The Top Ten Films of 2020
2020 was definitely a weird one. Normally, I would see 1-3 movies a week in theaters; this was not a normal year. Mass theater closures meant new films had two options: indefinite postponement or debuting directly to streaming. As a result, I was forced to find other ways to watch and consume movies. Since most big studio pics chose to delay their release, my options were to watch even more independent and international films. This definitely affected how I put together this year’s top ten list consisting of possibly my least mainstream picks to date.
In addition, as they have been criminally underrepresented in my past lists, I also tried to seek out more films directed by cis and trans women in 2020. Luckily, there was no shortage of these films this year, and they ended up making up half the list. Though I would have loved to have included all ten directed by women, I also wanted to include the other films that genuinely excited and affected me, regardless of who directed them. However, my news year’s resolution for 2021 is to continue to prioritize new films by women, people of color, and other underrepresented people behind the camera. This will not automatically diversify my future lists necessarily, but hopefully it is a step in the right direction.
And the ten best films of 2020 according to me are. . .
10. Kajillionaire
For the past fifteen years, no one has been a bigger Miranda July skeptic than me. Usually I find her quirky brand of idiosyncrasies more cloying than interesting. To quote The Simpsons’ Moe Szyslak, “It’s POMO. . . weird for the sake of weird.” Still, I always had respect for her commitment to these idiosyncrasies rather than giving into the drab kitchen sink realism that tends to dominate American independent cinema. Well, she did it. July has finally won me over with this delightful outcast story of a bottom-feeding con artist family (Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger, and a nearly unrecognizable Evan Rachel Wood).
It is difficult to interpret any behavior in a Miranda July film as naturalistic, but the trio’s propensity to play it straight throughout such ridiculous and needlessly complicated cons make the shenanigans much more empathetic than they have any right to be. These characters seem to have little idea about how to comply with modern day capitalist norms, but survive by exploiting every crack in society they see. Through the character of Melanie (Gina Rodriguez), who volunteers herself as a sort of apprentice to the family, we are given a backstage pass to the performance art of the small time con. Wood is particularly excellent as the daughter “Old Dolio”, an awkward wolf child raised outside the realm of normalcy but not immune to the thrill of stepping into it.
Kajillionaire Streaming Options
9. Dick Johnson is Dead
It was a great year for documentaries, conventional and not. Kirsten Johnson raised a high bar in 2016 with her personalized collage project Cameraperson, but has somehow topped even herself with this year’s entry. Death is by definition not the cheeriest subject, let alone the imminent death of a parent. However, Johnson makes light of the inevitable loss of her aging psychiatrist father, Dick Johnson, through flamboyantly staged death sequences and afterlife scenarios curated by the man himself. It is a fascinating experiment of “pre-grief”, exploring the myriad of ways to accept death and loss by directly involving the dearly departed themselves. However, the film also deconstructs the fictions created by the documentary form, a medium with an equal reputation for capturing truth but also distorting it. After realizing other people’s visions, Johnson has truly come into her own as possibly the most inventive living documentarian.
The life of a pig has not been this richly cinematic since Babe: Pig in the City. Gorgeously shot in black and white in a style more Godard than National Geographic, director Viktor Kossakovsky truly captures the soul of select farm animals, namely a large mother pig and her many piglets. Without any verbal commentary or visible human interaction, Kossakovsky lets the camera linger as the pigs struggle their way out of literal holes, battle for their mother’s milk, or even listlessly pace until they seemingly gather their thoughts. Despite a lack of running commentary, the documentary is not without agency. Kossakovsky captures these personalities on screen as a call to vegan arms, showing that these animals have complex lives of their own. Also, the piglets give Baby Yoda a run for his money as the cutest things on screen in 2020.
Streaming Coming Soon
7. Young Ahmed
I confess that I did not know anything about this newest release from the consistently masterful Dardenne Brothers until the last week of December. Considering their pedigree, why was this buzz so considerably muted? Then I discovered that it received unusually mixed reviews while tackling the controversial theme of radical Islamism. Still, their superlative immersive and naturalistic style end up making this macabre coming of age tale as compelling as any other conventional narrative this year.
At thirteen years old, Ahmed embraces radical Islamicism leading to the attempted murder of his liberal Muslim teacher. At first glance, the Dardennes come dangerously close to demonizing Islam as a whole, portraying male fundamentalists in all their conservative and chavinistic ugliness. However, they also portray the more complex reality that not all religious values are universal, and each passing moment that Ahmed spends in juvenile detention brings hope that he might change. Nevertheless, ambiguity has always been the brothers’ bread and butter, and Ahmed’s persistent stumbling to either be a radical fundamentalist or to be a more open-minded and merciful person makes for an absolutely engrossing experience. It is difficult to keep one’s eyes off of every move.
Sibil “Fox” Richardson’s story would be fascinating even if it were told on the local news. She is truly an exceptional woman: After serving three years in prison, she became a successful Black female entrepreneur while raising six boys and fighting to get her husband out of jail. That being said, a special thanks goes out to Garrett Bradley for not only making the most moving documentary in years but the most beautiful one as well.
By mixing recent footage with older mini DV footage shot by Fox herself, Bradley creates a tapestry of the moments of the confident woman Fox has become as she raises her family and fights for her husband’s freedom. While it’s a fair response to label a modern black and white movie “pretentious”, Bradley does not use this look frivolously. Not only is the film is not only visually beautiful to look at, but Bradley uses the shades of black and white to recall the nostalgia of old family photos. To take it a step further, even perhaps beyond Bradley’s intention,, the black and white could evoke the shades of gray perspective needed in the justice system to end the systemic exploitation and incarceration of African Americans. While Fox’s story is full of tragedy, Bradley’s film remains refreshingly hopeful, thanks in part to Fox’s resilience and the accomplishments of her overachieving children. It’s a story that not only needs to be told, but also be seen.
5. Vitalina Varela
When I first saw Pedro Costa’s Horse Money in January 2016, I discovered an original and unique style that I respected but struggled to enjoy due to frustratingly glacial pacing. Costa’s work is often called an “acquired taste”, and if Horse Money was baby’s first sip of Stroh’s, Vitalina Varela (a true story reenacted by its real subjects) is the 50 year old single malt you work your whole life to afford. This is in no small way due to the presence of its central character and actress Vitalina Varela, a Cape Verdean who arrived in Lisbon to meet her husband after 25 years, only to discover he had died and she missed his funeral.
Though based directly on Varela’s life, Costa avoids a naturalistic approach in place of pure expressionism. The shadowy darkness enveloping every figure transforms the Lisbon slums into the physical manifestation of a trance. It is an environment that slows every feeling and memory down so that every person is forced to feel every detail. Nonprofessional actors in world cinema are often praised for their naturalism, but Varela really transcends this. She doesn't just tell her story as if reading it on a stage, but internally relives it with hypnotic glazed eyes as feelings slowly trickle through her veins. While Costa’s style will always lack the thrill and pace of a Marvel movie, it leaves a powerful mark that is impossible to shake.
Vitalina Varela Streaming Options
4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things
I tried to be a more thoughtful and aware movie consumer this year, actively prioritizing films by women-identifying directors. I have never been less interested in the white male gaze. However, even with these reservations, I will forever be putty in the hands of the great Charlie Kaufman. While his third foray as a director certainly lacks much sociopolitical consciousness and is entirely from a privileged perspective, it is also unlike anything I have ever seen before. What it lacks in temporal relevance, it more than makes up for in visceral metaphysics. In a departure from his high concept escapades, Kaufman goes full David Lynch, following a young couple (Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons, truly shining in this overdue star vehicle) into the snowy abyss of rural America. As uncertainty about their relationship manifests in typically Kaufmanesque voiceovers, their own perception of reality becomes uncertain. Cue the full blown distortion and dreamlike indiocrynasies ranging from dream ballets, unchallenged aging, and a verbal dump of intellectual discourse. However, for all the many explicit ideas presented, Kaufman’s tactful attention to mood and continuous disorientation are really what got underneath my skin. The logos and the pathos mix like maple and bacon.
Streaming: I'm Thinking of Ending Things Streaming Options
3. First Cow
I have a sentimental attachment to this picture, as it was the last film I saw in pre-COVID theaters. This was also the last film I saw with my mother for our weekly Friday movie date. Naturally, these qualifications make the movie personally notable, and the exceptional subtlety of this film expand beyond the personal. Somehow, it manages to be part rich character study on finding friends during hard times and part eye-opening criticism of capitalism and class warfare. It’s the kind of narrative that quietly observes and lives with its characters before a momentous conflict consumes them.
Director Kelly Reichardt has been telling these kinds of stories for years, but this story feels more clear and heartfelt than ever. Set in frontier times, misfits Cookie (Umbrella Academy’s John Magaro) and King Liu (Orion Lee), a fur trapper’s cook and a Chinese immigrant on the lam, respectively, come together to form a successful funnel cake business, with a little help from the stolen milk from the cow of a wealthy landowner(Toby Jones). The harmless secret gets more complicated the more visible the business becomes, putting the two friends on the lam as the cow’s owner cries over spilt milk. A powerful opening image of the two leads embracing comes full circle with the last. It alludes to devastation at first, but ends with a touching sense of ambiguity. In other words, the movie in a nutshell.
2. The Assistant
In 2003, the AFI ranked “Man” from Bambi as the 20th top villain in film history, outranking Freddy Krueger, Cruella De Vil, the Terminator, and even Count Dracula. This was a bold choice as this was a character without any screen time. This was a character not defined by a flamboyant screen persona or clever turns of phrases, but purely for the destructive impact on the lives of the central characters.
This kind of oppressive character returns to the screen (or off it, more accurately) in this masterful early year surprise - he is similarly invisible, but felt in every email his titular assistant (a revelatory Julia Garner) types, every phone call she takes in the hallway, every slouch of her shoulders, every dish she washes, every message she tentatively relays to a coworker, etc. There is no overt physical threat, but Garner’s Jane must navigate through a labyrinth of seemingly intentional aggressions (both micro and macro) throughout one long work day at a New York film production office.
Director Kitty Green masterfully employs the “show don’t tell” style reflecting the silencing (literally and figuratively) film business world surrounding Jane. However, the way Green deftly captures her behavior paints a picture as detailed as any wordy piece of exposition. Powerless though she may seem, Jane is hardly weak. Her hard work and constant awareness clearly indicates that she is a survivor, even in a system that tries to quash that at every turn. Released in late February, I was blessed to have been able to see it on the big screen, where the blown up expression on Garner’s face is as loud as any literal blow up in Tenet.
This year, I changed my mind about my top pick on a weekly basis. It was an omnipresent coin toss, and could have been easily turned by someone else’s opinion. This continued through mid-December, when, on a whim, I started a film with no expectations. I’d almost missed out on my top film of the year! At last I found a film that excited, surprised, and delighted me in a way that I really needed after this hard year.
One can’t watch this film without thinking of the great Guy Maddin; like his best work, it’s a highly stylized, color saturated, absurdly humorous revisionist history of Canadian lore. If I didn't know better, I would have thought Maddin directed it himself. Close, but not quite: it was directed by fellow Winnpegger Matthew Rankin who worked in the art department on Maddin’s My Winnipeg.
What starts as a pastiche becomes a marvelous trip down a maple-laced rabbit hole. The subject of the film is the rise of power of Canada’s longest reigning Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, but this is not your father’s biopic. Inspired by King’s melodramatic diary, Rankin leans into a sublimely melodramatic representation through a children’s storybook aesthetic. The hand painted, expressionistic, Calagari-like sets are a constant reminder to the viewers that this is a Canada of the mind: a manifestation of King’s desires and personal demons anthropomorphized as literally as possible. Rankin takes real stories and characters and hyperbolizes them as if he is telling a bedtime story. Yet, for all its earnest inspiration, the film is also wildly funny and entertaining, more Kids in the Hall than Atom Egoyan. Even at its most ridiculous, it creates underdog characters that will hopefully bring the audience to another amazing display of visual splendor. However, most importantly, The Twentieth Century is delightful fun and as sincere as it is silly. Maybe it wasn’t the movie the whole world needed right now, but it was certainly the one I needed, even if I started watching it as a whim.
The Twentieth Century Streaming Options
Runners Up (not in any order):
La Casa Lobo (Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña)
Beanpole (Kantemir Arturovich Balagov)
Wendy (Behn Zeitlin)
The Forty Year Old Version (Radha Blank)
Lingua Franca (Isabel Sandoval)
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)
The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannel)
Lover’s Rock (Steve McQueen)
Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings)
She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz)
Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach)
Birds of Prey And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Cathy Yan)
Marona’s Fantastic Tale (Anca Damian)
The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)
Blow the Man Down (Danielle Krudy, Bridget Savage Cole)
The Trial of the Chicago Seven (Aaron Sorkin)
Da Five Bloods (Spike Lee)
Color Out of Space (Richard Stanley)
17 Blocks (Davy Rothbart)
Born to Be (Tania Cypriano)
Mank (David Fincher)
Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman)
Finding Yingying (Jiayan Shi)
The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack)
The Nest (Sean Durkin)
Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)
Deerskin (Quentin Dupieux)
The Painter and the Thief (Benjamin Ree)
Admittedly Have Yet to See
Minari
There was a week-long virtual cinema run in December that sold out immediately. Other than that, there were no non-festival opportunities for me to see it.
Special Prize
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
I finally caught “The Admittedly Yet to See” film of 2019 in early February. It could easily have topped 2019’s list had I seen it earlier. It is a film whose every frame is a work of art and every detail tells something new about the characters. I love it more after every viewing.
Underrated
Wendy
Benh Zeitlin’s long overdue follow-up to his masterpiece Beasts of the Southern Wild unceremoniously came and went from theaters in February. It turns out the moviegoing public did not have the happiest thoughts about yet another reimagining of Peter Pan. However, even though it is not nearly as masterful as its predecessor, there’s more than enough of the Beasts aesthetic here that makes it powerful in its own right. For one, the actual live volcano filming location and casting of local rastafarian Antiguans feels appropriately wild and otherworldly. If nothing else, Zeitlin’s film captured the energy of wild children rebelling against the natural course of aging. In the end, it is a lively picture with all the heart and visual splendor it could offer. If this movie was a dead fairy with critics, then I am here to clap for it.
Overrated
David Byrne’s American Utopia
Don’t get me wrong, I love David Byrne and honestly enjoyed just about every minute of this performance. But is this performance really a movie? Even with the standards appropriately looser than they have ever been this year, I think not. Spike Lee hardly cinematically reimagines the live show experience like Steven Soderbergh did with Spalding Gray. Since this was a show performed on Broadway, I expected more of an operatic spectacle. However, though not without its own occasional aesthetic flourishes (the use of zoom-in shots and still photography during the Janelle Monae cover "Hell You Talmbout" are pure Spike Lee), this mostly feels like a handsomely and respectfully shot concert, complete with Byrne playing the hits and casually speaking to the audience. Not a minute is wasted enjoying this concert; it’s fun. However, with so many great films this year pushing boundaries, its position on this year’s cinematic pedestal seems excessive.
Most Pleasant Surprise
Butt Boy
As it was John Waters’ favorite film of 2020, I was expecting a John Waters kind of movie: full of camp, depravity, and loud begging for laughs. It’s nearly impossible to take the premise seriously: a detective suspects missing children are disappearing up his AA sponsor’s butt. Yes, you read that right. Based on a short comedy sketch, it obviously has its humorous moments. However, the film amazingly plays this absurd premise totally straight, bringing a sense of earnestness that borders on nuance. At its core, it’s a thoughtful examination of addiction and life fulfillment as Chip (Tyler Cornack who also wrote and directed) succumbs to his fetish of putting things/people in his butt to literally fill the holes in his life. It all leads to a climax even more preposterous than its premise, but due to a game cast and solid direction, it works as a twisted claustrophobic body horror noir. Butt Boy is proof that scatology does not end with a fart joke.
Biggest Disappointment
Shirley
This film could have taken all my money had it not dropped on Hulu instead of theaters. Directed by Josephine Decker, the mastermind behind the transcendent best film of 2018 Madeline’s Madeline; starring Elizabeth Moss who is consistently delivering a Best Actress quality performance every year, playing the author of one of the greatest short stories ever written, this film had all the right pieces to be a visceral feast of imagery and histrionics. However, while certainly competent and well acted, this is a fairly straightforward piece of Oscar bait, offering few moments worth remembering. Focusing on the manipulations she and her husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) play on a young couple, it does explore her life beyond just being a writer. However, I liked this the first time when it was called Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and I honestly had to look up this aspect of the plot because I forgot it entirely. While hardly a misfire, this was very disappointingly safe. At least it’s better than Radioactive.
Top Ten Fun Facts
Best Reviewed (according to Metacritic): Time, score of 91
Worst Reviewed (according to Metacritic): Young Ahmed, score of 66
Longest Running Time: I’m Thinking of Ending Things - 137 minutes
Shortest Running Time: Time- 81 minutes
Films Directed by Women: 5 (The Assistant, First Cow, Time, Dick Johnson is Dead, Kajillionaire)
Films in Black and White: 2 (Time, Gunda)
Documentaries: 3 (Time, Gunda, Dick Johnson is Dead)
Films I Saw in Theaters: 5 (The Assistant, First Cow, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Time, Kajillionaire)
Netflix Films: 2 (I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Dick Johnson is Dead)
