What movies for coronalockdown?

What are the most relevant movies to watch in coronalockdown? Let’s exclude movies whose connection to the coronaplague is too obvious, e.g., movies about epidemics.

My suggestions: Make Way for Tomorrow, exploring what children owe parents, and the Japanese film that it inspired, Tokyo Story.

(An apocalyptic-minded Bitcoin-holding friend last week: “They just need to let a lot of people die so that we can get the economy restarted.” He could be a character in Make Way for Tomorrow!)

15 thoughts on “What movies for coronalockdown?

  1. Monty Python and The Holy Grail, for the much needed dark humour. The only reference in the movie to the coronaplague is the famous “bring out your dead scene”, which has now become a meme.

  2. Help me, please. What’s the subject and the modality of “They just need”? Is it Trump’s administration that needs, or is it impersonal? Does it mean “they” want many people to die, or are “they” waiting for this inevitable outcome in order to restart the economy? What’s the needed cause of the deaths – the virus or the halted economy? English modality is hard.

    Not sure, which movies are apt for the plague, but the seventies’ movies in general are mostly shot as if the directors were properly instructed about social distancing. Anything from Blow up to the last Fassbinder movie. Taxi driver. etc

  3. Vivarium, with Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg as an (involuntarily) self-isolating couple. A nightmare version of parenthood.

    Are zombie outbreaks too obvious? The Netflix series Kingdom is an awesome epic – an early-modern Korean kingdom grapples with zombies.

  4. Mom and I are watching 10 Cloverfield Lane (with John Goodman!) if you are in the mood for something a little less cerebral!

  5. If you liked Tokyo Story check out the rest of Ozu’s films — Late Spring, Early Summer, Late Spring etc. They deal with similar themes of family life, responsibilities between generations, and so on and are all terrific — easily as good as Tokyo Story. And in many of the films the actors and actresses are the same so you watch them age and play parts that are appropriate for their age. Though SPOILER ALERT: no car crashes, car chases, shootings, fist fights, people being impaled on sharp objects, or gratuitous sex scenes.

  6. I would’t recommend the movie, but read “The Inhabited Island” by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky. In my circle of friends referring to it (especially the part about transmitters which spread fear and totalitarian “patriotism” among locals) became the default way to describe what is going on in US right now. Strugatsky had a knack for predicting unobvious things… for example you can find the accurate description of a rave in their “The Carnivorous Things of the Century” written in late 60s.

  7. I Am Legend, World War Z.

    The virus tests, quarantines, & evacuations are so much more realistic 12 years later.

  8. Little House on the Prairie. Season 4 Episode 13 — ‘Quarantine’

    Akira (1988), set in 2019 Tokyo. Wicked cool anime urban apocalypse.

    Midway (2019) .Americans dealing with oriental airborne adversity. Terrible acting. Really good aviation scenes.

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