THE REEL FEELS
THE BEST: A seismic industr y shift couldn’t stymie bold storytelling and performances
SHUTTERED theater chains, constant release delays, an upcoming April Oscars and an earth-shaking shift to streaming: 2020 was the most unusual and significant year in the history of moviegoing. Still, against all odds, there was no lack of strong films to enjoy. Here, our critics tell us their picks for the best of a bizarre year.
IT was a dreadful year for the movie business, no doubt about it. But don’t confuse mandatory theater closures with the quality of the films themselves. Our fears of being stuck inside with nothing to do were soothed by a steady stream of, well, streaming movies. Good ones, at that! Sure, most giant action flicks delayed their releases for a year or more, but smaller gems were able to wrestle away attention from James Bond and Marvel for once.
The best was “Mank,” David Fincher’s wondrous ode to old Hollywood and “Citizen Kane” screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. A niche idea for a film, the black-and-white drama is a deeply personal project for the director — his late father, Jack, wrote the script — and the attention to detail in re-creating 1930s Los Angeles is remarkable. As is the gregarious lead performance from Gary Oldman.
Unexpectedly, some of the year’s finest performances came from a documentary. The captivating “Boys State” follows a pack of 17-year-old future politicians who inspire, cajole and lie to get elected into (fake) office at a weeklong Texas camp. After it premiered at Sundance, its stars René, Steven and Ben became bigger than T-Swift.
Then there were two heartwarming but polar opposite films about sons who miss their dads: “The King of Staten Island” directed by Judd Apatow and starring Pete Davidson, and Pixar’s “Onward.” One featured a lot more F-bombs and pot (I shall not reveal which), but both brought on the tears.
“King of Staten Island” also joined the ranks of classic New York movies. So did “On the Rocks,” Sofia Coppola’s witty wild night out starring Bill Murray as a suave father who helps his daughter (Rashida Jones) figure out if her hubby is cheating on her. Coppola
whisked us to the ‘21’ Club (RIP), the Carlyle and the Soho House, with Murray as our enviably sophisticated tour guide.
Two performances scorched the screen whether you watched them on an iPhone or a 70-inch TV: Vanessa Kirby in “Pieces of a Woman” and Delroy Lindo in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.” Kirby, who gets better and better, plays a pregnant wife whose baby dies during a home birth, while Lindo is a Vietnam vet who returns to the battlefield to search for a lost treasure. Midway through the movie, he unleashes a vicious minutes-long monologue as he stomps through the jungle.
Not as emotional but just as impressive is Sacha Baron Cohen as activist Abbie Hoffman in “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Baron Cohen, who also yukked it up in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” is part of a crazy-good cast in Aaron Sorkin’s characteristically sharp and witty drama.
And now some ugly ducklings. “Palm Springs” is the opposite of awards- or list-bait, but the Gen X “Groundhog Day” riff starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti is hypnotically enjoyable. And one of the zaniest Dickens adaptations in recent years is “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” starring Dev Patel. Director Armando Iannucci blew the dust off an old book and infused it with groovy color.
I hope to see you all back at the movies in 2021.
‘PROMISING Young Woman” is a candycolored Molotov cocktail of a film, with Carey Mulligan a vengeful avatar for every ignored sexual assault victim. The ending’s a doozy that should provide conversational tinder for months to come. Who but the vanity-free Frances McDormand could anchor director Chloé Zhao’s masterful “Nomadland,” an ode to the aging wander-laborers of middle America? Its hauntingly beautiful landscapes and supporting cast of nonactors are unforgettable.
Tom Hanks embarks on a different sort of travelogue in the gloriously oldschool Western “News of the World.” A Civil War vet who now moves through Texas reading newspapers aloud for pay, Hanks’ Captain Kidd is reluctantly charged with returning a Native American-assimilated young white girl (Helena Zengel) to family. You don’t come to a Charlie Kaufman pic expecting a linear plot, but “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” takes the director’s labyrinthine storytelling to new extremes in this story of a man (Jesse Plemons) bringing his new girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) home to meet the parents.
“The Vast of Night” beckons us into the milieu of midcentury radio plays and sci-fi serials. It’s a marvelously low-fi tale, set in a small town where something strange — could it be extraterrestrial? — is broadcasting a captivating frequency. Director Rob Savage pulls off the “Blair Witch”-ing of Zoom with “Host,” a freaky little horror film that makes cheeky use of the nowubiquitous platform.
Aaron Sorkin expertly punches up an already-punchy true story in “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” with Sacha Baron Cohen very comfortably inhabiting the role of 1960s Merry Prankster Abbie Hoffman.
Moving to the 1970s, documentary “Crip Camp” examines the nascent disability-rights movement, with roots in an upstate New York summer camp for disabled youth that gave its attendees an inspiring vision of how life could be.
“Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado” arrives with a blast of glitter to celebrate the life of the globally beloved, androgynous Puerto Rican astrologer in this doc. Whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer, Mercado and his message of love are guaranteed to charm. “Minari” is the latest step in Steven Yeun’s rise as acting powerhouse, as the patriarch in Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical story of a Korean family moving to 1980s Arkansas to start a farm. Little Alan Kim steals the show as the impatient young son, while Youn Yuh-jung is magnificent as his unconventional grandma.