Year in Review: Top 10 Performances of 2020

By now, we know the theme of this year-in-review project is more what is missing than what is here. Among the acclaimed performances I have yet to see are Frances McDormand in Nomadland, Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman, and Steven Yeun in Minari. There are others, and I look forward to catching up with all of them in the months to come. None of that, however, takes away from the tremendous work I was able to see in 2020 and which we celebrate below.

First, five more excellent performances that I saw in 2020 that did not quite make the top 10 (alphabetically): Radha Blank in The 40-Year-Old Version; Julia Garner in The Assistant; Jude Law in The Nest; Noémie Merlant in Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Shaun Parkes in Small Axe.

The Top 10:

10. Carrie Coon as Allison O’Hara in The Nest

Carrie Coon, so good in her smaller film roles over the years and as the star of HBO’s The Leftovers, finally gets a role in which she can unleash the full breadth of her talents. As a woman who slowly realizes the depths of her husband’s delusions and the faulty foundation on which her life has been built, she is tremendous. Coon lets the character’s quiet reserve fester until it explodes into fury and that fury precipitates action as Allison takes back her life.

9. Sharlene Whyte as Agnes Smith in Small Axe

The underrated final portion of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, Education, is a searing indictment of “educationally suboptimal schools” in the UK, where mostly children of color are sent by a white school system that no longer wants anything to do with them. Sharlene Whyte is phenomenal as a mother who learns of the “education” her son is receiving at his school and resolves to do something about it. Whyte never softens the character’s harder edges, depicting a woman whose life may be difficult but who will go to any lengths for the welfare of her children. 

8. Delroy Lindo as Paul in Da 5 Bloods

Delroy Lindo has been in movies and on television for more than 45 years, but too rarely has he been the lead, and never has he been given a character of this much nuance and depth. Lindo brings great pathos to the character of a Trump-supporting Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD who loses his mind in the jungle. The lengthy monologue he delivers directly to the camera toward the end of the film is among the finest pieces of acting of this or any other year, and Lindo makes it look effortless.

7. Adèle Haenel as Heloïse in Portrait of a Lady on Fire

It would be difficult to argue against Adèle Haenel as the finest actress working in French cinema today. The 32-year-old Parisian is a seven-time Caesar Award nominee (the French Oscars equivalent) and two-time winner. She has been great in everything from minor roles to leads, and as the repressed muse of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, she makes the case for global superstardom. Whether she wants it or not is up to her, but the strength and passion of this performance are proof enough that there is nothing to hold her back.

6. Viola Davis as Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Viola Davis can do anything. I do not mean that only in the acting sense. I feel like you could ask her to perform surgery and she would do a fine job of it. Such is the intelligence and confidence she imbues all of her characters with, and Ma Rainey is just further evidence. Ma Rainey is a woman who knows her worth and refuses to settle for less than her due, and like the great jazz performers depicted in the film, Davis uses all the notes in the scale to bring the character to life.

5. Elisabeth Moss as Cecilia Kass in The Invisible Man

From Florence Pugh in Midsommar to Lupita Nyong’o in Us to Toni Collette in Hereditary, horror films have given us some of the most extraordinary performances by actresses in recent years. I am not sure what it says about the industry for that to be true -- or rather, I could not speculate in this small space -- but whatever the reason, the genre continues to offer up complex, powerful female leads that are missing from so much of the rest of cinema.

Of course, it requires great performers to take advantage of these characters, and Elisabeth Moss has shown time and again that she is one of the finest performers we have. The role of Cecilia could be that of a typical scream queen in a lesser movie, but Moss and the filmmakers are committed to showing the character’s slow descent into madness and finally her rise to empowerment. Moss is expert at depicting every frayed nerve in her character as Cecelia is hunted and terrorized but never loses sight of the inner strength she possesses.

4. Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler in Hamilton

Any single member of the featured cast of Hamilton could appear on this list. They are all uniformly superb. Renée Elise Goldsberry, however, makes such an impression when she is on stage that the character of Angelica casts a large shadow over the entire show, despite appearing in relatively little of the lengthy production. “Satisfied” is a show-stopping number in every sense of the word, commanding the audience’s full attention as Angelica rewinds the clock and tells part of the story from her perspective.

It is one of the more experimental flourishes in the Broadway smash, but with Goldsberry at its center, we are with it every step of the way. The performance is a vocal masterclass, with Goldsberry using every syllable like a painter uses brush strokes. What the film version makes clear, though, is the depth of the portrayal. The pain, the regret, the betrayal, the forgiveness, Goldsberry has internalized the character to the point where it exists in the smallest movements, as well as the grandest flourishes. 

3. Riz Ahmed as Ruben in Sound of Metal

From his work in the blackly comic satire Four Lions to the deranged phantasmagoria that was Nightcrawler, two things have always been abundantly clear about RIz Ahmed: He is a wonderfully physical performer and an intensely smart performer. Ruben, a heavy metal drummer losing his hearing, requires both of those traits, and Ahmed absolutely shines.

Ruben’s life is dedicated to movement, whether physically behind the drum kit or geographically while on tour. There is no stillness, so when he becomes figuratively imprisoned by the loss of his hearing, he reacts like an animal caged. He knows he needs help, but he cannot quiet his mind long enough to ask for the kind of help he truly needs. Ahmed executes all of this with Newtonian precision: He is a body at motion that wants to remain in motion, but he cannot stop the outside forces of life.

2. Sidney Flanigan as Autumn in Never Rarely Sometimes Always

We talked about that scene last time in our Quotes and Moments column, but go back and watch it again. It cannot be overstated how much Sidney Flanigan is doing in that moment to bring us into Autumn’s world, as she relives all the traumas and disappointments of a short but brutal life. Eliza Hittman’s camera never looks away, which means the audience never looks away, as Autumn breaks down before our very eyes. Through it all, Flanigan, the 22-year-old first-time film actress, never steps wrong.

The film, though, is more than a single scene, and Flanigan’s performance is more than a single moment. Autumn’s breakdown would not hit as hard for us if Flanigan had not invested the time and work into all the small moments that come before it. She creates a character of strength and resolve, forced to protect herself, like so many others, by putting up seemingly insurmountable emotional walls. Flanigan builds these walls so skillfully that when they do come down, as they must, it is shattering.

1. Chadwick Boseman as Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

It might be tempting in some corners to call this a stunt, to suggest Chadwick Boseman’s tragic death in some way contributed to his placement at No. 1 here. That temptation, however, would only occur to folks who have not seen this movie. As good as one might hope Boseman would be in his final onscreen appearance, he is better. This is a performer doing career-best work, working at the peak of his skills, and we are left wondering only how high the peak could have gotten.

In Da 5 Bloods, Boseman plays a soldier, but it is here as Levee where he feels like a man at war -- at war with himself, at war with those around him, at war with the world. He fights, using every ounce of strength within him, to put on a show for all to see. The swagger, the shoes, even the music, it all hides the pain he dares not show. Finally, when that pain is released, it is like a crack opening in the very crust of the earth, and he spews the red-hot magma of his rage over everyone and everything in his vicinity.

Of course, it begins with August Wilson’s beautiful words, but there is a short list of actors talented enough to bring their full depth into the open. James Earl Jones could do it. Denzel Washington could do it. And here, Chadwick Boseman has done it. The “Your god ain’t shit” monologue deserves to go down in history with the great film speeches. Boseman makes it equal parts frightening and pained. Simply, it is the kind of work great actors do, and damn was he great.

Year in Review: The Best Moments and Quotes from 2020

Small Axe: Lovers Rock, directed by Steve McQueen

A different kind of year calls for a different kind of approach to the Last Cinema Standing year-end wrap-up. Truth be told, I just did not see enough this year to put together confidently a best-of roundup that would feel anything more than cursory. So many more movies to see, so many great moments to revel in, so many great quotes to enjoy. But, the best I saw this year still deserves to be talked about and remembered.

So, here we are. A smaller, more subdued countdown, but an appreciation no less of the great moments the cinema offered this year. They range from jubilation to sorrow, triumph to despair, and everywhere in between. If 2020 was anything, it was a year of snatching small joys from the wreckage of a world tossed into chaos. That is what these moments and quotes represent: small joys. Whether that joy comes from celebration or shared grief, it is about connection in a time when we are so disconnected.

Moments

Moment of the Year

The party goes a cappella to “Silly Games.” - from Small Axe, directed by Steve McQueen

The Lovers Rock section of Small Axe is 70 minutes of Black life like we have never seen it on screen. It is the house party to end all house parties, and not in the destructive sense so many American films over the years have depicted. The party we see is pure collective exultation, borne out of a need for community left unfulfilled by the culture at large. The UK of Steve McQueen’s opus does not provide spaces for Black people, so they must build their own spaces.

In those spaces, they are free. They are alive. They are human. There is nothing inherently “Black” about what is depicted in Lovers Rock, except that the revellers are all Black. Instead, McQueen presents a window into life, lived openly and honestly. No sequence better exemplifies this than the moment the music cuts out during Janet Kay’s rendition of Dennis Bovell’s “Silly Games.”

The DJ stops the record, but the party just keeps going, with every person on the dancefloor busting out an a cappella version of the song. McQueen lets his camera drift through the crowd, capturing every face, every motion, every syllable. As the rest of Small Axe demonstrates, these times of respite from the outside world are few and far between, and there are moments even during Lovers Rock when the constant, underlying threat to Black lives seems about to burst forth. But for these glorious few minutes, there is nothing but joy and togetherness.

Four more moments that stuck with me this year:

Escape in the night. - from The Invisible Man, directed by Leigh Whannell

The Invisible Man was among the true pleasant surprises in the early part of the year. It was one of the last movies I saw in theaters, and I am so glad I did because I could have heard a pin drop during the opening sequence. Everything in Cecilia’s (Elisabeth Moss) flight is taut, tense, and thrilling, setting the stage for the throwback monster movie that was to come. It has been a long time since a horror filmmaker remembered that silence, stillness, and empty space can be more terrifying than jumpscares and gore. Leigh Whannell knows, and he proved it right at the start. 

Levee busts through the locked door. - from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe

Levee (Chadwick Boseman) cannot break through the door. Why is the door even locked? He throws himself at it repeatedly throughout the film. In August Wilson’s original stageplay, he never gets through that door. In George C. Wolfe’s film, he does, and on the other side, he finds a brick wall. He is trapped, and we see in a single image the entire tragedy of the Levee character and the Black artists and performers he represents. The system is rigged, and there is always another barricade, locked door, or brick wall.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe

Autumn answers the questionnaire. - from Never Rarely Sometimes Always, directed by Eliza Hittman

So much of Never Rarely Sometimes Always is about the steely resolve of Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) as she encounters people and systems designed to prevent her from carrying out decisions about her own body. It is disarming, then, when she finds someone who displays empathy and concern. The scene plays out almost entirely on Flanigan’s face as she responds to the health questionnaire that gives the film its title. She is overwhelmed and, for the first time in the film, vulnerable. In this moment, we feel sorrow for her and for every woman and girl who has had to fight through this arcane system.

David Byrne and Co. perform “Hell You Talmbout.” - from David Byrne’s American Utopia, directed by Spike Lee

For most of its running time, David Byrne’s American Utopia is an ode to joy, a celebration of connectedness, and an embrace of the universality of all experiences. It is a wish for the America and world we want to build. But, no bright, new future comes to pass without struggle, and the performance of Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout” that comes toward the end of the show is an acknowledgement of that struggle. The names of murdered Black citizens ring out, one after the other, and as the list grows, it becomes increasingly apparent how far we are from an American Utopia.

Quotes

Quote of the Year

“I am Black, and I love being black.” - from Small Axe, written by Steve McQueen and Alastair Siddons

Spoken by education reformer Hazel (Naomie Ackie) midway through the final segment, Education, this line could serve as a mission statement for the entire seven-hour saga. Underneath the struggle and the hostility and the pain, Small Axe is about normal lives and normal people. Sometimes, they are presented with extraordinary circumstances, while most of the time, the circumstances are quite ordinary. 

McQueen has stated that one of his primary drives in making the film was so that his mother could see herself represented on screen. The power of Small Axe is that it embodies representation in all ways: good, bad, and irreducibly real. In that representation, there is pride. At the core of each segment lies an abiding love for community and the ways the West Indian people of the UK come together to lift up one another. They are Black. They love being Black. And in that love, there is power.

Two more quotes that stuck with me this year:

“You know you’re successful when you get tired of America.” - from The Nest, written by Sean Durkin

The Nest is a period piece about the 1980s that does away with all the usual trappings of the ‘80s. There is nothing about malls or leg warmers or the new wave in here. It is about a psychology, a mood, a pervasive sense of excess and greed. Though most of the film takes place overseas, the Reagan of it all is unmistakable. This line gets to the heart of Rory’s (Jude Law) obsession with appearing wealthy and the sense that there are no bounds to his craven pursuit of the high life. 

“Death sucks. I’m not okay with it. Death is ass.” - from Shithouse, written by Cooper Raiff

Sometimes, it helps just to state it plainly. After the year we had, I do not know if there is any American who would disagree. Death sucks. Cooper Raiff’s film was made long before we were overcome by a pandemic that would kill more than a quarter-million Americans. It is about smaller losses and the ways we cope and find solace in one another. But, even at the grandest scale, the fundamentals of death do not change. It sucks, and we should not be okay with it.

Year in Review: A journey through the streaming landscape

At one point or another in 2020, my wife and I were subscribers to 11 different streaming services. As we embark on 2021, we have narrowed it down to six “essentials,” or as essential as on-demand television and movies could be considered. This is the landscape of home viewing now. It has been for some time, and the quarantine has served only to speed up this process. 

But, I do not need to do a state of the union on the streaming industry. Smarter, better-informed, better-connected people than I have done that and more. Instead, I thought a more personal reflection might be in order. After all, most of us do not engage with our home viewing as part of a broad social and cultural trend, but rather as an individualized entertainment experience. In short, most of us are just scrolling, looking for the next watch.

I watched 557 films in 2020, the vast majority on streaming services, which is a first for me. In every year prior, I would guess the majority of watches came from home video or theater-going. I suspect this was more of a tipping point than a one-year anomaly. As I write this, it is the 5th of January, and I have watched nine movies this year: all of them on streaming. It is an odd new reality after I spent so much of my life dedicated to physical media.

My shelves are full of books and I would much rather pull one down than reach for my Kindle. I much prefer reading articles in magazines to online. Perhaps it is the old print journalist in me. Things feel more real, more comprehensible when you can hold them in your hand. Never mind the 1,000 or so DVDs I treat as precious, shareable artifacts, filled with the knowledge of other worlds.

It makes me a little sad, of course, as all obsolescence is wont to do. Yet, if you had told the college-age me -- that 18-year-old student renting the maximum seven movies a week from the video store -- that he would have access to a sizable portion of the Criterion library with a couple clicks for a nominal fee, he would have been thrilled. Such is the push and pull of progress.

The Criterion Channel truly is among the most amazing gifts to the cinephile world. It essentially began life as FilmStruck, the Turner Classic Movies streaming service in 2016. When it shut down at the end of 2018, it was a blow to film fans everywhere. Its re-emergence in 2019 as a standalone service was a tremendous boon to the streaming world, and it is not a stretch to say Criterion played a major role in getting me through 2020.

The best of world cinema was right at my fingertips, and I tried to take advantage as well as I could: from Victor Sjöström’s silent classic The Phantom Carriage to Russian war masterpieces The Cranes Are Flying and The Ascent; Japanese masters such as Ozu, Kurosawa, and Kobayashi to Finnish iconoclast Aki Kaurismäki; films from every continent short of the Antarctic. My watchlist on the site is 150 movies strong, and it only scratches the surface.

Daisies, available on Criterion Channel and HBO Max

In May, HBO made its oddly confusing switchover to HBO Max. It was not the world’s greatest roll out, but the service itself is tremendous. It features a heavy rotation of stone-cold classics (including many Criterion films, mostly part of the Warner library), as well as an array of popular modern hits for anyone looking to fill in the gaps of their pop culture knowledge. If it sounds like I am trying to sell you HBO Max, I am not, but times are tough, and if you have $15 a month to put toward your streaming budget, this is where I would put it.

Of course, we made fair use of Amazon Prime, which is great if you want to rent movies you cannot find anywhere else and which makes it easy to add premium channels (such as Starz or IFC). Hulu and Netflix are still good, though Hulu is sometimes unnavigable and Netflix feels too bloated for its own good. We mostly keep Disney+ around for access to Hamilton, but we should probably just buy a DVD.

Ultimately, I am an old-school guy. My wife likes to joke that I was born middle-aged. That has never bothered me, although the closer I approach to middle age, the stranger that feels. I like my DVDs and I like going to the movies. That is why I founded this site. Movies just feel different in a theater, on a big screen. Nothing could replace that. The streaming revolution is great, and I am 100 percent here for it, but if I could take every dollar I spend on streaming every month and pay to see just one of these classics at the cinema, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Top 10 older movies I watched on streaming this year (listed alphabetically):

The Ascent, directed by Larisa Shepitko (Criterion Channel)

An Autumn Afternoon, directed by Yasujiro Ozu (Criterion Channel)

Le Bonheur, directed by Agnès Varda (Criterion Channel)

The Cranes Are Flying, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov (Criterion Channel)

Daisies, directed by Vera Chytilová (HBO Max)

Hara Kiri, directed by Masaki Kobayashi (Criterion Channel)

Le Havre, directed by Aki Kaurismäki (Criterion Channel)

Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee (Netflix)

The Shop on Main Street, directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos (Criterion Channel)

Z, directed by Costa-Gavras (Criterion Channel)

Year in Review: What is a ‘2020 Movie’ anyway?

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Another way to phrase that headline would be: What is a movie in 2020 anyway? In one sense, what I mean is which movies would be eligible for “best of the year” consideration in a year as strange as 2020? In another sense, however, I mean to ask what we even mean anymore when we talk about film. Is it the theater? Is the pedigree of the artists? Is there some magical, mysterious force that confers importance upon a project such that we deem it “cinema?”

Famous culture critics such as Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall have raged against the debate between cinema and television for years, particularly when a director like David Lynch suggests the third season of his show Twin Peaks should actually be considered an 18-hour movie. Such a suggestion implies a certain embarrassment at the prospect of having made television instead of film. That is, of course, silly. Breaking Bad may be one of the finest pieces of art of the 21st century. It is definitively television, and it is decidedly better and more important that 90 percent of what we might call cinema.

If it were ever important at all to distinguish the two, the difference between film and television used to be relatively clear in my mind. Movies played in theaters. Television played at home on TV. With the rise of streaming and the seeming de-emphasis of the cinema, though, the lines get blurrier and blurrier, and the noise on both sides of the debate gets louder and louder.

It is funny even to frame it as a debate. The stakes are low, there is no right answer, and no one wins a prize for convincing anyone of anything. Anyway, for most folks, the distinction is academic. If you can watch it and enjoy it, does it matter if it is film or television or some weird hybrid in between or none of the above? No, but around here, we like to make academic distinctions.

So, we will not frame this as a debate --  I feel no need to convince you, and you should feel no need to change your mind -- but rather a discussion in four parts.

Case study No. 1: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

You may recall hearing a lot about Céline Sciamma’s brilliant romance around this time last year. The film debuted at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival then opened in theaters in November 2019 for a one-week Academy Awards qualifying run. It received no nominations, but the critics and few audience members who had seen it immediately recognized its brilliance. Thus, Portrait of a Lady on Fire ended up at or near the top of many Best of 2019 lists and even a few end-of-decade lists. It was not on mine.

I did not get to see the film until the same time much of the public did -- in February 2020. Its greatness was, of course, self-evident, featuring two stunning lead performances from Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant and some of the most gorgeous cinematography you will ever see. My own Best of 2019 lists had long since been compiled, and it felt strange to consider putting it on my Best of 2020 list more than a year and a half after it screened at Cannes.

This actually is a common problem with Academy eligibility and release windows of foreign films. One of the best films of 2016 was Danish war drama Land of Mine, but you will not find it on any of my year-end lists. This is because it was nominated at the 2016 Oscars but released in the U.S. in early 2017. To complicate matters further, it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015 and was released to theaters in Denmark in December that year. So, is Land of Mine one of the best films of 2015, 2016, or 2017? 

Such matters really only matter to those of us obsessed with listmaking and chronicling the history of the cinema in an orderly fashion. By any measure, Land of Mine is a tremendous achievement and a must-see film. So it is with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which will appear in my end-of-2020 wraps-ups. By any previously established precedent, it would not have qualified for me as a “2020 movie,” but as we now know, 2020 was the year of the unprecedented.

Case study No. 2: Hamilton and David Byrne’s American Utopia

I have never attended one of those Fathom Events screenings where they show pre-recorded performances of theater productions. They always seem interesting but have never been a viewing priority. However, when I heard Disney was going to release Hamilton in theaters, that became a priority. Of course, theaters shut down and Disney chose to release the show on its nascent streaming platform in July.

The show, of course, is excellent, but is it a movie? Most would say no. The Academy deemed it ineligible for Oscars consideration, although it will be eligible at the Golden Globes as a film. Perhaps an argument could be made for it as an avant-garde documentary depicting a single performance of the Broadway show Hamilton. 

It certainly feels as though it rises above the level of a mere pre-recorded stage production, with editing choices and camera angles that place it in the realm of great cinema. But as Zoller Seitz and Sepinwall will tell you, a filmed piece of art being great does not make it a movie. I have not seen Hamilton appear on many if any year-end lists, particularly not those strictly confined to film. And yet, we have David Byrne’s American Utopia this very year as a counterexample.

The Spike Lee concert film of David Byrne’s Broadway show is a wonderful, joyous document, and it has appeared on many end-of-the-year lists, but it is not substantially different from Hamilton as a film. It is a Broadway production, recorded and presented with amazing craft by a great filmmaker. Fans of Stop Making Sense or The Last Waltz would argue the concert film has a long, vital history in the cinema, but what is a Broadway musical if not a concert with a story?

Again, I have no answers here, only questions and beliefs. In this case, that belief is that if we want to call Lee’s film one of the best of the year -- and it should certainly be considered as such -- then we should refer to Hamilton in the same fashion.

Case study No. 3: Small Axe

I will be brief here because I intend to write about Small Axe in much greater depth in the coming days. If you are unfamiliar, Small Axe is a series of five feature films directed by Steve McQueen, all dealing with the experiences of West Indian peoples in the UK around the mid-20th century. The films played on Amazon Prime in the US and the BBC in the UK, though the first two features in the series, Mangrove and Lover’s Rock, premiered at the New York Film Festival.

If you look around, you will find Small Axe represented across lists of the best television of the year and the best films of the year, sometimes by the same publications. Everyone can agree on the series’ brilliance, but no one can seem to agree what it is. Some critics have broken it apart and called Lover’s Rock one of the standalone best films of the year, while still others have made the NYFF double feature of Mangrove and Lover’s Rock a single entry.

I do not begrudge anyone their opinion and am simply thrilled Small Axe is receiving the recognition it deserves. Hopefully, wherever people read about it, they are intrigued, and they watch it. That is the point of all this year-end handwringing anyway. For me, much like Krzysztof Kieślowski’s much-lauded Decalogue, Small Axe is meant to be taken as a whole. It is one grand, magnificent film, and that is how this site will treat it.

Case study No. 4: Nomadland, et. al.

Finally, what of the “2020” films that were not released to theaters or streaming services in the previous calendar year? Nomadland, Minari, Promising Young Woman, and more, the movies some folks have seen, which will be eligible for this year’s Academy Awards, but which most of the filmgoing public will not have had the chance to view. These are some of the best reviewed, most anticipated films of the year, and they just will not be able to factor into any kind of year-end wrap-up, at least not on this site.

If all of them end up being stunning masterpieces, then we will likely have a more wide-ranging version of the Portrait of a Lady on Fire scenario outlined above, and that is okay. If January 2020 rolls around and I am the only one left talking about Nomadland amid next year’s crop of potential modern classics, then so be it. I am here to talk about great films, whenever and however, and at the end of it all, that is why we are here. To talk about great films, whether or not they fit our preconceived notion of cinema.