In a year remembered for a deadly pandemic, mourning the absence of movies on the big screen seems trivial, possibly even obscene. But for cinema buffs, these are melancholy times. Moviegoers desire great stories told by great storytellers performed by great actors. Pickings were slim in 2020. But the last decade has gifted us a treasure of great tales easily accessed on various streaming services.
Three Great Performances
When Daniel Day-Lewis tackles a role, he always puts his best (left) foot forward. His performance in The Phantom Thread [HBO Max] is no exception. In this gorgeously shot and wonderfully scored 2017 film, Day-Lewis portrays Reynolds Woodcock, THE fashion designer to high society in 1950s London. Assisted by his sister Cyril, played brilliantly by Lesley Manville, Woodcock spends his days hyper-focused on his craft, only allowing romance to play a tertiary role in his life. When he tires of the latest romance, they are ushered out the door. This all changes upon his chance meeting with waitress Alma, played by talented Luxembourgish actor Vicky Krieps. She becomes his newest muse and, as you’ll see, goes to extreme lengths to avoid the fate of Woodcock’s previous mistresses. This film is worthy just for the cinematography and the score alone, but the performances and the wonderfully meandering plot make it an outstanding film that will never go out of style.
Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz vie for the affections of Oliva Colman’s Queen Anne in the best film of 2018: The Favourite [Rent from Prime/Apple/Vudu & more]. Colman (who also plays Queen Elizabeth in Netflix’s The Crown) won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of a sad, sick and lonely monarch in this wonderful film. Weisz (Sarah) and Stone (Abigail) are wickedly delicious as scheming cousins who battle for the role of the queen’s favorite. Abigail, a newcomer to the court, seeks to supplant Sarah, the queen’s friend and lover. The pair’s machinations are brilliant and the stakes are high, as this film explores the world of British royalty in the early 18th century. The film itself is just as brilliant and wickedly funny. A wonderful film!
The loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman to a drug overdose was felt by moviegoers everywhere. Watching The Master [Rent from Prime/Apple/Vudu & more] reminds us of Hoffman’s skill as an actor. This 2012 film matches him with the brilliant and unbalanced Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the lead sycophant to Hoffman’s cult leader. Partly inspired by L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology “religion,” this psychological drama tackles the conditions that lead men and women to an all-encompassing worldview estranged from the rest of society. It is an entrancing film and can be watched just for the fine performances from Hoffman, Phoenix, Amy Adams and Laura Dern.
A Poignant Pair
In 2015’s End of the Tour [Showtime], Jesse Eisenberg plays a Rolling Stone journalist who interviews the author David Foster Wallace (played brilliantly by Jason Segel) over the course of five days and gets a view into the talented writer’s world. The strong chemistry between Eisenberg and Segel helps make this film a great ride, particularly when the pair go on a road trip to Minnesota for Wallace’s book tour. The film contains a strong feeling of underlying sadness as David Foster Wallace’s real-life suicide is an important part of the plot. Despite this, the film is not a “downer”: it is an exploration of a new friendship between two writers. It is most definitely worth your time.
In Can You Ever Forgive Me? [Rent from Prime/Apple/Vudu & more] a struggling writer finds that she can pay the bills by forging letters from famous literary figures. Even better, she discovers it gives her new purpose in life. Many might consider Melissa McCarthy as “just” a comedian, but she is brilliant in her portrayal of writer/forger Lee Israel. Richard Grant almost steals the show as her ne’er-do-well long lost friend Jack Hock. Though a film about forging letters may not seem thrilling, this movie is emotionally engaging and will end up warming your heart in unexpected ways.
Fun Comes in Threes
Every decade, Ireland produces a great film that revolves around music. In the 1990s it was The Commitments. In the first decade of the 21st century it was Once. And in the 2010s it was Sing Street [Amazon Prime/Pluto TV]. The latest film in this unintentional trilogy is about a teenage boy in 1985 inner-city Dublin who decides to form a band (mostly to “get the girl”). The film gives us a journey through the music and styles of the 1980s as the boys in the band try to figure out what they are all about. It’s a wonderful film featuring little-known actors that you will fall in love with by the end of the movie.
A man places an ad in a magazine asking for a volunteer to time travel with him. In the real world, the ad was a joke. But screenwriter Derek Connolly took the joke and transformed it into a film (Safety Not GuaranteedNetflix) that imagines the ad was placed in earnest. Mark Duplass portrays Kenneth Calloway, a serious man with what seems to be an unserious project: time travel. Aubrey Plaza plays Darius Britt, a magazine intern that’s charged with investigating the story. This film accomplishes its storytelling with great charm and wit. Though it has comedic elements, the film’s tone is not jokey (and thankfully so). It strikes just the right note.
The great screenwriter and director Whit Stillman is not particularly prolific. His greatest films, Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco, came out in the 1990s and it took 13 years for his next (and only forgettable) film to arrive. But he made up for it with Love and Friendship [Amazon Prime]. The story is based on a nearly-forgotten Jane Austen novel and follows Lady Susan Vernon through her attempts to find financial stability after personal misfortune. Lady Vernon is played perfectly by Kate Beckinsale. The rest of the cast delights in this laugh-out-loud funny tale from 19th century England.
Four Chilling Tales
Michael Shannon specializes in portraying strangeness on the screen. His performance in 2011’s Take Shelter[Rent from Prime/Apple/Vudu & more] is par for the course in this regard. He portrays Curtis LaForche, who begins to experience hallucinations and apocalyptic dreams about an imminent disaster. He sacrifices everything to prepare his family for what he believes is to come. His wife, played by the always wonderful Jessica Chastain, struggles to understand his descent into what appears to be madness. The ending shocks.
Jake Gyllenhaal is Louis “Lou” Bloom, a wannabe TV news cameraman who operates as a stringer in Los Angeles. His psychopathic tendencies come to the fore when he begins to become involved in the news stories that he covers. Riz Ahmed (from HBO’s The Night Of), Renee Russo and Bill Paxton provide the supporting roles with aplomb in 2014’s Nightcrawler [Netflix]. Bloom inevitably take his passion for the news too far in this riveting thriller, endangering the lives of everyone around him.
It Follows [Amazon Prime and Pluto] is the scariest movie of the decade with the word “It” in the title. This 2014 supernatural horror film has a relatively conventional premise: a supernatural killer pursues you until it finds you and kills you. But the film employs a unique plot device: if the victim has sex with someone, the supernatural entity will (temporarily, at least) pursue that person instead. This one is definitely “not for the kids.” Is it a parable for the HIV/AIDS epidemic? We don’t know, but this film delights in frightening you. Check it out.
You will never look at goats the same way after watching The Witch [Showtime]. Set in 17th century New England, this 2015 horror film depicts a highly religious family that moves to the deep wood after a religious dispute with their local Puritan brethren. The eldest daughter, Thomasin, played by Anya Taylor-Joy in what was her break-out role (before she wowed us as the star of Netflix’s Queen’s Gambit), loses her baby brother during a game of peak-a-boo (he literally disappears). The family spends the rest of the film engaged in a duel with the forces of Satan. You’ll leave this film thinking those folks who ran the Salem Witch Trials might have been right!
