The Class of 2020: My Favorite Movies

Sawdust and Tinsel

The Distracted Boyfriend meme is nowhere more applicable than in the life of a cinephile. Whatever movie I plan on seeing next, the thought will always occur to me before I sit down to start it (and sometimes while it’s playing), “Oh, and I also need to see this, and this, and this!” Ironically enough, the fact that the coronavirus crisis has eliminated theatrical viewing as an option has only made the problem worse. Before, a typical weekend would see me heading to the theater to choose from a few (likely mediocre) new releases. Now, I can use that same time to consider the full range of home viewing options encompassing the entire history of world cinema. My odd tendency over the last few years of working mostly in reverse chronological order has meant that Golden Age and silent movies are the most frequent examples of the “offended girlfriend” part of the meme. On top of that, my main project throughout the year 2019 was to watch as many movies from the 2010s as I possibly could, with the production of this video in mind. But did I leave that decade behind when the calendar turned to 2020? No! My head was turned by several previously unreleased films, spurring me to make yet another video. Now am I done? For the moment, at least.

Over the past year, I’ve added more than a hundred movies to my all-time favorites list, crushing the previous year’s record of 87. I’ve also somehow found more time for watching movies during that span, so I don’t think I’m loosening my standards, though it’s possible I’m learning to appreciate more things. That would be the hope, wouldn’t it? Along with beefing up my experience with the cinema of the 2010s, I spent 2019 dipping my toe into Bollywood and the Romanian New Wave, so I can at least say that I’m not entirely unfamiliar with them. MUBI offered a series on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, putting me now in the embarrassingly normie position of only loving the Bach one. I also did a little picking at my DVD/Blu-ray collection, including seeing all of the Marlene Dietrich-Josef von Sternberg collaborations and several Theo Angelopoulos films.

Dil Se..

Then came the new year and the new decade, both of which I rang in by unveiling my little video collage to a surprised and, inasmuch as anyone said anything, delighted world. Pretty much simultaneously, I started a chronological journey through all the cinematic adaptations of Hamlet I could get my hands on. Since then, the viewing schedule has been perhaps more scattershot than ever. I’ve marked the centenary of Fellini’s birth by watching one of his movies every week since February, and I will have seen his entire filmography about a month from now, at which time I will attempt to write about it. There were a few older Oscar movies in February, and a few Adam Sandler movies that can be found on Netflix (though not his “Netflix movies,” to be clear). Speaking of the Oscars, the triumph of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite was an ecstatic moment. It was like the home team winning a championship. Not since Return of the King had my favorite movie of the year taken Best Picture, and back then I hadn’t seen most of the movies in contention, so this was unique. (I hope it stays that way, too. You’re not cool if all your favorite movies are Oscar movies.) Finally, when the shutdowns started in March I opened my wallet to take in some “virtual cinema,” watching some stragglers from 2019 like Vitalina Varela and Zombi Child and supporting independent theaters at the same time. On the other hand, I did not open my wallet for 2020 movies released in the same way, so I haven’t seen Trolls World Tour and such. In fact, I’ve seen very little from this year; here’s hoping there will be more to see, sooner rather than later.

Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach

Pre-1970s cinema awaits! It might be observed that the distinction between a movie buff and a cinephile is that movie buffs know all about the movies made in their home country between their childhood and the present day, whereas cinephiles love everything and are especially interested in the more remote frontiers of cinema, historically and globally. I want to be the latter, so I’ll keep on turning my head like the Distracted Boyfriend as I think about more kinds of movies that I need to see but haven’t yet. A reverse-chronological journey through the movies I own will probably be completed by this time next year, although I also still get two Netflix DVDs every month, and I’m still subscribed to MUBI, which just added a “Library” feature allowing me to see even more than the usual 30 movies they offer, and my hometown library has Kanopy now, and the Criterion Channel has a lot of cool stuff, so I might want to sign up for that, and…and…and…

Secret Sunshine

Here’s the class of 2020: my favorite movies that I saw for the first time since last June.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days	Cristian Mungiu	2007
Ad Astra	James Gray	2019
American Factory	Steven Bognar & Julia Reichert	2019
American Splendor	Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini	2003
Another Year	Mike Leigh	2010
Apollo 11	Todd Douglas Miller	2019
Aquarius	Kleber Mendonça Filho	2016
Ash Is Purest White	Jia Zhangke	2018
Bad Black	Nabwana I.G.G.	2016
Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker	Curt Geda	2000
The Beach Bum	Harmony Korine	2019
The Beaches of Agnès	Agnès Varda	2008
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood	Marielle Heller	2019
The Bling Ring	Sofia Coppola	2013
Boiling Point	Takeshi Kitano	1990
Booksmart	Olivia Wilde	2019
Carlito’s Way	Brian De Palma	1993
Casa de Lava	Pedro Costa	1994
Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach	Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet	1968
Coco	Lee Unkrich	2017
The Cow	Dariush Mehrjui	1969
Crazy World	Nabwana I.G.G.	2019
The Day He Arrives	Hong Sang-soo	2011
Day Night Day Night	Julia Loktev	2006
Dear White People	Justin Simien	2014
Dil Dhadakne Do	Zoya Akhtar	2015
Dil Se..	Mani Ratnam	1998
Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project	Jodie Mack	2013
Elle	Paul Verhoeven	2016
L’Enfer	Claude Chabrol	1994
Eve’s Bayou	Kasi Lemmons	1997
Femme Fatale	Brian De Palma	2002
Film socialisme	Jean-Luc Godard	2010
Fireworks	Takeshi Kitano	1997
First Love	Takashi Miike	2019
The Fits	Anna Rose Holmer	2015
For Sama	Waad al-Kateab & Edward Watts	2019
Fourteen	Dan Sallitt	2019
The Future	Miranda July	2011
Girl Walk // All Day	Jacob Krupnick	2011
The Grand Bizarre	Jodie Mack	2018
The Green Fog	Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson	2017
Haider	Vishal Bhardwaj	2014
Hamlet Goes Business	Aki Kaurismäki	1987
A Hidden Life	Terrence Malick	2019
The Hole	Tsai Ming-liang	1998
Homecoming	Beyoncé Knowles-Carter	2019
House of Pleasures	Bertrand Bonello	2011
The Hunters	Theo Angelopoulos	1977
If Beale Street Could Talk	Barry Jenkins	2018
Intikam Melegi – Kadin Hamlet	Metin Erksan	1977
The Irishman: I Heard You Paint Houses	Martin Scorsese	2019
John Wick: Chapter 2	Chad Stahelski	2017
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum	Chad Stahelski	2019
Juliet of the Spirits	Federico Fellini	1965
Knives Out	Rian Johnson	2019
Let the Bullets Fly	Jiang Wen	2010
The Limey	Steven Soderbergh	1999
Little Women	Gillian Armstrong	1994
Little Women	Greta Gerwig	2019
The Loneliest Planet	Julia Loktev	2011
Los Angeles Plays Itself	Thom Andersen	2003
Ludwig van	Mauricio Kagel	1970
The Mill & the Cross	Lech Majewski	2011
The Missing Picture	Rithy Panh	2013
Mouchette	Robert Bresson	1967
Mur Murs	Agnès Varda	1981
Mutual Appreciation	Andrew Bujalski	2005
The Odyssey	Vincent Haycock	2016
Offside	Jafar Panahi	2006
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood	Quentin Tarantino	2019
Only Lovers Left Alive	Jim Jarmusch	2013
Opera	Dario Argento	1987
The Other Side of the Wind	Orson Welles	2018
Parasite	Bong Joon-ho	2019
Paris Is Us	Elisabeth Vogler	2019
Police Story	Jackie Chan	1985
Portrait of a Lady on Fire	Céline Sciamma	2019
The Return	Andrey Zvyagintsev	2003
The River	Tsai Ming-liang	1997
Sawdust and Tinsel	Ingmar Bergman	1953
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World	Edgar Wright	2010
Secret Sunshine	Lee Chang-dong	2007
Sholay	Ramesh Sippy	1975
Shutter Island	Martin Scorsese	2010
The Spirit of the Beehive	Víctor Erice	1973
The Suspended Step of the Stork	Theo Angelopoulos	1991
Sword of Trust	Lynn Shelton	2019
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse	Fritz Lang	1933
Testament of Orpheus	Jean Cocteau	1960
Through the Olive Trees	Abbas Kiarostami	1994
Time Regained	Raúl Ruiz	1999
Toy Story 4	Josh Cooley	2019
The Travelling Players	Theo Angelopoulos	1975
Uncut Gems	Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie	2019
Venus in Fur	Roman Polanski	2013
Visage	Tsai Ming-liang	2009
Vitalina Varela	Pedro Costa	2019
We Need to Talk About Kevin	Lynne Ramsay	2011
When Evening Falls on Bucharest, or: Metabolism	Corneliu Porumboiu	2013
The World of Jacques Demy	Agnès Varda	1995
You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet	Alain Resnais	2012
Young Ahmed	Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne	2019
Zombi Child	Bertrand Bonello	2019

And this is how my personal top ten shakes out:

10. Carlito’s Way

9. Dil Se..

8. The Limey

7. The Loneliest Planet

6. A Hidden Life

5. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

4. Little Women (1994)

3. Parasite

2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

1. The Hole