So… yeah, 2020 has not been a good year. But let it not be said that we didn’t get something good out of it. When the layman’s access to streaming services was at its most vital, a lot of legendary filmmakers teamed up with Netflix and the like to keep the art alive in this particularly rough patch. Not only that, but because all the major studios were busy salvaging their blockbuster titles for when people could actually get to cinemas and watch them (which became more and more of a distant memory as this year dragged on), everyone got a break from the flood of superhero movies that have clogging the market of late, and a lot of independent studios stepped up to the plate and filled in the gap with some truly stunning pieces of cinema.
And in honour of the features that helped keep my sanity intact during one of the scariest periods of my relatively short lifespan to date, let’s close out le grand shitshow not by reliving the shite, but by holding up the jewels that still managed to find their way to audiences in the midst of all this chaos. These are my picks for the Top 20 Best Films Of 2020. But first…
Special Mention: After We Collided
This year’s winner for Best Worst Film is a bit of an oddball within that category, as while it’s not necessarily the funniest bad film I saw in 2020, it’s the one that I respect the most because it didn’t try to pull a fast one on its audience. Within the 5th wave of YA adaptations so far, this is the only one that has admitted what it is (cheap, disposable trash cinema) and embraced that fact, as it’s not as if people go out looking for these movies for their romantic authenticity. In a year where a lot of the absolute worst were all determined to filmsplain the hell out of real-world issues and make rubbish in the process, this being as content as it is with being fluff, while understanding that even fluff has a reason to exist, is something I look back on with increasing fondness as more time passes. It didn’t try to be more than it is, and that alone is kind of admirable.
The collective mood of 2020, more so than fear or even anger at the systems that fell asleep on the watch and let all this go down, was how the mundane monotony of everyday existence can itself be rather horrifying. Staring at the same walls, the same furniture, the same Gordon Ramsay compilation you’ve already watched fifty times that day; it has a numbing effect that can make you feel like your soul is being sapped away. This film is one of many that was able to capture that mood, only here, it’s refracted through a post-Weinstein lens to show a different kind of monotony, a different kind of soul-sapping day-by-day existence, that manages to say an awful lot about office culture and sexual harassment… without saying that many words at all. Much like how Dolittle served as its own little indictment of the industry that created it, so too does this show another aspect of that industry that could use a rough shaking by the collar.
While everyone else likely appreciated the break from the onslaught of superhero cinema that has so dominated the mainstream over the last decade-and-a-bit, speaking as a fan of that sub-genre, I felt like I was missing out. Which is why catching this little beauty on Netflix was such a joy as, while DC and Marvel were busy trying to dance around their usually-stringent release schedule, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Greg Rucka, and Charlize Theron managed to show both of them how it’s really done in one fell swoop.
And yet, the superhero aspect isn’t even what truly makes this qualify for a spot on this list. I mean, sure, the action scenes are terrific, the writing really brings the mythic quality of long underwear characters into the foreground in a highly satisfying fashion, and hot damn, is the acting in this stellar! But for me, the main reason why I love this movie so much is with the scene of Joe and Nicky professing their love for each other, while at gunpoint in the back of an armoured van.
“Beautiful” doesn’t even begin to describe this, and in its own way, it’s a rather poignant depiction of 2020 as an annual mood. We’re all in a tough situation, and we don’t even know if we’ll make it out of there alive… but fuck you, we’re going to appreciate the ones we love, because they’re the reason we’re still here. It’s certainly what kept me above ground during this shit-fuck of a twelve-month stretch.
#18: Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Yeah, quite a few female directors absolutely killed it this year, and Eliza Hittman did so with one of the most crushingly intimate films I’ve ever had the pleasure of covering on this blog. Forsaking any of the self-righteous bombast that so plagued a lot of the year’s worst, Eliza and star Sidney Flanigan stripped everything back to tell the seemingly-simple story of a single teenager and her best friend making a long-haul trip to a Planned Parenthood clinic.
And rather than go full seethe in depicting the shittiness of the lead’s situation (although such feelings were certainly experienced by myself while witnessing it), it locked into a continual vibe of realism, like we’re actually watching two young women going through this process and all the heartache it entails. It’s cinema as a vehicle for empathy, for making us understand those who are different to ourselves, and it made for one of the most affecting features I saw in 2020.
#17: Bill & Ted Face The Music
Okay, enough of the heavy shit for a bit, let’s rock the fuck out! Following two already-classic comedies that stand as pillars in the larger canon of metal on film, Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves pick things up right where they left off as if they never left at all, with Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson delivering on the same surprisingly-brainy sense of humour that made Adventure and Journey more than just simple dumb comedies. It’s the kind of rapturous musical voyage that brings together so many different genres (both sonic and cinematic), and makes them harmonise in a way that lets them all stand out, while also letting them strengthen the whole. It’s a glam-metal shot with a prog-rock chaser that made us all raise our glasses in salutation.
This film felt like a major turning point in my process of critiquing films, as this is where I really started taking notice of artistic reference points beyond just films I happened to have seen already. Robert Eggers’ tribute to the fine tradition of New England horror (covering everything from maritime suspense to full-on Lovecraft) touches on so many different flavours of art, from literature to paintings to Old Hollywood to ancient Greek mythology, that it felt like they were all pouring out of my skull as I struggled to get them all down onto paper before they vanished into the ether. It felt appropriate for this to reach Aussie cinemas at the same time “go outside and get some fresh air” became bad medical advice, as this claustrophobic, haunted, delightfully weird, and even Queer feature made for a cracking experience where relating to two men losing their minds from isolation felt a little too close-to-home. In-between the mermaids and all the squatting shits, that is.
After proving his salt as a director with Insidious: Chapter 3 and Upgrade (not to mention the oodles of great writing he’d served up previously), Invisible Man saw him break into the mainstream proper as a horror filmmaker to be reckoned with. As a fellow Aussie, it’s certainly a proud moment to see this man captivate so many audiences worldwide, but it’s even more gratifying seeing him do it off the back of such a fucking terrifying feature.
Watching this film felt like an invisible hand slowly wrapping its cold fingers around my throat, as the atmosphere on display here truly is that relentlessly visceral. Not a single moment of silence is wasted, not a single fevered step is misplaced (Elisabeth Moss finally got a chance to show what she’s truly capable of), and while it serves as a gripping depiction of the insidiousness of gaslighting (or ‘lying’, as we used to call it before Collateral Beauty happened) and abusive relationships through a thin sci-fi lens, it’s also insanely effective just as a portrait of someone at the mercy of something she cannot see, or even be certain is there, but could end her life in an instant. Once again, this turning up in 2020 makes a depressing amount of sense in hindsight.
Spike Lee doesn’t have a perfect cinematic track record (looking at you, Bamboozled), but when he gets it right, he can leave every other filmmaker with tire dust for breakfast. He brought together a lot of razor-sharp talent to pull an archaeological dig on film, turning the long-since-lambasted folly of the Vietnam War into a singularity of Black American history to offer a stunningly refreshing perspective on one of the most revisited moments in American history at large. Delroy Lindo’s impressive performance alone sells this picture, and Chadwick Boseman is not far behind him, but for a film that stretches on for two-and-a-half-hours, it is satisfyingly rich in historical and cultural context to make an incredibly smooth ride, speaking a lot of truth to power about the treatment of Black Americans in the process.
I don’t have a Disney+ account. After what happened in 2019, I didn’t really see the point in paying for the subscription and an additional charge to sit through the Mulan remake ($25 for purchase with no rental? “Fuck that noise” is my reasoning for not getting around to reviewing it), and if I hadn’t been handed this as an official write-up for FilmInk, I likely would have missed it entirely. But man, am I glad I didn’t, as it shows Pete Docter once again proving his mettle as one of Disney/Pixar’s reigning kings of the tear-jerk, with a gorgeous journey into the abstract that not only highlighted the joys of music, but all the smaller moments that make life worth experiencing. While there’s likely something to be said about the film’s uncharacteristic ‘maybe don’t follow your dreams’ message, the way it delves into the importance of life’s minor notes really resonated with me. And like with every other visit to the Docter I’ve taken thus far, I wept like a baby with colic when all was said and done.
Social media may only be an exaggerated approximation of real life, but in the year of COVID, it became a crucial service for a lot of us to maintain a semblance of a healthy social life. If that sounds depressing to you too, just wait ‘til you check out this feature that looks deep into the industries that exist to purposely muddy those waters. Operating like Nightcrawler with a gigabit connection coursing through its veins instead of blood plasma, this aggressively watchable look at the political trolling industry (can we take a moment to acknowledge how fucking sad it is that that is a viable industry these days? … We good? Okay, good.) is as magnetic as it is fingers-poking-through-the-skin uncomfortable to sit through. If you’re looking for a film with a likeable protagonist you want to see succeed, you’d be better off looking elsewhere. But if you’re looking for a film about a complete bastard who is so conniving and charismatically shitty that you can’t turn away, this will settle your anti-hero fix.
My personal favourite Aussie film of the year (and there were some hot contenders, including Below and Babyteeth), this felt like a concerted effort to take a snapshot at this specific moment in our nation’s history. The ravages of nature shining like enraged rubies in the background, the proximal dread of plague permeating the foreground, and stuck in the middle, we have a collection of rural Australians struggling to exist. Those living in the outback have had it particularly rough over the past year, what with droughts and bushfires and now region-wrecking COVID putting blockades on their livelihoods, and while I’ve never been all that big on Jeremy Sims as a filmmaker (most of his work ends up leaving me a bit cold by the ending credits), this is a truly heartfelt testament to the human need to connect with others, as well as all the literal and figurative environmental forces that make that need into more of a strong suggestion for some. And not for nothing, but it’s exceedingly rare for a remake of a foreign film to have this much purpose in existing, especially in a year that graced us with the excruciating needlessness of Downhill.
Emerald Fennell’s feature debut is a positively delectable serving of female empowerment that manages to break away from the rest of the pack trying (and usually failing) to do the same. It was quite a revelatory viewing experience for me as, prior to seeing something this daring and bold, I hadn’t really taken into account just how safe everyone else had been playing it. It’s a confrontational, uncompromising, ‘look at me when I’m killing your ego’ look at rape culture and toxic masculinity (at this point, I just like that phrase because of how much it annoys the people it most applies to) that took a hard stance on the subject, and yet deftly avoided basically every pitfall that a lot of hopefuls end up landing in. Seeing a film this righteous, yet this devoid of hypocrisies and pretence, was immensely refreshing, and holy shit, I still can’t get over how ingenious some of these soundtrack choices were. I have truly gained a new appreciation for the artistry of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton after watching this, and hopefully (once this becomes available for streaming), you will too.
#9: Seven Stages To Achieve Eternal Bliss By Passing Through The Gateway Chosen By The Holy Storsh
Yes, I know that the official title was shortened, but in a year with some particularly cringe-worthy names, I have come to love this word salad in all its word-salad-ness. It’s also a perfect lead-in to a film with a serious axe to grind about cult mentality and the psychological process that turns rational sceptics into idolatrous believers. This is easily my favourite all-out comedy of the year, as I didn’t stop laughing for a single moment while watching it, which itself is commendable because of how fucking depressing this ultimately is.
Long story short (mainly because most of it isn’t mine to tell), I have literal cult programming knocking around in my brain that’s been stuck in there ever since I was a little kid, and I have family history with a certain group that I won’t even dignify with naming because they don’t deserve any such recognition around here. As someone who has seen for himself what this kind of manipulation looks like and what it can do to people, this one really struck a chord because of how maddeningly accurate it is. And because of that, every laugh it got out of me is well-earned, because when staring in the face of something this patently ludicrous, yet this persistently effective, you just gotta laugh to start the healing process.
#8: Jiang Ziya: Legend Of Deification
This pick for my favourite animated film of the year might be the most quintessentially ‘me’ choice on this entire list, as my reasons for it ranking so high are even more personal than those behind Seven Stages or Rams. I could chalk this up to it pandering to me as part of a Taoist audience in the same way PureFlix panders to a Christian audience, but that still doesn’t measure up to just how masterful this is as a depiction of Taoist beliefs and perspectives on the universe.
I admittedly got into Taoism through the side-door of Dudeism, which initially started as an admission of just how seriously I take cinema as an artistic ideal… but over the last several months, I’ve become more ingrained in that philosophy proper. About the ebb and flow of life, about the eternal connection I have to every other aspect of this existence, and about how I don’t need to look a God in the face to see the Divine at work in the everyday.
With all that in mind, seeing something this spectacularly-animated and delivered, all in service to a message about how we are all one and the same and we all deserve happiness, connected with me in a way very films have. I have a habit of treating every film I watch (even the bad ones) as just another step in my larger discovery of self, and here, this felt like a major step forward in understanding how I see the world and why it felt like such a revelation when I started reading the Tao De Ching and realised “Holy shit-on-a-cracker, I’ve been living like this all my life without even knowing it”.
#7: A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood
Here is where we start getting into the absolute gems of 2020; the films that, upon first watching them, made a strong case to make it this high on the list, possibly even the highest. And considering how much I fell in love with Mr. Rogers after Won’t You Be My Neighbor? in 2018, I was far from surprised that this quasi-biopic would accomplish much of the same.
Aside from featuring the kind of casting that’s so pitch-perfect that it’s staggering that it hadn’t been done before (seriously, Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers? Perfect.) the way it side-steps its way into the biopic sub-genre with a film that isn’t so much about the man’s life as it is about his way of life, highlighting that caring and compassionate approach to the world and its problems, felt sorely needed during 2020. Marielle Heller may have struck gold a year prior with Can You Ever Forgive Me?, but the way she wraps the Land Of Make-Believe visual aesthetic around this grim family drama was mind-blowing to behold, making for my personal favourite offering from a female filmmaker in a year where they continually took the boys back to film school.
#6: If Anything Happens I Love You
I’ve been toying with the idea of including more short films in these year-end highlights, but with this one in particular, there was no avoiding it: It had to be given a place in the spotlight alongside the rest of the year’s best films. It also marks a personal milestone for my career as a film critic, as this was easily the most difficult film I’ve ever tried to write about. No other film, no matter how dreadful or complex or just plain boring, felt like I had to push through my own feelings towards it to get any of what I wrote onto that page.
And in its own way, that whole process is an example of why this kind of film is so important: Because actually putting these kinds of emotions and reactions into words is an incredibly difficult task. I haven’t yet had to process the death of a close relative in this fashion (at least, not in response to this level of tragedy), and yet writing down all those feels to do with regret and emotional emptiness and loss… I wasn’t kidding when I said that I had to stop myself multiple times while writing it, like my hands couldn’t bear to take the responsibility of turning any of that into written reality. Out of all the films I saw from 2020 (all 246 of them, for those keeping count), no singular film had me so overwhelmed with emotion and face-twitching sobs that the ‘work’ I put into writing reviews for every one of those films truly felt like I had to ‘work’ through some shit.
[cw: suicide]
Content/Trigger/Spoiler warning for this entry because, in order to properly get across why this ranks so highly with me… I need to talk about a moment where it actually triggered me. And not in the facetious “lol, opinion you don’t like” kind of way; this genuinely got me flashing back to a painful moment from my past. The time that I tried to kill myself.
Much like the protagonist of this film, I also found myself in a deep pit of despair some years back. A Beastly voice in the back of my head telling me to take the plunge and down as many prescription pills as I could shovel into my mouth. Police were called, an ambulance was called, and I spent the next 24 hours fading in and out of consciousness, only barely hearing voices in the void-laden distance, trying to establish a tether that would keep me in this plane of existence. If they hadn’t been called, if I hadn’t told my best friend and my mother what I had done… for all I know, I wouldn’t be here to write any of this down today.
And it was while watching this, seeing Adam on that gurney in the back of the ambulance, also drifting back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness, I felt something in my chest. Like a hardened spike poking its way right out of it, forcing tears to stream out of my eyes from the recollection. I looked at this film and saw… myself. I saw someone who went through the same shit I did, and bounced back just as hard from it, and all I could feel was gratitude for the people who made that connection possible.
All of that from a film I went into fully expecting to despise as soon as I saw the trailer. I mean, c’mon! A sick-lit romance about someone with schizophrenia (a condition that is rarely, if ever, shown with empathy or even all that much reality), from a director better known for starting and ending adaptation franchises that didn’t need to exist in the first place, with soundtrack and production credits from modern pop-music-slurry architects The Chainsmokers, with a trailer that heavily implies throwing away medication because Big Pharma. How in the fuck is any of that meant to equal up to something worthwhile?!
Well, it somehow did. I went in with some of the lowest expectations of the year (or really of any film FilmInk has given to me for a write-up), and I walked away with a feeling of well-earned catharsis that only a select few moments (not just films, but moments in my life full-stop) could even dare to approach.
Looks like we’re not done with the cerebral unearthing, as this film also appealed to me in a way that speaks to some of the darkest corners of my personality. Greta Thunberg has always fascinated me as a public figure, mainly because of just how liberating it is to see another autistic at that level of prominence, speaking truth to power and trying to make the world a better place for having her in it. It’s what I try and convince myself I’m doing with my own existence, but this doesn’t make the list because of how ‘inspiring’ it is. This makes the list, and so high on the list at that, because even as someone who has been in support of Greta from the word ‘Go’, this made me realise just how much I had in common with her. For better, and for worse.
Autistics aren’t known for taking things lying down. The more vocal members of the community (both verbal and non-verbal) will always, and with zeal the likes of which even Sobek has never seen, defend our views and do all we can to get people to see things from our perspective. I myself used to spend a lot of time on Twitter doing exactly this, arguing with anti-vaxxers and autism warrior moms and other such irritants, purely because I couldn’t get it through my head why anyone would think like this. Why anyone would feel so strongly about their own child’s ‘damage’ that they would parade them around online for sympathy, ostensibly taking a stand against big bad doctors and their pesky science, but ultimately only trying to show off the size of their shame trophies.
It’s a painful discussion to take part in, and for as much as I understood the toll it was taking on my mental wellbeing (part of the reason why I refrain from such conversations nowadays)… I couldn’t help it. It’s a part of the world that’s wrong, and I don’t understand why it can’t be right. It’s that black-and-white perspective that seems to appear in a lot of spectrum folx, and Greta is no exception. As we see her preparing to speak before large official gatherings, spending hours in initially-solo protests, and dancing away the words of anyone who tries to put her down (easily the moment that most inspired me personally in 2020; I’d give anything to brush off negative opinions that effectively), we also see how hard she’s pushing herself to do all this. How much the raw disconnect between what she knows to be true and how everyone else is acting is chipping away at her, resulting in her legendary “How dare you” speech.
I’ve become convinced that this might be the least-read review I’ve ever written for FilmInk, as a lot of the reactions towards it were just sneering at the film’s mere existence (and the continued one of Greta herself), rather than anything I had to say about it. But rather than fixate any further on what basic bitches think about all this, I’ve been trying to take a page out of Greta’s book and just focus on the good that can be done. I love this film, not necessarily because of its message about climate change (which is still a problem, and even with COVID going on, we literally can’t afford to forget that), but because never before had I seen an autistic person on-screen and felt like I was truly, genuinely represented, warts and all. Stick that in your “iT’s CaLleD aCtInG” pipe and smoke it.
Okay, let’s put that soapbox back on the shelf and get back to the point, with a film that scratches a cinematic itch in a way that only this kind of genre experiment could manage. As someone with a real love for the more out-there sides of horror, as well as stories that dive deep into the literal minds of characters, this was an absolute blast from start to finish. Brandon Cronenberg makes a grab for his father’s body-horror crown with both hands, and while time can only tell if he will create as captivating a film legacy, this has real potential to be a cornerstone of that legacy.
The psychedelic visuals that give even the best from SpectreVision a run for their money, the excellent acting, the well-formed and nuanced writing and narrative, even the premise on its own with an assassin who hijacks people’s minds to kill other people; I love every aspect of this production, and it locks together so tightly that it became a film I genuinely admire for its craftsmanship.
At a time when the industry looked like it was in true jeopardy, when we most needed our heroes but they were all too busy being dead or being living arse-candles to lift us up, in rides David Fincher on the back of a paint horse, not ready to let the art go into that long goodnight. Not without a fight, that is.
Making a film that’s inherently tethered to one of the greatest films of all time in Citizen Kane would be a tall order for any filmmaker, even one as proficient as Fincher, but he managed to deliver a film that may or may not hold its own next to its inspiration (only time will tell on that one), but adds to its cultural impact by examining all the real-world forces that went into it. The industry politics, the actual politics, the financial side of things, the creative side of things, the egos at the top of the ladder, and the egos desperately trying to climb it.
In terms of sheer film craft, this is easily the finest effort of the entire year, as everything about this production not only works, but works insanely well. The adherence to historical detail in terms of technique is incredible, from the black-and-white film stock to the cinematography methods that Citizen Kane itself popularised, to that fucking soundtrack that ranks as the best of any film I’ve seen since Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and largely for the same reason: Jazz has never sounded better, and I’ll be honest, I was a bit pissed that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross didn’t do the jazz numbers in Soul because this proves they can do it like fucking champions.
But in a year as turbulent for cinema as 2020 was, this film served an even greater purpose. It was an appraisal of film history, using one of its undisputed cornerstones as a nexus for everything that, granted, makes the industry so frustrating to deal with… but also why the art at its core is so vital to our culture and our own existence. It was a reminder that while the now feels like purgatory, it hasn’t always been now, and we’ve pushed through far too much to stop now.
I feel a bit basic putting this at the top of my list. I mean, all three 0%-ers ended up in my Worst Of, and now a 100%-er is right at the top of the Best. But really, in the face of something this fantastic, who cares about optics piffle?
For a start, this represents one of the true good things that happened this year, with Shudder finally making it to Australian bandwidths, opening the doors for all manner of gory fun in future reviews. It also benefits from being a film that, in a list meant to represent the best of 2020’s cinema, is so indictive of 2020 as a year and as a collective mood. Cracking open the salvos for screen-capture found footage movies to tell the story of a group of people under two unseen threats (one biological, one spiritual), turning two regular aspects of modern Internet pastime (Web streaming and group chats) into bona fide cinema while sticking around just long enough to make its point, in a film that is refreshingly to-the-point next to so many overlong messes of late.
But more so than what it says about the present, it’s what this film says about the future that truly makes it worthy of being the best film of the year. This is Steven Soderbergh’s vision for independent cinema fully realised, with filmmakers being pushed into extraordinary circumstances out of the reach of the Hollywood system, and through old-fashioned ingenuity and a keen observational eye of the world around them, creating true art while the big studios were busy floundering about how to maximise profits from their latest action-packed tentpole feature.
As entertaining as this is all on its own, since it’s one of the most likeable horror films I’ve ever covered on this blog, it’s the hope that makes me love it. It’s the notion that no matter how much shit hits the fan, no matter how hard the systems thought too big to fail end up failing, human creativity will always thrive. Boredom is a lot like necessity in how it fosters invention, something that was in plentiful supply this year, and with filmmakers willing and able to be this inventive with the medium… maybe it’ll all work out after all. Even if this lockdown persists (and it’s still going to be rough on a lot of people and businesses, not just at the movies), at least we won’t have to deal with it alone. Not with Dudes like Rob Savage looking out for us.
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