2020

This is an intimidating film to try to say anything about with one viewing. It is a work of almost infinite creativity. Charlie Kaufman’s skills as a writer are matched by the visual artist in this effort.   Like his films that have proceeded it, it is densely layered, sprawling, and intelligent. Kaufman is clearly a singular artistic voice and genius.

The opening montage is a stunner—voiceover narration-aided montage of the rooms these characters would occupy for the next two hours– like Woody’s Interiors. Here it also foreshadows the color design and wallpaper patterns. Golds and green color palate in the design of the frame throughout. Shot by Lukasz Zal who worked on Ida and Cold War. Praise is due to the artist first- and rightly so- but it is hard to ignore the freedom Netflix seems to be giving these auteurs This is a work that is excruciatingly intimate and specific, yet boldly ambitious in its reach and aim.

Pieces of a Woman from Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó. After those opening moments, a 22-mintute long take ensues and captures a home birth in real time. It is an extraordinary shot. This is 1917, Victoria, Children of Men with all the discomfort of a 4 Months 3 weeks, 2 days or Irreversible. The birth scene in Roma certainly comes to mind as well. It is crucial to the visceral immediacy of the scene and moment that this is captured as one take. It breaks with Shia going out the door to the ambulance as the camera brilliantly holds on the ambulance door and fades, first to black, then to the film’s title card—30 minutes into the movie… very strong. Many critics note that the film never reaches that cinematic high again– and that may be true—but there is still much to praise in what remains—this definitely not a great scene in a bad movie by any stretch. Gorgeous Fassbinder/Ozu-like doorway frame within a frame device at least three times – not just pretty for the sake of pretty—but capturing Kirby’s Martha (like the example above) in isolation, in quiet rage and freefall…

Remember the names of Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz. They are the co-directors and co-writers behind 2020’s horror/thriller Antebellum starring the magnificent Janelle Monáe. It is the debut film for Bush and Renz, it premiered during the pandemic so there is virtually no box office, and the reviews are rough- so here’s hoping they get another chance. The prologue is a Faulkner quote- “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” The opening shot many be cinema’s single finest shot in 2020. Their camera travels underneath the Spanish moss and past Don Johnson’s house in Django Unchained. It features these beautiful lens flares, shot during the magic hour for prime photography. There are more than a dozen characters involved in the one single shot- so the choreography has to be perfect. It has this tense, dramatic score— in total the tracking shot lasts four minutes. It is like a minor version of Joe Wright’s Dunkirk shot in Atonement.

Mank from David Fincher. Every year Netflix is supporting one of the best auteurs to make a passion project. Roma from Cuaron in 2018. The Irishman from Scorsese in 2019. Here, Fincher captures the light pouring in at Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley)’s funeral– easily one of the four to five greatest standout shots in the film. Not unlike Gone Girl or The Social Network– the verbal sparring is one of the film’s highlights- highly readable- dialog like a tennis match from Upton Sinclair to Hitler, politics and art—“do you always say whatever you think?” and “I’ve never not been fired”. Though he’s not really a screenwriter (it is credited solely to his father who passed away in 2003) I am once again blown away by how magnificently verbal and literate a Fincher film is. I would gladly read this screenplay. It cannot be a coincidence that The Social Network, Fight Club, Zodiac (I think each belongs as one of the best written films of their respective decade) all came from Fincher. This is better written than Sorkin’s 2020 entry The Trial of the Chicago 7 for example.

There is plenty of debate as to whether Steve McQueen’s Small Axe is television or cinema (he insists it is cinema, and I wholeheartedly agree), or whether it is five separate works, or one larger work that runs 406 minutes (just under seven hours). But, there can no debate as to McQueen’s talent and accomplishments to date- he is simply one of the greatest cinematic artists working since his stirring 2008 debut Hunger. Evaluating the entire Small Axe work is a tougher task. Certainly you can compare and contrast with something like Kieslowski’s’ Dekalog or Three Colours If we’re talking about Dekalog there’s nothing that touches A Short Film About Killing. But there is nothing either that rises quite to the level of say McQueen’s long-take car ride shot of Colin Farrell’s character through Chicago in Widows either. The Small Axe films are connected to each other, even the ones that are radically different in tone are constructed that way by McQueen for a reason. Lovers Rock and Red, White and Blue are 2 ½ hours of some of the finest cinema of 2020.

Zhao is largely a realist. The Rider had all non-professional actors. Here only Frances McDormand and veteran David Strathaim are professionals—they are the only two actors not playing versions of themselves. And both of them play their roles in a stripped down, minimal way. Zhao and cinematographer Joshua James Richards have earned the comparisons to Malick.  Many directors with strong photography, landscapes, nature photography get compared to Malick but this feels different. That pink, vanilla sky Monet of a cinematic painting (think Unforgiven—Schrader has a nice one in First Reformed) is used at least three times here. It is used in The Rider as well (which is also shot in South Dakota).

several still cinematic paintings like the Longhorn Saloon shot with McDormand outside—and the little space between the open fence in the backyard at her home in Empire with the mountains creating a beautiful landscape.

Possessor- this is an imaginative work—excited to see what Brandon does next.

Fennell’s screenplay fearlessly shifts tone. But it is razor sharp- she pulls it off- it is never grating or awkward. There will be some violence, or seriously offensive behavior (by any number of male characters in the film- essentially everyone except for the Alfred Molina character) and then Mulligan’s Cassandra will punctuate a scene with a “Your novel sounds terrible by the way” hilarious one-liner. The success in mixing the tones is a compliment to both Fennell’s writing, and Mulligan’s performance.

Emma. – a pastel-infused triumph from debut filmmaker Autumn de Wilde

Jane Austen and Anya Taylor-Joy do their part- but the entire mise-en-scene, from the décor to the costumes here is what sets it apart. There is enough here to make Wes Anderson proud. Other films have been made in this mode, including Paddington 2 (2017). Wes Anderson is one of this generation’s greatest filmmakers- it would make sense to have this level of influence. Given the period genre Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is another.

Andy Samberg has been making everybody laugh for ten to fifteen years- but 2020’s Palm Springs, a take on 1993’s masterful Groundhog Day, is the best thing he’s been a part of. Formally repeated use of the overhead shot in the pool.

Promising Young Woman– confectionery in design- like a Brittany Spears video (a key song in the film, a horror version/– all strings version of “Toxic”). Paris Hilton’s song in the pharmacy (as a disarmingly charming Bo Burnham sings along with Mulligan). Director Emerald Fennell (in her debut) truly knows how to measure and set a beautiful frame.

A superb on-a-wall-in-a-museum frame of the Blue Star lounge at the 55-minute mark from Promising Young Woman.