Marcelo's Top Ten Movies of 2020
I don’t want 2020 to be an “asterisk year” for film.
Things have changed in how we all watched movies in 2020, yes, and I don't blame anyone for not being able to catch everything 2020 had to offer. The global pandemic shut down theaters, films were pushed back months (maybe even years), and some studios went for the streaming and VOD approach. Things were scattered to say the least.
I miss movie theaters. A lot. I miss spending Sunday afternoons watching every wide release humanly possible. I miss going to film festivals—that’s not to say online fests aren't without their merit, but blazing through an insane amount of movies in a short amount of time, in packed rooms with attentive audiences can’t be beat. My movie count for 2020 was the lowest it’s been in ten years. But, these are small quibbles in the long run. I made it through the year, and so did my family, and we had our own close calls.
Making it through 2020 was a feat, so I don’t blame anyone for not having the same movie-watching energy as previous years. It was hard to have footing in the film world—something I caught onto pretty quickly this year was, yes, it was a great year for movies, but, you had to work harder to find them. VOD, Hulu, Amazon, HBO Max, Shudder, etc—instead of the multiplex, you had to keep track of countless online releases week-to-week, and even then there are plenty that got lost in the shuffle.
I’m still in the same spot I was last year, and year before—I watched a lot of amazing work from talented filmmakers, and I'm confident with my list here, but there are so many more films I missed out on that I didn’t get a chance to see before arbitrarily cutting myself off and making this list. Once we get back to some form of normalcy (eventually?), I hope we can look back at 2020 with a reverence—while the magic of movies was farther from our grasp, it was still burning as bright as it ever did.
And now for some honorable mentions before my top ten.
Bad Boys for Life
The third Bad Boys film opened in January 2020, and thanks to the cursed monkey’s paw that was 2020, it turned out to be the highest grossing American film of the year. Honestly, Bad Boys for Life isn’t a bad number, all things considered. I didn't expect much when it was announced, considering Michael Bay wasn’t returning to direct and the fact so much time has passed since the last film—and it’s hard to top a classic like Bad Boys II. But the directorial duo of Adil & Bilall rose to the challenge and went straight for the heart with their take on the aging heroes. It works, and Martin Lawrence gives an awards-worthy performance. Really, who could have seen that coming?
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
Cathy Yan’s superhero movie removed the broody bro-ness that's stunk up the male-driven DC movie roster. Instead it added in many, many shots of dudes getting kicked in the nuts. The result: You have the best DCEU movie, bar none. Birds of Prey is a 109-minute attack on the male ego and predictably enough, the dudes still clinging on to the neck-snapping dreariness of Zack Snyder’s superhero universe were Mad Online about it. Never was there a clearer sign of quality, if you ask me.
The Rhythm Section
In a year where we were supposed to get a new James Bond film—which, as of this writing, continues to get pushed back further and further into the unknown—the release of Eon Productions' The Rhythm Section hit just the right spy thriller buttons for me. Blake Lively proves again she’s of the best working actors today. She gives a harrowing performance, playing a woman on a quest for revenge who gets wrapped up in the seedy world of murder-for-hire espionage. There are no quick henchmen deaths followed by cheesy one-liners, instead Reed Morano's film is a brutal look at dealing with trauma in a violent world.
The Invisible Man
Elisabeth Moss is my favorite working actor working today. Whether its smaller indie fare like Shirley or a studio horror remake, like Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, Moss is ever captivating. Her performance is the centerpiece in Whannell’s film, and the writer-director knows to build the tight thriller around her. Evolving as a filmmaker, this is the best work of his career, and with word that he’s planning a sequel to this and a Wolf Man remake, too, it feels like Whannell is just getting started—and the prospect of Moss’s involvement in more finely crafted horror further sweetens the deal.
Freaky
The horror-comedy one-two punch of the Happy Death Day movies is hard to top, but writer-director Christopher Landon manages to outdo himself in the body-swapping horror riff Freaky. Vince Vaughn, as the serial killer whose body is switched with a teen girl, Kathryn Newton, does some daring work here. He doesn’t just go for the raunchy comedy he’s known for, he actually gives a believable, sweet performance. Newton continues to be a breakout star, while Landon firmly asserts himself as not only one of the best horror writer-directors working today, but one of the best, most inventive filmmakers out there, period.
Promising Young Woman
Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman is anything but the standard female-driven revenge film so many film snobs are used to—Ms. 45 this is not, and that’s entirely the point. It feels like a pointed jab at the male-dominated world of cinematic killers—Carey Mulligan’s Cassie applies her makeup as nefariously as the Joker before she goes “hunting.” Fennell’s approach, and the film’s ending, has already proven to be divisive because it’s not exactly what you’d expect, and it’s refreshing to see a filmmaker’s voice cut down expectations and tell the story they want to tell. It successfully chips away at the male-run oppressive system we’ve been accustomed to, and gives a voice to those who need it.
And now for my top ten list of 2020., presented in no particular order, as double features.
The Lodge / I’m Thinking of Ending Things
The first time I watched The Lodge was at a film fest in New Orleans in 2019—an experience that feels like a lifetime ago. The second time I watched The Lodge was on March 9th, 2020, a week before the nation went into lockdown. Sitting in a theatre in March, telling myself it was going to be okay but knowing the inevitable was days away, heightened the experience of watching this claustrophobic, secluded-cabin-in-the-snow horror movie. Not to say it needed the push—Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s thriller-mystery proves effective, led by a dark, multi-layered performance by Riley Keough. But, for me, no other 2020 film has accurately captured the mood of the ever-enclosed, fear-stricken lives we’ve found ourselves in than The Lodge.
Speaking of bleak, Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things has a similar snowy sense of dread. The less said about the twists and turns the better; we initially follow a young woman heading to meet her boyfriend’s parents and things unravel from there. The long drive before they reach the house sets the mood; the incongruous dialogue tests your patience, you don’t know exactly where things are headed, and it only gets weirder. Kaufman’s adaptation of the novel of the same name is as deconstructive as his previous work. The fourth wall not only breaks, but genres blend together, even skewing towards pure horror as its “reality” sets in. In terms of pure isolation, the terror of The Lodge and I’m Thinking of Ending Things struck a chord, heightened by our own isolation in 2020.
An American Pickle / Tenet
The past talks to the future, and the future talks back.
Seth Rogen might just be the most underrated actor of his generation. For anyone paying attention, he’s been delivering grade A performances for years—he’s perfected the “stoner stooge,” and with films like Knocked Up, Funny People, and 50/50 he’s shown he has a wide range few other performers in his league can reach. Rogen has the skill to play two characters in An American Pickle convincingly—one a Jewish immigrant who gets brined in a pickle vat who wakes up 100 years later (yup), the other is his great-grandson living in the modern day. The laughs come from the fish-out-of-water premise—with a pointed take on how the media can lift up an unknown commodity to sainthood, think Being There but in the Twitter age. But, there’s genuine human drama when the present has to reconcile with the past. An American Pickle is about heritage and legacy, and wouldn’t you know it, Rogen is perfectly suited for the role(s) because his ultimate talent is knowing there’s reverence in the comedy.
The past and the future battle it out, literally, in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. It’s hard to dismiss the baggage around the release of the year’s one and only summer blockbuster—no matter who you blame, either Nolan or Warner Bros, the misguided resilience of releasing a movie during a global pandemic was a dangerous proposition for audiences. Now that it’s out on home video for the world to see, I hope people start to come around to it. Tenet is both immaculate in its inventiveness and a shaggy dog of an exposition delivery machine, but I can’t stop looking away. It’s nowhere near as perfect as Inception or Memento, but it might stand as Nolan’s most defining work. In single scenes in Tenet, Nolan accomplishes narratively what he’s worked to do over other films’ entire runtimes. It’s an experiential work with an astronomical budget, and it’s as interesting to watch on a second viewing while still remaining way too dense to understand fully. In the end, it’s a hopeful movie too, as a war breaks out for the fate of the world and personal sacrifices are made in order to save it. It’s a welcome dose of emotion right, coming unexpectedly from the steely hand of Christopher Nolan.
Nomadland / Sound of Metal
Finding inner peace in a world where it’s nearly impossible to find...
Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland presents a side of America rarely seen—a nomad culture rejecting capitalist ideals, one that instead embraces a minimalist lifestyle. Frances McDormand plays Fern, a woman who decides to follow that philosophy by packing away her belongings and living out of her van. She connects with fellow nomads, some playing ficitionzied versions of themselves, as she tries to survive on her own, finding part-time work wherever she can. Beautiful western landscapes dominate the frame as Fern makes her way through nearly vacant small towns in America—which is striking to see, especially in 2020. Fern is searching for her own peace of mind, struggling with her own trauma, but like millions of Americans who are unemployed, stretched beyond their means, or just looking to live with the bare minimum to live comfortably, it’s a long, tough road to get there.
In Sound of Metal, Ruben (Riz Ahmed) and Lou (Olivia Cooke) are a metal duo band living out of an RV. The road life goes well for them until Ruben starts to experience severe hearing loss. He ends up going to a drug rehab home for the deaf, worrying he might fall back into bad habits. As the film progresses, it would appear Rubin is on a path to acceptance, with the help of the community leader Joe, played by Paul Raci in a heart-wrenching supporting role. But the wise words of Joe don’t stick and Ruben dips into desperation and anger. Addiction and obsession can take many forms and Sound of Metal examines those dangerous impulses, while setting the film in the real world of the deaf community—cast with real deaf performers, the film handles the sensitive subject matter with respectful hands. There’s no straight line to recovery and Sound of Metal handles that personal journey in a very real way. The final scene presents an ounce of solitude, and in a time when it’s incredibly hard to find, it’s beautiful to see it expressed so eloquently on screen.
Let Them All Talk / Mank
In his post “retirement” Steven Soderbergh has been continuously experimenting as a filmmaker, but sometimes innovations don’t prove successful—the ahead-of-its-time Mosaic app is now defunct (only available as an episodic mini-series), after filming two movies with iPhones he’s switched back to (smaller) professional digital cameras, and his attempts to step outside the studio distribution system (Logan Lucky, Unsane) weren’t financially success enough to keep him out of said studio system. Let Them All Talk is the first HBO Max project for Soderbergh after signing a multi-year deal with the streaming service and while it may look like the director is falling back into familiar territory, it’s yet another experiment for a director always taking risks. Filmed with limited equipment on the Queen Mary 2 over two weeks as the ship crossed the Atlantic, Sodebergh used a script summary by Deborah Eisenberg and had the actors improvise most of the dialogue in the film. You can feel the actors—who are as veteran as Meryl Streep and as young and curious as Lucas Hedges—all grasping to find the right words to express themselves as their characters. Streep, as Alice, is a writer who’s struggling with her new novel. She has a history of using people in her life in her work, and those long festering things left unsaid hang onto every word spoken between her and her friends she brings on the cruise. Hedges plays Alice's nephew, who’s also on the boat, and has his own problems with the unspoken truth. The wonderful thing about Let Them All Talk is how these conversations matter when all is said and done. Soderbergh has always been interested with the dynamic of “two people in a room talking” and while his approach is never traditional he’s still able to deliver an emotional punch—no matter the tools or the approach, every word matters.
One of the biggest surprises of the year was realizing just how in line Mank was in terms of Fincher’s previous work. In the mostly-kinda-based-on-true-events film, screenwriter Herman J. “Mank” Mankiewicz struggles to (co-)write Citizen Kane while bedridden in the middle of the California desert. Spiraling back and forth from the past and present, Mank presents the impression of man whose contempt for the system finds him at odds with the real-life wealthy businessman and newspaper owner who ends up as the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst. In Fincher’s “ode” to classic Hollywood, there’s a turn halfway through that turned knots in my stomach—not unlike how Se7en, Fight Club, or Gone Girl all threw me for a loop. What Mank finds, and what drives him to create a Hearst caricature in Citizen Kane, is just as dangerous as any killer: studiobacked propaganda made to influence an election. Fincher finds the chilling truth in Mank, while making an expertly crafted throwback to the movies of the ‘40s, proving again that film is a powerful weapon.
Da 5 Bloods / American Utopia
In 2020, Spike Lee directed two distinct films that captured the tortured, yet resiliently hopeful, soul of America.
Da 5 Bloods is an expressive and explosive war film. It pulls no punches with its message; it’s no surprise considering this is a Spike Lee Joint. A black squadron of Vietnam War veterans return to the jungle to search for buried gold, and there they see the effects of the war firsthand—from landmine victims to the now-grown children of the dead, there’s a reminder around every corner. The “Bloods'' have the death of their squad leader Norman (one of the final performances by the late Chadwick Boseman) hanging over them, another reminder that the war left no one unmarked. Boseman is the face of black youth lost, while Delroy Lindo as one of the surviving Bloods is the face of a generation still suffering the consequences from the unjust war—his angry monologue to the camera is the single best scene by an actor all year. There’s an uncontrollable rage from Lindo, heightened by the MAGA hat he wears, that feels all too real now. Like Lee’s previous films, things boil to a violent end, and those left standing have to pick up the pieces and move forward towards an uncertain future. Lee opens up old wounds and leaves it to us to heal on our own.
In American Utopia, Spike Lee presents David Byrne’s vision for a better world. The Broadway-production-turned-concert-film feels like a pseudo-sequel to Johnathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense. The 1984 classic acutely captured the essence of the ‘80s—the stripped down performances put a spotlight on the excess of that decade. In 2020, Byrne’s music, both new and old, highlights the injustices of the system and the cynical nature of culture he once sang about in the ‘80s, and wouldn't you know, it’s as relevant now as decades before. Like no other film I’ve seen in 2020, American Utopia presents a hope for a brighter tomorrow, but not one on a silver platter. The musicians on stage with Byrne are a mix of people from different backgrounds—a true melting pot, the real American Dream. The songs are ever energetic, and devastating when they need to be—the final four songs represent the sum of what it is, what it should be and a hope for something more. "Burning Down the House" tells us to destroy the system that binds us, "Hell You Talmbout" tells us what we’ve lost, "One Fine Day" fills us with optimism, and "Road to Nowhere" pushes us to go forth. American Utopia, like the other great movies of 2020, carries us through troubled times. There’s no easy way out of what we’re in, but with voices like David Byrne and Spike Lee talking to us, we can find comfort in knowing a better tomorrow might still be possible.
