2020 Movies

Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen, 2020): 5/5

Reminiscent of peak Altman, it’s a great party and a portrait of a whole community and culture—the clothes, the food, the modes of transportation, the furniture, the social norms, but mostly the music—all in 70 masterful minutes. Even better if you watch Mangrove first, since all this beauty is demonstrated to be so fragile and hard-won.

Spontaneous (Brian Duffield, 2020): 4.5/5

A teenage love story where people are suddenly just exploding for no reason. Funny, fast-paced, bloody and heartfelt. 

Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020): 1.5/5

Soooooo boring. The idea that some people and objects move forward in time and others move backwards, if simply told and well executed, could have led to some fun and funky images. This movie manages to avoid all of them. 

Mank (David Fincher, 2020): 1.5/5

Boring and self-satisfied. A horrible script that where every line is delivered like it’s the bon mot that puts a button on the scene. What is this movie even about?

The Nest (Sean Durkin, 2020): 3.5/5

Like Durkin’s Martha Marcy, this movie perennially seems on the brink of becoming a horror movie. I wish the protagonists were more expressive, but alas symbolism will have to suffice. Still, the father reminded me of Melissa’s wacky dad, and the movie culminates in a four-character crescendo that gave me the chills. Michelle is right that Jude Law is on another level here.

Sound of Metal (Darius Marder, 2020): 3/5

Title and marketing imagery makes one think that this will be hard core, but it is actually a sweet, routine (dull), well-acted movie made by sweet, routine people. I get their point and they are correct!! Acceptance is the bomb. I don’t regret my time but it’s no Whiplash. 

Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello, 2020): 2/5

Is Bonello the right person to tell this story about a black girl and her multi-generational relationship with Haiti and its mythology? We may never know. 

Richard Linklater Mini Fllmfest

For a guy who has made several of my favorite movies, it’s fascinating that he also regularly makes impersonal pieces of industrial content. I’ve seen 16 of his movies.

Tape (Richard Linklater, 2001): 3/5

Good acting and a pretty compelling teleplay. These people really don’t seem to like one another. 

Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, 2017): 2/5

Dour and maudlin. A disastrous performance by the Bryan Cranston playing it too big as he lamely channels Nicholson from The Last Detail. 

Where’d you go, Bernadette (Richard Linklater, 2019): 2.5/5

Genius architect loses, then re-finds, her groove. Linklater is often interested in the slippery nature of creativity, and Cate Blanchett is always great, but there’s surprisingly little going on here.

Rossellini Mini-Filmfest

I generally have antipathy towards Rossellini, and very recently I actively hated The Taking of Power by Louis XIV. Nevertheless, these three movies are probably my favorite of the eight movies of his I’ve seen. Is it him or me?

The Flowers of St. Francis (Roberto Rossellini, 1950): 4/5

Told as a series of vignettes from St. Francis’ life. I enjoyed how unadorned this one was.

Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950): 4/5

The second half, with its Flaherty-like documentary big fish haul and a real erupting volcano of course, is extraordinary and emotional. The last 10 minutes in particular are ravishing and ecstatic. 

Europe 51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952): 4/5

If Jesus were Alive Today, They Would Lock Him Up: The Movie. Compelling, moving and unsentimental. 

Fassbinder Mini-Filmfest

Previously I had only watched Ali (masterpiece), the Marriage of MB (should rewatch) and In a Year with 13 Moons (you couldn’t pay me enough to rewatch). I’m amazed (in a good way) how he just keeps retelling, The Blue Angel, with his characters again and again plummeting headlong and almost joyfully into masochistic and degrading relationships. The adored object almost seems to hypnotize the protagonist into self-destruction. Or as Rilke says, “Beauty is just the beginning of terror, which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so because it serenely distains to destroy us.”

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1972): 3.5

The first half is stagy and self-pitying, but the second half roars back with some superb masochistic degradation all around. Irm Hermann is excellently creepy as a mute servant.

Merchant of Four Seasons (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1972): 3/5

Points towards Haneke’s Cache, where the bourgeois existence is denied to a man because of the “original trauma” of Algeria. 

Fox and His Friends (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1975): 3.5/5

Extremely humiliating for the protagonist and degrading to the viewer. To root for this guy is to enter into a masochistic relationship with someone who will always disappoint and will always be taken for a schnook. As an actor, Fassbinder is superb and heartbreaking. How could he successfully portray someone so stupid, blank and naïve?

Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1981): 3/5

Reverses The Blue Angel in that once the intellectual gives into the corruption, he is able to integrate into his community and everything is fine again. Filmed In the most hideous possible garish colors and light. One of the visually ugliest movies I’ve ever seen. 

Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbiner, 1982): 4/5

An actress who used to be a star during the Nazi era and is now heroin-addicted and out of work—and the masochist who destroys his life trying to help her! It was the PICTURES that got anti-fascist! 

And The Rest

Ugetsu, rw (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953): 2.5/5

I keep trying with Mizoguchi, and I am starting to notice some cool things with long, gliding shots. But it’s still so glacial and performative. 

Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932): 3/5

I don’t usually love “two wisecracking criminals who are in love” movies, a la Mr and Mrs Smith, but this was snappy as can be. The movie’s irony and detachment (which probably explains its popularity) also makes it a bit unemotional and insubstantial. 

To Be or Not to Be, rw (Ernst Lubitch, 1942): 4.5/5

It’s hard to believe this was made in 1942. Jack Benny revealing himself firmly in the line of Groucho, Bugs Bunny, early Woody Allen, and Bill Murray—guys that are outside of the drama looking in. 

Il Sorpasso (Dino Risi, 1962): 4/5

Very enjoyable—and generous towards all kinds of people. Serious Beat energy-of-the-road (like Going Places) and a very Bill Murray insouciance. Also full of lust, reminding me of the Czech New Wave. Hopper himself said Easy Rider was inspired by it. 

Big Deal on Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli, 1958): 2.5/5

Watched (more comedia d’Italie) after liking Il Sorpasso so much, but this one much broader and less spontaneous-feeling. 

Le Million (Renè Clair, 1931): 3/5

A cross between a farce and a light opera. From that era when some of the sequences are silent (and terrific) and others have sound (and are fine.)

Night and Fog in Japan (Nagisa Oshima, 1960): 1.5/5

“I despise therefore I am.” Bitter personal recriminations and resentments are aired about the “failed” youth protests against the treaties between the U.S. and Japan. Spectacularly anti-dramatic.

Muriel, or the Time of Return (Alain Resnais, 1963): 3/5

I think I might have watched this before, but one may never know. 

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson, 1945): 3.5/5

Nasty people playing a cruel trick on an innocent. Revenge is best served to oneself. 

Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy, 1970): 3/5

Like Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast in bright colors, a lighter tone, and songs by Michel Legrand. Not close to Umbrellas or Rocheford but not nothin’.

Limite (Mario Peixoto, 1931): 3/5

Abstract, perhaps ambient, Brazilian silent. Fun with the right music. 

Citizen Kane, rw (Orson Welles, 1941): 5/5 

Complex and beautiful, with an astonishing iterative structure. The song and dance sequence with its costumes and high contrast lights while simultaneously Joseph Cotten is pointing out everyone’s hypocrisy is utterly masterful.  Heavy, heavy Trump vibes. 

The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012): 2/5

Wherein Bane and the uprising of the multicultural orphans-of-the-system are … repressed by an army of police, supported of course by the Bat Man.

Devil’s Doorway (Anthony Mann, 1950): 3.5/5

An unflinching and downbeat depiction of race. Some of the greatest action sequences I’ve seen.

Night Nurse (William Wellman, 1931)

Frank and modern attitudes toward career woman abound.

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (F.W. Murnau, 1931): 3.5/5

A luxurious romantic idyll, which is punished. As inauthentic as it is, it reminded me of Flaherty terms of the realism of its setting. It’s a shame it all has to be filtered through the lens of Female Suffering.

2020 films (so far)

Mank (David Fincher, 2020): 2/5

Greatest film ever made about the 1934 California gubernatorial campaign. The Welles vs. Mankiewicz authorship kerfuffle that's being used to hype this movie is a dead horse; Robert Carringer's archival scholarship has conclusively demonstrated how Welles's revisions significantly improved Mank's draft.  And, thankfully, the film largely avoids that issue, as it's really about how Mank arrived at his script titled "American."  But the characterization of Mank is mostly a one-note repetition of cynical Hollywood insider schtick, which isn't half as clever as Fincher et al think it is.  Perhaps this would play better in a theater, but on TV the photography and score look and sound like standard episodic Netflix fare.  The fake cigarette burns signifying reel changes and Fincher's appreciation of film culture only highlight how flat, grey-scaled, and "digital" this looks compared to celluloid.  A disappointment all around.

Sound of Metal (Darius Marder, 2020): 5/5

An alt-rock art-metal drummer loses his hearing and must cope with how it upends his life.  Here's a movie that really benefits from quarantined viewing in silence, as the story is told as much with sound design as words and images.  One could quibble with some gaps in plot or perhaps a predictable resolution, but lord knows we could use some fucking resolution these days.  Holding it all together is a stunning performance by Riz Ahmed (mesmerizing in the HBO series The Night Of and as the hapless sidekick in Nightcrawler), who has a vulnerable intensity and expressive eyes rivaled only by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, 2020): 3/5

I couldn't agree more, Charlie.  The argument in the car featuring a verbatim recitation of Pauline Kael's review of A Woman Under the Influence was priceless.  This being a CK film and all, I didn't give a shit about figuring it out, and just enjoyed it while it lasted.

Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard, 2020): W/O

I attempted a hate watch but couldn't make it past 20 minutes.  But I'm sympathetic to Ron Howard's frustration with the source material. 

 Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020): 1/5

Or, WHY BOTHER: THE MOVIE

Just absolutely atrocious all around. The paper-thin characterization. The joyless ostentatious ploys toward spectacle. The ceaseless exposition and loud, convoluted setpieces. (Yet no matter how didactically it explains its physics to you, the mechanics never come close to making sense.) The editing is some of the worst in a major blockbuster for years, frequently foregoing logic entirely in the vague hope the viewer will get caught up in its simultaneous “forwards/inverted reality” setup. And don't get me started on the sound mixing. (What good is a complex plot if it’s too hard to hear or understand???)

Pretty sure Nolan has a dick swinging contest with his future self to see who can come up with the most emotionally unsatisfying, quasi-philosophical concept that is half-well executed.

Mank (David Fincher, 2020): 2.5/5

Touching though it may be that Fincher has brought to screen the script written by his late father, and love letter though it might be intended to the golden era of Hollywood, MANK is aggressively disappointing. While much effort was put into creating the feel of a film from the era of CITIZEN KANE, not enough effort was put into translating the concerns of its historical story in a way that makes audiences actually care. This is a film to be intellectualized over, not to be resonated with - which is a shame because there is a human story here, buried underneath all the masturbatory "old-Hollywood" fetishism. An impressive simulacrum of classic Hollywood, but it contains zero revelations, historical or human. And then there's that distractingly inept score.

Ammonite (Francis Lee, 2020): 3/5

I came here for Gay Kate Winslet yearning and that's what I got. Overall though, this film just makes you recognize the true sorcery that is PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE.

Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard, 2020): 1/5

Glenn Close's makeup - zoo-wee mama! A milquetoast, exasperatingly mawkish adaptation of a controversial memoir from doltish venture capitalist J.D. Vance. At no point do any of the filmmakers seem to have considered answering the question: Why should I care about this awful little shit?

Thunder Road (Jim Cummings, 2018): 3.5/5

EIGHTH GRADE for dads. On-point-tragicomedy that shows how highly talented Jim Cummings is. A nice, touching, and enjoyable movie.

Mute (Duncan Jones, 2018): 1.5/5

Less of a film and more of a test on how long you can sit through an absolute mess. And there's honestly no reason for this story to take place in some BLADE RUNNER knockoff future dystopia, which makes the truly crappy-looking BLADE RUNNER knockoff future dystopia all the more disappointing.

A Rainy Day in New York (Woody Allen, 2019): 2/5

I mean, we’ve run out of things to say about new Woody Allen movies, right? Not just because those things inevitably become subservient to what we know about him as a person, but because Allen himself long ago seemed to run out of things to say worth making a new movie about. His latest attempt at effervescent dramedy casts Timothee Chalamet and Elle Fanning as Gatsby (yes, swear to god) and Ashleigh, a college couple who head to Manhattan for a weekend, where Ashleigh's assignment to interview a famous movie director (Liev Schreiber) and Gatsby's wandering spirit lead them on very different misadventures. Gatsby and Ashleigh are merely the latest variations on familiar Allen types—he the intellectual Woody surrogate who drops references to Irving Berlin songs, she the doe-eyed ingenue that older men can’t help but fall for—in a narrative that suggest the cultural interests of American 20-somethings ossified 70 years ago. If there’s anything of interest here, it’s Selena Gomez as the sister of Gatsby’s ex-girlfriend, in an eye-opening performance that somehow manages to make Allen’s ridiculous dialogue sound frisky.

Guest of Honour (Atom Egoyan, 2019): 2/5

Trashy yet ponderous tale of a persnickety health inspector and his bizarrely self-righteous/self-castigating daughter, needlessly told in flashback to kindly priest Luke Wilson. Little of what happens makes much emotional sense and ultimately there was just no rescuing this one.

Rebecca (Ben Wheatley, 2020): 1/5

“Why should you hate me?” Rebecca (2020) asked; “what have I ever done to you that you should hate me?”

“You tried to take Rebecca (1940)'s place,” said everybody.

Absolute garbage.

Braindead (Peter Jackson, 1992): 2/5

Jackson leans too hard on the gross-out for my (uh) taste, I prefer the first two acts, when Lionel is valiantly attempting to pretend this zombie apocalypse isn't happening, to the extended bloodsoaked finale. And the film loses me completely at the rooftop climax, with Mum for some reason re-emerging as a lucid behemoth.

Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg, 1935): 3/5

Josef von Sternberg, Peter Lorre, and Fyodor Dostoevsky – that’s quite a combination. But leans too heavily and simplistically on religious moralizing, leaving behind the entire punishment phase of Crime and Punishment. Loved when Raskilnikov smashed Luzhin's hat and Tonya's actor was visibly holding back laughter.

rewatched Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981): 2/5

Isabelle Adjani to all of the sane bitches out there: I respect it but it ain’t me.

Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine (Natasha Lyonne, 2020): 2/5

Like most people, I've been a huge fan of Sarah's Trump lip-sync videos during this year, and was curious to see if this obviously talented breath of fresh air would be able to hold an entire netflix special, and to find out if she had some other tools in her arsenal. (Answer: ehh and meh. But keep those lip-sync vids coming please!)

White Rabbit (Daryl Wein, 2018): 3/5

Authentic as fuck. Great vehicle for Vivian Bang. Looking forward to seeing what she does next.

The Dark End of the Street (Kevin Tran, 2020): 2.5/5

A little film that throws a lot of characters at you with no real rhyme or reason. The acting is a mixed bag, but the writing is decent, I wish it had more substance than a slice of life in a distressed neighborhood, but still an interesting watch.

Saint Frances (Alex Thompson, 2019): 3/5

It has the same ‘cutesy’ vibe that most lighthearted indies commonly fall victim to, but the performances are appropriately organic and the final product radiates with a level of honesty that makes it hard not to appreciate.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin, 2020): 2/5

As I write this, I have been watching this movie for days. It hit a logical endpoint 30 minutes ago and yet somehow it still has 90 minutes to go. Full song performances are included, often more than once. I mean you hear the song from the first note to the last.

 The Queen's Gambit (Scott Frank, 2020): 3/5

I do find it hard to believe that 1) Russian people would absolutely instantly fall in love with a rich white American girl that beat one of their best grandmasters, in the midst of the Cold War at that, and 2) a bunch of white snobby chess boys would take losing to a girl that gracefully in the 1960s. 

Fireballs: Visitors from Darker Worlds (Werner Herzog & Clive Oppenheimer, 2020): 3/5 

Herzog noting Chicxulub today vs. the devastation of 66 million years ago: "Nothing out here is reminiscent of it. Only leaden boredom weighs upon everything." Classic. 

Strictly Ballroom (Baz Lurhman, 1992): 2.5/5 

A Mentos commercial mixed with an 80s after-school special. I wonder what Baz Luhrmann's sequin budget was.

The Nest (Sean Durkin, 2020): 3.5/5
The story of one family's jarring cross-continental relocation and the ways in which its desperately status-conscious patriarch makes everything much worse. Jude Law's performance is a knockout —hearty and jovial with an undercurrent of self-loathing.