With my first-in-awhile Best Soundtrack now finished, it's time for the big one! For, officially, the 10th time on this site, we are about to go through my Top Ten favorite films of the previous year.
Usual rules and disclaimers apply. While there were at least more occasions this year where I could enjoy a movie in theater, the shifts forced on the industry by COVID mean that things are still very fluid, so most of the movies I ended up seeing were either only availabe via streaming, or were quickly enough made available to allow me to see them. On the whole, I found it a pretty solid year, though the composition of this list remained a mystery to me right up until the end. And with that, away we go!
Honorable Mentions: Encanto, The Suicide Squad, Ushiku, Tick, tick….Boom!, In The Heights, The Matrix Resurrections
10. Passing (Rebecca Hall)
Passing bills itself at first as a subtle, black-and-white arthouse commentary on race and the nature of identity in a discriminatory world, but at its most intense moments it veers straight into unremitting horror. Scenes of relatively innocuous, content, upper-middle-class life will be undercut with moments of raw, primal danger and the genuine fear that anything and everything terrible could happen at any moment. Which, of course, is the point, since that is the lived experience of so many minority and marginalized peoples all across America. And the strain that comes with that awareness, and whether avoidance or brutal confrontation is the best survival strategy, is precisely the sort of no-win scenario that can lead some like Ruth Negga's Clare to abandon their roots entirely in search of a place of real safety, even if it ultimately leaves them utterly adrift.
Countering Ruth is Tessa Thompson as Irene, as compelling and radiant as ever in a role that might seem at first to hold something of a moral high ground. As the film moves forward though, and as we get to see more of her husband, a quietly brilliant performance by André Holland, her insecurities start to shine through as well, as well as the creeping notion that the stability in her own life she takes such pride in might only be so much window dressing.
9. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
I grew up watching my parents' used, two-tape VHS set of the original, iconic 1961 West Side Story film adaptation, and Officer Krupke was one of the first stage roles I ever got to play, so if there was anyone under the sun with two opposable thumbs and a virulent scepticism of any attempt at a remake, it was *pokes chest this guy.
In retrospect, I guess if anyone was to prove me entirely wrong, it would have been the return of Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, because not only does their remake hold its own against the original, it also mostly succeeds (with one egregious exception) in adjusting the source material in some desperately necessary spots. This is most noticeable in the expanded focus on bringing us into the world of the Sharks and allowing us to understand and appreciate the family dynamic between Maria, Bernardo, and Anita. As much as the original will always hold a special place in my heart, its exceedingly White focus was and remains its biggest flaw, so to see a big-name, mainstream American production like this include whole scenes in Spanish with nary a subtitle was hugely important.
An additional feather in the film's cap is the astonishing success of the cast, in particular Mike Faist and Ariana DeBose, in providing performances that never feel overshadowed by their predecessors. Trying to redo legendary performances like Russ Tamblyn's Riff or Rita Moreno's Anita is the sort of task that sinks many a movie and acting career, but like their forebears, Faist and DeBose are bona fide stars. Did this movie need to happen? A year ago I've have said “HELL no,” but now? Yes, we very much needed this.
8. The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
I don't know guys, there's just something in how absolutely controlled and minutely crafted every single frame of Anderson's films are that grabs me every time. While I get the critiques that this movie, at least on the whole, doesn't reach the sort of profound emotional depths of, say, Moonrise Kingdom or The Royal Tenenbaums, there's more going on here than I think most viewers gave it credit for. The cast is, as always, ridiculously stacked, but somehow it never feels overstuffed; each person gets what, in the end, feels like just the right number of moments for us to construct an entire lost world out of their persons and relationships to each other. It's definitely a tight balancing act and the fact that the movie exists at all is a testament to the incredible prowess of Wes Anderson and his collaborators.
7. Along the Sea (Akio Fujimoto)
There is an incredible power in how quiet and downplayed Fujimoto is able to be in his filming style and in the performances he gets out of his cast, while still delivering heavy emotional blows as he tackles oft-ignored issues around living as illegal immigrants in Japan. Both this and his previous film, Passage of Life, are absolute masterpieces in this regard, capable of being so very minimal, while still bring across a sense of genuine danger that its characters can experience at any time, from any direction. In both cases there just are not any easy answers to be had, no possible refuge that is forever. Just very, very hard choices and a final scene that remains utterly haunting even though I have only seen each film once. He may be one of the most criminally underappreciated filmmakers in Japan today.
6. The Green Knight (David Lowery)
There's not much at this point I can add to my thoughts on this film that I didn't touch on in my review. Dev Patel gives us, in my opinion, his finest performance to date in the best King Arthur adaptation we've gotten in awhile. Working as a slow-burn deconstruction of the nature of myth, and how and why we twist or alter the facts when conveying stories, we are pulled into a place of utter desperation when forced to confront the cold, hard facts of human mortality. Perhaps there is no belt that could truly prevent us from dying, but if there were, who among us can honestly say they would not be sorely tempted to take it?
5. Dune (Denis Villeneuve)
This was the EVENT movie of the year, the love letter to the experience of the big screen that last year's Tenet wanted so very, very hard to be. I went in with zero prior experience of the Dune extended universe, but I am now all on board with Villeneuve's vision and very much hope he at least gets to continue this franchise up through Dune Messiah (casual moviegoers will fliiiiiiip...).
Hans Zimmer returns in force and a powerhouse cast on par with West Side Story or The French Dispatch, plus one of the year's most immersive and fascinating production designs, carries us into the world that, now that I'm in the know, is so obviously one of the birth-mothers of Star Wars. I definitely get why this was considered “unfilmable” for so long, but now that it's finally here, it feels like this is exactly what a best-case adaption would look like. There is a grandeur to the desert, especially the sheer size of the great worms, that hearkens back to the earliest days of adventure epics like Lawrence of Arabia. This is so very much a modern film produced out of our era of IP-adaptations, but there is so much in it that is timeless that I do believe it will hold up better than most.
4. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
I dunno, man. I don't know how PTA does it. A barebones summary of what passes for “plot” in most of his movies would generally provoke a reaction somewhere along the lines of “....naw dude, that'll never work.” Yet here we are. Heaven help me, the film about a girl in her mid-twenties falling for a minor (an absurdly over-confident minor, but still) against the backdrop of the 70's oil embargo....is one of the best movies of the year and I can't stop thinking about it.
Why is that? There's no one thing I can put my finger on. I am not of the time nor place to have the sort of drenching nostalgia PTA has for SoCal circa the Nixon/Ford/Carter administrations, but damn if the shots aren't so tactile they make me feel like I could reach out through the screen and touch everything. I very much AM an old-school rock person, so the music drops were right up my alley. Plus, a few hilariously on-point pieces of stunt casting aside (Bradley Cooper CAN act! Hey ho!), I especially dig it when an established director eschews mainstream leads and brings in amateur or unknown talents, people who actually look and talk and act like us grubby, non-celebrity peasants. And to top it all off, he even manages to work in a faux-action scene with an out-of-gas moving truck that the kids have to somehow have to move down a VERY steep road without killing anyone. It comes out of left field, it's the highlight of the entire movie, and it's frankly better than most of the money sequences in the year's ACTUAL action movies.
Rock on, Anderson. Rock on.
3. Spencer (Pablo Larrain)
The year's best Horror film, and yes, there is no other lable more fitting for the tight, extremely claustrophic and hauntingly psychological dive into a single Christmas experienced by Kirsten Stewart's Princess Di. Stewart has spent a decade now refuting everyone, including a younger, more arrogant me, who wanted to write her off for her association with Twilight, and this time she just might get to roll that choo-choo into Oscar Station. Or rather, she better (glares sternly at the Academy). Beyond her performance are a wealth of small moments between her and the staff she is surrounded with and, quite often, deliberately controlled by, touching on relationships that might, in other circumstances have been able to provide her with more direct support, but instead can only cheer her on silently.
2. Bo Burnham: Inside (Bo Burnham)
Bo Burnham should have just titled this Noah's Deepest Fears and Anxieties; A Netflix Special, because that's basically what it is. As such, this was my frontrunner for most of the year for the top spot on this list. Buuuut....at the end of the day, even in a COVID world, having a Netflix comedy special here is stretching my (admittedly liberal) definition of a “movie” to its absolute limit. And given that I have already played incredibly fast and loose with my own rules once before (see Hamilton), I couldn't bring myself to invite the same angst into this site again.
Neverless! This is still the most deeply personal thing I saw all year, and incredibly powerful time capsule of the early-COVID mileau and a cutting deconstruction of the cynical toxicity of current internet celebrity. The songs are nearly all gangbusters and the visual displays a lone person with a few lighting rigs is able to conjure up is nothing short of astounding to experience. It's a hard watch, but an absolutely necessary one.
1. The Mitchells vs. The Machines (Michael Rianda)
You know, this might be the most surprised I've ended up being at my own #1 pick. And yes, this is coming from the man who has declared an animated film to be his Film of the Year no less than three times. Obviously, given the background of the people involved in this movie, it was pretty much guaranteed to land in my Top 5 no matter what. But #1? It never really consciously occurred to me as possible until I finally sat down to sort titles.
And yet, at the end of the day, this just fits. It feels right. This funny and warm and odd film about a robot apocalypse that reminds a divided family just how much they need each other hit every note I could have ever wanted it do and more. Is it the BEST movie, with the tightest screenplay and most interesting, original story? Most definitely not. I have my nitpicks about the rather unoriginal story concept and the fairly empty treatment of the movie's “villain;” there was absolutely some narrative potential left on the cutting room floor. But at the end of the day, that's immaterial. As the film's central family reminds us, sometimes the messiest things are what touch us the most, what move us to remember why we love ourselves, our families, our friends. And especially in these dark times, that's important stuff.
Also, it's concluding beat-drop of Hoppipolla hits SO HARD it's almost shameful and I still haven't forgiven them.
-Noah Franc
