The 50 best films of 2020 in the UK: 50-21
50 Boys State
This eye-opening film looks at a role-play event to teach kids how politics works, organised by the American Legion. Here the Texas version is scrutinised, with debates and power struggles reaching a crescendo in a mock election. Read the full review.
49 White Riot
Document a r y about the groundbreaking Rock Against Racism movement that helped to stem the rising tide of far-right support in 1970s Britain, with its benefit gigs featuring the likes of the Clash and the Tom Robinson Band. Read the full review.
48 Only the Animals
This is an ingenious, witty thriller from the French director Dominik Moll (Harry, He’s Here to Help), one involving interconnected stories of six disparate people and stretching from the south of France to Ivory Coast. Read the full review.
47 The County
There’s a harsh Icelandic backdrop to this tough corruption drama: Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir plays Inga, a farmer who takes on the mafia who run the local co-op, trying to circumvent the monopoly by selling produce on the internet. Read the full review.
46 The Perfect Candidate
The fourth feature by Wadjda director Haifaa al-Mansour sees the Saudi film-maker return home for a politically inflected drama that interrogates the country’s supposed new liberalism, following a female doctor’s attempt to run for office after she is denied a permit to travel abroad. Read the full review.
45 Bacurau
A Brazilian horror-western with an exceptionally disquieting tone, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. A woman returns to a remote outback town – the fictional settlement of Bacurau – which appears to have fallen off the map, as a violent group of foreigners assemble nearby. Read the full review.
44 Shirley
Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss stars as celebrated horror writer Shirley Jackson ( best known for The Lottery) in a fictionalised biopic that speculates on what happens when a younger couple interrupts her tepid domestic life with husband Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg). Read the full review.
43 Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Individual films don’t often change the course of history, but by humiliating Donald Trump acolyte Rudy Giuliani, this follow-up to Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 hit comedy may have done just that. This time around, the
Kazakhstani journalist tries to offload his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova). Read the full review.
42 The Invisible Man
An enterprising adaptation of the HG Wells classic, reconfigured for the #MeToo era by horror specialists Blumhouse. Elisabeth Moss is a woman who believes she is being stalked by her controlling boyfriend, who was thought to have killed himself. Read the full review.
41 Saint Frances
Nicely observed US indie written by and starring Kelly O’Sullivan, who plays a woman in her mid-30s whose unexpected pregnancy coincides with her getting a job as a nanny for a kid called Frances (Ramona Edith Williams). Read the full review.
40 Waves
Formally ambitious drama about an African American high-school sports star whose life goes into meltdown, with a parallel narrative involving his sister. One-time Terrence Malick intern Trey Edward Shults directs. Read the full review.
39 The Painted Bird
Adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s second world war novel, following a young Jewish boy’s attempts to survive in Poland after his parents are taken to a concentration camp, filmed in gruesome, harrowing detail. Read the full review.
38 Love Child
This moving documentary looks at two Iranian refugees trying to get by in Turkey as they wait for official UN status – having fled from their home country because of their punishableby-death extramarital affair and the son produced from it. Read the full review.
37 His House
Impressive horror about a husband and wife from South Sudan seeking asylum who try to settle in a nondescript British neighbourhood, only to find their living quarters appear to be haunted by a spirit from their past lives. Read the full review.
36 The Boys in the Band
Netflix adaptation of Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking 1968 stage hit about gay men gathering for a birthday party; Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer are among the cast.Read the full review.
35 She Dies Tomorrow
Amy Seimetz delivers an oddball US indie about a woman who is suddenly convinced she will die in 24 hours – and whose obsessive paranoia about impending death infects her friends with a pandemic-style contagion. Read the full review.
34 The Good Girls
Ilse Salas is outstanding in an 1980sset study of Mexico’s financial meltdown, playing a rich, status-obsessed woman whose privileged life starts to collapse. Read the full review.
33 Possessor
This sci-fi thriller from Brandon Cronenberg is just as creepy as his father David’s work. It stars Andrea Riseborough as a future assassin who invades hapless victims’ minds and uses them to assassinate targets. Read the full review.
32 County Lines
This hard-hitting British drama takes its cue from the grim news stories of cross-country drug courier gangs. Conrad Khan stars as the 14-year-old who becomes entangled in crime after a dysfunctional childhood and unhappy schooling.
31 A White, White Day
Icelandic thriller about a policeman (played by Ingvar Sigurðsson) who discovers his recently deceased wife may have been having an affair with his friend; his grief and rage builds until violence appears inevitable. Read the full review.
30 The Ground Beneath My Feet
Unsettling Austrian study of an ambitious corporate executive-type whose life begins to unravel after her mentally ill sister attempts to kill herself, resulting in a plethora of threatening phone calls. Read the full review.
29 System Crasher
German drama about an out-ofcontrol child, featuring an astounding performance by then-nine-year-old Helena Zengel as a violent, rowdy kid with whom the established social-work systems simply cannot cope. Read the full review.
28 Vitalina Varela
Austere, compelling film from Portuguese auteur Pedro Costa, following the Cape Verdean immigrant of the title as she makes her way to Lisbon to try and find her errant husband. Read the full review.
27 The King of Staten Island
Judd Apatow hooks up with Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson to create funny, idiosyncratic comedy: Davidson plays a slacker tattooist whose life has been overshadowed by his firefighter dad’s death. Read the full review.
26 And Then We Danced
Intense, winning romance about two male performers who spark a secret relationship in the ultra-conservative world of traditional Georgian dance. Read the full review.
25 About Endlessness
This is the sixth and reportedly final feature by the idiosyncratic Swedish auteur Roy Andersson, a meditation on the human condition filmed with an utterly distinctive combination of colour palette and vividly detailed tableaux. Read the full review.
24 Les Misérables
In this award-winning
French drama that alludes to the celebrated Victor Hugo novel, tough, cynical police try to keep the peace on tinderbox streets in the Paris suburbs. Read the full review.
23 Spaceship Earth
An eye-opening eco-documentary about the Biosphere 2 experiment in the 1990s, in which a commune of like-minded people built a closed ecosystem in Arizona to try to improve humans’ relationship with the natural world. Read the full review.
22 Dick Johnson Is Dead
Film-maker Kirsten Johnson’s startlingly creative response to her former psychiatrist father’s dementia, in which she stages a string of hypothetical death scenes and afterlife fantasies. Read the full review.
21 Miss Juneteenth
Shame’s Nicole Beharie stars as a former beauty queen hoping that her daughter can repeat her triumph – primarily to gain the prize of a potentially life-changing college scholarship. Read the full review.
• Placings were calculated by a weighted average score from critics’ votes. Voters are: Peter Bradshaw, Cath Clarke, Ellen E Jones, Leslie Felperin, Phil Hoad, Mike McCahill, Benjamin Lee, Catherine Shoard, Andrew Pulver, Steve Rose
“I told him not to kiss me,” jokes Ball, before admitting it was “really, really rough”. Boe remembers “waking up in a pool of my own sweat. At least, I think it was sweat.” When they recovered, they decided that a Christmas album might raise everyone’s spirits.
This is their first festive collection, but, of their previous albums together, 2016’s Together, 2017’s Together Again and 2019’s Back Together (you are probably detecting a theme here), only the latter does not include a Christmas song. It reached No 2. “That’ll teach us,” chuckles Ball. Isn’t there a danger they will become overassociated with Christmas, like Bublé? Boe grins. “It didn’t do Slade or Roy Wood any harm.”
They were friends before recording together, having met in 2007 in a disastrous English National Opera production of Kismet. “One theatre critic told me it was the only show he never gave no stars to,” chuckles Ball. “But didn’t we have a good time?”
“Even though it was falling apart,” Boe chuckles back. They bonded, realised their voices work together (“I go high, Alf sings low”; “Michael’s jazzier than I am”) and have had a bromance since.
Boe grew up in Fleetwood, Lancashire, a tram ride from Blackpool, where he played drums in working men’s clubs, tried his voice in singing competitions and became entranced by the “razzmatazz” of the showbiz stars who came to the opera house when he was in the stage crew. “Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Status Quo. It was hugely influential.”
He was an apprentice panel beater at Blackpool’s TVR sports car factory when a chance encounter changed his life. “I was working in the garage and always sung along to the radio. A customer overheard me singing and suggested I audition for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company in London.” He was successful, and after a stint of Gilbert and Sullivan, he went on to study singing at the Royal College of Music. His first big break was in La Bohème and the rest is history. Boe beams in wonder. “If I’d known back then that I’d end up working with Michael Ball, I’d have … told the guy to buy a car elsewhere.” The two men roar with laughter.
Ball was the son of working-class parents in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire. His father worked up from the car production line at Longbridge in Birmingham to become head of global sales at British Leyland and duly thought the done thing would be to send young Michael off to boarding school. But he hated it (“I just wanted to dress up and sing”), became disruptive and was eventually asked to leave. It amuses him that he was eventually invited back to open the “Michael Ball studio” in the school. “I’m now one of the sacred alumni.”
Ball’s first singing experience was busking: “There was a mint spot just between the Guildford high street and Debenhams.” His first part after drama school was in Godspell in Aberystwyth, but he has faced major drawbacks. Aged 18, a parachute jump accident left him facing three years of surgery, “in and out of hospital having bits put back together. No one has a charmed life.”
Ball’s partner of 28 years is Cathy McGowan, who presented the legendary 60s pop show Ready Steady Go!, but subsequently shunned the spotlight and all interviews. “That is so cool. That’s why I love her.” McGowan also saved Ball’s life, in 2002, pulling him out of a house fire. “She was choking. She couldn’t wake me up, dragged me out. Then she went back to get the dog.” Ball lost gold discs, memorabilia, the works. “But you learn quickly that that stuff doesn’t matter.”
Do you draw on such experiences when you sing? “Of course. When you interpret songs, you don’t have to go through the exact same stuff as in the lyrics, but you understand the highs and lows. It’s about communicating the emotion.”
Ball and Boe are more than hired big voices and are “100% involved” in the album process. They sit at a piano with a list of potential songs, develop harmonies, then mock up tracks with synths and a producer. Then orchestras get to work. “That’s so exciting,” Ball smiles. “Listening to our dodgy demos grow into something glorious. The way the music industry is, with everyone doing everything in their front rooms on synths, makes it all the more important that we have the whole shebang. Big orchestral sections, strings, horns, choirs, loads of voices. Quality!”
The pair’s stock-in-trade of classic musical songs may not be fashionable, but such songcraft has timeless appeal – witness the wild success of The Greatest Showman, Mamma Mia!, Frozen and A Star Is Born soundtracks in recent years. Ball cites “the great American songbook – Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Rodgers and Hammerstein. Songs we all know and sing. Those Tin Pan Alley guys wrote for shows, but they were clever enough to realise the songs must stand on their own. Take I Dreamed a Dream, which is perfect for the character of Fantine in Les Mis, but anyone watching Susan Boyle doing it on Britain’s Got Talent goes: ‘Oh my God, the story, the emotion.’ That’s their brilliance. They’re the earworms of the musical theatre genre.”
Boe feels “blessed that all this works, given where we’ve come from and how hard we’ve worked”, but thinks of those less fortunate. They are supportive of loneliness initiatives to raise awareness of “the vast amount of people who will be struggling this Christmas”.
As for themselves, they are starring in a socially distanced Les Misérables on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. Ball is cooking Christmas dinner, expects to “fall asleep just after the Queen’s done her thing and wake up in time for Strictly” and – Boe smiles – “Michael’s invited us all over”.
They have been Together, Together Again, Back Together, Together at Christmas. Whatever next? “Together for ever!” sings Ball, breaking into Rick Astley’s hit.
It is left to Boe to be Scrooge: “I’m not singing that.”
Together at Christmas is out now. Ball & Boe star in Les Misérables at Sondheim theatre, London, until February
It’s so exciting listening to our dodgy demos grow into something glorious