And then there were two - La La Land and Call Me By Your Name

29 films in 122 days.

For dedicated followers of this site, you might think 29 films in 4 months is nothing...after all, in a couple of weeks it will be Oscar season here at Awards Wiz.

While movies such as "A Star is Born," "Beautiful Boy," and "First Man" premiere in October I will also be finalizing programming for the LGBTQ block at the Oxford Film Festival. Once that is done it will be time for Indie Spirits viewing/voting and my 12 Days of Christmas Catch Up series which will (hopefully) culminate in a Top 10 and finally in January/February watch and document all of the Oscar nominated films I missed in my 27 Days of Oscar push toward the finish line.

But this series was different. For the first summer ever I managed to write. Really write.

I read a quote by Cheryl Strayed today that said, "you cannot wish yourself into being a great writer. You have to write yourself into being one" and whether or not I am a great writer, I have certainly taken steps to get better.

I even managed, through this series to finish the first draft of my very own short film. When will I pick it up again? I'm not sure.

Something I have been contemplating the past couple of days is how this Best Films Rewatch might affect or even inform this upcoming Oscar season.

This time last year I was thinking the Oscars were going to be a bore, particularly after the one/two punch of "La La Land" and "Moonlight," my two favorite films of 2016. It was truly exciting to have my top 2 films of the year vying for the Best Picture Oscar. That is very rare.

We all know that "Moonlight" won Best Picture, but I haven't quite forgotten the smear campaign, intentional or not, that accompanied much of the Oscar coverage observing the Best Picture race.

I realized when I grabbed my "La La Land" bluray that I hadn't seen the film again since the 2017 Oscars. Within minutes I was swept up in the magic of the film and so happy that Damien Chazelle won Best Director.

The really interesting thing about the "scandal" that accompanied "La La Land" during phase 2 of the Oscar race is that there was a lesson to be learned in that small portion of what "La La Land" was actually about.

In case you need a reminder, a small group of Oscar bloggers and entertainment journalists managed to completely mischaracterize the plot of the film by focusing on the idea that white Seb was trying to save jazz from black Keith.

“How are you going to save jazz when no one is listening...where are the kids...where are the young people," John Legend's Keith says to Ryan Gosling's Sebastian. It's a valid question.

Too bad the nuances of this got completely bastardized by a fabricated Oscars death match.

This is the very question plaguing the Academy itself, and in turn the very people who created the scandal in the first place. Who is actually killing the Oscars? I would say it's the same people who are trying so desperately to "save" it. Ironic.

"La La Land" is a magical, beautiful musical about dreams, Los Angeles, and what some people have to give up to achieve one's dreams.

A film I had less time away from is last year's obsession and favorite film, "Call Me By Your Name."

Of all the films on the list, I was most nervous about viewing CMBYN again, having fallen so passionately for it last year, seeing it more times that I wish to admit.

I found myself stopping and starting the film multiple times, something I might have done on a 10th viewing, but shouldn't be doing with my Best Films Rewatch. Right before I stopped the film the last time I made it to the scene outside the Battle of Piave statue.

I have watched this scene over and over, read it multiple times in the book, and something I have never told anyone is that this scene, one that was praised by many, is the one I struggle the most with--in regard to Ivory's adaptation, Luca's direction, even the acting.

For some reason, this time, having not really been paying much attention...I had somehow managed to turn off my overthinking, critical brain and just watched.

My issues with the scene were more about an inferred subtext. Is Elio saying he is gay? Is Oliver saying they can't talk about being gay?

In the book we know that Elio has decided in this moment to admit to Oliver that there is an attraction, but watching it on film, I don't think Elio understands what he is feeling, so how can he even express it? Maybe Elio is simply saying he doesn't know about the things that matter.

Once I had this realization, the scene that has plagued me from the start immediately came alive for me in a way it never had before. In its literal simplicity.

I decided to stop the film and take a break. When I came back to it later that night I told myself I had to look at the film in a different way. Without subtext. Without history. And without my technology by my side.

I put my phone in the bedroom, started the film over from the beginning and watched (with relief) one of my favorite films of all time.

So, what's next for the Best Films Rewatch? Time. I need a bit of time to decide how I am going to rank these films and if I'm going to pick a top film. It took decades to make the list, so I can certainly take a few days to process the experience.