Annual: Top Films of 2020
2020: Year of the Corona.
It was the terrible year that practically killed movie theaters and threatened to annihilate cinema as we know it (and by "annihilate cinema" we mean exchanging the entire moviegoing experience for streaming subpar Netflix content at best right from the comfort of your own living room). Major movie productions had come to a screeching halt and theatrical releases had been delayed indefinitely. It was the year that streaming services sky-rocketed to new heights providing endless chum for zombified citizens held hostage to #QuarantineLife, and suddenly the very notion of "cinema" and whatever the hell it ever meant had transformed overnight.
Moviegoers were now considered streamers living in a black-and-white world where Netflix subscribers clamored for The Queen's Gambit rather than Mank (and in pitting an attractive series about youthful chess players against a two-plus hour colorless movie about crusty white men yelling about old Hollywood, clamoring understandably so). Instead of IMAX Blockbusters we had Disney + rentals with alcoholic relatives who need to keep pausing the movie to ask about the differences between the live-action Mulan and the animated Mulan (they're the same movie Uncle Felix, one is just a lot more lifeless). Films had suddenly been replaced by TV series, and mini-series were being considered as movies. A handy-cam recording of Hamilton had somehow landed a spot on IMDb's Top 250, and Tiger King had become the most watched anything out of the entire year. None of it made any sense, and all of it seemed like it was being insufferably projected onto our souls like an un-skippable YouTube Ad for Door-Dash.
2020 proved that these times were desperately trying, and every routine day felt all too frighteningly like Groundhog Day. We wandered aimlessly isolated and in fear, obsessing over the Coronavirus as Contagion had become more relevant of a movie than its release in 2011. We spent our nights berated by our indecisive scrolling through the "Newly Added Movies" menu before deciding to re-binge The Office for the seventeenth time, while new and inspiring films were being buried in our "Add to my list" queue on Hulu, expiring faster than the rotting vegetables in our fridges, losing the battle to another Friday night of Taco Bell.
Hollywood had become a streaming catastrophe and movies were getting lost in the shuffle by the week. A surprise Borat sequel was rushed to Amazon Prime only to be relevant enough for the upcoming election, and Christopher Nolan's Tenet got pushed back so many times that most folks didn't realize it was even released. The only respectable streaming service proved to be HBO Max whose biggest marketing push was Wonder Woman 1984 which contained about as much pizzazz as the soft-serve rainbow-poop provided by the claymation unicorn in the Squatty-Potty commercials. Even then, HBO Max decided their best response to COVID-19 was to dump their major Blockbusters onto streaming the same day as theaters (Let me tell ya, Dune is going to be a real hoot on them 55" TVs).
In a bizarro-year so devastating to the point where film escapism would have been a viable option to cope with the absolute bullshit which had been swallowing humanity by the day, even film escapism itself had become a tireless chore. And so, we pause to shed a small glimpse of a bombshell upon the aftermath of 2020; a slight diversion of films, be them utterly provoking or hilariously strange, that are worth our undivided attention in a world filled with unadulterated chaos.
As always, please excuse the belligerent behavior.
*A WORD OF CAUTION: The following is a long, heavily edited, chopped up, very slow descent into madness (and many run-on sentences).
To skip the bullshit, here's the list ranking in Letterboxd format.
To see ALL my nonsensical bullshit, here's the Letterboxd account.
I am not a film critic nor comedian, nor do I pretend to be these things.
Viewer Discretion Advised.
* * * * *
MISSED OUT:
- Promising Young Woman
- Da 5 Bloods
- First Cow
- Small Axe (Anthology)
- The Assistant
- A Sun
- The Father
- Trial of the Chicago 7
- Beanpole
- etc.
* * * * *
SOMEWHAT
HONORABLE
MENTIONS:
* * * * *
Bill & Ted Face the Music
The Bottom Line: Cute, Shiny, and Severely lacking George Carlin
*****
Consisting of neither the 80s burnout charm of Excellent Adventure, nor the bizarre, punk-rock rebellion of Bogus Journey (sad to say no reprise from Station this round), Face the Music often feels like it was designed for kids, and not slacker kids of the 90s grunge era. Right from the opening licks, classic Bill & Ted fans will realize something is amiss. Perhaps it's the low budget, or shoddy special effects; the all-too sleek visuals of the crappy CGI future that looks like a hand-me-down Apple commercial. Maybe it's the simple lack of quality jokes substituted for one too many precious "we are the world" moments featuring Kid Cudi playing himself. Even with the Grim Reaper reprise, perhaps Bill & Ted's grand finale should have just been left to its own devices as nothing more than a late 80s nostalgia machine that never should have been meddled with to make entitled 90s babies SO unreasonably upset.
Then again, it could just the lack of George Carlin. Maybe the movie's fine, and bitter fans should just take a Pepto Bismol and go to bed.
Grade: C
And Then We Danced
The Bottom Line: The Georgian version of Call Me By Your Name (but with dancing)
AKA: The horniest movie about an out-of-town boy who woos a young boy into a romantic fling for a short period of time before they have to split, since Call Me By Your Name (but with dancing)
*****
From the playfully sexual alpha male who appears from thin air like slut magic, all the way down to the Timmy Chalametty clone as the boyishly fragile, pasty-ass protagonist, this is the same damn movie as CMBYN. Gotta give props to writer-director Levan Akin for using the art of dance as a metaphor for all sorts of free expressionism in a world of repressed sexuality, but the beats of the story echo that of Luca Guadagnino's down to the ending. Early in the film, the dance instructor says, "There's no sex in Georgian dance." Well joke's on you pal, Akin's film relishes in its moments of both fiery eroticism AND backwoods porking!
Grade: B-
Color Out of Space
*Stray observations:
- Cage drinks Alpacca milk
- Cage aggressively eats giant tomatoes
- Cage yells "SLAM DUNK" while throwing tomatoes in trash
- Purple CGI creatures look TERRIBLE
- Cage screams while rounding off a shotgun
- Cage murders a goopy animal-orgy mutation
- Cage has blood spurting all over his face
- Cage starts weeping hysterically
- Cage is bananas
*5 points to Cage
Grade: C
* * * * *
TOP 20:
20. The Painted Bird
Infamous for its festival walkouts, Vaclav Marhoul's The Painted Bird painted itself as a controversial dare of a Czech art-house film even before it made its way to American cinemas (or in 2020 speak, couches), and let me tell ya folks, if endless displays of graphic violence in the form of a man's eyes being gouged out or a woman being violently sexualized with a bottle don't tickle your fancy, then buckle up, because this thing is nearly three hours, shot entirely in black-and-white, and filled with some of the most gruesome imagery of 2020 (and subtitles)! Painted Bird will undoubtedly make for an endearing family movie night, and if that's not enough, then at the very least, Marhoul's hellish WWII drama genuinely contains some of the most lavishly stunning cinematography to come out of any film in recent memory. In fact, from a visual standpoint, the film is so gorgeous to look at, it almost makes up for the fact that the story, characters or almost anything happening at all are handled in such a haphazardly uninteresting way. Despite the film being a tasteless, bladder-challenging testament to extraneous torture more so than an artistic expression of The Holocaust era, Bird is a movie that's simply too extra, and understandably so if it actually had something to say in the end (unless this is a comedy and I completely missed the point).
Grade: C+
19. Possessor
The Bottom Line: Neon-flooded scenes filled with sex and gore will make you believe that this is the most brilliant sci-fi horror flick of the last decade
Ron Howard Narration: It wasn't
*****
In Brandon Cronenberg's Possessor, there's a singular shot of Christopher Abbott having sex while wearing a rubber mask of Andrea Riseborough, and the whole thing is reminiscent of Arrested Development when Gob and Tony Wonder wore rubber masks of one another, and tricked each other into having sex with each other other, and now I feel like this whole movie was a missed opportunity. Great gore and practical effects, though. Papa Cronenberg would be proud.
Grade: B-
18. Bacurau
For better or worse, Bacurau attempts to throw everything at the walls of its titular fictitious village, from random sex and gratuitous violence to innocent children playing; old ladies pulling out glocks from their frocks, and a wicked, scar-faced villain who looks like a cross between Terence Stamp and David Byrne. For taking place in the future, Bacurau is also a tonally confusing piece ironically painting a sobering portrait of Brazil as a country stricken with poverty rather than flying cars, but also a future where drones look like flying saucers, and the bad guys wear evil AirPods and shiny tracksuits that make them look like the neighbors from Christmas Vacation. There's a dude named Lunga who's basically an extra from The Warriors; an un-caged Rufio, shirtless with a bleached blonde mullet, wearing beaded necklaces and bracelets and lives in a gigantic watchtower, which communicates via torchlight. Lunga kills bad guys with a machete and is easily the most badass representation of this absolutely bananas-ass version of future Brazil. Bacurau is an important film in its representation of a strong community fighting against wicked political warfare, but the movie's also all over the place, perhaps taking itself too seriously, only a couple over-the-top moments and one musical number away from being a Brazilian Bollywood film.
Grade: B-
17. Borat: Subsequent Movie Film
They should have ran with the original title - "Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan"
P.S. Rudy Giuliani might as well just permanently wear a paper bag over his head at this point
Grade: B
16. Emma
The Bottom Line: Both the definitive adaptation of the classic 1815 Jane Austen novel of the same name, while also acting as the best period-piece remake of Clueless (which is already a modern day adaptation of Emma). There's no counter-argument to this.
*KEY:
Emma = Cher
Bill Knighy = Daddy
Harriet = Brittany Murphy
Mr. Knightley = Paul Rudd
Mr. Martin = Breckin Meyer
Elton = Elton
Grade: B/B+
15. Uncle Frank
An Amazon Original, Uncle Frank has been pigeonholed by many filmgoers as suffering under the preachy weight of its belated "queer is cool" message, beating audiences over the head with clichéd themes of closet homosexuals being rejected by their Bible-thumping conservative family members until everyone learns a valuable lesson about equality (which feels about ten years too late), but despite the holes in the film's storytelling stereotypes, HBO veteran Alan Ball commands Paul Bettany in an emotionally controlled performance that steers his 1973 convertible of a script clear of enough potholes in order to depict the life of a gay man from half a century ago without crashing into droll familiarity. More known in the public eye as cardboard-cutout Vision in the Marvel movies, Bettany finally steps into a third dimension with Uncle Frank, and from his porn 'stache, thinning hair and aviator sunglasses, down to his polo shirts and tight pants; with every drag of his cigarette, it feels like it's about damn time Bettany played an actual person, because this just might be the man's finest acting to date. Playing a shadow of a man, Bettany puts on real crying tears and crying tears are always worth more of a bargain than any green screen portrayal of him otherwise playing a red Power Ranger.
*5 points to Peter Macdissi attempting to steal our hearts with his magnificent beard
Grade: B
14. Tenet
The Bottom Line: Christopher Nolan tries to fit more complex, time-jumping narratives into two-and-a-half hours than the entire fifth season of LOST, and trying to make sense of it all is about as good as philosophizing with a baked potato.
AKA: The Most Nolany Nolan Movie Ever Made
*****
This is the same movie that masquerades itself as a globetrotting spy movie which becomes National Treasure for a moment, but not before actually crashing a legitimate plane into an airport, then becoming a reverse car chase movie where characters are un-killed in backwards time, all the while a bunch of beefy military guys chase each other in the desert in time moving both forward and backward adjacently in order to steal some desert artifact before all of mankind implodes upon itself, or something like that (it's best to not try and keep up). The film becomes so wrapped up in its own mind-boggling plot that it's ultimately best left to keep it simple. Nothing about the plot truly matters because despite the intricate details buried beneath all the time-bending exposition, Tenet is still Nolan's James Bond flick where Kenneth Branagh chews up the scenery as a Russian bad guy who bludgeons people with gold bars. Ultimately, what's not to love?
Grade: B
13. Birds of Prey
The Bottom Line: All Harley Quinn wanted was a bacon-egg-&-cheese sandwich, and I felt that.
Also, there’s a scene where Margot Robbie shoots people in the face with a giant confetti gun, and that’s the equivalent of what getting hit by this movie feels like.
Grade: B/B+
12. Palm Springs
The Bottom Line: Groundhog Day for millennials, but with a less goofy Andy Samberg, and a more bleak message about relationships and the existence of time (or something like that)
*****
There's a point in the third act of Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs where the film's repetitive nature begins to take focus; its destination buried not in the plot of escaping a depressing time-loop, rather in accepting the defeated state of the characters’ inevitable existence. It’s actually a morbidly suitable take on struggling to even exist, which in itself is a dark but also highly relatable subject matter for this generation. Time marches on repeat, the laughter eventually wears off, and the existential dread sets in for our characters as they share this seemingly joyous reality as a false one in realizing that only they and the one person the are with are intertwined in this deeply personal and literally endless experience. That’s the moment when Andy Siara’s clever screenplay stops being a sci-fi comedy, and begins to sprout as a dark commentary on relationships and the meaning of embracing the time spent within them (or so we think).
Also, J.K. Simmons and Andy do mushrooms together and share philosophical dialogues. There's certainly some depth to its wacky plot.
*5 points to Simmons
Grade: B+
11. Another Round
The Bottom Line: Mads Mikkelsen and pals go through mid-life crisis as they experience the magic of day-drinking!
*****
Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg gives moviegoers perhaps the most realistic depiction of attempting to live a normal adult life while not letting alcoholism ruin their families and consume their lives.
Also, there's a point in the film where Mads does this wild parkour dance on a boating dock while a crowd cheers him on and showers him in champagne, and it's arguably the most accurate portrayal of liquid courage in all of cinema.
Grade: B+
10. Black Bear
AKA: The greatest performance Aubrey Plaza may give in her entire career
*****
On the surface, Black Bear is a well-budgeted student film; an overly ambitious and partly pretentious two-act art piece, each half of the story complementing the other, leaving a dizzying and mystifying ying-yang of overly theatrical relationships, toxic sexuality, tongue-in-cheek commentary on the film industry itself, and of course the psychological weight of artistry, and its blazing impact on being an honest human being in a deceptive world, left only to the devices of an ambiguous, open-ended finale. At the center of Black Bear is Aubrey Plaza, and almost nothing else matters. By taking place in a lonely, remote lakeside cabin in the woods, Black Bear feels like an eerie yet cozy stage play and on purpose, focusing on three characters who debate film, politics, and women's rights as they slosh around glasses of wine like woke hipsters. Then things get real weird.
*100 points to Plaza
Grade: B+
9. Mank
The Bottom Line: Cinema Porn AKA: Citizen Pain
AKA: A bunch of old mooks chatter about politics and film in old black & white 1940s Hollywood, and if that’s not your thing then Godspeed
*****
When damn David Fincher walked away from a potential third season of Mindhunter (and might never return) so that he could make a movie about the guy who co-wrote Citizen Kane, and would shoot the film to look exactly like the 1941 Best Screenplay winner, folks who were not diehard cinephiles were pissed. Hell, even the cinephiles were pissed. Mindhunter was a great show! So of course while watching Mank, it will be inevitable though difficult to separate bitter feelings of personal betrayal in order to enjoy Fincher's latest deep dive into roaring 1930s Hollywood, mostly because watching Mank is like getting a root canal for 131-minutes, but when the dentist shows you how good your mouth looks, it's easy to agree with his egregiously tedious yet stunning work. When the biggest gripe with the film is Gary Oldman pretending to play a 42-year-old, there's really not much negativity to take away, despite how "boring" most Netflix users will declare it.
Grade: B+
8. The Wolf of Snow Hollow
AKA: A dark comedy about a werewolf, but really a murder mystery and self commentary about personal issues, and the anxieties we made along the way
*****
Like a monster movie buried within the town of Fargo, Snow Hollow masquerades itself as a Coen Bros style dark murder mystery, endlessly chattering quirky dialogue; at its very core a comedic commentary on much more personal issues. The film may literally be about a deranged cop in denial about the existence of a monster, but it’s also metaphorically about a broken man unable to care for his family or his job, in denial of his creeping alcoholism. Perhaps Marshall is the monster itself. Either way, Snow Hollow is a loud metaphor movie, but writer-director Jim Cummings somehow makes it work in a terrifying and comical way.
*20 points to Cummings
*5 points to dope-ass werewolf movies
Grade: B+
7. Come To Daddy
The Bottom Line: Trailer Park Parasite
AKA: The only thing more shocking than all the plot twists is Elijah Wood's porn 'stache
Ant Timpson’s Come To Daddy is not what anyone is expecting. At all. The plot begins as one thing and completely manipulates into another. No one could ever see the direction this film goes in, and it is all the more original for it. An elongated father-son relationship explored through off-beat mood and quirky humor very quickly becomes a paranoid thriller, from one surprise to the next. What begins with uncomfortable tension in the first act evolves into absolute and utter chaos by the last. The film is calm right until the moment it’s not. And then things become incredibly violent, and even more absurd. There’s some B-movie schlock mixed with spontaneous gore, and just watching Elijah Wood react to all the madness is black comedy gold. Avoid every trailer and plot synopsis, at all costs. Go in blind. And good luck.
*5 points to Elijah Wood's porn 'stache
Grade: B
6. Saint Maud
When the gods of A24 Films slapped all the posters and trailers for their latest religious horror flick with bold and glowing reviews calling it "A religious experience," "An unholy terror," and "the next great horror movie," there was to be only so much anticipation for Rose Glass' debut film Saint Maud, considering this was coming from the same studio that produced movies like The Witch (2015) and Hereditary (2018) which have already been hailed as some of the greatest horror movies ever made. And although the film never quite reaches the same level of deliciously blasphemous darkness that past A24 horror flicks have captured so frighteningly well, Saint Maud does more with its uncomfortable spirit in 84 minutes than an entire season's worth of Mike Flanagan's "Haunting of" Netflix series (no disrespect).
Grade: B+
5. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
The Bottom Line: The Abortion Movie to End All Abortion Movies
AKA: Babies are bad and men are worse: The Movie!
Perhaps the most mini-but-mighty picture of 2020, Eliza Hittman's abortion epic (two words that otherwise would never go together) is such an emotional gut punch for being something so small, that the film itself is practically an unborn fetus.
-5 points to babies
Grade: A-
4. Sound of Metal
The Bottom Line: More like Deaf Metal, AM’I’RITE (Thank you, I’m here all week)
*****
Here comes the most unpredictable film of 2020: A movie you thought was about a boisterous heavy metal band but is actually a stunning portrait of the deaf community. Most of the runtime of Sound of Metal takes place in a humbling facility where Ruben (Riz Ahmed) learns the value of silence. Displaying endless scenes of classroom teachings on sign language, and depicting poignant mentor discussions on quiet appreciation, filmmaker Darius Marder could easily have taken a corny opportunity to trade the significance of the deaf community in exchange for a Hallmark crutch in Ruben learning some valuable lesson, but Marder is far more interested in exploring Ruben's stubborn rebellion against his teachings, and his inability to see being deaf as a gift rather than as a handicap.
*50 points to Riz
Grade: A
3. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
The Bottom Line: You thought this would be a normal Netflix movie? ayy lmao
Writer-director Charlie Kaufman is a strange and colossal asshole. He also writes some of the most frighteningly ambiguous and hauntingly beautiful films of anyone in his genre, or anything close to his genre, whatever genre that even is.
Grade: A
2. Minari
AKA: Steven Yeun raises a family on a farm which acts as a metaphor for his family, and chicken sexing is given all kinds of new meaning, and planting crops in literal roots becomes such a deep take on tending to a family, but then Korean grandma gets in the way with her silly traditions, and little David doesn't know anything but being an innocent child, even when he acts out, and then the family goes to church, and they just try and blend in, and live, and survive dammit! THEY'RE JUST TRYING TO BE AN ALL AMERICAN FAMILY, AND STEVEN YEUN IS DOING HIS BEST
*100 points to Yeun
Grade: A+
1. Nomadland
AKA: The most significant response to 2020
*****
Chloe Zhao's quiet little indie picture about elderly desert-dwelling nobodies existing in their RVs happens to be one of the most poignant films about American escapism ever captured on film. Fern (McDormand) represents the burned American who flees from a busy society in order to live an isolated life, and while that of course is not the most enticing plot for a film, Nomadland's identity as a simple response to a crowded and economically drained country has somehow breathed life into a time where even merely existing can become tiresome. Swapping Hollywood actors for real people playing themselves, Nomadland's authentic cast adds to the near-documentary element of a broken America and how to survive in it; by just being alive and accepting the beauty and devastation of all that comes with it.
*50 points to McDormand
*50 points to Zhao
Grade: A+
That's all folks.
Now get the hell out of here.
*MOST ANTICIPATED 2021:
- Dune
- The French Dispatch
- The Green Knight
- Candyman
- Last Night in Soho
- Zola
