If someone had told me a year ago that I would never set foot in a cinema or screening room in 2020 after the first week of March (the impressive The Outpost and lousy The hunt were the last films I saw on big screens), but that would remain healthy and somehow seeing new films, I could not have guessed what they were talking about. Nor could I imagine that I would be watching the 2021 Sundance Film Festival alone on the home screen, without parkas or ski boots at the front door. Maybe I’ll put some on for fun while watching some Sundance titles at home next month.
But that’s where we are now, with no safe return in sight. At the same time, we experience a flood of films, produced by different sources and delivered to the public in unconventional and unprecedented ways. The break could mark the end of the trip to the cinema as we always know it, since many cinemas may never reopen and traditional studios break down into unrecognizable wrappings of their former self.
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One thing that this lost year and the recent votes for the best films of the year by various fraternities of critics have stated is that the ever-blurred distinctions between film / television, majors / indies and American / foreign productions have diminished enormously; at this point, a film is a film is a film more than ever.
What can be lost with this development – certain traditions, styles, flavors and distinctive approaches to narrative in different cinematographic cultures – seems to be offset by an approach free of anything that ignores traditional national and stylistic boundaries and embraces new challenges from label approaches . It is a wonderful thing that a Chinese-born woman has made some of the most insightful films about America’s displaced populations and that a young Korean immigrant could grow up to direct a very accessible drama about the difficult raising of a child on a remote Arkansas Farm. I sincerely hope that theaters will be able to return, but the way we define what we’re watching – and under what circumstances we consume everything – is undergoing a significant change, see the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s recent acclamation of Steve’s participation MCQUEEN Small Ax British television anthology, which consists of five entirely different narratives of varying lengths, such as the best “film”.
With the world in simultaneous states of disturbing turmoil and agonizing stasis, the following are my picks for the best films of the helpless year of 2020.
1. Nomadland
After Songs my brothers taught me and The pilot, Chloe Zhao completed a trilogy of resources about the modern American West and its traveling residents with this frighteningly resonant, woman-centered road movie starring Frances McDormand that fits perfectly. And Zhao has already finished his next film, Marvel’s Eternals.
2. The Father
Anthony Hopkins ends an incredible career with his surprising turn as an old father with Alzheimer’s in the adaptation to the screens of Florian Zeller with supreme nuances of his own play. The art direction is subtle and revealing, as are the performances.
3. Promising young woman
Another highlight of Sundance 2020 is this surprising tale of revenge that goes on and on, with Carey Mulligan making every effort to present Emerald Fenell’s boldly audacious first feature film.
4. Dick Johnson is dead
In another year of many notable documentaries (yes, that was at Sundance too), Kirsten Johnson’s collaborative and often disorderly funny tribute to her demented father is unquestionably unique.
5. Machado Pequeno: Mangue
Steve McQueen presented something distinctive and penetrating with his film quintet about the difficulties faced by West Indian immigrants in London from the early 1970s onwards. Each is distinct in its own way, but Mangrove, long lasting and culminating in a historic judgment, is arguably the most powerful and fully realized of the group.
6. Into the Deep
Sundance also provided the launch pad for Emma Sullivan’s simultaneously fascinating and terrifying documentary about the murder of a Swedish journalist at the hands of a demented Danish inventor aboard his own hand-made submarine.
7. Soul
Pixar once again shows itself as the gift that continues to be given with this bold departure from company standards. Pete Docter’s distinctive style is composed here by the jazz soundtrack in a tale that inhabits several kingdoms, one more deliciously intriguing than the last.
8. The King of Staten Island
Staten Island is the only neighborhood in New York I have never been to, simply because no one said it was worth a look, but the Judd Apatow and Pete Davidson film absolutely deserves a trip, as it brings an entirely unknown community, alive with humor and discernment.
9. The outpost
Rod Lurie sometimes flirted with real quality during his eclectic career, but he finally put it all together in this film, a tight, focused, and incessantly intense account of a terrible siege like Álamo’s at a Marine outpost during the war in Afghanistan.
10. Devil between the legs
This possible career finisher of veteran Mexican director Arturo Ripstein will probably never be released in the United States (I saw it in Toronto 2019), so it looks like now or never to greet this bizarre, claustrophobic, superbly directed Last Tangosuch as the study of sexual obsession by a dissolute couple in their 70s. To be sure, there was never anything like it, although it is difficult to identify your target audience, except residents of excited geriatric wards. Calling Henry Miller …
Runner-up, 11-20
Minari (Lee Isaac Chung), First cow (Kelley Reichardt), The dissident (Bryan Fogel), Never seldom sometimes always (Eliza Hittman), Martin Eden (Piertro Marcello), I’m thinking about ending things (Charlie Kaufman), The painted bird (Vaclav Malhoul), Varapau (Kantemir Balagov), On the rocks (Sofia Coppola), Black Bottom by Ma Rainey (George C. Wolfe).
Most overrated movie
Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho), violently vile nonsense