By: Henry J. Fromage –
I’m closing out the year hellbent on watching every 2020 release worth watching that’s actually available to watch. This is the year it feels possible.
721. Everybody’s Everything
I have to confess that I can get down with a good Soundcloud banger, and make no mistake- they exist. That wouldn’t be enough reason to watch a documentary about Lil Peep, who overdosed just as he was beginning to break through to the mainstream, but the fact Terrence Malick of all people was a producer certainly drew my eye. It turns out he’s old college friends with John Womack, Jr., a historian who was Gustav Elijah Ahr aka Lil Peep’s grandfather whose letters to him and later interviews form the emotional backbone of the documentary and help shape a picture of the artist that footage of him performing and partying don’t quite. Hidden depths. Three Beers.
722. Safety
Disney + has already established a brand for its original content, and that brand unfortunately for us is ‘Disney Channel’. The cast and crew here are able to transcend the overly sanitized, often cheesy hallmarks of that brand, but only just. It helps that the true story of Ray McElrathbey, a Clemson football player who juggled the field, meeting his own high academic goals, a relationship, and taking care of his elementary school-aged brother who had nowhere else to go, is pretty compelling. A feel-good story that never tries to be anything else. Three Beers.
723. Between the World and Me
This star-studded HBO production isn’t quite like anything I’ve seen before- a filmed spoken word piece, specifically Ta-Nahisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, a book framed as a letter to his young son about all of the things he needs to know about being Black in the United States. Coates himself, director Kamilah Forbes, legendary DP Bradford Young, and a cast of recognizable faces that aren’t there so much to act as react to Coates’ powerful words and their own experiences reflected through them do a stunning job creating of work of unique depth and great beauty between the tears. An incredible experience, and an essential one. A Toast.
724. Mulan
I think I benefited from months of lowered expectations on this one, because I generally appreciated what Niki Caro was putting out there. Vibrantly colored wuxia with a hearty dose of girl power may well be the obvious move, but Caro makes the most of it- this movie looks like a (hundred) million bucks, and there’s some interesting character beats here and there. Let’s all just ignore the lead actress’s mouth flapping at the Hong Kong protests and how this production filmed in the same province as the Uyghur concentration camps, eh? Three Beers.
725. Black Bear
Aubrey Plaza often feels typecast, although to be fair she’s largely been typecast as her wholly original self by all accounts. Here, though, she and writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine show all of the tricks in her considerable actorly repertoire- many of which you may not have known or suspected she has. She starts off Aubrey Plaza-esque enough playing a director and former actress awaiting inspiration for her next film, who absconds to a cabin owned by a young couple (the always excellent Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon) with some serious marital issues. If that was all this film was, it would be already be an enthralling one, but it takes a major shift in the second half that deepens and complicates what we were just watching and what we will now proceed to watch- a conceit that is a tightrope walk all proceed across with aplomb. Bravo. Two Beers.
726. Sound of Metal
Riz Ahmed gets the tremendous showcase his acting talents have been overdue for in recent years, playing a heavy metal drummer who quickly begins to lose his hearing. Rookie director Darius Marder worked on this film for 12 years, and it shows in the authenticity of its handling of deaf culture and the performances of its deaf performers and those in their orbit (son of two deaf parents Paul Raci is cruising for a statue himself). This is also a technical tour-de-force, particularly its sound design and editing, just all around impressive. Two Beers.
727. Another Round
I should probably be reviewing this Best International Film contender in full, considering its entire premise is that a group of middle-aged friends in a rut decide to test the theory of Finn Skarderud, who posited that humans have a .005 BAC deficit, meaning that our ideal state is slightly tipsy. The group, led by a truly sad-sack Mads Mikkelsen, tries this to initially actually pretty great result, until the specter of alcohol abuse is raised for a few of them. This sometimes gets a bit predictable in its melodrama, but overall is the rare alcohol-positive film that feels like it realistically addresses why we drink in addition to its obvious potential pitfalls. Three Beers.
728. Beyond the Seventh Door
BabyRuth has been holding this one back just in case she got me in The Gauntlet, a movie exchange a few of us old hands are in, and the category fit, which it did. And damn are we both lucky. This 1987 Canucksploitation feature is about a robber and his ex-girlfriend who decide to rob a rich guy and end up in a labyrinthine series of escape rooms in a chase for their lives. What makes this so special is the acting duo of Bonnie Beck, trying her absolute hardest to bring some drama to the bare walls and cheaply constructed dangers, and Serbian actor with clearly a real name Lazar Rockwood, who looks and sounds like a cross between Tommy Wiseau and the Cryptkeeper and gives absolutely nothing to work with. At turns mumbling and bizarrely ad-libbing, he’s a true original, and the whole package is an unforgettable so bad it’s good classic in waiting. Six Pack.
729. Athlete A
This Netflix documentary follows the investigation into USA Gymnastics and particularly Dr. Larry Nassar, who molested very possibly every one of his young charges for 30 years, many of whom would become the record-breaking Olympians that form arguably the crown jewel of the United States’ Olympic team. This is a difficult watch, undoubtedly, but one of the clearest portraits of the type of institutional rot that aids and abets abuse this pervasive for this long. It’s not rare. Three Beers.
730. Yes, God, Yes
This short comedy now hosted by Netflix is set in the late 90s/AOL chatroom heyday, and is about a Catholic schoolgirl (Stranger Things‘ Natalia Dyer) whose perhaps slightly tardy sexual awakening is provoked by those early cesspools of internet horniness. This is one of those Saved!-style Christian satires that possess all of the subtlety of characterization of a Jeff Dunham show, but that’s not really the point- it’s much more a coming-of-age comedy, and it succeeds brilliantly at that. So, split the difference? Three Beers.
731. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
The first thing you need to know is that this is still very much an August Wilson stageplay adaptation, just like Denzel’s Fences. It’s set largely in the studio a couple of white producers a trying desperately to record an album from the imperious ‘Mother of the Blues’, Ma Rainey (an unrecognizable Viola Davis) and her backing band (an across the board excellent Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts). Oh, and there’s trumpeter Levee Green (Chadwick Boseman in his final performance), who has other ideas about the band’s sound, and a barely concealed desperation to make his own mark. Both leads deliver true powerhouse performances, and the last jab of cultural appropriate cuts deep. Two Beers.
732. Wolfwalkers
At least for this film, Cartoon Saloon, the Irish heir apparent to Studio Ghibli, has partnered up with Apple to distribute their latest paean to Gaelic art and folklore. This one is set in the Cromwell protectorate period, a dark time for the Irish, and its protagonist is the daughter of an English huntsman hired to clear the local woods of wolves. She soon finds the wolves aren’t quite what she was taught they were when she meets a young Wolfwalker, who explains she’s a girl when she’s awake and a wolf when she’s asleep. Overall, another gorgeously rendered fairytale from Tomm Moore, if not quite reaching the heights of his previous masterpieces. Three Beers.
733. A Call to Spy
This under the radar historical film chronicles the introduction of women to the SOE- Winston Churchill’s spy agency sent behind enemy lines to gather information and wreak havoc where they could. These incredibly brave women went into areas too dangerous even for the male spies, often without the support structure they had, and their stories are those of true heroism. Writer Sarah Megan Thomas and Director Lydia Dean Pilcher by no means break the stylistic mold of linearly told historical flicks, but the acting, particularly from Thomas herself, and the story itself makes it well worth your time. Three Beers.
734. Spaceship Earth
This documentary follows the two year Biosphere 2 experiment in which eight people quarantined themselves inside a replica of Earth’s ecosystem built to be entirely self-sustaining, up to and including its air supply. If you’re like me, you may wonder why you’ve never heard of this 1991 exercise in proving humanity’s ability to voyage to the stars far beyond the resources they can carry. Probably because it wasn’t entirely transparent in its methodology and the serious scientific community largely moved on before the experiment was even over, or perhaps because a young Steve Bannon of all people took over the company funding all of it soon after and buried any of the pesky climate change-supporting data they collected. In any case, it’s a messy story, but not the kind of messy that really proves all that interesting. Four Beers.
735. Bully. Coward. Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn
This subtext of this documentary about Roy Cohn, evil lawyer to the evil, up to and including Trump, is almost as fascinating as its text, being that it’s directed by Ivy Meeropol, who just so happens to be the grandchild of Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, who Cohn in his earliest dastardly act as Joseph McCarthy’s council, helped get the electric chair for allegedly stealing nuclear secrets. Despite that clear potential bias, Meeropol crafts a fascinatingly complex portrait of a man who contained multitudes of contradictions- as establishment a Republican as they came who was also nigh openly homosexual and died of AIDs, and a man who even those who loved him thought him evil. Two Beers.
736. The Perfect Weapon
There have been other fine documentaries about the threat of cyberwarfare to both the United States and the world at large, but none quite so succinctly lay out how we got where we are, and where we may be going in this new realm of warfare nobody quite knows how to handle, than this short HBO doc from from John Maggio. An essential primer to something that just recently has been back in the news, and arguably not getting nearly the attention it deserves (certainly not from our embarrassment of a President). Two Beers.
737. Greenland
I was expecting this to be another mid-range Gerard Butler blockbuster with just this side of dodgy special effects and lots of just the other side of dodgy accident work from this Scotsman who seems to exclusively play Americans these days. I mean, the director is Ric Roman Waugh, who arguably directed Butler to a career nadir with Angel Has Fallen. Well, both happy and confused to report that this film is rather excellent, focusing on the human responses to an extinction-level disaster event and the faint tendrils of hope that remain. It’s well thought out and even subtle, something I never, ever would have imagined calling this film considering its pedigree. Three Beers.
738. Some Kind of Heaven
This Darren Aronofsky-produced documentary from young filmmaker Lance Oppenheim is about The Village, Florida’s largest retirement community and practically an entire manicured, sanitized world of its own- as more than one resident comments, “a Disneyworld for adults”. That Oppenheim is able to find both the absurdities and the strange beauty in the stories of the residents he interviews and follows around show his skill as a documentarian- there’s almost an Errol Morris feel to his approach, and I’m not sure I can think of a higher compliment. Two Beers.
739. Showbiz Kids
Alex Winter has had an under-the-radar heck of a year, not just starring in the never-knew-we-needed-but-we-did third Bill & Ted flick, but directing both an acclaimed Frank Zappa documentary and this one, which is about the truly strange existence of growing up as and after being a child star. He enlists child stars (like himself- that’s his young mug in the picture) to tell about their own experiences, including Mara Wilson, Will Wheaton, Cameron Boyce, Milla Jovovich, Evan Rachel Wood, Todd Bridges, Henry Thomas, and several others spread throughout Hollywood’s history (even 1920s box office smash Baby Peggy, second only in popularity to Charlie Chaplin at the time, makes an appearance). Nobody can tell it better than those who went (and are going) through it. Three Beers.
740. Hunter Hunter
This vicious little horror just came out, and it feels like marketers have done it wrong, because by all means it should be recognized for what it is- one of the finest horror films of the year. A father, mother, and daughter are living off the land, until they hear the cry of a wolf. The father goes out to find the wolf, and while he’s (too long) gone, the mother finds a wounded man far out in the woods. I won’t reveal more plot, because it’s worth the ride, all the way to the truly brutal, but entirely earned ending. Two Beers.
741. Crock of Gold: Another Round with Shane MacGowan
I’m not much of one for music docs, but Jessica Kiang including it on her list of best docs of the year made it a must-watch for me, and I’m glad I did watch this at times corny (the animation, man… the animation ain’t great) but always interesting paean to the first frontman of the Pogues, the band that fused punk rock and traditional Irish music into something entirely original and incredibly influential. It’s hard to imagine a more shitkickering shitkicker of an Irishman and it’s a joy to make like Johnny Depp, grab a pint, and just let the old warhorse regale us with stories. Three Beers.
742. You Don’t Nomi
It’s funny what time will do to a movie, particularly a cheesy, tasteless movie like Showgirls, which was clearly never going to be appreciated in its time and nigh inarguably never should be appreciated as a film classic. That doesn’t mean it’s without value, though, and this documentary makes a case that it should be considered a high camp classic in the same breath as Mommie Dearest and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Damn if it doesn’t make its case, as well as the one that not even a director or cast may realize what they’ve really done until years later. I know I’m going to rewatch Showgirls now, for the first time since I was a 13 year old boy, in fact, when I appreciated it plenty… Three Beers.
743. The Man Standing Next
I only watched The President’s Last Bang a few weeks ago, but it turns out 2020’s biggest box office success in Korea treads much the same ground- the assassination of South Korean 18-year dictator Park Chung-hee (Lee Sung-min) by his KCIA Secret Service director Kim Gyu-pyeong (here played by Lee Byung-hun). Instead of the few hours before and the few hours after the shooting, though, this film is focused on the 40 days leading up to it, which really allows Lee to delve into Kim’s motivations for betraying his old brother in arms. This film boasts fine acting and production values all around, but perhaps gets a bit bogged down in backroom political arguments for those unfamiliar with the history. Three Beers.
744. Mayor
This documentary from David Osit sprung from the surprise he had visiting the Palestinian city of Ramallah, which he found to be a thoroughly modern, predominantly Christian community (as he points out in an interview with Steve James packaged with the film, Jesus is practically a “hometown hero”) that just so happens to be surrounded by illegal Israeli settlements and periodically overrun with Israeli soldiers looking to remind its citizens who holds the real power. To demonstrate both the banality and absurdity of daily life in a place like this, he focused on Mayor Musa Hadid, whose position entails both figuring out how to find the money to connect up cable in his office so he can watch the news as well as travel to Washington, D.C. to advocate for his fellow citizens. The Middle East and particularly Israel and Palestine are far both far more complicated and more straight up “normal” than you may think- which should just accentuate the horror when it strikes. It so easily could be us. Two Beers.
745. Pressure Cooker
This documentary about Philadelphia high school students working their asses off to get a scholarship to culinary school under the guidance of an outspoken, hard-edged, but clearly loving teacher is hands-down the feel-good documentary of the year, but it earns it, dammit. These kids are all such fascinating, multi-faceted people, surprising and validating at every turn, and it’s just a joy to follow them in their journey to ensure their futures, which deserve to be as bright as they already are. A Toast.
746. The Midnight Sky
George Clooney’s first film as director (Suburbicon, 3 years) and actor (Money Monster, 4 years) in quite some time (he’s been busy turning the ‘m’ in ‘millionaire’ to a ‘b’ with his tequila company sale) is set right at and after an apocalyptic event, leaving him as the sole survivor in an artic research station as far as he is aware, awaiting the time he can contact a space mission unaware of what has happened and tell them to turn around. Here he handles the heart-pounding space scenes with all of the aplomb he may have picked up from Alfonso Cuaron on the set of Gravity, but his real focus is the human stakes of all of these characters in their various states of predicament (played by one hell of a cast including Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Demian Bichir, Kyle Chandler, and Tiffany Boone). In whole a fine, emotional, if not ground-breaking Sci-Fi to wrap up the year. Two Beers.
