Certainly, 2020 changed how we watch movies. The living room sofa and the streaming service stood in admirably for the cinema seat and the projector as we all soldiered through weeks of isolation. I, for one, noticed a sharp decline in the quality of movie popcorn while stuck at home, but not a decline in the quality of the movies I saw. In fact, 2020 turned out to be a rich year for film!
While we’ll no doubt return to the cinema someday, let’s look back on some of the terrific movies that found their way to us last year. Here are seven I particularly enjoyed, in alphabetical order.
Da 5 Bloods
Acclaimed and prolific director Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods is a raw and complex exploration of the shared traumas of war. Channelling the greed and paranoia of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Da 5 Bloods follows four black veterans as they return to the jungles of Vietnam, in search of the hallowed ground where they had buried the remains of their fallen Squadron leader, along with a crate of gold bars.
With an electric performance by Delroy Lindo at its core, Da 5 Bloods careens back and forth between the present day and the thick of the Vietnam war, exploring the cause and effect of war’s psychological consequences. What begins as a politically supercharged but somewhat light caper flick takes a sharp, graphic turn at its midway point, and becomes a riveting fight for survival as madness consumes what had been a quiet treasure hunt. Lee chose unexploded landmines as the cause of the carnage, an expressly unsubtle metaphor for the ever-present memories of war that threaten to detonate at any moment within the soldiers who must carry them.
Available on Netflix.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Writer/director Charlie Kauffman is no stranger to the indecipherable, but his latest film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things may well be his boldest narrative high-wire act. Unfolding over a single evening, a withdrawn young woman and her troubled, intellectual boyfriend drive through the snow for a dinner with his parents, her first time meeting them. She narrates, but he feels more grounded in the world this uneasy film occupies. What unfolds is a bravely cryptic visual puzzle that defies explanation.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is elusive and surreal, and only grows more confounding as the couple drives deeper into the night. While the film’s timing and air of macabre, humourous rage frequently give it the effect of a horror film, its underlying emotions are of sadness and regret, of misunderstanding and isolation. In its final moments, I’m Thinking of Ending Things hints at a relationship that never was, a love that could have been, and a life spent without it. It is, ultimately, a profound meditation on missed chances.
Available on Netflix.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom marks the second time that Denzel Washington has produced a faithful adaptation of a celebrated August Wilson stage production, the first being the magnificent Fences in 2016 (a film he also directed).
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom doesn’t possess that film’s sprawling moral and emotional scope, but it offers instead a vivacious whirlwind of words, music, and colours so warm the sweat nearly drips through the screen.
The true story of Ma Rainey, one of the most celebrated figures of depression-era blues music, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom unfolds over a single day in a Chicago recording studio. Rainey is a soulful but domineering presence who wields the impunity of her fame as a weapon against everyone around her. She possesses uncommon leverage over the white studio producers who hope to cash in on her fame, a fascinating power dynamic at odds with the time. Meanwhile, her backup band features an ambitious talent named Levee (A vibrant Chadwick Boseman, in what would be his last performance), whose lust for the spotlight and buried traumas make him a lit match in a powder keg.
The clash of personalities produces the tempestuous, combustible energy that made the blues such a visceral and timeless expression, but the tumult is not sustainable, and the tragic eruption of tempers that ends the film feels as spontaneous and conflicted as the music Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom celebrates.
Available on Netflix.
Palm Springs
For many of us, time stood still in 2020. Days flattened into formless amoebas as each day in lockdown became indecipherable from the last. I often found myself looking back on the memorable events of 2020 and feeling as though they happened moments ago and ages ago simultaneously. Maybe that’s why I felt a bizarre pang of déjà vu watching Max Barbakow’s clever Palm Springs, about social outcasts who find themselves trapped in an infinite time-loop, reliving the same day over and over.
Palm Springs revisits the classic trope of Harold Ramis’s classic Groundhog Day, but with the twist that two different wayward souls find themselves trapped within the same time-loop, at different stages of acceptance. Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti have terrific comic chemistry as two rejects learning to reckon with the inescapable permanence of their mistakes and move forward, and writer Andy Siara mines these classic tropes for clever and sometimes morbid jokes built on moral insight rather than slapstick gags.
Available on Hulu.
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Polarising screenwriter Aaron Sorkin helmed this potent biopic about the Chicago 7, a group of youth activists opposed to the Vietnam War who faced trial after a riot outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. What begins as a “whodunnit” about the origins of violent clashes between anti-war protesters and Chicago police quickly becomes a cautionary tale about impartial justice, as the Chicago 7’s trial is derailed by judicial malpractice.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 confronts the suffocating fear that no avenue would remain for justice, that we might find ourselves unable to pursue the fate we deserve. Sorkin reminds us that the law is a human institution and that impartial justice is arduously achieved and delicately preserved. The faith and trust of the public are the foundation of any system of law, and Sorkin confronts the hopelessness that can result when that faith and trust are betrayed. At its heart, The Trial of the Chicago 7 is a rousing reminder that justice is only as strong and righteous as those willing to fight for it.
Available on Netflix.
The Willoughbies
The lineage of nearly every animated film produced today can be traced back to one of two origins from a generation ago.
On one side, Disney’s animated films in the 90s pursued a level of prestige and critical acclaim that endeared animated films to the Academy and gave rise to Pixar’s decade-long run of extraordinary success. On the other, Dreamworks Studio’s classic Shrek eschewed timelessness for timeliness, packing its 95 minutes with a hodgepodge of pop culture references and irreverent meta-commentary that was radically clever in 2001 but has become a staple of lesser, lazier animated films in the 20 years since, films that chased trends, rather than shaping them.
The Willoughbies falls decisively in the Shrek lineage. It’s packed with recognisable voice talent for the parents, trending slang, and sugary pop music, but its manic style, memorable characters, and surprisingly complicated message about neglected children make it far more than a fad-chasing cash-in.
The film follows four young children neglected by their parents. While most films that tread this ground depict joyless and dysfunctional parents in loveless, sometimes abusive marriages, The Willoughbies presents “loving parents who had no love left over for them.” Their children, convinced that no parents would be preferable to unloving ones, plot their independence, which inevitably leads to both unforeseen consequences and an eccentric found family.
This is a cute, quirky, frequently spastic family film, delivering clever sight gags at a breakneck pace, a wealth of amusing character design, an explosion of syrupy colour, and a touching reminder that it takes a village to carve out space for the world’s forgotten children.
Available on Netflix.
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