The year 2020 will undeniably go down as a
transformative year for the American film industry. As with any number of other
industries and institutions (the entirety of the U.S. included), small,
longstanding cracks were briskly turned in gaping chasms. We don’t yet know
what the final consequences will be, even as we can speculate endlessly about streaming’s
dominance and the end of theatrical exhibition. But I don’t feel too inclined
to focus here on what might be. Let’s just take some time to appreciate what we
know for sure.
In 2020, movies were experienced in living rooms and on laptops and subscription streaming’s investment in original content came through in a handful of excellent films that we were able to enjoy in spite of the endless barrage of horror and pain that was happening beyond our screens. Oddly enough, few of the films that I found to be among 2020’s best were escapist. As with most years, the best cinema confronts us with and helps us process the larger problems of the world, and the best escapism often finds ways to do this too (as contradictory as that seems). Here are 12 films that I found worth recommending. I hope that when I put together my list for 2021 that I will have experienced more of the entries on the grandeur of the big screen, sitting in the dark, alone together.
12. I’m Your Woman
Much of the best genre filmmaking doesn’t happen in the
pure, dime-a-dozen genre films (that stuff bores and makes us roll our eyes);
it happens in the revisionist work that is necessarily dependent on a working
knowledge of those conventions. Julia Hart’s I’m Your Woman takes the
70s “on the run” crime film formula and deliberately refrains from indulging in
the expected beats and characters. All that is relegated to the background, and
it is the absence that consequently gives the film its appeal. By focusing on
the quieter struggle of the gangster’s wife, this is a feminine entry in an aggressively
masculine cinematic lineage and it’s all the better for it.
I’m Your Woman is available to stream on
Amazon Prime Video
11. Small Axe: Red, White and Blue
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, an anthology of five
films centering on London’s West Indian immigrant community, often struggles to
navigate its own ontological question—is it television or is it film? If it’s
truly a collection of five films, they surely struggle to balance a consistent
level of narrative and aesthetic quality that would stand on their own. Nonetheless,
the third entry, Red, White and Blue, manages to be the most wholly
formed and quietly powerful.
Depicting the true experiences of Leroy Logan (John
Boyega in his best performance yet), a Black man who joined London’s
Metropolitan police force in an attempt to combat its malicious racism from
within, Red, White and Blue presents a profoundly challenging and
ongoing dilemma: How do you fight a system through the system, and how do you
live with the reality that the radical change necessary is more likely to be accomplished
slowly and painfully?
Red, White and Blue, as well as the entire Small Axe anthology, is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video
10. Palm Springs
Some films are best experienced without any prior
knowledge of their premise, and Palm Springs is one such film. Without
revealing what it’s actually about, however, I will say that it manages to
unintentionally tap into a deep reservoir of emotion that the year in
quarantine has produced. It’s a light and easily watchable film, no question
about it, but there is a distinct sense of absurdity (as Albert Camus defined
the term) to it as it charts a necessary but impossible search for meaning amidst
a cruel and meaningless existence. As it so happens, the very struggle to live on in spite of it, and especially the connections that we build to make each day
more bearable, end up being very meaningful indeed.
Palm Springs is available to stream on
Hulu
9. Da 5 Bloods
It seems fitting that it was Spike Lee who got the
first cinematic word in following this summer’s wave of protests and racial
reconciliation. His first hit, Do the Right Thing, remains as tragically
necessary today as it was in 1989. While Da 5 Bloods doesn’t manage to
top that classic (nothing Lee has made since has), it does manage to trace a
deep line from the traumas faced by Black soldiers during the Vietnam War through
to the enduring traumas of Black Americans in the homeland who, even in 2020,
are in so many ways still fighting the same fight.
Da 5 Bloods doesn’t
advertise its cultural commentary, however; this is still a film that forwards
a very literal journey as it pulls inspiration from John Huston’s The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In that respect it also features an
impeccable transition of aspect ratios that we unfortunately never got to
experience in all its glory on the big screen.
Da 5 Bloods is available to stream on Netflix
8. Sound of Metal
Sound is the one element of film form that frequently
gets overlooked. It’s not hard to understand why: Diegetic sound falls squarely
into the affective realm, so even as it’s deeply felt it largely escapes
description. Sound of Metal is a powerful reminder of cinematic sound’s
ability to make you feel, to render deeply internal subjectivities in
external form so that viewers can understand another person’s struggle.
Riz Ahmed gives a tremendously affecting performance
as a heavy metal drummer who unexpectedly and rapidly loses his hearing. What
follows is a crisis of identity and a challenging transformation of the self;
entry into a rich, often ignored community and culture; and the ultimate
embrace a new way of experiencing the world that offers its own beauties.
Sound of Metal is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video
7. Mank
David Fincher’s Mank, with its deep
black-and-white cinematography, anachronistic sound mix, and fake reel change markers,
is a nostalgia film in form and style, if not in narrative. This account of
screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz’s time writing the first draft of Citizen
Kane and his experiences with the various players who would make their way
into the story in some form or another, is a deeply cynical look at Golden Age
Hollywood and the political battles of 1930s California.
Mank isn’t a film for
everyone. It’s largely bereft of dramatic thrust and may be a tad impenetrable
to those viewers without at least some preexisting knowledge of Citizen Kane,
its background, and larger American film history (in other words, to anyone who
isn’t already a cinephile). That said, its pleasantly indulgent style is a
compelling enough reason to stick with what amounts to (in an intentional
parallel to Kane) a series of moments giving the overall impression of a
life: Mankiewicz and his loathing of the right-wing politics in his Hollywood
social circle. As Fincher has described it, it’s not a film about the
authorship dispute over Kane’s script, but rather a film about the
likely origins of some of its parts and what might have compelled Mankiewicz,
having initially agreed to waive screen credit, to change his mind.
Mank is available to stream on Netflix
6. The Invisible Man
Leigh Whannel’s adaptation of The Invisible Man is
a perfect example of a remake done right: It takes a basic premise and
justifies its return through inventive application and contemporary cultural
relevance. This is a terrific piece of horror/thriller, yes, and it’s engaging
because of smart staging and framing, but what makes it great is precisely how
it takes something familiar and makes it uniquely modern.
Being the victim of an invisible tormenter (literally)
is the allegorical substance of a film that’s really about domestic abuse,
gaslighting, and psychological manipulation. An abuser chips away at their
partner’s dignity, gets their partner’s friends to doubt that anything’s awry, attempts
to ostracize them from that outside support system, and ultimately gets them to
question their own sanity. Now that is scary.
The Invisible Man is available to stream on HBO Max
5. The Assistant
A woman leaving my screening of Kitty Green’s The
Assistant described it to her companion as “hyperrealistic.” Now, this is
the comment of someone who probably hasn’t seen the 1975 French film Jeanne
Dielman (3 hours and 45 minutes of mostly household chores performed in
real-time). To her point, however, The Assistant is almost entirely a
film about mundane office labor, but it’s that exact mundanity that conceals
the misogynistic rottenness at its core.
Set at the New York office of, ostensibly, Harvey
Weinstein’s Miramax production company, this is the restrained antithesis of
2019’s Bombshell. There isn’t a scene where Jane (the talented Julia
Garner) is in a position where we fear for her immediate safety and the
fictional Weinstein substitute is never actually seen. Instead, The
Assistant is a film about the constant atmosphere of dread in a space where
ongoing abuses go quietly (and systematically) unacknowledged. It’s a powerful
post-#MeToo film that makes its point loud and clear without ever having to
spell it out for you.
The Assistant is available to stream on Hulu
4. Bad Education
Cory Finley’s HBO film Bad Education pulls off
something remarkable (or at least it did for me): It tells you upfront that its
events are true and then proceeds to make you immediately forget this fact because
those events are so outlandish, so ridiculously unexpected, that they could
surely only have been made up. Stranger than fiction indeed.
For this reason, Bad Education is best
experienced blind. What I will say is that it features a characteristically
great performance from Hugh Jackman and that it will take you on a rollercoaster
ride that you won’t regret agreeing to.
Bad Education is available to stream on HBO Max
3. The Nest
Relative newcomer Sean Durkin’s The Nest is a
chilling domestic drama with plenty of political subtext to give it some
serious (but not in-your-face) meat. Rory (a slimy Jude Law) uproots his family
back to England in pursuit of a supposedly big financial opportunity, renting
out an exorbitant country manor for his wife (the always incredible Carrie
Coon) and kids. But this is not a film where the chilly mansion haunts its
residents; rather, it’s the family and their unresolved conflicts that haunts it.
Rory is a familiar persona—as the natural collision of empty late capitalist
greed and fragile masculinity, he puts on a perpetual (and blatantly hollow)
façade of financial wellbeing in an attempt to gain some semblance of
self-worth in the eyes of others. He’s a conman whose primary mark is himself. The
Nest is an arresting film with rewarding nuance but appreciated
accessibility.
The Nest is available to rent on most VOD platforms
2. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation
of One Harley Quinn)
Look, is Birds of Prey—or, to use its
delightfully obnoxious full title, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous
Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)—a work of transcendent cinema? Probably not, but it’s been a year short on
positive experiences. And in a year short of positive experiences sitting in
the movie theater, Birds of Prey was the most fun I had with a new
release, roughly a month before COVID-19 came crashing onto the scene.
Cathy Yan’s film is a candy-colored comic book
movie extravaganza with the jumbled narrative and crass humor you would expect
from its protagonist. It’s a simple crime film with endearing characters (all
of whom are played by wonderfully charismatic actors, with Ewan McGregor’s antagonist
as the cherry on top), punchy and stylish action scenes, and a great sense of
fun. Oh, and it’s hella gay (never a bad thing). Since 2020 confronted us with
misery at every turn, I cherish a film that gave me simple, uncomplicated joys as
I sat in the theater with a big smile on my face.
Birds of Prey is available to stream on HBO Max
1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
The standout scene halfway through Eliza Hittman’s Never
Rarely Sometimes Always (where the film also derives its name) is a tour de
force of performance and deceptively simple form. It’s a scene that takes many
of our frequent cultural talking points and, like the best political
filmmaking, reminds us of their embodied consequences. Great art like this
takes broad, abstract concepts and refuses to divorce them from their
inextricably human realities, and it’s stories like these that necessarily
confront audiences to look at others with empathy.
The odyssey that protagonist Autumn—a 17-year-old girl
from small-town Pennsylvania who travels to New York City to terminate an
unwanted pregnancy without parental accompaniment—endures has clear
sympathies. But it’s to the film’s credit that it never preaches; rather, it
presents its case with naturalistic style, making us bear witness to the
everyday acts of mundane terror that women everywhere experience. Though the
events of Never Rarely Sometimes Always are often frustrating and
heartbreaking, it’s the small acts of bravery and solidarity that it depicts
that are most powerful.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is available to stream on HBO Max
Special Mention: The Last of Us Part II
I would be remiss if I did not make space to
acknowledge the best feat of narrative storytelling in any medium that I
encountered in 2020, The Last of Us Part II. The game, of course, owes a
great deal of its effectiveness to the cinematic, and it’s the progress in that
area that has successfully elevated video game storytelling in general over the
last decade. At the same time, The Last of Us Part II’s success is more
indebted to the qualities that are uniquely game-ic. Many films have effectively
utilized multiple perspectives, but a video game’s ability to directly involve
you in its characters’ stories allows alternative subjectivities to become
fully realized. This potential exists in every video game, but never have I
seen one take advantage of it so profoundly. The role that you as a player are
forced into—an orchestrator of brutal violence and a vessel of immense anger
and pain—dovetails with an ingenious narrative structure that exposes the harsh
realities of revenge and relativity.
An absolute masterpiece and the pinnacle of this
console generation of gaming, The Last of Us Part II is one of the
greatest games ever made.
Birds of prey was below average at best
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