BEST FEATURES & DOCUMENTARIES OF 2020

7. “The Assistant”

Julia Garner plays a young, ambitious secretary in Kitty Green’s tautly modulated, Weinstein-adjacent drama. Over the course of one day, we see Garner’s character work the phones, prepare meals and clean up after meetings, all the while pretending not to know what’s often happening behind her boss’s strategically closed door. We never see the actual man, an astute choice for a movie that depends on the audience’s own imagination to fill in the blanks. The result is a graceful portrait of how sexual harassment and assault at the top of a corporation seeps into its culture, harming even the most “blameless” by standers. Available on Hulu and on demand.

8. “The Half of It”

We all needed a rom-com this year, and writerdirector Alice Wu delivered with a delightful retelling of the Cyrano de Bergerac story with an of-the-moment twist. Leah Lewis portrays heroine Ellie Chu with a well-calibrated combination of smarts and vulnerability, but it’s Daniel Diemer who steals the show as the lunky, hunky jock who asks her to pen letters to his love interest. Together, they work up a believable chemistry — whether it’s as lovers or friends is under lock and key in the Spoiler Alert box. This is that rare rom-com that end happily and believably. Available on Netflix.

9. “The Trip to Greece”

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s “Trip” series has been one of the joys of moviegoing over the past 10 years. Here, they sign off with an installment that captures all the sensory joys of the movies — delicious food, dazzling backdrops — as well as their poignant subtexts. The two actors have aged nicely, their repartee and competing impressions still sparkling and hilariously funny. Re-creating Odysseus’ trip from Troy to Ithaca, they touch on everything from Mick Jagger to mortality, with the witty banter of a prolix Hope and Crosby and the delicacy of a dragonf ly’s wing. Godspeed gentlemen, and to bed. Available on Hulu and on demand.