TOP 10 FAVOURITE FILMS FROM 2020

This list has already been requested by quite a few people over at the Instagram page, so first of all thank you to everyone that has been getting involved in the conversations over there and asking me to talk about my favourite films from the year that most of us wish we could just forget. I wish I could forget 2020 too, but there were some pretty great films that were released despite the world deciding to turn itself into a never-ending nightmare. 

Before we dive in, I always feel like I need to clarify something when I do lists like this; this isn't your list, this isn't the list, this is my list. These aren't the ten films that are objectively, measurably the best that came out in 2020, they are the ones I saw that connected with me. This also means that there are some that I haven't seen yet - notably The Father, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Kajillionaire, and Steve McQueen's Small Axe anthology, among plenty of others. I plan to see them all as soon as I am able to, and if I feel like I need to update this list once I've seen them I will do so down in the comments. But for now, let's dive into some honourable mentions.

Honourable Mentions:

• Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm (MA15+)

This Borat sequel succeeds where the first film failed for me; it functions as an effective narrative experience as well as one of cringe humour and live pranks. That's not to say that I don't like the original Borat - far from it. Its satire it biting and it is consistently laugh-out-loud hilarious. But this sequel delivers on that key Borat element while introducing narrative thrust and character development that its predecessor knowingly lacked. The biggest surprise here is that it knocks both elements out of the park. 

• Soul (PG)

I seemed to be in the minority at the time by saying that I didn't think Soul was the amazing masterpiece that most people seemed to be saying that it was, and while I still stand by that opinion, I do still think that it is a great movie and an important step forwards for Disney and Pixar. A big highlight for me is the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross - there were moments in the film that I realised were arresting me on an aesthetic level in ways that I was not used to from Pixar animations, and I realised that they were to do with the way Reznor and Ross' score was interacting with the emotional landscape in ways entirely new for Pixar. I've said it before, though, and I'll say it again; I don't think Soul functions well as a kids' film. 

• Promising Young Woman (MA15+)

You can read my full review of Promising Young Woman here. I think it's an impressively powerful and incendiary film, but I do think in retrospect that Bo Burnham's acting sticks out in a film populated by great actors. I hesitate to throw shade in the direction of Burnham because I think he is one of the most important and exciting artists working today (if you haven't seen Inside yet then what are you doing?), but I do feel like his performance is a little out of place in an otherwise uniformly solid crop of performances. 

• His House (MA15+)

I hadn't heard or read anything about His House before stumbling across it on Netflix, and what a pleasant surprise it was. It's a tight, perfectly structured horror film that takes real life trauma rooted in real human experience and externalises it in interesting and frightening ways. It's just the newest of countless examples of how deep horror cinema can go in depicting and interrogating real-life trauma and catharsis. 

• Pieces of a Woman (M)

I have heard some criticism sent the direction of this film, mainly that the middle section sags, but honestly when a film's opening and closing twenty minutes are as strong as they are here in Pieces of a Woman, it takes a whole lot for a film to ruin that goodwill with its audience. In the case of this film specifically, it's not that the middle section is bad - it's actually a really well executed drama documenting one woman's attempt to work through grief - it's just that nothing in it comes close to the tension and drama of its opening twenty minutes or the raw emotional catharsis of its closing twenty. Vanessa Kirby is outstanding in her role as a mother grieving the loss of a child whilst caught up in the legal ramifications that she doesn't want any part in, and delivers her performance with a quiet undercurrent of mental exhaustion and defeat that lends all of her scenes a vein of melancholy that ends up becoming the defining feature of the film. It's not Netflix, I highly recommend it if you haven't already seen it. 

That's it for honourable mentions, so let's go ahead and charge into my ten favourite films from 2020.

10. Palm Springs (MA15+)

To be honest, I'm not generally a huge Andy Sandberg fan, so I was hesitant approaching Palm Springs. Shame on me for being cynical, because it is the funniest film I saw in 2020. Not only that, but it has genuine heart and a surprisingly amount of attention of detail in its science fiction elements. The elements of Sandberg's comedic performances I find annoying are still there, but seem to be toned down by comparison - whether this is down to the script or the direction I don't know, but it definitely helped my enjoyment of the film. But most importantly, I feel, Palm Springs' script is whip-smart. It takes the familiar time-loop trope and plays around with it in ways that poke fun at it knowingly, but it never loses touch of its fondness and admiration for those tropes in the process. I saw a lot of people talking about Palm Springs being the comfort film they needed in 2020, and having seen it I can't really disagree. 

9. The Invisible Man (MA15+)

Originally this was going to be a part of Universal's attempt at rebooting all of their classic horror properties as big-budget mega-blockbusters, The Mummy starring Tom Cruise being perhaps the notable example. Thank God, then, that this awful plan bombed financially, leading Universal to hand the reigns over to independant, low-budget filmmakers in the Blumhouse style of horror filmmaking, because Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man - while not perfect - is a great film. Made on a $7 million budget, it is a case of the right material being with the right people at the right time who understand the heart of the material. Elizabeth Moss absolutely kills it in the lead role, but for me the highlight of the film comes in the form of some of the more subtle scares achieved purely through visual storytelling and filmmaking. There are a number of moments where a character will leave the frame, but instead of cutting away with that character, the camera lingers on the now empty space, implying someone or something may or may not be hiding in plain sight. This simple technique is fleshed out and explored in more and more exciting ways as the film progresses, and is something that I am almost certain would not be present in a $120 million blockbuster starring Tom Cruise. I was pleasantly surprised by how socially conscious the film is, too, but I'll leave that for you to discover yourself if you haven't yet seen The Invisible Man. I have fond memories seeing this film, too, it being one of the few films I was able to see in cinemas during the first wave of COVID-19 restrictions. 

8. Nomadland (M)

I will be the first to admit that I didn't get Nomadland the first time I saw it back in December of last year. While I was completely arrested by different moments of visual and narrative beauty, I was also bored, frankly, through sections on the middle. That all changed for me when the credits rolled. I won't spoil it for you, but I do suggest reading into the film a little before seeing it, because my expectations played a huge role in how I received the film. Having seen it again a number of times since that first viewing, it works for me better and better each time, to where it now leaves me in floods of tears. I'm glad that the Academy took somewhat of a risk awarding Nomadland Best Picture, too - we need more filmmakers like Chloe Zhao in this world. 

7. Saint Maud (MA15+)

This was a real treat. Rose Glass' feature length directorial debut is a quiet little self-contained horror-inflected drama that packs one hell of an emotional gut-punch. Centring around the titular Maud, the film explores ideas of faith, fate and obsession through the devout Maud's attempts to save the soul of a woman she is nursing at home - a once famous dancer with stage four lymphoma. The film walks a fine line between ambiguity and objectivity without declaring allegiance to either, in a way that gives it a palpable sense of mystery and intrigue. Then those final moments just blew me away. Driving home from the theatre that day I was an emotional wreck. 

You can read my full review of Saint Maud here.

6. The Painted Bird (R18+)

This was a real slog to get through, but images from the film stayed with me for ages and ages after it finished in a way that I found to be really upsetting. And this is not to say that The Painted Bird is a slog because of poor filmmaking or lack of engagement, I mean that purely as a comment on how oppressively awful this film is in its depiction of humanity's worst tendencies and our potential for harming other human beings. The more I think about it, the more I think it might be one of the more important war films so far this century. I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that it is this century's Come and See, but it is very similar in form, style and execution. It's certainly not a film for everyone, but I found it to be intensely provocative and physically exhausting to watch to the point where I must give credit where it is due. 

5. I'm Thinking of Ending Things (M)

Charlie Kaufman's third film as director is probably one of the most divisive and polarising films of the year. For every person I have seen calling it a masterpiece, I have seen another saying that it was the worst film of the year. I don't fall squarely in either camp, but I do find myself leaning more towards it being a masterpiece (it isn't, but I think it's pretty bloody close). It is worth saying that I am a huge fan of his first directorial effort, Synecdoche, New York (not so much Anomalisa), and I'm an even bigger fan of his writing in films like Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and of course Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (a top-5 favourite of mine). So I am definitely the target audience of this film, because I'm Thinking of Ending Things could well be the most Kaufman film that ever Kaufman'd. It is dizzyingly complex in terms of its narrative, particularly in its final act, but it is also by far his densest work in terms of the films constant referencing of cinema, theatre, music and literature. It really does reward a keen eye and a deeper dive into its references and intertextuality - I mean, it literally opens up into almost an entirely different film once you know what it is referencing and why. It is creepy and unsettling in ways his films haven't ever explored in the past, although there are hints of the gnawing existential dread of Synecdoche, New York in there. But on top of all that, it is playful and subtly comedic, something I haven't seen this film getting enough credit for. It is unique in the world of Kaufman's filmography, which means that in the world of cinema as a whole it is an admittedly rough gem that is worth savouring. 

4. Minari (PG)

Every so often you see a film at what turns out to be the perfect time in your life. Minari was one of those films for me; it was a pure, life-affirming trip to the theatre that re-energised my filmgoing drive. There's just something about how immediate and inconsequential that film is that I found to be incredibly rewarding. Almost nothing happens in a strictly narrative sense; it is simply about a Korean family adjusting to their new life in the United States, and the different ways it affects both kids and the marriage at the family's centre. But by committing to such a self-contained story, it allows for the smaller moments of drama to take on so much more weight. A raised eyebrow feels like a gunshot, and a back turned feels like the apocalypse. It's a delightful film about family, heritage and culture that feels incredibly universal in how specific and detailed it is. 

3. Sound of Metal (M)

At this point it is kind of cliche to say that [insert non-character here] is a main character of the film, but it really is the case that the sound design of Sound of Metal is a huge part of what makes it work so unbelievably well. I urge you to look into the process this incredibly talented and hard-working team went into in bring the subjective experience of the deaf community to the screen, because it is remarkable just how much detail and time went into making the soundscape we hear through Riz Ahmed's ears. It is an intensely subjective viewing experience, putting you squarely in the shoes of Ruben (Ahmed), a drummer who loses his hearing and is forced to adjust to life within the deaf community, whether he likes it or not. There are great performances aplenty, but the sound is really what makes Sound of Metal a remarkable film. 

2. Relic (M)

On the surface Relic is a horror film, but once you peel back the film's aesthetic it really isn't that at all. An Australian film about ageing and dementia, it is a heartbreaking film that goes to places of almost unbearable emotional vulnerability. One thing I love about Relic is the way that it uses the audience's knowledge and expectations of gothic horror cinema as a tool for exciting and unexpectedly rewarding subversions. It does this at just about every turn, but most effectively in the film's final moments. If you're after a spooky haunted house film, then that's all here for you, but it really functions at its best as a gut-wrenching exploration of the horrors of ageing and the pain it causes everyone. It's a film that I would recommend to everyone, horror fan or not, for its ability to generate empathy through grief in a universal and inescapable experience. 

1. Possessor (R18+)

I definitely plan on devoting an in-depth blog post to unpacking this masterpiece, so I won't go into too much detail here, but Possessor is far and away my favourite film from 2020. As a science fiction fan it is hugely rewarding, and as a horror fan it is equally rewarding, but it is in its intersecting of those two genres that Possessor soars. It takes its science seriously, but it also commits fully to seeing that science come to life in a world of brutality and violence void of stylisation in its depiction of said violence. It goes without saying that Brandon Cronenberg draws inspiration, whether consciously or not, from the films of his father David Cronenberg, because Possessor falls firmly in line with the tradition of Cronenberg Sr's films exploring man's relationship to technology, the tools we create, and the effect they begin to have on our minds, bodies and collective conscience. Possessor's commitment to practical effects and in-camera trickery also lends it a really sticky, fleshy and tactile quality that stands it apart from a lot of sterile, squeaky clean sci-fi coming out at the moment. You'll notice I haven't talked about plot at all - just go and see it, and then see it again, because you need to see this film and you need to see it twice. I'll stop gushing about Possessor now, but look forward to (or dread and subsequently avoid) my upcoming in-depth breakdown of the film. It's dark, hyper-violent, smart, visually striking and intellectually engaging - and it's my favourite film from 2020. 

So there you have it! I'd love to hear about your favourite films from 2020 down below in the comments - did I leave out any of your favourites? Do you disagree with any of my picks? Let me know down below, or find me on Instagram where we talk about movies all day long. 

See you next time!