The race is on between 3rd wave COVID case records and vaccine rollout, and so far COVID is winning. We’re over a year in now, and I have no doubt you are wondering “which movies are the best for day 400 of a worldwide pandemic”? Well, look no further! Here is a handy list of COVID-positive movies for your reference.
In the Mood For Love (Fa yeung nin wah): Set in Hong Kong, this visually gorgeous movie follows the lives of two neighbours in a crowded tenement, Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow, who believe their spouses are cheating on them. They find comfort in their growing friendship, but promise never to stray beyond that, so as not to become like their spouses. Why is this a COVID + movie? Because even though they fall deeply in love, they never actually touch each other (except for one hug which takes place outside). Also, it’s subtitled, and since you’ve got nothing else to do these days, you might as well sit back and read your movie.
Sergeant York: What better way to spend your 400th+ day of COVID than to watch the the life of someone who had it way worse than you? Sergeant York is the true-ish story of the military life of Alvin York who, after getting cheated out of the money he needs to buy some land and then being stuck by lightning, ends up getting drafted into WW1. Through a subsequent series of unlucky/lucky events, he eventually becomes one of the most celebrated heroes of the war. When he returns home, he gets his land, and lives happily ever after. Like maybe we will one day.
Things To Come: In 1936, HG Wells looks to the future and predicts some actual things to come: flat screen TVs, Jumbotrons, Segways, factory automation, underground drilling machines. In 2021, the world looks the future and hopes we can eat food inside a restaurant one day.
The Exterminating Angel: A very peculiar movie in which members of the Spanish elite class are guests at a dinner party and then find themselves unable to leave. Not because they are being held there against their will. They just cannot make themselves leave the room even to eat or use the bathroom. Every time they get close to leaving, they get distracted and end up staying put. At one point a goat wanders in (?) and so they slaughter it for food. Honestly, if this isn’t symbolic of 2020, I’ll eat my hat.
The Gold Rush: Perhaps the most famous of Charlie Chaplin’s movies, if only for the “roll dance” wherein Chaplin creates a dance number using forks stabbed into dinner rolls. Apart from being an absolute gem of a movie, there is much entertainment in watching Chaplin and his fellow prospectors invent ways to stay entertained while isolated in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness. You can then recreate these games in your own home, which during lockdown feels pretty much the same as his teeny tiny cabin.
Super Fly: Why binge-watch a season of Miami Vice when you can get the full Vice vibe from this 1972 movie about a cocaine dealer looking to get out of the business after he makes one last score. Ron O’Neal, sporting a fine biker ‘stache and sideburns, spends most of the movie just walking around to the music of Curtis Mayfield. Really, this was a 45 minute TV show that needed to be stretched into 91 minutes in order to qualify as a “movie”. Attempting to make something interesting out of nothing is exactly how my life feels at the moment, which is why this is a perfect pandemic movie.
Doctor Zhivago: An Omar Sharif epic is a fantastic way to spend an evening of lockdown, and if it can’t be Lawrence of Arabia, then it might as well be Doctor Zhivago. Some weird shit goes on – one character marries their cousin, another is molested by an … uncle? Maybe I missed that part while I was making popcorn. But weird shit aside, this is a classic, and unlike many movies of similar length, very little of it is wasted time. Better to make the popcorn before hitting play 🙂
Blue Velvet: First things first, this is not the movie about the horse. Secondly, I am retroactively embarrassed to say that all I really knew about this movie was from an episode of Friends. If you don’t know the one I’m talking about, all the better for you! Thirdly, I was mildly distracted by the amount of Twin Peaks imagery (crimson curtains, weird cuts, a dismembered ear, and Kyle MacLachlan) until I realized/read that Twin Peaks was, in fact, inspired by Blue Velvet. That alone makes it a COVID-friendly movie but add in Isabella Rossellini in a righteous wig and you have yourself a gold medal winner.