Category: Film Reviews by Amy

The White Tiger (R)

A young man from an impoverished town in India tries to grab his piece of his country’s bright economic future in The White Tiger, a new movie on Netflix.

Balram (Adarsh Gourav) has seen his ambitions crushed all his life. As a child, he loses a chance to go to a good school on scholarship when his grandmother (Kamlesh Gill) forces him to go to work. Later, the social caste system keeps him literally on his knees when dealing with his new employer (Mahesh Manjrekar), who is treated as something of a feudal lord of Balram’s village. Balram heads to the city to serve as a driver not for the man or his horrible oldest son, the Mongoose (Vijay Maurya), but for his more Western-cultured second son, Ashok (Rajkummar Rao). Ashok went to school in America and seems queasy about issues surrounding the way wealthy people treat the people who work for them. Pinky (Priyanka Chopra), his Indian-born but American-ized wife, seems even more uncomfortable with it. Their discomfort does not, however, always translate into being better employers. Nor does Balram always know what to do with himself in their monied urban environment, where he constantly feels his lack of worldliness and simmers with anger even as he is also hungry to find a way into this life. Add this to the fact that his family back home still gets most of his paycheck — their very survival even becomes his responsibility once his employers use them to coerce him into a ruinous decision — and it seems that no amount of eager hard work will allow Balram to get ahead.

Which is, of course, the point. This movie has a lot of the same elements about the grind of poverty as Parasite, but presents them bleaker, if that’s possible. Balram comes to the decision that he basically has no choice but to do things he finds unethical or even immoral; the system doesn’t allow him to be a good person and survive. There is also a fair amount about the idea of being a servant versus an employee; what is the difference between an economic system that allows someone to be employed and one that requires servitude in what again reads as a more feudal sense? All this is presented with humor, bleak humor, but humor and an engaging storytelling style (this movie makes a narration frame and some time jumps work) and a strong performance from Gourav that pulls you in. B+

Rated R for language, violence and sexual material, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Ramin Bahrani with a screenplay by Bahrani (from the novel by Aravind Adiga), The White Tiger is two hours and five minutes and is available via Netflix.

Some Kind of Heaven (NR)

Retirees enjoy a new carefree chapter of their lives — maybe — in Some Kind of Heaven, a documentary about four people living at The Villages in Florida.

“An endless cruise with everybody from high school” — what is your response to that statement? If you think “woo-hoo sign me up for the Jimmy Buffett margarita parties,” The Villages, the pre-planned retirement community that seemingly features every kind of amusement in a sort of large outdoor mall/golf course-like setting, might be for you. If it sounds like the kind of “heaven” that you and your philosophy professor buddy figure out is actually The Bad Place, then this movie will reinforce that reaction.

It follows four people living (sort of) at The Villages. The “sort of” is because of Dennis, who is about 80 and lives out of his van. He has come to The Villages with no permanent address and hopes to meet a woman with some money to live with.

Barbara is more organically looking for companionship; she moved to the Villages with her husband, who later died. She seems like she wishes she could return to her home in Massachusetts but as it is she has to work for a Villages medical office to make ends meet. She is just barely starting to get “out there” again, when we first meet her.

Anne and Reggie, a long-married couple, are still together — for better or worse. Anne seems to be left largely alone by Reggie, who throughout the documentary seems to be in the middle of some kind of serious, needs-medical-help episode. (Late in the movie he says an MRI discovered he’s been having small strokes.) He seems to be having delusions (which the movie seems to suggest are either caused by or made worse by recreational drugs he takes) and is making some pretty terrible life decisions, such as choosing to represent himself when he’s facing cocaine possession charges. Reggie rambles on about his spiritual journey and his newfound freedom but Anne goes from looking scared for him to seeming near the point of bubbling over with rage.

Generally, the men depicted here seem to have it better than the women — Dennis is able to float by for a good while and we meet a man whom Barbara likes and who seems to be having a truly great, carefree time. The movie doesn’t get into the gender dynamics of The Villages that much and I wanted to see more. What we’re left with is a “guys get to be 18 again, women have to put up with it” sense of the situation that may or may not reflect any kind of reality. There are a lot of “what about people with some different kind of life experience” or “Villages residents who are 80 versus Villages residents who are 55” questions I had that this movie doesn’t address. It doesn’t have to, necessarily, but since it does seem to want to be making a larger statement about the community, not just the central people, I did want more about the Villages society. There are times when it just feels like you’re watching four people’s misfortunes rather than getting a glimpse at a specific world.

Those stories are very engagingly told. I feel like we get to know Barbara the best and she was the one I found myself cheering on. She seems the least delighted by the Villages as a concept, with its fakey Spanish colonial facades and its million social clubs. Though I could see how this could come off as a purely negative look at the Villages, I feel like this documentary does show people enjoying their lives there and the return-to-college, eternal-tropical-vacation feel of the place. It does seem to be a kind of heaven even if it clearly isn’t everybody’s. B

This movie doesn’t appear to be rated. Directed by Lance Oppenheim, Some Kind of Heaven is an hour and 21 minutes long and is distributed by Magnolia. It is available for rent (including via Red River Theatres virtual theater).

Featured photo: The White Tiger

Promising Young Woman (R)

Carey Mulligan plays a woman who can’t move on from the wrong done to her friend and the resulting devastation in Promising Young Woman, a dark, occasionally darkly funny, brutal revenge thriller that is expertly well made.

Promising Young Woman is so much more emotionally torturous than comes across in the trailers, which highlight the revenge element but serve it up with dark humor. While it does have dark humor, actually seeing the story play out and knowing the characters, makes everything so much grimmer. I’ve read and heard lots of commentators point this out but it’s worth really highlighting this fact now that the movie is available for home viewing. (I believe this movie is still in area theaters as well.) Be warned: This is not a “bad-girl” funny good time.

That said, this is also an exceptionally well-made movie. It is surgical in its writing; every line has a point. It looks great; so much care has clearly been taken with every shot and with where characters are in the frame and where the movie is directing you to look. I was amazed with how it is all staged and how everybody is costumed and how that all works into what is being conveyed with each scene.

And the performances are strong. Carey Mulligan brings a lot of layers to Cassie, a 30-year-old woman who is stuck in her grief. During the day, Cassie is being her “real” self — but with a wall of dry humor and disinterest to keep people at arms length.

At night, Cassie goes out as someone else. She’s made up and dressed up and nearly-falling-down drunk. Or really “drunk,” because the unsteady walk and halting speech are just an act. Eventually, some Nice Guy (played by Adam Brody or Sam Richardson or Christopher Mintz-Plasse) comes over to “help her,” to “protect her from those jerks.” This seems to eventually involve taking her to their house, offering her more intoxicants and starting to make out with her, or really make out on her because she doesn’t engage. And then, suddenly, she soberly looks them in the eyes and asks them what they think they’re doing, to their absolute terror.

Cassie does this in the name of Nina, her best friend from childhood through their time in medical school. We learn piece by piece that something terrible happened to Nina, who is always talked of in the past tense. The terrible thing — which the movie makes clear involved sexual assault even before we know the details — has traumatized Cassie too. She lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown), who seem supportive but also scared and sad for their daughter. She works at a coffee shop and won’t even consider the promotion offered by her kind boss (Laverne Cox). And she has no contact with any other friends or anybody from school, at least until Ryan (Bo Burnham) comes into the shop and, after some chat, asks her out. She is wary with him too but slowly starts to wonder if maybe he really is a nice guy and maybe there could be more to her future.

This movie is written and directed by Emerald Fennell (known, as an actress, for roles in Call the Midwife and The Crown). This is her first feature-length movie, which makes the excellence in execution seem all the more extraordinary. I heard somebody on a podcast (maybe This Had Oscar Buzz) compare her to Jordan Peele and his initial outing Get Out and I thought of that comparison while watching the movie. There is a similar thoughtfulness and preciseness in both movies. It’s rare to see someone completely ace their first outing the way Peele did and Fennell does here. I don’t know that I’ll ever bring myself to watch this movie again but I can’t wait to see what she does next. A

Rated R for strong violence including sexual assault, language throughout, some sexual material and drug use, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman is an hour and 53 minutes long and is distributed by Focus Features. It is in local theaters and available for rent.

One Night in Miami (R)

Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown hang out together after Ali’s fight with Sonny Liston in One Night in Miami, a movie based on a play of the same name and directed by Regina King.

You can still feel the play in elements of this movie, which is largely made up of the four men hanging out in a hotel room, talking and arguing. Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir); Muhammad Ali, still going by Cassius Clay (Eli Goree); football player-turned-actor Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) and singer Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) gather in Malcolm’s room after the fight in 1964. The plan is to have a party but Malcolm offers only vanilla ice cream and conversation. Cassius is on the verge of announcing his conversion to Islam. Malcolm seems proud but also conflicted — he is in the process of making a break from the Nation of Islam. Jim has recently shot his first movie and seems to be considering leaving the NFL. Sam is preparing for a show at a venue where he previously bombed — and working on some new music. The friendship of these men is strong but the momentum of their own careers and their various approaches to the civil rights movement are points of friction between them.

To some extent the movie at its core is “just” conversation, but it’s engrossing conversation between people who feel multidimensional, with more layers than just “history’s Malcolm X.” We see just enough of these men’s lives to get a hint of what they’re bringing into the room, their hopes, their insecurities, what things inform their point of view.

The performances here are stellar across the board but I will admit that my eyes kept landing on Odom and his take on Cooke. He plays Cooke as someone who is canny about his profession and how to make it make money for himself and for other African American artists but he still has those desires to say something more through his songs. Maybe Hamilton just sort of taught me to look for “guy working at several levels” from Odom but I feel like he’s doing it again here and it pulls his Cooke to the center of the story even if Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali have the bigger personalities. A

Rated R for language throughout, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Regina King with a screenplay by Kemp Powers (who also wrote the play), One Night in Miami is an hour and 54 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon Studios and available via Amazon Prime.

News of the World (PG-13)

Tom Hanks plays the Tom Hanks character who is unexpectedly tasked with bringing an orphan to her distant relatives in post-Civil War Texas in News of the World.

This is basically Hanks’ Greyhound if you replace “get convoy of ships to the U.K.” with “get little girl to the Texas Hill Country” and “outrun Nazi submarines” with “outrun Old West-y villains.”

I mean that in the best way; I liked Greyhound. Here as there, Hanks is a man who calls on his quick thinking and basic decency to complete his hero’s journey. Is chicken parm the most inventive dish in the world? No, but few things are better than a really good chicken parm. Hanks is serving up some very classic cuisine and doing it expertly.

Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks), mostly just called Captain, was once a Confederate soldier but he seems very “bind up the nation’s wounds” for some “just and lasting peace” about the whole thing. Now, 1870-ish, he travels the Texas countryside and reads newspapers to audiences who pay a dime a person for this in-person Walter Cronkite action. Captain is lively but down the middle with his news reading, not allowing meetings to turn into anti-federal-troops gripe sessions, for example.

While on the road, he comes across a wrecked wagon and an African American federal agent who has been lynched — which, the movie makes clear, Captain finds appalling. He figures out that the man was tasked with transporting Johanna (Helena Zengel), the young blonde girl hiding nearby, who had been living with the Kiowa tribe. When the Kiowa were forced off their land, Johanna’s Kiowa parents were killed and Johanna, who only knows her name as “Cicada,” found herself orphaned for a second time. She lost her biological parents as a young girl when their settlers’ village was raided. She doesn’t appear to retain any memory of that life — or of being called Johanna — and doesn’t speak English.

Captain tries to turn her over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the next town but he’s told that the agent won’t be back for months. Eventually he agrees to take her on the several weeks’ drive south to find a biological aunt and uncle. Along the way they encounter various people who want to kill (or in Johanna’s case, kidnap) them, but Captain’s Hanks-y cleverness helps them deal with dicey situations. To pay for their journey, he continues his news-reading work, with Johanna collecting dimes from the crowd and learning to enjoy his stories.

There is nothing surprising here but everything here is done really well. Zengel is a solid child actor, communicating a lot with her face. Hanks, of course, is top notch, turning in the high-quality performance that seems like rote for him but is really the demonstration of extraordinary skill. Director Paul Greengrass is able to show us a country still mired in all kinds of conflict and aware of what our modern opinions will probably be without turning Captain into some kind of anachronistic saint. Even when the movie veers into “OK, this is a bit much” it is able to pull off the sandstorms and the town full of weird and violent separatists thanks to the skill of everybody involved. B

Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, thematic material and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Paul Greengrass with a screenplay by Paul Greengrass and Luke Davies (from a novel by Paulette Jiles), News of the World is an hour and 58 minutes long and distributed by Universal Studios. It is playing in local theaters and available for rent.

Featured photo: Promising Young Woman (R)

A jazz musician winds through the life of a woman who loves him in Sylvie’s Love, an almost miraculously good romance on Amazon.

This movie is beautiful to look at, beautifully romantic, sweet and joyful. For whatever reason, romances that are this straightforwardly romantic without any dressing up of comedy or tragedy or whatever are so rare that it feels like something of a miracle that this exists at all, and that it exists in an accessible way, and not as some released-and-it-disappears indie.

Sylvie (an excellent Tessa Thompson) is a young woman who seems to just radiate energy and possibility, living in Harlem in the late 1950s. Her mother, Eunice (Erica Gimpel), literally uses Sylvie as an example of poise to the young girls at the etiquette school she runs, but Sylvie loves music and television and hangs out with her father, who goes by Mr. Jay (Lance Reddick), at his record shop where she can have access to both. She’s engaged but the movie suggests that the engagement was more a way to placate her mother when Eunice thought Sylvie had gone too far with a boy than the result of a desire to be married. What really gets Sylvie beaming is television and the desire to work as a producer, a dream that seems far-fetched for a Black woman in the mid-century, as her father says, but TV is her passion nevertheless. Well, television and Robert Halloway (Nnamdi Asomugha), a talented young saxophonist who takes a job at the record store to hang out with Sylvie. Though she’s engaged and he is friendly with a girl angling to be a girlfriend at the club where he plays with a jazz quartet, the two are drawn to each other.

The romance of Sylvie and Robert doesn’t go smoothly and part of what makes this movie work is that we can believe both in the depth of their love and in the reality of the things that keep them apart. The movie starts in the early 1960s and then jumps back five years and then moves forward. We see these two people love each other while pursuing life goals that they also love. It’s all so kind, gentle, sweet, beautiful — not words that maybe sound like you should be pumped to see this movie but it is such a warm and rosy story that it is a nice world to be in for a while. The movie has an almost old-fashioned romance movie feel, like something you might see from the late 1950s or early 1960s, but without the overtly stylized showiness of a Mank.

Thompson is one of those actresses I don’t think I’ve ever disliked in a movie but she really is a delight here. She is able to convey strength and confidence even in moments where her character doesn’t fully know the right answer. Likewise, Asomugha is able to sell us on both his character’s devotion to Sylvie and all the decisions the character makes that pull him away from her. And they create a kind of glow around themselves as a couple.

The movie also has some strong supporting performances, including from Eva Longoria, who seems to be having a lot of fun as the wife of one of Robert’s bandmates.

Sylvie’s Love is a bottle of Champagne, a box of chocolates and a bouquet of roses — a perfectly executed romance classic. A

Rated PG-13 for some sexual content, and smoking, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Written and directed by Eugene Ashe, Sylvie’s Love is an hour and 54 minutes long and is distributed by Amazon Studios and available via Amazon Prime.

Featured photo: Sylvie’s Love

Soul (PG)

A middle-aged man hangs between life and “the Great Beyond” just as his dreams of being a working musician appear to be coming true in Soul, an animated movie from Pixar.

Joe Gardner (voice of Jamie Foxx) teaches band to high school students, who have varying degrees of interest in his instruction, but his real passion is to get a full-time paying gig as a professional jazz musician. He has chased this desire, to much disappointment, for years. His mom, Libba (voice of Phylicia Rashad), urges him to quit chasing this dream and accept the teaching position (and its pension and health care and steady paycheck) permanently. But then Joe has an audition with Dorothea Williams (voice of Angela Bassett) for a position as a piano player in her jazz band. He gets a chance to play a gig with her that night that could put him in as a regular. So delighted is Joe as he walks down the street contemplating this new future that he doesn’t realize there’s an open pothole in his path until he’s fallen into it.

He suddenly finds himself a bloop of glowy, vaguely person-shaped blueness, headed on a pathway through the stars up to what he’s told is the Great Beyond. Joe is definitely not interested in the Beyond; he wants to go back to the city and play jazz. Luckily, the afterlife doesn’t have the strictest security ever and he’s able to stumble away from the path to the Beyond and into the Great Before, a sort of nursery area for new souls. He’s mistaken for a mentor and is given new soul 22 (voice of Tina Fey) to mentor. His task is to help her find her “spark” and get her ready to go to Earth.

But 22 wants none of Earth and its whole “life and eventual death” thing. She’s had lots of mentors — all of whom have given up in frustration at her lack of a “spark.” Joe sees an opportunity; he’ll help 22 find her spark and earn the badge that lets her go to Earth and he’ll take the badge to return to his body and she can stay in the soft new souls land forever. Thus do they set off to find 22’s purpose.

Along the way, Joe and 22 do make it to Earth for a bit, though 22 winds up in Joe’s body and Joe winds up in the body of an emotional therapy cat. That cat, who (as Joe) can talk (at least to 22) and do things like push elevator buttons, is the most actively kid-like element of the movie. Similar to how Inside Out used personifications of emotions and personality traits rendered as physical spaces, Soul gives dimension to spiritual elements — for example, a place called “in the zone” where living people’s souls go when they’re playing a great basketball game or lost in a musical performance, and a variant of that location where souls go when they’ve lost connection to life and greater purpose. Soul is thoughtful and beautiful and I’m not sure I totally understand who this movie is for.

I mean, it really is beautiful — beautiful looking in how it blends the different visual ideas about an afterlife with the “real” world, beautiful sounding in its lovely score that mixes jazz and other musical styles. And it has some really beautiful ideas about life and what gives a person’s life meaning. I recently finished a rewatch of the series The Good Place, so maybe I am particularly susceptible to big-picture “what does it all mean” ideas rendered with a bit of cartooniness. I liked this movie and I think I would have liked it even more on a big screen, where I could have been even more enveloped in all the visuals. But where Inside Out was tethered to the kid-world by the girl the emotions operated in and the kid parts of her life experience, like imaginary friends, I’m not sure how kids connect to Soul. My younger kids saw parts and seemed to enjoy the music and the little soul blobs, but there is a level of zaniness missing here. (And the “lost souls” idea is expressed in a way that feels just disturbing enough that it would stick with younger kids, perhaps popping up in their brains at, like, 2 a.m.) I rewatched the movie with my elementary-aged kid and her interest seemed to wane as the movie went on. The idea that singular focus on your big break, the life milestone that will really “start” your life, will cause you to miss what your actual life is, for all its joy and heartbreak, is interesting to me. Do such concepts have any meaning to kids? I mean, my kid laughed at some of the butt jokes, so it wasn’t a total loss.

This doesn’t make the movie less successful as a, like, piece of film but as a PG movie on Disney+ it did make me wonder if when this movie goes on during family movie night, it will be the kids falling asleep and fiddling with an iPad while the parents are paying rapt attention. B+

Rated PG for thematic elements and some language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Pete Docter and Kemp Powers with a screenplay by Pete Docter & Mike Jones & Kemp Powers, Soul is an hour and 40 minutes long and distributed by Disney. It is available on Disney+.

Featured photo: Soul

Wonder Woman 1984

Diana Prince suits up in her golden armor for an all-too-brief fight sequence in the otherwise extremely long Wonder Woman 1984, a sequel to the 2017 Wonder Woman available until near the end of January on HBO Max and in theaters.

Though we last saw Wonder Woman hanging with Batfleck and the other Justice League-ers in roughly the current day, this takes us back to 1984 when Diana (Gal Gadot) is working in antiquities (for the Smithsonian, I think?) in Washington, D.C., and trying to discreetly protect people from baddies and other danger on the side. Despite a full professional life, Diana has a lonely private life, still aching from the death of Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) during World War I. Despite Diana’s inner sadness, her outer awesomeness has fellow museum science and antiquities person Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) wishing that she could be like Diana. Barbara makes that wish while holding an artifact that claims to grant wishes, though both Barbara and Diana initially have their doubts about the authenticity of the item. Diana has also made a Steve-based wish while holding the artifact. While they might not believe in the artifact, we see the little wind blow-y effect in their hair and so we are not so surprised to see their wishes come true: The formerly awkward Barbara can suddenly walk with ease in heels projecting sexy confidence and finds she has increasing physical strength. Diana is approached by a man she’s never met before — who then says and does the last things Steve Trevor ever said and did, and suddenly she can see that it’s him, returned.

After initially just giving in to the delight of having Steve back, Diana and Steve decide to go figure out how it is that he has returned. Unfortunately, by the time they start their quest, the artifact has been stolen by Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), who had long been on the hunt for it. A large donation to the Smithsoneon and some flirting with Barbara gets him access to the artifact and he convinces her to let him take it to get it looked at by an expert. What he actually does is, essentially, wish for all the wishes by wishing to become the artifact (which at some point people start calling “the Dreamstone”). People wish on Maxwell to get their heart’s desire and in return he takes something — their company, their wealth, their henchmen, etc. Their wishes seem to take from him too; he gets weaker and sicker-looking with each wish. Diana and Barbara discover that their wishes have a cost for them as well. These individual costs, however, are minor compared to the mounting societal costs as more and more people wish on Maxwell for more — more nukes, more power, more money. Diana discovers that this may be a feature, not a bug, of the Dreamstone, which has a dark history and was forged by a god known as the “god of lies.”

The lies are seductive and the truth is often sad and bittersweet but the world has to acknowledge and live in the truth to save itself — I think this is the working philosophy of this movie, which I feel like would have played a little different in the alternate timeline of June 2020 (the movie’s original release date), where all anybody is thinking about is the election and we’re all seeing movies in the theater, than it does now. There are some choices made with Pascal’s Max (some of the elements of his character read pretty Trump-y) that make me feel like this movie, without being overtly political, is trying to say something about the state of discourse. I feel like that element is maybe one of the many “too many accessories” that this movie should have taken off, Coco Chanel “take one thing off” style. (I always misremember that quote as “before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take three things off” and I feel like three is the minimum number of things this movie needs to take off.) There is a lot to do with Max that takes away from the development of Diana, Diana and Steve, Diana and Barbara, and Barbara and her own sense of self. Somehow, this two-and-a-half-hour movie feels like it doesn’t have time to give us any relationship or theme in depth — and yet the movie does not fly by. More editing? Less story? More editing of fewer plotlines and a more consistent tone — this movie just felt all over the place and needed streamlining in all things.

That said, there are nice elements. Because we can, I went back to watch some of the highlights of this movie before I wrote this review. The scenes between Diana and Steve do a good job of capturing the sparkle of that pairing, even if somehow the sparkle isn’t sustained. There is a nice start to a friendship between Diana and Barbara but then there is just so much plot business that it kind of gets lost. And there are some fun action stretches, nothing quite as fun as the No Man’s Land scene from the first movie, but nice work, to include an intro that gives us little-girl-Diana in Themyscira and brings back Robin Wright and Connie Nelson. (Much like Thor and Asgard in the Thor movies, Diana in Themyscira feels like a stretch where the movie really knows itself and what it’s doing.) And we get the golden armor that has been part of this movie’s marketing, though not for nearly as long as you’d hope given the general coolness of it.

Wonder Woman 1984 is a sequel to maybe the best recent vintage DC Comics movie and one that had a lot of Strong Female Lead hopes-and-dreams stuff attached to it. Living up to that is a tall order, and this movie doesn’t quite. But that’s not going to stop me from watching it, or at least parts of it, again. B-

Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Patty Jenkins with a screenplay by Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham, Wonder Woman 1984 is two hours and 31 minutes long and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.

It was a horrible and great year for movies

What even is a 2020 movie?

This year’s Oscar race will include films that at least dip a toe in theaters by Feb. 28. I spent at least the first month of this year watching 2019 movies as they trickled into local theaters. And then there’s that long stretch, between March 13 and right this moment, when I have seen exactly three movies on a big screen. Do all those small-screen movies — some great, some blech, some perfectly shrug whatever — count as part of 2020 cinema?

Yes. Like Stephen King used to say when he’d do his annual favorite film list in Entertainment Weekly, whatever we see this year is on this list for a great movie of this year. And, as much as I love the hot popcorn and cool air conditioning of a movie theater, it hasn’t been all bad for movies in 2020. After an Oscar season that was excitingly accessible, it was a silver lining to the terrible 2020 cloud to have movies like First Cow, Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Hamilton available to view as they were having their moment, instead of waiting for films to filter out of the big cities. And those movies are on a pretty long list of good and great films that came out this year. Finding a way to balance the fact that Ammonite is available to every interested Kate Winslet fan (I haven’t had a chance to rent that VOD release yet) and that most movie-lovers are also movie-theater-lovers and want them to survive will be the challenge of 2021 and beyond. (Some new movies are still hitting area theaters before they get to small screens, including Christmas Day releases News of the World and Promising Young Woman, but, of course, big budget theater-only releases are still far fewer than normal.)

But first, we have to get through winter.

What follows are my picks, not just for the best films of 2020 (endless movies also means there are endless movies to catch up on and plenty of 2020 greats that are still on my to-watch list) but for the films that might offer you some fun, escape, artistry and entertainment as we wait out the socially distanced season and hope for a return to more robust movie theater offerings sometime soon. (The streaming locations listed here are based on December offerings, which may change in January.)

• Excellent movies I saw this year that are technically 2019 movies: Portrait of a Lady on Fire was totally robbed during last year’s award season; it is beautiful, swoony, bittersweet and at times haunting (currently on Hulu). I didn’t get to review Little Women, the adaptation of the classic novel by director Greta Gerwig, before I did my 2019-in-review roundup; this is a perfect movie (currently on Starz but I may have to spring for the two-movie bundle that also comes with the 1994 Little Women and sells for $16.98 on iTunes).1917(currently on Showtime and available for rent or purchase) was also a basically perfect movie that dazzles with the visual feat of a “one-shot” movie that takes soldiers through battlefields on a mission during World War I. If you want to make an argument for the supremacy of seeing a movie in theaters, 1917 does a good job of selling that point.

•2020 movies that literally saved my life: I mean “literally” in the figurative sense though an argument for “literal” could be made as the precious moments of peace and quiet these movies brought to homebound children in the spring and summer of 2020 meant a calm cup of coffee or some other sustenance-providing thing for me. Trolls World Tour(available on Hulu and Peacock if you didn’t buy it the second it appeared on iTunes) may not be the best movie of 2020 but who cares, all of my children were happy to watch it the first time it came out and continue to watch it now. It is a bright and fun animated movie with cute music and, if you need to feel like your kids’ media has merit, it has some decent stuff about celebrating differences.

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmaggedon(available on Netflix) is another movie that kept all the kids entertained, but this one has legitimate claim for a “year’s best animation” prize. From Aardman Animation of Wallace & Gromit fame, this tale of sheep and their fellow farm animals encountering a friendly young alien is sweet, well-crafted and full of funny sci-fi Easter eggs. It’s also basically language-free and very little-kid friendly.

• More good kid fare: The Willoughbys (on Netflix) is a beautifully animated story about four siblings trying to dump their neglectful parents and learning to appreciate their kind nanny. It has shades of A Series of Unfortunate Events and just the right amount of Ricky Gervais. Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe(on Disney+) is another great movie about siblings working together that called to mind The Simpsons in its ability to pack every minute and every frame with jokes (though still with the right amount of slapstick for the little viewers). The eight-minute short Once Upon a Snowman (also Disney+) shows us snowman Olaf’s adventures between his “Let It Go” creation and his finding Anna.

• Add this to the family holiday rotation: Eleventy bazillion Christmas movies hit screens this year but here are three that are worth holding on to for next year — Jingle Jangle(on Netflix), a fun musical about a toymaker and his plucky granddaughter; Lego Star Wars Holiday Special (Disney+), totally great use of both Lego and fan-service, andMariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special (AppleTV+), which is like the grown-up (but family-friendly) version of Elmo’s Christmas Countdown (and both feature Jennifer Hudson!).

• Excellent movies I’ll never watch again: A movie can be great and a stone cold bummer at the same time. Thus, Never Rarely Sometimes Always with its heartbreaking performance by Sidney Flanigan as a young woman who needs abortion services but runs into so many obstacles is definitely on my list for 2020’s best and I don’t think I can put myself through seeing it again. (It’s on HBO Max and available for purchase.) Another movie great at stoking rage is The Assistant, a quiet film about a young woman working her first job for an unseen but monstrous movie producer boss. (It’s currently on Hulu and available for rent or purchase.)

I doubt I’ll bring myself to watch The Invisible Man again. Elisabeth Moss brings genuine terror not to the idea of an invisibility suit in the wrong hands but to the toll of domestic violence and, sure, this is one of those Universal Pictures horror movies but Moss deserves some awards attention for her top-shelf performance. (Available on HBO Max and for purchase.)Blow the Man Down is a smart movie with excellent performances (Sophie Lowe, Morgan Saylor and, as always, Margo Martindale) and a Coen Brothers-y feel (it’s available on Amazon Prime) that feels like an atmospheric mystery novel read in one sitting.

• Pretty good middle-of-the-road movies: We need not just great movies but pretty good movies that might be able to stand up to casual rewatching.

Netflix has a fair amount of these offerings. I have already rewatched parts of Will Ferrell’s wacky comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. I liked the Charlize Theron superhero movie (based on a Greg Rucka comic) The Old Guard and truly hope there will be a sequel. And I wouldn’t mind a next chapter of the kinda stupid Mark Wahlberg-fronted Spenser Confidential, an upbeat procedural that shares some DNA with the TV show Spenser for Hire.

The “Tom Hanks on a Navy boat in World War II” movie Greyhound (Apple TV+) delivers exactly on that premise. I liked Melissa McCarthy in Superintelligence (HBO Max); it might not rival Spy or The Heat but it’s an enjoyable comedy. Love and Monsters(available for rent or purchase) is an optimistic movie about the end of the world. I’d even put Birds of Prey (now on HBO Max) in that category, especially if you can fast-forward to the last half-hour.

• Pretty-good good movies: A rung up, you’ll find movies like Valley Girl (available on Hulu), a jukebox musical update of the 1983 film. An American Pickle (HBO Max), the “two Seth Rogens” movie was funny, sure, but also sweet and contemplative. The Sunlit Night (now on Hulu) has some of those qualities as well, and a solid Jenny Slate performance. I liked the indie Buffaloed (also on Hulu and available for rent or purchase) for its spunkiness. Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks (Apple TV+) was a crisp gin and tonic of a dramady. Unpregnant (HBO Max) is the comedy, Booksmart-ish version of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, based around a sweet friendship. Vampires vs. The Bronx (Netflix) offers fun horror and something to say.

• Great docs: This was a great year for documentaries and at the front of the pack is Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (on Netflix) that is about a camp for kids and teens with disabilities in upstate New York in the mid-20th century but sprawls to cover the political movement for legal protections for the rights of people with disabilities (and introduced me to American hero Judith Heumann). Another solid Netflix offering is Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado, which brings us the life of a hugely popular TV personality. In Netflix’s Dick Johnson Is Dead, a filmmaker deals with the dementia and mortality of her beloved father with grace and humor.

On AppleTV+, Boys State gives us the best and worst of present-day American politics as filtered through a high school government program in Texas.

And speaking of young nerds (and I mean that in the very best sense), watch a pre-Hamilton Lin-Manuel Miranda and his crew of improv rappers make theater and song and comedy in We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.

• More of the best movies I saw this year:The best movie I saw in theaters this year (at least, of 2020 offerings) wasEmma (currently on HBO Max and also available for rent or purchase), a beautiful and stylish-looking and cleverly cast and acted adaptation of the Jane Austen novel.

The 40-Year-Old Version (Netflix), about a woman reinventing herself, and The Vast of Night (Amazon Prime), a sci-fi suspense film, are two movies with an indie feel that nevertheless earn their place next to any glossy mainstream fare.

Palm Springs (Hulu) was one of those woulda-been theatrical releases that wound up on a streaming site, which means I’ll be able to watch this charming rom-com with Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti again and again.

Remember when everybody was raving about First Cow(currently on Showtime; available for rent or purchase)? They are right! This Western about friendship and baked goods is gentle and charming.

Enola Holmes (Netflix) puts the plucky little sister of Sherlock and Mycroft in the middle of her own mystery to solve (and the women’s suffrage movement). This bubbly action and adventure has a sweet story about mothers and daughters at its heart.

Mank (Netflix) is the most awards-season movie to ever awards-season with its Old Hollywood setting and its behind-the-scenes look at the writing of Citizen Kane using Kane-like visuals but it also would actually deserve those awards for its technical and performance feats.

Speaking of eyeball-grabbing style, Black Is King,Beyonce’s visual album riff on The Lion King, is absolutely beautiful (visually, musically, fashion-ally) and heartfelt (on Disney+).

Make room on the Oscar nominations list for all kinds of entries for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which features what appears to be the last Chadwick Boseman performance we’ll ever get and another knock-out Viola Davis role.

Two more movies with standout storytelling and performances: Shirley(on Hulu and available for rent or purchase) a gothic thriller mixed with a Shirley Jackson biopic starring Elisabeth Moss, and Spike Lee’sDa 5 Bloods(Netflix), another chance to see strong work from Chadwick Boseman.

• Absolute best time with a movie in 2020: Hamilton. As I said, what even is a 2020 movie? Can a filmed 2016 theatrical production count as a movie from this year? I say sure. Hamilton was a joy to watch (and rewatch; it’s available on Disney+). The experience of watching a Broadway play with its original cast and shot in a way that made it feel alive and not locked on a stage (even though this was on a stage it felt less boxed in than, say, Netflix’s adaptation of the musical The Prom) is maybe one of the most optimistic parts of whatever happens next in movies. More art to more people — let’s hope we can find a way to have that and our movie theater popcorn too.

2021 ‘at’ the movies
Who the heck knows what 2021 will bring, but here are some early 2021 movies that I’m looking forward to:
• One Night in Miami Directed by Regina King, this movie tells the story of a fictional meeting between Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown, according to Amazon, where it will be available on Jan. 15.
• The Little Things This Denzel Washington movie is slated to be released by Warner Bros. in theaters and on HBO Max on Jan. 29.
• Supernova This movie also sounds like it has awards potential with Stanley Tucci playing a man with early onset dementia and Colin Firth playing his longtime partner. It has a Jan. 29 theatrical release date.
• Nomadland Based on the nonfiction book of the same name, this movie is showing up on some top 10 lists and earning Frances McDormand buzz for her performance. The movie currently has a theatrical release date of Feb. 19; no word yet on streaming access.
• The Many Saints of Newark This Sopranos prequel movie is another Warner Bros. release and could hit movie theaters (and HBO Max) March 12.
• In the Heights This movie was on my list of things I was excited about for 2020 last year and I am hoping it will see the light of screens this year. Currently, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s pre-Hamilton musical is slated to hit theater screens (and HBO Max) on June 18.

Featured photo: Trolls World Tour