2020 MOVIE GUIDE

What I Loved the Most:

1. Small Axe. I’m kicking off my list with what has been submitted to awards shows as television, but it is the best thing I saw all year (plus film critics treated each entry like its own movie so I feel vindicated by this). Steve McQueen’s five-film anthology focuses on telling a mix of true and original stories that all center on London’s population of West Indian immigrants from the 60’s-80’s, and the whole is even greater than the sum of its incredibly worthy parts. Mangrove is the socially relevant courtroom movie that I wish Trial of the Chicago 7 was; Lover’s Rock takes place entirely at a house party featuring budding romances, community, music, and dancing; Red White and Blue is the biographical police movie that we need right now; Alex Wheatle is easily the weakest of the series, but profoundly tackles the concept of identity through another biographical story; and Education highlights the insidious racism present in London’s schooling system. Small Axe was the deep, dramatic, and ultimately hopeful mosaic we needed last year.

2. Minari. This is the quintessential American story of a family trying to survive and succeed on their family farm, and the interpersonal drama that they have to work out along the way. It just so happens to be about two parents who immigrated from Korea, their children, and the family’s grandmother. It tackles some heavy themes in a refreshingly gentle and quiet way that makes for the most compelling yet accessible 2020 film.

3. Nomadland. The reason for my ranking this lower than Minari is that Nomadland feels far less mainstream. It has a very loose narrative structure and a largely non-professional cast, which can be a turn-off for most audiences; therein lies its power. This is a moving, contemplative, beautiful, and emotional experience from start to finish, even if its not an emotional “story”. It manages to speak volumes about a mode of life and the failures of our society that creates nomads through the visual medium of film, not with words.

4. Judas and the Black Messiah. This film is as complex as its characters; by turns noisy, angry, scathing, sympathetic, condemning, intimate, tender, undoubtedly entertaining. It’s essentially a combination of The Departed and Malcolm X, and just as revolutionary as those films and as Fred Hampton was to social justice. It also features two of the most dynamic young performers working today in Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya; see it immediately.

5. Da 5 Bloods. This movie dropped on Netflix all the way back in February of 2020, which worked against it in this late awards season. However, his meditation on the Vietnam War that draws from Apocalypse Now, The Treasure of The Sierra Madre, and 50 years of Black history is not to be missed, even if it is a tad overstuffed with ideas. It does feature an incredible supporting performance by Chadwick Boseman, whose passing was a tragic loss of a young icon in the same year that took Kobe Bryant, as the young sergeant who never came home. As with the best of Spike’s projects in his legendary career, it’s funny in some moments, action-packed in others, socially conscious in most, and entertaining in all.

6. Mank. Welcome back to movies David Fincher – I haven’t seen you since you rocked us with Gone Girl. Like Bloods, this movie is slightly held back by its extraneous thoughts, most notably the inclusion of Lilly Collins’ character in the film’s present day taking dictation from Gary Oldman’s Mankiewicz. Everything else though, including just about every performance, is perfect, and I love Fincher’s use of sound editing to make the audio sound like it’s being watched in an old theater. This film is also structured like Citizen Kane and watching that film before approaching Mank creates a whole new level of appreciation for this gem.

7. Tenet. Not Nolan’s best but certainly his biggest, this film is complex in every way except any interest in character that’s jam-packed with heists, codewords, and false identities all set to a propulsive, electrified soundtrack. All that would be complicated enough, but Nolan also pumps the idea of time inversion into the movie, leading to action sequences featuring characters and actions that are moving, speaking, and performing backwards alongside their counterparts going forwards. He also puts every cent of the $200 million he spent making it onscreen, which is just a joy to behold. This bombastic spectacle deeply rewards every watch to unpack just what the hell is happening onscreen; this should have been last year’s most-talked about blockbuster.

8. Soul. While inferior to Pete Doctor’s previous Pixar film, Inside Out, Soul is a uniquely existential entry into Pixar’s lexicon and the entire lexicon of children’s movies dealing with life’s biggest question: what is my purpose in life – if we even have one? While it’s got fun body-swap gags in one section for the kids, it manages to hit some of the year’s most profound emotional beats in others. Best animated film of the year to be sure, but also belongs in my best of the year.

Solid Recommendations:

1. Palm Springs. This is the quarantine film we needed, and like Tenet, is built a form of time travel. Unlike Tenet, this movie doesn’t really care about time travel. Like the characters in the film, we’ve experienced the feeling of every day feeling the same. Also like the characters in the film, I’ve been lucky to have been stuck in my time loop with people who make it better. This is also a Lonely Island Production starring Andy Samberg, so you know you’re in for some laughs as time-loop movies, quarantine, and modern weddings are all sent up hilariously and tenderly.

2. One Night in Miami. It is undisputed that Regina King has talent in front of the camera, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much talent behind it she showed off in her directorial debut. A nimble screenplay effectively turns a play into a film, and the four central performances keep this film’s engine running. The tragic fact that two of our main characters will be dead within a year of this fateful night is never far from the frame as they debate, shout, reminisce, and share friendship. Check this one out.

3. Sound of Metal. A very modern, slightly edgy entry into the first-person character study genre of film, Sound of Metal features some of the year’s strongest performances and subjective filmmaking. As the main character goes deaf, the sound is often edited to put us in his shoes to very moving effect and creates an opportunity for sequences regarding a special type of disability that film rarely commits so much time to. You’re getting what you’re signing up for with this drama, but is that really such a bad thing when it works?

4. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. You can definitely feel that this was once a play based on its limited setting, but the film’s dynamic camerawork, artistic lighting, sharp editing, and literary edge keep things moving. Ultimately, the best thing in the film is the performances, and they provide one hell of an engine – including the supporting cast. Davis and Boseman turn in some of the best work of their careers, and Boseman turns in easily one of the year’s best.

Small but Mighty:

1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always. I may not have named it among my “most loved” of the year, but this is far and away one of the most important and well-made movies of the year. Its young performers provide excellent turns and hammer home the difficult themes this movie is tackling. I won’t get preachy, but I think that if everyone were to watch this movie, we would all be able to approach the divisive topic of abortion access with a lot more empathy, regardless of our opinion.

2. The Vast of Night. This tiny film is flung straight out of another era of filmmaking, where dialogue, acting and tension alone could power a film to success; you could almost say it’s reminiscent of an early Spielberg. This was the most thrilling movie that I saw all last year, and its final sequence creates some of the most acute paranoia that I’ve experienced in a movie in a long, long time. I wish this sci-fi drama/thriller could have been stunning audiences in theaters – welcome to the game, Andrew Patterson.

3. First Cow. This is the critical darling of the year that audiences seem to have connected with the least, and I can understand that. Kelly Reichardt’s dedication to natural, human filmmaking can make her movies feel slow, which most people would be too quick to label as “boring”. This fable of friendship, capitalism, and the frontier benefits from its gentle slowness however, and I would recommend this to anyone fed up with the same old, same old.

4. The Assistant. This, not Promising Young Woman, is the best #MeToo movie of the year. Unfolding over the course of a single workday and constantly following Julia Garner’s Jane, an administrative assistant for an always-offscreen Harvey Weinstein stand-in, she eventually stumbles on some troubling findings. The film is a special kind of riveting as she debates what to do and is illustrative of the systems of corporate power that keep people from speaking up more often in these scenarios. It also hardly uses any camera movement, instead relying on seamless editing and carefully selected shot patterns to constantly move us through the workday. Maybe it’s because it captured the tedium of corporate work for a young adult so well in addition to its resonant themes, but I was absolutely riveted the entire time.

Didn’t Live Up to the Hype:

1. Trial of the Chicago 7. This film does a lot of things well and has some fantastic sequences. It also features the year’s best ensemble cast, and a very smart script from Aaron Sorkin. It doesn’t, however, leave me with the searing impression that I just saw something great, and is absolutely overshadowed by the power of Judas and the Black Messiah (which takes place concurrently) and Small Axe: Mangrove. For a movie that billed itself as one for the moment of June 2020, it failed to deliver the lightning bolt of righteous anger and drama that the other two have cooked up, and if there was a smaller budget with a lesser-known cast and a new writer/director, I would have been more impressed. But I know what Sorkin is capable of as a writer, and I also know that he doesn’t have the chops as a director to deliver that extra oomph, which is what we’re missing here. It’s quite good, but it just didn’t live up to the hype.

2. Promising Young Woman. Like Trial of the Chicago 7, this movie has a lot of good things going for it; mostly Carey Mulligan’s terrific performance that reaches depths we haven’t seen from her yet. This film suffers from the opposite problem of Chicago 7, in that it might be powered off a little too much righteous anger. There isn’t a subtle bone in this film’s body, and while its anger is certainly for a righteous cause, it just doesn’t know what it wants to be as a movie, which is important. Its dedication to the #milennial aesthetic might be satire, might be intentionally ironic, might be a stylistic flourish, but I don’t know if anyone knows the answer. What this film has to say matters, but as a film it doesn’t quite live up to the hype.

Still Have to See:

1. The Father.

2. News of the World.

3. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.

4. The United States vs. Billie Holliday.