The Official Review Thread of 2020

[Sabin]

Every once in a while a movie comes along that makes me feel like an asshole for not liking. This year it is The Forty-Year-Old Version. From the outside, there's nothing in this film that isn't worth supporting: a writer/director/actor drawing from personal experience to paint a tale of nearing-middle-aged, drawing from a new well, intersectional struggle, a black and white New York energy. The last one is present in this film. Although the black and white cinematography isn't that great (theme of the year), it has a great sense of atmosphere that carries it along. And there's a very sharp specificity to the teaching scenes and the rehearsal scenes that are very funny.

That's about where it ends. The comic timing of it is all off. Scenes are long. She's not a dynamic performer. And I grew tired the story. She just goes from brilliant unappreciated playwright to brilliant appreciated rapper. All of which can work if but she never comes face to face with any of her flaws. She does some wacky shit like physically assault a producer and gets stoned and choke in her first performance but... where's the flaw? Where's the change? This movie plays like the story of a pathological fuck up approaching forty in a film that never lets her look like a fuck up. Its in direct odds with the fact that the film always portrays her as the only sane person in a world of crazy people. The ending would be so much more powerful if I felt like I was on that journey, but I wasn't. And that bummed me out because there's a reason people love this film.

[Mister Tee]

I really liked the first hour of Another Round. It was a barely-hidden metaphor -- middle-aged men striving to recapture the vitality of their youths through alcohol -- but it also played around with the idea Zemeckis' Flight had been too cowardly to really explore: that a mild level of intoxication CAN work as inhibitions-remover, and perhaps lead to achievement unlikely under normal circumstances. This is a variation on Baudelaire's "Be always drunken", and is not without its support in traditional medicine (my father-in-law was flat told by his doctor that one strong cocktail a day would keep him healthier). In Zemeckis' film, the path of intoxication was ultimately rejected on purely moralistic grounds. In Vinterberg's, the stumbling block is the likelihood that indulgence will lead in too many cases to over-indulgence, and ultimately failure and/or death. This is an approach that feels more genuine, even if it ends up much the same place.

There are a number of sentimental aspects to Another Round -- the picked-on kid with the glasses, the loyal dog whose master neglects it -- that prevent it fully being the clear-eyed human document to which it aspires. But it's got a lot of interesting elements, and the final moments work really well. Interesting to note that, of all films involved in the Oscar race this race, it's the most centered on the problems of middle-aged white men, yet it's received no criticism I've seen for that fact. Does the fact that it comes from abroad given it automatic diversity points to stifle criticism? If the remake Sabin envisions comes to pass -- surely Judd Apatow has one half-cast already -- will that still be the case?

Other Oscar catch-up:

It's hard to believe it's Paul Greengrass at the helm of News of the World. If there's one thing his films usually offer, it's a freshly-conceived approach to material. But News of the World feels like dozens of westerns I've seen before -- the nominated production design and score, in particular, come close to generic. The only real distinction this has from a film I might have seen in the 50s or 60s is that, instead of being set upon by savage Native Americans, our main characters are menaced at intervals by feral white men. (In the words of someone on IMDB, these guys appear periodically and basically announce "We'll be serving as Bad Guys to fill the next 15 minutes of run-time.") The only narratively interesting element of the film is the reveal of Hanks' situation when we finally reach his home of San Antonio. and even there, it's a bit confusing (trying not to spoil: he refers to having left 5 years ago, but this is 1870, and 1864 is later referenced). This is kind of nitpicky, but since it was the only part of the film that interested me, I was sorry to see them botch it. Anyway, the movie seems to me to be for people who liked movies 60 years ago more than anything made since -- for those who can watch an old cuss and a rebellious young girl warm up to one another and not care that they've seen the same plot innumerable times.

Love and Monsters is carried for a while by the fresh line readings of Dylan O'Brien. But it's not a terribly fresh story, and it grew more tiresome as it went on. As for the effects: when we got to the giant crab near the end, I thought, wow -- this is almost indistinguishable from the giant crab I saw in Mysterious Island, when I was 9 years old. Ray Harryhausen never got Academy cred, but apparently his inheritors can.

[Sabin]

Another Round is going to be remade by Hollywood within a few years. Impossible to imagine it doesn't happen. What that film will lose will be Thomas Vinterberg's conviction in this material. This quartet of middle-aged teachers convince themselves they've really stumbled upon something important in staying drunk all day and playing by Hemmingway rules (never drinking past 8pm) is improving their lives and their work. It will be a less truthful, less melancholic film. But it will be funnier. I can't share the enthusiasm this film has garnered elsewhere. Maybe it's because at heart I think there isn't really anything profound about this premise, or maybe because at two hours it feels too stretched out and self-serious. It made for a fine episode of Workaholics on Comedy Central. Here, it feels like a fairly rote mid-life crisis narrative with the other members of the quartet each cycling through a subplot with a kid each at school with very little commentary about their world or push-back from society. There's an inspired notion in these teachers, stuck in disappointing jobs, recycling their lesson plans for their own libertine purposes in the name of an asinine experiment. But I'm not sure Vinterberg is really interested in exploring those possibilities.

I admire the film's resistance to cliche. I wish I had a little more fun. These people are drunk.

Great ending though.

[mlrg]

I agree with Sabin on this. I think Mulligan gave the best performance of the five nominated but while I was watching Andra Day I kept thinking that this is the kind of performance that wins, even in the quality of the film is inferior compared to the other nominees.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
This will be something of a test case, since Promising Young Woman is also a major category nominee across the board, while US vs. Billie Holiday couldn't even pick up costume/production design/sound nominations that weren't that difficult to snare. In the 2007 case, La Vie en Rose had costume & make-up nominations, and its rival film, Away from Her, wasn't a major category nominee, so their overall profiles were closer together. In a similar/not totally analogous case, Keaton in Birdman was in the best picture winner, but Redmayne's film had film/actress/screenplay nods, so the gap between them wasn't cavernous. If Day wins here, it will strictly say the role rules, even where there's wide variance in the estimation of the two films.

It seems to me the big question is whether or not the Academy is averse to nominating a sole nominee against a more acclaimed production. They weren’t with Glenn Close for The Wife because not enough people saw it or liked her versus Olivia Colman in The Favourite. Julianne Moore won for a sole nominee but she was up against a profoundly minor group of nominees. But let’s take a look at Halle Berry for Monster’s Ball. That film wasn’t a sole nominee (it got a writing nom) but it was certainly a smaller and less acclaimed production than In the Bedroom. And why did she win? Because her performance was bigger whereas Spacek’s was more reserved.

I think the major thing Day has going for her is she has the biggest performance of any of the nominees. She’s asked to undergo the most torment of the lineup and that’s saying something in this category. Mulligan is terrific but she plays a character who never lets her guard down until the end. Day is unguarded from minute one. Let me put it this way: is there anything a traditional Oscar-winning performance needs that she isn’t asked to do? Bring a sole nominee works against her but as a sole nominee she’s not in a bad position...

Save for the lack of a SAG nomination, which I’ve detailed elsewhere. However I think this is still a race.

[Big Magilla]

Cole Porter's Miss Otis Regrets was recorded by Ethel Waters five years before Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.

Although it was about the lynching of a white society dame told to her assembled guests by her maid, it was a stunner, the first and most enduring song about lynching ever written. Marlene Dietrich, Ella Fitzgerald and Bette Midler were among the others who had subsequent successful recordings of it whereas I'm not familiar with anyone other than Holiday having recorded Strange Fruit, the lyrics of which came from a 1937 poem written by someone else.

[Mister Tee]

it's that's ostentatious lynching flashback

Which, by the way, is almost a direct steal from Lady Sings the Blues -- although, in that movie, Billie catching sight of the lynched man is what makes her start shooting up.

I had no idea that Strange Fruit was such an essential moment of the civil rights era. And even though this film tells us repeatedly that it is, I still don't totally understand why.

The movie keeps asserting it, but it never makes the case. Telling me, at the end, that Time Magazine years later picked it as song of the century doesn't prove squat. I think it's a great, powerful song, but I needed to see its effect on audiences, to make me understand viscerally why it'd be such a threat to racists. Instead, the film presents that effect as QED. I genuinely would have more enjoyed a film that explored the issue -- whether it demonstrated that the FBI guys were wildly overstating the case, or if there was demonstrable evidence that the song rallied people the way Uncle Tom's Cabin was said to have stoked passions leading to the Civil War. The point is, the film pretends to raise the issue, but drops it in favor of a retread of Lady Sings the Blues.

Mister Tee wrote
I fear this is another Edith Piaf situation -- that other, more inventive performances can win the prelims, but Oscar voters will fall for the old doomed bio-pic in the end.

I'd be more fearful if the performance was SAG-nominated.

This will be something of a test case, since Promising Young Woman is also a major category nominee across the board, while US vs. Billie Holiday couldn't even pick up costume/production design/sound nominations that weren't that difficult to snare. In the 2007 case, La Vie en Rose had costume & make-up nominations, and its rival film, Away from Her, wasn't a major category nominee, so their overall profiles were closer together. In a similar/not totally analogous case, Keaton in Birdman was in the best picture winner, but Redmayne's film had film/actress/screenplay nods, so the gap between them wasn't cavernous. If Day wins here, it will strictly say the role rules, even where there's wide variance in the estimation of the two films.

[Sabin]

Mister Tee wrote
I fear this is another Edith Piaf situation -- that other, more inventive performances can win the prelims, but Oscar voters will fall for the old doomed bio-pic in the end.

I'd be more fearful if the performance was SAG-nominated.

These are great write-ups and I don't have much to add. Except this: I used to think Lee Daniels was one of the worst directors working today. I don't think that anymore. I think he's one of the worst film directors working today. He's fine for television because he clearly favors a more episodic, leisurely pace focused on behavior that allow him to tell a longer story. But when you're making a film, you have to choose what parts of the story are essential and what parts aren't, and Daniels never wants to do that. He always wants to tackle it all. His enthusiasms and ambitions aren't well contained by beginnings, middles, and ends. Honestly, that might be one of the reasons why The Butler is structurally his best film. It's not good but it's so iron-tight as a conceit that he can't really get off-course.

Lee Daniels does something else as a director as well, and I think it's the reason why so many people have such an aversion to his film directing: he uses a sledgehammer visual conceit to tell the audience about something rather that explore it throughout the movie. I haven't seen Precious in several years but I'm thinking about that awful 360 circle around Gabourey Sidibe to show the audience not just that she's learning but that she's *BEEN* learning this whole time instead of take the time to find a creative way throughout to bring us on that journey. In The United States vs. Billie Holiday, it's that's ostentatious lynching flashback, which would play better if (as both Tee and Daniel pointed out) really honed in on that song as the focus. But it doesn't. Speaking for myself, I had no idea that Strange Fruit was such an essential moment of the civil rights era. And even though this film tells us repeatedly that it is, I still don't totally understand why. This film's confusion is evident from the first two scenes with the crucial question: what is the story we're being told and who is telling it? The United States vs. Billie Holiday feels like Billie Holiday is talking about herself as if she's describing a stranger.

It may be a mess but because Lee Daniels style lends itself well to a "Lady Drinks the Booze" kind of movie, it's a watchable mess. Andra Day is very good. I'm fine with a nomination because really she's the only thing holding this movie together. I don't think she deserves to win only because the film is so all over the place that she doesn't really come into view as a human being but I also don't think that if she beat Frances McDormand or Carey Mulligan it would be a crime. And forgive me for saying this, it really is time for another black person to win Best Actress. It's been a very long time since Halle Berry. And now that I think about it, there are parallels to the degree to which both actors allowed themselves to be stripped down and degraded on-screen. Although Berry had sex with a racist Billy Bob Thornton while Day only volunteers a strip and gets Trevante Rhodes as a paramour. Hmm...

Huh, guess I did have stuff to say. As always, sorry for not taking the time to write a shorter letter.

[Mister Tee]

The United States vs. Billie Holiday
A mess: One of those movies that should've been cut to ninety minutes to focus on one thing (a movie laser-focused on the drama around Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" in its entirety would've been much more compelling), or expanded to miniseries length to go into the kind of detail that Holiday's life needs. Andra Day and Billie Holiday both deserve better than what this film gives them. Comparisons to Judy and Zellweger's performance in it are probably inevitible, and like Zellweger, there's a genuine brokenness and lost-ness in her performance. Unlike Zellweger, who was mostly just surrounded by a bland film, Day is surrounded by a pretty crass and actively bad one. Good taste is not something you ever expect in Lee Daniels' films, and you don't get it here; a lot of it is just bizarre--especially Leslie Jordan as a fictional (transgender?) interviewer, and his voice is identical to Margo Martindale in Million Dollar Baby. Not good, really just for Oscar completists, but I do hope to see Day in a movie that is more deserving of her talents, because she is good.

When the scene began, in semi-long shot, my first question was, Is that Margo Martindale?

The movie differs from Lady Sings the Blues in quite a few ways, and seems to feel it's more accurate (though I'd need receipts to be sure)...yet it feels just as fraudulent a presentation as the Motown effort. Glamorized Louis McKay is replaced by glamorized FBI agent Jimmy Fletcher, but in each case Billie is given a dreamy love interest to carry the audience past the downward spiral of Holiday's life. I'm in agreement with dws, that a film focused laser-like on Strange Fruit and its implications would have served the filmmakers better. But instead they offer up a standard bummer-biopic that goes on too long, and even there feels like it's been haphazardly edited in the later reels. (I was quite confused about Trevante Rhodes' comings and goings as the movie went on.) And, because it's Lee Daniels, we get a lot of gaudy filmmaking, capped by a drug fantasia that makes me wonder if Daniels knows the difference between heroin and acid.

The reason to see this is Andra Day's take on the role, and she shows definite talent -- she captures Holiday's voice quite well (though not as eerily spot-on as Audra McDonald did onstage), and her dramatic scenes have a believably laconic quality that serve her nicely. But I still found myself a bit depressed by the fact she could win an Oscar for this, simply because of the routine baity scenes written into the role (She sings! She zonks out! She's persecuted! She wears out and dies!). This is the kind of role that Susan Hayward made an Oscar career of -- my college roommate referred to the genre as Lady Drinks the Booze -- but at least back then they were only getting nominated, not winning. I fear this is another Edith Piaf situation -- that other, more inventive performances can win the prelims, but Oscar voters will fall for the old doomed bio-pic in the end.

[Big Magilla]

THE FATHER
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams.
Dir: Florian Zeller.

An elderly man struggles with dementia as his daughter searches for the best way to care for him. Now we have seen this story done before. Most people would look at that synopsis and think there has been so many similar films and some of them can be either depressing or cloying or preachy or all of the above. But this is not one of those films. Florian Zeller's adaptation of his own play uses cinematic techniques as well as Anthony Hopkins' brilliant performance to put you into what it's like to have this condition. It allows you to truly empathize with what's going on. Then it hits you with this truly emotional ending. Hopkins is superb, that cannot be said enough. He's supported by Olivia Colman who's also wonderful. I actually didn't expect to love this as much as I did. This is one of the best films of 2020.

Grade: A.

I just watched it as well. I can't say I loved it, having lived through much of it with my own father, but it is one of the year's best films.

My father's dementia lasted for seven years from the age of 84 to his death at 91. From confusing people he saw every day with other people to thinking in was in a different place than he actually was to misplacing objects and accusing others of stealing them to seeing and talking to dead people (at one point he scared my brother half to death by wanting to give the phone to my late mother because she was "right here"), it was all too real. The only thing that was different with my father was the ending. That never happened with him. He just went into a coma and slipped away thinking my mother was still there with him.

[anonymous1980]

THE FATHER
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Williams.
Dir: Florian Zeller.

An elderly man struggles with dementia as his daughter searches for the best way to care for him. Now we have seen this story done before. Most people would look at that synopsis and think there has been so many similar films and some of them can be either depressing or cloying or preachy or all of the above. But this is not one of those films. Florian Zeller's adaptation of his own play uses cinematic techniques as well as Anthony Hopkins' brilliant performance to put you into what it's like to have this condition. It allows you to truly empathize with what's going on. Then it hits you with this truly emotional ending. Hopkins is superb, that cannot be said enough. He's supported by Olivia Colman who's also wonderful. I actually didn't expect to love this as much as I did. This is one of the best films of 2020.

Grade: A.

[anonymous1980]

MULAN
Cast: Yifei Liu, Donnie Yen, Gong Li, Jason Scott Lee, Jet Li, Tzi Ma, Yoson An, Ron Yuan, Rosalind Chao, Cheng Pei-pei.
Dir: Niki Caro.

This is the latest in a series of unnecessary money-grab live-action remakes of Disney animated films. This time it's Mulan, the young woman who disguises herself as a man to become a soldier for the Chinese Empire. I really liked the original Disney animated film. This one has no musical numbers, no funny talking dragon and almost no humor. But even then, could it succeed purely as a fantasy wu-xia martial arts epic? Eh, even in that, it's just so-so. It is a beautifully designed and shot production. There are some really cool action scenes here. And of course, the supporting cast consisting of Donnie Yen, Jet Li (I didn't recognize him!), Tzi Ma and especially Gong Li can make practically anything watchable. This may not be the worst of the Disney remakes but it's not even the best or even the least horrible among them which is the best thing I can say about this.

Grade: C+

[Sabin]

Watched The Trial of the Chicago 7 again. What a missed opportunity. It's written and directed like television where we've already seen the first season. Perhaps a limited series wouldn't have been the worst idea. In this form, it feels lifelessly directed and a-historically written. Has there ever been a movie about Vietnam that was less about Vietnam? It feels like a waste of a great cast and a great premise. So much feels unexplored. Had I seen it on the big screen, I might be more charitable but story of the year, isn't it?

There remains one dynamite scene in the "Conspiracy Office" between Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman. And "Centrist Boomer Tom Hayden" is possibly the best acting I've seen Eddie Redmayne, a character who cannot bear any reflection on what the real Tom Hayden who married Jane Fonda must have been like.

My father and his girlfriend really took to it but they were largely uninformed of the events while they occurred at the time. Their chief concern watching this film was that the Chicago 7 seemed so much like the Capitol Rioters that they hoped people watching the film wouldn't draw parallels between the two. That is such a failure on the film's part.

[dws1982]

How do you account for it being the only DGA nominee for Best Documentary Feature up for an Oscar? Doesn't that make it the odds-on favorite to win?

I'm going to guess that the DGA voters may have been impressed by the underwater photography which is quite good, otherwise I don't have a clue! The non-water stuff is mostly just of the talking head variety. I think 20 Feet From Stardom was the last movie to win the Oscar that wasn't nominated for the DGA Documentary Award. Surely something else can win this. Time is more timely, I might put my money on that, although Tee's point is definitely a good one, and I do think that right-wing media will definitely target it if it wins. (I gave it a relatively high rating when I first watched it, but I will admit to having the same issue as Tee and Sabin, without quite engaging with it. Definitely need to watch it again)

Still sad that Dick Johnson is Dead and Boys State were left out--both better than any of the three I've seen so far, dealing with some of the same issues, and both very entertaining and accessible. (I suspect Boys State was hurt by being exclusive to Apple TV+, a service that a lot of people don't have, or don't know they have.)

[FilmFan720]

Daniel, you matched my thoughts exactly!