Best of the Rest - 2020
“I’ll go.”
“…And I’ll stay. And we’ll be ok.”
Each year, the Cinema As We Know It writing team publishes features for our personal top ten films in tandem with our favorite scenes and performances. However, no matter how much we write for those features, there are always a handful of achievements that fall outside their purview. Logistically, we can’t have dedicated lists for each and every category under the sun, but we still want to recognize a few items from last year that we think deserve notice.
Loosely, this feature is a forum for us to write about the categorical ‘other’ in the media landscape. These selections are the scores we listen in our day-to-day lives. They’re the shorts that leave an impact in a handful of minutes. They’re the limited series that move us over the course of ten episodes. And they’re even the shows that make us look at a bag of bread in new ways. It’s anything and everything of note from our experiences last year, so for one reason or another, these are the best of rest that 2020 had to offer.
—
Normal People
Outside the realm of cinema, Normal People was certainly the best thing I watched, and it just might be my favorite piece of media of last year. Based on the best selling novel by Sally Rooney, the series follows two lovers, Marianne Sheridan (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal), who spark an intimacy in high school and in the ensuing years come in and out of each others’ orbit — coming together, separating, reuniting, separating again, and then coming back again. The series is incredibly melodramatic, checking a number of boxes of on-screen romances, but what differentiates Normal People is how it codes its romance to feel deeply sincere.
Co-directors Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald imbue both Marianne and Connell with a level of nuance that make them feel like holistic individuals with complex sentiments that extend beyond the thematic binaries of romance. Each time they cross paths, their relationship grows and evolves with each other’s gravity influencing the trajectory of the other, changing with their experiences found in each others’ absence. It’s a metaphorical helix so to speak; with each intersection, you wonder how narrow the next oscillation will be, either forming a unitary line where they’ll finally be together or separating far enough where they end up going their separate ways. And in traditional drama fashion, the show will play on those questions to great effect. By the time you reach the tenth episode, Normal People has made you feel all that you thought possible, and at its conclusion, you’ll wonder if you can feel anything like it again.
—Greg Arietta
How to with John Wilson
John Wilson’s comedic documentary show about the strange goings-on in New York City was a reprieve during lockdown, and also a reminder of some of what we lost during a pandemic. Wilson’s camera is hellbent on noticing the little inconsistencies encountered in everyday life within a bustling city. Sometimes that means city folk walking their potbellied pig on the streets, other times it’s Kyle MacLachlan failing to swipe into the subway. With Wilson’s editing and eye, we grow to appreciate the idiosyncratic but passionate people surrounding us everywhere. In the season finale, Wilson attempts to make his aging landlord risotto the same week the city of New York is on high alert for a rapidly spreading new virus. As the city begins to shut down, How To with John Wilson shines as a meaningful time capsule from a past not so long ago chronologically.
—Kevin Conner
Valerio’s Day Out
My favorite short of the year blurs strange but true-crime with melodramatic stream of consciousness; satirizing violence from an animal perspective. Grim and laugh-out-loud bizarre, Valerio’s Day Out manages to keep a lot of very specific concepts functioning in synchronicity. 2 years ago, Valerio, a male jaguar resident of the New Orleans Audobon Zoo, slipped from his enclosure and killed five alpacas, an emu, and three foxes before being recaptured. An assemblage of news footage and artistic inserts is show alongside Valerio’s own account of the event. The jaguar narrates in a sedated, lolling tone, describing his escape from captivity as his one opportunity to do what all jaguars are made to do. It perfectly imagines the way a cold eyed feline would assemble his own media coverage. Valerio is simply unmoved by our human aversion to the act of killing. Yet he is not without emotion, and as he recounts his forlorn lovesickness for another zoo inhabitant, Lula, he morphs into something of an antiheroic freedom seeker. The short celebrates intentional inconsistencies, as news broadcasts warp certain details and reality frays at the edges. As we all find ourselves in a state of unnatural isolation, pacing the confines of our circumstances, perhaps we can find some sympathy for this unique killer.
—Megan Bernovich
Mank Score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have quietly been making some of the best film scores of the last decade – most notably, their three collaborations with David Fincher: The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl. Although in many ways their excellent soundtrack to the 2019 series Watchmen simply represented the most polished version of the synth-heavy, techno-inflected soundscapes we’ve come to expected from the duo, it also required some skilled pastiche work that suggested what they might be capable of when pushed out of their comfort zone. Well, that’s exactly what we got with their soundtrack for Mank, a magnificent throwback to Golden Age Hollywood. There’s echoes of Bernard Herrmann’s celebrated Citizen Kane score – gloriously sinister horns, and a playful side too – but to that film’s rich orchestral textures Reznor and Ross add a nostalgic helping of big band jazz, and their signature piano-driven sound produces some beautiful melodies.
—Theo Rollason
Emile Mosseri
Emile Mosseri is the next big thing. After composing 2019’s The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Mosseri returns with not one, but two remarkable scores in the same year: one for Miranda July’s Kajillionaire, and another for Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari. For the former, Mosseri mixes parlor pianos, whispy flutes, harmonious vocals, and all else to create a dynamic score that perfectly complements the idiosyncratic quirks of Miranda July’s style, while Mosseri’s soundscape for Minari makes the fields of Arkansas feel otherworldly, a place of great ambitious hope and simultaneous alienation that turns the immigrant experience into an odyssey unto itself. Both are spectacular follow-up scores in their own right that deserve recognition, but its how Mosseri is able to burst onto the scene so suddenly and compose at such a high level that I believe he’s established himself as a premiere talent, now and into the future.
—Greg Arietta
The Cat From ‘The Woman Who Ran’
I’ll be honest, it wasn’t a vintage year for animal performances. We did get a few stand-outs: Johnny the Monkey in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Evie the cow in First Cow, and Bruce the Hyena in Birds of Prey – although a quick Google has just informed me that Bruce was, in fact, a dog with some CGI on its face. One animal did, however, sincerely manage to make an impression on me, and that was the scene-stealing cat from Hong Sang-soo’s wonderfully low-key The Woman Who Ran. Gam-hee (Kim Min-hee) is visiting the apartment of her friend Young-soon (Seo Young-hwa) when they are interrupted by a ring at the door. It’s a new neighbor (Shin Seok-ho) with a favor to ask: can they please stop feeding the local strays – “robber cats,” as he calls them – because his wife is scared of them. Young-soon nods along politely, but reminds him the cats have to survive. What follows is a hilariously circular non-argument about which of their preferences is more “important,” during which our furry friend pops in and out of the edge of the frame. The neighbor gets more and more passive aggressive, but Young-soon refuses to budge. Finally the man leaves, still smiling but plainly furious, and Young-soon and Gam-hee return indoors. The camera slowly zooms in on the cat and – as if clued in on the absurdity of it all – they let out a spectacular, perfectly timed yawn. Mewvie magic.
—Theo Rollason
Punisher by Pheobe Bridgers
AUDIBLE! Permit me two minutes to talk about Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher. In what could be succinctly described as depressed indie core, Bridgers’ break out sophomore album felt like a perfect pairing for 2020 and all its troubles. With eleven tracks clocking in at forty minutes, Bridgers somber vocals and foreboding melodies walk a lonely path of introspection, but it’s her lyrics that contain the most harrowing of thoughts. Perhaps it’s easy to glaze over at first, but songs like the title track “Punisher” or the grief stricken “Moon Song” adopt an increasingly melancholic connotation with prolonged playback, each listen yielding new impressions from Bridgers’ ambiguous and interpretive verse. Not without its moments of uplift, songs like “Garden Songs” suggest improvement through self betterment and both “ICU” and “Kyoto” are deceptively upbeat tunes.
Caping off the album with “I Know the End” feels like a perfect exit to a year of no-good happenings. With some of the most pensive lyrics, Bridgers’ finale goes for a mid-song inflection that moves into a momentous reckoning; as Bridgers herself put it, “It’s like being at peace with the end of the world … not in an apathetic way, but instead of waking up everyday during the apocalypse like right now and being heart broken … it’s like ‘What can I do today?’ instead of just giving up.” It’s a gentle push of optimism to send us on our way, and in total, a perfect soundtrack for life in 2020.
—Greg Arietta
Cinema As We Know It’s Best of 2020 Lists
All our favorites from the worst livable year on record.