JANUARY 24 - JANUARY 30, 2021 18 FEATURE By Ian Rosales Casocot


A Top 30 film list for a tumultuous year


If there was a year for endlessly watching movies, 2020 would be it. While movie theaters closed down, and while we thought of the last film we watched in the theater [mine was the Pixar film Onwards in City Mall, what was yours?] with some degree of premature nostalgia, we learned to flock to streaming online, Netflix most of all.


I have seen 331 films in 2020—features [including animated films], documentaries, and short films. A record for me. And I’ve ranked them all. [You can go to http:// bit.ly/3ipBt5p for the complete listing.]


now, for MetroPost, just my Top 30. Still, any ranked list changes over time, because our responses to anything will always be tied to context and personal connection, which are relative. I say this because even up to now, I look at this list and it’s difficult to resist the urge to rearrange. For example, when I watched Regina King’s One Night in Miami for the first time, I was impressed—but not enough for it to breach my provisional Top 10 of the year.


But for


thinking about the film. When I saw it for the second time a few days later, I was able to reach deeper into its cinematic nuances and the gravity of its themes, and I found a better movie than when I first saw it. Now, it’s my No. 2. But it has been an exhilarating year for the movies, even given the pandemic lockdown that made many of our anticipated releases unfortunately decamp


But I could not stop


yet finding ultimate grace in that exploration of humanity. In Nomadland, a woman loses her home in the recession and decides to live in her van while traveling the country— but finds uncommon bond with nomads like her, and beauty in harsh country. In First Cow, two strangers in frontierland America decide to live together, and find joy and sustenance in baking cookies flavored by stolen milk. In Saint Frances, a lost soul in her mid-30s becomes a nanny for the summer with no intentions of being good at her parttime job—but finds herself becoming a better woman, much to her surprise. In Minari, a Korean immigrant pursues the American dream of farming land in Iowa— despite bad turns of luck, protests from his wife, and the culture clash he frequently encounters. Even in the horror landscape of The Painted Bird, a very divisive film where a boy encounters unimaginable


year of the lesbian in film, with Ammonite, Deux [Two of Us], The Half of It, Happiest Season, Kajillionaire, The Prom, and Summer of Mesa coming to the fore—some better than the others. I love that trans people found complex representations in Alice Junior, The Craft: Legacy, Funny Boy, and Lingua Franca, with the documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen capping it all—again, some better than the others. I love the gender fluidity of Aviva, Possessor, Shirley, You Don’t Nomi, and True History of the Kelly Gang. I love that many films featuring gay men—End of the Century, The Christmas Setup, Los Fuertes [The Strong Ones], José, Matthias and Maxime, Monsoon, and Suble t— invariably involved place and transitions: whether arriving in a strange land or leaving a familiar one, and groping for anchor either way. I love that we have gay heroes to emulate [The Old Guard and Uncle Frank], and gay villains to make things more interesting [He Who is Without Sin]. And I love that we’re still doing coming of age films [The Boy Foretold by the Stars, Summer of 85, Your Name Engraved Herein, and The Thing About Harry] , even when we grapple with the continuing challenges of being LGBTQ [ And Then We Da nced, Supernova, The Surrogate, We lc ome to Chechnya , and Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker]. I love that


I love that 2020 was the


to 2021. The loss of Black Widow, Coming 2 America, Death on the Nile, Dune, Eternals, The French Dispatch, The Green Knight, In the Heights, Memoria, No Time to Die, A Quiet Place Part II, Top Gun: Maverick, and West Side Story to later playdates was keenly felt—but it also afforded smaller films to rise and define the movies of 2020, outshining even the big ones that dared open, like Tenet, Mulan, and Wonder Woman 1984, which were disappointments.


perversions while escaping the fires of World War II, humanity glimmers like a kind of holy grail. I think that’s what I


responded to in films in the difficult year that was 2020: grace notes in the midst of loss, horror, and depression. I found it in Elehiya sa Paglimot, the moving documentary on the filmmaker’s grappling with his father’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease. I found it in Soul, the Pixar film on jazz, death, and second chances. I


grounded for me my favorite genre of the disaster movie. I love that we had theatrical performances on film such as Hamilton, What the Constitution Means to Me, and David Byrne’s American Utopia.


G re en lan d


made five films—Mangrove, Lovers Rock, Red, White and Blue, Alex Wheatle, and Education— in an anthology series collectively called Small Axe to document the black experience in Britain, and subsequently unleashing a debate fit for 2020: what is


I love that Steve McQueen


What I like about the films I loved in 2020 were their daring to be blissfully, utterly human, warts and all—and


found it in About Endlessness, Roy Andersson’s final film in his trilogy of weird dioramas of human foibles and frailty.


film, and what is television? I love that Steven Soderbergh continues to experiment with cinematic platforms, this year giving us the wonderful Let Them All Talk, and I love that his Contagion, released in 2011, belatedly became the most sought-after film for our fraught times.


pandemic had an ironic effect moviegoing-wise: it allowed me greater access to films I would normally not be able to access in time— especially Filipino films. In answer to theater closures nationwide, the local film industry finally created an online portal to new films in release, Upstream, which made patronising Filipino films less a Manila-centric endeavour. Suddenly we had access to QCinema titles, and Metro Manila Film Festival entries without being at the programming mercy of local theater chains. [There is also the new FDCP Channel, which seeks to stream Filipino film classics and new festival titles.] But I have yet to see some of the


And I love that the


critically-acclaimed films of the year, including Asia, French Exit, Gunda, Judas and the Black Messiah, Night of the Kings, Saint Maud, Sun Children, Te Llevo Conmigo [I Carry You With Me], The Truffle Hunters, United States vs. Billie Holiday, and The White Tiger. So here’s my Top 30: [1] Nomadland (Chloé


Zhao, U.S.), [2] One Night in Miami (Regina King, U.S.), [3] First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, U.S.), [4] Saint Frances (Alex Thompson, U.S.), [5] Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark), [6] Minari (Lee Isaac Chung, U.S.), [7] The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul, Czech Republic), [8] Collective (Alexander Nanau, Romania), [9] Himala: Isang Dayalektika ng Ating Panahon (Lav Diaz, Philippines), [10] The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson, U.S.).


(Kristoffer Brugada, Philippines), [12] Soul (Pete Docter, U.S.), [13] World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt,


[11] Elehiya sa Paglimot


U.S.), [14] About Endlessness (Roy Andersson, Sweden), [15] Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, Ireland), [16] Ammonite (Francis Lee, United Kingdom), [17] Kalel, 15 (Jun Robles Lana, Philippines), [18] What the Constitution Means to Me (Marielle Heller, U.S.), [19, tie] Slay the Dragon (Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance, U.S.) and All In: The Fight for Democracy (Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortés, U.S.). [21] Aswang (Alyx Ayn


Arumpac, Philippines), [22] The Audition (Ina Weisse, Germany), [23] Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe, U.S.), [24] Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy (Elizabeth Carroll, U.S.), [25] The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea), [26, tie] Mangrove (Steve McQueen, United Kingdom) and The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin, U.S.), [28] Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, U.S.), [29] A Sun (Chung Mong-hong, Taiwan), and [30] Your Name Engraved Herein (Liu Kuang- Hui, Taiwan).


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