Like every corporate ad that has played over the last year in the pandemic, I can tell you how much the year 2020 sucked. Also, like every corporate ad, I can make some false statement that the world will get better after these “unprecedented times” and the power of films will be a step in helping ease the pain of these “unprecedented times.” I rather not. The luxury of being able to say I watched a multitude of films in 2020, with relative ease, cannot be lost on me, and to somehow sugarcoat and validate myself by saying films provided me escapism or the comfort I needed during these “unprecedented times” would be a lie. But what I can tell you is that despite the extremely low number of 2020 releases I watched and actually came out, there were occasional moments in watching these films, where I felt a sense of hope. Hope that there were people in our world, still emboldened to tell difficult stories in new exciting ways in an attempt to help us better understand the diverse world around us. Listed below are the films that made me feel that occasional hope.
But before I get started, I cannot forget some honorable mentions for the year, which include Steve McQueen’s sumptuous portrait of the human connection in Lover’s Rock, Emerald Fennell’s bold, vivacious, and despairing examination of sexual assaults and their effects in Promising Young Woman, and Cristian Petzold’s magically delicate tale of love in Undine. Any of these three would make my top 10 if I were attempting this at a different time, but I’m already three months late with my selections, so without further ado, my top 10 of 2020.
10. Soul (Pete Doctor, 2020)
In a year in which the world felt like it was going to collapse at any minute, Soul felt like the perfect antidote needed for my ongoing pessimistic mindset of the state of the world. Telling the story of a middle school teacher who attempts to revive himself after having accidentally died right before his musical break, Soul beautifully explores what does it exactly mean to enjoy life. Is it meeting the expectations of what society deems successful? Is it to submit to a path for financial success? Is it to tunnel-vision your way to popularity? With a wonderfully creative geometric animation of souls representing somewhat abstract and complicated categorizations of our inner desires, an invigorating score leading to a perfect pace, and a magical montage creating an ode towards the beauty of the minutia and normalcy within everyday life, Soul perfectly weaves the anxieties of existing with childlike innocence, giving the world a much-needed optimistic and sincere window for an earnest self-reflection of our own souls.
Also, bonus points for an A+ Knicks joke, although I guess it wouldn’t work for this NBA season as the Knicks are above .500 as I write this?
9. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola, 2020)
With the continuation of this list, a consistent trend will be me highlighting films that provided me a sense of warmth, and On the Rocks is no exception. What continuously astounds me with Sofia Coppola’s works is her ability to cast critique with empathy whether it be towards the empty, nonchalant, yet lonely celebrity father of Somewhere or to the lavish, wasteful yet childish queen of Marie Antoinette. In On the Rocks, Coppola casts her ire on the father figure once again, but through an older and mature lens, creating an oddly endearing, yet exasperated tone that feels all too relatable. Through an observational lens that wonderfully utilizes its surroundings, whether it be of the New York nighttime malaise or the melancholy Mexico morning sunrise, to create a seeping internal emotional depth, Coppola is able to utilize this irresistible and boozy charm from her environment and leads and contrast that with inserts of silence and softness within Murray and Jones’s demeanors, inviting us towards minute and precious moments of contemplation of our own familial relationships, ultimately invoking a melancholic optimism towards her exploration of human actions and relationships. In the end, anxieties will bubble through and things will happen, and Coppola knows that. Instead of providing us with a definitive answer, Coppola knows that sometimes, the best we can do is blow out the candles, hope to stay on course, and wish for the best to come.
8. Nomandland (Chloe Zhao, 2020)
Meditations on life are no easy feat. Moments in which one makes the audience feel small within the world itself are not as well. In Nomadland, Chloe Zhao is able to achieve the feeling of both in her fluid and ghostly portrait of the American landscape. Following Fern played resiliently and tenderly by the wonderful Frances McDormand, Nomadland creates a truly lived-in inhabitation and gateway for audiences to feel and absorb the arresting and lonely moments within life on the go. Whether it be from gorgeous sunset drives down the freeway providing us a sense of freedom to large establishing shots of nature’s masterpieces invoking a fragility within human life to minute capitalistic actions and bumps in the road providing a subtle critique in our establishment’s toxic work mindset to empty living room halls invoking a sense of loneliness and alienation, Zhao is able to wonderfully train her eye to carve out a layer of humanity while still exploring the contradictions and minutia in everyday life. In turn, Zhao is able to create something compassionate and spiritual like a Terrence Malick piece and something angry, realistic, and elliptical like a Kelly Reichardt piece. Although the tones of spirituality and anger can sometimes clash, Zhao is still able to build a beautiful concoction that is thankful, yet critical towards the world around, resulting in bittersweet and tender moments of harrowing grace.
7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, 2020)
Quiet films often prove to be the most powerful films, and Never Rarely Sometimes Always correctly proves this statement. Following the young Autumn, played by the brilliant and subtle Sidney Flannigan, as she treks to New York with her cousin Skylar, played by the resilient and charismatic, but equally capable Talia Ryder, to seek out an abortion. Focusing on a topic rote with controversy, Hittman never allows the topic’s controversial nature to manipulate the film into something bombastic and obnoxious. Instead, Hittman enters the sparse and quiet route, opting for a film that relies on long glances and shots and delicate touches that provide the perfect amount of tension towards the situation at hand, creating a masterpiece within visual storytelling, that is all the more powerful, sensitive, and gut-wrenching for it. The audience feels the uncomfortableness as the camera lingers on longer than it should. The audience feels the danger when a larger man enters the frame. The audience feels the confusion and loneliness when the pinball machine constantly screams in the ear. The audience feels the yearning and beauty within female connections as the acute camera observes the application of make-up between friends. Hittman’s neorealist and quiet observations provide the backbone to a candid portrayal of what it is like to be a woman in the 21st century. What results is an honest, unflinching, yet empathetical view of two women trying to survive in our patriarchal world, filled with a rawness that only the best neorealist films are able to conjure.
Also, if we were to have a top 10 scenes of 2020, the titular 8-minute sequence is my number one as it brilliantly displays the slow realization of abuse that is immensely heartbreaking and tragic.
6. Dick Johnson is Dead (Kristen Johnson, 2020)
Documentaries that explore their inherent subjectivity are some of the most interesting avenues of filmmaking, and Dick Johnson is Dead is no different. Inspired by the idea to shoot various different ways her father will die onto the silver screen, Kirsten Johnson, through Dick Johnson is Dead creates a celebratory, yet haunting confrontation with mortality, more specifically mortality of a loved one. Structured with humorous abstract acts of her father dying and enjoying time in heaven with all his wants and wishes, there bleeds a daunting sense of dread and desperation that beautifully complicates these moments of levity, complicating the documentary beyond the observation of a man, into an exploration of coping. As the humor drives the film, Johnson exquisitely inserts moments of gravity of the current state of the man who will do anything to please his daughter, even confront his own death, as the audience is given moments of memory loss and denials of erratic behavior. The juxtaposition of jubilee and desperation to hold onto sanity demonstrated by Dick Johnson is heartbreaking, but the examination of the director’s purpose in capturing these moments is equally as well.
As we watch this structure repeat itself over and over again, we start to understand what the film is about. This is a film about a father’s love for his daughter. This is a film about a daughter’s love for her father. This is a film about one man and one woman’s journey to cope with the idea of losing each other, trying to repeat and prepare all the ways this loss can happen until the idea loses feeling. This is a film about understanding the inevitability of that devastating feeling, no matter how hard one tries to numb it. This is a film about two people trying to hold on to each other for as long as possible, and as that desperation and love pour out, it combines to create a beautiful yet intimidating exploration of the pomp and circumstance of death.
5. Another Round (Thomas Vingerbeg, 2020)
Our society’s relationship with alcohol is toxic at best. An instigator for a majority of social interaction, alcohol can be the wondrous tool to wipe all our troubles away. However, obvious to all, it can be a wondrous tool to start all our troubles as well. Another Round’s exploration of society’s complicated relationship to this elusive substance leads to the creation of this year’s most anxiety-inducing film. Revolving four high school teachers attempting to put the theory of creativity and relaxation can be achieved by constantly having a BAC of 0.05% to the test, Another Round deftly examines the intoxicating allure of alcohol, while restraining from being a complete condemnation or commendation of the substance itself. Another Round understands the validity of using the substance as a way to remove worries as Vinterberg frames the moments of joy caused by alcohol consumption with such an exuberant high and energy, especially in comparison to the bareness and mundanity in which Martin, played by the ever-so charismatic and wondrously physical performance of Mads Mikkelsen, begins the film. In doing so, it forces the audience to understand the allure.
Yet, the film is consistently drenched with a dread of the inevitability of the downfall, complicating every swig taken the further the film progresses. Slowly, as the consumption increases, Vinterberg has the film sober up, bursting the bubble of these men as he deftly trickles in notions of the outside world seeing their intoxication, breaking the facade of secrecy in which they believed they maintained that is ultimately heartbreaking and harrowing. Through these extremities and unpredictabilities in which Vinterberg is working in, Another Round refuses to condemn or commend, instead, providing us with the tools to think beyond the cinematic world itself while creating an empathetic and fizzy portrait of our relationship with alcohol that ultimately bittersweetly celebrates the messiness of it in our everyday lives.
Side note: This has one of my favorite bookends of 2020, with an exquisite use of an original song.
4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, 2020)
Charlie Kaufman’s, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, is one of the best visual depictions of the mind I have ever seen period. Charlie Kaufman’s, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, is also the technically most impressive film I have seen this year. Attempting to articulate the narrative of this film would be an utter disaster, but what Kaufman is able to brilliantly achieve within the film is an utmost precision that demonstrates a master in his craft in presenting the complex nature of humanity and the loneliness it can entail. Through an absolutely articulate editing job with the utilization of ambiguous match cuts and off-kilter and off-rhythm cuts, Kaufman creates a sense of paranoia, self-doubt, and tension that physically and visually matches the abstract energy only the mind can fully achieve. Along with the way in which Kaufman engages with language, having everyone speak as if they know what the next line of dialogue is to having the camera linger just enough to emphasize a point without being didactic and having that point be reiterated through a new vessel, Kaufman uniquely demonstrates on our screen the regurgitation of the mind and the vast amount of emotions within it, from the loneliness we inhabit, to the influences we latch onto, to the imagination we constantly conjure up inside.
In doing so, Kaufman provides a hauntingly complex exploration into what it means to be alone while also serving a disturbing exploration into the idea of originality, questioning whether human beings are even able to achieve originality anymore. It is a large question and exploration, and an extremely distressing one to answer and contend to. Kaufman knows this all too well, entrenching the film with ambiguities that are sometimes too large to understand, but in doing so he simply asks us to resign to them, have empathy to those who are lost or feel lonely by them. These ambiguities are innately difficult to grasp, yet they are what make us uniquely human.
You can read Piper Coyner’s review of I’m Thinking of Ending Things here.
3. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2020)
As much as I love Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, I am of the firm belief that First Cow should be held as the 2020 gold standard of balancing scathing critique of our capitalistic establishment and colonialist tendencies with grace and human compassion. Brilliantly still in its execution, First Cow follows Cookie and King-Lu as they attempt to build a baking business that is fueled by stealing milk from the only cow on the land, conveniently owned by the richest and whitest man in town. The irony is already imbued within the narrative itself, but through the film’s stillness and lingering nature, Reichardt is able to reveal a treasure trove of riches and stories to create a beautifully lived-in world that ultimately acts as more fuel for the anger towards the establishment. As Reichardt’s eyes linger, we capture the natives who are quietly selling their goods, we see the little girl humbly carrying a bucket of milk to her family, we view the boy who is unable to get a bite of the oily cakes. With her stillness and clever use of editing that provides little to no closure, Reichardt smoothly allows characters to simply pass and go within the frame and narrative itself, imitating the fleeting, yet lived-in nature of similar moments within our own reality.
In doing so, Reichardt gives us a full display of those affected by the capitalistic tendencies of the American colonialists as she contrasts these hard-working individuals with the loafing berry-eating general. However, Reichardt does not absolve her film into a pity-fest. Through the soft-focus on the mundane, Reichardt is able to utilize the precision of mundanity’s process to make it absolutely mesmerizing. In doing so, it allows for a gateway to also admire the beauty of the human connection and of the human spirit of those unfairly affected by these capitalistic tendencies. The anger and the compassion that Reichardt is able to deftly balance in First Cow simply provides another beautiful example of how Reichardt is able to uniquely create depictions of ambiguity and contradictions of raw emotions that feel similar to life itself. Thus, it simply is not up to debate. First Cow provides another example of why Kelly Reichardt is the most important, and arguably the best, filmmaker of the 21st century, and it is not even close.
2. Time (Garrett Bradley, 2020)
If there is any film on my list that is a must-watch for our current times, Time is it. In its concise 81 minutes, Time is the first film in which it feeling much longer than its listed runtime was a positive attribute for me. Following the strong-willed Sibil, Time examines the injustices of America’s justice system towards African Americans through a delicately told personal story of tragedy and perseverance, structured through the beautiful interweaving of old VHS tapes of Sibil documenting a diary for her incarcerated husband and the present day of Sibil waiting for the release of her husband. Through these juxtapositions of time periods, and the revelations invoked within them, along with the breathtaking moments of black and white stillness within the frame, whether it be of a cloud moving or a child looking out the window, Time feels like an eternity, providing barely an ounce of the excruciating strain Sybil went through towards the audience that aptly makes us realize the injustices that lie within. Yet, Time does not reduce its subjects to mere symbols to display injustices as it acutely demonstrates their intimate humanity as well, beautifully following all the insecurities, hurts, dejections, and a few blissful moments of joy that revolve each of the subjects as they grapple with the effects of the past and the unpredictability of the present.
Thus, in Time’s insistence of the minuteness within the largeness of America’s cruel criminal justice system, Time becomes more than a documentary that examines the injustices of the criminal justice system. It becomes a meaningful exploration of the abstractness of the idea of time, as the film deftly uses recollective narration, a free-flowing sonic palette aided by the spiritual piano compositions of Ethiopian composer, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, and an exquisitely edited ending, that breathtakingly complicate the notion of eternity within time and space, and a gorgeous portrait of a resilient African American family. A family that is consistently neglected by the very people that were meant to serve them. A family that had to learn how to carry forward without a father figure. A family that defied all expectations of what the world wanted them to be. Through Bradley’s exquisite composition in providing meaningful conversations about injustices of the criminal justice system for Black people and creating a beautiful and intimate look into an African American family that has preserved through it all, Time is the much watch of 2020 and beyond.
1. Minari (Lee Isaac Chung, 2020)
The feelings in which I express when I watch Minari are extremely difficult to articulate into coherent sentences. The homely tender quality that Minari expounds on the Asian American experience is also extremely difficult to articulate into coherent sentences. Thus, its inexplicable nature of being able to capture the soulful, yet all too relatable complications within a family unit in an area that consistently demeans you as the outsider, despite engaging with the so-called American dream, is why Minari is my favorite film of 2020. Following the Yi family’s uproot to Arkansas so the father, Jacob, played with a stoic tenderness by the wonderful Steven Yeun, can achieve his dream of creating a farming business, Minari tells the story of a Korean American family attempting to carve out an identity of their own in a land in which does not favor them to do so with observational empathy. By allowing the audience to inhabit the curious and childlike lens of David, played radiantly by the great Alan Kim, Minari gives us a sense of quiet and empathetic observation, giving us moments of contemplation and wonder as we explore the world around them.
We are given the space to discern the stirring and repressed emotions within the family dynamic, while still maintaining a childlike joy in interacting with an unfamiliar space that builds a richness that transcends beyond a simple sob-story that can often be tied with immigrant stories. This, along with its lyrical compositions, poetic score by Emile Mosseri, and the joyous and playful dynamics of every single family member (Yeri Han is my MVP of the film despite little to no awards praise for her), Minari is able to provide a sense of grace within the quiet anger and disappointment towards the “American Dream” stirring within the Yi family while creating a lived-in familial experience that is neither too sentimental nor dramatic, but all too relatable. Like the growth of the Minari plant, Minari revels in its resilience, perfectly capturing the heartbreaking qualities within assimilation while still providing hope in Asian Americans to create something new, to create a new identity that is uniquely our own, while still staying true to our roots.