My movie-watching felt a little different this year. For the first time in probably 40 years I didn’t go to a single movie in the theater. I didn’t end up watching any fewer movies, in fact I watched quite a few more than the last couple years, in part because one of my pandemic routines was watching part of a movie almost every morning while running on a treadmill. Not quite the same as the big screen experience, but not a bad way to motivate myself to get up and run every day. Since most of the movies I watched this year were on Amazon or Netflix, there aren’t a whole lot of movies on the list that I didn’t like. If I started something that sucked, say Lovebirds, or Army of the Dead, then I just stopped and moved on to a better one. Without the big screen I’d say there weren’t as many highs, the movies that I loved that just blew me away, but there was at least something I enjoyed about every movie on the list. Usually I take great pleasure in writing about the worst movie I saw in a given year, but in 2020/2021 I actually enjoyed my lowest ranked film. But I am certainly ready to return to the theater. Ok, enough of an introduction. On to the movies.
51. Hubie Halloween This is a pretty bad movie starring Adam Sandler as a small town goofball who lives for Halloween, but is forced to help solve a mystery when people start disappearing on Halloween night. Our whole family watched the movie together around Halloween and we all got some laughs, so mission accomplished, Netflix.
50. Time Time is a documentary filmed by a woman whose husband is incarcerated as she fights for his release from jail. It documents her journey raising five children and struggling against the judicial system for nearly two decades. Over the course of the film we see the mother age from her twenties to middle age, see her sons grow up, and she never gives up hope that she and her husband will be reunited. The movie was nominated for Best Documentary, but I found it disappointing. There were far too many scenes of the mother just sitting on hold waiting for someone to give her information about her husband. For a movie that was filmed over decades, you’d think they could edit it down to something a little more vibrant. When I read the description of the movie I thought it was about a family fighting for someone wrongly imprisoned, but in this case the husband was in prison after pleading guilty to an armed robbery that he admittedly did commit. Maybe that shouldn’t matter, but it made it harder for me to get emotionally invested in the film.
49. Lovers Rock The second episode in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology (no, not that Steve McQueen, it’s the Steve McQueen that won Best Picture for 12 Years A Slave), Lovers Rock was probably the only one of the five films that didn’t really resonate with me. It’s an hour long slice-of-life movie portraying a house party in London’s West Indian community. It’s mostly about music and community, and fits within the whole of the anthology, but as a stand-alone, not much happens and it didn’t do much for me.
48. Without Remorse I was excited for this Tom Clancy adaptation as a potentially exciting action movie, but it ended up being basically a Liam Neeson movie without Liam Neeson. There is a cottage industry of these types of revenge thrillers now - a guy who happens to possess a certain set of skills (in this case Michael B. Jordan plays a Navy Seal) has his wife/kids/dog murdered/kidnapped/attacked and then he sets out to exact revenge. The type of thing Liam Neeson has made a career of. I suppose if you’ve never seen one of these movies before this would be interesting but having seen approximately 17 variations on this story in the last decade, I thought it was a dud.
47. Alex Wheatle Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology features five films that look at the life of London’s West Indian community in the 70’s and 80’s. The five stories aren’t intertwined in any way, but collectively they explore the themes of community, music,institutional racism, and inequality. It was interesting, but heartbreaking to see these stories (four of them are based on true stories) that mirror much of the racism and inequality that have happened, and continue to happen in the United States. Alex Wheatle is now a children’s book author, but when we meet him in the story he is a young man growing up in an institutionalized foster home, searching for his identity. After growing up around a mostly white community, he begins to forge his identity as he meets members of the West Indian community, and develops a passion for music. There are interesting parts, but at just over an hour long, the story didn’t quite feel complete - I found myself wanting to know a little more about this man and how he ended up being an author, but this movie is just a slice of his young adult life.
46. Midnight Sky When I heard that George Clooney was releasing a mostly one-man movie set in the arctic, I was intrigued. An unexplained natural disaster has made Earth mostly uninhabitable, and Clooney is alone on an Arctic research base, the only person that can warn a group of astronauts not to return home. The premise is intriguing, but the execution doesn’t quite work, mainly because it feels extremely derivative of a couple of earlier movies. If the premise sounds interesting to you, save yourself the time and instead watch Arctic, with Mads Miklelson, and then Arrival, a movie that has grown on me as a true sci-fi classic.
45. Project Power In a year starved for action movies, I was willing to watch anything with a fight scene that looked halfway decent. And halfway decent was exactly what this movie was. In New Orleans a new drug shows up on the streets that gives users superpowers for 5 minutes. You don’t know what your power is going to be until you take the pill. A teenager, a cop (Jason Gordon-Levitt) and a soldier (Jamie Foxx) team up to try to take down whoever is manufacturing the drug. It sticks pretty closely to the Netflix formula of putting A list actors in a B movie and putting together some decent action with average production values. It’s nothing special, but it’s a watchable action movie, and there weren’t many of those this year.
44. Atlantics Atlantics is set in Dakar, Senegal, and it’s ultimately a love story between Soulieman, a young man that works in construction, and Ada, a young woman who has been promised in marriage to a wealthy man that she doesn’t care for. When Soulieman and his fellow construction workers don’t get paid for a couple of months, they decide to leave by boat to seek a better life. When the small boat disappears at sea, strange things start to happen with the relatives and friends of the men who disappeared. Ada is convinced that Soulieman is still alive. The movie feels a bit unpolished, but it is unique and has some unexpected twists.
43. First Cow First Cow got such good reviews it was one of the ten or so movies that I actually paid to watch this year (rather than just streaming on a service I already had). It wasn’t worth it. It’s a nice story about a cook traveling with fur trappers and a Chinese immigrant that cross paths and become companions. There are some moments of great kindness and tenderness but overall the movie just drags. If you’ve seen any of director Kelly Reichart’s movies like Wendy and Lucy or Meek’s Cutoff you know that they are contemplative films that highlight quiet moments. They are the kind of movie that critics love, but frankly are just too slow for me to enjoy.
42. Mank Mank tells the story of Herman Mankiewicz in 1940 as he writes the screenplay for the legendary movie Citizen Kane. It has its moments, as Gary Oldman (playing Mank) and Amanda Seyfried (as Marion Davies) bring incredible performances to the screen, but this kind of period piece isn’t really my kind of movie. Nominated for Best Picture.
41. Da 5 Bloods Spike Lee is one of our greatest directors. Do The Right Thing is in my opinion an all-time great film, and he’s made a lot of other terrific movies. I like a lot of his recent work too - Inside Man and BlacKkKlansman are two of his best movies. But he’s also made some movies that just weren’t that interesting, and this movie fits into that category. This was a movie released on Netflix that got great reviews, and a lot of people were surprised it didn’t get nominated for Best Picture. I don’t see it. It’s a movie about 5 Vietnam veterans that decide to go back to Vietnam to look for gold that they buried while they were on a mission. To me it felt like a typical Netflix original - good cast, good director, and even a good premise, but half baked in the execution. The cast is good - Delroy Lindo in particular is really interesting as a bitter man that still hasn’t gotten over what he lost in the war. But the dialogue and the plot just feel contrived, like how they find the treasure and what happens once they do. It’s not bad as far as Netflix movies go, but for a Spike Lee movie I was expecting a lot more.
40. Blindspotting Blindspotting is the story of a couple of lifelong friends that grew up together in Oakland. One of the young men only has a couple of days left on his felony probation before he can move out of a halfway house. He’s trying to stay clean and move on with his life, but his volatile friend continually drags him into dangerous situations (getting in fights, leaving a gun out that gets found by his toddler son, etc). They also witness an act of violence by a white police officer on a black man that leaves both of them deeply shaken. It’s a fascinating movie that addresses issues of race, policing, and gentrification (they both work for a moving company in Oakland so they have to deal with the issue all the time) without ever feeling preachy about the issues. The characters in the movie felt trapped by the violence and trauma of their childhood, which made it interesting, but it also made it hard for me to watch at times as the two of them consistently made bad decisions that put themselves and the people around them at risk.
39. Education Education is the heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful conclusion to the Small Axe anthology from Steve McQueen. It’s the story of Kingsley, a 12 year-old boy and the son of West Indian immigrants living in London. When Kingsley is disruptive in school, he is sent to a reform school, supposedly to get him the help he needs. The school is an atrocity, where profoundly disabled children, but mostly children of color, are sent to languish while receiving almost no education. Kingsley’s parents are slow to recognize just what is happening to their son, but a group of activists from the West Indian community begin to come together and fight for their children that have essentially been institutionalized. Without minimizing the inequality and inhumanity of the struggle, McQueen again returns to the theme of community coming together to overcome systemic racism in this excellent series.
38. Stowaway The nice thing about Netflix movies is that it’s easy to start them, and if they aren’t any good, you just flip to the next one. I was fully expecting to do that with Stowaway, but ended up sticking around for the whole ride. Anna Kendrick, Daniel Day Kim (Jin from Lost!) and Toni Collette play a 3 man crew on a spaceship headed for Mars. An accident on the landing pad leaves an extra man trapped on board. It’s pretty standard fare, not really sci-fi but set in space, with a moral dilemma on hand. I knew the premise and thought it probably would be too predictable, which maybe it was, but darn if I didn’t get hooked into caring about the characters and wanting to find out what happens. Not bad for a Netflix original.
37. The Ride This movie on Amazon felt a little bit like a fancy made-for-tv movie, but I still really enjoyed it. Based on a true story, Shane Graham plays John Buultjens, a young man locked up in juvenile detention after getting in a violent fight with his skinhead dad. While he’s in custody he ends up coming to live with a multi-racial family (Sasha Alexander and Ludacris) that wants to adopt him. The family gets off to a rough start, but eventually John bonds with his adoptive parents, and ends up becoming a world class BMX rider. It’s predictable, but this kind of thing always pulls at my heartstrings.
36. Bad Education Bad Education is the true story of a Long Island school district with a star superintendent and an outstanding academic reputation. It was also the home of the largest embezzlement scheme in public school history. Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney are excellent as the superintendent and his second in command, and Ray Romano continues his run as a surprisingly good serious actor, playing the school board head, all brought down by a student reporter that stumbles onto the story.
35. The Trial of the Chicago 7 This film was nominated for Best Picture, over many films that were more deserving. It’s certainly watchable, but to me felt derivative and not as good as many other courtroom films. The movie was written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, who has a great resume, including the far superior courtroom drama A Few Good Men. The Chicago 7 were a group of anti-Vietnam war protesters arrested and accused of inciting riots outside the Democratic National Convention in 1968. The movie sports an all-star cast, but Sascha Baron Cohen steals the show as Abbie Hoffman, the group’s most famous member, and court jester. It’s certainly watchable, but it failed to make me feel strongly about any of the characters, and the final scene veered so far into melodrama it left me saying “Oh come on!” at a moment that was meant to be a powerful conclusion.
34. The Old Guard In a year with a scarcity of action movies, The Old Guard was a welcome diversion. Charlize Theron plays the leader of a group of immortal heroes that fight as mercenaries over the centuries. There’s nothing especially memorable about the movie, but solid acting makes the characters interesting, and there are some good action scenes, which is something I didn’t say very often in the last year.
32. Ford vs Ferrari Matt Damon plays car designer Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale plays British driver Ken Miles, who set out to create a car that can beat Ferrari in the 24 hours of Le Mans race. It took me a while to get around to watching this because I felt like I knew exactly what the movie was going to be like. It was predictable, but the acting is good, the story is crisp, and it ended up being a fun watch.
31. Selah and the Spades Selah is the leader of the Spades, the most powerful of five groups that run student life at a prestigious East Coast boarding school. This is an Amazon movie that is almost great. It looks great - the boarding school setting, the students (although many of them would have a hard time passing as actual high school students), and some great monologues about being a young woman in high school and the pressures of the boarding school environment. While it has great style and good characters, it feels a bit over the top at times, and the ending doesn’t quite land. It’s the first movie from director Tayarisha Poe, and I’m excited to see what she does next.
30. Beautiful Boy In Beautiful Boy Timothy Chalamet plays a son struggling with addiction, and Steve Carrell stars as his father trying to get him help. Both actors do a solid job portraying the toll that addiction takes on a family. It’s based on a true story, and it feels discouraging at times as the family deals with the pain of addiction and the constant fear of relapse. It’s ultimately hopeful, but not necessarily fun to watch the family’s struggles.
29. Hillbilly Elegy Hillbilly Elegy is a 2016 memoir by JD Vance, a young man that was raised in Appalachia and graduated from Yale Law School. It was a book that shot to the top of the bestseller list after Trump was elected, supposedly a window into life in Trump Country (from someone that safely made it out). I enjoyed the book quite a bit, and thought that the movie was a faithful, but not necessarily spectacular adaptation. It didn’t get a great critical reception, which I didn’t quite understand. Glen Close does a nice job (and is unrecognizable) as the matriarch of a family that is trying to overcome poverty, addiction, mental illness, and violence. The book is better of course, but I thought the movie was still worth watching.
28. Eurovision: The Story of Fire Saga If I’m being honest with myself, this isn’t a very good movie, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it tremendously. Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams play a comically bad singing duo that are chosen to represent Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest after every other contestant from Iceland meets a terrible accident. I can tell you right now whether you will like this movie - if you like Will Ferrell, you will almost certainly enjoy it. If you’re not a Will Ferrell fan because you don’t like funny things, then you’re probably better off using your time on Netflix to watch another episode of The Crown.
27. Good Trouble Our family watched this last Spring shortly after John Lewis died. The documentary is a fitting tribute to a great American. I knew a little about Lewis, but the movie filled in a lot of the details of his life and political career that I didn’t know. It’s hard to watch this and not come away in awe of a man that spent his life fighting for civil rights and voting rights. Lewis was a pivotal part in so many important moments in our country’s history, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that our country is a better place because of his legacy.
26. Hunt for the Wilderpeople If you’ve ever seen one of Taika Waititi’s movies (Thor Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit, What We Do In the Shadows) you know that he has a certain joyful whimsy to his films. Even when they deal with serious material, there is a playfulness that makes the movies fun. In Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Ricky Baker is a 12 year old foster child that is sent to live in rural New Zealand with a charming foster “auntie” and grumpy foster “uncle”. It’s impossible not to root for Ricky on his adventures trying to stay one step ahead of law enforcement in the New Zealand bush.
25. I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore When a lonely single woman has her home broken into, she sets out to find the culprits. She enlists help from her oddball neighbor (Elijah Wood, aka Frodo), and they end up getting drawn further and further into a criminal underworld. The movie has a surprising charm, especially in the interactions between the misfit characters that populate the film. The final act is extremely violent, which took away some from my enjoyment of what was mostly a quirky, interesting movie.
24. Chemical Hearts In Chemical Hearts, Henry Page is a high school senior and editor of the school newspaper. At the start of the year, a new girl transfers to the school and the two of them gradually fall for each other. As they get to know each other, Henry starts to learn more about her heartbreaking past, and what led her to transfer to a new school as a senior. It’s a pretty standard teen romance film, but has some real depth and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit, even if most of the “high school” actors looked like they were actually about 25 years old.
23. I Am Not Your Negro Remember This House was the name of a book that James Baldwin started to write about the assasinations of Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evars. Baldwin never finished the book, but the documentary, narrated by Samuel Jackson, fleshes out what Baldwin did write, alongside interviews and writing from the rest of Baldwin’s life. I was familiar with Baldwin, but didn’t know much about him before seeing this excellent movie. Baldwin was a brilliant writer and speaker, and his words hit me especially hard when I watched it shortly after the murder of George Floyd. There were so many powerful Baldwin’s quotes in this movie, and one that really stuck with me was “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it has been faced.” I have a small sliver of hope that the events of this past year are the beginning of our country facing our racist past, and that facing this history could lead to real change.
22. Vivarium In Vivarium, Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots play a young couple buying their first house. When a real estate agent drops them off at the new home, things start to get strange. Every house in the development looks exactly the same, but no one seems to be home. Then they realize that they can’t figure out how to leave. The next morning, a mysterious package arrives at their door, and things get really weird. It’s a dark mystery that won’t appeal to everyone but is definitely unique.
21. The Way Back Ben Affleck plays a washed up, alcoholic construction worker that used to be the star player at a local Catholic school before giving up the game. Many years later he’s asked to take over coaching the team mid-season when the current coach has health problems. From the trailers I thought this would be the standard basketball redemption movie where the down on his luck coach takes a ragtag team and turns them into winners. That’s not quite what this was. The movie is really more about the coach than the team, and the coach’s problems turn out to be a lot more deep-seated than say, Norman Dale in Hoosiers. The movie doesn’t have the same kind of story arc and Redemption Through Winning The Big Game plot that most of these sports movies have, and that was a good thing.
20. Red, White, and Blue Another terrific movie in the Small Axe series from Steve McQueen. The Small Axe name comes from a Bob Marley song (“If you are a big tree, we are a small axe, ready to cut you down”). Music is one theme that runs throughout the anthology, and another is the fight against institutionalized racism and inequality. In Red, White, and Blue, John Boyega plays Leroy Logan, a young man who decides to become a police officer after his father is brutally beaten and arrested for no reason. He is an excellent recruit and officer, but when he makes claims that he wants to help reform the police department from within, he’s met by discrimination and blatant racism from fellow officers and resistance from his own family, still distrustful of law enforcement. Boyega is great, and it’s a movie that is thought-provoking without providing any easy answers.
19. Ad Astra Brad Pitt plays an astronaut that takes on a space mission to find out what happened to the Lima Project. The Lima Project was led by the legendary Clifford McBride (played by Tommy Lee Jones), who just so happens to be Pitt’s father. I suppose this could be considered a science fiction movie because it’s set in space, but like most of the space movies I’ve watched the last few years, it's really more about the journey the character is on. In fact the few “action” scenes in the movie almost seemed tacked on to make the movie a little more exciting. Overall, Pitt is excellent, and the movie is very watchable if not necessarily memorable.
18. 20 Feet From Stardom This movie is a few years old, but I stumbled across this Best Documentary winner on Netflix earlier this year. 20 Feet documents the lives of some of the great backup singers in pop and rock music. It’s a revelation. The music itself is terrific, but the best part of the movie is getting to know the stories of the women that have provided the backing harmonies for countless songs over the years. Their stories and personalities are captivating, and I can truly say that it made me listen to music in a different way.
17. Map of Tiny Perfect Things We’ve reached the point where time loop movies have almost become their own genre. Groundhog Day will always be the original and best version, but now we have The Day After Tomorrow (sci fi Groundhog Day), Happy Death Day (Horror Groundhog Day), Palm Springs (Adult Drama Groundhog Day), the TV show Russian Doll, and the most recent entry, Map of Tiny Perfect Things (coming of age Groundhog Day). I’m here for it all. No, it’s not Groundhog Day, and it’s not even Palm Springs (up near the top of the list this year), but it’s still fun. In this version a teenage boy is trapped in the same day, but one day sees a young woman that he’s never seen before. In all of these movies the main character seems to have to go through some growth and maybe make the world a better place as they try to figure out why they’re living the same day over and over again, and how to get out. No big surprises, but worth a watch.
16. Concrete Cowboy Concrete Cowboy tells the story of the real-life Fletcher Street Riders, a group of African American horseback riders in the middle of Philadelphia. It’s told as a coming of age story about a teenager named Cole, sent to live with his father (Idris Elba) in Philadelphia after getting into too much trouble with his mother in Detroit. Cole eventually has to choose between the trouble he’s getting into on the streets with his old childhood friends and the community that his dad and the other riders are a part of. The cinematography is terrific, the camera work capturing the beauty of the horses and their owners in the middle of a seemingly run-down urban neighborhood. One of the best parts that I didn’t realize until the end credits is that most of the actors in the movie are members of the actual riding community in Philadelphia. This is a real hidden gem.
15. 7500 In a year without any blockbusters or big Hollywood movies, some of my biggest surprises were small movies I found on Amazon Prime like this one. 7500 stars Joseph Gordon Levitt as the pilot of a plane that gets hijacked. It’s a streamlined film - not a ton of character development, not a ton of plot or outside story. Almost the entire movie takes place in the cockpit with only a couple of actors. But it crackles with intensity, the storytelling is tight, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
14. My Octopus Teacher It still amazes me that such a small film ended up attracting such a wide audience, eventually winning Best Documentary. The movie follows Craig Foster, a burnt out filmmaker who decides to spend a year snorkeling every day in the kelp forest near his home in South Africa. During the course of the year he observes and gets to know the octopus that lives in the kelp forest. It’s not spectacular, but it’s mesmerizing, and perhaps most importantly speaks to the healing power of nature and the value of spending time in wilderness. As an Ecology teacher that encourages my students to love and spend time in nature, the movie resonated deeply with me.
13. Foster This was a gem of a movie I found on HBO. Foster is a documentary that looks at the lives of families in Los Angeles that are involved with the foster care system. It’s a subject that is close to my heart, but I think that everyone should watch this movie. We hear from children that are in foster care, see a young man that is struggling to care for his newborn daughter after his girlfriend falls into drug addiction, and follow a single foster mom who is caring for a huge group of children, including several with special needs. The movie is heartbreaking at times, but also hopeful. Having been involved with the foster care world for nearly a decade, I could tell that all of the families had a lot of struggle ahead of them, and that some of the stories probably wouldn’t have happy endings. But it is also important that work like this highlights the humanity and the beauty of the people whose lives are involved with the foster care system. If you want to see a true hero, I’m not sure there was a better example in any movie this year than the foster mom at the center of this film.
12. Dick Johnson is Dead Dick Johnson is Dead is a one-of-a-kind documentary. Dick Johnson is the father of the filmmaker (Kristin Johnson), a wonderful, humorous, loving father, who is in the early stages of dementia. Having lost her mother years earlier to dementia, Kristin Johnson is determined to document as much of the time left as she has with her dad. But in a somewhat strange twist, she also uses the movie to stage comical scenes of her dad dying (with his approval), as a way of helping both of them deal with the impending loss. It sounds like a strange premise, but it’s a wonderful movie. There are so many poignant moments between father and daughter, and touching moments as Dick Johnson talks about his family and his late wife. For anyone that has seen family members suffer from dementia it is heartbreaking at times, but so moving. It’s a movie about death, but in some ways it feels uplifting. There are many tear-jerking moments in the film, but the movie is really more about love than it is about death. Dick Johnson was one of my favorite characters in any movie this year.
11. Crip Camp As much as I loved My Octopus Teacher, the movie I thought should have won Best Documentary was Crip Camp. The best documentaries can take you into a world you might not know much about, inspire you to care about something, and show us the lives of interesting characters. Crip Camp does all of those things. Camp Jened was a short-lived camp for disabled teenagers in the Catskills in the 1970’s. The first half of the movie is a wonderful tribute to the camp, the counselors, and most of all the young people who found community and acceptance at Camp Jened. If that was all the movie was about, it still would have been interesting, but the second half of the movie goes on to show us what the young men and women who came of age at the camp went to do with their lives, and how they truly changed the world. It’s an inspiring story of the fight for equal rights, and how many of these campers played a crucial role in legislation like the Americans with Disabilities Act. It’s a powerful and inspiring film.
10. Mangrove My favorite of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology films, Mangrove is a vibrant courtroom drama set in Britain. The Mangrove is a Carribean restaurant that becomes the hub of Britain’s West Indian community, until it becomes the target of frequent raids by racist police. When the owner and community take to the street to protest, they are arrested and threatened with years in prison. It’s not necessarily fair to compare movies just because they are in the same genre, but it was hard for me not to put this side by side with The Trial of the Chicago 7, another courtroom drama that came out around the same time. The Chicago 7 was nominated for Best Picture, but I thought Mangrove was a far superior film. McQueen does a great job of capturing the sounds and feel of the restaurant and surrounding community, and it feels like there is more at stake in the courtroom than just the sentences of the men and women on trial.
9. The Last Black Man in San Francisco My favorite scene in any movie the entire year is the first five minutes of The Last Black Man in San Francisco. It’s a beautifully shot, beautifully scored scene of the two main characters skateboarding down the hills of San Francisco, while a neighborhood resident narrates from his soapbox about the city that used to exist changing in the face of gentrification. It ends with Jimmie Fails, who stars in and wrote the movie, standing in front of his childhood house. His family lost the house years ago, but he still sneaks back to touch up the paint and do upkeep when the current residents are out. It’s a touching story about home and loss, and a tribute to a San Francisco that isn’t the same as the one tourists see. The score by Emile Mosseri really adds to the movie, especially that first scene - true cinematic perfection.
8. Inside Inside was one of the last movies I watched this year, and a fitting end to this pandemic year of movies. Inside is a Netflix comedy (sort of) special filmed by Bo Burnham, alone in his home over the course of the past year. It’s equal parts comedy and tragedy. If you don’t know Bo Burnham, he’s a very talented YouTube comedian and musician, who has recently branched out into directing (the excellent Eighth Grade) and acting (Promising Young Woman). He rose to fame on a series of irreverent songs he posted on YouTube when he was a teenager, and he’s been a popular internet personality ever since. He’s also a comedic genius. Burnham made Inside without a crew of any kind. He is truly alone the entire film. The show has some great comedy bits, like the song White Woman’s Instagram, and a video where he starts out singing a song, then films a reaction video of himself playing the song, and then a reaction video to that reaction video, and so on. It’s laugh out loud funny stuff. But what makes Inside so memorable is the toll that the pandemic and making the video seems to take on his mental health. As the year goes on his hair and beard grow longer, he often looks like he hasn’t showered in days, and he breaks down a couple times on camera. He talks about the struggles he’s had with mental health and how it led him to quit performing in the past, and he really seems to struggle as the year goes on. Who among us can’t relate? Of course it’s impossible to know what is acting here, and what is “real”, since Burnham was the one that edited the film and decided what to keep in, but it was hard for me to watch at times - I felt like I was watching someone doing their best to stay afloat, but gradually having a breakdown. I think a lot of us have felt that way this year. As soon as I finished watching I Googled “Bo Burnham” and the first search suggestion that came up was “Is Bo Burnham ok?” Clearly I was not the only one concerned for this young man after watching the film. Despite being listed as a comedy special, I thought this was one of the more emotional movies I watched all year, while reminding me for the 100th time of the importance of human connection.
7. The White Tiger One of the best Netflix originals that I’ve seen, The White Tiger is an adaptation of the novel by Aravind Adiga. It’s the story of a young man that rises from the slums of India to become the owner of the successful White Tiger Taxi Company. The lead character, Balram, is played by newcomer Adarsh Gourav, who perfectly captures the combination of earnestness, humility, and eventually cunning that help him rise to the top. It’s a story that has numerous twists and turns, all told through Balram’s narration as he wrestles with being a loyal servant, an idea that is ingrained not just in his brain, but in the social caste he is trying to escape. It’s a smart, dark, movie that didn’t get much publicity but I think should have been a Best Picture nominee.
6. The Vast of Night The only thing that makes me hesitant to rank this movie in my top 10 is that I don’t want to hype it too much. It’s a hidden gem, a perfect example of a movie that I went into with low expectations and was thrilled by how great it was. It’s set in a small town in New Mexico in the 1950’s, with almost the entire town deserted because everyone is at a high school basketball game. A couple of teens, one working as a switchboard operator, the other as a radio DJ, discover a strange frequency being broadcast over the airwaves. As they try to figure out what is going on it leads to more mysteries and more questions. It’s a simple movie, but the atmosphere is what makes it so great. It does a great job capturing the feel of a 1950’s small town. There are long tracking shots as the two main characters make their way through the town, and one shot in particular as they walk through the gym with the basketball game in the background is incredible. It’s less about what happens in the film as how it feels, and it has a great feel. The movie was directed by Andrew Patterson, a first time director, and I’m pretty sure it’s a sign of great things to come.
5. Palm Springs Another worthy entry in the time loop genre. Andy Samberg plays a wedding guest that inadvertently gets trapped re-living the same crappy wedding over and over again, waking up each morning with a girlfriend that he knows is going to cheat on him by the end of the day. Some days he enjoys it, giving a great wedding toast that charms all the guests, but most of the time he’s depressed, giving in to the meaninglessness of his existence. Unlike Groundhog Day, we meet the lead character when he’s been in the loop for a long time, so we don’t know exactly how he got here or how long he’s been living the same day. Eventually, a couple more people get pulled into the loop (an adversary and a love interest, of course), and they try to figure out life as well as try to figure out how to get out of the loop. A charming movie in every way.
4. Promising Young Woman Promising Young Woman is certainly a memorable movie. In fact it probably stuck with me more than any other movie this year. It’s not easy to watch. Carrie Mulligan gives one of the best performances of the year as a woman that goes to bars every weekend, pretends to be drunk to the point of being incapacitated, then waits for a “nice guy” to take her home. As soon as she’s about to be taken advantage of she flips the tables and exacts her revenge. If that sounds dark, it’s really just the setup. Gradually we find out more about the trauma that is driving her behavior. It’s an unflinching movie that takes aim at the worst of male behavior. I’ve talked to some people that watched the movie and thought it was too much, but that was kind of the point. Director Emerald Fennell (who I’d never heard of before, but seems like she has great things ahead of her) doesn’t pull any punches. It doesn’t shy away from the toll that that sexual assault takes on its victims long after everyone else has moved on. I couldn’t help but think of Brett Kavanaugh while I was watching this movie, the “family man” who has moved on all the way to the supreme court.
3. Sound of Metal A simple, but achingly beautiful film. Riz Amhed plays Ruben, a drummer in a two person metal/punk band, alongside his girlfriend and lead singer Lou (played by Olivia Cooke). While on tour, his world is upended when he starts to lose his hearing. The second half of the film is especially memorable as Ruben goes to live in a deaf community for recovering addicts. The support he finds as he tries to come to grips with his losses is powerful. Most of the actors in the film are deaf themselves, and it was fascinating to read about the lengths the director went to to make sure that it was an accurate portrayal of the deaf community. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the movie is the sound. The sound design puts you in Ruben’s head for much of the movie, hearing muffled speech, buzzing, and even long periods of quiet. It’s a movie I wish I could have seen in the theater, and very worthy of every accolade it received (winner for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, as well as nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor).
2. Nomadland Nomadland follows Fern (Frances McDormand) as she travels around American following the loss of her husband and the collapse of her town after the Great Recession. As she travels around the country “living the van life” she strings together odd jobs and meets an incredible community of fellow nomads. Most of the people in the film aren’t actors, they are true nomads that took part in the film, which adds an unmatched level of authenticity. It’s an intentionally slow movie, beautifully shot, and focused not so much on a destination but on the journey of the film. At its heart the movie isn’t just about nomads, it’s also about loss, and the different ways that people deal with grief. Who would have thought that a real-life creator of a Youtube channel called Cheap RV Living would provide perhaps the most moving scene in any movie this year. What a heartachingly beautiful film.
1. Tenet There is a scene in Christopher Nolan’s classic, Memento, where Guy Pierce’s character turns to his wife and says “Haven’t you read that book before? Doesn’t the enjoyment come from not knowing what comes next?” It seems like a throwaway line, but having seen all of Nolan’s movies, I’ve come to realize that this line is perhaps the central tenet (get it?) in all of his work. In nearly every one of his films he flips the timeline in some way, so that we think we know what to expect, and then turns that expectation on its head. In Tenet, breakout star John David Washington (Denzel’s son) stars as The Protagonist, a mysterious character that is barely a step ahead of the audience (or maybe a step behind) in understanding the convoluted plot. Without giving too much away, the story involves time travel, and a group of people that are working to prevent a future war that might end the world. It’s intentionally challenging to follow. Characters wear masks and speak in accents that sometimes makes it tricky to hear the dialogue. There are different timelines and scenes repeated from different points of view. The temptation with an action movie this spectacular (easily the best action and fight scenes of the year) is to turn off your brain and watch the spectacle. But Nolan, even in superhero movies and action films, challenges you to use your brain to try to solve the puzzle within the story. His style isn’t for everyone, but it’s made him my all-time favorite director, a true original during an era where action movies are almost exclusively sequels and remakes. This movie has flaws, and for some those flaws will probably keep them from enjoying the movie, but for people like me that love smart action and science fiction movies, Nolan’s work always keeps us looking forward to what comes next.
Bonus Section: A sentence about some of the older movies and TV shows I watched last year.
The Queen’s Gambit Who would have thought I would enjoy something this much that was about chess?
Schitt’s Creek After hearing everyone tell me how great the series I finally started watching, and they were right. I’m halfway through season 3.
Space Force I think I am the only person that liked it, but I thought this series starring Steve Carrell as head of the newly formed Space Force was really funny.
WandaVision I am loving this new era of Marvel and Star Wars on Disney +. This was my favorite of the Marvel series, a mystery within the larger Marvel universe.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Solid action series that maybe took itself a little too seriously but was still really fun.
Loki Only one episode out, but so far so good.
The Mandalorian I LOVED season 2 of this series, to the point where the final episode was maybe one of my all time favorite episodes of any show ever. I watched the final scene (from the point where the lone X wing shows up) 5 times.
Inception An all timer for me, maybe Christopher Nolan’s greatest work.
Memento An all timer for me, maybe Christopher Nolan’s greatest work.
The Prestige Only Christopher Nolan could make a movie about dueling magicians this interesting.
There Will Be Blood Went back and re-watched this after talking with some friends about how great it is, but it still makes me so uncomfortable I just can’t enjoy it.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail I have watched this so many times and still think it’s funny. My 12 year-old daughter gets bonus points for laughing even harder than I did while watching it the first time.
The Phantom Menace After watching The Mandalorian my daughter and I went on a Star Wars kick. This one is still the worst of all the Star Wars movies. This movie could have been soooo much better.
Attack of the Clones Slightly better than The Phantom Menace, but still not great. But for me a bad Star Wars movie is like bad pizza. I’m still glad it’s there, and I’m still probably going to enjoy it.
Revenge of the Sith The best of the Star Wars prequels, the scenes where Chancellor Palpatine seduces Annakin to the dark side are actually pretty great.
Solo: A Star Wars Story A standalone movie about young Han Solo, it doesn’t really feel like a Star Wars movie, but I really enjoyed it.
Rogue One I need to take the time to rank all the Star Wars movies, but I think this would probably come in 5th for me, behind the original trilogy and The Force Awakens
A New Hope Still my all-time favorite movie, I’ve probably seen A New Hope more than 40 times, and never get tired of it.
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