Films of 2020

At the beginning of each new year, when I start the next list for the Film5000 Project, I’m always faced with the choice of a suitable thumbnail image. My standard practice is to choose a promotional still from a movie that’s widely expected to be one of the year’s biggest releases. Usually, this image serves as a placeholder, and I eventually swap in a shot from whatever film winds up actually being the year’s most memorable picture: sometimes a blockbuster, sometimes an Oscar or Cannes winner, but always the movie that I think best captures the zeitgeist of the time. Since I try to know as little as possible about films before I see them, I choose my first, placeholder image based on what film fans and industry insiders await most eagerly. So it was an eerie coincidence that at the beginning of 2020, I chose one of the only then-available images from Christopher Nolan’s Tenet: a head-and-shoulders shot of star John David Washington, the lower half of his face covered by a mask, framed in a rectangle, not unlike the Zoom tiles through which we all would spend much of this year interacting each other.

COVID-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30th. By mid-March, it became a full-on global pandemic that forced the shuttering of movie theaters and live entertainment venues around the world. When the lockdowns first arrived, we hoped they would last only a few weeks. But as we moved into the summer, many of us wondered if 2020 would be a year without movies. Of course, three months of pictures were already out by then, but January through March is rarely a high-water mark for new releases. Still, Disney’s Onward, DC’s Birds of Prey, and the Blumhouse remake of The Invisible Man had all been solid hits. And at arthouses, audiences were buzzing about films like Kitty Green’s The Assistant, Eliza Hittman’s Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, and Autumn de Wilde’s Emma., all fresh, exciting independent movies whose directors were women.

Like many film fans and critics, the last movie I saw in a theater in 2020 was the most enchanting of these female-directed indies, Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow. I saw it as part of a retrospective of Reichardt’s work at Harvard, in which fewer and fewer people were let into each subsequent screening as the university scrambled to figure out safety guidelines. By the time Reichardt arrived to discuss her latest and most accessible work to date, the audience was limited to only 35 or so. The next day, the Harvard Film Archive closed to the public altogether. 

Once it became clear that movie houses were not going to reopen anytime soon, many feared the pandemic would mark the end for many cinema chains and arthouses already hurt by industry and market changes. Everyone who cared about movies jumped into action to do whatever we could to keep things going. For me, taking action meant starting a podcast for my hometown arthouse/rep cinema, the historic Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Within two weeks of the theater’s shuttering, I was doing weekly episodes with the creative director, executive director, and membership director to keep our audience engaged. The Brattle, like many cinemas across the nation, soon started its own virtual-cinema service, encouraging members to rent new releases and recent restorations from its website-based platform, with a portion of the fees going towards sustaining the theater. On the podcast, we discussed these movies, as well as the wealth of other content that folks were streaming. It was soon evident that, despite the pandemic, studios would continue to release movies throughout 2020. But would be a year totally devoid of blockbusters? Would prestige pictures be withheld for a year? Might Reichardt’s First Cow have a chance at a Best Picture nomination?

Producing and co-hosting the Brattle Film Podcast left me almost no time for the Film5000 Project. I had been re-watching films from 2010 and posting those entries on the tenth anniversary of their release dates. But my plans to backfill that year and then create a Best-of-the-’10s list were shelved as I threw all of my efforts into the podcast (which still continues, though thankfully we now only record one episode per month). As a result of podcasting with people who work in the exhibition end of the film industry, I grew more attuned to the work of movie distributors and exhibitors than I had been before. And while I much prefer watching and discussing actual films to analyzing the state of the film industry, 2020 made it impossible not to engage with all that was happening to and changing about cinema itself. 

When I began this blog in 2010, I was operating under the assumption that the 2020s would likely be the last decade of cinema as I define it. I state in the ABOUT section of this website that I consider the cinematic experience to have commenced around 1930, when seeing feature-length sound films in theaters with an audience became the primary form of entertainment for much of the world. I assumed that by 2029, movies would have evolved (or devolved) into something distinctively different from what they had been for the previous hundred years of the medium’s life. But the first year of this decade may have hastened that transition. Mainstream commercial cinemas may disappear much faster than anticipated in the face of many powerful concurrent factors: the dominance of streaming services; a rise in popularity of independent, arthouse, foreign, repertory cinema and local film festivals; and the near-complete transformation of popular filmed storytelling from a format of one-to-four-hour self-contained movies, with distinct beginnings, middles, and ends, to a more open-ended, long-form, episodic series format.

Film writers and commentators have been predicting the end of cinema since before 1930, and all along throughout the invention of television in the 1950s, the dawn of cable and home video in the ʾ70s and ʾ80s, and the creation of digital subscription-based content providers in the ʾ00s and ʾ10s. I certainly don’t intend this blog entry to be yet another dire and dubious prediction about the Death of Movies. However, the year 2020 saw a confluence of simultaneous developments which profoundly impacted the industry and our collective understanding of movies. I believe that what I view as cinema has already undergone the transformation that I assumed would arrive by 2029.

What’s different now, compared to all previous external threats, is that every aspect of the film industry itself is consciously driving the transition, rather than combatting the prospect of an outsider technology taking over. While Netflix, viewed initially as a disruptive outsider, may have introduced the concept of streaming movies at home, along with TV shows and comedy specials, the major studios themselves see this development as the future of their business, not an alternative they need to counter. With Disney CEO Bob Iger leading the charge by concentrating the majority of his company’s efforts into Disney+, its new streaming platform, the few remaining major studios all launched their own online platforms or allowed themselves to be absorbed into existing technology companies. 

The labor organizations, especially the Writers Guild of America—already a de facto union of television scribes, since that’s where 95% of the available writing jobs have been for years—focused their efforts on the concerns of those who work in TV. No longer fighting for a piece of the theatrical take, the WGA was wisely securing and protecting Video-On-Demand royalties and streaming residuals for their members since well before the pandemic. Meanwhile, AMC and other big cinema chains were losing the “day-and-date” battle, with the majority of movies appearing on multiple streaming platforms on the same day as their theatrical release date. Only the biggest blockbusters and a few prestige pictures are still required to wait the traditional 90-day period of a theatrical release before migrating to small screens.

So, when COVID-19 hit and cinemas went dark, a horde of streaming services was perfectly positioned to cater to the few holdouts who hadn’t yet joined the home-viewing habits already embraced by almost everyone else. Of course, there were exceptions. The James Bond producers were not only the first to delay a planned 2020 theatrical release, they were also the first to reaffirm that no film they controlled would be available for home viewing until it had enjoyed a full theatrical rollout. In the early spring, before lockdowns were even discussed, a James Bond fan campaign, every bit as concerned about box-office stats as it was about audience safety, encouraged the makers of Daniel Craig’s long-awaited final outing as 007 to postpone the release. By the time the hoped-for fall 2020 premiere of No Time to Die rolled around, many theaters had reopened, with masking and social distancing requirements, but they had very little in the way of movies to run. And rolling out a new James Bond film at a time when audiences were wary of returning to cinemas was not a risk the producers were willing to take.

On the other hand, Christopher Nolan (perhaps the contemporary filmmaker most dedicated to the theatrical experience) and his studio Warner Brothers decided to move forward with the wide release of Tenet, Nolan’s latest sci-fi action film, and in a multitude of theatrical formats, as they had done with prior Nolan pictures. The decision proved unpopular. Debate raged as to whether it was reckless to give people a reason to gather in cinemas before a COVID-19 vaccine was developed. In an effort to encourage attendance, a masked Tom Cruise posted a video of himself on social media in which he went to see Tenet at an IMAX theater and raved about it afterwards. It didn’t help. While Tenet ended up the fifth-highest grossing movie of the year, its box-office take, like that of all movies that limped into mostly empty theaters, was not what the studio or cinema owners hoped or needed. (That said, whether you agree or disagree with my opinion that Tenet is terrible, it’s hard to imagine the pseudo-cerebral action picture doing Dark Knight-level box-office, even without a pandemic keeping audiences away.)

Not long after Tenet experiment flopped, Warner Brothers announced plans to break with tradition and release its entire 2020–2021 slate on HBO Max, its new streaming platform, concurrently with each film’s theatrical date. This move was met with derision from filmmakers working for Warner Brothers until now considered the most director-friendly of the major studios, because Warner executives neglected to consult or even inform the creatives working for them of the decision. Among the most outraged were Nolan and Denis Villeneuve, who declared that releasing his much-anticipated Dune: Part One to both theaters and HBO Max on the same day would doom the film. Disney followed Warner’s lead, moving many of their hot new releases, including Pixar’s Soul, directly to Disney+, while announcing that others, like their live-action remake of Mulan, would drop simultaneously in theaters and on the subscription service, with an additional $30 “advance purchase” price required to watch them at home during the time they were playing in cinemas. For movies that maintained an exclusive theatrical run before becoming available on any home platform, like News of the World, Mank, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the “only in theaters” window shrunk to as little as 14 days. 

2020 was also a tumultuous year on the critical and awards front. Many film writers and reviewers considered their job more important than ever, now that all filmed media was arriving in an uncurated glut across dozens of disparate digital platforms. At the same time, viewers grew more resentful than ever at being told what to see and what to like. The prior year’s “Marvel movies are not cinema” imbroglio reignited, and Twitter blew up with hot takes that scrutinized and criticized every aspect of every decision of every individual connected to every movie. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was already dealing with conflicting pressures from audiences, interest groups, industry watchdogs, activists, and outspoken influencers of all persuasions. Now it scrambled to figure out how to adapt the rules for what qualified for an Academy Award and how to pull off their Oscar show. The yearly spectacle had already lost viewers by the millions in recent years as it (and everything else in America) became more politicized. 

The 93rd Academy Awards ceremony was delayed until April 25th, and the eligibility requirements were loosened to include films that debuted on streamers and VOD, provided they were intended for theatrical release, as well as films that didn’t come out anywhere until January of 2021. These changes, said to be temporary, may instead become permanent, especially since some of the year’s most interesting films were released as limited series. A prime example is Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, which could reasonably be considered a five-episode TV series or five individual movies all organized around a specific culture and shared themes.

The much-buzzed-about Oscar broadcast, produced for the first time by the high-powered creative team of Steven Soderbergh, Stacey Sher, and Jesse Collins, turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. In an attempt to make the show more modest and small-scale, the show was held in Los Angeles’s beautiful Union Station, which was inexplicably art-directed to look like a cross between a Marriott conference room and a Denny’s. Nearly all elements of comedy, music, and entertainment got stripped out of the show, and no clips from the nominated films were shown. Even for someone like me, who has been advocating for years to just let the award winners make their speeches without worrying about how long the show runs, it was a slog to see an Oscar broadcast devoid of montages, songs, or discussion about the nominated movies. It contained little more than long, somber speeches that only resonated for those who had seen the films in question. If ever an Oscar year cried out for clips of the nominated films to provide context for the speeches about them, it was 2020, as even the major categories included films and performances not seen by the great majority of moviegoers. 

The national focus on smaller pictures was one of the things that made 2020 such an interesting year for film. With the dearth of blockbusters, independent films got far more recognition than they had in decades, not just in terms of mainstream film writing, but at awards season, too. Films like Minari, Sound of Metal, and Promising Young Woman, all of which might have nabbed a single acting nomination in a less disrupted year, scored multiple nominations and wins. Of course, this trend was met by tremendous backlash. Commentators from all sides of the political spectrum railed against virtue signaling, “wokeness,” and/or Hollywood’s perpetual inability to process current events at the speed of contemporary social discourse. They pounced on the Academy’s choices and on the embarrassing and alienating broadcast.

Still, the Oscars fared better than the Golden Globes, which featured an awkward combination of live hosting and Zoomed-in nominees. This format resulted in some moments that were excruciating, like Best Supporting Actor winner Daniel Kaluuya’s audio feed not working for the first minute of his speech, and some that were charming, like seeing Best Supporting Actress winner Jodie Foster at home on the sofa with her wife in their PJs, clearly not expecting to win. In hindsight, 2020 may possibly be the last year films are “honored” with these awards. Always viewed by most as a sham, the Globes were still considered a fun party and, in recent decades, a useful way to campaign for more legitimate kudos. But the 78th Golden Globes came under fire for the lack of Black representation among the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gives out the awards. The 90-odd members of the HFPA are little more than highbrow “star-fuckers” who previously gave their awards to whichever A-listers they could convince to show up to the TV broadcast. The tactics for navigating the multiple controversies besieging them for decades may have worked in the ʾ80s and ‘90s, but these buffoonish “journalists” could no longer justify their existence in an era when the industry and the country are grappling with greater and greater political, racial, environmental, and social crises.

Beyond COVID-19, the fraught Trump/Biden presidential election, and the out-of-control wildfires that turned much of California into an all-too-real disaster movie, 2020 will forever be remembered as the year in which George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were murdered by police officers. By the end of May, despite the COVID risks, over 450 major protests were held in cities and towns across the United States and on three continents, kicked off by footage of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killing handcuffed George Floyd in broad daylight, surrounded by several of his fellow officers, and with the full awareness that he was being filmed. The Black Lives Matter movement, which had begun in July 2013, became an international social cause after the video of Floyd’s murder went viral. 

Several of the year’s most notable pictures spoke directly to the issues of Black lives in America, most notably Judas and the Black Messiah, Shaka King’s late-ʾ60s Chicago period drama about the betrayal of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton by an FBI informant. One of the few historical Hollywood films depicting militant Black figures to not water down the protagonist’s message or misrepresent their actions, it was also a rare first-rate biopic and one of the year’s best films (though it was technically a 2021 release and therefore not counted in my best of 2020 lists). 

Other biographical and historical movies touched on the Black Panthers, a major political organization begun in 1966 that has been all but erased from the popular understanding of the Civil Rights Movement. Benedict Andrews’s Hollywood biopic-meets-political-thriller Seberg failed to contextualize the Black Panthers for contemporary audiences. It blew an excellent opportunity to explore a fascinating true story about the justifications and consequences of political radicalization in the 1960s. Aaron Sorkin’s criminally fallacious The Trial of the Chicago 7 used Black Panther leader Bobby Seale as little more than a prop and reduced a vitally important story of political protest in the 1960s to the empty speechifying that passes for political conviction in today’s Democratic party—which may render The Trial of the Chicago 7 the most film prophetic of the year.

Other weak attempts to mine relevant political themes and tell meaningful, compelling stories about real-life characters, including Julie Taymor’s The Glorias, Lee Daniels’ The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and Michael Almereyda’s Tesla, all squandered their potential. The year’s most lauded picture, Mank, also fell short. In it, David Fincher made embarrassingly inept attempts to draw parallels between the contemporary political and journalistic scene and that of the 1940s.

Genre movies fared much better. Many people during the lockdowns discovered the bounty of diverse horror that’s been made in every country, from all kinds of under-represented perspectives, for the last sixty years. And a slew of new horror movies took on issues of racial strife, immigration, class warfare, societal depression, and other themes far more effectively than most of the year’s serious dramas. Movies like Bacurau, His House, Lapsis, Relic, and The Invisible Man made their subtextual points with style and verve. Tiny indies like the inspired The Vast Of Night got a boost by helping bring back drive-in cinemas as a COVID-safe way to enjoy movies communally. Here’s hoping that the resurgence of genre movies is one aspect of the pandemic that sticks around. 

With serious, complicated issues foregrounded in 2020, the year saw many terrific documentaries like Disclosure, My Octopus Teacher, Time, Mayor, Desert One, Crip Camp, and—my pick for best picture of 2020—Colectiv. For now, at least, the streaming revolution has been a boon to documentaries, with many more getting made and seen every year. Of course, this glut means there are also far more poisonous works of misinformation dressed up as legit docs flowing into our collective consciousness, not to mention middling and condescending documentaries that attempt to counter such propaganda—I’m looking at you, The Social Dilemma!

But the joy of discovering works of non-fiction was another thing that made the year’s many lockdowns tolerable, and sometimes even enlightening and enjoyable. Even the music docs—David Byrne's American Utopia, Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson And The Band, Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane Macgowan, Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, Zappa, and many more—were as much moving commentaries on the pride and shame of their respective nations and eras as they were about the artists on which they centered. And the growing trend of blending documentary and fiction, which I usually find frustrating, reached an apex of sorts with Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland. While Zhao’s much-acclaimed and award-winning third film didn’t crack my top ten list, it felt like an appropriate Best Picture winner. It captures something all too true about the current state of the country (and the state of cinema) in its self-conscious depiction of a lifestyle that, while insecure and possibly unsustainable, offers individual freedom as well as an unlikely but powerful sense of real community.

I don't know who had a good 2020. It was a pretty hard year for everyone. So my annual pick for who had the best year overall goes too...

INDEPENDENT CINEMAS & DRIVE-INS: While 2020 spelt doom for many commercial cinema chains; the independent theaters that managed to weather the mandated shuttering thrived. While audiences starved for the experience of watching movies in community rediscovered the American Drive-In—both pop-ups and the few remaining legacy drive-ins. Non-profit cinemas around the country reached out to their members for funds and were surprised and the generosity and support that poured in.  So much so, in fact, that several historical cinemas used the closures and stepped up funding to remodel, expand, and plan for a future where there may be fewer moviegoers, but those that continue to seek out films that stimulate, challenge and inspire will be all the more passionate and dedicated.