3 Brothers' Essential Films of 2020

The Prestige Pic

Bad Education

dir. Cory Finley

What It’s About: A superintendent (Hugh Jackman) at a highly-ranked school system in Long Island has to mitigate the fallout from a scandal when his assistant superintendent (Allison Janney) is caught embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Why it’s Good: “[W]ith Bad Education, [Finley] proves that he can conjure more than a visual and thematic milieu when making a film. He can tell a good story as well.” (Aren)

Da 5 Bloods

dir. Spike Lee

What It’s About: Four Black Vietnam War vets (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr.) return to Vietnam to find the remains of their fallen sergeant (Chadwick Boseman) and recover gold they stole during the war.

Why It’s Good: “Lee’s recent films [Da 5 Bloods included] continue his work as chronicler of African American history, and [...] testify to his deeply knowledgeable engagement with film history.” (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

dir. Charlie Kaufman

What It’s About: A young woman (Jessie Buckley) joins her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) on a road trip to visit his aging parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis) at their remote farmhouse, where she experiences an existential crisis.

Why It’s Good: Essay forthcoming, but Aren thought it a provocative, structurally-daring examination of cognitive feedback loops and emotional interiority.

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

dir. George C. Wolfe

What It’s About: An adaptation of a play by August Wilson about one tense day at a recording studio for blues singer, Ma Rainey (Viola Davis), and her band, particularly her ambitious young trumpeter (Chadwick Boseman).

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that he’d be “perfectly happy to watch one of these August Wilson adaptations starring Viola Davis every year and simply marvel at great performances of strong dramatic scenarios.”

The Nest

dir. Sean Durkin

What It’s About: A seemingly well-to-do family (Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Charlie Shotwell, Oona Roche) starts to fracture due to domestic strife and economic pressures when they move from America to a massive mansion in Surrey, UK.

Why It’s Good: “It’s the kind of film you dread watching with your spouse, just as you dread going back to sleep after waking from a bad dream because you worry you’re going to see something you recognize that chills you to your bone.” (Aren)

Small Axe: Alex Wheatle

dir. Steve McQueen

What It’s About: Depicts the early years in the life of writer Alex Wheatle (Sheyi Cole), who grew up in a white foster home before slowly acclimating to the West Indian community in Brixton, and his involvement in the 1981 Brixton riot and subsequent imprisonment.

Why It’s Good: Review forthcoming, but Anders and Aren both appreciated the specificity of its character building and its passionate examination of the importance music can have in a person’s life.

Small Axe: Education

dir. Steve McQueen

What It’s About: Due to his difficulty with reading, 12-year old Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy) is sent to a “special school,” which Kingsley’s working-class mother, Agnes (Sharlene Whyte), discovers is a dumping ground for West Indian children the state deems “sub-normal” and only suited to menial work.

Why it’s Good: Review forthcoming, but Anders and Aren both thought it was a terrifying, moving look at the inequities of the British education system.

Small Axe: Lovers Rock

dir. Steve McQueen

What It’s About: A loose, freewheeling depiction of one night at a thumping reggae house party in the West London suburbs in 1980.

Why It’s Good: Review forthcoming, but Anders and Aren both appreciated its relaxed, plotless storytelling and the undeniable atmosphere of its dance scenes.

Small Axe: Mangrove

dir. Steve McQueen

What It’s About: Depicts the happenings around the Mangrove Restaurant in Notting Hill in the late 1960s and the police harassment and subsequent trial of the West Indian “Mangrove 9” for supposedly inciting a riot.

Why It’s Good: Review forthcoming, but Anders and Aren both found the film to be a moving portrait of community as well as a gripping courtroom drama.

Small Axe: Red, White and Blue

dir. Steve McQueen

What It’s About: Leroy Logan (John Boyega) joins the London Metropolitan Police to help reform the service from within but ends up dealing with racist harassment from fellow officers and disappointment from his family and the rest of the West Indian community.

Why It’s Good: Review forthcoming, but Anders and Aren both thought it was a strong character portrait of a man trying to reconcile the contrasting tensions of his work and home life.

Soul

dir. Pete Docter

What It’s About: After his soul leaves his body, Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) accidentally ends up in the Great Before, where souls are prepped for their journey to Earth, and finds himself a mentor to a wayward soul (Tina Fey) that doesn’t want to be born.

Why It’s Good: Table Talk forthcoming, but Anders and Aren both appreciated the film’s visual splendour and soundtrack, both the jazz by Jon Batiste and the synthy ambience by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross.

Tenet

dir. Christopher Nolan

What It’s About: An American intelligence agent (John David Washington) is recruited to a secret organization and tasked with stopping a Russian arms dealer (Kenneth Branagh) from triggering the apocalypse in this time inverting action thriller.

Why It’s Good: “It’s a big, brainy action movie and is very entertaining.” (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

The Multiplex

An American Pickle

dir. Brandon Trost

What It’s About: An early-20th-century Eastern European Jewish immigrant (Seth Rogen) is accidentally preserved in pickle brine for a century and revived in 21st-century Brooklyn, where he connects with his great grandson (also Seth Rogen).

Why It’s Good: “It’s a silly, though familiar concept, but the film does well with the richness of its comedic and thematic potential, injecting classic tropes such as the odd couple, the fish-out-of-water, and the man out of time with good natured and timely humour.” (Anders and Aren)

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

dir. Cathy Yan

What It’s About: After breaking up with the Joker, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) joins with a group of outcast women (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Rosie Perez) to save a young thief (Ella Jay Basco) from the gangster, Black Mask (Ewan McGregor).

Why It’s Good: “[W]here Suicide Squad could only pretend to be a fun, easy-going superhero film, Birds of Prey actually is one.” (Aren)

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

dir. Jason Woliner

What It’s About: Borat Sagdiyev (Sacha Baron Cohen) heads to the United States of America to deliver a bribe to the Trump Administration, with his estranged daughter, Tutar (Maria Bakalova), along for the ride.

Why It’s Good: “The resulting film is a welcome surprise and a messy, funny clarification of the absurdity of our current moment.” (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

The Gentlemen

dir. Guy Ritchie

What It’s About: A crooked private investigator (Hugh Grant) tries to blackmail a pot kingpin (Matthew McConaughey) and his right-hand man (Charlie Hunnam) in this gangster comedy.

Why It’s Good: “There’s not much more to The Gentlemen than the brash showmanship of the filmmaking and the charm of the actors playing off each other, but there needn’t be.” (Anders and Aren)

The Invisible Man

dir. Leigh Whannell

What It’s About: A woman (Elisabeth Moss) flees an abusive relationship only to learn that her ex-boyfriend committed suicide in the aftermath (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). However, she soon becomes convinced he didn’t die but turned himself invisible in order to terrorize her.

Why It’s Good: “Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man is about as scary, melodramatic, and entertaining as you could hope for an updated and revamped version of H.G. Wells’ classic novel to be.” (Aren)

The Way Back

dir. Gavin O’Connor

What It’s About: An alcoholic former basketball prodigy (Ben Affleck) becomes the coach of his high school basketball team in a bid to turn his life around.

Why It’s Good: “The Way Back still provides many of the inspirational pleasures of a sports drama. But it’s an addiction film at its centre and a showcase for Ben Affleck’s considerable talents as an actor.” (Aren)

Weathering With You

dir. Makoto Shinkai

What It’s About: A teenage runaway falls in love with a “sunshine girl” who can make the sun come out for short periods of time in a perpetually rain-soaked near-future Tokyo.

Why it’s Good: “It’s a coming of age romance that satisfies because of the depth of its characters and its obvious compassion for those very characters.” (Aren)

The Arthouse

Disappearance at Clifton Hill

dir. Andy Shin

What It’s About: A mentally-unstable woman (Tuppence Middleton) returns to her home of Niagara Falls to investigate a kidnapping she witnessed as a child.

Why It’s Good: “Disappearance at Clifton Hill is not just moody, but substantial in its commentary on how power operates in Canada.” (Aren)

First Cow

dir. Kelly Reichardt

What It’s About: A wandering cook (John Magaro) and a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee) partner to sell cakes made from stolen cow’s milk at a frontier outpost in 1820s Oregon.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren called it a “quiet portrait of friendship on the frontier of the Oregon Territory in the 1820s” and a parable about the “risks and rewards of capitalism.”

Martin Eden

dir. Pietro Marcello

What It’s About: A poor young man (Luca Marinelli) falls in with a rich family and acquires a taste for luxury and art that sets him at odds with his working class roots.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren called it a “compelling investigation of the relationship between art and politics, and wealth and ideology.”

The Platform

dir. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia

What It’s About: A man (Ivan Massagué) wakes up in a mysterious prison consisting of 150 levels where the only food is sent down each day on a platform from the highest to the lowest levels, with prisoners on the upper levels getting to eat as much food as they want, leaving nothing for those below.

Why It’s Good: “[E]ven if the metaphors hold no interest for you, The Platform is still a seriously entertaining science-fiction horror film.” (Aren)

Sorry We Missed You

dir. Ken Loach

What It’s About: A working class family (Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor) in Newcastle, UK struggles to adjust to the pressures caused by precarious work conditions and school troubles.

Why it’s Good: “Ken Loach’s latest kitchen sink drama, Sorry We Missed You, plays like a horror movie where the monster is capitalism.” (Aren)

Sound of Metal

dir. Darius Marder

What It’s About: A heavy-metal drummer (Riz Ahmed) goes deaf and has to adjust to a new world without sound at a rehabilitation home.

Why It’s Good: “Sound of Metal is a film of note due to its groundbreaking sound design.” (Aren)

The Trip to Greece

dir. Michael Winterbottom

What It’s About: Fictionalized versions of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon head on a foodie road trip through Greece.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren said that “The film's wisdom comes in acknowledging that these moments of travel and joy and carefree fun are only the interludes between the harsh realities of life that are inevitable for all of us.”

The Wild Goose Lake

dir. Diao Yinan

What It’s About: After a violent fallout with a rival, a gangster (Hu Ge) hides from the cops and other crooks at a lakeside resort town.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren said that it “gets by almost entirely on mood, with its drifting camerawork following stoic figures passing through neon pools of light.”

Wolfwalkers

dir. Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart

What It’s About: During the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland in the mid-17th century, a Puritan English girl (Honor Kneafsey) befriends a pagan Irish girl (Eva Whittaker) who manifests a wolf when she sleeps, putting her in conflict with her father (Sean Bean), whose job it is to eliminate all the wolves in Ireland.

Why It’s Good: “It’s a remarkable animated work that cements its animation studio as one of the very best in the business.” (Aren)

Young Ahmed

dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

What It’s About: A radicalized, Islamic Belgian teen (Idir Ben Addi) tries to kill his language teacher and is sent to a rehabilitation centre, having to navigate his way through Belgium’s therapeutic state apparatus.

Why It’s Good: “[W]ith its controversial and topical subject matter, the film clarifies and makes even more pointed some of the themes and conclusions that have always lurked in the subtext of the brothers’ films.” (Anders and Aren)

The Hot Doc

76 Days

dir. Hao Wu, Weixi Chen, and Anonymous

What It’s About: Tracing life inside several hospitals in Wuhan dealing with COVID-19 during the 76-day lockdown in early 2020.

Why It’s Good: “As a moment-to-moment documentation of the lives of these health care workers and their patients, 76 Days is fascinating.” (Aren)

Beastie Boys Story

dir. Spike Jonze

What It’s About: In this concert film cut with documentary footage, the two surviving members of the Beastie Boys, Mike D and Ad-Rock, narrate their rise from teenage pranksters to hip hop legends and pay tribute to their late friend and band member, MCA a.k.a. Adam Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012.

Why It’s Good: “[Beastie Boys Story] reaffirmed my love of the band, and also made me happy to see people I admired who had grown and learned from life. Ultimately, it’s pretty inspiring stuff.” (Anders)

Boys State

dir. Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss

What It’s About: Over the course of one week in Austin, Texas, 1,000 politically-ambitious teenage boys gather to form a representative government, including holding party and gubernatorial elections, in this hands-on trial run of American democracy.

Why It’s Good: No review, but on Letterboxd, Aren called it “A very entertaining microcosm of the American political process as represented by 1,000 politically-ambitious teenage boys in Texas.”

CoroNation

dir. Ai Weiwei

What It’s About: A patchwork documentary of life within Hubei Province during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why It’s Good: “The film offers plenty of philosophical fodder for contemplating the balance between individual and collective needs, and I appreciated how despite the ultimately critical portrait, it is seen as a genuine problem to be worked out rather than a given.” (Anders and Aren)

Dick Johnson Is Dead

dir. Kirsten Johnson

What It’s About: Documentarian Kirsten Johnson depicts her father, Dick Johnson, dying in humorous and inventive ways and imagines what his experience in heaven would be like as a means of dealing with his steady decline from dementia.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren called it a “moving portrait of the slow march towards death.”

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds

dir. Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer

What It’s About: Heading around the globe to several locations including Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Norway, France, Hawaii, and Anatarctica, Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer examine the science of meteorites and their cultural impact on human history.

Why It’s Good: “The film is a wide-eyed examination of natural wonder, full of Herzog’s peculiar awe at the natural world, which he finds both terrible and awesome.” (Aren)

Hong Kong Moments

dir. Bing Zhou

What It’s About: Seven different Hongkongers of diverse political viewpoints tell, in broad strokes, a multifaceted story of not only the conflict between protestors and the police but also the larger picture of life in Hong Kong in 2019.

Why It’s Good: “[I]t can be difficult to discern what the real story is ‘on the ground.’ For this reason more than anything, Hong Kong Moments is useful viewing for Western audiences.” (Anton)

The Last Ice

dir. Scott Ressler

What It’s About: An examination of the melting of the Arctic Sea Ice and its impact on the Inuit in Greenland and Canada as demonstrated through the lives of a traditional hunter and a cultural custodian.

Why It’s Good: “[T]he film is both informative and handsomely produced, with a wealth of gorgeous cinematography that showcases the wide-ranging impacts of its subject.” (Aren)

The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel

dir. Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan

What It’s About: This belated sequel to the 2003 cult documentary, The Corporation, expands the examination of the role of corporations and capitalism in our global society, and asks what function concepts like “corporate social responsibility” and organizations like the World Economic Forum play in our world today.

Why It’s Good: “By actually providing the viewer with opportunities to hear the justifications of corporate pitch people and CEOs themselves, along with a range of significant critiques, the film generates a productive dialogue that places the role of the corporation into context on moral and political grounds.” (Anders)

The Painter and the Thief

dir. Benjamin Ree

What It’s About: After two of her beloved paintings are stolen from a gallery, painter Barbora Kysilkova adjusts to the loss by forming a friendship with Karl Bertil-Nordland, the man who stole one of the paintings.

Why It’s Good: No review, but on Letterboxd, Aren called it “Exceptional documentary that is way more complex than you initially think.”