Favorite films of 2020

Usually I don’t compile my best films of the year list till halfway into the next year, but 2020 was a year when everything was unusual, so this time around I’m in advance of the Oscar nominations (I’ll add another post after they're announced). 
 
Definitely a year when boundaries were blurred:  film and video, movies and theater, fiction and documentary.  I already listed my best tv series and documentaries of the year, so here I throw in everything else.  So was Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” a tv series or five separate movies?  Why was David Byrne’s American Utopia considered a film, while Hamilton was apparently considered filmed theater?  But then Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and One Night in Miami were filmed plays as well.  And so on.  So I put all these variants into two categories, “Must-sees” and “Worth seeing,” in rough order of my enthusiasm, and will update the list as tardy candidates emerge.  (For comparison or futher exploration, see Metacritic's ranking of the best films of the year.)
 
Must-sees
Small Axe: Lovers Rock/Mangrove/ Education/Red White & Blue/Alex Wheatle
Nomadland
Hamilton
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
First Cow
The Trial of the Chicago 7
One Night in Miami
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Sorry We Missed You
The Truth
Babyteeth

Wolfwalkers
 
Worth seeing
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
David Byrne’s American Utopia
Mank
Ammonite
Sound of Metal

Promising Young Woman
Beanpole
Saint Frances
Palm Springs
The Assistant
Ordinary Love
South Mountain
Emma
40-Year-Old Version
What the Constitution Means to Me
The Easy Girl
 

Please spread the message

It seems to me that this website is now more relevant, timely, and useful than it has ever been, as more and more people are drawn to what’s streaming right now – either from cable-cord-cutting, or increased appetite under pandemic lockdown, or general cultural currency.  And there’s so much out there that it’s difficult to keep up with what’s worth seeing.  And that’s where I come in. 
 
Even though I filter my own viewing through a highly-selective lens, I still watch more than any reasonable person would do.  So for those who know me and/or come to have some sense of my approach to cinema, I can provide a second filter to help make sure that you spend your viewing time wisely, informatively, and enjoyably.
 
Conveying my own views in a brisk and concentrated style, and trying to increase viewership and appreciation for the best in film and tv available through streaming, I also link to each film or show’s Metacritic entry, where you can see trailers, cast-lists, and a range of critical opinion.  Though streaming availability is a volatile thing, and dependent on what channels you subscribe to, I also indicate where I managed to watch whatever is under discussion.
 
So I ask you to forward the Cinema Salon link to any of your friends or acquaintances who are media-curious.  Though the metaphor has taken on a whole world of unfortunate associations, what I’m hoping for is a bit of viral spread for this website.

 

Black History Month on PBS

The flagship show for PBS last month was The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song (MC-85, PBS), in which Henry Louis Gates Jr. follows up his series on Reconstruction with a survey of music and worship at the heart of the Black American history.  Well-produced and well-illustrated – except perhaps for the repeated shots of PBS "celebrity" Gates walking through various vacant Black churches, alone with his cane – the two two-hour episodes cover a lot of ground, from African roots through emancipation, and between the push and pull of respectability vs. resistance, even to the margins of hiphop and the Nation of Islam.
 
On “American Experience,” they offered an encore of Going Back to T-Town (PBS) to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre in 1921.  At the time the documentary was produced in 1993, there were still personal voices testifying to life in the Greenwood neighborhood, known as “Black Wall Street,” both before and after the murderous white riot that left three hundred Blacks dead, and most of the neighborhood burned to the ground.  It’s vital to remember these buried stories if this country is ever going to confront and repair its history of violent racism.
 
The newest American Experience episode was Voice of Freedom (PBS).  I wasn’t sure that the story of Marion Anderson’s free concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, promoted by Eleanor Roosevelt after the DAR prevented the singer from performing at Constitution Hall, was sufficient to warrant a two-hour treatment, but it turned out to be well worth the time, broadening its scope to include not just her entire against-the-odds career, but the history of the Lincoln Memorial from its dedication in 1922, where African-Americans were ironically segregated and excluded, to MLK’s March on Washington in 1963, when Marion Anderson sang again from the very same spot, covering an arc of America’s history of race relations.
 
On “American Masters,” How It Feels to be Free (PBS) similarly related how six Black female entertainers – including Lena Horne, Nina Simone, and Cicely Tyson – broke down barriers and advanced the cause of Black liberation, from the 1940s into the 1980s.  Again, I found it well worth the two-hour running time.
 
On the other hand, I can neither recommend nor warn you against the “Masterpiece” program The Long Song (MC-78, PBS).  I felt I’d seen enough after the first hour-long episode, but found myself going back for the other two, largely for the lead performance by Tamara Lawrance, as a house slave on a Jamaica plantation in the 1830s, immediately before and after slavery was abolished in the British empire.  I was less taken with Hayley Atwell as the plantation mistress, who verged on caricature, a disappointment to me after I was so impressed by her in Howards End (perhaps the Marvel universe is where she belongs, but I’m never seen any of her many appearances as Agent Carter).  Her performance seemed schizophrenic, while the male lead seemed muddled and befuddled in his relationship to both women, and his switch from freedom-lover to belligerent overseer.  There was, however, a definite aura of authenticity in the plantation’s Black community, and the historical moment is certainly of interest.  Too bad it was so Masterpiece-y.