The 25 Best Films Of 2020 You Didn’t See - Page 2 of 2

“Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets”
Filmmaking duo Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross have been quietly amassing a following over the years, with singular documentaries like “Western” and the David Byrne concert flick, “Contemporary Color.” In their latest experiment in vérité, “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets,” the brothers document the final hours of service inside a beloved Las Vegas dive bar and the motley crew of barflies and locals that gather to say goodbye. At least that’s what the Ross’s would like you to think. In reality, the Roaring 20s bar is in New Orleans, and the eccentric group of regulars is mostly comprised of complete strangers. The brothers kept the cameras rolling for eighteen hours straight, supplying their cast of first-time and local theater actors with enough booze to keep things interesting. The beauty of “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” is that you can watch the film with or without prior knowledge of the artifice on display and have two very different viewing experiences, neither of which take away from the intoxicating brilliance of what the filmmakers have concocted. While some have pointed out the comparisons to the work of directors like Sean Baker, it might feel more appropriate to think of the film as something a guy like John Cassavetes might conceive of if he were alive and making films today. “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” is radiating with life, humanity, and tragedy; a film that will have you longing for late-night conversations with strangers and the communities we build in our most beloved public spaces. – MR

The Climb
When an American indie film debuts at Cannes, not Sundance, that’s definitely an eye-opener that grabs attention. “The Climb” is that rare film, a buddy comedy directed by first-time feature-length filmmaker Michael Angelo Covino, starring Covino and his best friend Kyle Marvin. Delays and COVID-19 delayed it more than a year (it premiered Un Certain Regard in 2019) and likely lost much of its buzz, but it is such an original. Formally audacious, though subtle—a lot of long takes, perfectly composed frames—”The Climb” is an interesting marriage of French and American sensibilities. The French aspect is the droll, deadpan humor ala Pierre Etaix and Jacques Tati, and the way the frame (and what’s not in it), is used for hilariously sly comedic effect. The American side, is the idea of toxic masculinity and toxic men, but flipped to explore the idea of toxic male friendships steeped in narcissism, insecurity, and fear of losing a soul mate. Deeply overlooked this year, “The Climb,” is laugh-riot and a well-crafted one at that. We can’t wait to see what they do next. – Rodrigo Perez

“Collective”
From “All the President’s Men” to “Zodiac” and the recent Oscar-winner “Spotlight,” great films about journalism have remained a staple in the cinematic landscape for quite some time. The best of them can show us the grueling procedural side of the job, while illuminating how rewarding the occasional victory can be. It’s safe to say that last year’s Romanian documentary “Collective” can now officially join the canon too. Like a large percentage of films on this list, “Collective” was even more infuriating and powerful for how tragically timely and urgent it was. A bone-dry look at what happens when a Bucharest-based sports newspaper discovers a massive cover-up in the Romanian healthcare system that led to numerous unnecessary deaths in the wake of a tragic nightclub fire, “Collective” unfolds into something unexpected and unprecedented. Director Alexander Nanou manages to take a tale of healthcare corruption – the discovery of Hexi Pharma supplying hospitals with purposefully over-diluted disinfectants which have led to the mistreatment and deaths of hundreds – and allow it to seamlessly unfold into a story of government incompetence and a system that must place value on profits over human life to thrive. Sound familiar? Devoid of a dramatic score or talking heads using sound bytes to manipulate the audience, Nanou values the subjects and their quest for truth enough to do the heavy lifting and keep us absorbed in the material. While it may not offer a happy ending, it does offer a sobering finale that reminds us that in the era of “fake news” and sky-rocketing corporate wealth, the only way we can overcome is to remember that we’re all victims of a system that wants to keep us divided. – MR

Color Out Of Space” 
In 2018, Panos Cosmatos’Mandy” accomplished something that very few films starring Nicolas Cage have been able to accomplish: instead of pandering to Cage’s most meme-able tendencies, Cosmatos harnessed this misunderstood screen icon’s inimitable persona at face value before proceeding to fashion a beautiful, transportive, hauntingly psychedelic drive-in movie experience around it. Cage has always been one of our more unpredictable leading men, and in the delightfully daffy Lovecraft adaptation “Color Out of Space,” cult filmmaker Richard Stanley offers his wild-eyed star what is unquestionably his best, battiest part since that 2018 cult-classic-in-the-making. Here, Cage plays Nathan Gardner: paterfamilias of a hippie-like family of four living on a secluded, bucolic farmhouse who starts bearing witness to some strange, frightening happenings after a meteorite pulsing with electric lava lamp colors crash-lands in the front yard. If it’s nutty midnight-movie madness you seek, Stanley’s movie was one of 2020’s premiere oddities: a kind of acid-brained live-action comic book, a foggy stoner’s mélange of goo, screams, otherworldly hues, plus a shimmering, metallic synth score by “Hereditary’sColin Stetson, and blessed scenes where Cage extolls the virtue of milking alpacas. In other words, it’s the rare contemporary B-movie that actually earns its cult bonafides. – NL

Dick Johnson Is Dead
Since COVID-19 hit earlier this year, our collective American relationship with death has changed. Death is now an increasingly unavoidable fact of life for everyday Americans: people are saying goodbye to their loved ones over the phone and via Zoom, and yet, lest we forget, there is no one definitively correct way to respond to death. The tremendous “Dick Johnson Is Dead” is documentarian Kristen Johnson’s attempt to wrestle with the mortality of her own father, the titular, totally adorable Dick Johnson. Dick himself is quite a character: pure, good-humored, and uniquely lovable in the way all grandpas are often lovable. He’s a great subject for a documentary, and were it not for him and his daughter’s thrilling proclivity for blurring the timid borders that separate fiction and nonfiction, “Dick Johnson Is Dead” might come across as a glorified home movie. Instead, Johnson’s film is about the myriad of ways in which we as a species respond to being shuffled off our mortal coil. At the end of the day, though, this deeply existential black-comedy deconstruction is an unorthodox love letter to her father, and during a time when people are missing the opportunity to create new memories with their loved ones (for obvious safety reasons), “Dick Johnson Is Dead” is a brazen hymn to how memories can live on after a person has taken leave of this earth. – NL 

Education: Small Axe
Of all of the films from Steve McQueen’sSmall Axe,” we saw “Mangrove” and “Lover’s Rock” (justifiably) end up on many critics’ end-of-the-year Best of 2020 lists. While we’re not trying to take anything away from those towering, career-best works, we’re also here to argue that some of the later “Small Axe” films were unfairly overlooked, none more so than “Education,” which is nothing less than the most tender work from the otherwise severe McQueen. “Education” is an intimately personal film: the story of precocious 11-year old London schoolboy Kingsley (a remarkable Kenyah Sandy), whose dreams of studying space travel are tragically squashed when his school exposes its racist, segregated mindset by transferring him to a new class for students that are purported “educationally challenged.” “Education” is a gorgeous end to an anthology that lends humanity and dynamism to an under-depicted demographic: it suggests that Kingsley, in spite of all the hardships he and his family face, is the future, and the film’s unusually hopeful, outward-gazing climax not only suggests that McQueen can work wonders in a more gentle register, but it casts the entirety of “Small Axe” itself in a thrilling new light. – NL 

Ema
Pablo Larraín is one of our reigning cinematic masters of pure discombobulation: his movies are engineered to draw divergent responses, and watching them, one senses that Larraín would rather die than make something that could be described as pedestrian. This applies whether the director happens to be raising a middle finger to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (“No”), or turning what could have also been just another Academy-friendly biopic (“Jackie”) into a shattering contemplation of how the most famous person in the world at the time would process trauma. Not many folks in the U.S. saw Larraín’s latest, the colorful psychedelic freakout that was “Ema,” this year; that’s because the film didn’t have any kind of traditional rollout, and was instead largely watched by a devoted contingent of film-lovers on MUBI. On paper, “Ema” is the story of a dancer, her lover, and their troubled son. That aforementioned description does nothing to convey the strange, strange spell cast by Larraín here: if any 2020 movie could be accurately described as a “vision,” it’s “Ema,” which unfolds as an unholy crossbreed of hyper-kinetic dance flick, arthouse abstraction, and museum-installation sensorial trippiness. “Ema” is a disarming and beautiful study of female liberation and male impotence, and a film that no one other than Pablo Larraín could have made. – NL

Ham on Rye”
There are few genres as ubiquitous as the coming of age film. From Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” to the late-’90s wave of gross-out teen comedies and the recent surge of female-led hits like “Lady Bird” and “Booksmart,” the genre is well-trodden territory for both mainstream and independent directors alike. Thirty-year-old director Tyler Taormina is well aware of the tropes of the genre, and uses them to the most unlikely advantage in his microbudget debut, “Ham on Rye.” In what might be the most subversive coming of age film to come around in decades, Taormina’s debut tells the very loose story of a group of teens whose fates will be decided by a bizarre rite of passage that involves a local deli and a dance-off that’s reminiscent of “The Bachelor.” That might not sound like the most enticing set-up to most, but the plot takes a backseat to vibes in Taormina’s suburban bubble. Produced on what would be most indie films’ craft service budget, “Ham on Rye” is impossible to boil down to a simple plot, and even more impossible to shake. What begins as a hangout flick in the tradition of Linklater’s ’90s classic, albeit shot like “The Picnic at Hanging Rock” through the hazy lens of a vintage Nickelodeon series, soon unravels into something far more melancholy and even sinister. A startlingly original vision of youthful nostalgia and the unstoppable forces of time, “Ham on Rye” is an experience we hope audiences can discover in 2021 and the years to come. [editor’s note: we’re slightly fudging this one, as it comes out on MUBI, January 11, but it was also on many top 10 lists of 2020 like the New Yorker, so that’s our excuse]- MR

“Jungleland”
While we always want to champion filmmakers who take risks, there’s still something to be said for a familiar story done just right. That’s exactly what director Max Winkler did last year when he pivoted from the darkly comedic palette of films like “Ceremony” and the Zoey Deutch-breakout “Flower,” into more straight-up dramatic fare with the boxing drama “Jungleland.” Winkler’s take on the material follows two Massachusetts-bred brothers, a down on his luck boxer, Lion (Jack O’Connell) and his hustler brother, Stanley (a mesmerizing Charlie Hunnam) in their attempts to break free of the poverty and string of bad luck that’s defined their lives. Finding themselves indebted to a local mobster (Jonathan Majors), the brothers are forced to deliver a mysterious young woman (a ferocious Jessica Barden) to San Francisco’s Chinatown, where Lion will have a shot at redemption in the city’s annual bare-knuckle championship. Clocking in at a lean 90 minutes, “Jungleland” hits all the beats of your classic underdog story (horribly impulsive decisions, one last fight, thick East Coast accents) but Winkler’s work here is undeniably powerful. He knows he’s not breaking the mold, and therefore his allegiance is smartly with his trifecta of gifted actors. While O’Connell is trekking in familiar territory, he’s nevertheless fantastic, and Barden continues to add more pitch-perfect performances to her burgeoning career, it’s Hunnam that truly walks away with the film. An actor who’s long been stuck in failed franchises and self-serious machismo roles, it’s exhilarating to watch Hunnam own the screen like this. A downright revelation here, it’s the kind of performance that hopefully elevates Hunnam into the Jude Law/Colin Farrell second stage of his career he’s long deserved. – MR

“Martin Eden”
“Young man dreams of being a writer, struggles to find success, lashes out at those around him” might not sound like something the world needs in 2020, but that would also be an extremely reductive way of describing the plot of “Martin Eden.” Loosely adapting the story of the same name by Jack London, Italian director Pietro Marcello introduces us to the impossibly handsome proletariat Martin Eden (played by the impossibly handsome Luca Marinelli) as he dreams of becoming a successful writer, but is held back by a lack of education and financial stability. In other words, Martin Eden is poor and living in a capitalist world that makes it nearly impossible for working-class types to balance their dreams and passions with the economic reality of their livelihoods. When we think of films about struggling writers today, we think of the seemingly never-ending supply of twee pity parties that have a special slot reserved every year for them on the festival circuit. The fact that Marcello has made a vital film about a writer in 2020 speaks to his ability as a filmmaker to accurately portray the hypocrisies of being a young idealist and to the possessed, remarkable performance of Marinelli. In fact, Marcello’s film feels like the perfect film for creative types living in this political moment in time. It’s the cinematic answer to those frustratingly tone-deaf “30 Under 30” articles we get every year that fail to provide us with that one key piece of information: they had rich parents. “Martin Eden” is a timeless portrayal of the proletariat’s internalized conflict over preserving their authenticity while enjoying the opulent pleasures of the upper class. – MR

The Nest
The trailers for Sean Durkin’sThe Nest” almost made the director’s follow-up to “Martha Marcy May Marlene” look like a slow-simmering arthouse horror flick. To some degree, we understand the marketing decision; even if “The Nest” has more in common with the dread-suffused marital-breakdown dramas of the ’60s and ’70s than it does with, say, “The Lodge,” you’ve still got to sell the movie to audiences. That said, there is a gnawing sense of horror that exists at the brittle, frigid core of “The Nest”: the horror of wanting more for yourself than you probably need. Durkin’s uncompromising meltdown of a film is a riveting cautionary tale that warns against the addictive nature of material consumption and pursuit. Audiences should check out “The Nest” for its immaculate sense of formalism, Durkin’s directorial mastery, and the deft use of period pop tunes throughout. That said, Durkin’s latest also happens to be one of the year’s most well-acted pictures. A heroically pathetic Jude Law continues to prove that he’s far more interesting as a handsome, grinning villain than as a “traditional leading man,” whatever that means anymore, while Carrie Coon is almost annoyingly brilliant as the long-suffering wife of Law’s character, enough so that you almost forget that the “Gone Girl” actress will doubtlessly be overlooked by the Academy for her next-level career-best work here.  – NL

She Dies Tomorrow
There is a commanding sense of rupture and catharsis in “She Dies Tomorrow,” the latest from still-ascendant indie genius Amy Seimetz, that seeps into the dark corners of the viewer’s mind and takes root there, much like the all-consuming unease that gives this disturbing film its narrative jet fuel. “She Dies Tomorrow” is one of those movies, like last year’s “Palm Springs,” that feels all but tailor-made for the COVID-19 era, almost by accident. The film is Seimetz’s rumination on the power of obsessive fear and incapacitating paranoia, and its disorienting rhythms are enhanced by her signature, shiv-sharp penchant for destabilization and fatalism. “She Dies Tomorrow” is very clearly informed by Seimetz’s own experiences with anxiety and mental health struggles, and the idea that stress can spread like a virus, infecting everyone you come into contact with, arguably hits even harder at the start of 2021 then it did last year. “She Dies Tomorrow” refuses to hold its audience’s hand, but Seimetz’s enviable command of the movie’s striking visual language, and the screenplay’s vision of a world where soul-gnawing distress pulverizes any semblance of rational thought, make it the scariest movie of last year that no one saw. – NL

Sorry We Missed You
The title of Ken Loach’s latest, “Sorry We Missed You,” is twofold. On a superficial level, “Sorry We Missed You” is an indifferent adage plastered on the doors of various Londoners when they miss a package in the mail (this is significant inasmuch as this film’s protagonist, a blue-collar striver named Ricky, ekes out a paltry living delivering overnight packages). On a more meta-textual level, “Sorry We Missed You” sounds like a half-assed apology issued from the 1% to the suffering proletariat: in other words, sorry we don’t pay you a fair wage, sorry you have to endure a substandard quality of basic living… sorry we missed you! Even more so than the great director’s last film “I, Daniel Blake,” “Sorry We Missed You” is one righteously pissed-off movie: it’s another one of Loach’s pulverizing studies of poverty, a film that understands that the demands of the modern labor force often compel working individuals to spread themselves too thin, greatly damaging their overall quality of life as a result. The characters in Loach’s film lash out at each other because they are exhausted by the unceasing vocational grind that has come to define their lives, but the director’s signature pessimism, though hard to take at times, feels perfectly suited to our current national moment. – NL

“Swallow”
One of the many great films that appeared to get swallowed up at the beginning of the pandemic was Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ debut feature “Swallow.” Aided by stunning anamorphic cinematography by Katelin Arizmendi and one of the great performances of 2020 in Haley Bennett, Mirabella-Davis’ film tells the unusual story of a newly pregnant housewife (Bennett) who becomes irrationally obsessed with consuming inanimate objects. Taking what could have been a particularly gruesome “My Strange Addiction” episode and turning it into an oddly moving look at how our traumas manifest themselves in often unexplained ways, “Swallow” is able to move seamlessly from stomach-churning horror to unexpected tale of addiction. The empathy that Mirabella-Davis feels for his lead is on full display, which allows for an actress as brilliant and underused as Bennett to fully thrive in a way not yet seen. Popping up in thankless roles in last year’s “The Devil All the Time” and the poverty-porn extravaganza, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Bennett is an actress we’ve had our eye for years, but it wasn’t until “Swallow” that audiences were able to see the gifts she’s always possessed. A film that you can recommend to your horror-hungry friends in the mood for some Cronenberg-esque body horror or anyone who’s ever dealt with some form of addiction or severe mental illness, “Swallow” is a deceptively layered character study about facing our demons and more importantly, a woman’s right to choose. – MR

Time
Time” is an elliptical, affecting snapshot of the life of Sibil Fox Richardson, known to most as “Fox Rich,” and how she has tirelessly worked to free her unjustly incarcerated husband, Robert, convicted of a hastily-conceived robbery that was supposed to fund the couple’s dreams of starting a hip-hop clothing brand. In “Time,” as befits its title, we see years go by – there is something intangibly haunting about seeing Sibil’s face, and the faces of her adorable children, grow and change until the visible effects of years gone by having begun to take their toll. At its most powerful, “Time” summons the inimitable grit of Charles Burnett: it is less a standard-boilerplate work of nonfiction storytelling and more of a glimpse of a moment in time (duh), following this incredible woman and her family as they toil thanklessly in a seemingly never-ending fight for justice. What “Time” captures so beautifully is the multifaceted humanity of people who are often looked at by members of the white, moneyed status quo as something less than human. Robert may be a criminal in the eyes of the law, but he is also someone’s lover and best friend, and a hero to his children. “Time” is well worth your time: it’s a touching and tough-minded ode to resilience in the name of negligent injustice. – NL

Tommaso
The mesmeric, haunting “Tommaso” might just be Abel Ferrara’s most relaxed movie to date; it’s also one where the autobiographical parallels are all but impossible to ignore. “Tommaso” is about a tortured male creative living in Rome with his wife and daughter, who, in the film, are played by Ferrara’s own wife and daughter (it should be noted that “Tommaso” was also shot in the city Ferrara currently resides in). Regular Ferrara muse Willem Dafoe seethes with a sense of bruised, pent-up volatility, playing the title character, a sober addict in recovery. “Tommaso,” at times, feels like Ferrara doing his spin on Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory,” but with his signature, serrated edge and propensity towards histrionic mania. And yet, what a captivating, elusive, poetic movie this is: it’s almost amusing to consider that the most shocking thing about Ferrara’s loose-limbed character study is how tranquil it feels. For the most part, “Tommaso” is a serene, meandering realist drama that’s a far cry from the notorious likes of “Bad Lieutenant” and “Fear City.” “Tommaso” isn’t for everyone – Ferrara’s movies rarely are – but it’s a welcome reminder that we are all quite lucky to be living in a world where Abel Ferrara, magnificent lunatic that he is, is still making movies– NL

“True History Of The Kelly Gang”
Justin Kurzel’s brand of cinema – “Snowtown” and “Macbeth” in particular – is one of blood, mud, and cruelty. Even if the director stumbled with his somewhat overblown “Assassin’s Creed” adaptation, the ferocious Aussie auteur found himself very much back on successfully familiar turf with this year’s “True History of the Kelly Gang,” a rip-snorting, inventively ghastly period yarn about Australia’s most infamous folk hero. Anyone looking for the muted anguish that coursed through Kurzel’s prior films may have found themselves baffled by the more uncouth tone of this new movie: this is a swaggering bit of mythic-outlaw reconstruction that’s more indebted to John Hillcoat’sThe Proposition” than “Picnic at Hanging Rock.” “True History of the Kelly Gang” showcases what is no doubt Kurzel’s most impressive ensemble to date: Russell Crowe, Essie Davis, Charlie Hunnam, Nicholas Hoult, Thomasin McKenzie, Earl Cave (son of Nick) and “1917” breakout George MacKay as the titular bandit. There’s a sneering rock n’ roll mystique to the movie’s feral tone, lest one mistake Kurzel’s latest for another plodding period crime yarn. “True History of the Kelly Gang” is pungent, alive, and single-mindedly intense: its punk rock revisionist history to the nth degree, and even on the rare occasion when Kurzel’s film gets away from him, it is nevertheless an immense pleasure to see this brilliant director getting back to doing what he does best. – NL

The Vast Of Night
The Vast Of Night” is a breathtakingly stylized lo-fi genre hybrid that does a lot with very little. This deeply creepy piece of uncanny-valley termite art is awash in the fear of a bygone age; even its most innocuous frames drip with a uniquely scintillating version of midcentury dread. The film’s tone is considerably indebted to creature features and assorted B-movies– the kind you’d typically see at the drive-in at midnight if you were an avid film freak in the ’60s and ’70s – which is to say nothing of the filmmakers being rather obviously influenced by Roger Corman and the original “Twilight Zone.” “The Vast Of Night” spins fresh gold out of both sci-fi and horror movie tropes in a fashion that is refreshing in its sincerity, and we would implore those who let this spectacular oddity slip under their proverbial radars to seek it out, if for no other reason than there’s been nothing like it all year. Director Andrew Patterson gets a surprising amount of mileage out of some pleasingly familiar ingredients (“there’s something in the sky” is a phrase that gets repeated more than once, and it takes on a frightening new meaning every time we hear it), and after languishing in the John Carpenter-indebted spookiness of his formidable debut, we’re convinced this director may have a masterpiece in him. – NL

“Zombi Child”
Another 2019 festival genre-bender with colonialist roots, Bertrand Bonnello’s coming-of-age mood piece “Zombi Child” feels like the culminating work of the director’s decade-run of politically tinged tales of horror. Beginning in Haiti in 1962, “Zombi Child” shows us a young man brought back to life, only to find himself working the grueling sugarcane fields. Flashing forward 55 years to modern-day Paris, Bonnello then introduces us to a teenage Haitian immigrant on her first day at a private boarding school, where most of her classmates are predominantly white. Like his unforgettable 2011 film, “House of Tolerance,” Bonnello once again finds himself connecting the political threads of the past to the present, exchanging the 20th century-spanning tale of sex workers under the oppressions of capitalism to the colonizing of Black land and identity in 21st century Paris. While “Zombi Child” might not be as wholly successful as “House of Tolerance” or even his 2016 dissection of Gen-Z radicals attempting to overthrow a capitalist system in “Nocturama,” his latest outing maintains the brilliant ambition and auteurism he brings to every project. Even more so than his last several features, “Zombi Child” is almost all vibes. Here, Bonnello honors the quasi-girl power themes of other female-dominated horror films like “The Craft” but also suffuses the film with a sense of dread that’s impossible to shake. If you can get on the films occasionally jarring wavelength, you’ll be rewarded with a moody, atmospheric fable of the inherited traumas of racism. – MR

Read all our Best of 2020 coverage and Most Anticipated 2021 coverage here and here.