The Top Ten (new) movies I saw in 2020

 In a year of much screen time, here are the Top Ten (new) movies I saw in 2020:

1917 

Sam Mendes's WWI movie came out of nowhere - had he ever in his long career done a movie so daring and innovative? - and will astonish and engage any viewer, no matter how many war movies you've seen, or missed. 

23 hours to Kill 

You would think that, eventually Jerry Seinfeld would run out of material, as he’s made his long and brilliant career based on commentary about the minutia of daily life, but his hour-long comedy special on Netflix shows that he continue to work miracles. 

The 40-Year-Old Version

When I'd first heard about this Netflix film (written, directed, starring playwright Radha Blank) I thought, despite strong reviews, that this would be a film for which lI would not be the ideal audience; all the more props to the amazing R Blank in that I was totally captivated, entertained, and moved by her really intelligent and imaginative film.

 Ali Wong: Hard-Knock Wife 

This spirited comedy special is terrific and memorable not only for Wong’s fantastically energetic performance and her terrific comic timing but also for the range of her materials, which includes marriage equality, breast-feeding, c-sections, universal paid maternity leave and, on the lower end of the spectrum, fart jokes.

Dick Johnson is Dead

Kristen Johnson's funny, original, and moving documentary about the last years of her father's life has many surprises and somehow manages to avoid the lachrymose sensibility that pervades many such projects. 

The Farewell 

Lulu Wang's film, with a great lead performance by rising star Awkwafina as a 20-something Chinese-American would-be writer in NYC, is a movie full of multiple culture-clashes and generational clashes, family dramas and mini-dramas, and some hilarious and riotous segments.

Mank

This David Fincher (dir.) & his (late) father Jack Fincher (screenplay) tells of Herbert Mankiewicz, a troubled, alcoholic, charming roundtable drinking buddy and Hollywood wash-up until he got tabbed by the 24-year-old Orson Welles to write the screenplay that would become Citizen Kane.

Nanette

Hannah Gadsby’s hour-long live-from-Sydney comic stand-up show is, at the end, a knockout —  a most unusual comic gig that mixes humor – (much of it about Gadsby’s coming out as a Lesbian in her mid-30s) – with some unusual comic riffs; who’d have thought you could work into a standup show a long and hilarious series of riffs on art history?

Pain and Glory 

Pedro Almodovar’s film is a rich and complex narrative of a type that we don’t see often today, at least in films from the U.S.: a story about a 60-something film director at a point of crisis in his life and his career

Young Ahmed

The Dardennes brothers’ latest film is a bit of a break for them: same territory and milieu (the industrial territories of Belgium and northern France) but focused on a teenager who has become absorbed in a conservative Muslim mosque whose young and charismatic leader has seemingly pushed this vulnerable young man to criminal extremes. 

And a special note to 3 excellent streaming versions of three plays: the impossible to overpraise Broadway musical Hamilton; the Bridge Theatre (London) production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the most exciting and imaginative Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen; and the Met Opera live streaming broadcast of Porgy & Bess.