Greg's Top Ten Films of 2020
“What’s happened, happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to do nothing.”
2020, a sinisterly bad year. While the world caught fire all at once and every facet of normalcy went up in flames, cinema was a true comfort in these troubling times. For two hours, a movie could, for better or worse, provide escapism, where the dealings of reality ceased momentarily. But as we are all aware, movies always end. The credits roll, the lights come on, and life resumes.
What makes movies so consequential is that when it’s all over, we’re made a little better. We’ve seen incredible images. We’ve sympathized with situations unlike our own. And maybe, just maybe, we’ve learned something new about the human condition. No art form is quite like it, and while corporations and pandemics may try and take it from us, we can rest assured that no matter what happens, cinema will certainly never die.
2020 was a challenge all its own, full of hardship and loss, but from the other side of 2021, I can say I appreciate the films that made days easier when it felt like they couldn’t get any worse. Selecting ten films as “the best” for one year is never quite enough. The sheer act of ranking art with numerical values is in and of itself a contradiction, but these ten films prove that, even when the world turns sideways, cinema will always be there to renew faith in our collective existence, now and into the future.
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Honorable Mentions
Beginning (Dea Kulumbegashvili). Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hitman). Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart). Palm Springs (Max Barbakow). Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)
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10. Kajillionaire
Kajillionaire is nothing short of a continuation of the idiosyncratic quirk that made Miranda July such a beloved director. Old Dolio, our 26 year old protagonist, just wants to be loved by her con artist parents. Stealing mail from neighboring PO boxes, filing false insurance claims, and knocking off bed ridden seniors produces small-time cash for the family, but with overdue rent, there’s enormous pressure on the family to score the big one soon. When Melanie, a long lost daughter that Dolio’s parents always wanted, enters the equation, repressed familial trauma in Dolio’s up-bringing starts to crop up as she competes for the affections of her mom and dad.
The scenarios with which we find our characters is so bizarre yet befitting of the off-beat traits July imbues in them. Beneath a heavy layer of quirk, there is a resonant message about our nurtured upbringings and the universal desire to feel loved and validated. Plus, I would be remised if I didn’t mention Emile Mosseri, who is surely destined to be the next big thing after delivering his third straight stand out score. It’s been nine years between July’s 2011 film The Future and Kajillionaire. If we’re lucky, we won’t have to wait that long to experience what she’s cooking up next.
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9. Night of the Kings
A frenetic night of legends and myths, stories and fables, truths and fiction come at odds and in compliment of one another in Philippe Lacôte’s Night of the Kings. Set in a Côte d’Ivoire prison run by the housed inmates, newcomer Roman is selected as the storyteller for a night-long ritual that concludes with his sacrificial death. All the while, a pair of competing factions vie for the monarchial leadership position known as the ‘dangoro,’ cultivating a power struggle that feeds into the film’s underlying tension. Honoring the tradition of West African oral storytelling, Lacôte’s one night odyssey film feels like a surreal dream. As Roman weaves an ever-changing story around ‘The Zama King,’ the prisoners, and by extension we, start to have reality blurred with each passing moment. What we’re told could be entirely true or entirely made up, but it speaks to the art of storytelling and the sheer power it has on all of us that it is as effective as it is engrossing.
You can read Cinema As We Know It's review of the film here.
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8. First Cow
Kelly Reichardt’s interest in a pastoral America brimming with underlying issues continues in First Cow: a soft-spoken crime drama (if such categorization could be permitted) about two settlers in the Pacific North West who steal the milk of the first bovine brought to the region. As one of America’s premier auteurs, Reichardt’s style could be characterized by moments of quiet uneventfulness that carry the weight of a thousand feathers. Discreetly, Reichardt textures her latest with the westward colonial expansion of America, the negative implications of a society built on hardline capitalism, and an endearing romance to boot, all sewn together without the heavy handed motions or appeals of lesser films. It’s an effort that comes across with simplicity, but in truth, it’s a aura few directors can replicate, and Reichardt has mastered it time and time again, this time included.
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review on the film here.
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7. I’m Thinking of Ending THings
Watching I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a lot like trying to grab water. Every time you think you have a grasp on it, it slips from you, changing shape into something else entirely. However, the philosophical ramblings of Charlie Kaufman are so fixating that you become smitten with the task of trying to grab hold once again with each scene. Highlighted by a terrific performance from Jessie Buckley, this cinematic adaptation sees a nameless woman visiting the parent’s of her boyfriend Jake for the first time — a boyfriend with whom she is thinking of breaking up with. What begins as a seemingly innocent endeavor turns into a series of deeply unsettling psychological outpourings where manifestations of both the woman’s and boyfriend’s psyches start to take shape. Continuity shifts, changes in temporalities, and moments of song and dance make this a strange and cold work of fiction, but it’s a film I’ve thought about quite a lot since I first saw it back in September, lingering in the same way our lead thinks about ending her relationship. I’ll leave it with a note that Jake poignantly points out: life on the farm never is quite that easy, is it?
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review of the film here.
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6. Mank
After sitting on a shelf for thirty years in the offices of one David Fincher, the story of Herman J. Mankiewicz finally gets developed for the big screen. Cross cutting between the writing process that gave us Citizen Kane and the real life instances that inspired it, Fincher’s latest film is hodgepodge of vignettes that finds Mankiewicz at the crossroads of upheaval politics, 1930s Hollywood, and his own virtue, constructing a portrait of a man who finally wants his life and work to amount to something, through both actions and writing credits. Fincher makes numerous assertions about the character of his subjects, their political nature, and their deviancy in early Hollywood, but it’s how he engages with the long-tired debate of who wrote Citizen Kane that underpins the significance of Mankiewicz’ actions. As revisionist mark on a man’s life and work, Mank gives us a characteristic relief that leaves an unshakable impression.
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review of the film here.
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5. On the Rocks
Evolving the themes presented in her 2010 feature Somewhere, Sofia Coppola gives us her first foray into the space of comedy with On the Rocks, a mid-life crisis film where Laura, played by Rashida Jones, finds herself stuck in a career slump all the while she believes her husband is having an affair. As a comedy lite, much of the film’s sense of humor is delivered with dry pan and sharp wit, often deriving from the endearing banter between Jones and the ever-likable Bill Murray, who plays Laura’s father in the film. Coppola isn’t afraid to make a joke at the expense of our leads to punctuate their inner detriments, smuggling personal insecurities under the guise of a punchline, and while you’re supposed to be laughing, there is still very much that signature Sofia Coppola subtly that elicits an emotional response. Her films are always a delight, and we should rejoice that one arrived in 2020 of all years.
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review of the film here.
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4. Ema
From the opening sequence of Ema, a palpable heat can be felt radiating from its core. In the primary, the film is about the titular Ema, played by little known standout Mariana Di Girolamo, reconciling the surrender of her adopted son to child services, with whom she shared custody with her partner Gastón, played by Gael García Bernal. As a Hitchcockian drama of rhythmic proportions, the film is colored by lust and desire, matriarchal and patriarchal sentiments, and more pressingly, control and freedom, with director Pablo Larraín cultivating a reverberating kineticism throughout by weaving the Latin dance of reggaeton into the very fabric of the film. The film likes to suggest Ema as a firestarter, both literal and metaphorical, and it isn’t long before the audience finds out that her plan to get her son back is truly wicked.
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3. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
Divisive politics, economic ruin, existential unknown, and more are heard in passing at the Roaring 20s bar where Turner and Bill Ross’ hybrid documentary Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets takes place. Assembling a cast of characters they met at various watering holes and using a rented out bar as the stage for their experiment, the Ross Brothers let lose these individuals for a night of drinking that is quite telling of the state of America. Set during the days leading up to the 2016 election (but filmed the day after), you get the sense that all the conversations between the patrons here are a reflection of the American populous. The seemingly random assortment of characters from all walks of life coming together under one roof, all expressing their hopes and dreams, their fears and concerns — all in one giant drunken tirade. It is a reckoning with the end that carries with it a great deal of self reflection, and within the cinematic dealings of the Ross Brothers, they are able to create a mesmerizing portrait of a nation adrift, its beauty and tragedy in all.
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review of the film here.
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2. Time
It’s one thing to tear down the gross cruelty of the American justice system, but seldom does a film do it with as much pathos as Garrett Bradley’s Time. After Rob Rich is sentenced to sixty years in prison for robbery carried out under desperate circumstances, Fox Rich is left to raise her three sons on her own. Over the course of twenty years, Fox documents her fight to free her husband from an institution that has become unusually cruel. A whirlwind of anger, frustration, patience, and love swirl about in a searing condemnation of America’s criminal justice system, but instead of statistics or political legalese, Bradley frames one family’s story as a theft of time and one woman’s struggle to reclaim it. By counting the days, hours, and minutes when Rob isn’t there, the years of birthdays, graduations, celebrations, anniversaries, and holidays amass to a heartbreaking affirmation (or realization) that the “justice” system is anything but just. Twenty years are condensed into 88 minutes of tour de force documentary filmmaking, each minute just as essential as the last, all swelling with vigorous emotion and carried by Fox’s undying love and passion to see that justice is properly served. Let’s just hope Amazon knows they’re sitting on a Best Doc Oscar, and campaigns it as such.
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1. Nomadland
No film this year carries itself quite like Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland. Based on the book of the same name, Zhao pens the story of Fern, a modern day nomad who travels between contract jobs to make ends meet after the death of her husband and closure of the sheet rock plant where she worked. What’s so remarkable about Nomadland is how it can illicit such a sentimental response towards one individual’s search for belonging while connecting it to the decaying foundation of America and its promises. Forced by the hand of economic hardship and loss, a gapping void is left within Fern that can’t be easily filled, something she longingly tries to fill with each place she travels. Zhao’s direction, of which rightfully deserves an Oscar, frames this around the vast landscapes of middle America, allowing us to see the heart and soul of a bitter and dying country that feels entirely empty.
Fern’s journey brings her all over, crossing paths with other nomads who have their own story and own desire to find that final piece to complete their long-lived lives. Of note here is Zhao’s use of real people to portray these nomads, real individuals who are out there experiencing the target of her critique right now. Her creative decision is a sobering reminder that the anecdotes of hardship presented in the film are not entirely fiction, but rather a cinematic testimony of the inequitable state of a country plundered by neoliberal politics and trickle down economics, leaving us to ultimately ask what can fill a soul and a nation hollowed out by grief and runaway capitalism? It’s a pressing question, one that’s navigated with great beauty and melancholy, but Zhao has more than a few answers to help us fill those vacant spaces.
You can read Cinema As We Know It’s review here.
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Cinema As We Know It’s Best of 2020 Lists
All our favorites from the worst livable year on record
