Top 10: Films of 2020
Welp, another year is in the books, and it’s been the most insane and strange one in cinematic history! 2020 was a dumpster fire of a year for the entire globe, and it very well could change the face of cinema as we know it. We saw a massive amount of release dates get pushed, which allowed streaming platforms to lead the charge, delivering us from the madness of our own isolation. As disastrous of a year as 2020 was, it wasn’t without its own gems and masterpieces, but it definitely contributed to us missing out on a lot of potential top 10 candidates (like First Cow and The Sound of Metal, amongst others) more so than usual. Oh well, c'est la vie, so it goes…
Like we say every year: We're a smaller indie blog and don't get the opportunity to see every film, so this is solely based on the ones we were able to see. Also, since the subtleties of taste buds differ from person to person, it's highly unlikely that we'll be in complete agreement, but if you let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, we'd love to have a conversation over the past year's films.
With that said, let’s dive into what we consider to be the best films from 2020!
Actress turned writer/director Emerald Fennell makes her feature film directorial debut with Promising Young Woman, a savagely refreshing new take on the revenge thriller. Bold, provocative, and stylishly sleek, the film launches an incisive attack on “nice guys” everywhere and is bolstered by Carey Mulligan’s phenomenal performance and Fennell’s confident swagger. There’s a lot of mystery and genuine surprises built into its twists and turns, making it one of those films that best experienced the less you know about it. It won’t likely be for everyone, especially those who crave subtlety in their cinema, as it can occasionally feel like its on-the-nose directness is teetering on brink of being too preachy — although the message at its center is definitely a timely and important one. It bites off a bit more than it can chew with its ending, but whether you agree with the film’s outlook or not, you’ll likely be transfixed by Mulligan’s astounding performance and enamored by her character’s journey — even if the ending kinda kills your buzz.
If you fuse the colorfully eccentric outsider Art of Harmony Korine and Sean Baker with the lush visual verve and romantic whimsy of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, you’d have something close to Miranda July’s Kajillionaire. It’s a thoroughly unconventional riff on the familiar, which may be too bizarre for some, but if you can slip into July’s frequency, its trajectory is both unexpected and intensely touching. On the surface, it appears to be a bizarre comedy about a dysfunctional family (and it is, kinda), but underneath the film’s irregularity and absurdity lies something deeply profound, tender, and multi-layered. It strives to be much more than just a coming-of-age tale; it’s a coming-alive story with a clever focus on the family unit. July sweeps the viewer up into her vibrantly odd and seriously funny world straight from the start, creating an odd-ball coming-of-age film that’s surprisingly refreshing in its depth, oddity, and execution.
8: Swallow
If you took Terrence Malick’s naturalism and ability to capture the internal headspace of his characters visually, and combined it with Todd Haines’ stylish psychological drama Safe and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, you’d have something close to Swallow, the debut feature from Carlo Mirabella-Davis. Although it’s more of a tense psychological thriller than a straight-up horror, it’s noticeably streaked with elements of body horror (a la David Cronenberg), and it uses its grotesque quirk as a believable foundation to explore its central subject matter with more profound — and surprising — depth. Its strongest and most interesting asset is in how Mirabella-Davis uses Hunter’s fixation — something which is a direct response to her environment and the people in it — as a means to making a personal breakthrough. Her actions make for an interesting (yet unsubtle) statement of rebellion, an odd attempt to reclaim control over her body from its oppressive surroundings, and it winds up to a shocking and provocative climax. It creates conversation by challenging the typical notion of mental illness as an inherent negative and exploring the potential of an illness being a path to tremendously cathartic self-discovery. Bolstered by Haley Bennett’s powerhouse performance, this compelling feminist thriller will take you for a ride you won’t soon forget.
7: Soul
Writer/director Pete Docter has made some of the best Pixar films in the last two decades, and Soul is no exception. Where Inside Out looked inward, exploring the origins of human emotion, Soul looks outward, exploring what it all means and what we’re meant to be doing with our lives. For all intents and purposes, it’s the cosmically curious, philosophical cousin to Docter’s 2015 film — but on steroids (or LSD). Both are equally inventive and audacious in their own right, but Soul takes its heady abstractions to new extremes, venturing into places that children’s films rarely go. Although it stumbles a bit narratively, Soul moves in and out of deeply touching, beautifully profound, and cosmically trippy moments, wrestling with some large, complex existential concepts that are made digestible enough for children (without being diminished), yet resonate and compelling enough for adults. In short, it’s pretty much everything a viewer could want from a Pixar flick.
Jim Cummings is a special filmmaker and a mesmerizing performer, and The Wolf of Snow Hollow finds this indie powerhouse taking on a genre film in his own unique way. It might not be as thunderous as 2018’s phenomenally electric Thunder Road, but it comes damn close! Miraculously, Cummings is able to effortlessly capture much of the same magic as he did with Thunder Road. The film plays like a cross between Fargo and An American Werewolf in London, mixing black comedy, horror, and crime thriller into one delightfully satisfying genre stew. Yet again, he showcases his incredible ability to juggle various tones with fairly graceful ease and deliver a commanding performance that undulates between earnestness and absurdity. If horror-comedies are your bag, The Wolf of Snow Hollow will definitely give you everything you’re looking for and some.
If you’ve never heard the name Pepe the Frog before, chances are you’ve seen him floating around the internet in some capacity, whether it be a headline or (more likely) a meme. The humanoid frog made his first impactful appearance in Furie’s 2005 issue of Boy's Club, which found Pepe urinating with his pants pulled down to his ankles. His infamous catchphrase, “Feels good man,” serving as a concise celebration of weird individuality. Regardless of your knowledge of Pepe’s story, Feels Good Man paints a finely-detailed portrait of his life to date, which serves as an excellent entry point for noobs and an engagingly detailed profile for longtime fans. It’s a veritable trip, and its story becomes more fascinating at every turn. Neatly arranged and nicely edited, Feels Good Man effectively examines internet culture and creative ownership within a digital age, building toward a thought-provoking argument over its power and influence, which is actually quite terrifying. As much as it opens your eyes, it will make you laugh and leave you feeling inspired.
4: POSSESSOR
With POSSESSOR, writer/director Brandon Cronenberg cooks up a mind-melting experience that invades the senses in the best possible ways, proving yet again that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. 8 years after his debut, Antiviral, his return is equal parts brutal and chic. Melding the style of MANDY with the gonzo sci-fi of Existenz and the layered performances of Face/Off, POSSESSOR creates a journey that’s gripping and visually mesmerizing; it’s a singular slice of sci-fi that thoroughly thrills and cerebrally stimulates. While it might not fully explore the world its characters’ inhabit, it builds the kind of world that you can expound upon with your imagination. It absolutely will not be for everyone, but it’s the kind of daring, bold cinematic exploration that we’d like to see more of. It is impeccably crafted, elegantly directed, and adorned with two incredible lead performances and a hearty dose of savage violence. With both Antiviral and POSSESSOR, the young Cronenberg shows that he has the keen eye, stylish flair, and weirdness to match his father’s sophisticated and provocative nature.
The Vast of Night is a marvelous debut from director Andrew Patterson (who also co-wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym James Montague — in addition to serving as producer and editor) that completely conjures up the feeling of a bygone era. With astounding skill, he finds a fresh angle to a familiar story about something otherworldly in the sky, and he fills its journey full of palpable wonder that will leave you feeling awestruck. The film transports viewers to the 1950s, to a small town in New Mexico where a strange event envelops the curiosity of two of the town’s bright young residents. The period aspects are stunning and understated; they are cleverly wound into the film’s narrative and directly contribute to its rich atmosphere, which is masterfully sustained by Patterson and his team for the film’s entirety. It’s an absolute slow burn, full of sequences of characters walking and talking, but its compelling central mystery and palpably eerie atmosphere churn this quiet little indie into an exhilarating experience full of wonder and awe.
Adapted from the Iain Reid novel of the same name, I’m Thinking of Ending Things takes viewers on a strange and squirmy journey full of psychological thrills that entangle time, memory, and experience into one bleak and nightmarish reality. Kaufman stays true to the heart of Reid’s novel, and while he takes many artistic liberties and makes many renovations, they all help to create a tighter, more nuanced story, one that better veils the twists and turns of its fascinatingly sad thought experiment. He tones down the overt horror leanings of the novel (like its heavy use of the mysterious caller), trades in its oddity for one that’s more visual, humorous, uncomfortable, and unnerving, removes its inter-chapter foreshadowing gimmickry, and brings the whole mind trip to a mesmerizingly surreal, tragicomic crescendo, which messes with your head in the same ways the book does. In short, he completely makes the story his own; he honors the unnerving quality of the source material and culminates all his hallmarks into a riveting exploration of regret, longing, and the frailty of the human spirit. The unique experience Kaufman creates here is a mix of Eraserhead’s surrealism (particularly the dinner sequence) and The Lighthouse’s psychological mind games, which is cerebral perfection to us.
Before we cruise to our #1 pick, here's a few honorable mentions that just missed the cut:
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
And without further delay, our #1 pick of 2020 is…
1: Da 5 Bloods
Da 5 Bloods shows Vietnam from the black perspective, blending comedy, heist, and war elements together into a tasty stew with a modern bend. If you frankensteined together Going in Style, Dead Presidents, Apocalypse Now, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, you’d have something kinda close to Da 5 Bloods. A whirl of social issues and pulpy, escapist thrills bookended by segments of Muhammad Ali and MLK, who both suffered for their strong opposition of the Vietnam War, this sprawling War epic explores the nature between racism and war, brotherhood and greed, with exciting and explosive force. Using our politically corrupt and racially tense modern times as its backdrop, Da 5 Bloods looks at the Vietnam War from over its shoulder, ruminating on how it has impacted and influenced the today — and not just in terms of its four primary characters, but the lives of all Black Americans. The film is, in essence, a rescue mission, a heist, and an urge for a better tomorrow, today, all at once, and it sizzles and crackles with Lee’s energetic pizazz. Overall, Da 5 Bloods digs in deep to its heavy, socially relevant themes, and comes up with pure gold. The result is gloriously messy, wholly satisfying, and one of the most urgent and timely films of Lee’s long and illustrious career, which is why it’s our favorite film from 2020.
Did we leave any of your top picks off our list? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!