2020 HINDSIGHT

Strange to reflect, as we say farewell to the past year, on how many iconic "futuristic" years I've lived through: 1984, 2001 and...

...if short-lived '70s-era Hanna-Barbera cartoon show titles count as iconic, 2020. I doubt I'll make it to The Year 2525 of which Zager and Evans so memorably sang, at least in my current incarnation.

Anyway, here's one more list for January; my books for 2020. Even granting that it doesn't count short stories, articles, blog posts, poems, comic books, shopping lists, factory warranties, skywriting, banners towed behind airplanes etc etc, it's disgracefully short; I'm a ploddingly slow reader, and there are a couple of longish ones on there, at least by my standards, like Death's End, part three of Cixin Liu's astonishing Three-Body trilogy, and David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue.

Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman

Wild Wives by Charles Willeford

The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen

Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother by Barry Sonnenfeld

Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie

Death’s End by Cixin Lui

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell

I didn't include it on this list, because I was only about halfway through it on New Year's Eve, but in December I also finally cracked a book I've put off for a long time, Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, his 1722 chronicle of the 1665 Great Plague of London.

As you might guess, there's plenty about 1665 that's perfectly recognizable in 2020, although the response of the city's government, as described by Defoe, puts this country's federal response utterly to shame. But it's also instructive reading for anyone who thinks that 2020 was the worst possible year.

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!

PROMISING WOMEN, VARIOUS AGES

 Merry Christmas everybody! In theaters today:

Promising Young Woman--Cassie, played by Carey Mulligan, is "promising" in a rather grim sense here: promising as prey. Guys find her alone in bars, tipsy and mumbling. They gallantly offer her a ride, then when the get her back to their places, they start to undress and assault her. At this point, she drops the bleary manner and they realize that she isn't drunk at all, and they're in trouble.

She was on track to graduate med school, but something bad happened, and now Cassie lives with her worried parents (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge) and works by day in a coffee bar. A pleasant young doctor (Bo Burnham) that she knew back in school buys coffee one day, and flirts with her, and she's pulled into a romance with him, but her secret nighttime hobby persists.

The feature directing debut of the English actress and writer Emerald Fennell, this revenge shocker explores the ugly truth that men widely regard an incapacitated woman as, quite literally, fair game; Cassie's would-be rapists react to her trap as if it's a mean and unfair trick. But Fennell is more ambitious than merely giving us the satisfaction of seeing the tables turned on these creeps. She's determined to have Cassie take on the whole structure that tolerates rape culture; the enablers, the passive witnesses, etc.

The results are quite convoluted and brutal and harsh. But Fennell and Mulligan maintain an edge of caustic wit that gives the film a charge. It ends with a smile, but not a smile that lets us off the hook.

WW84--Wonder Woman was introduced in the comics in 1941 to fight Nazis and Mussolini and other thugs of that period. Her first star vehicle in the movies, just three years ago, reset her origin story in the World War I era. This cheeky sequel, with Gal Gadot returning as Diana, has her living in Washington D.C. in the mid-'80s, working at the Smithsonian and not looking a day older than she did when Woodrow Wilson was president.

Diana befriends a supposedly dowdy, recessive coworker (Kristin Wiig), and runs afoul of a blustering TV conman (Pedro Pascal), a "Greed is Good," You-Can-Have-It-All type, who has stumbled upon the supernatural power to grant people's wishes, but who, of course, has never heard about being careful what you wish for. This same rather vague McGuffin allows Diana to reunite with her love interest from the earlier film, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). Before the end of this two-and-half-hour tale, we get the origin of WW's Invisible Jet, and our heroine also has to grapple with a new iteration of one of her '40s-era enemies from the comics, the were-cat known as The Cheetah. 

Returning director and co-writer Patty Jenkins generates period through style as well as sets and costumes; the film often feels like an overstuffed '80s big-budgeter. I lived in D.C. in the late '80s, and neighborhoods where I worked are featured in a number of scenes, which gave me an extra nostalgic buzz. It's all a bit fuzzy around the edges, but it doesn't take itself too seriously, and like the first movie, though perhaps more so, it has a generous spirit. Gadot is good company once again, and Wiig brings both humor and unexpected anger to her role.

The TV fraud's worldwide mischief results in the appearance of a huge wall, of national and international chaos, and of the threat of nuclear war. It's just possible he's meant to remind us of somebody or other.

HAM & EGGS

Available at Laemmle virtual theaters...

Ham: A Musical Memoir--"I fear that my karmic lesson in this lifetime is humility. But I think that lesson is beneath me."

So quips Sam Harris, the Star Search singing prodigy who went on to Broadway and TV success, at the end of the title number of the nearly one-man show adapted from his book Ham--Slices of Life. He says it with an admirable, Nathan Lane-worthy ironic grandiosity, too.

In this filming of his stage show, shot in front of a live audience at the Pasadena Playhouse under the direction of Andrew Putshoegl, Harris recounts his childhood and youth in Sand Springs, Oklahoma: his love of musical theatre, his growing awareness that he was "different" in a way that was dangerous in small-town Oklahoma; his humiliations and brushes with tragedy, his distant father, his mentors; the joy he took in performance. In its broad strokes, it's a familiar story, but a story that works every time, and Harris shuttles effortlessly between the heartfelt and the comically over-the-top. Most importantly, the movie offers a generous dose of his brassy, stirring belt.

It's only almost a one-man show, because he's joined onstage by his accompanist, occasional back-up singer and heckler Todd Schroeder, who also co-wrote some of the songs with him. He's a talented fellow, even if he's not such a ham.

Available on Prime Video:

Sunny Side Up--When we first see Greg, a nebbishy guy who resembles a young John Oliver, he gets up, showers, and makes himself a couple of eggs, sunny side up. He dresses in a dark suit, and then...the voice of his inner critic starts berating him, telling him all the reasons why he shouldn't leave his apartment--everyone will be staring at him, thinking he's weird, etc.--while at the same time furiously haranguing him to just get over it and go.

Greg manages to get to his job as a funeral director, the voice in his head abusing him all the way. Casual passive-aggressive remarks from coworkers are seen as vicious attacks; even compassion from a kind coworker seems like pity and repulsion to him.

This attempt, by writer-director Mike Melo, to dramatize what a social anxiety disorder feels like in the first person is highly unsettling at first; it's what the voices in most of our heads probably say at times, but psychotically, intolerably intense, and constant. Poor Greg only seems at peace when he's preparing a dead man for a funeral; he and the guy have a mellow imaginary chat. But then a coworker barges in and rattles him.

In light of what we see, it seems pretty heroic that Greg functions as well as he does. As such, this film may serve, as A Beautiful Mind did, to help audience members grasp how useless "Oh just get over it" responses are to people struggling with mental illness.

But there's no way around it; after a while Greg's nasty inner babble grows as tiresome for us as it does for him. Hunter Davis, who plays Greg, holds our sympathy, but the movie's conceit threatens to wear us out. Also, Melo can't find a better rescuer for Greg then the cute whimsical non-judgmental woman downstairs (Samantha Creed) who pushes her way into his life and accepts him as he is. She swerves dangerously close to Nathan Rabin's notorious "manic pixie dream girl" stereotype, although, to his credit, Melo doesn't allow this adorable deus ex machina to give the movie a pat resolution.

A NOVEL GIFT IDEA

Have I got the perfect 2020 holiday stocking stuffer for you, at least for the degenerate Grinches on your list! The UK's Dockyard Press has republished my holiday horror novel The Night Before Christmas of the Living Dead in an authoritative new edition...

It's not fit for respectable readers, but those who enjoy blood and gore, raunchy sex, foul language, depraved characters and sophomoric preachiness about the evils of holiday consumerism should love it!

You'll notice that I'm willing to put my sanctimony about the evils of consumerism on pause long enough to ask you to buy this book...

IS HE HIS HALF BROTHER'S KEEPER?

 Opening this weekend:

Half Brothers--Back in the '90s, young Renato's adored father left Mexico on an undocumented crossing into the U.S., promising to return when his fortunes improved. He never did.

Fast forward to the present, and Renato (Luis Gerardo Mendez), grown into a snazzy, successful businessman, gets called to his father's deathbed in Chicago. Understandably bitter, he initially declines the invitation, but his fiancee insists, sure he needs to resolve his father issues in order to be a decent stepdad to her disturbingly eccentric son.

When Renato gets to the Windy City, he's stricken to learn that he has a half-brother, Asher (Connor Del Rio), a good-natured but insufferably obnoxious screw-up. The old man's final wish is for Renato and Asher to take a road trip together to learn why he never came back to Mexico, and the two have wacky adventures along the way.

Luke Greenfield's film echoes such earlier movies as A Family Thing and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, among others. But the movie that Half Brothers really reminded me of was 2010's Due Date, a sometimes unpleasant but fascinating, vividly-acted road comedy with Robert Downey, Jr. as a cold-fish upscale architect and Zach Galafianakis as a hopelessly inappropriate aspiring actor forced to travel together. Like that film, Half Brothers sometimes has too much psychological realism; the actors bring a level of emotional exposure that's too painful for the kind of slapstick sentimental comedy it wants to be.

Despite this, the film has warmth, and some potent depictions of the horrors of the Mexican immigrant experience. And, perhaps taking a cue from the French bulldog in Due Date, it has an adorable little goat. When in doubt, put in a cute animal.

BENIGN BOOMER

For reasons too complicated to explain here, Your Humble Narrator recently had the chance to hang out with Boomer, outgoing Arizona Senator Martha McSally's dog...

This is about as nonpartisan as I'm likely to be able to get this time around: Boomer is superb. I'm very happy with the thought that he'll have Mom with him at home in the days and weeks to come.