The 25 best films of 2020

The botched theft of a painting marks the beginning of a strangely beautiful friendship between artist Barbora Kysilkova and lifelong screw-up Karl Bertil-Nordland. Barbora is initially drawn to Karl’s skittishness; he’s like a rescue animal that’s been abused so relentlessly it doesn’t know how to receive kindness. But while Barbora is a remarkably forgiving person, she’d still like to know where he stashed her celebrated painting. Benjamin Rees’s documentary works splendidly as a portrait of compassion and a treasure hunt led by a maddeningly unreliable guide.

Checking in on Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan (Keanu Reeves) twenty-nine years after their last big-screen adventure might’ve seemed like a dicey idea, but it wound up being exactly what we needed in the midst of a dreadful year. This time out, our heroes are faced with a one-day deadline to compose the song that will unite the world. While they travel ahead in time to steal the song from their future selves, their daughters (Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine) venture into the past to assemble an all-star roster of musicians to aid their fathers’ mission. It’s a surprisingly poignant finale that leaves you believing in the healing power of music (and basic human decency).

There’s a strong whiff of Jane Campion in Francis Lee’s romantic drama about paleontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) falling in love with the wife (Saoirse Ronan) of a wealthy tourist (James McArdle). Lee’s approach is so restrained that he risks alienating audiences expecting an explosion of ardor from these two formidable performers, but the awkwardness is the point. This is a beautifully crafted film that thrives in the margins; what’s not being expressed is every bit as powerful as that which is consummated.

If you thought Brandon Cronenberg got a pass for his moderately interesting “Antiviral” in 2012, jack yourself into the horror heir apparent’s sophomore feature. This gonzo, ultra-gory espionage thriller links up with Cronenberg père’s “Existenz” in interesting ways (not just due to Jennifer Jason Leigh’s presence), but it blazes its own bizarro trail as it wears on. Cronenberg pours on the ick like this might be the last film he gets to make; it reminds me of Peter Jackson’s “Dead Alive”, a shotgun spray of influences that gets a talented director to the kinds of films he really wants to make.

You don’t have to be a fan of the groundbreaking hip-hop trio to find tremendous poignancy in this Spike Jonze-directed documentary. It’s essentially a filmed stage show, with the two surviving Beastie Boys – Adam Horowitz (King Ad Rock) and Michael Diamond (Mike D) – eulogizing their departed best friend Adam Yauch (MCA), but it’s also a wake for an era of music that, for better and worse, is gone forever. The good: these New York City brats’ restless curiosity about other cultures led them to an enlightened view of the world; they powerfully renounce the misogyny of their early work and exhort their fans to always, always respect women. The not-so-great: the death of MCA marked the death of the Beasties; most fans understand and accept this, but that doesn’t make the realization any less painful.

Many of the best documentaries immerse their viewers in a subculture they would’ve never thought to explore, which is certainly the case with James Lebrecht and Nicole Newman’s “Crip Camp”. The film vividly demonstrates how the 1960s counterculture inspired attendees (including the legendary Judith Heumann) of New York’s Camp Jened to launch the disability rights movement. It’s a stirring film that should be mandatory viewing in schools, which, thanks in large part to the fight waged by these “Jenedians”, are now accessible to people of various disabilities.

This is one of the first significant films of the #MeToo era, and it’s going to be difficult to top its bruising efficacy. Writer-director Kitty Green crafts an infuriatingly believable environment of institutionally enabled harassment, one that should be all too familiar to anyone who’s worked in the entertainment industry. Julia Garner gives one of the year’s best performances as an assistant trying to do the right thing despite the corporate culture’s indifference to her boss’ lewd behavior.

Kemp Powers’s speculative play about what could’ve gone down the night Muhammad Ali wrested the heavyweight title from Sonny Liston didn’t immediately catch fire the way it deserved during its Los Angeles theatrical run in 2013, but seven years later it’s finally arrived under the steady direction of Regina King. The premise is simple: Ali (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Sam Cooke Leslie Odom Jr.) hang out in a Miami hotel room after the GOAT’s world-shaking victory. Interestingly, Powers’s discourse winds up focusing on a fictionalized, but wholly believable tension between the socially conscious Malcolm and the all-business Cooke. This dialogue is every bit as relevant today, as young artists navigate a world where holding up the mirror to nature means acknowledging a load of ugliness (to the dismay of their so-called “fans” who want them to shut up and play the hits).

Steven Soderbergh’s minimalist approach to filmmaking (all you need is an iPhone, a great script, great actors, and a knack for camera placement) gets a playful workout in this comedy set aboard the actual Queen Mary 2. The director’s process is, as ever, on your mind as you settle in, which tempts you to focus on craft over the human drama unfolding in front of the camera. But unlike last year’s disappointing “The Laundromat”, Soderbergh’s right at home with this ocean-crossing romp. Screenwriter Deborah Eisenberg’s premise proves a riffable bonanza for Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest, Gemma Chan, and Lucas Hedges; you’ve seen this story (about a great author struggling to regain relevance) before, but there’s no denying the immense pleasure of this company.

What a drag it is getting old. When an Alzheimer’s-stricken woman (Robyn Nevin) goes missing, her daughter (Emily Mortimer) and granddaughter (Bella Heathcote) rush to the family’s country home to find her. Though the elderly matriarch returns soon enough, the trouble is just starting. Natalie Erika James’s slow-burn horror flick isn’t subtle in its examination of dementia, but her use of the body-horror subgenre to depict the way families deal with the mental/physical deterioration of their loved ones builds to one of the most stunning finales of the year. James is a filmmaker to watch.

The year’s most talked about film in terms of the theatrical experience and its future didn’t really get a fair shot as a movie in its own right – which is a huge bummer because it’s easily the most inscrutable studio tentpole ever made. The initial reviews of the film hailed Nolan for doing what he does better than any other director working today, which is, evidently, leaving first-time viewers wondering what the hell they just watched. The film is just now hitting streaming, and it almost plays like self-parody. Maybe it’s Nolan’s “Raising Cane”. He’s not renowned for his sense of humor, but people can surprise you.

A miracle. Sacha Baron Cohen’s Kazakhstani alter-ego appeared to be retired after the character’s first film became a worldwide blockbuster, but never underestimate Cohen’s genius and, most importantly, the colossal stupidity of the American people. Cohen manages to wreak all sorts of havoc despite the country going into a shutdown due to the spread of the coronavirus. What makes this film special, however, is the introduction of Maria Bakalova as Borat’s teenage daughter, who stows away to America to aid her father’s mission of presenting President Donald Trump with a cultural offering.

Cory Finley’s account of an embezzlement scheme that sucked a Long Island school system dry of $11 million is the most curiously unheralded film of its type since Doug Liman’s “American Made”. Here you have Hugh Jackman pouring on his overpowering charm as a swindler, who, with his equally conniving accomplice (Allison Janney), hoodwinks desperate parents by promising to turn their school district into one of the country’s best. It’s a fascinating story in its own right, but watching Jackman work his “Professor” Harold Hill magic is a singular delight.

Eliza Hittman’s stunner about a seventeen-year-old Pennsylvanian (Sidney Flanigan) who travels to New York City for an abortion sans parental consent will leave you furious and utterly exhausted – which is nothing compared to the anguish young women are forced to endure in this country when they choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Too many films both-sides this subject by getting the male party involved when that should never be a consideration. Hittman’s movie is righteously unsentimental; the tragedy here is the trampling of a young woman’s rights.

Ken Loach goes after the gig economy, and delivers his most incendiary drama in over a decade. The film focuses on a family devastated by the 2008 financial crisis, which forces its patriarch (Kris Hitchen) to become a self-employed deliveryman. Loach’s films are often loaded-dice affairs; he’s an angry, cynical artist who expects the worst outcome because that does tend to be the way of the world for blue-collar people. This is the first time he’s imbued a story with a glimmer of hope, which is precisely what so many gig workers felt twelve years ago. It was just another form of exploitation, and Loach makes you feel that burn.

Josephine Decker firmly established herself as one of cinema’s most boldly original voices with 2018’s exhilarating “Madeline’s Madeline”, so there was some concern that she was wading into more conventional waters by undertaking this biopic of author Shirley Jackson. “Shirley” might be the most classically structured film of Decker’s career, but it’s every bit as florid and sensual as her best work. Elisabeth Moss’s performance is a study in self-destructive extremes; she’s either a bedridden depressive or the flame-throwing life of the party. Decker views Jackson’s artistry as a rebellion; the work gets done regardless of who has to suffer.

August Wilson’s blazingly brilliant play about a 1920s session band recording an album with blues diva Ma Rainey gets first-rate treatment from legendary theater director George C. Wolfe and a murderer’s row of a cast. Some critics have complained that this adaptation is “stagey”, which is akin to dinging “Stop Making Sense” for not having a car chase. Wilson’s work is confined to a solitary location, and the music of his dialogue, particularly here, is derived from tight-quarters confrontation. Viola Davis brings the fury in the title role, but it’s Chadwick Boseman’s final performance (as ambitious trumpeter Levee) that’ll stay with you long after the closing credits.

Spike Lee is one of our greatest living filmmakers, but he never stays on a hot streak for long. This isn’t a knock on the man, but rather the reality of being insanely prolific and ambitious at the same time. So it’s staggering to find Lee churning out two films that are as good, if not better than his dynamite 2018 duo of BlackKklansman and Pass Over. This Netflix-distributed Vietnam epic is a classic Spike gumbo of genres and themes. It’s equal parts war film, crime film, father-son film, and civil rights jeremiad. These ingredients might clash at times, but that’s the filmmaker’s jarring intent. It’s also a pretty nifty Marvin Gaye tribute!

Kelly Reichardt once again looks to nineteenth-century Oregon (as chronicled by author Jonathan Raymond) for an understated, leisurely paced tale of the American Dream undone. In “Meek’s Cutoff”, it was settlers being led to their doom by a blustery guide who has no idea where he’s going; here, it’s a pair of enterprising misfits (John Magaro and Orion Lee) eager to boost their financial standing via the sale of delectable biscuits. Our hearts slowly sink as we realize that, even 200 years ago, the capitalist system in America was rigged.

Too often, documentaries about current events play like extended news packages or primers for a far more interesting book/magazine article on the subject. Bryan Fogel’s “The Dissident” is the polar opposite. If anything, it may be too dense with crucial detail to absorb on one viewing. This account of the state-sponsored murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is every bit as absorbing as Fogel’s Oscar-winning “Icarus” (about the Russian Olympic doping program); over a briskly paced two hours, the filmmaker succeeds in giving the viewer a fuller sense of man largely unknown to the American public until his death, while mounting a damning case against the vicious Saudi regime.

There are two ways to watch this booze-soaked doozy of a movie, and it’d be shooting dirty pool to deprive you of one avenue by giving away the game. Here’s all you need to know: brothers Bill and Turner Ross have captured the last day and night of a Las Vegas dive bar called The Roaring 20s. It’s the kind of establishment where regulars clock in like they’re going to work, where everyone knows each other’s name, and said familiarity can breed more than a little contempt. Tempers flare and hearts are broken, but no one gets hurt too bad. Then it’s closing time, and these rummies are faced with the dilemma that, while they don’t have to go home, they can’t come here anymore.

Spike Lee’s film of David Byrne’s “American Utopia” is a buoyant life raft in a sea of despair. Released prior to November’s presidential election, it felt at the time like a jubilant reminder that love and art and all the stuff that makes life worth living will conquer hate every time. As he proved with “Passing Strange” and “Pass Over”, Lee knows how to make the theatrical experience cinematic without removing it from the theater. His film is also in deep conversation with Jonathan Demme’s “Stop Making Sense”, a masterful work from a beloved colleague he clearly misses.

What starts as a slow-paced slice of life drama about a tiny Brazilian village mourning the death of a matriarch gradually turns into something more… well, more. Filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles toy with the audiences’ expectations throughout before lowering the boom about halfway through. Only a spoilsport would give away the reveal, but if you’re not on guard for a brain-melter when you see Udo Kier’s name in the credits, that, my friend, is on you. “Bacurau” gets bonus points for being as radically political as it is entertaining. It ain’t subtle, but these ain’t subtle times.

Film and television critics are currently waging a nasty war over Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe”. Is the Amazon-distributed work a series of films or a TV series? While it obviously doesn’t matter (McQueen says they’re movies), ask yourself this: would you rather watch the delirious 1970s house party of the series’ second segment, “Lovers Rock”, at home or in a packed theater with a thumping sound system? McQueen’s seventy-eight-minute film captures young West Indian immigrants bumping and grinding to reggae and soul classics. Like any great party film, you don’t want it to end. To that end, “Lovers Rock” is every bit the equal of Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused”. A stone-cold, groovin’ masterpiece.

Charlie Kaufman’s latest brain scrambler sets up as an intimate, lightly surreal drama about a young couple (Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons) driving out to the country to meet the man’s parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). At this stage in his career, we know the writer of “Being John Malkovich” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” has zero interest in staging a conventional family yarn, but even the most seasoned Kaufman fan probably didn’t expect this odd little film to literally turn into Rodgers & Hammerstein “Oklahoma!” Unlike Kaufman’s unremittingly grim “Synecdoche, New York”, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” takes flight right as it threatens to collapse into misery. The final shot may be less than reassuring, but Kaufman at least acknowledges the potential for joy amid the greyness of this world.