2020 A Very Strange Year of Film In Review

Why Tenet is Exasperating, FIRST COW, and other films from 2020 that I love...

Hi, Thomas Flight here- I make video essays about film and TV. This is where I write once a month about visual media, share additional background on my recent video essays, and recommend a piece of film or TV I’ve recently enjoyed. If you’re interested in keeping up with my work and what I have to say about visual media, if you haven’t yet please consider subscribing.

Essays published this month:

If I sound a little exasperated in my video about Nolan’s exposition problem, it’s because I am. I have a weird relationship to Nolan’s films, they’re movies that I want to be deeply in love with. Inception was a film that helped get me really excited about being a filmmaker again. I love his concepts, I love the virtuoso nature of his visuals, but his films never quite seem to reach the greatness they aspire to. Some people may think I’m giving his work too much of a hard time- “they’re just blockbusters” seems to be a common defense. And I’ll fully admit I’m holding Nolan to a higher standard of C I N E M A than I am say, Mission Impossible: Fallout or the latest Bond flick- but I only do because it seems (to me) like he could do better- like he could make films that would find themselves in the company of the all time greats. And yet he consistently seems to undercut his films’ incredible potential with annoying little issues that seem fixable enough.

And that’s one of the weird little dimensions of criticism, that I’m more critical of and harsher on Tenet than I am on Mission Impossible: Fallout even though if I look at them as objectively as possible they seem pretty similar- both have dumb plots about saving the world and weak characters but big impressive action sequences- Tenet’s lead by their ingenuity, Fallout’s lead by Cruise’s insanity- both grounded in their dedication to actually doing what you see on screen. But yet I leave Fallout entertained, having turned off my brain and just allowed the action to entertain me, it’s flawed, but it seems to be everything it could be. And yet I leave Tenet mostly frustrated, wishing instead it would have been the movie I feel it could have been. Instead of turning off my brain, it’s a film that makes me think, but all that thinking does is make me dwell on the film’s inconsistencies and inaccuracies. 

First Cow, what a delightful gem of a film. I really wish I could have caught this in theaters back at the start of the year. It’s one of those films that really gets richer on a second viewing.

As a YouTuber there are some films and topics that get a lot more traction than others. I always try to talk about things that I’m interested in, but to even be able to keep doing this as a full time gig, unfortunately you have to have at least a slight bias towards talking about films that will get clicks. It’s just one of the unfortunate realities of being a YouTuber (aka a servant of the algorithmic gods).

But sometimes I can’t help but throw all that to the wind because the only thing I want to talk about is FIRST COW. FIRST COW IS GREAT. PLEASE WATCH FIRST COW.

Some films I enjoyed from 2020 and some I didn’t: 

As long as 2020 felt, the end of it still snuck up on me. And so tomorrow the strangest year for cinema in my lifetime will come to a close. 2021 will likely be just as strange or even stranger, as we continue to grapple with when and how theater-going can resume and as the results of few hamstrung productions from throughout 2020 start to surface.

Purely as a film lover and viewer it was a bit of a downer year. 2019 was my favorite year for film since I started covering film as an essayist and so my expectations were high. Towards the beginning of 2020 I saw a few new releases I enjoyed: The Assistant impressed me, with how it used perspective to portray how power-dynamics can lead to abuse in workplaces, Invisible Man exceeded my low expectations by being a decently paced, creative, suspense film, and EMMA. did a wonderful job of portraying visually the exaggerated, satirical world crafted by Jane Austen. But then you all know what happened- and my plans to see First Cow during its theatrical run (along with mine and everyone’s plans to do anything else), were suddenly canceled. 

Stuck and at home everyone started turning towards streaming media (even more than they already were). I recommended my YouTube viewers create a “watching project” for themselves. My wife and I finally knocked out the last two seasons of The Sopranos. 

While I saw a record-low number of films in theaters this year, I actually watched a higher than average number of films (for me). I got around to watching many classics and foreign films that I’d been meaning to get to. In April I caught up on all the other Bong Joon-Ho films I hadn’t seen. Over the summer I dove deeper into Bergman’s work watching The Seventh Seal, Winter Light, and Scenes from a Marriage, I also explored some more Tarkovsky, watching Mirror and Nostalghia for the first time. Impressed by Johanna Hogg’s The Souvenir from last year, this year I caught up on all her previous work- especially enjoying her first film Unrelated. In the fall I rewatched all of Yorgos Lanthimos’ films and gained a newfound appreciation for his direction and style. I also further explored the world of “non-verbal” cinema, I’d been a fan of the documentary Samsara for quite some time, but this year I explored the style’s roots in Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka, and Man With a Movie Camera. (These films actually led to my friend Ben and I making an experimental feature film this month somewhat along those lines. My patrons are getting a special preview screening today, but we’ll release to to the public sometime in 2021- I’ll update you here when it’s out)

All of that mostly satisfied the void filled by the lack of new releases, but even when releases came along I was mostly underwhelmed. Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, Nolan’s Tenet, and Fincher’s Mank, were all fairly underwhelming to me, none of them really connecting despite each having unique and interesting qualities. The highlight of my summer in terms of new releases was Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things- a divisive film that nonetheless gave me something to think about and talk to friends about.  

But the end of the year rolled around, the best of lists started to surface, some festival releases started to hit streaming and VOD platforms and I was able to start catching up on some of the gems of 2020 that had slipped me by. There’s still much I haven’t been able to see, despite all the buzz, Nomadland and Minari aren’t yet available, and some like The Sound of Metal, and the last three parts in the Small Axe anthology, I just haven’t had time to watch yet. But I finally got around to watching First Cow, and absolutely fell in love. I've also really enjoyed Mangrove and Lovers Rock, the first two in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series. Other highlights have been Soderberg’s meandering but fun Let Them All Talk, and Vinterberg’s dramedy Another Round, and The Nest.  

There’s still much more I want to see from this year and I’ll be catching up well into January and February, so I don’t plan to make any kind of “best of” or “top” list this month.

Meanwhile everyone in the film community waits with bated breath to see how the next several years play out. The industry is thrown into chaos, the chips are in the air- some may fall for the better and some for the worse, I don’t know, we’ll find out together.

Happy New Years,

TF