2020 was 2020. The year's reputation speaks for itself. Perhaps for that reason, I believe this is my weakest Top 15 List in years. I was able to find about twenty movies from 2020 that I believe are truly great. But in comparison, in 2019 and 2018, I was able to find about thirty. Some of the movies on the 2019 list would be easy No. 1s if they had come out in 2020. Portrait of a Lady on Fire alone was better than this whole year combined, and that did not make my Top 5 last year. I don't want to call this is a "bad list" because these are not bad movies. These are great movies. Many deserve much more attention than they have received so far.
Yet even while I beg for wider audiences, I have to admit to myself one important thing: I love this list less than the others. I loved watching movies less in 2020. Bear with me, I have a lot of thought in this opening, and there's a few paragraphs to go.
I still believe motion pictures as an artwork had value last year. Yet while 2020 was a bad year for many people, it was a worse year for the film industry. 2020 was a bad year to watch movies, a worse year to write about movies, and an apocalyptic year to make movies. The ongoing Coronavirus disaster threatens the industry in ways no crisis of in history has ever done. Even before hundreds of thousands of people were dying, studios and theaters were in flux, uncertain of their future while clinging onto shrinking ticket sales. When suddenly in March, every single theater had to close at once, studios had to somehow find a new way to survive. The answer looks like streaming. But who actually knows? I wonder if the smart money might even be wrong on that one.
For a good chunk of 2020, for the average film-goer, there was no movie industry. When theaters closed, the major blockbusters, the billion dollar bets that studios could previously make with very little risk, had to flee to safer waters. Something like The Way Back, a smaller adult drama, could drown in empty auditoriums. But Dominic Toretto was not going down with this ship. That meant a lot of the most exciting and popular movies were gone. If all you cared about was superheroes, you had very little to enjoy. And when the mainstream viewers disappeared, that only left me and film critics trying our best to tell whoever was left that would listen that, "look, Shirley actually is really great and you have Hulu anyway, please watch it! You have the time! Come on!".
It felt like I was talking to nobody. That's painful if you're a writer hungry to be noticed, and somebody who really wants good art to thrive.
I am an outlier. I saw about 70 movies from 2020. Many people did not see any. There was nothing playing that they cared about, so they just moved their attention towards TV or sports or the unending torment that was politics last year. I had to work hard to stay connected to the industry. Finding new releases without a theatrical schedule was difficult. It was nearly impossible to find discussions. "Really, nobody has anything to say about The Mortuary Collection? That's got Clancy Brown and it is a lot of fun!"
It took real hard work to find a Top 15, when for so many, movies no longer existed. It was a dark reminder that all of this, all the things I've written about for over a decade now, is temporary and fragile. We could just not have movies one day, and life would go on. Life would be worse, but I'd find a way to adapt. You'd get more video game reviews at least.
The bigger problem for me, is this: streaming might be the future, but I hate it. I gave it a try and I am unhappy with it. I simply do not enjoy movies as much on my television as much as I do in a theater. The last movie I saw in 2020 was in March, I would not be back in a theater until 2021. Within two weeks Tom Hanks had Covid, Broadway shut down, the NBA was closed, and the entire country was in meltdown. So it was either streaming or nothing. There was no safe way to see Tenet outside my house, no matter how much Christopher Nolan could whine and moan. So I watched it at home, and it was fine. Better than some initial reactions led me to believe. It was James Bond meets Primer, that's cool. It definitely would have mattered a lot more if I had seen it with an excited audience and not just my confused roommates who had no idea what was going on.
Losing the theater did not mean losing movies. Plenty still came out, and plenty were very good. I'll have a lot to say soon once I finish this gargantuan opening thesis. However, even after nearly a year without cinemas, I still cannot imagine a film industry without it. Movies are worse at home. They feel less important as random Netflix or Amazon Prime releases. They lose the power of being events when they're just as simple as laying back on my couch and putting them on as white noise. Movies should not be what you look up from when you need a break reading the latest horrors on Twitter.
Every movie I saw in 2020 outside of a theater had to pay a small tax of my enjoyment. I love them 10% less for not being in theaters. Perhaps this list actually is as strong as 2019's or 2018's, I just had less fun watching. Movies need the focus and definition of a screen. They should demand your complete attention for their hours of runtime. Your emotions can be heightened by the energy of a crowd in a room. A good audience can make a bad movie fun, or a great movie unforgettable. It is good and healthy that you surrender your mind to just one thing for a brief portion of your life.
It maybe it is not entirely Netflix's fault that life is so full of distractions and the constant need for social media validation with Likes and Upvotes. But their product cannot compete with a billion other things around me. Some movies that made this list lost the attention battle with Reddit and my dinner in the oven. That is not fair to the material. That isn't fair to you. It makes me feel like an awful asshole every time I need to play some Sudoku during a less exciting scene.
But fuck, last year sucked, sue me. If I am undisciplined and my mind was wondering, maybe that was not my fault.
Ten years ago, we all assumed the future of books would be digital tablets. The convenience and cheapness of eBooks would wipe out old-fashioned paper and print. That largely never happened. I have not read an eBook since Obama was president because the old way worked and felt better. The inevitable future is not always so inevitable.
Already once in film's history there was a panic that television would conquer the cinema. In the US, that never happened. The industry adapted and evolved. Maybe I'm just a luddite but I feel like people want the power of an event. They don't just want background noise as six other things happen at once. They want to be thrilled by movie magic and movie magic exists on the big screen. I hope theaters survive this plague. Because without the proscenium of a proper theater screen framing the action, we might discover that movies were less real than we thought. It can all evaporate away like a gas having lost all dimension. Magic only exists when you believe in it. Once it no longer excites, it's just a lame trick for nobody.
There will still be movies as long as we have this civilization. However, without theaters and without finding a way for movies to matter, some other form of art will take their place. Maybe it is serialized television, maybe it is video games, or maybe it is just our new wartime reality of one atrocity every day on the news. Whatever it is, it will not be the film industry as we imagined it in 2019.
Last year showed me that future. I don't like it. I hope 2021 can show me some other future. Please get vaccinated as soon as you can. Stay safe. Then go back to the movies. That's all I want.
...
Anyway, the actual list. Let us begin, as always, with the Honorable Mentions. There are far fewer this year, only about five:
20. Wolfwalkers, dir. Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart - Wolfwalkers is a prime example of what I mean by movies having lost their dimension and reality. This film came out on Apple TV+, a service that most people do not care about. It is the Ted Lasso channel, otherwise, movies come to Apple TV+ to die. Wolfwalkers was released in December, and I don't have anybody to talk to about it. It just faded away. This movie deserved better. Also it is perhaps the most beautiful animated film of 2020. There are other contenders. We will get to them.
Wolfwalkers is the newest movie from Cartoon Saloon, the studio behind The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea. It is the third in their trilogy about Irish folklore and legends. This time a very Gaelic take on werewolves. It is a deliberately political movie, specifically about Oliver Cromwell's imperialist conquest of Ireland and the loss of a peaceful mystical reality that the werewolves represent. It is also an Irish historical fantasy, because (spoilers) the Lord Protector meets a very Inglourious Basterds end.
There's a sweet central relationship between two young girls. Those characters are too young for me to comfortably read a queer dynamic to their friendship. I also cannot ignore what subtext is screaming out at me on the screen. I don't quite know how to feel about that. Wolfwalkers is definitely a fascinating movie, even if the weakest of Cartoon Saloon's releases so far.
19. Capone, dir. Josh Trank - Josh Trank made a purposefully difficult and bizarre biography of Al Capone. By design he denies you of your expectations. This Capone (Tom Hardy) is known as "Fonz", and is a rotting husk of the once-feared man who dominated pulp crime stories. Hardy puts on a big, ridiculous performance with loud make-up and an even louder accent. Tom Hardy does loves his weird fucking accents. Capone offers a mystery about Fonz's missing treasure and lost secrets. The movie then chooses to have no satisfying answer to any of that. Instead, we see a world through the eyes of a man barely holding onto reality. He's increasingly pathetic, having to replace his signature cigar with a thick carrot halfway through the movie. Capone does go places, probably not the ones you expect. I did not expect to end up in the Overlook Hotel for an extended hallucination sequence.
Capone is not the movie for everybody. In fact, Trank might have been making a movie specifically for nobody. But I commend the results anyway.
18. Gretel & Hansel, dir. Oz Perkins - I am surprised this movie ended up so underrated by year's end. It came out in January, just early enough to get a real theatrical release. Yet I don't think it found an audience.
A dark horror revision of a classic fairy tale is not the most original idea. Fairy tales were originally meant to be as scary as they were fantastical. Oz Perkins turns Hansel and Gretel, already a story about cannibal witches devouring children, into an atmospheric piece of subtle nightmares. This is a horror film more about tone and mood than particular big scares. Though they do come. And it is all beautifully framed. This is a gorgeous movie. Please watch it.
Gretel (Sophia Lillis) is haunted by dreams and visions as she leads her brother Hansel (Sam Leakey) through the woods of a grim fantasy Europe that never was. As the title suggests, this is more Gretel's story than Hansel's. It is a movie about female power, and all the dark connotations that has had through our history. Alice Krige's witch offers the traditional view of the evil monster crone. Gretel meanwhile, and her movie, looks for something else, an alternate meaning.
17. The Devil All the Time, Antonio Campos - This was one of the better Netflix releases from this year. The Devil All the Time is based on a novel by Donald Ray Pollock, and the film reads like a dense gothic tragedy. Like so many movies I love, it does not have many easy answers for the material it presents. We see two generations of inter-connected people in mid-20th century Appalachia as their lives collide through poverty, crime, and above all else, pure evil. In the first part of the story, a distraught father (Bill Skarsgard) crucifies his sons' dog, hoping that God will bring back his wife. God never answers his prayers. Instead, it seems our titular Devil, who never appears in person, is calling the shots in this world.
The Devil All the Time is an incredible ensemble piece. It is not a fun movie. It is not a movie that will make you feel better, especially in a year where you probably need that more than anything. But between actors like Tom Holland, Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, and Robert Pattinson slinging a sunny Texan accent, there is a lot of great talent on the screen.
16. The Assistant, dir. Kitty Green - The Assistant is a single day of work for Jane (Julia Garner), a young junior assistant trying to keep her job in a high-powered New York production company. She's working a terrible long day, from sunrise to sundown, for people who do not appreciate her. People like Jane are disposable by design. That design has a purpose, and it is vulnerability.
Jane is not the target of the sexual abuse happening at her office. But that does not mean she is in some ways still not a victim. She has to watch all this unfold in clear sight, while her coworkers either pretend it is not happening, or dismiss it as a big joke. There is a horrifying Kafkaesque scene where Jane attempts to speak to HR about her boss, who never appears on-screen. (We all know without his name needing to be said that he's Harvey Weinstein.) The HR manager (Matthew Macfadyen) dances around the point, with purposeful ignorance, even building the boss's case against her. Then his last line reveals the whole game with terse brutality. It was the most chilling single moment of 2020 in film for me.
The Assistant very nearly made the Top 15 list. If I were doing a Top 16, it would be on there. But sadly, there was not room. Fifteen is the number I am sticking to. So here we go, with the main event, finally. The Top 15 Movies of 2020:
15. Color Out of Space, dir. Richard Stanley
Color Out of Space is a ridiculous movie. Richard Stanley returned from decades in the wilderness to create a movie that was basically "what if Annihilation but much more stupid?". This is a movie that features mutant alpacas, a teenage girl riding a white horse to do black magic, Tommy Chong in a shack, and Nicolas Cage's wackiest performance in years. I am not sure what I expected out of an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation in 2020. But I did not expect Nicolas Cage's inexplicable whispery Transatlantic accent from Vampire's Kiss. Color Out of Space ends up right on that line from So Bad It's Good and Legitimately Great. However, that assumes that line exists at all. Ridiculous trash can be a treasure all on its own.
The main question though is how do you film a movie that is specifically about an unearthly color that does not exist? The short story is very specific: this is imagery that cannot exist on this planet and is beyond the human mind to comprehend. Richard Stanley solves that problem with ease. Just make it neon pink. Then toss in as many homages to John Carpenter's The Thing as you can fit in a moderately-budgeted horror movie.
There was no other horror movie in 2020 that was as much fun as Color Out of Space. A lot of indie horror today is extremely serious, maybe even over-serious. Color Out of Space goes straight for extremity. The central family is already full of bizarre characters and weird quirks even before a meteor lands in their backyard, transforming their New England forest into The Shimmer. There is an almost Twin Peaks strategy going on here, where the weirdest things happen to the weirdest places, with just as much gross exploitation. This movie definitely goes for it. Just when you think Color Out of Space is aiming for a slow burn of small mind-bending horror, it drops ten tons of disgusting and wonderful body horror on your head. There is a fusion in this movie that I will not soon forget.
14. Shirley, dir. Josephine Decker
Shirley is another difficult biopic, much like Capone. Instead of telling a clean story of its subject's life, it presents more questions than it has answers. Traditional biopics try to explain a person's life with one answer, and in the process probably get that life wrong. Shirley shows that perhaps we can find more truth about a person in the questions, in the ambiguities that even the subject does not quite understand. We meet Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) through the eyes of Rose (Odessa Young), a young lodger who has come to live with her. Everything we learn about Shirley ends up creating more questions about her reality, and Rose's reality. The two start with a tense distant coldness, which eventually turns into a relationship too strange to call a "romance", but it is somewhere on the borders of that territory.
Shirley, much like 2019's Portrait of a Woman on Fire, is a movie about a female world that exists separate to and in opposition to the male reality all around them. Men are not an unseen threat in this universe though. Shirley's husband, Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg) is the domineering presence in this story. He is one of the darkest villains of 2020. He is as much manipulation and condescending negativity as he is her main driving force. Perhaps his twisted methods work, Shirley does end with the famous author creating one of her great novels, Hangsaman. However, he is why Shirley ultimately needs Rose, a figure who is as much muse as student, daughter and lover, real and unreal. There are fleeting moments of freedom with the two women alone, which are the best moments of Shirley.
Speaking of POV characters whose reality is difficult to define, Shirley might have something in common with I'm Thinking of Ending Things. We will get to that movie later, do not worry.
Unsurprisingly, Elisabeth Moss is incredible in Shirley. Her Shirley Jackson is a font of acidic wit but intense loneliness. She's worldly and cynical while desperately insecure and vulnerable. Everything revolves around her literary genius but also she can barely hold together her own life. What is she? Genius or victim? Manipulatee or manipulator? Well, both can be true in a person.
13. Lovers Rock, dir. Steve McQueen
This autumn director Steve McQueen released five films in his "Small Axe" collection, a series of movies about the West Indian experience in London during the Seventies and Eighties. Most of the collection are about what I'll call "big things". The friction where old White England fails its Black subjects. The first film, Mangrove, is an intense courtroom drama about police brutality and the right to protest. If you wanted the most 2020 movie possible, Mangrove is it. However, Lovers Rock ended up being my favorite of the collection. Because it was the one that did not show the conflict. It showed what the conflict was fighting for.
Lovers Rock is about refuge. Only one White character gets a line in this entire movie, and he is only there as a depressing reminder of the real world outside. The rest of this film is a "Blues Party" in 1980. A regular house in a regular neighborhood is transformed into an ad hoc dance club for one night. We needed the pain of Mangrove or Red, White and Blue so that in Lover Rock, people could dance to to the song Kung-Fu Fighting, and fall in love. Steven McQueen creates a lot of authenticity to this culture, to the point you can smell the curry rice through Amazon Prime.
Easily the best single scene in Lovers Rock is an extended slow dance scene set to the song Silly Games. There is a lot of throbbing sexual need in that scene. But also, a kind of community energy, as everybody moves together as one, letting Janet Kay's high notes drive them closer together. At some point the DJ turns off the music because the with the entire cast has begun to sing together. They are creating this moment and driving it. They keep singing for several more verses, never wanting to let go of where they are and what they're doing. It is magical. The single best scene of all of 2020.
12. The Lodge, dir. Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala
It will be next to impossible to discuss The Lodge without noticing its obvious similarities to Ari Aster's Hereditary. They're both sullen moody indie horror movies set in the aftermath of grief. They both prominently feature creepy dollhouses with dark thematic significance. They're both slow-moving nightmares that lead to shocking climaxes of barbaric yet liberating violence. This is just how a lot of indie horror movies are now. So maybe The Lodge is not a revolution of any kind, but it is a very creepy and disturbing little movie. Definitely not the kind of thing I'd watch with Grandma.
The idea is to lock away three characters in a winter cabin just long enough for paranoia and madness to set in. Grace (Riley Keough) is trying to find her way into her boyfriend's family, specifically to warm herself with his two children, Aiden (Jaeden Martell) and Mia (Lia McHugh). She decides to spend a few days with them alone at Christmas, which is already a very bad idea, don't do this. This is only made worse because their mother killed herself in gruesome fashion. (One of the few scenes from last year that left me sobbing from the blunt awfulness of it, even as I guessed what was coming minutes earlier.) During the days alone, strange things begin to occur. Objects disappear. The power goes out. Grace loses her pills. We find ourselves in either a symbolic purgatory or perhaps an actual one. You might feel a lot of similarities to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw in this plot summary, another story where the supernatural and madness are indistinguishable. The Lodge is the better Haunting of Bly Manor.
Despite making this list, I am not entirely sure how I actually feel about the ending to The Lodge. It is maybe a kind of justice. But to get there, the movie relies on an unspeakable cruelty from its characters. The twist may infuriate you. It certainly infuriated me. I still have to give credit to a movie that created this kind of intense paranoia, and released in a way that shocked me. I was not prepared for how bold this movie was willing to be. Riley Keough,who is awesome in everything, has a career-best performance here.
11. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, dir. George C. Wolfe
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is another movie set mostly in one location. But that is because it is an adaptation of an August Wilson stage play, not a claustrophobic journey into self-destruction. Or well, it is a claustrophobic journey into self-destruction, but not a scary one. This movie is notable for being the final performance of the late Chadwick Boseman, whose death was a deep low point in a year that already had more troughs than crests. His final role as the ambitious and unstable trumpeter, Levee Green, might be his career's best. They say leave the stage with the audience wanting more. Boseman definitely did that. He will be missed.
Black Bottom is set in 1920s Chicago, as the blues star, Ma Rainey (Viola Davis), records her music for the first time. The film is set on two levels of the recording studio. Ma is tempestuous and unpleasable upstairs, while downstairs in a seedy green room, Levee is dreaming of similar grandeur. He wants what Ma has, figuratively and even literally when it comes to Ma's younger girlfriend, Dussie Mae (Taylour Page).
But what Levee does not realize is that Ma herself is just a pawn. Ma rightfully is terrified that the moment she lets the White producers have her voice, she will no longer exist to them as a person. All of this conflict exists just beyond difficult memories of White violence. The 1920s were not that long after Reconstruction. These people are the first generation after a wave of terrorism and White Supremacist revolution in the South. Music was a way out, but ultimately, it all comes back to White Capitalism. There is no escape from that.
All those themes are a lot to shove into a single movie. I am not sure if Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is better served as a film than it was as a stage play. (I've only seen one August Wilson drama in person, which was really damn good.) But at least on Netflix these ideas are out there to a wider audience. We have movie stars putting in incredible performance to entertain you while reenacting painful history. I hope this is a sign that all of Wilson's work is coming to cinemas one day.
10. Ride Your Wave, dir. Masaaki Yuasa
This is the other candidate for most beautiful animated movie of 2020. As long as I'm the one writing these lists, there will always be an anime film in my Top 15. That is an Ironclad Law of This Blog. This year we were lucky enough to get two actually. They're both supernatural romantic comedies set around water. I even saw them both within a week of each other - in theaters no less!
A young surfer, Hinako, moves to a seaside Japanese town and falls in love with Minato, a local firefighter who cooks really great Omurice. (Omurice, by the way, is really hard to cook, I can't do it, so Minato's Tinder profile is all the more impressive for it.) They're young, they're skinny, they're hot, and it seems like they have their futures ahead of them. That is until one day Minato never returns from morning swim on the beach. Hinako is unable to move on, and neither is her boyfriend's soul. He's trapped as a liquid ghost, living inside cups and inflatable water balloons. Hinako tries to make this work. But a fluid boyfriend is a difficult relationship to keep up, especially when nobody else can see him and they believe you're completely insane.
Despite one of the main characters dying horrifying fairly early in the movie, Ride Your Wave is a very pleasant experience. It is all bright sun and striking colors, a Super Mario Sunshine color pallet. I really love the way Ride Your Wave draws its characters. They're long stringy creatures with a kind of non-solid expressionism that many anime designs do not have. Their bodies twist and contort in a way that fits the scene. Also, you could definitely see why Hinako is so hung-up on Minato. He's dreamy, impossibly so. And later, yes, he is an impossibility.
Grief is a painful struggle. But not every movie that takes on that task needs to use the Ari Aster strategy. Characters can find good things in the world even after the best single thing has left it.
9. Weathering with You, dir. Makoto Shinkai
Weathering with You is far too close to being just "Your Name 2". In fact, the main couple from Your Name have cameos in this movie. The comparison is unfavorable to Weathering with You. Your Name remains Makoto Shinkai's most enjoyable and popular film. Weathering with You is a more opaque story, it has a much less clean plot, and a more troubled ending. It combines the threat of climate change with a teenager romantic comedy. That's a lot more weight than a breezy meet-cute romance can quite hold. But still, there's a lot to like here.
Weathering with You imagines a near-future Tokyo that is tortured by endless rainfall. It is Roland Emmerich's Godzilla transplanted back to its native Japanese soil. Hina, a teenage girl, discovers she is a "sunshine girl", a witch who can summon sunlight. She meets Hodaka, a young runaway boy, who falls in love with her. They create a kind of make-shift family, both hiding from the authorities for their own reasons. They discover that Hina is central to a dark prophecy demanding human sacrifice to keep Tokyo from sinking into Tokyo Bay. Weathering with You then asks, how much is a city worth compared to one girl? We're so desperate to fight against climate change, but perhaps the wiser move to prepare for it. Can you accept a changing circumstance and adapt and even thrive?
My favorite scene of Weathering with You is around the second act, where Hodaka tries desperately to hold his "family" together. After trudging through rain and snow to find somewhere to sleep, they find a hotel and are able to rest in warmth and with full stomachs. Hodaka prays to God (or whatever equivalent Japanese religion has) that things stay the way they are, right now. Please let this center hold, even while everything else collapses. It is a delusion a lot of us shared in 2020. The next day, of course, has to come, and Hodaka and Hina have to face it.
8. The Vast of Night, dir. Andrew Patterson
You would never believe that The Vast of Night is Andrew Patterson's first feature film. He pulls off so much with a limited budget and a limited scope, with a kind of confidence you rarely see in a first movie. This is a UFO invasion movie where the aliens barely appear. There is one big special effects scene at the very end. The rest is all staged across a few locations with a small cast. There is a creepypasta effect here, where the horror is obscured and then enhanced by the technology around the characters.
The Vast of Night is set in the 1950s, as a clear pastiche on The Twilight Zone. Somebody in the production was deeply enamored with old-fashioned analogue technology. There are a lot of cables being patched through, finding old records, and characters wander around with microphones. We spend a pivotal scene in a switch-board station where the young operator, Fay (Sierra McCormick) talks into her board with callers. The entire scene is basically anti-film. We're not seeing anything the callers are seeing. The aliens are an idea. We only can see Fay's increasing paranoia and fear, as she sits all alone on a dark Texan night, unsure of what is out there. Later in the movie we cut to complete black as a caller describes his top-secret army experience with things from beyond our planet. Less is always more in The Vast of Night.
What's so cool about The Vast of Night is that aliens and UFOs are old-hat by this point. By 1996 we needed extraterrestrials to blow up the White House to be scary. But just by telling and not showing, they manage to recreate an air of menace and mystery to them. When The Vast of Night does decide to really use its visual muscles, it still does show aliens. It instead has an awesome showstopper of a long-take around a basketball game. It rules. I really wish I could have seen The Vast of Night in a theater. Not to see aliens projected to forty-feet tall, but to see Andrew Patterson recreate a normal small-town high school basketball game. Because even mundane events framed the right way can be gorgeous.
7. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), dir. Cathy Yan
Birds of Prey simply is a really fun movie. That's what these pulp comic book movies should be: fun. Even though it made it this high on my Top 15, I don't think Birds of Prey is a particular masterpiece or has all that much to say. All this movie does is collect a lot of good actors and good DC comics characters and smashes them together into an adventure. This is why I mostly did not mind Suicide Squad. These movies end up structurally kind of a mess. But that's the case with most Tarantino scripts. He doesn't care about a clean three-act structure. Instead, the question is "What's the most amount of character and the most amount of cool that we can shove into a movie? We'll worry about whether it all fits together later."
If I have any complaint about Birds of Prey it is that is has any connection to Suicide Squad at all. Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn dominated the screen and was superior to Jared Leto's embarrassing Joker. We could have just retconned that Joker from existing at all. Birds of Prey is set right after Harley Quinn breaks up with Mista Jay to go out on her own. But this movie never needed his baggage. You could argue this film is a successful feminist statement of overcoming gaslighting. However, we did not need to prove that Harley Quinn kicked ass. She simply does.
The rest of Birds of Prey is kick ass. Ewan McGregor is the right mixture of hammy, slimy, and let's be honest, legitimately hot to be a great villain as Black Mask. We have Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez, and a surprisingly evil Chris Messina performance. The John Wick team came in to do some major reshoots to add action scenes. That frenetic style feels a bit out of place with the rest of the movie, which is a more a bantery comedy. Yet, those action scenes are well-done. There's a lot to say about enjoyable filmmaking in a grim year where not a lot of blockbusters came out.I'll definitely take this over Wonder Woman 1984.
6. Palm Springs, dir. Max Barbakow
Speaking of enjoyable filmmaking, here's Palm Springs. This movie came out a few months deep into the quarantine, when basically all culture in this country had come to a sudden halt. There were no sports, there was no theater, cinemas had been closed since March. Basically all you had was Trump and Covid, Covid and Trump. (Or The Last of Us 2, if you wanted something even more depressing and miserable than current events.) Then finally after months, what felt like a real movie came out, on Hulu. It was a great movie too. It was this bright comedy of being trapped in a Hellish routine with no escape.
So maybe in another year, Palm Springs does not make the Top 15. Maybe it just rhymed well enough with the nightmare reality of everyday life while still offering bright escapism as two charming people fell in love. But I can't fault a movie for being the right story at the right time. While I don't hate Comedies, they very rarely make my Best List, so maybe Palm Springs really is that great. It is hilarious. Best laughs of the year.
Palm Springs is a clever spiritual sequel to Groundhog Day. This movie picks up right in the most difficult and troublesome parts of Groundhog Day, specifically Bill Murray's creepy attempt to trick his way into Andie MacDowell's bed. Palm Springs builds an entire story around it. What if the woman in the infinite loop suddenly realized what was happening to her? Can we work out how fucked up that is? Palm Springs is not here to "fix" those problems. But it does want to build a meaningful equal relationship. It also really helps that Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are great leads who play well together. They're the best on-screen couple of 2020.
5. Bacurau, dir. Kleber Mendonca Filho & Juliano Dornelles
Sometimes it is nice to see the worst people get what is coming to them. Bacurau is one of those fantasies where "fuck around and find out" actually ends with the fuckers in question finding out. It is a hard movie to review because Bacurau's first half goes out of its way to hide where the film is going in its bloody final act. We open with a character Teresa (Barbara Colen) returning home to Bacurau, a small Brazilian village. She's going back for the funeral of her grandmother. Teresa, however, is not the main character. That ends up being more the character of Domingas (Sonia Bragas). Strange events being to occur around the village. We spot UFOs. But this is not a movie about aliens. There's local government corruption. Bacurau is not about that either. We meet a lot of quirky locals. But this is not a slice of life.
The only way I can really discuss this movie is to just say it, so if you don't want spoilers, skip on down to Relic just below us.
Bacurau is Brazil's answer to The Purge series. And I mean specifically the later Purge movies, the ones that directly go after racism and class struggle. Turns out this village has been targeted by a group of White Supremacist foreigners. Their yuppie leisure activity is hunting Brown people for sport in the third world. Turns out, they did not bother to do their research on this particular tiny third world village. You're in the wrong neighborhood now, Udo Kier. These are well-armed Marxists, and they've faced worse than you.
What sells Bacurau is how well this fictional village is realized. Directors Filho and Dornelles are significantly better directing in Brazilian Portuguese than English. Bacurau as a place feels real, with its own odd culture and rhythm. There's authenticity top this place. The evil yuppies are more like broad cartoons. Then again, those characters do not deserve the love and attention that goes to the Brazilian heroes.
4. Relic, dir. Natalie Erika James
I saw a lot of horror movies in 2020. I saw a lot of indie horror movies. I don't want to suddenly start complaining about the indie horror scene. I am far happier with the last five years of this genre than the decade that came before. But a lot of these movies have a similar kind of scale and a similar kind of ambition. There might be just one movie too many set in a claustrophobic house with an unhappy family. That claustrophobia works, especially when you're low on budget, but can't we get a bit of space? A few more laughs? Then again, regardless of tone, I find being scared to be a lot of fun. And Relic is terrifying.
Relic up until its ending, is a straight ghost story. There's a creepy house with a dark history. We watch three generations of women who love each other but do not love being around each other. The Grandma, Kay (Emily Mortimer) is losing her sense of reality. Her dementia is infecting her body and even her house. I won't spoil too much but this is the best version of The Navidson Record I've seen put to screen. Relic opens a lot of really tough emotions involving preparing for a loved one's end of life. Horror is a great medium through which a lot of anxieties can be explored, even palliative care.
There is a very fine line between a very good movie and a great
movie. I think a truly great movie needs to end on a question. Answers
are satisfying, but also, they leave you with nothing to ponder. What I
want is one final detail that disrupts what you already believe. A final
note that turns the story into something more.
Relic becomes something more than merely terrifying in its final scene. At this point, the monster of the film has been beaten. The door outside to safety is open. Kay's daughter and granddaughter (Robyn Nevin and Bella Heathcote) can both leave. But instead they stay. Are they staying out of love or pitiful obligation? Is this ending a sweet coming together and a touching moment? Or is it a disgusting inability to let go and simply awful? I have my preferred read. But I also prefer not being entire sure. The ending haunts me. That haunted feeling is what makes Relic a truly great movie.
3. Sound of Metal, dir. Darius Marder
I find it difficult to ask for help. I don't want to be the problem. I have trouble admitting, even in the worst of times (and we are in the worst of times), that I am not okay. I could blame it on anything. American masculinity, maybe? Self-sufficiency is a perverse virtue. We value never needing help as a man and an adult. No, people should need you. If you cannot thrive without help, you're weak and insufficient, a disappointment. It is not profitable to be in pain or be vulnerable. Community is a crutch. This is all terrible and I should stop thinking like this. Easier said than done.
Sound of Metal is a movie directly about how problems cannot be solved alone. There are things that only a community can help with. One day, your health can fail, and you cannot do it alone. Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is a metal drummer in a small band with his girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke). This is his dream life. They tour, they rock, and they're in love. However, his hearing is disappearing. It is a problem he cannot fix. It is a problem Lou cannot help him with. Ruben tries to keep touring even while mostly deaf and in real danger of losing more hearing. You can blame it on mere pride, but asking an adult to give themselves up to somebody else's care is a difficult demand. I bet I would fight against it too.
What I love about Sound of Metal is that this is not a movie about losing hearing. The hearing is gone by the first act. (There's much less metal in Sound of Metal than the title promises.) It is about finding a community. Ruben cannot live as a man who cannot hear, he has to live as a deaf man. He to learn to "hear" another way now. That means joining a deaf community, assisting deaf children. This is a culture that will not see themselves as disabled, meaning they are not less than the average person. Ruben finds himself surrounded by deep love and deep understanding. They are there for each other and live full lives. Ruben has a way out.
Learning to be a deaf man might, however, be less painful than letting go of his old life. Finding a new life was relatively easy. Saying goodbye? That could be impossible.
2. I'm Thinking of Ending Things, dir. Charlie Kaufman
I'm Thinking of Ending Things is the most inscrutable movie I saw in 2020. It is more puzzle than narrative. If this had come to theaters, this would be an easy F on CinemaScore. I can see the nice older couple sitting across from me walking out early. They are too confused and frustrated to deal with Charlie Kaufman's bullshit any longer. Even as a huge fan of his work, this movie has a lot of red flags. Ladies, don't date Charlie Kaufman.
On the surface, this is just a toxic relationship as Jessie Buckley's nameless protagonist wishes for an end to her dying romance with Jake (Jesse Plemons). She is out of love with him, assuming she was ever in love to begin with. To humor him before she works up the courage to let the fling die, the Girlfriend meets with Jake's parents. This nice rural dinner instead turns into a surreal nightmare. The night has the coherence of a half-remembered meandering memory with no point, and the honesty of a greasy salesman caught in a lie but still trying to make the sale. Nothing makes sense, and the thin plot threatens to collapse at any second. To her credit, Jessie Buckley creates a lot of character in a role that by design, is supposed to have none.
But instead of settling as a horror movie, I'm Thinking of Ending Things keeps going. That almost makes it more terrifying. There was a structure, it was a creepy house with creepy weird thing happening. But then the couple leaves the house. We discover a huge twist, yet the movie rolls on for another forty minutes, a bad night that never ends. Eventually we lose any narrative at all. What was scary ceases to matter. Even the big twist cannot explain what is happening in the final twenty minutes of this movie.
Netflix's greatest flaw as a studio has been its inability to reign in its talent. It seems mostly indifferent to the final result as long as it has more content. Too many directors who go there find themselves with too large of a budget and almost no studio notes. Thus the movies comes out feeling self-indulgent and bloated. Mank is a handsome movie but it really needs about twenty minutes of trimming and a couple subplots excised. Telling a director "no" sometimes can be better for the final product.
In the case of I'm Thinking of Ending Things, that indulgence might have helped. There is a beautiful ballet sequence for seemingly no reason other than to be pretty. It does not seem to add anything to the "point" of the movie. It directly contradicts some things we already know. The final speech of the I'm Thinking of Ending Things is just a weird gag on A Beautiful Mind. There were four other scenes that easily could have been the final shot of the story. But also, in a lot of ways, the disoriented, almost pointless feeling of the ending might be the point. We get just enough distance from the big twist to know that was not what I'm Thinking of Ending Things is really about. Instead, the movie cannot say what it is about. We are viewing the world though the eyes of somebody who has no answer. Why should the movie then end with some grand sweeping conclusion if the character himself has never found one?
I'm Thinking of Ending Thing is an extremely "my shit" kind of movie. If I were trying to be true to any kind of "brand identity" I've created as a critic, this would easily be the big winner. In fact, my Number One is extremely not my shit. It as off-brand as I have ever been. But in terms of how much I enjoyed a movie in 2020, there is really only experience that stands above them. Let's do it now. The Best Movie of 2020:
1. Emma., dir. Autumn de Wilde
Emma. was the last movie I saw in a theater in 2020. It was at the AMC Garden State Plaza on March 3rd. I think about 6:30 PM. I went to it all alone, specifically to keep my mind off Super Tuesday. That previous weekend the entire Democratic field had rebelled against Bernie Sanders' sense of inevitability and threw their support behind Joe Biden. At the time, this all felt really important and painful. I knew it was over for Sanders that night, and I did not want to watch him lose. The only way I found to survive elections last year was to turn off the internet and focus on other things. I was already struggling to find much hope in the future, and this was before had to lock myself at home.
So, lacking any better idea that night, I saw a movie. I loved that movie. It took my mind off things.
My 2020 wasn't as bad as it could have been. Other people have it much worse, I accept this. I never got sick. My grandpa passed away but that was not unexpected. My grandma had a health scare but seems fine now. The year sucked but could have sucked much more. I never even had to stop going to the office. My job decided I was essential enough that I had to risk it, meaning I kept a regular schedule and a regular rhythm. I have plenty of savings now. Also, I love quiet days at home. I am not claiming some deep tragedy in being unable to see Tenet in IMAX like Nolan wanted. Yet, there is a difference, and it matters to me.
Movies are just better in a theater. I can't imagine I could have given Emma. the focus and care that it deserved if I were just watching it one afternoon on TV. This a 19th century Jane Austen costume drama that only barely avoids being stuffy and dull. At home it would be nothing, Netflix and Chill filler. On the big screen, it was one of the exciting movies I saw last year. That's the difference a cinema can make.
There is a scene in Emma. set in a picnic up on a hill. This small English town is not a place of great excitement or drama. Going up on the hill for lunch is the kind of event you build your week around because there is nothing else happening. Emma Woodhouse (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a big fish in a small pond. She might not dazzle London, but here, she is the center of society. During the lunch, Emma. makes a joke that is just ever so slightly too cruel. This is in expense of Miss Bates (Miranda Hart), an older woman of fewer means. That tiny mocking lands hard. If Anya Taylor-Joy had stabbed the other actress in the heart, it would have been less shocking. People in the audience gasped. It was horrible to watch, Emma had destroyed that woman, without meaning to.
I've seen planets destroyed in other movies and felt nothing. One woman gets embarrassed, and I felt millions of voices suddenly cry out in terror. Movies matter, and matter more in theaters.
Putting that one scene aside, what I need to mention is that Emma. is pleasant. It is a nice time. If you need a doll-like model to wear any kind of beautiful costume, Anya Taylor-Joy is your actress. (Fashion is half the reason The Queen's Gambit blew up as the TV show of the fall.) The cast has plenty of depth with figures like Mia Goth, Johnny Flynn, and Bill Nighy. I might have fallen in love with Tanya Reyonlds a bit as the haughty Mrs. Elton. She somehow carries her neck and nose above every other cast member. This is a handsome movie with lovable characters and a thick romantic Gordian Knot. Two characters dancing a bit at the local ball and suddenly feeling things they did not understand were there before is a huge revelation. I love that shit. Superheroes are cool, but turns out what I really love is Clueless with bigger fashion choices.
2020 doesn't deserve a good time movie to represent it. I should pick something miserable instead like The Trial of the Chicago 7, a bad experience I'd love to forget. But movies in 2020 deserve something bright and something warm. That is why I am picking Emma.
Anyway, if you still have time, why don't you sit around and I'll go over some other smaller business. I have a few other lists I'd like to knock out.
Top 10 Best Performances of 2020:
10. Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Cass in The Invisible Man
9. Ben Affleck as Jack Cunningham in The Way Back - This movie came out too late for the 2020 Awards and too early for the 2021 Oscars. Ben Affleck way deserves a nomination he is not going to get.
8. Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson in Shirley - I couldn't choose one Elisabeth Moss performance, so I chose them both.
7. Riley Keough as Grace Marshall in The Lodge
6. Andrea Riseborough as Tasya Vos in Possessor - Possessor might be the biggest personal disappointment for me. Brandon Cronenberg doing his own eXistenZ that's so violent it had to be released unreated? It should have been my shit. But, I just could not connect to the character or the story. Andrea Riseborough is fantastic in this movie, however.
5. Aubrey Plaza as Allison and a Different Allison and perhaps a Third Allison in Black Bear - Black Bear was not quite good enough to be an honorable mention, but please go see it.
4. Jessie Buckley as "Young Woman" in I'm Thinking of Ending Things
3. Riz Ahmed as Ruben Stone in Sound of Metal
2. Delroy Lindo as Paul in Da 5 Bloods - I actually hate this movie. Spike Lee does a lot of disservice to Vietnam with this messy take on the Black experience that instead turns into another Rambo 2. But Delroy Lindo is very good in it.
1. Chadwick Boseman as Levee Green in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom - RIP, king.
Top 10 Older Movies I First Saw in 2020:
I don't think I'll do this every year, but I wrote short review for nearly all of these across this year, so I might as well highlight my favorites:
10. Do the Right Thing (1989), dir. Spike Lee
9. Pulse (2001), dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
8. The House That Jack Built (2018), dir. Lars von Trier
7. The Hustler (1961), dir Robert Rossen
6. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), dir. Aditya Chopra
5. Fiddler On the Roof (1971), dir. Norman Jewison
4. The Boxer's Omen (1983), director Kuei Chih-Hung
3. The Housemaid (1960), Kim Ki-young
2. Funny Girl (1968), dir. William Wyler
1. Upstream Color (2013), dir. Shane Carruth - The less said about Shane Carruth this year the better.
Least Interesting Movie of 2020:
This goes to Sonic the Hedgehog. This movie lost the only interesting thing about it when they took away Sonic's disturbing monkey face. There have been enough decent video game adaptations at this point that merely being Not Godawful is not good enough anymore.
Movie I Wish I Loved More in 2020:
I regret to say that this award goes to First Cow. This is a kind of "Western" that is mostly about baking and friendship. It was far too slow for me, especially watching at home. I spent two hours in incredible boredom. That cow was very cute and I want to try these recipes. But otherwise, I got nothing out of this. A lot of other critics did. I envy you.
Worst Movie I Saw in 2020:
With so few big movies coming out, there was really no point to tracking down a bad movie. But the single worst movie I saw this year was Come to Daddy directed by Ant Timpson. It is a kind of black comedy thriller starring Elijah Wood, emphasis on the "black" and not the "comedy". It isn't funny. The whole thing is really unpleasant and mean-spirited in the worst ways.
Top 5 Movies Delayed Out of 2020 Whose Departure Inspired the Least Sadness in Me:
These are the movies that were delayed into 2021 that were really not worth saving. I don't care if they get released or not.
5. Morbius - This is that Jared Leto vampire movie. Sony is trying to do some kind of half-assed shared superhero universe with Venom at the centerpiece. Venom was hilarious, I actually recommend that movie. Meanwhile, Jared Leto probably shouldn't do superhero movies anymore.
4. Jungle Cruise - This is an adaptation of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. It looks like one of those blockbuster flops Disney released in the wake of Pirates of the Caribbean. I don't know how this got greenlit.
3. Top Gun: Maverick - I never needed a Top Gun 2. After a year I still don't need one. We got a Mission: Impossible coming out in 2021, that's plenty of Tom Cruise already.
2. Ghostbusters: Afterlife - I really do not need another Ghostbusters movie. The tone of this is so disgustingly reverent to the material. It's fucking Ghostbusters! It was a dumbass comedy from the Eighties, not some centerpiece to Western Civilization. I'll have to deal with Star Wars the rest of my life. Can we please just let Ghostbusters die??
1. Black Widow - The MCU gave me time to miss it. Eternals might be cool. But Black Widow? Bleh, I am as uninterested in this movie as anything they have ever done. Florence Pugh and Scarlett Johansson are slumming it in this movie. Also, since I already know Black Widow dies in Avengers: End Game, why on Earth should I care about this story? This is five years too late, Marvel.
Preemptive and Probably Very Inaccurate Top 15 Movies of 2020 Having Seen None of Them (AKA, movies I am most hyped for, and wow, a lot of these movies are repeats from last year, huh?)
15. Soggy Bottom, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson - I don't know what this movie is but anything Paul Thomas Anderson does is making my anticipation list.
14. Minari, dir. Lee Isaac Chung - This did not have a mainstream release in 2020 so according to my personal rules, it is ineligible for the list. I easily could have seen it, I'll wait for everybody else.
13. Last Night in Soho, dir. Edgar Wright - I also don't know what this movie is but anything Edgar Wright does is making my anticipation list.
12. Halloween Kills, dir. David Gordon Green
11. The Suicide Squad, dir. James Gunn - I don't think this movie even has a plot or a script. It is just James Gunn throwing a million actors at the screen. I bet it works.
10. Spiral: From the Book of Saw, dir. Darren Lynn Bousman - It's Saw 9! But with Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson. Sure.
9. The Matrix 4, dir. Lana Wachowski - I haven't seen a trailer for this but whatever, more Matrix, let's do it. It has been just long enough for me to miss The Matrix and forgive Matrix: Revolutions for sucking serious ass.
8. Nobody, Ilya Naishuller - Bob Odenkirk is John Wick?? FUCK YEAH.
7. The Green Knight, dir. David Lowery
6. Saint Maud, dir. Ross Glass - Which actually was released in the UK in 2020, but will not be released in the US until later this month. So it is ineligible for a 2020 slot.
5. No Time to Die, dir. Cary Fukunaga - You better get vaccinated or else this will be delayed to 2022.
4. Candyman, dir. Nia DaCosta - I'm much less excited for this after Antebellum was such a disappointment in 2020. If this sucks I will say "Candyman" five times in a mirror and let him murder me.
3. In the Heights, dir. Jon M. Chu
2. Dune, dir. Denis Villeneuve - With HBO pushing all its movies to HBO Max, there is a very good chance this is the only Dune movie they make. It appears to only be adapting half the first novel. It would be disappointing if I never get to see Timothee Chalamet become Padishah Emperor.
1. Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0, dir. Hideki Anno - Again, H Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y P E.
...And Evangelion is delayed again. 2021 starting strong.
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