Best Movie 2020 Watch: There’s Always Something to Be Thankful For…
2020 is going to be a year people want to forget. So that means everyone’s likely to dismiss the 2020 movie slate for being one of the weakest in modern history. Personally, yes, 2020 lacks the top end moviemaking at this point in time has been weak in 2020. But there’s still hope. Hope, ironically, in the form of teenage coming of age stories, who populate most of the top 5! So thanks, Gen Z, for saving the 2020 movie year!
Spike Lee movies carry themselves with a power that makes them irresistible. Consider this one, a story of 4 African-American Vietnam War vets who return to the country to supposedly honor their fallen 5th soldier buddy (RIP, Chadwick Boseman) by retrieving some buried treasure. On top of Lee’s justified politically charged anger is a wonderful story about carrying grief, and attempts at generational connection, anchored by a never better Delroy Lindo.
An innovative spin on a movie where people relive the same day. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti are an excellent pair, complementing each other’s energy perfectly. The script uses the new spin of having 2 people reliving the same day and extrapolates that into a new set of experiences and stories previously unexplored with time loops. Now let’s chill in the pool.
A well deserved breakout for Mamodou Athie and director Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr. Athie stars as a car wreck survivor with memory loss and a young daughter who helps raise him as he raises her. What follows is an eerie study on the power of memory, and maybe the soul itself, as Athie goes an a journey to try to get over the trauma of the accident. Osei-Kuffour Jr.’s script is definitely going to go in directions you will not see coming, a rare but welcome feat.
How fitting. Aaron Sorkin’s 2nd attempt at direction sees the talented writer fix some of his director failings in Molly’s Game, while also doing what the director does best: create crackling dialogue while people walk, talk, and go to court. Despite the age discrepancies of the protesters, the period detail is nicely rendered, and Sacha Baron Cohen is also quite electric as Abby Hoffman, as well as Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the horrifically handled African-American protester.
If you want to see how hard it’s been for women to work in toxic work environments, this is sadly, a great example. Julia Garner would seemingly be an ideal candidate for anyone to hire: she arrives first and leaves last every day, and works her ass off the whole time. Surrounding her? A well designed suffocating environment where we never see outward abuse, but know it’s there through snide comments like “Don’t sit on the couch” or “He’s gonna hire outside the company” instead of promoting a female manager. Garner’s performance showcases all that repressed anger and sadness as she does what she has to, but hates herself for having to do it.
I doubt many of you have heard of Camp Jened. In the 1970’s, a bunch of hippies started this camp in upstate New York to give physically disabled individuals a chance to get away and have a relatively normal summer vacation like anyone else. The first half is totally hilarious and fun, but then, something amazing happens. Energized by their ability to learn from one another, these campers decide it’s time to fight for their rights, leading them to civil activism that becomes the American Disabilities Act. Funny and inspirational? What more could you want?
The Invisible Man has been around since talking cinema was created. Usually the story focuses on the man himself, and his complicated relationship with being seen/unseen. Leigh Whannell turns the tale on its head in 2020, making Adrian Griffin a control freak, with Elizabeth Moss #MeToo’ing herself out of a frightening situation. The movie then becomes a treatise on how the world is built to distrust truth telling damaged women, while also making sofas and armchairs seem diarmingly menacing.
This movie should have been melodramatic nonsense. Instead, Alice Wu’s tale is a gentle, sweet tale about good people learning about things they don’t understand. Daniel Diemer and Leah Lewis are dynamite together, forming a wonderful friendship while they both pine for Alexxis Lemire. Lemire is also delightful, taking what would normally be a manic pixie dream girl and making her something much deeper and more interesting. It’s rare entertainment when a movie can tell a great story without resorting to absurd melodrama, but this one pulls that off miraculously.
This powerful film is about emotional withholding during harrowing circumstances. Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder are sensational as a pair of teens heading to New York from rural Pennsylvania. Distress permeates each scene, as Eliza Hittman’s story goes through the minutiae of what an underage girl with no support systems has to go through to get an abortion. The movie keeps from hitting despair though Flanigan and Ryder’s friendship: rock solid, and downright heroic as nothing needs to be said for each to help the other during their times of need.
A wonderfully pitched coming of age satire. Natalia Dyer plays a sexually curious but shy Iowan girl who attends Catholic High School. She goes on a kairos trip, this relatively real, insane excursion where we get a series of brilliant takedowns on the tenants of abstinence only education and veiled piety of the Church, never losing sight of Dyer’s story about not just a sexual awakening but a come to Jesus moment with how the world really operates.
