jeffery berg's top 10 films of 2020

Here goes my top 10 films of 2020. 

An overriding theme of these, and many of the films of the year, are characters staking out anew in the midst of societal and institutional corruption and chaos. Many of these films have a distinctive style and look (three happen to be in black and white), soundscape, and a tight, individualistic lens.

10.

DEAR COMRADES!

I was drawn to the story and striking look (filmed in black and white by cinematographer Andrey Naydenov) of legendary Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky's retelling of the Novocherkassk massacre. Through the plight of a stalwart party member (Julia Vysotskaya, in one of the many compelling turns by female actors this year) in search of her missing daughter, the piece becomes more complicated and haunting.

9.

RESIDUE

One of the more unsung films of the year, Residue shows the violence of white gentrification of black neighborhoods, as a screenwriter wrestles with the past and unrecognizable present of his D.C. roots. I was really into director Merawi Gerima's use of sound and visuals to create an engrossing portrait of unease and memory.

8.

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

Perfectly-plotted, visually remarkable revenge escapade. It feels its from a place of love for movies and pop, without feeling gimmicky and aloof from its salient core subject matter. Many clever films like this one can hit hard on the first watch but lose steam on subsequent viewings, but Emerald Fennell's picture becomes more layered and interesting in afterthought. 

7.

MINARI

Compelling American dream drama of a Korean family in rural late-80s Arkansas, told in a gentle, moving way by Lee Isaac Chung. The ensemble cast is very strong, as is the lush score by Emile Mosseri.

6.

SAINT FRANCES

Another relatively unsung gem of the year. Set in the Chicago burbs, Kelly O'Sullivan's acting and witty, observant script are excellent in a portrayal of a nanny's complicated relationships, including a new friendship with the 6-year old girl (Ramona Edith Williams) she's in charge of.

5. 

MANK

A daring, delirious vision of venomous Hollywood told through the story of Herman J . Mankiewicz completing the script of Citizen Kane. Highlights are the immaculate crafts of David Fincher's crew, the rich cast and supporting players, and Fincher's late father's (Jack Fincher) bubbly, electric script.

4. 

FOURTEEN

An ebb / flow and slow unraveling of a friendship told with wry, deft care by Dan Sallitt and the film's two leads Tallie Medel and Norma Kuhling. Time flits by and wry insights abound in the perfectly-calibrated dialogue.

3.

TIME

Quite simply Time is an extraordinary documentary of the effects of a man's incarceration on a wife (Fox Rich) and her family. Garrett Bradley's film focuses on the painful minutia within the bureaucracies of a corrupt system--sometimes the outcomes of lives ticking by in the length of a phone call. 

2.

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS

Early on in the year, I watched this gripping tale by Eliza Hittman of a young woman's (Sidney Flanigan) travels from Pennsylvania to New York City to get an abortion, and never forgot it.  

1.

NOMADLAND

It feels a bit anticlimactic to have this at the top spot, as its gotten plenty of praise, but I found this humanistic movie to be extremely potent. A mesmerizing look at the real lives of nomads, told through the perspective of Frances McDormand's amalgamation of characters. McDormand is amazing, per usual, but perhaps more grounded and complicated than ever here, and Chloé Zhao's direction is rich and sensitive. I look forward to seeing cinematographer Joshua James Richards' work here in a theater one day.

honorable mention

LOVERS ROCK

This is just one sliver in Steve McQueen's (one of my favorite directors of the young 21st-Century so far) Small Axe series. Ultimately I considered the collection more miniseries than movies, and didn't want to bump any films off the list, but there was no scene I saw this year (or in many years) as electrifying as the dance sequence set to Janet Kay's "Silly Games." I watched this truly immersive, out-of-this-world moment on a laptop for the New York Film Festival in a time where dancing in groups wasn't (and is still not quite yet) possible.

other notable films of 2020 (in order of preference):

A White, White Day, Crip Camp, The Assistant, Ammonite, A Sun, Driveways, The 40-Year-Old-Version, Let Them All Talk, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Wild Goose Lake, Sibyl, The Truth, Spontaneous, Possessor, La Llorona, Collective, Kajillionaire, Nova Lituania, First Cow, Sorry We Missed You, Alone, Boys State, Impetigore, The Rental, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, Dick Johnson is Dead, Black Bear, One Night in Miami..., Athlete A, A Secret Love, Corpus Christi, And Then We Danced, An Easy Girl, Sound of Metal, Another Round, The Wolf House, Soul, Da 5 Bloods, Shirley, The Inheritance, Babyteeth, Premature, The Invisible Man, I’m No Longer Here, The Mole Agent, Pieces of a Woman, Dark and the Wicked, The Nest, Zombi Child, Goldie, The Calming, The Painter and the Thief, Silence & Darkness, Bacurau, Miss Juneteenth, Happy Old Year, Beanpole, Jezebel, Vitalina Varela, The Disciple, Relic, Welcome to Chechnya, The Turning, Host, Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, Deerskin, The Swerve, My Octopus Teacher, I Carry You With Me, The Midnight Sky, Fauna, The Vast of Night, The Whistlers, She Dies Tomorrow, Howard, Circus of Books, Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado, Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on ‘The Exorcist,' The Trial of the Chicago 7, Disclosure, Rewind, The Life Ahead, Emma., Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin - ***

A look back at my top 10 films of 2019 (which feels like ages ago)

-Jeffery Berg

minari

Writer / Director Lee Isaac Chung's Minari moves with a graceful, wavy, yet precise pace. I sometimes pictured the motions of the arms of a conductor in front of an orchestra playing Emile Mosseri's lush score. Mosseri also composed the almost unbearably beautiful music for last year's (has it only been a year ago?) The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Films and film scores like this feel unusual in 2020. There's a gentleness to the story, an unwavering sense of humanity, even in its flits of tension, sorrow, and bitterness. Its goldenrod-tinged photography (by Lachlan Milne) captures a Korean family's new life around the mid-to-late 1980s in Arkansas--in a trailer (a "house on wheels," at first, without front steps) among pastoral, sun-dappled fields--where the father, Jacob, played by Steven Yeun (who was so brilliantly ambivalent in Burning), builds his farm with the "best dirt in America." Even in moments of bleakness [the parents' depressing work of separating male and female chicks in plastic containers within a hatchery--David (Alan S. Kim), the young child, running around its gravelly perimeter], the film is warm with humor. I've been conditioned in this still-young century of indie films to expect the very worst to befall characters, but Minari seemed to be guiding me on a divergent path: one of compassion and promise--in a sense, it's a very American picture. Elements of the Western are here: a man on a new frontier, sometimes stubbornly, staking his ground (here, he is carving out a piece of his own land, without pillaging others, and takes it back from his oppressors—like factory farmers); the covered wagon now a station wagon--a small crack in the windshield; David totters through fields in a red-striped polo, blue shorts, pulled-up striped-at-the-top gym socks (I donned a similar pair as a kid) and brown cowboy boots. Later in the picture, a young friend from church plays country on the boombox, imitates the swagger of a cowboy and gives David chewing tobacco. But I also felt that the film sometimes swayed out of iconography into something more Biblical, ghostly and mysterious. Paul (Will Patton, who manages to not make his wild character a simplistic caricature), a Korean War vet, who brings Jacob his tractor and ends up helping him farm the land, prays mightily, sometimes dipping into tongues, sometimes hauling a cross along a dirt road. He asks for an exorcism of the land--of the past--and its former owner, who is suggested to have committed suicide. 

Besides Paul, another character who disrupts, but also quietly (or maybe not-so-quietly) enriches the family, is the grandmother Soonja (Yuh-jung Youn), who, to David, has "a Korea smell" and is not like the "real Grandma" of perhaps his Westernized imagination of a cookie-baking, white-haired smiley old lady of commercials. Soonja is blunt and energetic, teaching her grandkids card games and forcing David to consume a broth for his health (which David humorously turns on her). Monica (Yeri Han), the mother of the family and daughter of Soonja, is immediately unhappy in her new surroundings, and hopes her mother will assuage her isolation. Like any family, nothing is perfect, and people lash out, mean things are said, feelings are hurt. Besides Youn's wide-ranging, piercing  portrayal, Han's performance and Monica's character was particularly affecting to me. In a scene that subtly references the small town's ignorance and tendencies towards belittlement, two fellow churchgoer women ask Monica questions and tell her she's "so cute," and Monica shyly flees. Monica, who within her family, confronting her husband with her concerns, in setting up a swing-set for her kids with rope and a wood-slat, is strong and firm, suddenly becomes another woman here.   

The elements of water, earth, and fire have strong symbolism throughout. These symbols could be wrought with groaning heavy-handedness, but Chung imbues them with unusual implications that drive story and inform the specificity of the characters. The perspective of the film is important and intricately designed--it's mostly felt through the view of David, but there are some side scenes of conversations, experiences, and arguments of the adults out of the child's comprehension. In a small trailer, how can David not overhear so many things said between his distressed parents? And so the natural elements have a sweeping feel, like the fever dream fears of a child: water comes down in a torrential storm--Tornado Watches a scary new reality. Water is lavishly wasted in a bath and then suddenly runs dry--the fields cracked, the tap stopped. But water has more humorous connotations too--in urine and in Mountain Dew, which David claims his father says is "water from the mountains." Weaving these elements together, Minari is about growth, sustenance (the titular plant, next to a creek bed, is described as a substance for rich and poor). It's a film about broken-ness, deterioration, and disrepair and the literal healing of a heart. ***1/2

-Jeffery Berg