Servant - Trying - Mythic Quest - The Morning Show (season 1)
And these movies: - Cha Cha Real Smooth - Swan Song - Coda - The Banker - The Tragedy of MacBeth - The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Looking forward to the Sidney movie as well.
I do find the thesis in the ending quite weak:
> For a longer time before the gritty period, we all dedicated ourselves to the idea that anything we’d acknowledge as very good had to be both serious and artsy. People really liked Good Will Hunting (see: very serious); it was also a good movie, so it won an Oscar. Zillions of people love movies like The Princess Bride and Happy Gilmore; it’s incredibly likely both dwarf Good Will Hunting in terms of total views, but you can’t even imagine a world where either could have possibly won an Oscar.
[...]
> This is a short article by my standards, but it does have me thinking: What kind of world could we actually live in, if we were willing to treat works of art made with the goal of making us happy as if they were important? What if we were willing to make them? We’ve seen what happens in a world where all the Oscars go to movies that make you cry, or that we pretend make us think even though they generally don't
There are plenty of widely acclaimed movies that can not be considered "very serious", picking some recent Oscar winners as examples with categorizations from wikipedia:
* Parasite ("black comedy thriller")
* Green Book ("comedy-drama")
* The Shape of Water ("romantic fantasy")
* Birdman ("black comedy drama")
* CODA ("comedy-drama")
* La La Land ("comedy-drama")
* Life Of Pie ("adventure-drama")
Are all those completely feel-good movies intended to make you happy? Maybe not, but still its not like happy/humorous/feel-good is completely disregarded category even among grumpy art critics.
Netflix is screwed.
It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you could find it on Netflix, put it in your DVD queue and in a few days receive the DVD in the mail. Their inventory was really good, (with some exceptions) and the service had pretty fast turnaround. Phase 1.
Then broadband started becoming more available, so streaming became a natural extension. Here's where Netflix faced bigger challenges. Initially, IP owners were happy to sell streaming rights for pennies since they didn't have any idea of the real value. Netflix leveraged this to build up an even bigger catalog that wasn't constrained by the number of DVDs in their inventory.
Netflix started to dabble in producing (and buying) content for their streaming. Good stuff like Stranger Things. The Crown. Dark. Babylon Berlin. And IP owners started raising the prices for renewals for movies and series in their catalogs. Netflix decided to cheap out on the quality of their shows. And they started to cut down on their DVD catalog as well.
Now you have all of the IP owners with their own streaming services, so Netflix will find it really hard to stream anything but the crappiest stuff. And they've shown little ability to consistently produce quality series or movies.
Contrast this with ATV+. Apple knew that it had a huge potential customer base, but that licensing IP wasn't going to be sustainable; whatever they streamed had to be exclusive. So they started slow, trying to replace HBO for high quality content. And they had some meh shows like "See." Not bad, but not HBO. Then "The Morning Show," followed by "Ted Lasso." Now they're starting to get some traction. Having an infinite amount of money always helps, but they became pretty good at saying no. "For All Mankind" grabbed a chunk of sci-fi viewers. Greyhound captured the war nerds. Slowly, carefully, they've been building up a pretty solid catalog. Now you have shows like "Servant," "Slow Horses," "The Mosquito Coast," "Foundation."
Cap it off with a series and a movie that have set ATV+ on par with any streaming service: Severance and Coda.
Now ATV+ will never have the catalog that Disney+ has. They might be fine with that. But where does this leave Netflix? Netflix has no serious movies that could compete for an Oscar. They don't seem to have the ability to create must see TV anymore. Perhaps they're too driven by algorithms to give the viewer what Netflix "thinks" they want? I just can't see a path forward for Netflix as other than crappy shows. Even with their foreign content, they face increased price pressure and competition from the other SVODs.
Nitpick but CODA barely counts as original content. It's an American remake of a very popular French movie "La Famille Bélier". The producers were even involved with both film.
As a movie fan, I despise Netflix's creative line. Their model is to create dumb TV Shows repeating the same concepts over +8 seasons with no real inherent concept. People just get engaged because it's what's closest and easiest to watch.
Now, said that, The Power of the Dog and Rome were two very good movies that somehow came out of Netflix. I don't think that CODA is such a turning point. All these services are pouring so much money into productions that sometimes they hit the bullseye.
Who knows, without Apple's support and promotion, CODA may not have gotten to this point
Having worked on a movie that had a (short, failed) Oscar push, you cannot underestimate who important (and expensive) promotion is to even just getting a nomination. Had CODA remained an indie darling on the festival circuit it almost certainly would not have won.
This is very important to note. Apple Studios didn't develop the movie. Apple was just good at selecting a potentially well-performing candidate for their streaming service and for winning awards at different competitions. They did heavily promote the movie though. Who knows, without Apple's support and promotion, CODA may not have gotten to this point
CODA was clearly the best film from a list of extremely poor films this year. There were only two good films this year, with The Worst Person in the World, and the too intellectual Drive My Car.
CODA is the third remake of an excellent story, with the second remake, with Luane, being unbeatable in Europe. Nobody in Europe wants to see this attempt, but for the American market it's huge. It was already the biggest film at Sundance. So why not, for their domestic market it's good enough. But that's why the big studios bailed on it.
Roma? The Irishman? The Two Popes? Marriage Story? Mank? Beasts of No Nation? Power of the Dog? Tick Tick Boom?
Can't really take a comment seriously that puts Apple's film output over this. Besides Coda has Apple produced or even just distributed anything of comparable quality?
I'm a CODA. For me it's a big deal to see a film like this win this recognition.
> “CODA” becomes the first film with a predominantly Deaf cast to win Best Picture
Whenever I see a movie/series starring a minority getting high awards I always think about if it was awarded for actually being good, or just because it had a cast filled with a lesser represented group and juries didn't want to come off as racist.