At the risk of putting a repeater on everyone else in the entire world’s thoughts, 2020 was not a good year.
At the beginning of the year, I tasked myself with seeing at least 50 movies in theaters. I was well on track to surpass my goal for the year when I had already seen 13 movies on-screen by mid-March. Unfortunately the nationwide lockdown quashed all hopes of me keeping my New Year’s resolution to myself, but I still managed to sneak off to see Tenet in September when the theaters reopened for one last death rattle. Don’t worry, the nearly brand-new theater was completely empty and sanitized. Honestly, it was the ideal way to watch a movie.
What follows is a cobbled-together list of the best films I saw that in one way or another released to a wide audience in 2020. You may notice the absence of Tom Hooper’s Cats from my list. While I do consider this a 2020 release because it didn’t get a wide release until after the New Year, I felt it was unfair to any other movie to hold something to that high a standard.
The Vast of Night tells the story of two teens in 1950s New Mexico that pick up a strange signal on their town’s telephone switchboard. With a budget of less than a million dollars, the film is very dialogue-driven, opting to weave a story and build suspense through conversation rather than effects-laden action scenes. Maybe it just hit at exactly the right time (arriving on Amazon Prime in late-May) but this film was a much-needed escape from the opening months of quarantine.
Available on Amazon Prime Video
Christopher Nolan’s latest sci-fi heist film Tenet was supposed to be a rallying cry for audiences to return to multiplexes, but ended up a harbinger of sorts for the end of public movie-going as we know it. Despite its reputation for underperformance at the box office preceding it, I actually thought it was a mostly enjoyable visual spectacle that may have had expectations for it set a little too high. What it lacked in satisfying emotional payoff and character development, it more than made up for in overly-convoluted and confusing plotting. Either way, it was quite the trip.
Available on most VOD rental platforms
Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal tells the story of Ruben (Riz Ahmed), a drummer who suddenly begins to lose his hearing, and his journey coping with his new way of life. What I initially expected to be a very singularly-focused film ended up being extremely illuminating of the struggles of the deaf community. We get to see Ruben’s introduction and induction into a group of people not often enough highlighted in media through the lens of a terrific, and likely award-garnering, performance by Ahmed.
Available on Amazon Prime Video
Another Round (Druk) is a Danish comedy/drama film by Thomas Vinterberg starring Mads Mikkelsen as Martin, one of four middle-aged school teachers who decide to put to test the theory that their lives would be improved by constantly maintaining a certain minimum blood alcohol content. What starts off as a light-hearted joke between friends ends up profoundly changing the lives of the men in different ways, for better or worse. It expertly strikes a balance between being something fun to watch while also providing emotional substance and catharsis.
Available on most VOD rental platforms
After 14 years of very nice and nahhht being spewed from every idiot who has ever seen the first Borat film (myself included), I had no earthly way of predicting how much I would enjoy getting a sequel. Because creator Sacha Baron Cohen has become so recognizable in the US, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm‘s greatest one-up to the original is the addition of Borat’s daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) as its main focus. Even without this addition, Cohen serendipitously struck gold with the shitstorm that was 2020.
Available on Amazon Prime Video
I watched Jim Cummings’ The Wolf of Snow Hollow as a shot-in-the-dark gamble for something to watch on Halloween night. The film follows John, a small town deputy trying to solve a rash of murders carried out by what he insists is just a human killer, despite evidence suggesting otherwise. My bet fortunately payed off because what I got was a strange beast that straddled the line between cop procedural thriller and dark comedy, two genres I hold near and dear to my heart.
Available on most VOD rental platforms
Much like with The Vast of Night, I think Palm Springs hit at the perfect time when we both didn’t have any new significant movies coming out and needed something to lighten spirits. In what is essentially a self-aware copycat of Groundhog Day, laid-back Nyles (Andy Samberg) and maid-of-honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) explore the existential dread of being caught in a time loop on Sarah’s sister’s wedding day in Palms Springs, California. Comedies are usually extremely hit-or-miss for me, but this one had me 100% on-board with The Lonely Island’s irreverent brand of humor.
Available on Hulu
Of all of the films on this list, Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman’s Extra Ordinary is the only one I had no previous knowledge of immediately before watching. In what I’ve been calling the best horror-comedy since Shaun of the Dead, the film centers around an Irish driving instructor and psychic Rose (Maeve Higgins) as she becomes embroiled in a washed-up 80’s rock musician’s (Will Forte) plot to enact a satanic ritual. This movie is witty, sharp, and just so happened to strike the perfect balance between smart and immature comedy that is right up my alley.
Available on Kanopy and Showtime (also available to rent on most VOD rental platforms)
It’s a shame that The Invisible Man was one of the last movies to play a wide release in most theaters because it was one of the single best experiences I had watching a movie in all of 2020. Loosely adapted from the H.G. Wells novel of the same name, as well as the 1933 film, Leigh Whannell’s reboot to this public domain property flips the script and makes the central focus of the film Cecilia (Elizabeth Moss), the titular villain’s victim, in an allegory for domestic abuse. In addition to an impressive performance by Moss, the film’s main strength lies in Whannell’s excellent direction, creating tension with clever camera positioning but also not at all shying away from bursts of horrifying violence when appropriate.
Check out my full review here.
Available on HBO Max
As is typical with most of my favorite movies of years past, I’m not entirely sure I can recommend Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor to many people. It’s a mean-spirited, mostly emotionless yet ultraviolent tale of a woman losing her grip on what makes her her. Tasya Vos (Andrea Riseborough) plays an agent for a shadowy corporation that offers covert assassinations of high-profile targets. Through the retro-futuristic technology of the film, Tasya can inhabit the bodies of her victims, making them do whatever she wants before ultimately eliminating her target, usually through a murder-suicide to dispose of the evidence. Trouble brews when her latest victim Colin (Christopher Abbott) begins to fight back against her control.
I’m not going to lie, there’s not actually a lot going on here narratively that makes it stand above other films in this grotesque body-horror genre, but the disturbing visuals and unique ideas on display will probably stick with me for several years to come. Cronenberg employs a lot of practically performed and trippy effects to convey the struggle between Tasya and Colin as they vie for dominance within Colin’s body. And there’s so much damn blood.
Available on most VOD rental platforms