Jacob Mouradian’s Top 10 Films of 2020

Jacob Mouradian’s Top 10 Films of 2020

Within the past 12 months, we experienced a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, a second once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis, and political tensions so fraught that they nearly spurred a potential World War III. Even the methods we use to escape from daily hardships shuttered, as art, entertainment, and other forms of socializing were hit hard by effects of COVID-19. Needless to say, 2020 has been one of the most infamously defining years of our collective lives.

And yet, despite it all … we adapted. With our masks and PPE we learned to protect ourselves from the virus (or well, some of us did). We fought back against the state’s violent oppression. We turned out in droves to vote the racist megalomaniac out of the White House. And our entertainment evolved, too. Movies were still released, and they were still made, and we traded in our multiplex tickets for streaming subscriptions and virtual cinemas and festivals. All of us in the industry from professionals to consumers were forced to adjust to our new way of life.

Like everything else, it’s impossible to predict where we’ll all be by the end of this coming year, this coming month, or even the end of this coming week. However, 2020 reminded us that movies are not a dying fancy. Even in an uncharted hellscape they remain a prominent cultural force, and just like us they’re adapting to their new structural upheavals. One way or another, they are here to stay.

Here are the ten films from 2020 that stuck with me the most, quelled from all the films that I also watched within the 2020 calendar year. As with all sorts of media categorization, lists like these should be seen less as a definitive declaration of taste and more so as a timestamp of interests as they exist here and now. Because canon is ridiculous, lists are subject to future change.

10. Color Out of Space

What a way to start the year! Viewable as a condemnation of inaction in the face of environmental destruction and/or on-setting fascism, as a slight against Lovecraft’s own racism, or simply as a bonkers piece of multicolored cosmic horror, Color Out of Space is Richard Stanley’s return to cinema after two decades with enough nightmare fuel to burn a hole right through your cerebral cortex … but like, in a fun way. A double-sided performance from Nicolas Cage and a slow descent into madness from Joely Richardson make this all the more memorable.

You can read my full review of the film here.

9. Amulet

Ricocheting a bit against all sorts of archetypes from haunted-house to creature-feature to cosmic horror, Romola Garai’s directorial debut is quite the odd tale of moral ambiguity. It’s a study on humanity’s avoidance of introspection for fear of what we may uncover – or worse, for fear of having to face the ugliness that we already know to be there. Garai bars us from ever pledging any steadfast allegiance to any of the characters, which keeps us on our toes in a narrative sense. She also manages to wrangle in some allegorical struggles from overcoming abuse to battling xenophobia, making for a jumbled, peculiar, yet awe-inspiring configuration.

You can read my full review of the film here.

8. Possessor

Brandon Cronenberg’s worlds are so singularly high-concept that they immediately make you question why anyone would willingly take part in them, and their coldness make them initially off-putting. But both Cronenberg’s steadfast committal to his constructs – bolstered by his performers’ utmost dedication to the conceit as well – allow them to start feeling all the more organic as they press on, and soon you’re swept away into their perplexing, alluring worlds. With Possessor, Cronenberg examines our sense of solitude brought about by digital technology and the splintering of our identities that such isolation can spur. He stays a few steps away from going full-on technophobe and instead asks us to focus rather on who is to gain from this fracturing of our identities and to what purpose such as set-up serves. On top of that the film showcase some of the best practical effects of year, and both Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott’s embody an underrated fury in their “dual” performances.

7. Wendy

Sundance wunderkind Benh Zeitlin returns after eight years with another tale of working-class magical realism, and reworks J.M. Barrie’s classic Peter Pan for a modern audience in the process. In doing so he eliminates the racist proclivities of the original and suggests Neverland not just as an ageless sanctuary but also a safe place for the evils of the world – man-made, ecological, and the like. What results is a rousing fantasy imbued with childlike fervor, with all the swashbuckling excitement and meditative wonder of a daydream through and through.

You can read my full review of the film here.

6. Disclosure

With gender identity being in the cultural zeitgeist right now, with loads of hate, ignorance, and misinformation being bandied about (all thanks to the far-right conservatives, religious fundamentalists, and TERFs continuously flooding the gates) a documentary as detailed and robust as Disclosure is a much-needed salve. Sam Feder’s film is less an answer to “What does it mean to be trans?” and more an exploration of how the public’s conception of transness has been shaped by mass media over the last century. Through this angle Disclosure conjures up more questions, particularly about sociopolitical power and who’s historically had the decision-making abilities to show how people are (or are not) depicted, and why that is (or is not). However, it’s also about just how prominent a role audio-visual media plays in our lives, how it feeds into our own psychological development, and how we queer and otherwise marginalized people find and/or create communities for ourselves out of a necessity for survival, patchworked from all that came before. A delectable deep dive into cinematic history that anybody interested in gender studies or the history of film will undoubtedly enjoy.

5. Spontaneous

An explosively gory take on the emotional turmoil that is adolescence, as well as the seemingly unrelatable trauma people collectively experience in the face of an unprecedented event. Brian Duffield’s directorial debut manages to be witty, but not in a disassociated way that would condescend toward his teenage audience. Likewise, he manages a very good horror-comedy balance that despite its extremes remains emotionally sincere throughout. Katherine Langford, Charlie Plummer, and Hayley Law all give terrific headlining performances, and Joseph Trapanese’s ambient score adds its fair share of the tender and the terror.

You can read my full review of the film here.

4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

The Western capitalist reflection of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days’ Eastern Bloc dictatorship, exposing the common thread of systemic misogyny inherent in modern-day political systems. Eliza Hittman’s film is an unflinching look at the bureaucratic hurdles American women – and in this particular case, teenage girls – have to go through just to achieve bodily autonomy, which subtly exposes the hypocrisy of the American dream and our infatuation with free will. Autumn and Skylar (portrayed by Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder, respectively) may defensively reflect the grayness of their lives back out onto others, but their strong bond of friendship ensures their mutual protection and moral strength as they navigate a world that was never built for them.

You can read my full review of the film here.

3. The Invisible Man

Leigh Whannell reworks Universal’s troubled Dark Universe to a smaller scale, taking the “Invisible” out of the supernatural realm and making it more of an allegory for both domestic abuse and the invasiveness of the Information Age. While that make it sound like it could be even more of a mess than its predecessor, Whannell doesn’t allow Cecelia’s struggles to be made into a high-concept gimmick – nor, on the other hand, for the film to become some sort of technophobic screed. The invisibility device is instead there to remind us to remain vigilant of insidious horrors in others’ lives as well as our own ­– even if we can’t see them – while also acting as a much-needed diatribe on the persistence of misogyny within the tech(-bro) world.

You can read my full review of the film here.

2. Da 5 Bloods

For the past four decades Spike Lee has been one of most distinct and provocative voices in American cinema, and Da 5 Bloods is evidence that that’s still the case. Lee and his co-writers Kevin Willmott, Danny Bilson, and Paul De Meo elucidate the troubling relationship between Black identity and American history, which in turn reveals the intergenerational trauma spurred on by both racism and war. The Bloods are but five forgotten fighters from a failed war, taking their last chance to stake a claim at the fame and glory they were initially denied. As with BlacKkKlansman Lee might be a bit too eager to draw connections to modern-day conservative extremism, but it works as more than just a call-out given its complex insinuations with Paul’s character and his relationship to his son – whose actors, Delroy Lindo and Jonathan Majors, respectively, lead a stellar ensemble cast with knockout performances (and a particular scene which may be the most anxiety-inducing, tear-jerking one of the year). And R.I.P. to Chadwick Boseman, in his spectacular penultimate role.

1. The Quarry

Films as intimate, introspective, and confident in its vision as The Quarry are all the more unexpected in a landscape inundated by tentpoles and other studio filler, so whenever they spring up they should be cherished as the blindsiding sucker punch that they are.

Director Scott Teems allows the film’s mysteries and the characters’ deceptions to unfold at their own slow pace, and his smooth handling of it further bolsters the film’s dark sense of ambiguity. By committing so wholeheartedly to this construct Teems entrusts his audiences to fill in the blanks and make their own moral judgments, which really abets The Quarry’s neo-noir western aims. It also provides what should be a star-turning lead role for supporting regular Shea Wigham, who fills his mysterious preacher role with gritty, pathetic dread.

It’s Night of the Hunter by way of The Club, as filtered through the Americana-doused eyes of Jeff Nichols … and wow, does it pack a wallop.

You can read my full review of the film here.

Honorable Mentions

Makoto Shinkai continued his stellar animation run with Weathering with You, while Quentin Dupieux made one his most delightful absurdities in years with Deerskin. Justin Kurzel managed to get out of his Assassin’s Creed slump with True Story of the Kelly Gang, and Robert Zemeckis returned to his campy side with his new take on Roald Dahl’s The Witches. Feels Good Man and Totally Under Control were timely and competent docs, and both Nocturne and The Gulf of Silence were laudable small-scale horror efforts. Charm City Kings was a coming-of-age drama with enough camaraderie and on-screen chemistry to carry a whole series if it wanted to, and had I actually managed to catch in before 2020 was up Soul could have very well made the cut.

2020 Films I Have Not Seen

Film-bro magnates Christopher Nolan and David Fincher have managed to allude me in my post-college years, so I completely missed out on Tenet and Mank. Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology is the primary reason I regret no longer paying for Amazon Prime, but I suppose Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal is a close second to that claim. I also missed out on A24 darlings First Cow and Minari, and I’ll have to wait until the wide release this coming year to see Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland. Streaming staples such as I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Palm Springs, Wolfwalkers, Happiest Season, and The Trial of the Chicago 7 also managed to bypass me.

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