TEN FOR '20

Weird in many far more important ways, 2020 was a weird movie year. For one thing, it was for most of us a vastly truncated moviegoing year; at this writing, I haven’t gone to see a movie at a theater, either a press screening or a regular commercial showing, since The Wife and I went to that new version of Emma in late March.

This is almost certainly the longest such stretch for me since I was a small child. I also haven’t been to a movie at any kind of public venue at all since I went to see Sonic the Hedgehog at the West Wind Drive-In in Glendale a few days later.

All the same, I’ve managed to see quite a few movies.

Via streaming, DVDs and the like, movies have been a major diversion during the months of lockdown, as well as the months since the relaxation of lockdown during which many of us still haven’t heard of a movie worth risking COVID infection to see on a big screen.

The releases of lots of big-budget, screen-filling movies got postponed, like the James Bond flick No Time to Die. So 2020 turned out to be a year for the sort of movies that critics often claim to wish would get more attention: low-budget indies, obscure festival bait and—especially—documentaries would get releases and notice they might otherwise have struggled to find.

This year we got Korean small-town horror with Zombie for Sale, micro-budget Great Lakes absurdism with Lake Michigan Monster, sexual awakening at church camp with Yes, God, Yes, and a comic Scottish Most Dangerous Game with Get Duked!

We got documentaries about everything from post-Soviet Russian hockey to Harry Chapin to the Moonies to the Church of the Subgenius to President 45’s psychology. And all of them got a marketing push that would have been all but unthinkable the year before.

Anyway, here are the ten films that, at this writing, seemed like they helped me pass this Plague Year most agreeably:

The Trial of the Chicago 7—Aaron Sorkin’s dramatization of the 1968-70 trial was as lively, funny, sad, cogent, thought-provoking and entertaining as anything I saw this year.

First Cow—The story of two guys trying to get ahead in the Oregon Territory in the early 19^th Century, directed and co-written by Kelly Reichardt, is an austere and heartbreaking take on the American Dream.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always—More tough but touching naturalism, this follows a teenage girl in trouble as she and her best friend travel from small-town Pennsylvania to New York City. Sidney Flanigan gives one of the performances of the year in the lead.

The King of Staten Island—Pete Davidson co-wrote and stars in a semi-autobiographical comedy about a directionless young guy in the title borough, directed by Judd Apatow; Marisa Tomei plays his widowed Mom. The movie’s a little poky and shapeless, but it’s hilarious and good-hearted.

Desert One—The disastrous attempted rescue mission of the American hostages in Iran in 1980 is chronicled in this painfully honest documentary from Barbara Kopple, fleshed out with graceful animation by Zartosht Soltani.

Promising Young Woman—Carey Mulligan shines in this harsh but bracing and caustically witty rape-culture revenge shocker, an impressive feature debut for writer and director Emerald Fennell.

Kajillionaire—Maybe the strangest big-name release of the year, this deeply eccentric portrait of a family of the smallest of small-time grifters is made unforgettable by performances from Evan Rachel Wood, Richard Jenkins, Debra Winger and Gina Rodriguez.

My Darling Vivian—This documentary about Vivian Liberto, the first wife of Johnny Cash, is narrated by their four daughters. It’s essential viewing for Cash buffs, but fascinating for anybody.

The Way I See It—Another documentary; this one about Reagan and Obama White House photographer Pete Souza’s awakening to political engagement. There are maybe too many corny inspirational anthems, but the subject’s photos are potent.

Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm—The Candid-Camera-on-crack style of comedy practiced by Sasha Baron Cohen is, I must admit, not my cup of tea; I find it excruciatingly embarrassing to watch at times. But there’s also no doubt that Cohen, through the adventures of his “Kazahk” alter-ego Borat, makes highly trenchant and relevant satirical points, and Maria Bakalova, the young Bulgarian actress who plays Borat’s daughter, brings the movie an unexpected dose of genuine emotion.

Also worth sitting through this year: The Invisible Man, for Elizabeth Moss; the uneven Filipino historical drama Quezon’s Game, for its fascinating subject; Freaky, for Vince Vaughn as a teenage girl; Ham: A Musical Memoir for the singing of Sam Harris;  Lucky Grandma, for Tsai Chin’s badass performance; Radioactive, for Rosamund Pike’s badass performance; the live-action Punch and Judy show Judy and Punch; the overlooked Hitchcockian set-bound thriller 7500, for Joseph Gordon-Levitt; Yes, God, Yes, especially for Natalie Dyer; the rather hair-raising horror indies The Wretched and Homewrecker; tiny-budget dramas like Angelfish and Clementine; the near-miss showbiz tale The High Note; the near-miss psychology romcom Sunny Side Up; the near-miss biopic The Glorias; the near-miss sci-fi yarn The Vast of Night; the cheeky WW84; the intriguingly stylized school drama Selah and the Spades and the Irish supernatural comedy-thriller Extra Ordinary. Also, a bunch of worthwhile documentaries: Our Time Machine; Blessed Child; J.R. “Bob” Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius; Boys State; the hard-hitting wildlife documentary Wild Daze and the dazzling Time.

While I’m at it, here are quick hits on a few notable flicks I hadn’t previously reviewed:

Hillbilly Elegy—Ron Howard’s adaptation of the J. D. Vance memoir is compelling  and well-acted in itself, especially by Glenn Close and Amy Adams, but politically evasive and timid in what it omits.

Mank—This chronicle of Herman Mankiewicz and the writing of Citizen Kane, a long-cherished project of director David Fincher and his late father Jack Fincher, has some superb acting and looks good, but it’s accuracy-challenged, and worse, appallingly slow and overlong.

On the Rocks—The latest from Sofia Coppola, this mild comedy-drama has rascally art dealer Bill Murray helping daughter Rashida Jones stalk her possibly-straying husband Marlon Wayans. Murray’s performance is another classic of avuncular mischievousness, and Jones is just as good, but the movie lacks urgency, like a piece of literary fiction that ultimately doesn’t feel like it’s about anything much.

The Prom—A gay high school student throws her Indiana hometown into a tizzy because she wants to go to prom with her girlfriend, and Broadway stars Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman and Andrew Rannells swoop down uninvited on the town for what they hope will be a career-boosting protest of this intolerance. The tunes in this musical are unmemorable but pleasant, the stars have a self-deprecating blast; it’s sort of boring to say so at this point, but Streep is particularly marvelous. And Jo Ellen Pellman, as our heroine, is a wonder.

I also managed, at this writing, to have not yet caught up with several important films: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, News of the World, Tenet, Soul and Nomadland, to name a few. Any of these could have altered my list.

Happy New Year everybody; have a great 2021, at the movies and everywhere!

DEFEATAL POSITIONS

Available this weekend in virtual cinemas...

Desert One--Directed by the great Barbara Kopple, this documentary chronicles the disastrous, abortive April 1980 attempt to rescue the embassy hostages in Tehran, which ended in a fiery collision between two aircraft and the deaths of eight servicemen in the middle of the Iranian desert. The 52 hostages remained in captivity for almost a year longer, and the incident effectively ended Jimmy Carter's chances of reelection.

A two-time Oscar winner for the classics Harlan County, USA and American Dream, Kopple builds her account around talking heads, with their description illustrated by the vivid animations of Iranian artist Zartosht Soltani. The approach feels meticulous, almost forensic, and Kopple's point seems, at least partly, to debunk the long-held right wing narrative that the catastrophe was somehow due to Carter's feckless, dilatory indecision (similar wishful stories went around about Obama's handling of the Somali pirate takeover of the Maersk Alabama).

Kopple and her sad, heavy-hearted interview subjects make it clear that the culprits were just wind, sand, mechanical failure, pilot error and bad luck. Or, if you believe the Ayatollah Khomeini, it was an Act of God; Kopple shows us a festival that takes place annually near the crash site, celebrating the American defeat.

It's a masterly piece of cinema that courageously takes on a rarely-addressed theme: failure. There's no way to spin this mission as anything else. Sometimes, this movie reminds us, brave people make great efforts and take great risk in their country's service, and everything goes wrong, and that's it. There's no last-minute reversal in favor of the good guys, and the attempt is no less deserving of respect.

Available On Demand...

Watch List--If you aren't bummed out enough by Desert One, this stunning drama set in Manila should do the trick. After landing on the "Watch List" of former drug users, Maria (Alessandra de Rossi) loses her husband to one of the "Extrajudicial Killings" under Duterte's regime. Desperate to support her sweet kids in her now even more impoverished circumstances, she tries to negotiate with a police detective to be an informer, and soon finds herself pressed into service as a killer herself.

If this sounds like some hot La Femme Nikita-style action fantasy, forget it. Directed and co-written by Ben Rekhi and also known as Watch List (Maria), it's a tragic and disturbingly plausible-feeling dramatization of how a decent person could be dragged to these hellish depths, and of the toll it would take on their spirit.

Rehki's tightly economical direction has something of the efficiency and immediacy of a Warner Brothers cautionary gangster picture from the '30s. And like the best of the Warner gangster flicks, he also has a star that gives the movie a potent charge; Alessandra de Rossi is heartbreakingly good as Maria, bright and sensible and endearing, and shattered by the knowledge of what she's capable of.

Ravage--This horror picture is of the "rural people are evil" genre. Harper (Annabelle Dexter-Jones) is a nature photographer working alone in a remote part of Virginia. She witnesses, and records, a gruesome crime out in the woods. Soon she's in the clutches of a cadre of sicko hillbillies, led by an excellent actor named Richard Longstreet, who don't cotton to outsiders.

Written and directed by Teddy Grennan, this is unapologetic torture porn in the tradition of a '70s drive-in shocker. The showcase atrocity with which the film ends, however, is of much greater antiquity; a variation on it can be found in the Merry Jeste of a Shrewde and Curste Wyfe, a no less horrific (and misogynistic) 16th-Century ballad that was one of Shakespeare's sources for Taming of the Shrew.

Admittedly, Harper isn't an old-school victim; she has MacGyver-ish combat skills that force her attackers to respect her, often in the split second before they lose their lives. I can't claim I'm too pure to have enjoyed these moments. Also, Bruce Dern turns up long enough to contribute one creepy scene.

On the whole, though, I'm over movies where young women mewl and wail and scream for their lives. This movie's nods to female empowerment weren't enough to override this distaste.