Mank — Features — Cinema As We Know It

Best Performances of 2020

Taking what’s on the page and performing at the behest of the director, actors serve as the conduits for with which a film’s message is channeled. This year saw no shortage of performances that do just that. While it’s difficult to string a unifying theme between actors and their performances in a single year, what remains consistent, year over year, is that we get to see life on the screen in ways that help us better understand ourselves and others. It’s one way we become sympathetic to the world around us, and it’s the actors we have to thank for it. From rising talents to career bests, these are our favorite performances of 2020.

Theo's Top Ten Films of 2020

This last year I’ve needed movies more than ever, and I’ve also noticed a few interesting effects that 2020 has had on my film-watching habits – aside, that is, from the fact that I saw none of the movies on this list in a cinema. With most of 2020 spent locked up indoors, I started relishing the little incidental bits of audio-visual information that graced my screen. At the same time, the dismaying responses to local and global political circumstances have only intensified my desire for a cinema that is both attentive to the realities of everyday life and critical of the various systems that govern our lives, and I think the films I’ve designated as my top ten of this year reflect that.

Greg's Top Ten Films of 2020

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. The last 365 days were a challenge all their own, full of hardship and loss, but from the other side, I can say I appreciate the movies that made things a little easier on the days that couldn’t get any worse. 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.