Declaring the current year the "worst year ever" has been a silly December tradition for a while now, but this was different. Even though 2021 has certainly come out swinging, I would be surprised if it could sustain the same consistent day to day despair as 2020. There's no need to rehash it all but it certainly had as profound an impact on movies as everything else. With theaters more or less empty since March, those of us who follow movies as a hobby were left to our own devices...often literally. All of us want to put out our annual lists as per usual, but in the absence of "must-see" movie events to coalesce around, the lists will be more idiosyncratic and personal than ever based on whatever winding path we took through the various streaming services out there.
There usually ends up being one horror movie on these lists, but this year that genre dominated in a big way. I didn't expect it but in hindsight it makes sense. The conditions were perfect. Studios were unsure of just what to do with their major releases, either delaying them until next year or experimenting with outlandish pricing (sorry guys, I'm not paying $20 or $30 to watch a movie once at home). Horror, perhaps the most resilient and versatile of movie genres, figured out years ago that the best way to reach its audience was to take advantage of the emerging world of streaming.
Then there's the real-life horror of the past year. A common theme in this genre is the sins of the past coming back to menace people in the present day. COVID-19's reign of terror in the United States was facilitated not just by a psychotic president but an overall cultural indifference to the health, happiness and safety of its citizens. Something like this requires major intervention by the powers that be and instead our government determined it was more cost effective to just let people die. We'll be paying for this for a long time and horror films are just barely getting started when it comes to processing that.
It's not all scary stuff, though. Read on!
10. Ride Your Wave
In a small city by the seashore, a college student named Hinako with a passion for surfing meets a dashing young firefighter named Minato. Their picture-perfect romance is interrupted by Minato’s sudden death, but Hinako discovers that if she is near water, she can summon his ghost by singing their favorite song. Masaaki Yuasa has a highly distinctive style, but don’t let his screwball animation style and goofy facial expressions fool you - this is a classic tearjerker similar to the work of his countryman Makoto Shinkai. It’s a charming, bittersweet story about grieving with lovely characters and gorgeous animation, particularly during the surfing scenes.
9. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
The cheerfully bigoted journalist made a surprise return in this sequel, which is subtitled "Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." After he was imprisoned for embarrassing his homeland in the previous film, Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) is called upon to bring a gift to Vice-President Mike Pence in order to get the nation in the same good standing with President Donald Trump as North Korea and Russia. Like its predecessor, the movie is a combination of a scripted storyline and hidden camera stunts with unsuspecting Americans. The filming took place shortly before Covid swept the world, which was cleverly incorporated into the plot. Even before its release, it made headlines due to a queasily funny prank on former New York mayor turned dripping, farting lawyer Rudy Giuliani, clearly following the president's lead in terms of how to relate to women. Baron Cohen continues to be utterly fearless but the surprise with this film is how heartfelt it is, thanks to the out of nowhere brilliant performance of Maria Bakalova as Borat's teenage daughter Tutar. Her character has a powerful story arc and she ultimately walks off with the film.
8. Feels Good Man
It was a story only possible in the age of the internet - soft-spoken cartoonist Matt Furie can only watch in horror as his creation, a frog named “Pepe,” is inexplicably turned into a symbol of fascists and white supremacists. This poignant documentary traces the slow evolution of the character beyond the control of his creator and the various iterations of the meme go hand in hand with the larger story of lonely men on the internet who retreated from society into a ideology of hate that eventually took over the United States when Donald Trump was elected president. Meanwhile, Furie has to reckon with the fact that his character was eventually placed on the Anti-Defamation League’s list of hate symbols and, when he’s finally had enough, goes into legal battle against the likes of Alex Jones. Pepe also appears in several impressive cartoons created just for the film.
7. Body Cam
Something is hunting the police officers in a small city and it becomes clear very early that the culprit is supernatural. Officer Renee Lomito (Mary J. Blige) and her rookie partner (Nat Wolff) investigate and find that the answers lie within the police department itself. The concept is such an absolute no-brainer that it's amazing it wasn't done earlier. While the script is sympathetic to good police officers, there is a certain catharsis seeing the police up against an enemy that no amount of shooting can stop, experiencing the fear that minorities in America feel all the time. If the government bureaucracy won’t hold the police accountable, maybe something else will.
6. The Invisible Man
Remakes of horror classics are inevitable, but many of them could take a lot of lessons from how well Leigh Whanell updates the classic 1930s monster movie to come at the same tale from a totally new and modern perspective. In the first scene, Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss) flees her abusive, controlling husband, an engineer named Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Instead of the expected pursuit, she gets news that he has committed suicide. However, Cecilia knows this is out of character and realizes Adrian is using frightening new technology to reassert his hold on her without being seen. The invisibility suit is the only fantastical thing about this harrowing tale of stalking and the way Cecilia is doubted and dismissed by her friends and family is something many women identified with. The special effects are seamless and the suspense is top notch. On a personal note, this was also the last movie I saw in a theater before the plague messed everything up.
5. Da 5 Bloods
The word “the” is about all that’s missing from Spike Lee’s epic tale of four Vietnam War veterans (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock, Jr and Norm Lewis) returning to the country decades later. The “bloods” are out to recover the remains of their squad leader (the late Chadwick Boseman) as well as dig up a shipment of gold bars they were ordered to retrieve but instead buried. There is a lot of good acting here, but viewers will finish the movie blown away by Delroy Lindo’s towering performance as Paul, the heartbroken and dangerously unstable man whose sanity begins to unravel as he returns to Vietnam. Lee’s films are never short on ambition - this is a searing analysis of the connection between American foreign policy and how black people are treated in their homeland, a modern retelling of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and a tragic look at how deadly unresolved trauma can be. It has contrived and unwieldy moments, but is unquestionably a great American film all the same.
4. Tread
The amazing true story of Marvin Heemeyer, a highly skilled welder who encased a bulldozer in steel and concrete and used it to destroy several buildings in a small Colorado town. A protracted zoning disagreement with the local government drove Heemeyer into a vengeful rage and he spent over a year constructing his indestructible tank that left police helpless as it tore through everything in its path. There are enough re-enactments of the incident that the movie is almost a feature film adaptation, but the real-life helicopter footage of the mayhem is utterly jaw-dropping. There is much insight to be gained through the interviews and especially from the excerpts of the audiotapes Heemeyer recorded before his rampage. Despite how outlandish the story sounds, it was brought on by a seething resentment that is uncomfortably familiar.
3. The Assistant
This spare but powerful drama depicts one day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner, conveying heavy emotions with subtle facial expressions), who works long hours at the New York offices of a powerful movie studio. It becomes clear in short order that the owner of the company is a serial predator who is constantly taking advantage of young women desperate for fame. The executive is known to the audience only as a bullying voice on a telephone, never named and never even seen, but he’s obviously meant to be a stand-in for the notorious Harvey Weinstein. All the employees know what’s going on, including Matthew Macfadyen as the worst HR manager in history, but there’s just too much money on the line to do the right thing. You may never have worked in an environment where the whole bureaucracy existed to protect a perverted scumbag, but you’ll feel like you have by the end of this quietly furious movie.
2. The Hater
This epic Polish film examines a kind of evil native to its era, one that uses modern technology to unleash the worst human impulses for its own ends. A manipulative little creeper named Tomasz (Maciej Musialowski) is expelled from college for plagiarism and ends up working for a “troll farm,” basically a PR company specializing in drumming up negative attention. Assigned to a smear campaign against a progressive pro-refugee mayoral candidate in Warsaw, Tomasz uses social media (mostly Facebook) to whip up anti-Islamic hysteria while also using his newfound skills to pursue a personal vendetta, leading to consequences that will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the resurgence of white supremacist violence in the Western world. Insightful about the conditions that produce a person like Tomasz without ever being sympathetic, the movie may have been too accurate for its own good. It was originally planned to open in 2019, but was delayed for several months after the real-life murder of Gdansk mayor Pawel Adamowicz unfolded in a way uncannily similar to the film.
A beautifully made Guatemalan film that adapts the old Latin American legend into a powerful and highly relevant look at recent history. In a scenario that mirrors the high-profile prosecution of former president Efrain Rios Montt, the elderly General Enrique Monteverde (Julio Diaz) is on trial for a genocidal campaign that killed over 100,000 of Guatemala’s indigenous Mayan citizens in the 1980s. He is found guilty but the verdict is overturned by a corrupt higher court. However, nothing will protect him from the vengeful spirit wandering his estate. Meanwhile, his conflicted daughter Natalia (Sabrina De La Hoz) is beginning to grasp the enormity of her father’s crimes. This is not a scary movie in the traditional sense - in fact, the audience will be rooting for La Llorona. The horrors committed by real people are far worse than anything we could dream up for our folklore. If you want to brush up on the history of Guatemala before or after watching this, the documentary 500 Years is a great resource.
The director, Jayro Bustamante, surely intended to comment on the history of his own country but it's unlikely he knew just how appropriate this story could be in other parts of the world. Americans look down on countries like Guatemala, thinking ourselves too advanced and too powerful to worry about the same problems they might have had. And yet ever since the November election, we've found ourselves in an era very similar to the events referenced in this film. The rest of the world has plenty to teach us...if we're willing to stop bragging, show some humility, and pay attention.
11. Sputnik
12. His House
13. Sound of Metal
14. Random Acts of Violence
15. Us Kids
16. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
17. Lucky
18. Mank
19. Blood Quantum
20. Relic
A little note on scheduling: this year's Academy Awards have been delayed until the end of April to give Hollywood more time to get their movies to audiences. Naturally, the stuff I write each year about them will be delayed as well. Have a good year, stay safe, don't try to overthrow any governments.
