Andy's Top 10 of the Year So Far

Looking back at my favorite new releases in the time of Covid.

Man, it’s been a weird 6 months for movies (and everything else, obviously). We had a little over two months of movies in theaters and it’s been nothing but a chaotic mix of planned and unplanned streaming releases since. But hey, this weird no-man’s land moment in cinema history has also given us a glimpse at the near future of the medium, where the pool of new movies is rich with smaller films with bigger Hollywood movies making up the periphery. And since I typically like to take stock of what’s been good in the first half of the year anyway, I figured the time was right to indulge in a little list-making and see what’s really stuck with me in the months of “quaran-streaming.” 

So here are my 10 favorite movies of the year so far:

10. The Vast of Night

There’s nothing particularly new or revolutionary about The Vast of Night, a retro small-town alien invasion movie that explicitly tells the viewer it’s essentially a feature-length Twilight Zone or Outer Limits episode. But it’s meticulous camerawork, meditative editing style, pitch-perfect sound design, and luminous performances make it a special streaming experience. Lately I’ve been really interested in the idea of dialogue or voiceover or whatever else that evokes strong images in the viewer’s mind that may even be more potent than what they’re seeing onscreen. The Vast of Night plays with this type of visual language with great skill, and to great effect.

9. Blow the Man Down

Blow the Man Down is another under-the-radar Amazon Prime release that I plugged here at ESH in May. Here’s what I wrote about it:

“On the surface, Blow the Man Down may feel like “Fargo with Lobsters,” and there’s definitely a Coen Brothers-esque sensibility in there somewhere. But I’d describe it more as a “nautical noir-Western” of sorts, populated by characters (mostly women) who would normally be peripheral to, or even absent from a story like this.

Blow the Man Down was directed by two women (Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy). I only point that out because I recently plugged another film directed by two women, and I said something about that film that just as easily applies to this one — ‘Everything about it feels just familiar enough to be inviting, but also new and fresh in ways that defy description (turns out, that’s what happens when you let more women direct movies).’”

8. The Hunt

I tend to get suspicious of sensational narratives that circle a movie before it comes out, so I tried to go into The Hunt with an open mind. And it turned out to be pretty damn good. Not the best, but certainly a different experience than what the critical consensus seemed to describe. It isn’t the sharpest satire on the block, but it’s a worthwhile one nonetheless — a nasty, bloody exploitation romp about the way the right and the left mock and vilify each other on the Internet until we all become fucked up, dehumanized caricatures of ourselves. There’s plenty of eat-the-rich sentiment going on in this movie re: Parasite, Joker, Knives Out, Ready or Not, etc., pointed forcefully at the sociopathy of affluent liberalism this time around (which, as a lefty, I found to be fairly astute and weirdly … refreshing?). And Betty Gilpin is a goddamn treasure! Her performance alone is well-worth the price of admission, even if the blunt, painfully on-the-nose satire isn’t doing it for you.

7. The Gentlemen

Say what you will of Guy Ritchie, the guy knows how to make a fun-ass movie. The Gentlemen is a modern British gangster picture a la Ritchie’s Snatch and RocknRolla with an endlessly charming cast and a more reserved stylistic approach that neglects a lot of Ritchie’s flashier cinematic tricks, which in this case only helps. It’s just a fun time with cool actors in dope suits and “boxes of bush.” What’s not to like??

6. You Don’t Nomi

The best and most entertaining documentary I’ve seen this year, You Don’t Nomi takes a comprehensive look at Paul Verhoeven’s “trashterpiece” Showgirls, chronicling the circumstances and main players of the making of the film, its fraught release and critical backlash, and the varying, passionate schools of thought that have bubbled up around the film in the intervening two and a half decades.

From my plug of the film earlier this week:

“In her review of You Don’t Nomi for Nightmarish Conjurings, Breanna Whipple frames Showgirls as another Verhoeven film that’s ‘bathed deeply in satire while simultaneously mirroring the uncomfortable realities of western culture.’ This is pretty much how I see Showgirls, both as a Verhoeven stan and lover of beautiful trash. It amounts to something too weird and delightful to fit completely in the “so bad it’s good” category, but it’s also too trashy to be the “prestige drama” that the cast and crew may have thought they were making at the time. You Don’t Nomi gets this, and in painting a comprehensive portrait of Showgirls from various angles, some flattering others not so much, it captures the essence of the movie and challenges the ways we watch and think about movies in general.”

5. True History of the Kelly Gang

Here’s a snippet from my review of True History of the Kelly Gang for Nightmarish Conjurings:

“What are the power dynamics at play when it comes to deciding who is a criminal, who is the law, and who is more equipped to uphold justice? When you occupy a frontier, whose crimes are more worthy of condemnation — the “lawmen” who are also the most willing to exploit those beneath them or the young, poor punks who have no choice but to punch up any which way they can?

These are the questions that True History of the Kelly Gang asks with an epic 70s-character study narrative and rock ‘n roll, spaghetti western-meets-Ozploitation aesthetic. […] It’s a stimulating, emotionally gripping, and delightfully hyper-stylized period piece that lands somewhere between Peaky Blinders and Barry Lyndon.”

4. Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee does it again. Like all of his best work, Da 5 Bloods remixes both American and cinema history to tell an “undertold” story about the Black experience and the injustices we just can’t seem to face, let alone fix in this country. A meandering odyssey of four Black war vets who return to Vietnam to find the remains of their fallen squad leader and the buried gold fortune they hid together, Da 5 Bloods is in constant conversation with other Vietnam movies (Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon, etc.) as well as the historic shittiness of our present day. And it explores the heart-wrenching position of the forgotten Black Vietnam vet with great care, through an unforgettable performance by veteran-character actor Delroy Lindo. This one’s important. Watch it.

3. Bad Education

Based on the true story of the largest public school embezzlement scandal in American history, HBO’s Bad Education is the kind of insightful, dark character study we tend to think doesn’t exist anymore. Director Cory Finley follows his fantastic 2017 debut Thoroughbreds with a slow-burn piece that’s every bit as exhilarating as it is disturbing, with Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney both giving career-high performances. Here’s hoping we see more great stuff like this from Finley in the years to come.

2. Color Out of Space

Richard Stanley hadn’t made a narrative feature since he was infamously fired from The Island of Dr. Moreau in 1995. Color Out of Space, a gonzo sci-fi/horror spectacle based on an H.P. Lovecraft story that solidifies Nicolas Cage as the new Vincent Price, is a fucking triumphant return. It’s both a tonal and visual anomaly, melding Lovecraftian terror with Cage “camp”, and mixing CGI with practical effects and dank lighting to create beautiful, grotesque, uncanny images you haven’t quite seen in a movie before. Also, Tommy Chong is in it. It’s a glorious piece of genre filmmaking I’m happy I was able to see in theaters before the lockdown.

1. The Invisible Man

Over the course of this newsletter, I’ve periodically talked a big game about the death of Hollywood and how we all need to embrace truly independent filmmaking in the streaming age. But I also haven’t had a better time at the movies so far this year than actually being at the movies and watching The Invisible Man. Director Leigh Whannell (whose previous film, the sci-fi action sleeper Upgrade, is sure to become a cult classic) and star Elizabeth Moss deserve all the praise for making a fresh, frenetic, and prescient psychological sci-fi horror flick out of one of our oldest popular genre properties. From the slow-burn emotional first-half to the gorgeous action sequences of the second half to the De Palma-esque potboiler ending, The Invisible Man is the best popular cinema we could’ve hoped for in 2020.