Movie sign
Brandy McDonnell's list of top 10 films of 2020 reflects Oklahoma's growing movie industry, COVID-19 changes
Movie theaters shut down, streaming services ramped up, and superheroes and other tentpole protagonists were suddenly sidelined during 2020, a year with more plot twists than a horde of Hollywood screenwriters could have ever imagined.
Even as COVID-19 continually changed — and continues to change — all aspects of American life, heroes new and old emerged in the film industry. Oklahoma's burgeoning movie scene started making an impact on awards season, with the celebrated Tulsamade drama “Minari” generating Oscars buzz (assuming, of course, those coveted golden statuettes actually get handed out on April 25) and Edmond-based filmmaker Andrew Patterson picking up prizes for his feature film debut “The Vast of Night.”
Although many potential blockbusters were pushed out of their release dates due to the pandemic, plenty of independent and foreign films like the Irish animated tale “Wolfwalkers” and the Russian horror film “Sputnik” made meaningful bows in the year just past.
Even when they were forced to close their physical theaters, art houses like the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Rodeo Cinema, Tower Theater and Tulsa's Circle Cinema have helped curate such promising titles through their innovative Virtual Cinema offerings.
Here are my top 10 films — plus five honorable mentions, including two Oklahoma-made movies — from the undeniably strange and memorable days of 2020:
1. `Wolfwalkers'
2020 was an excellent year for animated films, perhaps due in part to the pandemic keeping families with children at home.
Fledgling Irish animation house Cartoon Saloon has created four feature films — 2010's “The Secret of Kells,” 2015's “Song of the Sea,” 2017's “The Breadwinner” and “Wolfwalkers” — and all of them have proven painterly instant classics. A visually enchanting adventure based on Celtic folklore and history, “Wolfwalkers” is set in 1650 in a remote, walled Irish city under oppressive English rule, but its
themes about tyranny and otherness, friendship and family, nature and myths remain timeless.
When English lass Robyn Goodfellowe (voice of Honor Kneafsey) sneaks out of the city and follows her father (Sean Bean), the town's designated wolf hunter, into the wilderness, she befriends the wild Mebh (Eva Whittaker), one of the legendary “wolfwalkers,” magical and enigmatic people who take on canine form while their human bodies sleep.
How to see it: Apple TV+.
2. `Sputnik'
A frighteningly effective sci-fi horror story, this Cold War Russian-language thriller definitely owes a debt to Ridley Scott's iconic “Alien.” But the assured feature film debut from director Egor Abramenko turns that familiarity to its advantage, whipping through as many surprising twists and turns as its terrifying otherworldly creature.
In 1983, a Moscow-based neuropsychiatrist (Oksana Akinshina) known for her radical methods is whisked away to a secret base to consult on the case of a cosmonaut (Pyotr Fyodorov) who didn't come back alone from his recent trip into space.
How to see it: Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube and more.
3. `Minari'
Lee Isaac Chung's semiautobiographical family drama, which was filmed in Tulsa in 2019, centers on a Korean immigrant family that moves from Los Angeles to the Heartland to start a farm and pursue the American Dream.
Although the story is set in Arkansas, the Oklahoma skies, farmland and woods are beautifully showcased in the moving but not maudlin movie, which earned both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the January 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Over the past year, “Minari” has steadily and quietly continued to touch audiences and earn acclaim, especially for Yuh-Jung Youn, who plays the feisty Korean grandmother who moves in with the family to help care for the story's lively 7-year-old protagonist, David (Alan Kim). The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle, of which I'm a founding and voting member, not only honored Youn as best supporting actress but also named “Minari” its best picture of 2020.
How to see it: Full theatrical release is planned for February.
4. `The Vast of Night'
The Oklahoma Film Critics Circle bestowed its best first feature award on Edmond director Andrew Patterson for his atmospheric sci-fi mystery, which was filmed in Whitney, Texas, with a largely Oklahoma crew. On Monday, Patterson received the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award at New York's 30th Annual Gotham Awards, considered one of the first major ceremonies of the cinematic awards season.
The throwback thriller is set in 1957 in tiny Cayuga, New Mexico, where smart and curious telephone switchboard operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) and hip yet brainy radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) pinpoint a bizarre audio frequency interfering with both their jobs. The teenagers embark on a lifechanging quest to uncover the cause of the strange sounds in the film, which received the Audience Award for best narrative feature at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival.
How to see it: Amazon Prime.
5. `Nomadland'
Frances McDormand has been nominated for five acting Academy Awards, winning for “Fargo” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” But that still somehow feels like inadequate acclaim after watching her unadorned, filmcarrying tour de force turn in writer-director Chloé Zhao's visually striking and delicately understated road movie.
Based on journalist Jessica Bruder's 2017 nonfiction book, the drama follows Fern (McDormand), a widow who loses her job and house in the Great Recession and leaves her small Nevada home to become a modern-day nomad, living out of her customized van, taking seasonal jobs and traversing the American West.
Along with McDormand and Oscar-nominated character actor David Strathairn, the timely and resonant drama co-stars real-life nomads Charlene Swankie, Linda May and Bob Wells playing fictionalized versions of themselves.
Considered an Oscar front-runner, “Nomadland” already has earned high honors from the Gotham Awards, Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which I'm also a voting member.
How to see it: Full theatrical release is planned for February.
6. `Soul'
Despite the pandemic and thanks to Disney+, the animation masterminds at Pixar managed to release not one but two touching tales in 2020, with “Soul” and “Onward.” But director and co-writer Pete Docter's spiritual sequel to “Inside Out” is something special, boasting innovative visuals, creative storytelling and wonderful music that combine into a cinematic experience that is weird, profound and life-affirming.
Pixar's 23rd feature also boasts some overdue advances: Kemp Powers (who wrote the celebrated 2020 live-action drama “One Night in Miami”) becomes Pixar's first African American co-director with “Soul,” which also boasts the studio's first Black protagonist in Joe (Oscar winner Jamie Foxx), a middle-school music teacher and aspiring jazz pianist who is literally rushing to seize the chance of a lifetime when an accident puts him in a coma.
Determined to avoid “The Great Beyond,” get back to his body and finally live his longheld dream of performing with a beloved band leader (Angela Bassett), Joe's soul stumbles into “The Great Before,” where souls dwell into they find their spark and venture down to Earth.
“Soul” has already scooped up several prizes for best animated feature as well as for its Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score, and given Pixar's stellar Oscars track record, there's no reason to expect that to stop this awards season.
How to see it: Disney+.
7. `First Cow'
The latest melancholy, minimalist film from respected indie auteur Kelly Reichardt (“Meek's Cutoff,” “Wendy and Lucy,”), this frontier drama manages to be a lot things without a lot of fuss. It's a slow-moving but engrossing mystery, a stereotype-shattering Western and a tale of friendship that is stirring but not syrupy.
Gorgeously filmed on location, the period piece is set in 1820 in the wilds of Oregon Country and follows Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro), a quiet and gentle chef who is traveling with a rowdy group of fur trappers when he meets King-Lu (Orion Lee), a cunning Chinese immigrant hiding from Russian heavies. Their chance encounter turns into an unlikely friendship and then morphs into a shady but promising business opportunity when they learn that the colony's rich English Chief Factor (Toby Jones) has just obtained the territory's first milk cow.
How to see it: Amazon Prime, Hulu, Sling TV and more.
8. `Babyteeth'
Shannon Murphy (TV's “Killing Eve”) leaves a mark with her feature film directorial debut, a sharp and stinging coming-of-age dramedy written by first-time screenwriter Rita Kalnejais. The Australian independent film avoids most of the trite and timeworn tropes of the terminally ill teen subgenre, creating a genuinely haunting and heart-rending drama that viewers won't easily forget.
Eliza Scanlen (2019's “Little Women”) stars as 16-year-old Milla Finlay, the cancerstricken daughter of Henry (Ben Mendelsohn, “Captain Marvel”), a psychiatrist, and Anna (Essie Davis, “The Babadook”), a retired concert pianist. The specter of Milla's impending death has taken a steep toll on the uppermiddle-class family, and their life is further disrupted when she falls in love for the first time — with Moses (Toby Wallace, the Aussie soap opera “Neighbours”), a live-wire 23-year-old drug addict and dealer.
How to see it: Hulu, YouTube and Vudu.
9. `Over the Moon'
Oscar-winning Disney legend Glen Keane (“Dear Basketball,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Tangled”) makes his long-awaited feature film directorial debut in this visually dazzling and narratively poignant entry into Netflix's growing original animation slate.
Beautifully drawing on Chinese myth, the kaleidoscopic movie musical, produced in partnership with Shanghai-based Pearl Studio, follows brainy teen Fei Fei (Cathy Ang), who is still mourning the death of her cherished mother (Ruthie Ann Miles) when her dad (John Cho) begins a new romance with the kindly Mrs. Zhong (Sandra Oh). Desperate to preserve her mother's memory and prove the moon goddess Chang'e (Phillipa Soo) they both loved is real, Fei Fei builds a rocket to the Moon and successfully makes an unexpectedly mystical journey with an unexpected stowaway: her ornery 8-year-old future stepbrother, Chin (Robert G. Chiu). Penned by screenwriter Audrey Wells (“The Hate U Give”), who died of cancer in 2018, with additional material by Alice Wu and Jennifer Yee McDevitt, “Over the Moon” is both a breathtakingly beautiful celebration of Chinese culture and a universally relatable tale of coping with loss and change.
How to see it: Netflix.
10. `Emma.'
Before she wowed in her breakout role as a troubled chess prodigy in Netflix's smash series “The Queen's Gambit,” Anya Taylor-Joy turned in a stellar titular performance as the spoiled but well-meaning Regency Era matchmaker Emma Woodhouse in the latest cinematic take on Jane Austen's oft-adapted novel.
Working from a screenplay by Eleanor Catton, Autumn de Wilde, who makes her feature film directorial debut after helming music videos for Beck, The Raconteurs and Florence + the Machine, manages to craft a version of Austen's familiar story that is fresh, funny and faithful, which is no easy feat.
How to see it: HBO Max, Hulu, Amazon Prime and more.
Runners-up
Oklahoma filmmaker Mickey Reece's “Climate of the Hunter,” “One Night in Miami,” “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” “Wonder Woman 1984” and Oklahoma filmmaker Jacob Burns' “Shifter”
Features Writer Brandy “BAM” McDonnell covers Oklahoma's arts, entertainment and cultural sectors for The Oklahoman and Oklahoman. com. Reach her at bmcdonnell@oklahoman.com, www.facebook.com/brandybammcdonnell and twitter.com/BAMOK. Please support work by her and her colleagues by subscribing at oklahoman.com/subscribe.