Photo-Illustration: Vulture and Courtesy of the Studios
We’re already a few months into 2020, which means it’s time to start up our running list of the best movies of the year to date. There are already plenty of candidates, from a fervent animated romantic fantasy (Weathering With You) to a brilliant depiction of trauma and loss in Russia at the end of World War II (Beanpole). Here are the best movies Vulture has seen and (for the most part) reviewed so far, according to our critics Angelica Jade Bastién, Bilge Ebiri, David Edelstein, and Alison Willmore.
(A reminder about methodology: This list is restricted to films that have had their first official release in 2020 — so no Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which had a brief run in 2019 — and we will continue to update it throughout the year.)
Photo: Courtesy of Toho
Anime’s king of feels Makoto Shinkai conquered the world in 2016 with his body-swap romance Your Name, a massive global hit that’s (of course) set for an American remake. So it’s not a surprise that he’s stayed in similar teen-fantasy-romance territory for his follow-up, about a young runaway to Tokyo and the orphaned girl he falls in love with — a girl with the power to bring the sun out, however briefly. What is surprising is the moodiness of Weathering With You, a love story for an era of climate change that staunchly refuses the idea that the young have to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the decisions of previous generations. It’s darker and less deliriously swoony than Your Name, but its emotions are just as big — big enough to change the course of the future.
Photo: Gustavo Figueiredo/RLJE Films
Look, all you really need to know about this trippy H.P. Lovecraft update is that Nicolas Cage stars as a husband, father, and would-be farmer who owns and does a lot of shouting about alpacas. Or maybe what’s most important is that this throwback horror freak-out is the work of filmmaker Richard Stanley, making a long-in-the-works comeback over two decades after he was famously fired from the disaster that was The Island of Dr. Moreau. Either way, rest assured that things start going very poorly for the ill-fated family at its center, not to mention their animals, when a meteor crash-lands on their rural property and starts warping reality around it.
Photo: Bleecker Street
Director Kitty Green’s scripted debut depicts a long day in the life of a low-level drone at an unnamed New York film studio not unlike the Weinstein Company. Jane (Julia Garner) takes calls and makes copy and scrubs the bodily fluids off the couch in her boss’ office, all with the same look of grim understanding that this is what she has to endure to get ahead in her dream industry. Spare and devastating, The Assistant serves up a portrait of an abusive workplace in which the behavior of the unseen man at its head trickles down to inform the power dynamics and behavior of the rest of the company. That includes HR, to which Jane pays a visit in a brutal centerpiece scene that emphasizes what it’s like when the only choices open seem to be to become complicit or to give up.
The Whistlers
Photo: Vlad Cioplea/Magnolia Pictures
Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu loves to play with procedure and form; he’s an ideal director for playful tales about bureaucrats, cops, and other officials in a country still wrestling with the decades-long fallout from a communist dictatorship. His movies are cosmic comedies shot through with moments of ironic tragedy, and this crime comedy-drama might be his weirdest one yet. It starts off as a bizarro tale about a policeman who has to learn a “whistling” language used by the inhabitants of one of the Canary Islands in order to help free a gangster from prison, then twists into a moving meditation on love, loyalty, and self-improvement. Best experienced without knowing anything beforehand; I’ve already said too much!
Photo: Kino Lorber
Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s soul-crushingly powerful and exquisitely mounted historical drama (which really deserved at least an Oscar nomination this year; it was short-listed but didn’t make the final five) follows two female veterans trying to reconnect with life in postwar St. Petersburg. It starts off in unspeakable tragedy — the young director is known for booby-trapping his films with the occasionally devastating image or plot development — which makes for a striking emotional and structural gambit. As the characters wrestle with their own trauma, we, too, are dealing with the consequences of what we’ve seen. What makes it all work — and work so beautifully — is Balagov’s almost supernatural command of film language: the elegance of his storytelling, the vivid, symbolic use of color, the humanism of the performances. You can bask in Beanpole’s cinematic delights while simultaneously having your heart ripped to shreds.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
