Best films of COVID 2020...Wonder Woman 1984 is not the absolute worst.

Maybe this is the year that the film distribution model will change. The movie theater distribution network  has supported the big distributors and kept indie films hidden from nearly all viewers.  I won't miss it--though most of my friends still seem to long for the days of sticky seats and a very limited slate of major theater releases.  Could we at least have hybrid?  If COVID taught us anything, it's an awareness of how limited we've been by the six-plex model.  

Here's what I have from the year COVID changed everything, including the film industry.  I'd like to thank Netflix.  It's been the central lifeline for so many of us as we struggled to replace our personal panoplies of cultural options.  The weight transferred to, essentially, one provider.  Netflix--you pulled through for us in 2020. 

Best films of 2020

1. Nomadland--it would be sufficient if the only thing this movie did was introduce you to your new mentors: Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells. But, then Frances McDormand shows up (supported by David Strathhairn). McDormand really should have her caricature carved into those Badland hills--she's given us so much all the way back to Blood Simple. Here, she delivers Fern, who can't fit into normal society. Even when she's invited back after the premature death of her husband, she smiles, shares a laugh, and heads back to her van, seasonal jobs packing for Amazon, Wall Drug stocking, or campsite maintenance. Based on the 2017 non-fiction book of the same name which documents the wisdom of our off the grid alternative culture--it's out there in overnight parking lots, even if we chose not to look. 
2. Echo--Icelandic Oscar nominee Rúnar Rúnarsson's third film runs 80 minutes but provides 56 vignettes, and all 56 pack a wallop. We start in a forest--no, wait, it's a car wash--and then the rest of the dust and dirt of our tired civilization gets wiped clean. The film released in late 2019 as a Christmas movie but wasn't screened internationally until mid 2020 (if you were lucky). Often startling cinematography covers a desire for kind loving connection--whether it's a Christmas gift for an addict at a mobile drug distribution center, or a single man pouring himself a glass of red wine for a solo Xmas eve meal. There's a worksite strike, a man sharpening tools, a children's nativity play, dancing meat processors, a fight over which tree to buy, a Monopoly game between stoners, a burning farmhouse, a funeral for a young boy, fireworks, sheep having sex, or a bodybuilder competition. Each is more spectacular than the former--leaving you with, somehow, hope and appreciation for life. 
3. Death of a Ladies Man--Gabriel Byrne is losing his mind, and you can tell because his internal soundtrack has become LaLa Land versions of Leonard Cohen hits. Oh, and by the way, his old tricks to get women into bed, which, admittedly, have worked extremely well, aren't working.  How do you die with class and atonement when you've got these problems, and a terminal illness?
4. Sound of Metal--sometimes we change, and sometimes change comes to us while we're sorting t-shirts prior to a rock concert. This is the rare movie that lets you inside the mind of another person as they experience such a dramatic change--in this case, losing your hearing. The loss would be terrifying to anyone, but this character is a powerful heavy rock drummer who's teamed up with his lover in a rising two-person band. Not anymore.  No more record deal. No more concert dates. No more life on the road. No more lover. Whoever did the soundtrack, which bewitches you by switching from hearing to non-hearing perspective, SHOULD have won the Academy Award (they didn't--some kid's animated feature called "Soul" or something did). You can't take your eyes of Riz Ahmed--or the other deaf characters. The hearing characters including Olivia Cooke go on with their lives unscathed.
5. Guest of Honour. Atom Egoyan is back to his old tricks of Sweet Hereafter and Exotica! He's arguably the leading legend of Canadian directors, and his style is unique.  You could even say his style determines his characters, since this film's eye for details leads the camera to a government food inspector (not a Revenue Canada agent in sight!).  The food inspector has a taut and unsolvable relationship with his musical daughter who appears to have suffered early issues that may have been magnified by the death of her mother from cancer.  Or not...and we won't know until the beautiful mirrored end, while the inspector looks in restaurant bathrooms, under food preparation tables, and behind walk-in storage closets, noting every sordid detail.
6. Apples--this Greek (with support from Poland and apparently Cate Blanchett) film opened at the Venice Film Festival and also played at TIFF--all to spectacular reviews.  Weird that the film released in the fall of COVID year 1--since it's about a recently past pandemic, the result of which is that random individuals have their memories wiped clean.  (In this sense, the film immediately reminds us of Saramago's Blindness, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind--both apt.) Aris, the central character, finds himself lost on a bus without ID or any memories, so he's transferred to a hospital where engaging scientists have come up with a method to allow lost patients to literally imagine entirely new lives--unless they somehow discover who they used to be.  Aris does OK with the required exercises until he meets another character who is doing the same exercises...a day earlier than he is.  Then he starts to question the whole thing, and that leads him to his true past.
7. Uncle Frank--the movie has three chapters, and each repeats stereotypes of the coming out experience shortly after Stonewall.  In some cases, these hackneyed tropes are insulting--for instance, a gay Arab character who seems to think South Carolina in 1969 is the perfect place for a gay romantic escape.  But, in most of the other cases, the characters have some depth (including Margo Martindate as the smarter than you realize mother, and Steve Zahn playing a brother who can barely spit out sentences such as "I got no problem.").  Whatever its failings, the film appeals to the desire I think most of us share--to have an older family member who sees you for who you are, accepts all of it, and wishes you the very best luck in the world.
8. A White White Day--If you've flown IcelandAir in the last year, you know that Hlynur Pálmason is a folk hero there. He deserves to be--his stylistic touches (watch for tunnels, time lapse of house repairs, and full frontal portraits of key characters) keep you mesmerized, but allow the story to pace its own drama. An aging cop's wife drives off the road, and it takes many Icelandic seasons for him to drum up the idea that she may have been having an affair.  This fantasy soon becomes a fixation, and the result leads to a self-burial confrontation, pepper spray, and bad grandparenting...to say the least.  When we're not fulfilled, we'll create what we need to fill our own gaps...partially true, mostly fantastical.
9. Quebexit--it's rare for a political comedy to have the gravitas to make it into any top 10 lists, but this one does it easily.  The Quebec government misreads the results of an oil pipeline referendum and takes it as a separatist victory.  The Canadian military splits, and a handful ends up guarding a deserted two lane road that crosses from Quebec into New Brunswick (thank goodness...otherwise too many McGill students would get over the line!).  They all fight and try to maintain military protocol but eventually get distracted...at which point a one-woman Mic-Mac delegation "occupies" both encampments on behalf of first peoples' rights.  Now what do you do?  Better than Canadian Bacon, the other bilingual comedy...
10. Chasing Unicorns--not a lot of film goers (myself included) know that Estonia is addicted to venture capital...and bagging a Wall Street "unicorn." Now we do.  Released late in 2019 but not shown in North America until this year, it follows Henrik Kalmet and Lilsa Pull as they learn the lessons of creating value (lesson number 1:  never sell anything or have any revenue). Lilsa's character is the only adult view in the room...you see the antics of this bunch of harebrained "entrepreneurs" through her eyes, primarily, and her eyesight is sadly very good.  The movie condemns the idiocy of the venture capital economy--and attempts to offer guidance on what it really means to lead a meaningful life.  Chasing fanciful animals who are always virgins is apparently not the right path!
11. A Promising Young Woman--this is a fable (pink carpets, chapter headings, a leading character named Cassandra--dead giveaways) that proposes that all men are irredeemable scoundrels at heart--and women will turn against each other rather than rock the sexist boat.  Carrie Mulligan, Bo Burnham (Mad Men etc), and Alison Brie (Glow etc.) interact, not nicely.  Cassie plays drunk, but springs back to consciousness the minute some well-meaning guy goes for her panties--which is basically every fucking time. The reason: her best friend was abused on webcam and eventually died...and all the nice guys watched.  So, there's a Carrie-like power of retribution that plays out with a human bonfire and a porn shop nurses' uniform. The film is a bit of a mess, but we talked about it for hours afterwords...so it deserves a watch. Margot Robbie produced.  (The film was released in 2020 but was largely not available for streaming until 2021.)
12. On the Rocks--how strange--as this New Year starts, this film has grossed $992,000--and it's by Sofia Coppola!  Such is the need for a revolution in film distribution, since this should be a big budget smash like Lost in Translation. Besides sharing an oversized Bill Murray as the father-you-can't-avoid, this film also examines similar turf...when do you know you're seeing the truth about yourself and those you love.  Bill's character Felix takes his daughter Laura (Rashida Jones) on a very very damaging journey based on his myopia--he's convinced her husband is having an affair, and he demands to protect his daughter. The journey embarrasses everyone, and barely stops even when Laura starts saying "no." Father doesn't know best...he don't know anything.
13. I Care a Lot--Rosamund Pike creates an absolutely unique criminal--I found her character mesmerizing. She finally meets her equal in Peter Dinklage, a gangster with mom issues, when she victimizes Dianne Wiest.  You'd think all three of them might finally throw in the towel, but no....not a chance. Warning--you won't be able to send your elderly relatives to eldercare again after you get a sense of the conglomerate that becomes the ultimate bad guy in this non-stop joy ride of a film.
14. The Life Ahead--this Italian adaptation (the third) modernizes Roman Gary's The Life Before Us effectively, though it surrenders a lot of the power of one of the world's greatest novels in the process.  In return, it brought Sophia Loren out of retirement to play the dying Holocaust survivor and ex-sex worker Madame Rosa, who takes in troublesome kids and meets her match--and her triumph, in Momo. The film was directed by Loren's son, which should give you some warning that the film is primarily her vehicle, but she carries it on her shoulders, even while dying in the basement, overwhelmed by dementia. Momo's "escape from the hospital" scene with Rosa is as good as it gets. 
15. Another Round--Director Thomas Vinterberg and Mads Mikelson teamed up for The Hunt years ago...Don't Stand So Close to Me on steroids.  Here, the result is equally as likely to involve squirming when Mads and three Danish friends decide to test a discarded theory that they'll be more creative if they keep their blood alcohol above .25 continuously.  Three of them already have drinking problems, so the extra boozing doesn't make any of them more attractive--though it improves their teaching. Eventually, based on the scientific results they're recording, they up the dose--until finally all four can see that the test creates counterproductive results. They stop--well, three of them do. One is now an addict and commits suicide. What did the research prove???
16. The Prom--being a lesbian in high school is hell--until Meryl Streep, James Corden, and Nicole Kidman show up to support you with musical numbers that make LaLa Land look dumb. (Mary Kay Place and Tracy Ullman pitch in--we're bringing the big guns to Hicksville Indiana here. There isn't a cliche these three all-stars aren't willing to enact, but the result is artistic and amazingly tender. Save the last dance for all of us...we need the stage lights and primary colors...
17. Out Stealing Horses--Stellan Skarsgard (Trond) has moved from Sweden to Norway after his wife is killed in an accident while he was driving. He wants to escape but within days he meets a neighbor who turns out to be the younger brother of Trond's best friend Jon. Lars, sadly, also killed his twin brother by mistake early in his life, so the two have a lot to share. If this sounds vaguely Scandanavian (Nazi's and other family members and logging accidents and affairs also count heavily) it is--this is the slightly vaguer version of Per Petterson's 2003 novel (the book's a bit better). The film was released in 2019 but didn't arrive in the US until April 2020.  Absolute most amazing factor: the soundtrack.  Original and true to the mystery that our strongest memories that define us. Knowing ourselves, it's shocking how often we meet the other players in our essential memories later in life, and discover that they have no idea what we're talking about. 
18. Da 5 Bloods--a good friend says that Spike Lee doesn't feel he has much time left as a director, so he wants to fit everything in.  This may explain the clumsiness and preachiness and pedantry of the script. Nonetheless, the film never hits a wrong note...as four brothers and their fallen comrade return to Viet Nam to collect the gold they buried after a failed attempt to save a downed crew. They Bloods are betrayed by pretty much everyone in the process...but that doesn't slow them down. They're used to being betrayed by white America, so they're well trained soldiers in this never-ending war already.  Thank you, Spike Lee!!!
19. French Exit--Michelle Pfeifer can't keep a penny in her rich pocket, so she moves with her son to Paris and tries to die in style.  The film has the courage to follow this story to its pretty perfect conclusion. Let's say there are no singing angels, but there are some pretty pithy communications around the topic of being true to our fundamental natures.
20. Fantastic Fungi.  This documentary posits the idea that mushrooms are the only thing that can save the world...and then proves it. After all, the global mycological network has kept trees and all other plants in communication for hundreds of millions of years. And, they offer cures for human disease and depression.  Narrated by Brie Larson, with all the leading experts (including Michael Pollan reprising the arguments from How to Change Your Mind on the medical breakthroughs associated with magic mushrooms before they became illegal).
21. The Corruption of Divine Providence--released at the Whistler Film Festival, this film answers Joan Osborne's question "what if god were one of us?"  In this case, she is--she's Jeanne, a Metis teenager from Manitoba who actually is the real deal (she levitates, throws fire, walks on water--you get the picture).  Despite the real evidence, those close to her don't trust her.  And because of the real evidence that she's "divine," the charlatan hoards come swooping in.  The film's ultimate message is to beg the devout to open their eyes. Religion, as practiced in Manitoba at least, is no good for anyone.  Let's dump it and get on with being kind, fair, and honest to one another.
22. The Trial of the Chicago 7--this Netflix release was a breath of fresh air and comedy since it came out while Trump was stacking the courts with idiot jurors.  Abbie Hoffman and the gang did draw a bad hand, just like the rest of us now in 2020. This Aaron Sorkin film is based on the infamous 1969 trial of seven defendants charged by the federal government with conspiracy and more, arising from the countercultural protests in Chicago at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The film is weakened in the ways it marginalizes the historical women involved in the trial, but it reminds us of the brilliance of Bobby Seale (who steals the show) and Jerry Rubin. Great Sacha Baron-Cohen and Jeremy Strong.
23. I'm Thinking of Ending Things--the most important thing to know about this film is that it's by Charlie Kaufman, who did Adaptation, Synecdoche, Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Perhaps that's all you need to know. It appears (critics rely on the underlying book to offer this insight) that the entire movie is the dream of an elderly custodian.  On the way there, we get narration from a woman who appears to be ready to break up with Jake, her boyfriend (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman look-alike and sound-alike Jesse Plemons).  Or maybe Jake is thinking of committing suicide.  Or maybe Kaufman is thinking of ending the film.  Who cares.  Will the snow ever stop?
24. Nothing to Hide--3 1/2 French couples meet for a regular dinner and talk each other into leaving their cell phones on the table and reading outloud anything that comes in during the meal.  The results are tragic--Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf comes to mind, as does the work of Yasmina Reza (Art, God of Carnage). One of the men, for instance, switches phones with another, to avoid having a sexting relationship revealed, and as a result gets outted as gay. Another woman loses her panties.  And it turns out that an admirer of naked breasts is actually a plastic surgeon checking in on his patients. Like those women with boob jobs, everyone has scars by the end, most still hidden. Nice stage to movie transition for this drama.

2020 films I enjoyed, but that weren't all that noteworthy..

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire--this film released in the US in February.  A woman is hired to paint a portrait of another woman, and they both have strong ideas about how that should play out...none of which match up with the desires of the object's mother, who's paid for the whole thing.
2. Poissonsexe--Daniel is a lonely scientist, lost in research bureaucracy that has nearly drained his ability to propose new questions of nature.  Eventually, with the help of another lost soul, they find their own "ET" and the fable resolves into a tale of finally finding connectedness.
3. Sugar Daddy--perhaps this is the year of films about women rented out to provide services (see "Portrait of a Lady on Fire.").  This film is the most cinegraphic, with loads of beautiful shots, and a central actress Kelly McCormack who does, in fact, seem to draw the lens to herself.  The story revolves around an artistic woman who discovers she can support herself by hiring out as a date (generally not sexual) so that older men don't have to attend fundraisers by themselves.  Eventually she makes the mistake of trusting one of them...which is sweet, but of course she's missed the point that the "John" got into this exactly so trust wouldn't be an issue.
4. Maria's Paradise--this Finnish entry (2019 but not released in the US until March 2020) seems perfectly suited to our demagogue-dominitated world--and that's the problem. The political message is a bit stronger than the actual plot and delivery--not that Maria's Paradise isn't a very scary and strange picture of how people take blind control of others. It's 1927. Salome is among the many devoted followers of Maria Åkerblom, a charismatic seer who claims that God visits her in her dreams. Maria also drinks and may have a weird sexual relationship with a Finnish war hero from the red scare. Despite the clear mess, Salome only tentatively questions her leader’s teachings--and as a result, several people are murdered--or literally caught in wolf traps. Hopefully, everyone reading this is stronger than Salome. 
5. The County--When you come from a country with barely half a million citizens, the local agricultural co-op can look like Facebook or Google. Size relative to the community does matter. Inga finds herself running her dairy farm solo after her husband, "a co-op man" who has informed on neighbors who buy or sell goods outside of the syndicate, dies.  She has clearer vision--yes, the co-op helped poor farmers in Iceland in the 1880's when it was founded, but now it's overcharging, threatening, and primarily interested in its own survival.  Inga won't have it, and she eventually convinces her begrudging community that change is needed.  Reminders of "Three Days and Two Nights" with Cotillaird...except the boots in this film are covered with manure.  

Worst films of 2020

1. The Artist's Wife--terrible case of "been there, done that, and jeez, I'm not doing that again." In fact, we should have known that Glenn Close would be better in "The Wife"--same story but only two words in the title, rather than three with a possessive. Why anyone would release a film about a woman denying her power to support an egotistical bully in 2020 is a topic for Zoom calls everywhere. In this hackneyed retread, Lena Olin, looking spectacular, becomes all awkward as she tries to convince Bruce Dern's daughter (played by Juliet Rylance who must actually be Mark Rylance's daughter?) to come home before Bruce, the arrogant and mean artist, becomes the arrogant and mean and dementia-ruled artist.  Bruce acts out in cruel and completely imaginable ways, and Lena isn't great at filling in the gaps.  She sleeps with the au pair, insults her step daughter, misses a few of her beach workouts--and gets a lot of paint on herself.
2. Wonder Woman 1984--I don't know where to start, but I guess condemning this on a feminist basis makes sense since it's the only chance women have in the DC pantheon.  This film supports cat fighting between talented women, and is so fucking hetero-normative it should be illegal.  There.  That's the first flaw.  Now for the other thousand.  1) It's boring. 2) The original hid the lack of acting talent--this new version highlights it. Ouch. 3) How many sappy scenes do we need with children? 4) The moral of the story appears to be that if dads spent more time at home, and poor people stopped wishing for things, life would be an endless Christmas shopping mall. 
3. Beware of Children--a Norwegian teenager, Lykke, shoves a friend on the soccer field...and the friend dies.  This is tragic, but not as tragic as watching dozens of well-meaning parents destroy themselves and their own high principles trying to blame everyone else on the planet for this senseless and mistaken act.  This Scandi movie joins the "worst film of the year" list not because it's a terrible film.  But, I could never recommend it to anyone--there's not a worthy character among the dozens of pretentious blowhards we meet.  Hell is do-gooder parents, it turns out.

2020 films I chose not to see, or haven't seen yet

1. Spike Lee's film of David Byrne
2. The new Miranda July film