The most memorable movie moments of 2020

Moorehouse College pride saves David (Jonathan Majors) when he finds himself standing on an undetonated land mine in Vietnam. His combat veteran father, Paul (Delroy Lindo), has no intention of letting his son die in the country he survived over forty years ago and invokes the hallowed Moorehouse name of Olympic hurdler Edwin Moses to jump his old, imperiled bones to safety.

“We have taken a powerful psychotropic drug, and you are going to die.” The bad news for Udo Kier’s thrill-killing mercenary is that the people of Bacurau fully intend to make good on their proclamation. The worse news is that it won’t be quick. This murderer is to be buried in an underground cage, where it’ll be a toss-up as to whether he dies of starvation or asphyxiation first. Either way, that line, uttered by a village shaman, belongs right up there with “Go ahead, make my day.”

Rudy Giuliani, once celebrated as “America’s Mayor”, has brought himself low over the last two decades as a Republican party hack who’s eagerly worked as an agent of the Russian government. Those who’ve been awaiting his comeuppance were rewarded this year when Sacha Baron Cohen booked the publicity-craving politician an interview with Borat Sagdiyev’s teenage daughter (Maria Bakalova). Giuliani is taken enough with the young woman that he ends up on a bed in a hotel room fondling himself. A month and change after the debut of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”, Rudy would be holding a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

One of the most cathartic cinematic moments of 2020 arrives early in this engrossing documentary about the unusual friendship between artist Barbora Kysilkova and Karl-Bertil Nordland, who stole two of her prized paintings. After forgiving recovering addict Nordland for absconding with her work (and having no clue where it got off to), she asks him to sit for a portrait. When Kysilkova reveals the finished painting, Nordland breaks down into guttural sobs.

The fate of Quynh (Van Veronica Ngo) is one of the gnarliest science-fiction/fantasy notions since Stephen King’s “The Jaunt”. In Gina Prince-Bythewood’s superhero yarn, the apparently immortal Quynh is dropped to the bottom of the ocean in a locked iron maiden. This occurred centuries ago, which means she’s been drowning and awakening and drowning all over again for hundreds of years. Tantalus got a better deal.

Jake Horowitz and Sierra McCormick deserve a special Oscar for the epic walk-and-talk that opens Andrew Patterson’s sci-fi chiller “The Vast of Night”. It’s a Steadicam tour de force that sets up the movie’s intentionally inscrutable mystery, but the scene stands out for its craft and the crackling chemistry between these two hugely talented actors. Horowitz comes on like the next Sam Rockwell, while McCormick registers as a bookish Anna Paquin. It’s an electric stretch of filmmaking that introduces us to an abundance of talent.

The reference to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!” feels like a joke at the outset of Charlie Kaufman’s morose comedy, but an hour later, it explodes into a full-blown production in the hallway of a shuttered high school. The fact that there are no school musicals being performed this year lends the sequence added poignancy; you’re mourning the squandered promise of youth and the year that so many young adults lost due to this pandemic.

Jeff Roda’s ensemble dramedy centers on a group of middle school kids desperate to get let into the backdoor of a hip, small-town club. It’s real – too real for its own good, actually. The stakes are so low that it’s hard to give a rip about whether these kids make it inside (and, truth be told, they don’t seem to care if they get in). But there are painfully true moments interspersed throughout, the most memorable of which finds Shel (Tanner Flood) wandering out to a construction site with the very cute Amy (Alivia Clark) for what should be a make-out sesh. Alas, Shel lacks the nerve to take the next step, and he’ll be regretting that his reticence for the rest of his life.

Alzheimer’s eats our memories out from the inside, so there is an ugly logic to the final scene of Natalie Erika James’s “Relic”, wherein a mother and daughter peel away the skin of their dying, dementia-afflicted matriarch. What lies beneath is not a white, sinewy skeleton, but rather a black-boned demon. It’s hideous and pathetic, the accumulation of pain and resentment that we carry to the grave.

The soon-to-be revelers are singing Janet Kay’s “Silly Games” in the kitchen long before the house party begins. It’s the song of the moment, and when it hits later on at the party, the DJs milk it for all it’s worth and then some. The groove’s so hot, the wallpaper is sweating. Finally, they drop the audio out and let the crowd sing it, trancelike, in perfect rhythm. Count yourself extraordinarily fortunate if you’ve ever been to a party like this once in your life.

A most triumphant finale! With time running out to record their long-prophesied song that will unite the planet, the bards of San Dimas pull it out at the last second, thanks to a major assist from their daughters Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine). Performing in an all-star band featuring Jimi Hendrix, Mozart, Louis Armstrong, and more, the boys generate a rocker of utopian good vibes that lingers long after the closing credits are over. We’d missed Bill and Ted, but we didn’t know how badly we needed them.

Studio horror has a tendency to go light on the gore. Christopher Landon’s “Freaky” doesn’t have that problem. Case in point: the very bad death of Alan Ruck’s shop teacher. After taking sadistic pleasure in knocking around his own student (who’s actually inhabited by a serial killer), the man we know as Cameron Frye gets kicked onto a table saw and halved lengthwise. We’re so used to a movie like this cutting away from the good stuff that it’s a genuine shock when we see the entire, extremely bloody deed. Kudos, Mr. Landon.

The year’s best action film brings back more than Detectives Mike Lowry (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence); after a one-film absence, we once again get to hear Mark Mancina’s propulsive theme from the first movie! Non-“Bad Boys” fans won’t understand why the series’ devotees fist-pumped over the opening title, but that six-note cue sets a friendly, affectionate tone that’s sustained throughout the movie – making it the most likable (and best-reviewed) “Bad Boys” film by far.

At the end of Darius Marder’s “The Sound of Metal”, drummer Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed) has regained some semblance of sound via cochlear implants, but, as he wanders the streets of a city in Belgium, it’s clear to us that this is a very different way of hearing. Ruben sits on a park bench and takes in the surrounding cacophony for a moment before removing his hearing aids. He sits in the silence, blessed to live amidst so much beauty. Life is precious no matter how you process it.

Screenwriter and wit, Herman Mankiewicz, is blasted at a dinner party hosted by William Randolph Hearst at his San Simeon mansion. Rather than attempt to steady himself with water and food, Mank puts the pedal to the metal and makes a spectacular dolt out of himself by regaling his fellow diners with the very true, very disappointing story of an ambitious man who sold out his principles to become a wealthy recluse. At the conclusion of his soliloquy, he throws up on the rug. “Don’t worry, folks. The white wine came up with the fish.”

Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott III go the talking head route with their documentary about New Jersey’s legendary Action Park. They’ve basically no choice, as cameras were nowhere near as ubiquitous during the amusement park’s heyday as they are today. But some stories are best left to the imagination, like the tale of the water slide that operated as a kind of ski jump, propelling kids into the air before landing in a pool. The design flaw here is failing to take into account that kids are stupidly competitive. They have to go higher and farther than their friends – and the problem with “farther” is that the pool simply wasn’t long enough. Fortunately, no one was killed (in this instance), but the thought of a bold young man figuring out how to clear the pool (into the surrounding forest) by a considerable margin has provided me with a much-needed smile every day since I watched this documentary.

Max Barbakow’s clever “Groundhog Day” riff peaks when its time-loop-consigned leads (Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti) blow into a desert roadhouse, filled with the toughest of customers, and perform a carefully choreographed dance number. The surly regulars don’t know what to make of this display, so they just stand there in slack-jawed awe. Our heroes cut out before the clientele remembers they’re supposed to pound the bejeesus out of people like this.

Regulars. Every bar has ‘em. And there’s certain to be a long, sad story behind their decision to make a specific establishment their home away from home. Brothers Bill and Ross have assembled some of the most fascinating barflies in the country to play out an unscripted drama in a Las Vegas dive bar, and the results are hilarious and sad in equal measure. The film is a nonstop barrage of classic moments, but the one that sticks with you arrives early on, when Michael, a grizzled drunk who lugs around a pile of books, awakens from his slumber on the bar and hits the men’s room to shave. Time to go to work… drinking.

Josh Trank’s dreary account of Al Capone’s last, syphilitic days is a little too one-note in its exploration of a damaged, violent psyche, but it sticks with you in a direly unpleasant way. And once you’ve beheld the spectacle of Capone (Tom Hardy, chomping on a cigar and growling under heavy makeup) waking up in his own waste, there’s simply no unseeing it.

The bulk of this zany David Dobkin comedy is comprised of overwritten, -produced, and -performed pop songs in the ABBA mold. They’re as catchy as they are painfully cheesy, but they can’t compare to the majesty of “Jaja Ding Dong”. Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams belt this jaunty tune out with a lovable lack of shame, ending this intermittently amusing, far-too-long movie on the highest of notes.

American renaissance man Action Bronson briefly steals Judd Apatow’s “King of Staten Island” from star Pete Davidson when he turns up as “Shot or Stabbed Victim”. Almost every line out of his mouth is quotable, but I’d give anything to hear a packed theater lose its mind when he utters, “Tell my sister I know she’s my mother.”

Jason Hehir’s ten-part documentary about the life and career of NBA great Michael Jordan is rife with memorable moments, but nothing stands out quite like the shot of His Airness rocking out in the back of the bus (via headphones) to the latest smooth jam from R&B crooner Kenny Lattimore. It looks like he’s listening to a banging track from Dr. Dre, when, in reality, it’s this.

Christopher Nolan’s set pieces are extraordinary as ever in “Tenet”, but the most dazzling moment of them all is a quiet conversation in a restaurant between John David Washington and Michael Caine. The eighty-seven-year-old British screen legend has lost none of his magnetism over the years, but he seems especially perky here as an intelligence officer who has a word of sartorial advice for young Washington. The “Goodbye, Sir Michael” line might have you worrying that this is Caine’s big-screen swan song, but one look at his IMDb page provides assurance that this most industrious of actors plans to keep busy well into the ‘20s.

This may be difficult to believe, but not all alcoholics bottom out by hallucinating a bat killing a mouse in their bedroom a la Ray Milland in “The Lost Weekend”. Gavin O’Connor’s film about a drunk (Ben Affleck) who gets an ideal last shot to restore his former high school basketball team to its former glory makes this painfully clear. We grasp the dimension of Affleck’s problem early in the film as we watch him methodically put away a refrigerator full of beer in one night. It’s quiet, solitary desperation, one that many elbow-benders share.

Ace cinematographer Matthew Libatique is currently facing some sketchy legal trouble in Poland, so let's give the "Iron Man" director of photography some love by recognizing his epic shot in Cathy Yan's "Birds of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), wherein he slides past Mary Elizabeth Winstead as she's battling a goon to get a money shot of her stabbing the baddie. The cost: Winstead and the massive stunt man barrelled into Libatique and knocked him out cold. Was it worth the concussion? We say "Hell yeah!"