Tuesday, January 12, 2021

My Top 10 Films of 2020

 Bit late.  Blame Brexit.

10. The Lighthouse (dir. Robert Eggers)

The last film I saw in a “proper” cinema before the first lockdown (I did manage to squeeze in Parasite at my local arts centre) was, erm, a claustrophobic horror about two men trapped in isolation and slowly going mad.  Yep.  Robert Eggers’ two-hander sees new lighthouse-keeper Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) join veteran Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) on a rain-lashed New England island in the 19th century.  Just before their month-long stint is due to finish, a storm keeps them stuck in the lighthouse and it all goes a bit wrong.  It’s a simple set-up, and in honesty the movie’s a bit too long, but Pattinson and Dafoe’s fantastic, committed performances would be enough without taking in the truly astonishing cinematography.  Shot in black-and-white on lenses from the 1910s to the 1930s, in a ratio (1.19:1) so obscure I’ve never heard of it – and I like weird ratios – it’s absolutely jawdropping to look at it.  I’m glad I managed to see it on a proper cinema screen because I don’t know how well it’d translate to TV.

 

9. Bill & Ted Face the Music (dir. Dean Parisot)

Many years ago I listed some of my favourite endings on this very blog, and one of them was the gloriously upbeat finale to Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.  When, ten-odd years ago, the series’ writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon started talking about a third film I was nervous.  But then 2016 onward happened, and it became increasingly obvious that a film starring two good-natured, inherently decent guys whose first commandment is “Be excellent to each other” was exactly what was needed.  And when circumstances made it that it would be in cinemas shortly after the initial lockdown, it became basically my most-anticipated film of the year.  (I quite wanted it to be my first foray back into cinemas, but that ended up being The New Mutants.  Since I was increasingly convinced that film would never be released, I was fine with that.)

   It turns out that the newspapers at the end of Bogus Journey proclaiming world peace were an addition by the director that the writers hadn’t written, so the happy-ever-after is quietly ignored.  Instead, that initial success for the Wyld Stallyns is shown to have tailed off in the 25-odd years between movies and Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are now middle-aged, somewhat washed up and still trying to write the song that will unite the world.  Rufus’ daughter Kelly (Kristen Schaal) turns up out of the blue to tell them that they have literally a few hours left to do it or history will fall apart.  So they figure, if they’ve written it in the future, why not just jump forward a few years and get the song from themselves?  Inspiration without the perspiration, if you will.  Meanwhile, their daughters Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) and Thea (Samara Weaving) go off on their own time-travelling adventure to put together history’s ultimate supergroup so their dads have a suitable backing band.

   While a lot of fun is had with the core plot (special marks to the Future Bill and Ted who have become insufferable rockstars with inexplicable English accents and a dress style Mötley Crüe would dismiss as “a bit much”), parts of the film do feel like a remix of the first two.  Regardless, the cast is universally delightful, laughs are plentiful, and I think I spent the entire movie with a big smile on my face.  Bogus Journey may remain my favourite of the trilogy, but Face the Music was absolutely a movie 2020 needed.

 

8. 1917 (dir. Sam Mendes)

I’m a bit of a sucker for oners.  Sometimes indulgent and show-offy they may be, but my word they work well when they work.  So Sam Mendes’ attempt to do an entire WW1 movie as a oner would automatically be of interest, but it doesn’t hurt that it was a damn good movie too.

   Much like Birdman, 1917 doesn’t pretend to be a real one-take film, taking place over about a day (the lead character gets knocked out partway through and wakes up hours later, allowing for some variety and for Roger Deakins to show off with some characteristically astonishing cinematography, here involving a ruined French town lit by flares at night).  It’s a relatively straightforward setup involving two young soldiers who have to manually deliver a message to another platoon not to attack, and the one-take nature superbly delivers the chaos of war.

 

7. Emma. (dir. Autumn de Wilde)

At the other end from 1917’s technical virtuosity, we have Emma., which is a tale told simply but well.  I’ve not read Austen’s novel so have no idea if it’s a good adaptation, but the film is witty, warm and excellently acted (the always-brilliant Anya Taylor-Joy, to no-one’s surprise, is the standout as the lead).  It also looks stunning, betraying debut director de Wilde’s background as an acclaimed photographer.

 

6. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (dir. Cathy Yan)

I’m in the minority of quite enjoying 2016’s Suicide Squad, but even those who hated it (i.e. everyone else) are in agreement that that film’s standout was Margot Robbie’s brilliant portrayal of the Joker’s psychiatrist-turned-deranged-lover, Harley Quinn.  So a spin-off starring her was an eminently sensible move.  And if Suicide Squad was DC’s fairly transparent attempt at Guardians of the Galaxy, then Birds of Prey is DC’s fairly transparent attempt at Deadpool – the narrative follows Harley’s fractured psyche by jumping around all over the place, the violence is turned up, and Harley’s narrating but getting easily distracted much like Wade did (one brilliant moment has her start a thought in voiceover then finish it “in scene”, as it were).  Add in some great fight choreography, an excellent soundtrack, sterling supporting work from the rest of the cast (standouts being Mary Elizabeth Winstead as an assassin who wants to be cool and badass but can’t quite manage it and Ewan McGregor as a flamboyantly evil crime lord who’s having so much fun that you forgive his occasionally slipping accent) and a tame hyena, and the result is one of the most trashily fun movies I’ve seen in ages.

 

5. The Farewell (dir. Lulu Wang)

The plot of this delightful Chinese-American comedy-drama is straight out of “you couldn’t make it up” territory, literally – it actually happened to writer-director Wang.  In the big-screen retelling, Awkwafina plays Billi, a naturalised American who left China as a child and prepares to return – her beloved grandmother Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao) has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.  But rather than tell Nai Nai she’s not long for this world, her family have decided to hide the diagnosis from her.  So Billi’s cousin has been pressganged into proposing to his girlfriend – a big wedding providing a convenient excuse for the extended family to return to the motherland and see the unknowingly ailing Nai Nai one more time.  The result is an unexpectedly funny and very moving examination of family dynamics with a universally brilliant cast.

 

4. On the Rocks (dir. Sofia Coppola)

I’m reasonably confident this film was devised purely for my own benefit.  One of my favourite directors casting two of my favourite actors as father and daughter?  Especially when the director’s previous big-screen work with one of the actors was one of my all-time favourite films?  (We’ll ignore the dire Netflix special A Very Murray Christmas, which I could bear about ten minutes of.)  Yes please.

   On the Rocks stars Rashida Jones as author Laura, struggling with writer’s block.  She’s got a seemingly perfect family life with two adorable daughters and dashing husband Dean (Marlon Wayans), but he’s been a bit distant lately.  He insists it’s due to the pressures of launching his latest start-up, but she starts to suspect he’s having an affair with one of his work colleagues.  She reluctantly confesses her fears to her playboy father Felix (Bill Murray) and he immediately concurs and persuades her to start trailing Dean.  Thus starts a very low-key detective story as Laura and Felix snoop around New York, using Felix’s long-established contacts (he’s the sort of old-fashioned raconteur who knows every maître d’ in three continents) to try and catch Dean out.

   Coppola directing Murray in a film that’s in love with the city it’s set in brings obvious Lost in Translation comparisons to mind, but On the Rocks is more structured – and, arguably and surprisingly, a bit lighter in tone, without quite so much of a melancholy undercurrent – than that classic.  Laura and Felix’s laid-back gumshoeing gives the film a quiet, breezy feel, but there’s enough emotional depth in their frequent two-handers to add a decent amount of weight to proceedings.  And Coppola’s genius for small but immediately memorable roles persists – the breakout character here being Jenny Slate’s vapid Vanessa, always somehow catching Laura when they’re dropping their kids off and subjecting her to the latest dramas of her life.  All this, and a scene specifically designed to make you observe what nice legs Jessica Henwick has.  Definitely a film made for me.

 

3. Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

Not really a film that I need to write about much, given how many acres of commentary it’s already – and rightly – generated.  Interestingly, the other two films of Bong’s I’ve seen have both wrapped up his interests in class struggle in sci-fi wrappings – monster movie in The Host and dystopian thriller in Snowpiercer – but as much as I love sci-fi used as a societal mirror, it’s refreshing to see a film that doesn’t attempt to hide the corrosive effects of capitalism behind metaphor.  The sort of film that will have dissertations written about it for years, and rightly so.

 

2. The Personal History of David Copperfield (dir. Armando Iannucci)

Given Iannucci’s reputation as one of Britain’s most merciless satirists, the idea of a kindhearted adaptation of one of Dickens’ sunniest works is...not something I’d’ve necessarily expected from the man whose last effort was the brilliant but pitch-black The Death of Stalin (see my list from a couple of years ago).  And yet, this sunlit costume comedy was so delightful that it ended up being the only film I saw twice in the cinema this year (not something that was easy to do, admittedly). 

   Iannucci’s take on Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel starts on the brilliant conceit that David (Dev Patel) is giving a reading of his work, much in the way Dickens himself was famed for.  This simple but effective set-up allows all sorts of neat tricks, as David stands in the corner and watches his own birth; or the vile Mr. Murdstone (Darren Boyd) literally reaches in to one scene to spoil young David’s fun; or the source novel’s rather cruel discarding of David’s first wife Dora (Morfydd Clark) is rewritten to a less heartless conclusion by Dora herself.

   Any Dickens adaptation is automatically going to draw in the finest actors available to play the smallest of parts, and Iannucci doubles down on that by adopting theatre-style colourblind casting.  Patel is spectacular as David, whether it’s Chaplin-esque clowning, some truly remarkable impersonations of his fellow cast members or perfectly timed deliveries of some brilliant lines (“Do you have a lettuce somewhere covered in ointment?”).  With the possible exception of Benedict Wong’s slightly one-note Mr. Wickham, all his co-stars bring their A-game, with special plaudits going to Hugh Laurie’s Mr. Dick – what is usually a comic side role is given an undercurrent of real heart and pathos. 

   The film’s not perfect – it arguably overplays the comedy in places, and a slight rejigging of the book’s events makes the end very rushed.  But it makes you smile like few other things from 2020 can.

 

1.       Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig)

As with Emma., a lavish costume drama based on a classic book I’ve never read so I don’t know if it’s a particularly good adaptation or not (from what I can gather it rather freely mixes the source material with concepts from the author’s own life).  And I don’t care – again, as with Emma., this is a story told (relatively) simply but brilliantly.

   Gerwig takes Louisa May Alcott’s novel and mixes it around, so that rather than a linear beginning-to-end we start near the end and have flashbacks gradually catching us up.  This is my one complaint with the film – if you’re not familiar with the book, it can be confusing at first (I thought Florence Pugh was acting weirdly infantile in early scenes, not realising she was actually playing a thirteen-year-old very well). 

   And that is my one complaint.  Everything else is superb.  Wonderfully shot, wonderfully acted, wonderfully written.  My reliance on Saoirse Ronan as a bellwether of quality continues to pay dividends.

 

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