Fright Club: Best Horror Movies of 2020

There were so many great films this year, and given the bizarre circumstances of planet earth, you may have missed most of them. So, while we’ll focus mainly on the top 10, there are others: Blood Quantum, Invisible Man, Relic, Amulet, Host, La Llorona, Get Duked!, Rent-a-Pal, Luz: The Flower of Evil, Swerve.

And please, if you have not sought it out yet, a film that made our Best of 2019 list—Devil to Pay—is finally available. So, while we won’t add it to this year’s list, please do watch it!

In the meantime, here are our picks for the ten best horror films of 2020.

10. His House

A remarkable braiding of human tragedy, global political peril and traditional ghost story, co-writer/director Remi Weekes’s His House was one of 2020’s great surprises. Two powerful lead performances from Sope Dirisu and Lovecraft Country’s Wumni Mosaku pull you into the story of South Sudanese refugees Vol (Dirisu) and Rial (Mosaku). You ache for them as they try to find a way to fit into their new life in London—a life where so many other refugees have failed.

Tension builds quietly but steadily as the two navigate their new community and the rules good refugees must follow, but worry for them and their security leaps to new heights as certain horrors bring about risky behavior. You never know whether you’re more worried that they’ll be sent back or they’ll have to stay.

Mosaku’s stare is weightier and more powerful than anything else you’ll encounter in this film, but it’s balanced by the vulnerability Dirisu brings to Bol. The two deliver an urgent and profound message about guilt, tragedy and forgiveness.

9. She Dies Tomorrow

She Dies Tomorrow is a horror film that’s one part Coherence, one part The Beach House, one part The Signal (2007, not 2014) and yet somehow entirely its own. It helps that so few people have seen any of those other movies, but the truth is that writer/director Amy Seimetz (creator of The Girlfriend Experience) is simply braiding together themes that have quietly influenced SciFi horror hybrids of late. What she does with these themes is pretty remarkable.

Her film weaves in and out of the current moment, delivering a dreamlike structure that suits its trippy premise. Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) believes she is going to die tomorrow. She knows it. She’s sure.

She calls her friend Jane (the always amazing Jane Adams), who senses that Amy is not OK but has this obligation to go to her sister-in-law’s party…whatever, she’ll stop over on her way.

By the time Jane gets to the party, she’s also quite certain she will die tomorrow. It isn’t long before the partygoers sense their own imminent deaths; meanwhile, Amy is spreading her perception contagion elsewhere.

8. Gretel & Hansel

Sophia Lillis (IT) narrates and stars as Gretel, the center of this coming of age story—reasonable, given the change of billing suggested by the film’s title. The witch may still have a tasty meal on her mind, but this is less a cautionary tale than it is a metaphor for agency over obligation.

Alice Krige and her cheekbones strike the perfect mixture of menace and mentorship, while Sammy Leakey’s little Hansel manages to be both adorable and tiresome, as is required for the story to work.

Perkins continues to impress with his talent for visual storytelling and Galo Olivares’s cinematography heightens the film’s folkloric atmosphere.

There’s no escaping this spell. The whole affair feels like an intriguing dream.

7. The Other Lamb

The first step toward freedom is telling your own story.

Writer C.S. McMullen and director Malgorzata Szumowska tell this one really well. Between McMullen’s outrage and the macabre lyricism of Szumowska’s camera, The Other Lamb offers a dark, angry and satisfying coming-of-age tale.

Selah’s (Raffey Cassity) first period and her commune’s migration to a new and more isolated Eden offer the tale some structure. Like many a horror film, The Other Lamb occupies itself with burgeoning womanhood, the end of innocence. Unlike most others in the genre, Szumowska’s film depicts this as a time of finding your own power.

The Other Lamb does not simply suggest you question authority. It demands that you do far more than that, and do it for your own good.

6. The Lodge

Several Fiala and Veronika Franz follow up their creepy Goodnight Mommy with this “white death” horror that sees a future stepmom having a tough time getting to know the kids during a weeklong, snowbound cabin retreat. Riley Keough is riding an impressive run of performances and her work here is slippery and wonderful. As the unwanted new member in the family, she’s sympathetic but also brittle.

Jaeden Martell, a kid who has yet to deliver a less than impressive turn, is the human heartbeat at the center of the mystery in the cabin. His tenderness gives the film a quiet, pleading tragedy. Whether he’s comforting his grieving little sister or begging Grace (Keough) to come in from the snow, his performance aches and you ache with him.

There’s no denying the mounting dread the filmmakers create, and the three central performances are uniquely effective. Thanks to the actors’ commitment and the filmmakers’ skill in atmospheric horror, the movie grips you, makes you cold and uncomfortable, and ends with a memorable slap.

5. The Dark and the Wicked

Bryan Bertino is not a filmmaker to let his audience off the hook—if you’ve seen The Strangers, you know that. Like that effort, TD&TW is a slow burn with nerves fraying inside an isolated farmhouse as noises, shadows, and menacing figures lurk outside.

Bertino and cinematographer Tom Schraeder work the darkness in and around a goat farm to create a lingering, roaming dread. But where Bertino, who also writes, scores extra points is in crafting believable characters.

Too often in horror you find wildly dramatic behavior in the face of the supernatural. One character adamantly denies and defies what is clearly happening while another desperately tries to communicate with “it.” No one would do either, but this is the best way to serve the needed action to come in lesser films.

4. The Wolf of Snow Hollow

Two years ago. Thunder Road was a pretty fantastic breakout for writer/director/star Jim Cummings. A visionary character study with alternating moments of heart and hilarity, it felt like recognizable pieces molded into something bracingly original.

Now, Cummings feels it’s time to throw in some werewolves.

Cummings is officer John Marshall of the Snow Hollow sheriff’s department. John’s father (Robert Forster, in his final role) is the longtime sheriff of the small ski resort town, but Dad’s reached the age and condition where John feels he’s really the one in charge.

John’s also a recovering alcoholic with a hot temper, a bitter ex-wife and a teen daughter who doesn’t like him much. But when a young ski bunny gets slaughtered near the hot tub under a full moon, suddenly John’s got a much bigger, much bloodier problem.

At its core, The Wold of Snow Hollow is a super deluxe re-write of Thunder Road with werewolves. I call that a bloody good time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP2m2pG6Qn4

3. Werewolf

Liberation isn’t always the good time it’s cracked up to be. In his strangely hopeful tale Werewolf, writer/director Adrian Panek offers a different image of social rebuilding.

Werewolf is beautifully shot, inside the crumbling castle, out in the woods, even in the early, jarring nonchalance of the concentration camp’s brutality. Panek hints at supernatural elements afoot, but the magic in his film is less metaphorical than that. 

The film is creepy and tense. It speaks of the unspeakable – the level of evil that can only really be understood through images of Nazi horror—but it sees a path back to something unspoiled.

2. Swallow

Putting a relevant twist on the classic “horrific mother” trope, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis uses the rare eating disorder pica to anchor his exploration of gender dynamics and, in particular, control.

Where Mirabella-Davis’s talent for building tension and framing scenes drive the narrative, it’s Bennett’s performance that elevates the film. Serving as executive producer as well as star, Haley Bennett transforms over the course of the film.

When things finally burst, director and star shake off the traditional storytelling, the Yellow Wallpaper or Awakening or even Safe. The filmmaker’s vision and imagery come full circle with a bold conclusion worthy of Bennett’s performance.

1. Possessor

Brandon Cronenberg’s created a gorgeous techno world, its lulling disorientation punctuated by some of the most visceral horror to make it to the screen this year. There is something admirably confident about showing your influences this brazenly.

Credit Cronenberg, too, for the forethought to cast the two leads as females (Jennifer Jason Leigh playing the remarkable Andrea Riseborough’s boss). The theme of the film, if driven by males, would have been passe and obvious. With females, though, it’s not only more relevant and vital, but more of a gut punch when the time comes to cash the check.

Possessor is a meditation on identity, sometimes very obviously so, but the underlying message takes that concept and stabs you in your still-beating heart with it.

Best Films of 2020

Most of the movies we hoped to love in 2020 have been pushed to 2021, but it turns out, that may just have opened up opportunities for gems we’d have ignored otherwise. Yes, the best films of 2021 are smaller than the best films of 2019, but they are still great. Here’s the list of our favorite 25 movies from our least favorite year on record.

1.First Cow

Kelly Reichardt films tell a story, but not in the traditional Hollywood sense. She draws you into an alien environment, unveils universal humanity and shows you something about yourself, about us. There’s usually a story buried in there somewhere. In this case, it’s about two outsiders in 19th Century Oregon who find friendship.

And a cow.

The narrative lulls you with understated conversations and observations while the meticulously captured natural beauty onscreen beguiles. Within that, we see the potential of a young country through the eyes of Americans determining the dream. 

2. Time

What director Garrett Bradley delivers with this documentary of a woman’s daily toil to end her husband’s prison sentence is a miracle of love, hope and superhuman perseverance. The film unfolds in a poetic, sometimes stream-of-consciousness fashion, enveloping you in the indefatigable spirit of Fox Rich. The film sings in a style that is simply transportive, carried by the voice of a true wonder woman.

Time is a stunning journey, searingly intimate with a sobering undercurrent of commonality. You wear this film like a blanket of feeling. Don’t miss the chance to wrap it around you.

3. Soul

For Soul, Pete Docter and co-writer/co-director Kemp Powers create a deceptively simple, beautifully constructed ode to happiness.

And what a beautiful, big screen-begging journey it is. Soul looks like no Pixar film before it, with wonderfully layered and personality-laden animation for hero Joe’s daily life that morphs into an apt Picasso vibe for our time spent with Joe in other worlds. 

Just when you think you know where the film will leave you, it has other plans, and that’s okay. Because while the best of Pixar has always touched us with family adventures that speak to what it means to be human, Soul leaves plenty of room for our own improvisations, producing a heartfelt composition that may be Pixar’s most profound statement to date.

4. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

In 1927 Chicago, four musicians – three vets and a brash youngster – gather in the basement of a downtown recording studio. They tune up and rib each other, waiting for the star vocalist to arrive.

That would be one Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, legendary “Mother of the Blues” and one of the first blues singers to make records. And in the late 1920s, those records sold, which meant Ma didn’t waste her time in studio basements.

That spatial divide becomes the metaphorical anchor in director George C. Wolfe and screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s adaptation of August Wilson’s Tony Award-winning play. And thanks to the blistering adversarial performances by Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis, the film has a show-stopping pillar on each floor.

5. Nomadland

Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland follows Fern (Frances McDormand) on her journey in “Vanguard,” the van that serves as her new home. Without an ounce of vanity or artifice, McDormand’s performance allows this film to be one of resilience and promise. Given that Normadland is, in fact, the story of a penniless Sixtysomething widow who lives in a van, that is in itself a minor miracle.

But that’s the film—a minor miracle. Perhaps only in a year when the billion-dollar franchises were mainly held at bay could we make enough space to appreciate this vital and beautiful reimagining of the rugged American tale of individualism and freedom, which is almost always also a story of poverty.

6. Da 5 Bloods

A heist movie on the surface, Da 5 Bloods is clearly about a great deal more than making it rich. Writer/director Spike Lee has a lot to say about how those in power tell us what we want to hear so we will do what they want us to do. 

As commanding a presence as ever at 68, Delroy Lindo blends vulnerability into every action, whether funny, menacing or melancholy. His MAGA hat-wearing, self-loathing, dangerously conflicted character gives Lee’s themes a pulse. 

It should surprise no one that Lee’s latest happens to hit the exact nerve that throbs so loudly and painfully right now, given that he’s been telling this exact story in minor variations for 30+ years.

7. Mank

David Fincher’s rapid-fire dialogue is beautifully layered and lyrically precise, more like the final draft of a script than authentic conversations, which only reinforces the film’s commitment to honoring the power of writing. 

Gary Oldman expertly sells Herman Mankiewicz’s truth-to-power rebellion as a sly reaction to his own feelings of powerlessness. His charm as a “court jester” belies a growing angst about America’s power structure that Orson Welles (Tom Burke) is eager to illustrate.

And though much of Mank‘s power is verbal (just try to catch a breath during Oldman’s drunken Don Quixote speech), Fincher crafts a luscious visual landscape. Buoyed by Erik Messerschmidt’s gorgeous B&W cinematography, Fincher recreates the era with sharp period detail and tips his hat to Welles with Citizen Kane-esque uses of shadow, forced perspective and one falling glass of booze.

8. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

With her 2013 debut It Felt Like Love, Eliza Hittman brought a refreshing honesty to the teen drama. At its core, Never Rarely Sometimes Always could be seen as Hittman’s kindred sequel to her first feature, as two friends (Talia Ryder and a stunning Sidney Flanagan) navigate a cold, sometimes cruel world that lies just beyond the hopeful romanticism of first love.

NRSA shows Hittman in full command of her blunt truth-telling, demanding we accept this reality of women fighting to control their own bodies amid constant waves of marginalization.

Just three films in, Hittman has established herself as a filmmaker of few words, intimate details and searing perspective. NRSW is a sensitive portrayal of female friendship and courage, equal parts understated and confrontational as it speaks truths that remain commonly ignored.

9. One Night in Miami

Regina King, who already has an acting Oscar, jumps into the race for Best Director with a wise and wonderful adaptation of Kemp Powers’s stage play. Powered by a bold and vital script from Powers himself, King invites us into a Miami hotel room in 1963, on the night a young Cassius Clay upset Sonny Liston for the Heavyweight title.

Clay, NFL legend Jim Brown and soul sensation Sam Cooke think it’s party time, but Clay’s mentor Malcom X uses the occasion to engage the room in a frank discussion about the next steps in the civil rights movement, and about each man’s role in the struggle.

The four leads – especially Aldis Hodge as Brown and Leslie Odom, Jr as Cooke – are fantastic, propelling a film that finds its profundity through a refusal to settle for easy answers. Though existing mainly inside one room, One Night in Miami is in a constant state of motion. The characters challenge each other, and the film challenges us with a beautiful dignity that shines in the face of bigotry. 

10. Shirley 

Director Josephine Decker’s languid style seduces you, keeps you from pulling away from her films’ underlying tensions, darkness, sickness. She specializes in that headspace that mixes the story as it is and the story as it’s told, which makes her a fitting guide for Susan Scarf Merrell’s fictionalized account of this slice of Shirley Jackson’s life.

Decker manipulates the pacing, melancholy and sensuality of her tale beautifully, drawing a stirring performance from Young. But my god, what she gets from Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg.

The result is dark and unseemly, appropriately angry and gorgeously told—a fitting tribute to the titular author.

11. Promising Young Woman

In a riotous and incredibly assured feature debut as writer and director, Emerald Fennell twists both knife and expectations in a rape-revenge riff that’s relevant, smart and surprisingly hilarious—if you like your humor dark.

A pessimism runs through Fennell’s film that’s hard to ignore and even harder to criticize. But the film is true to the character of Cassie—a woman who’s profoundly dark and unforgiving but not wrong.

Fennell’s film is not a nuanced drama concerning rape culture. It’s not telling us anything we don’t honestly know already. It’s not a scalpel to the brain, it’s a sledgehammer to the testicles.

12. Collective

On October 30, 2015, a massive fire broke out at the Colectiv Club in Bucharest, Romania. Twenty-seven people died in the initial blaze while another 180 were injured. In the days and weeks following the fire, dozens of survivors died in the hospital of preventable infections. Over the next year, journalist Catalin Tolontan would uncover a trail of corruption that had all but hobbled the country’s health care system.

There’s a matter-of-factness to this film that is methodical and precise. This clinically observational approach feels more authentic. For a film so steeped in the hunt for the truth, Alexander Nanau’s fly-on-the-wall perspective just seems right.

Collective isn’t a flashy film – it doesn’t want to be. What it is, though, is a gripping look at the good that can come from honest, professional investigative journalism. 

*Originally reviewed by Brandon Thomas.

13. The Trial of the Chicago 7

Chicago 7 artfully and urgently recreates the scene of the federal court hearing against eight defendants alleged to have conspired to incite the infamous riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s film rings with historical significance as well as disheartening immediacy.  An alarmingly relevant look at the power of due process, free speech, and justice, Chicago 7 is catapulted by more than the self-righteousness that sometimes weights down Sorkin’s writing. This is outrage, even anger, as well as an urgent optimism about the possibilities in human nature and democracy.

14. News of the World

GD National Treasure TomHanks is Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a Civil War veteran who travels from town to town reading news stories to weary people looking for a distraction. In his travels he comes across a 10-year-old girl (Helena Zengel, wonderful) who’d been raised by Kiowa people and is now being returned against her will to her natural aunt and uncle.

Reluctantly, Captain Kidd agrees to transport her 200 miles across dangerous territory. Not because he wants to or because he will benefit in any way from it. In fact, he will probably die, and she with him.

Westerns lend themselves to poetry of a sort. News of the World offers a simple hero’s journey, understated by director Paul Greengrass’s influence and Hanks’s natural abilities. 

15. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

The inimitable Charlie Kaufman adapts Iain Reid’s wildly circuitous novel about delusion, self-hatred and self-inflicted loneliness. Who better? 

Jessie Buckley gives an award-worthy performance as a woman visiting her boyfriend’s family for the first time. Unbeknownst to him, she’s thinking of ending things. 

Buckley’s effortlessly adaptable performance in an endlessly puzzling narrative ensures the movie never loses focus. She’s surrounded by sharp turns from Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette and David Thewlis in a darkly funny near-horror of existential dread.

16. The Devil All the Time

The constant fight to overcome the worst in ourselves lies at the heart of The Devil All the Time, director Antonio Campos’s darkly riveting realization of Donald Ray Pollock’s best-selling novel.

Redemption is a slippery aim in and around Knockemstiff, Ohio, and grace is even harder to come by. With a heavier hand, this film would have been a savage beating or a backwoods horror of the most grotesque kind. 

Campos and his formidable ensemble (Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Riley Keough, Bill Skarsgard, Jason Clark and More) deliver Pollock’s tale with enough understatement and integrity to cut deeply, unnerving your soul and leaving a well-earned scar.

17. Sound of Metal

Riz Ahmed is Ruben, a heavy metal drummer suddenly and irrevocably going deaf. It’s a performance that brings this man to life with so many layers and such nuance and power it requires your attention.

Even before you begin to appreciate Ahmed’s remarkable performance, you’ll likely notice writer/director Darius Marder’s choices when it comes to what he allows you to hear.

The sound design evokes the sensation of being in Ruben’s head. What he can’t really hear, you can’t, either. Marder mimics the humming, echoing, and blurring together of sounds to create an immersive sensation that never feels like a gimmick. It transports you, as does Ahmed’s performance, to a place you’ve probably never been.

18. Possessor

Possessor is a meditation on identity, sometimes very obviously so, but the underlying message takes that concept and stabs you in your still-beating heart with it.

Brandon Cronenberg’s created a gorgeous techno world, its lulling disorientation punctuated by some of the most visceral horror to make it to the screen this year. 

Credit Cronenberg, too, for the forethought to cast the two leads as females (Jennifer Jason Leigh playing boss to a remarkable Andrea Riseborough). The theme of the film, if driven by males, would have been passe and obvious. With females, though, it’s not only more relevant and vital, but more of a gut punch when the time comes to cash the check.

19. Swallow

Putting a relevant twist on the classic “horrific mother” trope, writer/director Carlo Mirabella-Davis uses the rare eating disorder pica to anchor his exploration of gender dynamics and, in particular, control.

Where Mirabella-Davis’s talent for building tension and framing scenes drive the narrative, it’s Haley Bennett’s performance that elevates the film. Serving as executive producer as well as star, Bennett’s character transformation is startlingly true.

When things finally burst, director and star shake off the traditional storytelling of the Yellow Wallpaper or Awakening or even Safe. The filmmaker’s vision and imagery come full circle with a bold conclusion worthy of Bennett’s performance.

20. Senior Love Triangle

Co-writer/director Kelly Blatz creates a minor cinematic miracle with his feature debut, Senior Love Triangle.

Inspired by co-writer Isadora Kosofsky’s remarkable longterm photo essay of the same name, the film delivers a candid look into the intimate relationship among three elderly characters: William (Tom Bower), Adina (Anne Gee Byrd) and Jeanie (Marlyn Mason).

The film is equal parts charming, frustrating and heartbreaking. More importantly, it takes its characters seriously. In an era where veteran actors entertain us via “those crazy old people!” vehicles (watching Diane Keaton become a cheerleader in Poms sapped my will to live), Senior Love Triangle feels gloriously anarchic. The magic of Blatz’s film is that it offers a character study of the sort we simply never see.

21. Capital in the 21st Century

New Zealand filmmaker Justin Pemberton has assembled an array of scholars and historians (including Thomas Piketty, author of the source book) for a 103-minute presentation that is so informative, measured and concise it should earn you college credits.

There are graphs, illustrations and pop culture snippets from film and television that Pemberton weaves throughout the lecture material to attract the eye and boost the film’s overall entertainment value. But make no mistake, his mission is about breaking down the 400 years of history that explain the social and economic precipice we’re teetering on right now.

And while some of the lessons are not new (i.e. we need a strong middle class) the context here is so vivid and relevant many observations may land with an echo of “eureka!” inside your head.

22. Wolfwalkers

One of the brightest spots in a relatively weak year for animated films, Wolfwalkers spins another beautiful Irish folk yarn from the team behind The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea.

Robyn, a young English girl whose father is tasked with wiping out wolves from an Irish village, longs to be a hunter herself. Things change quickly when Robyn meets up with Mebh, a young firebrand who belongs to a legendary group that transforms into wolves by falling asleep.

It’s a film bursting with dazzling animation and captivating lore, one full of warm silliness, gentle danger, wonderful voice work and a timeless, touching finale perfect for multiple family movie nights.

23. The Wolf of Snow Hollow

Writer/director/star JimCummings is officer John Marshall of the Snow Hollow sheriff’s department. John’s father (Robert Forster, in his final role) is the longtime sheriff of the small ski resort town, but Dad’s reached the age and condition where John feels he’s really the one in charge.

John’s also a recovering alcoholic with a hot temper, a bitter ex-wife and a teen daughter who doesn’t like him much. But when a young ski bunny gets slaughtered near the hot tub under a full moon, suddenly John’s got a much bigger, much bloodier problem.

At its core, The Wolf of Snow Hollow is a super deluxe re-write of Cummings’s heartbreaking and hilarious 2018 character study Thunder Road with werewolves. We call that a bloody good time.

24. Boys State

Imagine what you get when you bring over a thousand 17-year-old boys together to play politics.

Fight Club with zits?

You get Boys State, an annual exercise into the “civil discourse” of state government. An American Legion program since 1935, Boys State (and its corresponding project for girls through the Legion Auxiliary) gives selected high school juniors the chance to build a representative government from the ground up.

For directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, the result is an endlessly fascinating and thoroughly entertaining mixture of shock and awe.

25. The Vast of Night

Opening with vintage Rod Serling welcoming us to “Paradox Theatre,” director Andrew Patterson unveils an incredibly polished debut, one that’s full of meticulous craftsmanship, effective pacing and wonderfully engaging storytelling.

Peterson’s commitment to production and sound design results in a totally immersive experience. The period details – from costumes to recording equipment – are more than just historically correct. Paired with the quick, comfortably lived-in dialog from screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger, they create a throwback setting that charms without the tell of undue effort.

Peterson also flexes confidently behind the camera, moving from extended tracks to slow pans to quiet stills, all in service of the film’s wondrous tone. With Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz leading a stellar ensemble, what could have been a generic sci-fi time filler becomes a smart parable with an eerie grip.

Best Movies You Missed in 2020

Let’s be honest, no one saw much of anything movie-wise this year. The highest grossing cinematic releases made so little they would have been considered catastrophic bombs in any other year, and streaming numbers confirmed that we were having a hard time zeroing in on new releases.

Still, there were some exceptional films that simply disappeared without even a hello. These are movies that broke new ground, broke our hearts, explored new genre hybrids, reimagined familiar tales, startled our senses, and otherwise just impressed the hell out of us. We really want to introduce you to these guys, which we list in alphabetical order because they deserve equal attention (and we argued too much about the ranking).

Black Bear

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.

As slippery as it is inviting, Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear is an intoxicating trip through the inspirations and indulgences that take root in creative minds. It feels intensely personal, and yet – once Levine delivers his midstream shape shift – malleable enough to bend to myriad perspectives and interpretations. Black Bear isn’t a comedy – except when it’s funny. It’s also dramatic and slightly horrific, depending on your viewpoint.

Most of all, it’s emotional, propelled by career high performances from Christopher Abbott, Sarah Gadon, and Aubrey Plaza. The glee each performer takes in upending character expectations is evident, with Plaza seamlessly moving from a cool, casual customer to the emotionally frayed flashpoint of a volatile triangle.


Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.

Similar to the hybrid reality it creates, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is an oddly compelling cocktail. It’s like a foul odor you step back from quickly, then find perversely comforting once you’ve had time to soak in it.

Sitting unceremoniously at the edge of Las Vegas, the bar The Roaring Twenties is down to its final day. Directors Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross drop us off before noon, when grizzled regular Michael (Michael Martin, perfect) is cleaning up in the bathroom and daytime bartender Mark is hanging up some cheap decorations for the farewell party.

As drinks are poured, ashtrays are emptied and daytime TV gives way to nighttime jukebox singalongs, we get to know the parade of souls that have come to call this dive bar home.What The Florida Project was to Disney World, Bloody Nose is to Lost Wages, eschewing tourist playgrounds for the world-weariness of an existence in exile, and of outsiders no longer bothering to look in.

Capone

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.

You’ve seen Capone on film: films about him, films containing him, films about gangsters reminiscent of him. A lot of these movies have been great – some of them classic. But you have never seen Alphonse Capone the way writer/director Josh Trank sees him.

The film focuses on the final year of the infamous mobster’s life—the adult diapers and dementia year. Tom Hardy finds the faulty humanity in this character. His depiction of Capone’s confusion is unerringly human, and in his hands Trank’s macabre humor never feels like mockery.

Trank’s loose narrative is less concerned with the scheming, criss-crossing and backstabbing from underlings trying to find the money than it is with Capone’s deterioration, and that’s what makes this film so gloriously odd.

No doubt some viewers will be disappointed—those who tuned in to see Hardy play a badass at the top of his game. My guess is the reason one of the finest actors working today was drawn to Capone was the opportunity to do something just this unexpected.


The Devil to Pay

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.

“They want nothing from you and God help you if you try to interfere.” – 2010 census worker.Welcome to The Devil to PayLane and Ruckus Skye’s lyrical backwoods epic, grounded in a lived-in world most of us never knew existed.

One of the most tightly written thrillers in recent memory, The Devil to Pay peoples those hills with true characters, not a forgettable villain or cliched rube among them. The sense of danger is palpable and Danielle Deadwyler’s commitment to communicating her character’s low-key tenacity is a thing of beauty.

The Devil to Pay remains true to these fascinating souls, reveling in the well-worn but idiosyncratic nature of their individual relationships—a tone matched by sly performances across the board. And just when you think you’ve settled into a scene or a relationship, the film shocks you with a turn of events that is equal parts surprising and inevitable.


Dirty God

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.

There is an unerring authenticity about the slice of life that is Dirty God. Co-writer/director Sacha Polak sugar coats nothing, wallows nowhere, and dares you to judge Jade (a breathtaking Vicky Knight), regardless of her behavior.

The approach is provocative because Jade’s torment is almost inconceivable. Few of us could honestly imagine it. Polak doesn’t soft pedal, and she doesn’t let the viewer off the hook with a pitiable or noble character.

Dirty God—a film about self-image and the unfair reality of limitations—makes other “coming of age” style films feel like soft drink ads.


Faith Ba$ed

Available on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play and Vudu.

Luke and Tanner are big movie fans, and when they discover just how profitable the faith-based market is, a plan emerges. If they can make their own “Jesus” film and sell it to ChristFlix pictures, there should be more than enough profit to stuff their pockets and help out the local Elevate Church where Luke’s father (Lance Reddick) is the pastor.

Director Vincent Masciale, helming his second feature, brings an irresistibly absurdist vibe to the shenanigans that practically begs you not to overthink any of it.  Good-natured fun is certainly had at the expense of the faith-based industry. But the delightful surprise is what else Luke Barnett’s script gives us: a church community that is welcoming to all, one where people missing something in their lives can and do find real fulfillment.

And the film gives us plenty of laughs, memorable quotes and overall nuttiness at a time when we could use it.


Get Duked!

Available on Amazon Prime.

What does one homeschooled teen and three high school ne’er do wells in trouble for blowing up a lavatory have in common? Impending doom.

The four boys are making the Duke of Edinburgh Award trek across the Scottish Highlands. Dean (Rian Gordon), his daft mate Duncan (Lewis Gribben), and the future of hip-hop DJ Beatroot (Viraj Juneja) have no choice after that lav incident, while Ian (Samuel Bottomley) just earnestly wants to complete the challenge and include the award on his college applications.

But it’s a long hike and a lot could go wrong, especially now that Dean’s used the map to roll a joint. Will Ian ever be able to check off the requirements of teamwork, foraging and orienteering?

The horror is light, the comedy raucous, the fun explosive. Writer/director Ninian Doff’s Get Duked! may not change you, but it will brighten your mood.


I Used to Go Here

Available on HBO Max, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime and Hulu.

Thirtysomething Kate (Community‘s Gillian Jacobs, fantastic) is bumming over a breakup and the cancellation of the promo tour for her very first book. A phone call from her old professor David (Jemaine Clement) perks Kate right up.

Would she come back to Illinois U. as a “Distinguished Alumni” and do a reading from her novel? She would.

Even at its nuttiest, I Used to Go Here is a deceptively smart look at the complexities of accepting adulthood. It’s Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young with a lighter touch, a film that might make the “your future starts now” message on the back on Kate’s t-shirt ring true for both filmmaker and star.


The Nest

Available on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu and Amazon Prime.

If you saw the quietly unnerving Martha Marcy May Marlene nine years ago and have had the name Sean Durkin filed away since then, you’re not alone. Good news for all of us then, as Durkin finally returns as writer and director with The Nest, another precisely crafted examination of family dynamics.

This time, though, it’s a nuclear family led by a strong Jude Law and a remarkable Carrie Coon, one that’s slowly imploding before our eyes.

Though it lacks the sinister edge of MMMM, Durkin’s storytelling here still carries a chill, assembling precise details with a subtlety that often betrays a focused narrative. With a microscope trained on the rot of wealth and the minutiae of finding a work/life balance, Durkin gives his stellar leads plenty of room to dig indelible, often heartbreaking layers.


Never Rarely Sometimes Always 

Available on HBO Max, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime and Hulu.

With her 2013 debut It Felt Like Love, Eliza Hittman brought a refreshing honesty to the teen drama. At its core, Never Rarely Sometimes Always could be seen as Hittman’s kindred sequel to her first feature, as two friends (Talia Ryder and a stunning Sidney Flanagan) navigate a cold, sometimes cruel world that lies just beyond the hopeful romanticism of first love.

NRSA shows Hittman in full command of her blunt truth-telling, demanding we accept this reality of women fighting to control their own bodies amid constant waves of marginalization.

Just three films in, Hittman has established herself as a filmmaker of few words, intimate details and searing perspective. NRSW is a sensitive portrayal of female friendship and courage, equal parts understated and confrontational as it speaks truths that remain commonly ignored.


The Other Lamb

Available on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu, Amazon Prime and Hulu.

The first step toward freedom is telling your own story.Writer C.S. McMullen and director Malgorzata Szumowska tell this one really well. Between McMullen’s outrage and the macabre lyricism of Szumowska’s camera, The Other Lamb offers a dark, angry and satisfying coming-of-age tale.

Selah’s (Raffey Cassity) first period and her commune’s migration to a new and more isolated Eden offer the tale some structure. Like many a horror film, The Other Lamb occupies itself with burgeoning womanhood, the end of innocence. Unlike most others in the genre, Szumowska’s film depicts this as a time of finding your own power.

The Other Lamb does not simply suggest you question authority. It demands that you do far more than that, and do it for your own good.


The Painted Bird

Available on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu and Hulu.

If you paint the wings of a sparrow (or stitch a star to his jacket) the rest of the flock will no longer recognize him. The other birds will swarm and peck him until he plummets back to the earth. This is just one of the horrific lessons a young boy learns as he desperately searches for anywhere or anyone safe in war-torn Eastern Europe.

What follows is a brutal parade of the worst humanity has to offer. Domestic abuse, graphic violence, multiple instances of animal abuse and death, rape, child abuse and rape, and more. Then the war crimes start around hour three.

The Painted Bird is a test of endurance. It’s also a beautifully shot, well performed, and incredibly moving piece of cinema. You simply have to be willing to go where it wants to take you. And all of those places are dark and darker.


Senior Love Triangle

Available on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu and Amazon Prime.

Co-writer/director Kelly Blatz creates a minor cinematic miracle with his feature debut, Senior Love Triangle.

Inspired by co-writer Isadora Kosofsky’s remarkable longterm photo essay of the same name, the film delivers a candid look into the intimate relationship among three elderly characters: William (Tom Bower), Adina (Anne Gee Byrd) and Jeanie (Marlyn Mason).

The film is equal parts charming, frustrating and heartbreaking. More importantly, it takes its characters seriously. In an era where veteran actors entertain us via “those crazy old people!” vehicles, Senior Love Triangle feels gloriously anarchic. The magic of Blatz’s film is that it offers a character study of the sort we simply never see.


Shadow of Violence (Calm with Horses)

Available on YouTube, Google Play, Vudu and Amazon Prime.

Nick Rowland’s crime drama follows Douglas “Arm” Armstrong (Cosmo Jarvis). Once a promising Irish boxing champion, Arm left the gloves behind for the reliable income and familiar treatment offered by the Devers crime family. As their chief enforcer, Arm is feared, which often hampers his relationship with his ex Ursula (Naimh Algar) and their autistic son Jack.

The delicate co-existence of Arm’s two worlds is a constant struggle, but when family patriarch Paudi Devers (Ned Dennehy) finally orders Arm to kill, it becomes clear there is room for only one set of loyalties.


She Dies Tomorrow

Available on YouTube, Hulu, Google Play, Vudu and Amazon Prime.

With She Dies Tomorrow, writer/director Amy Seimetz (creator of The Girlfriend Experience) is simply braiding together themes that have quietly influenced SciFi horror hybrids of late. What she does with these themes is pretty remarkable.Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) believes she is going to die tomorrow. She knows it. She’s sure.

She calls her friend Jane (the always amazing Jane Adams), who senses that Amy is not OK but has this obligation to go to her sister-in-law’s party…whatever, she’ll stop over on her way. By the time Jane gets to the party, she’s also quite certain she will die tomorrow. It isn’t long before the partygoers sense their own imminent deaths; meanwhile, Amy is spreading her perception contagion elsewhere.

A remarkable film unfurls from this simple but powerful idea.


True History of the Kelly Gang

Available on YouTube, Vudu and Amazon Prime.

Planting its flag unapologetically at the corner of accuracy and myth, The True History of the Kelly Gang reintroduces a legendary 1870s folk hero through consistently bold and compelling strokes.

Director Justin Kurzel and screenwriter Shaun Grant – the duo behind the true crime shocker The Snowtown Murders nine years ago – go bigger this time, trading spare intimacy for a tableau of grand visual and narrative ideas.

With a direct nod to the moment when “the myth is more profitable than the man,” Kurzel spins an irresistible yarn that manages to balance the worship of its hero (George MacKay) with some condemnation for his sins.

And as the road to Kelly’s guns-blazing capture unfurls, the film incorporates elements of both a tense crime thriller and a Nightingale-esqe reminder of savage colonialism.


The Vast of Night

Available on Amazon Prime.

Opening with vintage Rod Serling welcoming us to “Paradox Theatre,” director Andrew Patterson unveils an incredibly polished debut, one that’s full of meticulous craftsmanship, effective pacing and wonderfully engaging storytelling.

Peterson’s commitment to production and sound design results in a totally immersive experience. The period details – from costumes to recording equipment – are more than just historically correct. Paired with the rapid-fire, comfortably lived-in dialog from screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger, they create a throwback setting that charms without the tell of undue effort.

Peterson also flexes confidently behind the camera, moving from extended tracks to slow pans to quiet stills, all in service of the film’s wondrous tone. With Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz leading a stellar ensemble, what could have been a generic sci-fi time filler becomes a smart parable with an eerie grip.


Werewolf (Wilkolak)

Available on Amazon Prime.

Liberation isn’t always the good time it’s cracked up to be. In his strangely hopeful tale Werewolf, writer/director Adrian Panek offers a different image of social rebuilding.

Werewolf is beautifully shot, inside the crumbling castle, out in the woods, even in the early, jarring nonchalance of the concentration camp’s brutality. Panek hints at supernatural elements afoot, but the magic in his film is less metaphorical than that. The film is creepy and tense. It speaks of the unspeakable – the level of evil that can only really be understood through images of Nazi horror—but it sees a path back to something unspoiled.


Why Don’t You Just Die!

Available on YouTube, Google Play and Amazon Prime.

Given that 75% of writer/director Kirill Sokolov’s Why Don’t You Just Die! takes place in a single apartment—one room of that apartment, really—you might be surprised to learn that it’s an action film.

It’s pretty heavy on the action, actually, amplified by inspired framing, kinetic cinematography, sometimes hilarious but always eye-popping choreography, and blood.

Just a shit ton of blood.

This movie is a hoot!

With a spare script, visual wonder and energy to burn, Why Don’t You Just Die! promises to snatch your attention like a duffle bag of cash and hang on until exactly enough blood is spilled.

That’s a lot.


Yes, God, Yes

Available on Netflix, YouTube, Google Play, Vudu and Amazon Prime.

Natalia Dyer (Stranger Things) is Alice, a Catholic high school junior who has done absolutely nothing (regardless of one persistent rumor), but still thinks she may be a budding pervert hurtling toward eternal damnation.

It seems a lot of people may harbor that same suspicion of Alice.

Dyer is wonderfully expressive, especially in her most quiet moments. Her understated comedic energy belies a gawky sweetness that makes Alice easy to root for. Writer/director Karen Maine takes full advantage with a raunchy sex comedy that manages never to lose its sweet disposition.

Eighties Lady

Wonder Woman 1984

by Hope Madden and George Wolf

During a moment in time when a TV personality megalomaniac attains unprecedented and appalling power and threatens global civilization, it’s good to find a little hope in humanity.

Or at least a diversion, so let’s watch Wonder Woman 1984, eh?

Gal Gadot returns, lasso in hand, to defend the world from Eighties-style greed and fashion in a film that homages Reeve-era Superman while it straps some social commentary in shoulder pads, and lets loose with some thrilling fun.

Unburdened by the origin story of her 2017 original, co-writer/director Patty Jenkins is free to expand the hero’s narrative. 1984 finds Diana Prince as a Smithsonian anthropologist working with the socially awkward gemologist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig, a blast) when self-help ponzi scam artist Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal, slimy perfection) brings Big Comic Book Villainy to the DC mall.

Lord is looking for a 4,000 year old artifact that grants wishes. But when the dream stone gives, it also takes, and Diana’s sleuthing finds that over the many centuries, entire civilizations have paid the cost.

While the last film weakened in the final third with an overly cumbersome finale, WW84 only gets better as it progresses, making that two and a half-hour running time seem much more palatable.

The story turns manage to find real hope in the face of overwhelming global selfishness and the destruction that comes with it. The Reagan-era spin is luminous—Whamtastic, even—and Jenkins displays a delightful knack for the Eighties-style action sequences.

Bigger! Bolder! With leg warmers attached to legs that ain’t afraid to kick a sexist pig where it counts.

Gadot’s easy grace creates a more wizened hero than the naieve goddess of the last go. Jenkins and her co-writers even find a perfectly reasonable and wildly welcome way to bring Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) back from the dead. The chemistry between the two actors again sparkles with endless charm while Pine’s “man out of time” deadpans fuel the funniest lines in the film.

And this film is funny, playful even. But more than anything, this episode is a bow to truth, and to the belief that the truth still means something. If it doesn’t, not even a superhero will be able to save us. And the truth is, WW84 finds a thoroughly entertaining, surprisingly touching way to point that out.

And stay during the credits for a welcome stinger.

Love Notes

Sylvie’s Love

by Rachel Willis

Writer/director Eugene Ashe (Homecoming) helms a charming, if paint-by-numbers, love story in Sylvie’s Love.

Young saxophonist Robert (Nnamdi Asomugha, Crown Heights) is instantly smitten with Sylvie (Tessa Thompson, Annihilation, Little Woods) when he walks into her father’s record store and sees her at the counter. Though Sylvie’s engaged, that doesn’t stop two from forming a connection.

The chemistry between Thompson and Asomugha is undeniable. Particularly in the early stages of the relationship, these two characters radiate attraction. The early sexuality of young love then gives way to a sensuality that blends seamlessly into something more mature as the years pass. Thompson and Asomugha bring an unmistakable authenticity to the relationship, and to the depth of their characters’ feelings for each other.

The first two acts follow a conventional pattern, much of the dialogue you could voice before the characters do. But at times, Ashe surprises with a few well-chosen moments. The third act strays outside the realm of predictability, but not by much. It’s not hard to figure out where the film is going to take you, but whether or not that bothers you depends entirely on how invested you are in Sylvie and Robert’s relationship.

The focus is sometimes too narrow, which one sees very rarely. Far too many films take on more than they can handle. One of my biggest criticisms of the film is too much of a spoiler to reveal, but a particular character feels like an afterthought in much of Sylvie and Robert’s orbit. This is their world, and other people barely inhabit it. This leaves a few irritating loose ends that, while not essential to the film to clear up, are a thorn in its side.

An epic love story must have its characters go through a few ups-and-downs and navigate obstacles to determine if theirs is a love that will last. There is some fun in watching Robert’s career as a saxophone player over the course of the film, and as a jazz musician in the 50’s and 60’s, you can be sure there’s a fantastic soundtrack boasting some of the greatest songs of the era. The same can’t be said for the score, which is often distractingly sappy.

The holidays seem a perfect time to get lost in an epic love story, but Sylvie’s Love isn’t quite compelling enough to join the ranks of the truly great romances.

Special Delivery

Born Again

by Hope Madden

What opens as a slyly comic take on a familiar horror scene turns – with a blinding light and the sound of a garage door – into something more silly and broadly funny. Born Again, Hands Off Productions’ 6 ½ minute visit with the “worst Satanists ever,” wastes no time and packs a comedic wallop.

Written by director Jason Tostevin and co-star Randall Greenland, the film’s success relies on a clever turn. Most of the pair’s collaborations, including 2015’s impressive (and award-bedecked) gangster short A Way Out, benefit from a similar subversion of expectations. But Born Again takes the team back to horror, and the sensibility here is much more enjoyably goofy.

Regular Tostevin collaborator, cinematographer Mike McNeese, lenses an impressive effort. The two handle the shift in tone beautifully, opening with sumptuous colors and tight close ups, then pivoting to a visual style that feels in on the joke.

Production values throughout impress, while performances – though brief – are strong. Tiffany Arnold, whose work relies almost entirely on facial expressions, is a riot, but the scene stealer is Greenland.

With sharp timing and a panda mask, Greenland perfectly represents Born Again: it’s so wrong, yet endearingly hilarious.





Contact Tracing

The Midnight Sky

by George Wolf

Between sci-fi and horror, it’s sometimes hard to keep track of which genre relies more heavily on recycled ideas. Since I see more horror than anything else, I’m inclined to lean in that direction, but The Midnight Sky adds one to the science fiction tally, building its very respectable tale on some very recognizable building blocks.

Director George Clooney also turns in a gritty and understated performance as Dr. Augustine Lofthouse (nice!), a revered scientist in the year 2049. Three weeks after a cataclysmic event on Earth forces survivors underground, Augustine chooses to remain at his Arctic Circle observatory. His hope is to make contact with Aether K-23, and warn the five crew members finishing a two year mission that there is no home worth returning to.

Augustine’s simple goal gets complicated by his discovery of Iris (Caoilinn Springall), an eight year-old girl missed during the outpost’s evacuation, and by the realization that he’ll have to take her along on a treacherous journey to the only satellite antenna capable of making contact with Aether.

Clooney and writer Mark L. Smith (The Revenant, Overlord) adapt Lily Brooks-Dalton’s source novel through three rotating narratives that offer mixed results.

On board with the Aether crew, we learn Sully (Felicity Jones) and Ade (David Oyelowo) are close, Sanchez (Demián Bichir) is the quietly wise vet, Maya (Tiffany Boone) the baby-faced youngster and Mitchell is the stoic manly man we’re not surprised is played by Kyle Chandler.

There are some effectively human moments with the crew, but too much of this thread feels strangely overwritten by Smith, a tendency that only becomes more weighty during the flashbacks to a younger Augustine (Ethan Peck).

Though we learn what drives the Dr.’s frigid quest for redemption, the backstory lessons are more spoon-fed than well-earned, standing in sharp contrast to the gentler hand played between Augustine and Iris.

Remember, Clooney has a deserved Oscar nom for directing, and his latest course is steady as she goes. Many of the deep space segments, buoyed by another wonderful score from Alexandre Desplat, will make you long for a return to big screens, while two tension filled set pieces – one with a snowmobile and another sporting zero gravity blood loss – find Clooney flexing some thrill muscles to fine effect.

There’s nothing really wrong with the themes and devices here, that’s why they’re used so often. The failures of humankind and the promise of the next generation are ideas that sit comfortably in the wonders explored by science fiction. But though our current global crisis gives The Midnight Sky’s iteration some added urgency, it can’t shake the feeling we’ve boldly gone here pretty often.

The Midnight Sky premieres on Netflix December 23.

All That Jazz

Soul

by George Wolf

Pete Docter has written, directed, or been a part of the story team for some of Pixar’s greatest achievements. From Up to Inside Out, WALL-E to Toy Story, he’s helped set the standard that each new Pixar film competes with.

For Soul, Docter and co-writer/co-director Kemp Powers sense the time is right to tweak the winning formula a bit, creating a deceptively simple, beautifully constructed ode to happiness.

The updated blueprint starts with an African-American lead, Joe (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a middle-aged music teacher who still harbors dreams of stardom in a jazz combo. Just when Joe gets that long-awaited chance to play with one of his favorite artists, an out-of-body experience finds him fighting to get back to the life he’d been living.

Hence, the “soul” here may be not what you’re expecting. The music is all that jazz, but once Joe meets up with a wandering infant soul named 22 (Tina Fey), the film becomes a funny, surprising and truly touching journey toward becoming a fulfilled human being.

And what a beautiful, big screen-begging journey it is. Soul looks like no Pixar film before it, with wonderfully layered and personality-laden animation for Joe’s daily life that morphs into an apt Picasso vibe for our time in the before and after worlds. In those other worlds, Joe and 22 are gently pushed toward their destinies by the reassuring voice of the cubist Counselor Jerry (Alice Braga) amid a madcap series of detours carrying the emotional highs and lows of an inspired jazz trumpeter’s solo.

Foxx and Fey are joyfully harmonious, backed by jazzy arrangements from Jonathan Batiste, an ethereal score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and a stellar supporting group of voice actors that includes Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs, June Squibb, Rachel House, Wes Studi and a perfectly nutty Graham Norton. 

And though Soul delivers plenty of whimsical fun, it’s anchored by the existential yearning Docter hinted at with Inside Out’s “Bing Bong” character five years ago. 

But just when you think you know where the film will leave you, it has other plans, and that’s okay. Because while the best of Pixar has always touched us with family adventures that speak to what it means to be human, Soul leaves plenty of room for our own improvisations, producing a heartfelt composition that may be Pixar’s most profound statement to date.