OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Top 10s from 2020

A couple of lists of movies that our reviewer thinks are the best, or at least ones that are inextricably linked to this strange year.

Frances McDormand stars in director Chloe Zhao’s film “Nomadland” as a woman living rootlessly across the American West after the Great Recession. (Searchlight Pictures/AP)
Frances McDormand stars in director Chloe Zhao’s film “Nomadland” as a woman living rootlessly across the American West after the Great Recession. (Searchlight Pictures/AP)

I miss movie theaters.

We have been a few times over the past months, mostly on weekend afternoons. Usually, we have the theater to ourselves. It's better than watching at home, and not just because these days we'll take any excuse to get out of the house for a while.

We like the trailers, the sinking into the luxe seats, the giving over of ourselves to the color on the screen and the noise stirring through the auditorium. A movie is not content; a movie is a civic ritual meant to be observed in public space amid fellow congregants.

Still, we are not hurting for content. Every day five or six or more links to online screeners arrive in my email inbox. For the past month, most days also see the arrival of a couple of "For Your Consideration" DVDs in the mail. My wife, Karen, gets them too, and since she's in more critics' groups than I am, sometimes she gets different ones. Sometimes she forwards her emails to me, so I can open them on my iPad and try to send them to our flat-screen TV. Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn't. So the other night we watched Paul Greengrass' "News of the World" on an iPad propped up on our coffee table. I like the film, but wonder if I might have responded to Dariusz Wolski's open range cinematography differently had I watched it properly, in a theatrical setting.

As it was, we concluded that as enjoyable as the movie is, it leans too heavily on Tom Hanks' inherent decency. It's a well-made star vehicle, an old-fashioned cowboy film evocative of John Ford's "The Searchers." But not a Top 10 film, we heartlessly decided.

But at least we watched it — invariably some will be missed. We only ran into the "News of the World" screening link because we were looking for a link to Emerald Fennell's "Promising Young Woman." We found it, but saw "News of the World" sitting right next to it, and clicked on Greengrass's film instead.

We will see "Promising Young Woman" because Fennell is the "Killing Eve" showrunner and Carey Mulligan is an actor whose work is always worth checking out. But we'll miss something that I'll eventually regret not putting on one of the following lists of the best films of 2020.

Not that it matters much, for someone will put "News of the World" on their Top 10 list and someone else will put "Promising Young Woman" on theirs. I only assemble these lists as a way to try to force some sense into a year that has felt dangerously shapeless. Because it's what movie critics do at the end of the year.

And because it's fun and possibly even helpful to look at lists of favorite things assembled by well-meaning people in the spirit of "check this out." So please, when you get the chance, check these movies out.

TOP 10 FILMS OF 2020

1. "Nomadland" — Most years there are one or two movies that feel intrinsically tied to their moment in time. Last year, it was Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite," the year before it was Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma" and Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Shoplifters," in 2010 it was Debra Granik's "Winter's Bone." There's always some movie that seems to be, for lack of a more accurate signifier, the movie of the year.

These aren't necessarily the best or most important, movies produced in a given year, only that I will always remember exactly where I was in my life when I first watched them. In the future, whenever I think back on 2020 I will remember Chloe Zhao's understated meditation on our current American wilderness and the people who, by choice or necessity, wander it.

Zhao's film — which screened in October at the Arkansas Cinema Society's Filmland event and is scheduled to open in theaters in February — embeds a fictional character, Frances McDormand's Fern, in the otherwise nearly completely real world of houseless van dwellers who follow seasonal work from town to town across the West.

The director employs only a handful of actors, with the rest of her cast playing versions of themselves in this surprisingly gentle eulogy for the American dream. There is some comfort in thinking that, stripped of almost everything, we might still light out for the territory to find comfort and community beneath the notice of those who can, for a while, still pretend to the middle class.

Director Lee Isaac Chung (left) and Steven Yeun pose for a portrait to promote the film “Minari” during the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27 in Park City, Utah. (AP)
Director Lee Isaac Chung (left) and Steven Yeun pose for a portrait to promote the film “Minari” during the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27 in Park City, Utah. (AP)

2."Minari" — Lee Isaac Chung's gentle Arkansas-set (but Oklahoma-shot) family drama — which seems surely drawn from the director's memories of growing up on a small farm in Washington County with South Korean immigrant parents — was a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It is, as Arkansas Cinema Society's executive director Kathryn Tucker said the other day, "a perfect movie" in that it never admits a false note or hedges toward (or away from) sentimentality.

It is a simple, specific story populated with full characters and wonderfully acted by a terrific ensemble cast, which includes Will Patton as an addled but hard-working neighbor whose presence is initially discomfiting, and young Alan S. Kim, 7 years old at the time of filming, who is alternately heartbreaking and adorable as the youngest member of the family. "Minari" is scheduled for theatrical release in February, but will likely be given a special Arkansas premiere.

3. "Driveways" — Andrew Ahn's "Driveways," which debuted on streaming platforms in May, is similar to "Minari" in a few respects. It is a tender and hopeful film that focuses on a friendship between an 8-year-old Asian American boy (Lucas Jaye) and his elderly neighbor (the late Brian Dennehy, in one of his last performances), after the child's single mother moves them to upstate New York to rehabilitate and sell a house left to her by her estranged sister.

4. "Sound of Metal" — Punk-metal drummer Ruben (Riz Ahmed) loses his hearing in this remarkably comforting movie about losing what is precious. It is the directorial debut of Darius Marder. After waking up after a gig to find his hearing alarmingly muffled, a reluctant Ruben is convinced by his artistic and romantic partner Lou (Olivia Cooke) to undergo an immersive rehab stint in a rural deaf community led by Vietnam veteran and addict Joe (Paul Raci, a hearing actor who grew up with deaf parents). But while Ruben goes along with the program, his ultimate goal — raising enough money for cochlear implant surgery that will allow him to return "to normal" — is antithetical to the group's philosophy.

A bittersweet love story crossed with an inspirational comeback tale crossed with a philosophical inquiry into what is and what ought to be valued, "Sound of Metal" is a primer on how to accept a new normal.

John Magaro appears in a scene from “First Cow.”
John Magaro appears in a scene from “First Cow.”

5. "First Cow" — Kelly Reichardt is one of the heroes of our country. In "First Cow," two lonely entrepreneurial frontiersmen in the Oregon Territory of the 1820s make a home and embark on a business venture with the help of a kind-eyed bovine, a 2-year-old Jersey cow called Evie.

For the most part the film drifts along gently, comparable to the British comedy series "The Detectorists," moments before one of the stars of that series, Toby Jones, showed up onscreen. But it's rare that such a sweet-tempered movie gets so real in the third act: Cognizant that most great fortunes are begun by a crime, they risk the only capital they can be said to possess, their very lives.

"First Cow" had a theatrical run; you can find it on various streaming platforms.

6. "Saint Frances" — North Little Rock's Kelly O'Sullivan wrote and stars in this wonderfully serious adult comedy, directed by her partner Alex Thompson. It's a semi-autobiographical story about a 34-year-old nanny whose choices haven't always been above reproach.

It's frank and funny (sort of in the way the Showtime series "Shameless" used to be about a decade ago) and it draws more than a few comparisons to Amy Schumer's "Trainwreck," which feels fair, though "Saint Frances" is gentler and more naturalistic than either of those reference points.

Bonus: another great juvenile performance, this time from irrepressible Ramona Edith-Williams.

"Saint Frances" was also featured at ACS Filmland this year. It's available for streaming now.

7. "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" — Charlie Kaufman's tricky and discursive film will either irritate or enthrall. I'm in the latter camp, though I recognize that most of the fun from the movie involves cutting through its misdirections and unpacking its allusions. Your mileage may vary.

The main cast — Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and David Thewlis — is outstanding. And the movie is on Netflix, where it probably belongs and where it can be paused and rewound and archived for repeat viewing. Someone will probably write an exhaustive article about all the references embedded in the text.

8. "Collective" — Maybe the best documentary in a great year for documentaries (wait, every year is a great year for documentaries), Alexander Nanau's rigorous examination of the furious expose of the Romanian health-care system by a newspaper primarily dedicated to sports journalism after a 2015 fire in a Bucharest nightclub called Colectiv is both devastating and faith-restoring. If the truth can win in Romania, then perhaps it has a chance here. "Collective" is streaming on various platforms.

9. "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" — A simple and familiar setup: 17-year-old Autumn (singer-songwriter Sidney Flanigan) is pregnant and living in Pennsylvania, where she can't obtain an abortion without parental consent. As she sees it, she has no choice. So she and her girlfriend, cousin and co-worker Skylar (Talia Ryder) soon find themselves on a bus to New York City, clutching just enough cash to get the procedure.

Shot mostly within the confines of the New York Port Authority, it's a grim revelation of how those with limited resources and experience have to do the best they can. Autumn is not a plucky heroine; she doesn't know how to ask for help from the few in positions to help her. She's proud and ferociously independent, but not terribly able.

Eventually, Skylar takes over the focus of the film as she musters the grace to be kind to her cousin, who certainly doesn't return the favor. There's no happy ending here, just a gradual resolution, with the brightest spot coming during a post-procedure feast at a bakery on the edge of Chinatown, complete with shared bites of steamed red bean buns. It's the only time Autumn smiles.

Julia Garner appears in a scene from “The Assistant,” a monster movie where the monster never appears.
Julia Garner appears in a scene from “The Assistant,” a monster movie where the monster never appears.

10. "The Assistant" — A monster movie where the monster is never glimpsed, Kitty Green's "The Assistant" feels like an indictment of the way we were, not so long ago, and maybe might still be if we ever had the chance and the power.

Just the other day, during a discussion about Lionel Barrymore's avaricious Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life," someone wondered if Potter might today be construed by some moviegoers not as the obvious villain of the piece, but as an anti- (or even full-blown) hero, so darkly have we attached ourselves to transactional conceits. If winning is all that matters, then Potter — or a Harvey Weinstein or a Michael Jordan — is justified to use any means necessary, right?

Here Jane (Julia Garner, an Emmy winner for Netflix's "Ozark") is the monster's lowliest servant. She does his scut work and watches and stays steely throughout.

Some people will regard "The Assistant" as a movie where nothing much happens. Most of those will be (like me) male and straight and white and comfortably situated. I don't know that the movie is made for us, but I think we have the biggest need of it.

"The Assistant" is available on streaming services.

AN ALTERNATE TOP 10

Any of these movies could have ended up on the above list had deadlines not intruded. I change my mind a lot.

1. "The Outpost" — There is an immersive verisimilitude to Rod Lurie's "The Outpost," a wrenching war thriller that has absorbed the lessons of documentaries like Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's "Restrepo" as well as Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" and Oliver Stone's "Platoon," which it resembles less in form than in effect.

2. "Martin Eden" — Pietro Marcello's sweeping Italian-French adaptation of one of Jack London's lesser-known novels (savagely reviewed by contemporary critics ) is being hailed as the best film of the year by a lot of critics (it's high on our Piers Marchant's list) and is an impressive, audacious take on one of the primal American myths, that of the self-sufficient autodidact who goes from rags to riches via hard work, perseverance and education.

Marcello effectively transposes the story to Italy and shifts the time period, but mostly remains true to the spirit of what London saw as an artistic autobiography and indictment of the individualism he thought animated most upward-mobility fairy tales.

3. "A White, White Day" — Icelander Ingvar Sigurðsson has become one of my favorite actors in the past couple of years. Here he's a small-town police chief, mourning his wife's accidental death, in a slow-cinema thriller that defies convention. It's streaming on Film Movement's channel, and available on DVD.

4. "Corpus Christi" — Every year in my Lifequest classes, I try to show the most notable movie from the previous calendar year that didn't make it to our local market. This year it was Polish director Jan Komasa's story of a convict who masquerades as a Catholic priest (something that apparently happens with some regularity in Poland). Despite the 2019 date, the film didn't show up anywhere in the United States until just before the pandemic shut down theaters.

Available for streaming.

5. "Hamilton" — Both more and less than cinema; I went in a skeptic and came out a true believer. On Disney Plus.

Viola Davis shines as Ma Rainey in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” (Netflix)
Viola Davis shines as Ma Rainey in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” (Netflix)

6. "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" — I never really got all the fuss about Chadwick Boseman. I thought he was a good actor given the right role. But I get it now. In the moment, this beautifully realized adaptation of August Wilson's well-worn 1982 play will wreck you.

And Viola Davis is great in it too. On Netflix.

7. "Bad Education" — In March 2004, a student newspaper at a New Jersey high school published a story about an assistant superintendent for the district who had been quietly fired by the school board.

That assistant superintendent would eventually be convicted of embezzling more than $4 million from the school district. Eventually, it was discovered more than $11 million of the district's money had disappeared. The scandal torpedoed the career of the well-liked district superintendent Frank Tassone, a former literature teacher who had presided over the district for more than a decade. Tassone, who eventually pled guilty to larceny charges, is believed to have stolen more than $2 million from the school district.

"Bad Education," the HBO movie about the Roslyn school district scandal, is the second feature from Cory Finley, whose murderously cool "Thoroughbreds" was one of the highlights of 2018. It stars Hugh Jackman as Tassone and a brilliant, dangerous Allison Janney as the assistant superintendent whose malfeasance the students initially uncovered.

8. "Da Five Bloods" — Not the best Spike Lee, but very good Spike Lee. On Netflix.

9. "The Wild Goose Lake" — The year's best neo-noir crime thriller comes from China. It's available for streaming and on DVD.

Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche star in Hirokazu Koreeda’s “The Truth.” (Courtesy of IFC Films)
Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche star in Hirokazu Koreeda’s “The Truth.” (Courtesy of IFC Films)

10. "The Truth" — I probably overrate this playful take on French manners and movie stardom by "Shoplifters" director Hirokazu Koreeda, but it does bring together a lot of my favorite things — Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Paris and the completely rehabilitated Ethan Hawke who has, over the past four or five years, become something like the thinking person's Nicolas Cage in that his attachment to a film vouchsafes a certain quality.

Hawke doesn't make dull movies anymore, and even if "The Truth" is not the best thing any of the aforementioned have ever done, it felt like a balm when I watched it in July.

It's available for streaming.

The newspaper editor Catalin Tolontan appears in a scene from Alexander Nanau’s documentary “Collective,” about the scandals that followed a deadly 2015 fire in Bucharest, Romania.
The newspaper editor Catalin Tolontan appears in a scene from Alexander Nanau’s documentary “Collective,” about the scandals that followed a deadly 2015 fire in Bucharest, Romania.

Best Documentaries: "Collective," "City Hall," "Time," "Belushi," "The Go Gos," "Dick Johnson Is Dead," "Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets," "The Painter and the Thief," "You Cannot Kill David Arquette," "The Social Dilemma," "Boys State," "Crip Camp," "After Truth," "David Byrne's American Utopia," "Gunda"

Honorable mentions: "Mank," "How to Build a Girl," "The Whistlers," "Black Bear," "Shirley," "Sorry We Missed You," "The Trial of the Chicago 7," "Relic," "Nest," "Wolf Walkers," "Shirley," "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga," "Swallow," "Mangrove," "Lover's Rock," "Let Them All Talk," "Out Stealing Horses," "Another Round"

Noble misses: "Fatman," "The Painted Bird," "Kajillionaire," "Tenet"

Plain Old Misses: "Buddy Games," "Hillbilly Elegy," "A Rainy Day in New York," "Unhinged"

Sorry We Missed You: "Soul," "John Lewis: Good Trouble," "Wonder Woman 1984"

Email: pmartin@adgnewsroom.com | blooddirtangels.com

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