Aren's Top 10 Films of 2020

1. Tenet (dir. Christopher Nolan)

In many ways, Tenet is Christopher Nolan’s version of a James Bond 007 film, following a charming secret agent (John David Washington’s Protagonist) around the world on a mission to stop the maniacal plot of a powerful villain. It has exciting set-pieces in exotic locales that showcase stunt work and practical special effects, a pulsing musical score from composer Ludwig Goransson, and charismatic performances from Washington and co-stars Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki. It’s ambitiously imagined and excitingly staged, providing the thrills and formal spectacle that I want out of blockbuster entertainment. 

Being a Christopher Nolan film, it also does more than that. Once again playing with the concept of time, Nolan reverses the flow of time itself within the film to create a narrative puzzle where timelines loop back on themselves. This allows for mind-boggling set-pieces where characters fight future versions of themselves. Where Inception explores time implicitly through its structure and the concept of “dream-time,” Tenet explicitly makes time a central narrative component, coalescing many of the formal approaches and thematic musings that Christopher Nolan has been exploring for many years. The approach takes advantage of the way that time is intrinsic and essential to film as a technology—the fact that film is simply 24 still frames projected at the speed of 1/24th of a second per frame, and that our experience of time then creates the illusion of movement. But it doesn’t do this simply to impress the viewer intellectually. It does it to excite the viewer viscerally. It showcases what is possible when a filmmaker uses the wildest ambitions of their imagination to allow for fantastic set pieces and thrilling narrative resolutions. 

Perhaps most significantly, in a year when movie theatres largely disappeared, Tenet provided a truly unforgettable theatrical experience. It’s impossible to divorce my appreciation of the film from the experience of seeing it in IMAX in a mostly-empty theatre at the end of last summer, during a brief respite from lockdowns and skyrocketing COVID-19 cases. Its grand scale and ambitious action filmmaking was made to be seen on a massive movie screen with booming sound and the fact that I got to see it in the manner it was intended was a minor miracle in the hell year of 2020. The visceral experience of watching Tenet—of being thrilled by its heady mix of action spectacle and puzzle narrative—will remain one of my few cherished memories of a dreadful year.

2. Wolfwalkers (dir. Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)

Wolfwalkers is a beautiful story of friendship and another captivating examination of the tensions and conflicts that have come to define Irish culture and history. It charts the relationship between two girls in mid-17th century Ireland: Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) is the English daughter of a hunter (Sean Bean) tasked with hunting down the wolves near Kilkenny; Mebh (Eva Whittaker) is a pagan girl living in the woods who manifests in wolf form every night while she sleeps. As in his previous films, The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, Tomm Moore again explores the ways that Irish culture is formed out of a clash between Christianity and paganism, Catholicism and Protestantism, England and Ireland, and civilization and nature. He expresses this conflict in the stunning animation itself, which highlights the rigidity of civilization in its geometrical exactitude, and the freedom of nature in the free-flowing pen marks and rounded designs. Through the growing friendship between Robyn and Mebh, the film posits a way to heal the rift and strike a balance between the worlds of nature and humankind. It also implicitly posits Irish culture as the saviour of both pagan and Christian traditions. Tomm Moore and the animators at Cartoon Saloon have already produced many beautiful works of art, but Wolfwalkers is both their most conventionally appealing story and their most stunning work of visual artistry.

3. Another Round (dir. Thomas Vinterberg)

In one sense, Another Round is an affable comedy about four middle-aged friends (Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, Magnus Millang), all teachers at the same school who begin to experiment with day-drinking in order to experience the ecstasy of life without inhibitions. It’s an anthem for the “Dudes’ Rock” movement and a hilarious look at how a bit of liquid lubrication can replace the confidence that a lifetime of mediocrity has eroded. But in another, deeper, sense, it’s about the crutch of alcohol and how people rely on things outside themselves to fuel their personality and their ambitions. The film is wise in its examination of the effect alcohol has on our lives: the way that it serves as a social bond and centres so many relationships (both individually and culturally), but also the way that it easily becomes a poison and an escape hatch from reality. The film isn’t a morality tale and doesn’t use the lives of the characters as cautionary tales. Instead, it simply charts their lives and witnesses their choices with a sympathetic eye. It’s brilliantly performed by the four leading men, especially Mads Mikkelsen, who often does his best work with director Thomas Vinterberg. It all culminates in an ending for the ages, where we see a lifetime of repressed feelings burst forth in a wild dance that is equally freeing and desperate. This film is what great character drama should look like.

4. The Nest (dir. Sean Durkin)

There is nothing particularly surprising in the narrative happenings of The Nest, a domestic drama set in the 1980s that follows an ambitious stockbroker (Jude Law) who forces his wife (Carrie Coon) and kids (Charlie Shotwell, Oona Roche) to move to a massive mansion in England so he can take a job in London. Suffice to say, the move does not go well and so we’re forced to watch this family disintegrate within the cavernous, ill-fitting home in which they live. Only the second feature of director Sean Durkin after his ambitious debut, Martha Marcy May Marlene, The Nest is a showcase for its talented performers and a master class in how to use a camera to unlock the potential of human confrontation. Sometimes the camera zeroes in on characters’ faces, such as during a dinner party in which we watch the scales fall from the eyes of Carrie Coon. Other times, it keeps its distance and swallows them up in shadows, transforming the spaces they inhabit into a grand metaphor for their own unhappiness. Again, there is nothing original about this approach, but it demonstrates a strong handle on this sort of material. The visual approach elevates the confrontations, heightens the performances, and allows the grand metaphors to encapsulate the elemental human drama at its centre.

5. Small Axe: Mangrove (dir. Steve McQueen)

Mangrove is an intimate portrait of community and a persuasive look at how individuals are radicalized. The first of the Small Axe films, the anthology project that follows the lives of the West Indian community in London in the 1960s through 1980s, it tells the story of the “Mangrove Nine” and their trial in 1970 for supposedly inciting a race riot. The first half shows the happenings in and around the Mangrove Restaurant, a West Indian restaurant run by Frank Chrichlow (Shaun Parkes). The second half shows Frank and others from the community on trial for crimes they did not commit, which becomes a pulpit from which to indict racist British institutions. In many ways, the film works like a persuasive trial argument. The first half paints a compelling portrait of the defendants and their circumstances; the second half showcases why they are innocent and sheds light on the greater abuses of the system. The film is impassioned, but never irrational; it is persuasive, but not didactic. It’s a great example of political filmmaking, in that it both argues for a specific politics, but also shows the ways that politics can infuse and influence every facet of an individual and a community’s life.

6. Small Axe: Education (dir. Steve McQueen)

The shortest and quietest of the five Small Axe films, Education is a profound look at how easily the education system can fail children. It follows Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy), an illiterate 12-year-old boy from a West Indian family in London, as he’s transferred to a special school that’s a dumping ground for children deemed “educationally subnormal,” most of which are Black immigrants. Kingsley’s working class mom, Agnes (Sharlene Whyte), is too busy to think much of Kingsley’s school troubles, but concerned community members eventually clue her into the ways that Kingsley’s schooling is born out of racist government policy. Like Mangrove, Education focuses on the ways that a community can react against injustice and provide spaces for healing and growth. It also shows how individuals like Kingsley are caught up in the maw of institutional oppression and denied a fair shake. The film is intriguing as an examination of specific British education policies, but it’s heartbreaking as a portrait of a boy who doesn’t understand why he’s being failed. Any person who has ever struggled in school for reasons they cannot comprehend will see a portrait of themselves in this tale, and enjoy a glimpse of possible ways forward.

7. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (dir. Charlie Kaufman)

Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation of Iain Reid’s novel is an examination of the interior life—or rather, the life of the interior. That is to say it, it is about the world we make inside our heads—in this case literally…I think. It’s hard to talk about what Charlie Kaufman’s dramatic puzzle is doing exactly without spoiling the narrative surprises. What I can say is that it’s a perceptive look at the ways that we create the world at the same time as we observe it. It examines the quantum nature of reality through the seemingly-domestic tale of a woman (Jessie Buckley) on a road trip with her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to visit his aging parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). It is deeply uncomfortable, but oftentimes confronting hard truths is uncomfortable. It’s also intellectually provocative and exceptionally crafted, with an exacting full-frame aspect ratio, startling editing rhythms, and sympathetic performances from Buckley and Plemons, who generate a considerable amount of emotion out of something that could’ve easily been a cold intellectual exercise.

8. The Invisible Man (dir. Leigh Whannell)

An exciting horror film that riffs on H.G. Wells’ classic tale while bringing something new to the equation. Leigh Whannell (writer of Saw and director of Upgrade) brings the story into the present and makes it about the gaslighting of an abused woman (Elisabeth Moss) by an invisible assailant. The film continues cinematic horror’s long standing investigation of misogyny, riffing on films like Rosemary’s Baby and, yes, Gaslight. The result is the generation of a deep sympathy with Moss’s protagonist and a profound horror at the actions of the villain that go beyond the thrills depicted on screen. But let’s not discount those thrills, which are intelligently crafted and shot. Whannell weaponizes negative space within the frame, making every dark corner, empty hallway, or idle armchair a potential threat. There are also a few truly shocking set-pieces that give you the rush of terror and excitement that makes horror such a visceral cinematic experience.

9. The Painter and the Thief (dir. Benjamin Ree)

The Painter and the Thief is an examination of the mysterious power of forgiveness. The central concept is undeniably compelling. After having two of her paintings stolen from a gallery in Oslo, Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova meets one of the thieves, Karl Bertil-Nordland, and decides to paint a portrait of him. A friendship blossoms out of this uncertain act of forgiveness, but not the sort of friendship you assume. There are narrative and editorial surprises in the film’s presentation, which starts from telling the story of the friendship from Barbora’s perspective before shifting to Karl’s. The presentation brings up intriguing questions of documentary ethics, but also upsets some fundamental assumptions of how we often think forgiveness works. The result is a moving and profound look at how grace operates in our broken world.

10. Sorry We Missed You (dir. Ken Loach)

Ken Loach’s domestic drama portrays a life of precarious work as something out of a horror movie. The film follows a working class family (Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor) in Newcastle and the intersecting economic and personal struggles that threaten to overwhelm them. Much of the film is a matter-of-fact depiction of life in our modern economy. It shows how precarious life is for the father, who works as a delivery contractor and thus has all the restrictions of employment with none of its advantages. It shows how hard it is for the mother, a personal care worker, to simply get to the homes of her patients without access to a car. Ken Loach has long been one of cinema’s most talented leftist dramatists and the film’s political message is undeniable. But Loach doesn’t stack the deck in depicting the struggles of this particular family; he simply shows how easy it is for people in our modern world to crumble under the weight of a million little indignities and how one string of bad luck can financially cripple a family and ripple out like a shockwave. The experience of watching the film mere days before the pandemic crippled the world economy and drove hundreds of thousands more workers into precarious work conditions only illuminates the truth of Loach’s film: that our entire world can be upended by a twist of fate, since the systems and institutions that are meant to support us are intentionally designed to fail.

Another 10

CoroNation (dir. Ai Weiwei)

Dick Johnson Is Dead (dir. Kirsten Johnson)

First Cow (dir. Kelly Reichardt)

Martin Eden (dir. Pietro Marcello)

The Platform (dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia)

Small Axe: Alex Wheatle (dir. Steve McQueen)

Small Axe: Lovers Rock (dir. Steve McQueen)

Small Axe: Red, White and Blue (dir. Steve McQueen)

The Trip to Greece (dir. Michael Winterbottom)

Young Ahmed (dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)