Top 10 Films of 2020

Well, in addition to being a hellish year generally speaking, 2020 was a weird year for movies. With many theaters shut down and studios hedging their bets on big budget projects, it was a time for smaller films to shine on streaming platforms.

While the “Oscar year” was extended through February 2021, I decided to limit my top 10 to the calendar year. So with all due respect to titles like “Judas and the Black Messiah,” which was just released on HBO Max in February, only 2020 releases made the cut. (Though you may likely see “Judas and the Black Messiah” the next time I post one of these lists.)

As always, I’m going to do my best to avoid spoilers, but if you’re particularly sensitive to them, you may want to skip this or that write-up.

10.) ANOTHER ROUND

A group of friends hope to determine whether constant, low levels of drunkenness can improve their lives. (Duh, of course it can!) With all due respect to Seth Rogen, his inevitable American remake of this is gonna suck. “Another Round,” a Danish film directed and co-written by Thomas Vinterberg, is funny in ways you don’t expect, straddling a line between a delicate kind of humor and sadness. And who better to capture that melancholy than Mads Mikkelsen as Martin, a man struggling to stay passionate about his work and keep his marriage alive. Fans of Mikkelsen know that he’s an actor who never betrays anything on screen. That’s one reason why the movie’s final moments, which I won’t get into here, are such a surprise and delight.

9.) THE VAST OF NIGHT

This wildly confident debut feature from director Andrew Patterson follows teens Everett (Jake Horowitz) and Fay (Sierra McCormick) as they attempt to unravel the strange goings-on in the night sky over their small town. Comparisons to “The Twilight Zone” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” are apt. There are some beautifully orchestrated Spielberg-type long takes that make the quick cuts sprinkled throughout the film that much more impactful. Patterson also understands the value of having talented performers deliver chilling monologues with the utmost conviction. Something they saw, something they heard, something they experienced. That can do the work of any number of big-budget effects sequences.

8.) NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS

“Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.” That’s reportedly Ernst Lubitsch by way of Billy Wilder. In this Eliza Hittman film, a pair of teenage cousins named Autumn and Skylar (played by Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder, respectively, both giving lived-in and natural performances) travel from rural Pennsylvania to New York City so that Autumn could get an abortion. There’s a scene halfway through, in fact it’s where the movie gets its title, that absolutely destroyed me. Autumn is a perpetually disaffected teenager, but in this scene, we see what lies underneath that exterior. And there’s an unspoken revelation that hit me with the full force of an uppercut to the jaw. Shattering.

7.) PALM SPRINGS

Nyles (Andy Samberg) and maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) are stuck in a time loop where they relive a wedding day over and over again. Released on Hulu in July, “Palm Springs” is the “Groundhog’s Day” for our quarantine malaise. Given the cyclical nature of the structure, this film lives or dies on the shoulders of Samberg and Milioti. Fortunately, they deliver big-time. Samberg was a hurdle for me going in, his version of loud comedy just isn’t what I’m looking for when I wanna laugh. Though he’s refreshingly easygoing and lowkey here. But by balancing humor, anger, and ennui, Milioti is the standout. I’ve liked her in everything I’ve seen (shoutout to fans of “Black Mirror” and FX’s “Fargo”), but this should be a star-making turn.

6.) SHIRLEY

Famed author Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) and her husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) take in young couple Rose (Odessa Young) and Fred (Logan Lerman). The volatile Shirley uses Rose as her muse for her next book. Young gives a marvelous performance, she goes toe-to-toe with Moss (who had a pretty great year between this and “The Invisible Man”). There’s a naïveté to Young as well as a worldliness that makes for a wild mixture. Director Josephine Decker’s loose, cinéma-vérité-adjacent style also pairs nicely with the characters at odds here. Her woozy aesthetic, handheld camera and gauzy close-ups so tight they’re almost abstractions, make the circumstances seem that much more combustible.

5.) SOUND OF METAL

Darius Marder has crafted a punishing yet beautiful film. Metal drummer and former addict, Ruben (Riz Ahmed), loses his hearing and struggles to adjust to his new life. It’s rare that a soundscape makes you feel claustrophobic. But the sound designers place the viewer inside Ruben’s head, using that hollow, inside-a-seashell effect that you hear in war movies right after an explosion. Marder holds those moments so long that it’s genuinely unnerving. The performances are uniformly excellent, from Ahmed to Olivia Cooke as the vocalist in his band (and his girlfriend) to Paul Raci who runs a home for deaf recovering addicts. Raci doesn’t have an inauthentic acting bone in his body.

4.) MINARI

Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han) move their Korean American family, which includes their young son David (Alan Kim) and daughter Anne (Noel Cho), from California to rural Arkansas. Jacob hopes to make a living as a farmer, but Monica feels alienated and disconnected. In part pulled from the real-life experiences of director-screenwriter Lee Isaac Chung, it’s not surprising that this film feels authentically personal. There’s a specificity to the characters and their relationships. The entire cast is great, but eight-year-old Alan Kim is a revelation. Incredibly natural on screen. This is a full-course meal of a film – filled with laughter and tears, calm and tumult, grandeur and intimacy. Cinematographer Lachlan Milne captures the rural landscape beautifully, his roving camera taking in the lush green and the endless blue of the sky.

3.) ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI…

The fictional story of…well, a night in Miami, where Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) spend the evening in a motel room, celebrating Clay’s unexpected boxing victory. Tensions rise when the group delves into conversations about professions, faith, and the state of the African American community in 1964. Regina King proves remarkably adept in her feature directorial debut. Films adapted from stage plays – this is based on a play written by Kemp Powers – can sometimes wear their theatrical origins on their sleeves. Look no further than “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” which was very good but so monologue-heavy that I often thought and now it’s THIS character’s turn to take center stage. There’s no getting around the limited setting in “One Night in Miami…,” which is usually a hallmark of a play adaptation. But King’s coverage is so thorough and the performances so nuanced that the movie feels like full-blown cinema. All of these actors are playing individuals, not doing impersonations. The script, also by Powers, offers up a real exchange of ideas. Using icons from the past, this story dramatizes what we as a nation are still discussing today.

2.) FIRST COW

In the Pacific Northwest of 1820, Cookie (John Magaro) and King-Lu (Orion Lee) have ambitions to start a bakery. They sneak onto a wealthy Englishman’s land to milk his cow, the only one in the region, and use the milk to make biscuits to sell at a market, eventually attracting the attention of the Englishman (Toby Jones) himself. Kelly Reichardt’s quiet, contemplative, and methodical brand of filmmaking isn’t gonna be for everyone. But it’s certainly for me. She creates so much tension without the bells and whistles you associate with suspense. No quick cutting, no aggressive camera movement, no driving score. Just, in one instance, a slow pan across a series of windows from inside the wealthy man’s home. We see Cookie and King-lu approach from outside with a pastry they were commissioned to make as we hear, inside, the Englishman talk about the brutal measures he’d take to put a stop to illicit behavior.

1.) SOUL

Sublime. Cosmic. And intimate. At the end of 2020, Pete Docter and Kemp Powers’ “Soul” was a god damn gift. Middle school teacher Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx) has hopes of becoming a jazz musician, but an accident separates his soul from his body. Stuck in a realm called the Great Before, he enlists the help of a soul-in-training (Tina Fey) to get back to Earth. One of the criticisms of the film is that it’s derivative of other Pixar titles like “Ratatouille.” But the conflict between passion and purpose and parents’ expectations for their children, depicted here by Joe’s mother (Phylicia Rashad), who wants him to stop playing low-paying (or no paying) jazz gigs, are themes with universal draw. This is a stunning piece of animated work. There are entire sequences that are shades of blue and don’t have any hard edges – that’s the Great Before for ya – yet there’s definition and they look dazzling. The score, the year’s best, combines swoon-worthy jazz compositions from Jon Batiste and inviting(!) work from Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. 2020 was hard, and it’s important to remember to do the basic living stuff. This movie is a much needed reminder as only Pixar can deliver.

And finally, some honorable mentions: “The Invisible Man,” “Wolfwalkers,” “American Utopia,” and the Small Axe films “Mangrove” and “Lovers Rock.”

What were your top films of 2020?