My top 10 films of 2020!

I dedicate this post and this list to all the filmmakers and studios who managed to release their films last year amidst a global pandemic, and to the cinemas and streaming services that have shown them.

10-1:

In this terrific fun horror comedy, three streetwise New York City teenagers suddenly find themselves with more than just puberty and homework to contend with. When their home borough the Bronx becomes the site of a vampire invasion, they must step up and protect what (and who) they love. Oz Rodriguez' Vampires vs. the Bronx is like Attack the Block (with vampires instead of aliens) meets Dope, but it still raises the stakes (pun intended) for contemporary vampire movies and cuts a fresh impression of its own.

2020 was certainly a year many of us will rather forget, and Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, with directors Al Campbell and Alice Mathias, very bluntly remind us why in this awfully underrated satirical mockumentary that explores all its highs and lows in chronological order, with commentary from various fictitious "experts." This was surely my choice for 2020's funniest film; I'd even put it in the "so funny you have to see it twice to experience all the gags because you missed half the first time from laughing so hard" category. The entire cast also clearly shared Brooker and Jones' wish to skewer everything about last year, but stealing the show are Lisa Kudrow as a deluded Trump campaign spokesperson and Hugh Grant as a British historian working for the government. And remember: conservative voices are being silenced!

This is one definitely for the #MeToo era (which I have no problem with, JFTR). Writer-director Emerald Fennell introduces us to Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a 30-year-old medical school dropout who still lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge and Clancy Brown). She works at a local coffee shop but otherwise has no real direction or ambition in life; not openly, anyway. By night she leads a double life: frequenting local nightclubs and bars where she feigns drunkenness and waits for men to take her home and try to sleep with her, and then reveals her sobriety when they do. When she reconnects with young doctor Ryan (Bo Burnham) and he tells her their mutual former classmate Al (Chris Lowell), who raped Cassie's best friend Nina in college and got away with it, is getting married, she sees her chance for revenge and plots her plan. But this no ordinary revenge movie; instead of taking the tried-and-true I Spit on Your Grave route, Fennell takes us down one I found genuinely interesting and very unpredictable. It actually proves to be more of a black comedy than a drama or slasher flick, but Fennell infuses it with suspense nonetheless. Mulligan gives a firecracker turn as the duplicitous, cunning and very smart Cassie, with engaging performances surrounding her, and the design, cinematography and editing are equally striking. Oh, and you mightn't listen to Angel of the Morning or Britney Spears' Toxic in the same way after seeing this.

In this adaptation of Iain Reid's 2016 novel, Jesse Plemons and Jessie Buckley are Jake and a young woman known by several names, a young couple who take a road trip through the winter to visit Jake's deliberately obnoxious parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). Even before they left, however, she was having second thoughts about their relationship, and as their trip progresses, it becomes increasingly clear to both that perhaps their relationship wasn't working out as well it seemed to be. After a filmography including Being John Malkovich, Adaptation. and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Charlie Kaufman definitely has a reputation for weirdness and that continues here, but I'm Thinking of Ending Things is strange in its concept yet very lucid and stimulating in how that concept is explored. Therefore I found it genuinely thought-provoking and engaging throughout (although making sense of the narrative itself was still hard for me until a scene near the end). Kaufman visualises what could've been a quite dull narrative quite evocatively and even sensually in parts, and his very dialogue-heavy screenplay is appropriately erudite (the protagonists are both obsessed with literature). It's definitely not a movie for all tastes, but I found it just exquisite.

He is, of course, the first person who normally comes to mind when you think of a nature documentary: David Attenborough. For over 60 years now he has shared his boundless passion for, and knowledge of, the natural world with millions of viewers around the globe. But in 2020, he chose to share something else in the powerful documentary David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet. Here Attenborough turns his focus from how nature currently is and has been, to how much it has changed over his lifetime, and remains changing, with flashbacks from his life and career interspersed. It's his "witness statement" for the future, and a very eloquent and important statement it is. Crucially, it steers clear of being propagandist or preachy, instead demonstrating consistently thorough research and objective creative choices. Particularly, the wilderness photography is absolutely mouth-watering and the score beautifully restrained. It all adds up to a stirring, aesthetically strong and very educational factual odyssey.

Now here's one I really don't understand all the negative reviews for. Chloe Grace Moretz is Maude Garrett, a US Air Force Flight Officer in World War II who is assigned a mission to transport secret documents from New Zealand to Samoa with an openly misogynistic all-male crew aboard a B-17 bomber christened the Fool's Errand. She's placed, to her annoyance, in the gun turret, and it appears to be a fairly routine flight until something unexpected and curious makes its presence felt on the bomber. It's a gremlin, and naturally it wants to get inside and feed. And despite her angst about her placement on the flight, now Maude willingly takes charge of it to save all their lives (including a hidden one most precious to her) and prove her worth and strength to her male crewmates. Director/co-writer Rosemary Liang had me truly riveted from start to finish with Shadow in the Cloud, which for me generated palpable suspense and a very logically plotted sci-fi/horror narrative. This is brought to life, too, with totally convincing visual effects, editing and sound. But surprisingly and even more resonantly, it also becomes a very blunt riposte to gender inequality in the armed forces; I should mention here that I am the proud grandson of a former member of the Australian Women's Army Service, who all deserved far more acknowledgement than they received. Anyway, Shadow in the Cloud took me on a rollercoaster ride as a creature feature and pleasantly defied my expectations with its impassioned sociological message.

I also suggest ignoring the wrap on this movie. In fact, listen up because I have a few things to say here in its defence. Firstly, at no time does it defend or celebrate the sexualisation or exploitation of young girls which it depicts. Secondly, it has been fucking crucified for covering territory which Larry Clark's and Harmony Korine's films have been given a light wrist-slap for treading considerably more perversely. The cancel culture surrounding this film is also dangerous for its debut woman of colour writer-director Maimouna Doucoure having a successful career, although had Netflix not promoted it so misleadingly and sensationally unlike its original French distributors (I've included both posters above for this reason) it probably wouldn't have twisted so many tails. Anyway, now that I've expressed all that, Cuties follows 11-year-old Amy (Fathia Youssouff), a Senegalese immigrant who lives in the Paris slums with her mother Mariam (a superb Maimouna Gueye), her Muslim aunt (Mbissine Therese Diop) and her two younger brothers. Amy is bored there, but that is until she encounters her neighbour Angelica's (Medina El Aidi-Azouni) twerking clique, the Cuties, who quickly take her aboard. Then they set their sights on participating in a local talent show, but as she's drawn deeper and deeper into their world of pre-teen sexual exposure, Amy starts to have second thoughts. Cuties is clearly a critique of the hypersexualisation of young girls primarily, and it criticises that very sharply, but it works almost as well as a study of cultural and generational clashes and the troubles of immigrant life. You can all watch it and decide for yourselves, but I considered it brave, realistic and genuinely moving and angering.

 

They're ba-ack! Pixar, one of the perennials of my annual top tens, have come close to the summit yet again with Onward. Elf brothers Barley and Ian Lightfoot (voiced by Chris Pratt and Tom Holland) live in the city of New Mushroomton with their single mum Laurel (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Their dad Wilden died of a severe illness before Ian was born, but on Ian's sixteenth birthday Laurel gives her sons three magical gifts Wilden left behind for them which they can use to cast a spell to summon him back to life for just one day. Ian completes half the spell before Barley distracts him, leaving only the bottom half of Wilden's body summoned, so now they must go in Barley's van "Guinevere" on a quest to complete the spell; meanwhile, Laurel inevitably notices her boys are missing and hits the road to rescue them with help from her friend Manticore (voiced by Octavia Spencer). Director Dan Scanlon, who sculpted this narrative from his own childhood, returns after his debut with 2013's Monsters University and the result is yet another emotional powerhouse. As the boys get closer to their shared goal their true motivations for it become more obvious, but all this is handled very tenderly and even philosophically, instead of manipulatively. That was exactly the right touch in this case, too, and of course, Scanlon and his team ensure the animation matches that quality in each scene. The vocal performances are all convincing as well, and Jeff and Mychael Danna deliver a dynamic score. Onward indeed goes upward.

Gymnastics wasn't a sport known for controversy or scandal. That was until 2015, when news broke of USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar and his decades of sexual and physical abuse of young female gymnasts, and the culture within the sport that allowed his crimes to be covered up for too long. Bonnie Cohen's and Jon Shenk's utterly devastating documentary Athlete A fearlessly lifts the lid on the investigation into Nassar and all the coaches and officials who were complicit. Alongside new interviews with key gymnasts who either endured or witnessed this abuse, like Maggie Nichols and Rachel Denhollander, Cohen and Shenk prominently feature actual footage of Nassar's police interrogations, during which you just want to be able to walk into the room, pull his chair out from under him and assault him with it. That's how (appropriately and intentionally) enraging this film is. Yet it also proves informative beyond its coverage of the Nassar saga, by simultaneously exploring the modern history of gymnastics since Nadia Comaneci's gold medal win at age 15 at the 1976 Olympics transformed the sport into one so well-known for juvenile competitors. Perhaps that's when the seed for abuse was planted, but as this film reinforces, it should certainly have never been watered. But watered it was, until it tragically became the culture of abuse and corruption that welcomed horrible people like Nassar in when they tried to enter it. Athlete A might be the only good thing that has come from that, but let's hope no more documentaries like it need to made from now on.

But indeed, my champion for 2020 in cinema is this utterly extraordinary fantasy/romance anime from Japanese directors Junichi Sato and Tomotaka Shibayama, writer Mari Okada and studios Toho Animation and Twin Engine. It tells the tale of high schooler Miyo Sasaki (the voice of Mirai Shida in the Japanese-language version), who unhappily lives with her stepmother. She is head over heels in love with classmate Kento Hinode (Natsuki Hanae), yet he not only rebuffs her every advance but openly dislikes her, to her despair. He is very fond of his pet cat Taro, an attachment Miyo is well aware of, and which she soon tries to use to her advantage. One day she meets a strange mask seller who gives her an enchanted, cat-shaped Noh mask which turns its wearer into a feline, and now, disguised as Taro, Miyo finally has (an unsuspecting) Kento's affections. But of course, this comes with a painful cost: wear the mask for too long and she will never be able to turn human again. Now, with a gradually sympathetic Kento and her family and other friends behind her, Miyo must take a precarious journey to escape the curse, deciding en route whether she really wants to be human again. This masterpiece seriously felt like it chose me to watch it: after I did, I was physically shaking for hours, and yes, I cried - buckets, honestly. It really is one of the most profound, insightful, empathetic, touching, vibrant and visually stunning films - certainly of the animated variety - I have ever seen. The animation is thoroughly refined and strikingly detailed, Miyo's and Kento's character arcs are genuinely relatable and very intelligently juxtaposed, the dialogue and plotting are very realistic and lucid respectively, the voice cast all imbue their parts with range and charisma, and Mina Kubota ties it all together even stronger still with a genuinely distinctive and affecting score. A Whisker Away might be about cats on the surface, but it carries a sentiment that can be felt in virtually any species, and it couldn't have expressed that sentiment better. Don't be surprised if this one cinematically has nine lives.

Now to get introspective again.

Everybody needs - and hopefully has - friends and mentors in their lives. I know I sure do. And there are several people in mine who tick both those boxes. Here today, I want to talk, impartially and just for myself, about a quandary they (all inadvertently) have been giving me.

I look up to them all, because of both their conduct and their wisdom. This obviously makes them people I would consult for advice on what to do about a particular matter I didn't know how to deal with. They've also made me re-examine many of my values and views which I did need to change. But where does or should one draw the line between doing that and still thinking for oneself? That's what I've been recently grappling with amongst all this. Because I do still need, not always but often, to think for myself, as everybody else needs to (and deserves the right to).

I want it to be abundantly clear that none of them have ever sought to indoctrinate me; just to guide or reprimand me when necessary. Those are often parts of a friend's job, too. But I believe I still need to strike a mental balance between listening to and absorbing what others tell me (which has made me publicly experience cognitive dissonance, the concept of which one of these friends re-familiarised me with), and maintaining my own opinions; all my family and friends would themselves want me to do the latter regardless.

Writing this post has been tougher than I expected, because of my overthinking habit, but I felt if I didn't express this anywhere, it would all eventually come out at an inappropriate place and time. And this issue will take me awhile to resolve, but I feel better for having discussed it here now. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #231: Point Break (1991).

 

In California, a group of robbers have been targeting banks. They call themselves the Ex-Presidents because they disguise themselves under rubber masks of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon B. Johnson. Meanwhile, rookie FBI Agent and ex-footballer Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves) aids seasoned agent Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey) in hunting them down. Upon learning the Ex-Presidents are surfers, Utah resolves to investigate the local surf scene and then go undercover as a surfer in order to find the group. Once he does, their charismatic leader Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) takes Johnny under his wing and nurtures him. Johnny soon finds his loyalty to his job tested, with Pappas and their domineering superior Ben Earp (John C. McGinley) breathing down his neck, until he's brought back into line to bring the Ex-Presidents to justice.

This 1991 effort by director Kathryn Bigelow and writer W. Peter Iliff suffered commercially because it was released the same week as that year's biggest blockbuster, Bigelow's then-husband James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, in fact, executive-produced Point Break), but it's deservedly enjoyed a rebirth since then with a considerable cult following. Now, I'm still trying to work out how the bank customers could take the robbers seriously in those truly ridiculous president masks but despite that, I had a lot of fun watching this caper. Bigelow paces and visualises each action scene with ferocious zest and confidence, and she and Iliff also keep an insistent eye on ensuring the narrative unfolds intelligently. Bigelow also draws decent turns from her almost entirely male cast (even Reeves), with McGinley stealing the show.

It's also fluidly edited, energetically filmed and with a pulsating score. Point Break probably won't make me into a surfer (I have nowhere near enough balance to be one anyway, and I get seasick), but it still slapped a smile on my dial for its full duration.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #230: A Separation (2012).

 

Simin (Leila Hatami), a teacher, is desperate to leave Iran with her husband Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and their eleven-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, the writer-director Asghar Farhadi's own daughter) in order for Termeh to have a better life abroad. Nader, however, is torn between participating in this desire, as he also wants more chances for his daughter, and remaining in Iran where he is looking after his elderly father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi), who's battling Alzheimer's disease. This conflict of loyalties and wishes throws their marriage quickly on the rocks, which increases once Nader hires working-class wife and mother Razieh (Sareh Bayat) to be his dad's caregiver. Now, with Razieh's own unstable family life tossed into the mix and Nader accused of a crime, any chances of this being an amicable divorce are extinguished.

A Separation won the 2011 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and Golden Globe and the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear, but I must say I don't understand why. Let me be clear and say I knew beforehand this was no fast-paced action movie, and for about the first 30 minutes it did have me engaged, but after that I found it increasingly monotonous and even predictable. It has one intimate argument scene after another (with one near the end I almost found unintentionally funny, it was so over-the-top) and I also felt Farhadi overlooked a chance here to specifically examine the confines marriage and legal systems place on women particularly in the Middle East. A little political commentary like that would've made the narrative more powerful and unorthodox, I think. Or maybe it was there, and I just missed it; in which case, it should've been more pointed.

A Separation is an intimate, personal film, and many of those are great. But for me, telling an intimate story doesn't mean you should make it constantly repetitive. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #229: A Month of Sundays (2015).

 

Frank Mollard (Anthony LaPaglia) is a Sydney real estate agent in a mid-life crisis. In his case, that means struggling to recover from his divorce from Wendy (Justine Clarke) and bond with their son Frank, Jr. (Indiana Crowther), and even during a property boom he can't sell a house to save his life. That last problem may also be why his boss Phillip Lang (John Clarke) constantly joins him at work. Then one night, to throw an added spanner in the works, Frank receives a call from an elderly woman who instantly reminds him of his recently deceased mother, so much so that he confuses her for his mum. Upon realising she's not his mother, he chooses to meet her in person anyway and she turns out to be Sarah (Julia Blake), a retired widower whose real son Stuart (Terence Crawford) is an army officer. Over several meetings with Sarah, Frank gradually learns how to manage and mend his relationships with his family, his past and his work.

I feel quite strangely about A Month of Sundays. Writer-director Matthew Saville tries here to tell a deceptively straightforward but ultimately rather convoluted and juxtaposing story and that's always an approach I'm intrigued to see unfold, but this time not all the plot lines fully mesh. They all make sense and connect, but they just don't all exactly reflect or mirror the others as much as maybe they should. However, thematically it did still get through to me, and it offers a fairly refined and realistic portrait of contemporary Aussie suburbia.

LaPaglia is fine in the lead, although it's a role I've seen him play several times before, and I could actually say as much about both Clarkes, funnily enough. The best performance is easily Blake's; this Australian screen (and stage) veteran effortlessly projects a grandmotherly warmth and sophistication, with a subtle determination and a slightly troubled secretiveness just under the boilerplate. She's flawless in the role.

So in summary, A Month of Sundays treads narrative territory I've seen explored more boldly and freshly, but it does offer some thematic depth and truth to mull over.

Making news and history for all the wrong reasons: the Donald Trump Story!

I'm certain you've all heard by now of the chaos that's befallen Washington, D.C. this fortnight. President Trump's supporters sieged the city to try to consolidate his position and invalidate his election loss. His reluctance to condemn that violence, or comment on it in general, inevitably and quickly alerted suspicion. What subsequently emerged were allegations that he secretly incited that siege, and a phone call he made on 2 January to Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he pressured Raffensperger to change that state's vote totals from the election.

Joe Biden, who, although I wanted him to win, I am not always in sync with, was correct in saying Trump was tarnishing his legacy by encouraging all these guerrilla tactics against the Capitol and the democracy it usually represents. Additionally, by resorting to them, all the participants were making him, themselves and, since this storming has made global news headlines, indeed the US itself look bad. Now, as a would-be Democrat (since I'm Australian), you may be wondering why I even care about their violent actions; I obviously don't. I simply do care about democracy, and the sentiment behind the adage "the pen is mightier than the sword."

But I digress. All this has added up to Trump now being the first US president ever to have been impeached twice, and he's managed that fitting fate in just one term. Come to think of it, if he really did encourage his supporters who've waged their siege to do that, it means he was even prepared to disregard the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed more Americans than it has any other nationality. Which in turn means he doesn't even care about his supporters' medical safety, never mind that of his opponents.

Now, I think thankfully, efforts are being made to block him from ever being able to run for political office in the US again. And this week even George W. Bush issued a statement condemning Trump's actions in the Oval Office and his fanbase's outside it. Unless some miracle occurs, his life will end no differently to how his political career has: with him as a cautionary tale for history. Having gone from a popular and respected real estate mogul, to a disgraced tyrant who formed and led a literally violently devoted cult and crippled the world's biggest superpower. And after repeatedly insisting he would make it great again. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #228: The White Balloon (1995).

 

It's the eve of the Iranian New Year in Tehran. Seven-year-old Razieh (Aida Mohammadkhani) and her mother are shopping in a market when Razieh sees a goldfish for sale in a bowl and is immediately captivated with it. She then, of course, nags her very reluctant mother about it until Mum's patience is finally worn thin and she gives Razieh a banknote to go and buy the goldfish herself. While doing so, Razieh loses the money twice, first in an encounter with a snake charmer and then when she accidentally drops the note through a grate at the entrance of a closed shop. Still undeterred, Razieh now enlists her older brother Ali (Mohsen Kalifi), who she bribes with a reward of a balloon, and a young Afghan balloon-selling street vendor, to help her retrieve the cash and thus pay for her coveted goldfish.

This was my first film of 2021 and what a gem it is to start the year with. The White Balloon won the Camera d'Or award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival for debut director Jafar Panami, and I think deservedly so. It's a slow but charming and ultimately very touching little movie and I was the exact same age when it was made as the two main children in it, so despite being a Westerner maybe that's why I connected with it as much as I did. Panami and screenwriter Abbas Kiarostami, who was already a celebrated Iranian filmmaker, also manage to make this seemingly wholesome and innocent fable into a sharp allegorical statement about globalisation and cultural imperialism. They also wisely inject it with a very populated, vibrant vibe, with numerous other characters who come and go (most notably a mournful Iranian soldier).

Panami, who edited the movie as well, also nurtures natural, realistic performances from his mostly non-professional cast, and Farzad Jadat's understated photography fits the location, occasion and narrative mood like a glove. The White Balloon is one I really doubt you'll want to pop.