It's already such an incredible cliché to say that 2020 was an unusual and difficult year that I feel embarrassed just alluding to it. Like many clichés though, it exists because there's truth to it, so we'll just have to deal. As someone who has both always strongly preferred to engage with new movie releases by going to a theater and has severe motivational difficulties even in less stressful circumstances, I spent a long time this year not actually watching almost any of the many VOD and streaming releases that did still come out. Only a frantic push in December to watch as many new movies as I could prevented 2020 from being one of my worst movie watching years ever, which would have been a pretty disappointing capstone to an extremely disappointing year.
Thankfully that push did happen, and I got to watch many movies I never would have otherwise. The experiment was so successful I may repeat it in other, less disastrous years. December is already such a period of reflection and rumination, the combination of winding down at work for the holidays and the effect of the arbitrary delineation between years putting us all in a relaxed, contemplative mood. More to the point, a bunch of year-end Top 10/20/50/Whatever lists come out and tell me what I missed. Both of these make it the perfect time to go on a binge of the year's best that you missed the first time around.
Not all of my top 10 emerged from this push. In fact, only half did. The others were movies I'd managed to be excited enough about to push through my malaise the first time around, or in one case saw before the pandemic (!) in an actual movie theater (!!!). But in a year mostly defined by a crushing weight that made even my favorite hobby nearly impossible to indulge in, I'd rather focus on the event that bounced things back and rejuvenated me to the point that I wanted to start this newsletter.
The top 10 below is listed in alphabetical order, not in a numerical ranking. I find numerical rankings difficult far out of proportion with how much they actually illuminate about anything. I don't much care for assigning grades either, so you won't find anything like that below. Instead, you'll find only my reminiscence on the 10 greatest experiences I had sitting down and watching something in 2020. I hope that's sufficient.
Another Round
Is there anyone with as compulsively watchable a face as Mads Mikklesen? Craggy and impassive but with deep, soulful eyes, a close-up on Mikklesen can be as riveting as the most intense action scene. He's far from the only thing that works about this Danish film though. It directly confronts our relationship with alcohol in a way that few things do. Most biopics of a troubled genius or things of that nature are happy to present alcoholism as an individual struggle brought on by their own traumas, but it's rare to see something that examines the culture around drinking without resorting to high-handed moralizing.
I'll admit that most critics seem to see something more even-handed and ambivalent in this movie than I do. Maybe it's because I don't drink, but to my mind the benefits of the main characters' plan to drink on the job come at enormous personal cost, and hardly seem like they were the only way to confront their malaise. More than anything, I find it exposes the lie of the “alcoholic genius” that the movie itself references. But perhaps that multi-faceted approach, that allows our own biases and preconceptions to find voice in its story, is part of what makes it so fascinating.
The Assistant
This movie has been called the first great movie of the #MeToo era, and that is a worthy appellation. Never mind its all-but-overt setting in the offices of the man who started the original cascade, Harvey Weinstein. By situating itself as a day in the life of a new assistant, watching all the little ways she can tell something is wrong and all the ways (some subtle, some decidedly not) she is pressured to just go along with it, we get to see every single facet of a rotten system that goes far deeper than one man. It tells the story of how things could be so bad for so long, how so many people could deaden themselves to what they know is wrong, far more effectively than the story of the man himself.
There is something even broader in this movie that makes it resonate beyond its timely subject matter though. The rhythm of mundane task, constant indignities, and pressure to swallow it all without complaint will be familiar to anyone who has ever labored in a bad working environment (which is to say, most of us). In many ways, the things that allow a monstrous abuser like Weinstein to operate with impunity are the same things that allow any bad boss to get away with the misery and dysfunction they cause. This is not just true to life, it puts the issue squarely in terms we can all understand. And that kind of understanding is necessary if we're ever going to confront the problem.
Black Bear
I'm fairly surprised this ended up on my list considering that, for the first half of the movie, I absolutely hated it. For roughly 50 minutes, we're treated to the most excruciating, thuddingly obvious depiction of domestic strife. A man and his wife endlessly snipe and scream at each other with no provocation while Aubrey Plaza serves as audience stand-in by awkwardly sitting between them and trying to pretend it isn't happening. It's such a stilted caricature of a doomed relationship that it reads far more like a writer's screed against his ex than anything insightful. And yet.
With the second half of the movie, everything gets reshuffled. The new framing scrambles everything that came before, and now it stands as a critique of the mixture of the professional and the personal in entertainment that I initially took it for. What's more, Aubrey Plaza truly gets to shine. In the first half she played a low-key version of her usual pigeonhole: sarcastic, deadpan, deceptive, mischievous. Now she's a woman in a slow-motion crisis, every twist of the knife bringing her one step closer to a total breakdown. What results is utterly enthralling. Not only does it stand on its own terms, but it builds upon the first half to such wonderful effect that I can't even blame the movie for my initial distaste. That's a pretty impressive feat.
Collective
It's doubtful the Romanian documentarians who set out to investigate corruption in their healthcare system knew just how vital the subject would seem when their movie got its international release in late 2020. Healthcare is an evergreen topic, especially in the US, so it's not like they were taking a shot in the dark. But being almost literally every person on Earth's number one concern is the kind of relevance you can't possibly predict. So in one way, Collective already had the wind at its back by the time I saw it. I also usually don't care too much for documentaries, though, so you could call it a coin flip when I decided to sit down and watch it.
Luckily, that coin flip came up “fantastic.” The creators chose a style of silence, sitting back and letting the camera silently observe press conferences, meetings, and investigations rather than explanatory talking heads or interviews. This lets the whole series of events unspool like a narrative, following the journalists and officials trying to find and tear out the rot, contrasted with the stubborn resistance every step of the way. What really made this movie work for me, though, was that every once in a while they cut back to one of the victims of the horrific nightclub fire that set off the movie's events. We see her initial struggles, the solace she finds in art and advocacy, the survivors meeting up and supporting each other. It's a way for the filmmakers to say that, as much as we may be interested by the intrigue and politics, the most important thing is always the people who are hurt by these decisions. Without that, this would have been interesting but not affecting. With it, it's deeply resonant for these times.
Color Out of Space
I love Nicolas Cage. It started out as a joke, an ironic appreciation for a notably bad actor, but as I saw more and more performances by the man it started to evolve. Watch enough of him and you realize that he's not a bad actor at all: in fact, he's wildly talented. He makes poor choices, sure, but even in his worst films you will never see Nic Cage turn in a subpar performance. Say what you will about the man, he does not just show up and cash his check. He approaches every movie with gusto, turning up the energy as high as he's asked to and going all out every time. Thankfully for brain geniuses like me who see past the meme to his true greatness, Cage has made a habit recently of showing up in smaller indie movies with directors who know how to use his talents to the fullest.
This year's selection was Color Out of Space, and it might be one of the best showcases of his talents yet. This adaptation of an iconic Lovecraft short story lets Cage show his surprising range, starting the movie as a low-key supportive father and husband, charming in his corniness and humble affect. But as it goes on and the alien presence corrupts the mind of the family, he slowly turns up the dial of the now-familiar Cage freakout, letting more and more of it slip into his performance until he finally bursts into a manic whirlwind of chaotic energy. There's plenty of other pulpy pleasures in this B-movie throwback (psychedelic lighting, cheesy but creepy practical effects, a solid grasp on tension building and creative monster design) but it's all anchored by this Cage performance for the ages.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
It should say something for how much I admire the work of Charlie Kaufman that this movie made my list despite being, in my opinion at least, one of his weaker showings. It lacks the structural audacity of Adaptation, the existentialist gut-punch of Synechdoche, New York, or the technical inventiveness of Anomalisa. In many ways, it feels like what you would get if you stripped an average Kaufman movie of these identifying qualities and just presented it at is essence: surrealist meta-structure telling a story about the impossibility of real human connection or understanding. Yet Kaufman is such a talented storyteller that even that is enough to be one of the best movies of the year.
Part of this is perhaps just an appeal to my personal predilections. I love a well-executed touch of surrealism. That feeling of understanding just outside of your grasp, of something just comprehensible enough to feel like you can grasp of it but just alien enough that you never fully will, is one of my favorite feelings that media can inspire. And if you feel the same, this tale of a woman meeting her boyfriend's parents that jumps backwards and forwards through time seemingly at random, placing her in the same role of uncomprehending observer as the viewer, executes that masterfully. And it all builds to an ending that descends into full-on abstraction yet also manages to beautifully convey the nihilistic core of its story. Its not a movie that will make you feel good (it's not even one I agree with, ultimately), but it is one that will fascinate you every step of the way.
Kajillionaire
There's a criticism of twee indie movies and other such things that argues their artificial affectations obscure and substitute for real emotional connection or genuine insight. It's one that often rings true, and is especially biting for someone like me. Maybe it's because I'm so online, or maybe it's because my own serious mental illnesses convince me not to confide in others, but I find it almost impossible to straightforwardly express even positive sincere emotional sentiments. I can only express them through layers of irony and detachment. When I try to do otherwise, I feel both dangerously exposed and painfully insincere.
That's why it was such a shock that Kajillionaire confronts such detachment head on. This tale of the daughter of petty grifters is, in some ways, directly about how such affectations may convey meaning but are no substitute for more sincere human connection. It's also a touching story of an emotionally abused person clawing their way towards a fulfilling life despite everything they've ever been taught working against it. And it does all this without ever leaving its off-kilter, slightly absurdist world of petty grifts. It's likely not for everyone, but for the irony-poisoned like me, you may find it quite moving.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Sometimes all you need in a movie is one stellar scene. Which is not to say that there are not charms throughout all of Never Rarely Sometimes Always! Nearly every scene in this movie quietly showcases how the society we've built lets down young girls. The central premise may be that a Pennsylvania teenager is forced to venture to New York City to receive an abortion without her parents' permission, but that's just the largest of the indignities she and her supportive cousin are forced to endure. Yet the movie is gentle and empathetic in its telling, so it never becomes hard to watch. And the true focus is on the bond between her and her cousin, how girls like them support each other to survive in a world that is often hostile.
It's impossible to talk about this movie without talking about its title scene though. Having finally reached an NYC Planned Parenthood, the main character is given an intake exam where she is asked to respond to several statements about her life with the options in the title. The camera stays entirely focused on her face as she is asked questions that reveal the extent of the abuse she has suffered. But the most devastating part is realizing, as she struggles to contain the emotions that well up inside her, that she has perhaps never had anyone even ask these questions to her before. When I first saw it, I couldn't help but cry. Hell, I'm tearing up about it now just writing about it. Even if the rest of the movie was mediocre (and it's far from it!), it would be worth it for this knockout scene.
Palm Springs
Palm Springs is definitely the movie I watched the most in 2020. It came out right when it was starting to set in for me just how long this quarantine thing was going to last. In an environment like that, I was in desperate need for entertainment. This movie about a time loop, ironically enough, itself became a comfortable rhythm for me in the unending purgatory of pandemic life. For a time, whenever focusing on the task before me started to feel impossible, I would throw on this movie and let its easy laughs and fantastic comedic timing carry me through that rough patch while I worked. It became like an old friend in my lonely one bedroom apartment, bringing the joy I couldn't quite muster for myself anymore.
But it's not just the comfort it brought me that makes look back fondly on this movie. Its depiction of a jaded old hand deep into a Groundhog Day time loop was a fun new twist on the now-familiar formula. And beyond these romantic comedy charms, it actually told a story about the rhythms we build up in our personal and romantic lives, and how those can hold us back from reaching for true happiness. It's not often a movie this funny can also carry such a heady theme so well, but Palm Springs walks that tightrope walk marvelously. Perhaps that, even more than the laughs, was what kept me coming back again and again.
Wolfwalkers
I've already written and podcasted pretty extensively about why I loved this movie so much. It's a gorgeously animated tale stuffed to the brim with charms. Everything about its visual and sound design enhances the experience. Its touching story is light enough to move quickly yet heavy enough to pull on your heartstrings and give you something to chew on after watching. There's an endless list of things to praise, and even when wracking my brain its somewhat repetitive dialogue was the only thing I could think to criticize. If you know how exacting my standards can be, that's already an accomplishment.
I think what I admire most about it, though, is simply that it tells a straightforward story incredibly well. Throughout this list I've praised surrealism, ironic detachment, meta-narrative, all manner of things that eschew this kind of straightforward storytelling. And I do sincerely love something that can wrinkle my brain and impress me with its cleverness! But at my heart, I'm also a storyteller. And when you strip away these kinds of tricks and just lay bare a story, something that lives and dies by its ability to communicate its characters, make you care about them, and put them in difficult situations? Well, that's hard. It's really, really hard. Yet here we have a movie that makes it look effortless. A movie where every scene has a clear narrative and thematic purpose, where we truly understand its characters and what motivate them, where those characters are constantly put in situations where their own wants and needs are put in conflict and we have to watch as people we care about fight each other to do what they both think is right. It's nothing short of a miracle.
I'm often hard on the writing in a movie or TV show or game. Part of that is it's just the part of media I can most easily understand, analyze, and articulate why something does or doesn't work for me. Part of it is because, deep down, I hope that everything can excite and inspire me on this level. I know how difficult it is, and there are plenty of things I adore that don't quite meet that standard. But there is always that tantalizing hope, that everything will fire on all cylinders, the stars will align, and every element of a story will come together and just work. When that happens, you end up with something I'll immediately run to everyone I know to praise, something I'll come back to again and again just to watch the clockwork workings of each piece advancing a greater whole. It doesn't happen often, because it's incredibly difficult (I've certainly never managed it). But when it does? It's magic.