The Top 15 Films of 2020

Photo: Manfred Werner/Manfred Werner cc by-sa 4.0

There were many films to celebrate at home and in cinemas throughout 2020, despite the tremendous social and financial impact of COVID-19 on UK and international cinemagoing. A considerable number of these films came through regular streaming giants, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, but new avenues were also paved with the success of Curzon Home Cinema and other smaller platforms whose popularity has soared since the beginning of the year. Streaming has allowed more new releases to be seen than ever, with independent feature films experiencing a renaissance in online distribution.

 

Listed below are my personal top 15 films of 2020.

 

 

15.

Saint Frances (dir. Alex Thompson)

The title of Alex Thompson’s debut directorial feature comes from one of its final scenes, where six-year-old Frances (Ramona Edith Williams) impersonates a priest, perched in a confessional, whilst listening to her nanny, Bridget (Kelly O’Sullivan). “I’m not an impressive person,” Bridget admits. “I don’t have a husband or kids or a fancy job.” They continue talking, and later Bridget realises this summer was probably the best of her life, although the events of the film might first make you think otherwise. Nothing is sensationalised or sentimental in Saint Frances, whose central character, Bridget, pivots between relationships, an unplanned pregnancy, and the vibrant spirit of Frances. Thirty-four and directionless, having found no use for her creative writing degree, she by chance manages to secure a job nannying the child of lesbian couple Maya and Annie (played by Charin Alvarex and Lily Mojekwu). Bridget’s journey through adulthood plays alongside her growing friendship with Frances – perhaps the lightest and best-observed aspect of the story – lending great warmth and empathy to the many pitfalls and missteps Bridget takes along the way. 

 

Available to stream on Curzon Home Cinema.

 

14. 

Falling (dir. Viggo Mortensen)

Viggo Mortensen shines in his memorable feature directorial debut, co-starring as John, a middle-aged, gay man who is attempting to rehabilitate his ageing father, Willis (Lance Henricksen), from upstate New York to sunny California. From the opening scene, where the faint sound of a piano convinces Willis the plane must have an “upstairs,” it is clear that his outbursts are signs of dementia. As husband to Gwen (Hannah Gross) and father to John and Sarah (Laura Linney), there are few redeeming elements to his character, which from John’s troubled childhood up until the present day remains both venomous and undignified, forever showing the cold shoulder to friends and family alike. Mortensen’s portrait of old age is strikingly unsympathetic and maybe even repetitive – drawn loosely from autobiographical elements – allowing few moments of reprieve from the resentment that consumes Willis. Henrickson (who outshines Mortenson and the rest of the cast) compels viewing as much as he repulses. Likewise, Falling also triumphs in its depiction of mental illness more so than other, similarly themed films from 2020: Sally Potter’s semi-autobiographical feature The Roads Not Taken, for example, intercuts the real and imagined memories of Leo (Javier Bardem) to a frustrating and less rewarding effect.

 

Available to stream on Curzon Home Cinema.

 

13.

Last and First Men (dir. Jóhann Jóhannsson)

Many will remember the late Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson for his soundtracks for Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners (2013), Sicario (2015) and Arrival (2016), as well as James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything (2014). He also composes the score for his only directorial feature, Last and First Man, a 70-minute, monochromatic essay inspired by the final chapters of William Olaf Stapledon’s novel of the same name. A narrator (voiced by Tilda Swinton) drily remembers the evolutionary history of mankind, from past to distant future, whilst images of the Soviet-era, brutalist Spomeniks come and go on the screen. Jóhannsson’s sublime, electronic sounds effectively lend themselves to the strangeness of these monuments, whose original purpose of commemorating Communist resistance here transforms into otherworldly relics. Several critics have described Jóhannsson’s debut as a minor work of science fiction, but there is much to be valued and taken away from this beautifully realised and unusual experiment.

 

Available to stream on the BFI Player.

 

12.

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (dir. Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer)

After the middling documentaries of Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016) and Meeting Gorbachev (2018), the mad and wonderful Werner Herzog returns to form with his meteorite-inspired documentary Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, co-directing with Cambridge professor Clive Oppenheimer. The pair globetrot between sites of impact, ranging from inconspicuous rooftops in Oslo, Norway – where micrometeorites are harvested from puddles of water – to the epic deserts of Australia and Antarctica, amongst others. The subject matter has always been peripheral and centre stage to Herzog’s documentaries, and much like his finest projects, Grizzly Man (2005) and Encounters at the End of the World (2007), the interviewees are often of more interest to the roving camera than the ostensible topic of the documentary. Herzog and Oppenheimer gather an array of fascinating characters whose lives have been inflected by the culture and tradition thrown up by the impact of meteorites. These visitors from darker worlds, Herzog and Oppenheimer suggest, are to what we owe both our life and imagination, our creation but also devastation.

 

Available to stream on Apple TV+.

 

11.

Queen & Slim (dir. Melina Matsoukas)

First-date lovers Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) turn to the road as fugitives after the defensive shooting of a white police officer in Melina Matsoukas’ film of the same name. Young and black, their journey from Ohio through to New Orleans and Florida invites fire and fury in national news coverage, with their argument for innocence united with the cause of millions of black Americans. They are also brought together privately, and whilst long-haul passengers – with brief interludes at petrol stations and the house of Queen’s Uncle Earl (Bokeem Woodbine) – they find themselves falling in love. At heart, Matsoukas’ picture is a story of the road, of constant transit, sharing the genre with the likes of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) or Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973). Cinematographer Tat Radcliffe shoots the wide landscapes of Queen & Slim in warm and neon-soaked colours, recalling the late Robby Müller’s photography for Wim Wender’s ‘road movies’ The American Friend (1977) and Paris, Texas (1983). Queen & Slim is a small and timely epic.

Available to stream on multiple platforms.

 

10.

Little Joe (dir. Jessica Hausner)

Emily Beecham took the award for Best Actress from the 2019 Cannes Film Festival for her performance as Alice Woodward, the co-breeder of a scientifically engineered strain of flower called ‘Little Joe’ (after her teenage son). Questions about the plant circulate from the beginning: concerns over testing and its viability for distribution, but also the commercial value of its scent which is designed to make its owner happy. In vibrant red blossom, the intended calm of ‘Little Joe’ gradually changes the personality of those in the vicinity of its pollen (all except Woodward): the closeted presence of her colleague Chris (Ben Whishaw) gives way to unusual, predatory behaviour one evening in a pub. For others, the plant’s scent leaves them cold and emotionally blunted, recalling the hypnotic sedation of the plant offerings in Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) remake. But unlike the grotesque appetite of Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986), ‘Little Joe’ works almost imperceptibly and leisurely, forcing Woodward to privately question her abilities as both mother and scientist. Little Joe might be one of the most unsettling films you watch this year.

 

Available to stream on the BFI Player.

 

9.

David Byrne’s American Utopia (dir. Spike Lee)

A snowy-haired David Byrne, his eleven-piece band, and Spike Lee’s fluid camerawork form the cast of this live recording of the Broadway performance American Utopia. And what an experience Byrne and Lee have created. Of course, much of the concert pays tribute to the musical highlights of Byrne’s former Talking Heads outfit – covering crowd-pleasers from ‘Talking Heads: 77’ and ‘Remain in Light,’ amongst others – but large sections are also concerned with present-day affairs. Occasionally, Byrne drops the song and guitar for small interludes of monologue, whimsically commenting on life, the universe and everything as he sees it. These gold nuggets are maybe some of the best parts of the performance. Lee carries the viewer along in solidarity with Byrne’s troupe, each of whom wears and carries their instruments, freely moving between aerial shots and physical intimacy on the Hudson Theatre stage. There are liveness and energy, in every sense, to this extraordinary concert feature, one which now feels increasingly remote from the limitations people now experience in the present day.

 

Available to stream on multiple platforms.

 

8.

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

There are immense strength and integrity to the centrepiece of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe quintet, particularly in the performance of John Boyega as Leroy Logan, the principled and ambitious black officer who attempted to reform the police force from within. Logan’s decision to join the force rests uneasily with his Jamaican family, especially his father – having recently experienced brutality from two white officers – before later extending to hostility from the community at large. Logan’s quest is heroic, in many ways, but as his father reminds him, “big change, it is a slow turning wheel,” and he can only do so much. Unlike the overpowering presence of the police in Mangrove, the first and longest episode in McQueen’s anthology, Logan’s career offers an internal perspective to the series. Elements of this narrative feel like the European cousin of Norman Jewison’s acclaimed In the Heat of the Night (1967), where black police detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) investigates a murder whilst exposed to small-town racism. In one particular scene, Logan’s isolated pursuit of a young man through a paper factory – having been abandoned by the force – parallels Tibbs’ ambush in a Mississippi warehouse. McQueen delivers something truly powerful with Red, White and Blue.

 

Available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

 

7.

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

Charlie Kaufmann’s third directorial feature begins on the road during a long and cold blizzard. Jake (Jesse Plemons) is taking his new girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) – whose name slips uncertainly between Lucy, Louisa, Lucia, and Ames – to his Oklahoman farmhouse to meet his parents, played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis. They have little to talk about on the way, but as time passes, her internal thoughts circle the realisation that she’s “thinking of ending things,” either with Jake or possibly herself. These suppressed feelings of loneliness and despair culminate with their arrival, where the picture enters more familiar Kaufmann territory. Between rooms, Jake’s parents appear to get younger and older, confronting the woman with awkward and sometimes revelatory glimpses into this foreign environment. Buckley’s character embodies many of Kauffmann’s trademark anxieties, taking the baton from Philip Seymour Hoffmann’s existential director in Synecdoche, New York (2008) or the aimless, puppet couple in Anomalisa (2015). The surreal and often horrifying elements of Kauffman’s film do not hold the comedic strength of his earlier scripts, but for many viewers, there is much pleasure to be reaped from the ambiguities it offers.

 

Available to stream on Netflix.

 

6.

Uncut Gems (dir. Josh and Benny Safdie)

At the centre of the financial storm in Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems is the Jewish-American jeweller Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), addicted to gambling away his wealth and that of others. There is another centre to this film: a rare and uncut black opal extracted from the Welo mine in Northeast Africa. Ratner, burdened with a number of debts, smuggles the stone into his New York jewellery store, KHM, before loaning it to NBA basketball player Kevin Garnett (as himself) as a good-luck charm. From here, the narrative follows Ratner’s failed attempts to retrieve the stone, and the colossal personal and emotional fallout of his decisions. Uncut Gems is the Safdie brother’s sixth and most exciting feature to date, boasting a career-best performance from Adam Sandler, and proving (once again) that he can offer a mesmerising screen presence. There is no moment of pause or respite in this Shakespearian tragedy in miniature, but what an exhilarating ride it is.

 

Available to stream on Netflix.

 

5.

Small Axe: Lovers Rock (dir. Steve McQueen)

In the second chapter of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, he plays host to the most ecstatic and rapturous party of the year. Originally selected for the NYFF and London Film Festival, before later being broadcast on BBC One, Lovers Rock is the most ambitious episode of the series, whilst also the only fictional narrative. In 1980s west London, Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) secretly meets with her friend Patty (Shaniqua Okwok), having both escaped to attend a local party in Ladbroke Grove. Their excitement and anticipation quickly melt into the foggy spaces of the townhouse, where steaming food, drugs and passions fuel the atmosphere of each moment. Throughout the night, Martha finds herself separated from Patty, having crossed paths with the figure of Franklyn (Michael Ward). Together, their mutual attraction and nocturnal freedoms are brought out in scenes of dance, and in the early hours of the following morning, they leave, making plans to reunite. These passionate encounters, inspired by the sounds of lover’s rock, reggae and soul, by traditions and ritual, erupt in real-time like multicolour fireworks. Lovers Rock is the peak of McQueen’s career behind the camera.

 

Available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

 

4.

Shirley (dir. Josephine Decker)

Shirley Jackson, the American mystery writer best known for her 1948 New Yorker short story “The Lottery,” is the fascinating subject of Josephine Decker’s latest picture. Adapted by Chicago playwright Sarah Gubbins from Susan Scarf Merrell’s semi-fictional biography, this recreated story is still much indebted to Shirley’s own literary output – teasing dark pleasures and undertones from every scene. Newlyweds Fred (Logan Lerman) and Rose Nesmer (Odessa Young) arrive at the door of Shirley (Elizabeth Moss) and her husband Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), hoping to stay whilst they look for somewhere more permanent to live. The couple prepares meals, washes stacks of dishes, but soon falls prey to the parasitic influence of the older couple, whose collapsing marriage finds renewed inspiration in destroying the innocence of the young couple. Moss is compelling to watch as the bed-ridden, morose Shirley, reimagined by Decker and Gubbins as both childless (untrue in real life) and quietly unstable – even daring Rose, in one scene, to eat a mushroom that might be deadly or benign. Shirley is one of Decker’s more commercial features in recent years, but it effectively demonstrates the non-linear hallmarks and moods which have come to define her style of filmmaking.

 

Available to stream on Curzon Home Cinema.

 

3.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir. Céline Sciamma)

Céline Sciamma, whose filmography has never shied away from the female gaze, achieves her manifesto (in her own words) with Portrait of a Lady on Fire. This is cinema to be treasured and valued, in every sense, capturing the giddiness and rush of pleasure of experiencing first love. In the eighteenth-century, painter Marianne (Noémie Merlant) travels to an island in Brittany where she has been commissioned to produce a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) for her future husband, a Milanese gentleman. Héloïse, resisting this nuptial arrangement, refuses to sit for her portrait, leaving Marianne no opportunity to study her subject. To better paint, Héloïse’s mother, the Countess (Valeria Golino), persuades Marianne to accompany her daughter on various coastal walks, before coming back to translate what she has seen into the marks and colours on her canvas. Gradually, the subtlety of their interactions gives way to friendship, before ripening into a careful, unspoken desire. Taking place over a week and a half, the film burns with the passion of looking – in one scene, Héloïse’s distracted stare even leads to her dress catching on fire. Sciamma also finds inspiration in the films of New Zealand director Jane Campion, particularly The Piano (1993) and The Portrait of a Lady (1996), whilst building from themes she has dramatized across her career (see an extended review here).

 

Available to stream on MUBI.

 

2.

Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

There was something incredibly significant about watching Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite in a fully-packed cinema in January – and more than unusual for a non-English-language drama – as well as its subsequent triumph at the Golden Globe Awards and 92^nd Academy Awards. Parasite proved the Hollywood system could be overturned, if only momentarily, marking a cultural breakthrough for international and Korean cinema in this new decade. For Joon-ho, the titanic success of Parasite has seen fresh restorations and re-releases of his back-catalogue, including Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) and his influential Memories of Murder (2003). Co-written by Joon-ho and Han Jin-won, the story begins with the poor Kim family, nested in the underbelly of Seoul, whose ill-fortunes are reversed with the opportunity of working for the more privileged, yet unsuspecting Park family. From here, they begin to infiltrate every element of the Park’s luxurious existence – the father Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) is hired to chauffeur Mr Park (Lee Sun-kyun), and later recommends his wife Chung-sook (Hang Hye-jin) for the open position of a housemaid. However, much like the modern architecture of the family house, there are hidden depths and shifting surfaces to the narrative of Parasite, where any moment the unexpected becomes reality. More than anything, Parasite is a perfect satire of class relations and co-dependencies, a home invasion that starts from within, before metamorphizing into the realms of Greek tragicomedy.

 

Available to stream on multiple platforms.

 

1.

Bacurau (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles)

Few films in 2020 have felt as adventurous, provocative and exciting as Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ near-future western Bacurau (named after a fictional quilombo settlement bordering the Serra Verde, Brazil). Having competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, and played in UK cinemas earlier in 2020, the film saw a short release window before cinemas closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

 

Following the sudden death of the village matriarch (Lia de Itamaracá), a series of strange events besiege the people of Bacurau – without notice, the town vanishes from online maps, and UFO-shaped drones appear in the skies. Homecomer Teresa (Bárbara Colen) soon discovers a local dispute over water rights, with the river hoarded upstream by the mayor of Serra Verde, Tony Junior (Thardelly Lima) – a similar conspiracy to the Californian Water Wars in Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974). Shortly afterwards, an entire family is discovered dead, having been executed by a troupe of amateur, American soldiers, spearheaded by the German-American Michael (Udo Kier). This array of brilliant and sometimes ultraviolent encounters between the townspeople and modern-day cowboys pushes the feature into a brutal terrain, where scenes of horror and absurdity meet in the crossfire.

 

Indebted to a number of genres and cinematic styles, Bacurau presents a fizzing cocktail of Brazilian melodrama and the popular, Italian-style Westerns of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. Filmed with Dornelles’ regular cinematographer Pedro Sotero, dusty colours combine with strange and wonderful images – of coffins overspilling with water as villagers’ thirst congeals with hallucinogenic drugs, and scenes of nightmarish retribution in battle. Bacurau is also concerned with community, as well as structures of colonial and political power which Brazilian cinema has come to review, such as Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s explosive City of God (2002). Splicing various influences and polemics together, the texture of Filho and Dornelles’ feature is rough and rowdy, resisting any immediate definition.

 

Available to stream on MUBI.

 

 

Other honourable mentions include: Leigh Whannell’s thrilling modernisation of H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, featuring another stellar performance by Elizabeth Moss this year; Anya Taylor-Joy as the title character in Autumn de Wilde’s comic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.; The Twilight Zone-inspired horror Vivarium (Lorcan Finnegan); Robert Eggers’s second horror project The Lighthouse, featuring career-best performances by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson; the latest feature of Palm d’Or-winning director Hirokazu Kore-eda, The Truth; Armando Iannucci’s personal take on Charles Dickens’ The Personal History of David Copperfield; Václav Marhoul’s brutal trip through post-Holocaust Europe, The Painted Bird (see an extended review here); the Oscar-nominated drama Les Misérables, directed with flair by Ladj Ly; three generations of haunting in Natalie Erika James’s Australian horror Relic; and finally, Spike Lee’s reclamation of the black experience in Vietnam, Da 5 Bloods.

The Sopranos: family like you've never seen it before

One of the many things I will remember the UK Lockdown for is viewing all six seasons of The Sopranos on DVD. I have since learned that I was not the only one re-treading the New Jersey-based crime drama: Roddy Doyle recently spoke of watching the series with his partner on the radio, and finding unexpected pleasure in how well it has stood the ten years since its finale in 2007. From May to August of this year, The Guardian itself even complimented my viewing schedule by publishing several articles about the series. 

The Sopranos is brilliant for a number of reasons, but mostly for the fictional anti-hero of Tony Soprano (played with immense charisma by James Gandolfini), and his Italian-American family. Tony’s almost Shakespearian presence is pitted against a smorgasbord of characters in each season, ranging from his hilarious mother to Uncle Junior, and the later mobsters of Ralph Cifaretto and Phil Leotardo.

 

These tectonic shifts in power are wonderfully contrasted, and maybe even softened, by their individual domestic lives. Tony’s morning collection of the newspaper from the driveway, his private therapy discussions with Dr. Jennifer Melfi, and dinnertime arguments with his wife and children, for example, comprise much of each episode’s runtime. These small acts of life humanise what might otherwise be considered a show that glorifies its violence, and certainly, you come to appreciate the characters for who they are behind closed doors.

 

The Sopranos was also a welcome relief from binge-worthy television shows – particularly the bite-size episodes of Sally Rooney’s adaptation of Normal People – as I deliberately avoided rushing through each season, usually watching one episode per night. Allowing some time for each episode to rest certainly encouraged my awareness of its nuances, tracking the various story arcs with more care, whilst anticipating the many uncertainties of Tony’s future.

 

Escapism might be the wrong word to describe The Sopranos, and global turbulence during the Covid-19 pandemic was, in many ways, reflected in its family politics and changing allegiances. However, from its first scenes to the very last, David Chase’s ode to criminal organisation kept me entertained, and invested in a number of people whose lives suddenly meant a great deal. Surely that is the best kind of television?

Listening to Bob Dylan’s Rain

Bob Dylan was twenty-one years old when he recorded ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ in the summer of 1962, and twenty-two when he released the song on his second studio album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. It began life as a poem. Typed from the keys of a borrowed typewriter, seated in a room above Greenwich Village’s Gaslight Café, he would perform it to a modest crowd of Beats and other bohemians shortly after it was finished. Allan Ginsberg – after his return from India – cried when he first listened, as did many others. From here, Dylan would make minimal changes to his choice of lyrics, but each of its five verses would continue to transport its audience long after it was first composed.

Over its two sides and thirteen songs – eleven of which were original compositions – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan introduced listeners to what Dylan could achieve as a songwriter. Traditional melodies were not only revisited but accompanied by lyrics of wit, bitterness, and evocative romance. Many of these songs, for the young Dylan, held a mirror to a changing private and public life.

 

In January 1962, Dylan moved into a top-floor apartment on West 4^th Street, New York, with his then-girlfriend Suze Rotol, before she travelled to Italy for her studies. Their romance stirs in the lyrics of ‘Girl from the North Country,’ and their separation is felt keenly in the frustrated blues of ‘Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.’ Importantly, this relationship also fed Dylan’s political consciousness, and with the Civil Rights Movement unfolding on his doorstep they informed the topical protests of other tracks, including ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ‘Masters of War’ and ‘Talkin’ World War III Blues.’

 

To listeners of Dylan’s album, much of his zest and youthful songwriting found its greatest expression with the torrential forecast that ‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.’ Just shy of seven minutes, Dylan’s song brought the personal and political into close proximity, with each descriptive lyric inspired by his readings of microfiche newspapers in the New York Public Library.

 

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

 

– Dylan gently asks, in the opening lines, before replying with a sequence of prophetic visions, migrating between “misty mountains” and “sad forests,” amongst other landscapes. Later, he asks further questions: what has he seen and heard, who has he met on his quest, and what will he do next? Structured to the question-and-answer dialogue of the traditional ballad ‘Lord Randal,’ Dylan’s song asks questions of an America in crisis, departing from the Anglo-Scottish tale of betrayal and poisoned eels to capture the anxiety of Kennedy-Khrushchev relations and civil unrest. From verse to verse, line to line, these images and symbols of change are heaped upon more images and symbols. Dylan sings of innocence lost to experience, recounting lists of what we hold dearest and fear of losing the most.

 

In his memoir Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan describes the background to the song as a “culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course.” For Dylan, the centre simply could not hold.

 

And so Dylan’s weatherman refrain that “it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall” gathers a number of symbolic possibilities, gesturing at both personal and political meanings. For Dylan: “it's not atomic rain, it's just a hard rain. It isn't the fallout rain. I mean some sort of end that's just gotta happen.” Although he frequently turns away from reading meaning into his lyrics, this unusual insight might be the nearest he allows his listeners to any specific understanding. How we brave the storm and find our way through, Dylan suggests, is the greatest quality you can have these days.

 

‘A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall’ is a song that must be heard more than once for anything to settle. In performance, it has become one of Dylan’s most popular and revisited songs, with covers ranging from Joan Baez, performed several years after its composition, to Patti Smith at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, in 2016. They have each heard and interpreted the rain in their own ways. Dylan has also reinvented the mood and rhythms of his protest anthem at various points, most notably during the Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour, where the song is performed at a quicker, more upbeat pace. 

 

Dylan’s song belongs to no specific voice, and much like the symbolic possibilities of each image so does the song allow for multiple voices. Over the years it has taken on new forms and new meanings, with the mesmerising and masterly lyrics remembered and performed anew for each singer.

The Films of Christopher Nolan Ranked, from Following to Tenet

Now that Tenet has finally been released to audiences globally after months of delay, it is worth reviewing the extensive catalogue of Christopher Nolan’s films that came before it, starting with his feature debut Following (1998) and leading up to the commercial success of his recent Hollywood blockbusters. Over the years Nolan’s films have exponentially increased in scale and budget, turning away from the smaller narratives of Memento (2002) and Insomnia (2002) for the grand ambitions of Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014), vaguely similar to the multiplication of cells in a petri dish. Of course, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, and whilst they dazzle audiences with their visual spectacle, many of these films fall short of their original premise, unable to achieve the logic or coherence required. Generally these are male-led narratives, despite trading traditional machismo for intellect, with his women regularly side-lined or undeveloped (see Catherine Shoard’s review in The Guardian for ‘Nolan’s previous litany of saintly dead spouses’). To those viewing Nolan’s impressive backlog for the first time, these varied impressions should be fully considered beforehand.

 

This ranked compendium is therefore entirely subjective, based on my ever-changing preferences and opinions towards Nolan over the years. 

 

11. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

It was reported that Nolan did not want to produce a final segment to the narratives of Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008), and unfortunately it does show. Although The Dark Knight Rises (2012) might be one of Nolan’s best-looking films – thanks to regular cinematographer Wally Pfister – in other respects it pales against its predecessors. Hammy acting partners with a confused and dense storyline, neither of which are helped by the sound mixing which makes Tom Hardy’s Bane impossible to properly understand. 

 

10. Following (1998)

Inexpensive and filmed straight after Nolan graduated from University College London, Following tells the story of a young man unknowingly drawn into the criminal underworld. Filmed with hand-held cameras, in grainy 16mm monochrome visuals, it effectively demonstrated Nolan as a fledgling talent. Impressively made but minor viewing.

 

9. The Prestige (2006)

In retrospect, the narrative structures of both Inception and Tenet owe a significant debt to Nolan’s three-act illusion in The Prestige (2006). Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale compete as magicians in Victorian London, and whose friendship sours after the on-stage death of Jackman’s wife, Julia (played by Piper Perabo). Nolan hides many tricks up his sleeve, but unfortunately they are visible from the start, and what should be a grand pay-off culminates with a disappointing and contrived flutter of cards. (David Bowie’s cameo as Nikola Tesla is worth waiting for).

 

8. Interstellar (2014)

In Interstellar, Nolan pays tribute to the science fiction influences of his childhood: otherwise a gigantic, top-heavy ode to George Lucas’ 1977 Star Wars franchise and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Spectacular in all respects, Interstellar might be Nolan’s biggest film, sweeping between planetary surfaces and zipping through wormholes with stars Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway for company. Unfortunately, the ending is a colossal, incomprehensible dud, and despite the script pleading to its audience for emotional depth, it brims with clichés and ultimately fails to emotionally connect.

 

7. Tenet (2020)

Tenet gave me a headache, but Nolan’s eleventh feature was worth paying for and sitting through for its 150-minute runtime. How to explain the plot? Clémence Poésy’s Laura advises John David Washington (cryptically named ‘The Protagonist’) to “try [not] to understand it. Feel it.” Aaron Taylor-Johnson later offers similar advice, recommending Washington to not “get on the chopper if you can't stop thinking in linear terms.” Time moves forward and backwards and forwards again in Tenet, with tense car chases being played and replayed in reverse to stunning effect, and battle sequences taking place in both the past and future simultaneously. For anyone familiar with Adam Sandler’s 2005 comedy Click, then the experience of watching Tenet is reminiscent of Sandler handling the universal television remote, able to pause, rewind or forward ahead certain scenes to his delight.

 

6. Batman Begins (2005)

Batman Begins relaunched the DC anti-hero with incredible confidence and originality, rejecting the prior Tim Burton pantomimes for a gritty and bold modernisation. Christian Bale’s performance draws from the unsympathetic arrogance of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man (2008) whilst suggesting a greater fragility to his superhero image. Co-writers Nolan and David S. Goyer spend much of the runtime establishing groundworks for character arcs and future sequels, but the final product is nevertheless magnificent and deserving of all its critical praise.

 

5. The Dark Knight (2012)

Heath Ledger succeeds Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Nolan’s impressive sequel to Batman Begins, trading Chaplin-esque antics for a series of high-profile terror attacks on Gotham city. Filmed with cumbersome IMAX cameras, The Dark Knight is extravagant and visually spectacular from the opening bank robbery to the climactic ferry scene. However, it is also a film of ideas, and much of the narrative (now co-written with his brother, Jonathan Nolan) transitions from one moral set piece to another.

 

4. Insomnia (2002)

Supremely underrated, Nolan’s chilling adaptation of Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s Norwegian thriller inspires mesmerising performances from both Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Together with Following and his Oscar-nominated feature Memento, Insomnia established Nolan’s control of small-scale material, with his directorial style perfectly suited to the murder investigation in the Alaskan wilderness.

 

3. Inception (2010)

Inception is a difficult film on first viewing, but an even greater on the second and third. You are supposed to get lost in trying to understand the stages of its dream logic, whilst being accompanied by a similarly perplexed cast of actors, headed by Leonardo DiCaprio, attempting to steal information through an act of psychological subterfuge. The critical and commercial success of Inception proved that audiences were not incapable of appreciating intelligent cinema, whilst confirming Nolan as a financial asset for Warner Bros. Pictures. James Bond-inspired action sequences combine with dreamtime surrealism to boast one of Nolan’s most impressive films yet.

 

2. Memento (2000)

Nolan’s Memento was so challenging for US audiences that producers distributed a 3-disc DVD special containing the re-edited film in chronological order. Once again with Nolan’s screenplays, the narrative moves in different and puzzling ways, following the character of Leonard Shelby (played by Guy Pearce) across two sequences of time: one in black-and-white, and a second in colour though arranged in reverse order (to simulate the anterograde amnesia of its main protagonist). Here, Nolan translates trauma and grief into the fractured, non-linearity of the timeline, demonstrating pure originality and flare.

 

1. Dunkirk (2017)

I worked in a cinema the summer of Dunkirk’s release and spent every day watching the opening scenes of Allied soldiers running through Dunkirk, with gunfire close behind, and the closing credits over which Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch’s variations on Edward Elgar played. Everything about Dunkirk is purely cinematic, with its notable absence of dialogue further emphasising the visual landscape of the historic mass evacuation (either from the ground, sea or air). Nolan’s success with Dunkirk is due to the fact that it tempered the scope of Interstellar and Inception with the smallness of its cast and runtime, neither allowing the film to exhaust itself with exposition nor lose control of the many elements it was attempting to handle. Nolan has yet to again balance these elements so well, and since the release of Tenet, it would appear his films now sacrifice cohesion for showiness and intellect. Dunkirk is one of the great war films of the past decade, and likely Nolan’s greatest film to date.

 

The best films of 2020, so far …

Uncut Gems (Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie)

Energetic and rowdy, the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems is their most exciting film to date, boasting a Shakespearian performance from Adam Sandler as the Jewish-American jeweller Howard Ratner (his best role since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson). Available to stream on Netflix.

 

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers) 

Two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) gradually lose their sanity whilst stranded on a remote island in 19^thcentury New England. Superstition, homoeroticism and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick wonderfully collide over its 100 minutes runtime.

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) 

Taking place over a week and a half, Céline Sciamma’s latest picture tells the brief affair of Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Filmed in soft, romantic pastels, Portrait of a Lady on Fire captures the rush and headiness of falling in love. (See an extended review here). Available to stream on the Mubi Library.

 

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) 

Bong Joon-ho triumphs in this perfect satire of class relations, building from ideas stretched and flexed in both The Host (2006) and Snowpiercer (2013). The impoverished Kim family ingeniously infiltrate the household of the wealthy Park family, with devastating and bloody consequences ensuing.

 

Vivarium (Lorcan Finnegan) 

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg find themselves trapped in topsy-turvy suburbia after agreeing to a house viewing in the development site “Yonder.” Unable to leave or find a way out, the couple decides to accept their new life. John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) and Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1988) inspire this multi-layered, unique thriller.

 

Light of My Life (Casey Affleck) 

Indebted to the post-apocalyptic world of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Casey Affleck writes, directs and stars in Light of My Life (his first time behind the camera since 2010’s mockumentary I’m Not Here). Father (Casey Affleck) and daughter, Rag (Anna Pniowsky), attempt to survive in a landscape where the female population has been decimated by a plague. Subtle, beautiful and evocative.

 

The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul) 

One of the most shocking films in recent years, The Painted Bird (adapted from Jerzy Kosiński’s novel of the same name) is a violent and muddy vision of post-Holocaust Europe. Carried from one extremity to the next, an unnamed, Jewish boy (Petr Kotlár) journeys across a changing Europe. (See an extended review here).

 

A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick) 

Terrence Malick returns to form with A Hidden Life, abandoning the wishy-washy ensembles of Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017) for an elegant, mercurial autobiography of the Nazi-objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl). If Malick demands patience from his viewers, then he also rewards them with a sympathetic and beautifully-realised picture.

 

Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) 

Having shared the Oscar for Best Screenplay in BlacKkKlansman (2018), Spike Lee reteams with co-writer Kevin Willmott to produce another spectacular and timely picture. Experiences of the Vietnam War are hazardously revisited when a group of ageing veterans return in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader (Chadwick Boseman). Available to stream on Netflix.

 

Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) 

Alice Woodward (Emily Beecham, taking the award for Best Actress from Cannes) is the breeder of an artificially engineered strain of flower titled “Little Joe,” whose curious scent leaves its owner feeling happy. Far from the grotesque appetite of Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986), “Little Joe” poses a subtler kind of threat. Hypnotic and beautiful in equal measure.

 

The Truth (Hirokazu Kore-eda) 

Turning from Japan, Hirokazu Kore-eda translates his studies of family life into a Parisian setting, exploring the relationship between the actress Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) and her daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche). Tenderly observed.

 

Other films to mention include Autumn de Wilde’s comic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.; David Lynch’s latest selection of short films (including What Did Jack Do?, Fire (PoZar), and The Story of a Small Bug); Luca Guadagnino’s fashion-short The Staggering Girl; and Patrick Vollrath’s hijacking thriller 7500 (a student of Michael Haneke).

 

Films to avoid include Pablo Larraín’s dull and vacuous Ema; Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ body-horror Swallow; the Irish production Sea Fever (Neasa Hardiman); Naomi Watts as a paranoid author in The Wolf Hour (Alistair Banks Griffin); and William Eubank’s Alien-rip off Underwater (see an extended review here).

The Painted Bird – review | Václav Marhoul’s eastern-European horror show

                The Painted Bird (dir. Václav Marhoul, 2019)

                                            ✭✭✭✭✭

In retrospect, the audiences of the 76^th Venice Film Festival were far too comfortable amid the selection: Hirokazu Koreda’s latest picture, The Truth (2019), and Todd Phillip’s Joker (2019) hardly compromised their afternoons. Václav Marhoul’s third feature, The Painted Bird (2019), offered a visceral antidote with its tour of post-WWII Europe. After its premiere, over twelve viewers were reported to have stumbled out the auditorium (see Xan Brooks’ comic description in The Guardian); this backlash would later repeat at the Toronto and London Film Festivals. 

 

Having faced up to Marhoul’s picture – just shy of three hours – I recognise these reports work to its favour. In the past, films ranging from William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) to Gasper Noé’s Irreversible (2002) have gloried in their public attention, equally building the directors’ reputations whilst lionised for their perversities. However, if we criticise these films for their subject matters, then we forget to admire them for their commitment to the cinematic experience.

 

Over nine episodes we follow the movements of an unnamed, Jewish boy (Petr Kotlár) across Nazi-occupied Europe. He rarely speaks, and the number of horrifying experiences endured only seem to harden his mute profile. Swept from one abusive community to another, the boy reconciles with the cruelty of an adult landscape: either through experiences of torture, bestiality, paedophilia or after being pecked by a murder of crows whilst buried in the ground. In a later scene, the boy watches from afar as Nazi guards spray bullets into a group of Jews fleeing from a freight train. Their belongings are quickly plundered, including by the child, out of a necessity to survive. These experiences are brief (thankfully, for the audience) but sketch the realities of a Holocaust Europe.

 

Surprising cameos are also dotted throughout the landscape, including the international stars of Stellan Skarsgård (one of the few, kinder characters); Harvey Keitel (robed as a local priest); and Julian Sands (a deceptively violent miller).

 

Adapted from Jerzy Kosiński’s novel of the same name (published to controversy in 1965), Marhoul pitches its central theme of childhood innocence against a brutal adult world. Telling one episode at a time, the film neatly reflects its literary material: each episode, whilst offering a stepping stone toward the prospect of ‘home,’ provides a variation on the preceding cruelty. Pasolini’s adaptations of The Decameron (1971) and The Canterbury Tales (1972) offer comparable narrative structures.

 

Shot in crisp, 35mm monochrome, cinematographer Vladimír Smutný textures The Painted Bird with an uncomfortable beauty. This was undoubtedly intentional, and works to its advantage. Heavy nods to The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960) and Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962) also abound here, as well as to the films of Béla Tarr and Grigori Kozinstev. The Painted Bird, despite being set in twentieth-century Europe, captures something of their medieval landscapes, peppered with superstition and magic realism. Maybe this is where the terror lies: the smoothness with which the present traffics with the barbarities of the past. It is a muddy and unsettling vision.

 

Now that cinemas are vacant spaces during the time of Covid-19, (and the opportunities for walkouts are left to the foreseeable future), it feels all the more relevant that we are reminded of what defines the cinematic experience. Todd Phillips’ Joker took the Golden Lion home from the festival, a decision I found both dismaying and infuriating; the mound of controversies it stacked was overblown, and unlike The Painted Bird it played its cards relatively safely. 

 

Marhoul’s picture is deserving of its praise, disgust and controversies.

Paris, Texas: a European in the American West

Paris, Texas (dir. Wim Wenders, 1984)

Like so many deserving classics of the 1980s, Paris, Texas is a film that ought to be watched more than once, with each viewing yielding more detail, more insight and colour. Of course, this is not true of every film in the period. If David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) first offered me clarity with its midnight-noir plot, this has since been lost to uncertainties and cloudiness; if Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead Trilogy (1981 – 1992) once repulsed, it now confirms itself as a masterwork of the genre. However, like with any relationship between a film and its audience, so much has to been given for something to be returned. 

Unlike other filmmakers of the German New Wave, Wim Wenders grasped Hollywood (and, more specifically, “America”) more fully than his peers – the movement had initially been focused on the rejection of America’s easy-viewing, “escapist” pictures – confidently migrating his style across the Atlantic. However, it would be a mistake to suggest Paris, Texas announced this bench-mark. His quixotic trilogy of road movies – comprised of Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976) – is peppered with the iconography of Denis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) and Peter Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon (1972). These are sketches Paris, Texas would later paint over (only roughly keeping to the lines), again concerned with oddballs and twenty-somethings musing on their wayward journeys. In other mediums America is also given to his European witness, particular with celluloid photography, which had long demonstrated his enchantment over its wilderness (one collection is suitably titled ‘Places, Strange and Quiet’).

Wenders’ filmography would find its greatest expression in Harry Dean Stanton’s portrayal of Travis Henderson in Paris, Texas. It is an ode to the American Western, the road pilgrimage, and the Wolffian premise of ‘God’s Lonely Man.’ But it is fundamentally the story of a father and child being reunited, and how their love is eventually reclaimed. Ultimately, the maternal triumphs in Paris, Texas – Nastassja Kinski’s Jane Henderson is left spinning with her son, Hunter, in the final scenes – but Wenders’ film is a male journey, fraught with self-evaluation on its yellow brick road. Wenders’ film only loosely resonates with the Spielbergian “family movie,” before turning to shadier elements of domestic violence, depression, and prostitution. Its brilliance comes not only from the measure of this balance, but also its passion to invent something new.

Paris, Texas, like the ‘road trilogy,’ would prove to be a small stepping-stone towards Wenders’ later pictures: in Until the End of the World (1991), the road (quite literally) takes off into galactic space.