Top 10 of 2020

What a strange year it's been. I began this year on something of a high as I felt I'd firmly established my YouTube channel, Tavern Talk by initial reaction, as a weekly review show based out of the Movie Tavern line of theaters owned by the Marcus corporation and was looking to garner a varied list of guests to join me each and every week to discuss the biggest releases while also branching out in hopes of doing more interviews and special episodes such as Oscar roundtable discussions with local pundits, but alas...a global pandemic. After shooting a final review for the only movie with a more maligned release schedule than The New Mutants, The Hunt, on March 12th I would not return to a movie theater for almost six months. In early September we would shoot a review for Christopher Nolan's TENET and in mid-November I had my final theatrical experience of the year in Christopher Landon's Freaky, though I was lucky enough to see both One Night in Miami... and Nomadland back at the beginning of October via a drive-in film festival which was, needless to say, a huge win for 2020; especially considering one of those films is in my top five favorites of the year and the other would certainly make the top twenty. 

So, with such limited access to movie theaters this year what was there to see? A lot actually. So much in fact, I somehow still managed to allow some of the more talked about titles of the year to escape me prior to making this list. Most notably, I still need to see Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Martin Eden, Shirley, and I need to finish David Byrne's American Utopia but I've seen well over two hundred 2020 releases and feel confident that my top ten would largely go unchanged despite those I still need to catch-up with. I don't publish anything below beyond a top ten as those rankings would certainly be more likely to change the more I'm able to see over the next few months, but to highlight a few titles that didn't make my top ten that were in high contention would be to mention the beautifully animated Wolfwalkers, Guy Ritchie's return to form in The Gentlemen, Emerald Fennell's searing and sugar-coated Promising Young Woman, Aaron Sorkin's highly-respectable The Trial of the Chicago Seven, as well as genre pictures like Aneesh Chaganty's RUN, Antonio Campos' The Devil All the Time, Brian Duffield's Spontaneous, Judd Apatow's The King of Staten Island, and not to mention the aforementioned TENET and One Night in Miami.... I'm sure there are other fantastic titles I'm missing especially considering the stellar year it's been for documentaries given The Last Dance, On the Record, Time, Zappa, and Collective are all classified as 2020 releases, but there is simply not enough time or space to highlight all of the grand work that has turned up in this otherwise tumultuous and challenging year. I'd also like to give a special mention to Clark Duke's Arkansas given I naturally have a soft spot for it, but let's not waste any more time on what might have been and get down to the films from this year I think will have the longest lasting impression on me.

NEWS OF THE WORLD Review

In the second verse of Alan Jackson’s 1994 hit “Gone Country” the singer talks about a folk singer considering trying his hand at the more financially viable country music scene. The verse is largely crafted to segue into the multi-purpose chorus, but its comments on the lack of any real difference between the intent behind Bob Dylan’s lyrical content and country music’s entire ethos (standing up for the little guy, speaking out against wealth and privilege) is relevant given the South has always pinned pride as a key characteristic and humility as a weakness, but by uttering the line, “Well, they're not as backward as they used to be,” in reference to his hillbilly brethren Jackson essentially admits to past shortcomings with an eye toward the promise of a more harmonious future. While the only obvious parallel between Jackson’s song and News of the World is that director Paul Greengrass has in fact "gone country", intentional or not, the director’s latest collaboration with star Tom Hanks also addresses outright the idea of looking toward that more harmonious future in the wake of reconstruction-era America. Though not as effectively communicated in this film based on the novel by Paulette Jiles as it was in Hanks' "Black Jeopardy" skit on Saturday Night Live or as efficiently as in Jackson's song, News of the World still comes with a competent take on how far we can regress when we allow our differences to divide us rather than sharing in our similarities to connect us. The idea that even if people are willing to change, more often than not the times are not ready to turn with them is a theme that feels as relevant now as it does in News of the World's Texas setting circa 1870. Of course, meaningful change takes time and there's a caveat of understanding to this given the period setting, but there’s still something oddly disconcerting about seeing Texans denounce the articles of a newspaper as read by Hanks' Captain Jefferson Kidd (yes, this totally could have been the middle chapter in a Hanks/Greengrass trilogy called Captain Jefferson, but alas...) that conveys the actions of a president the majority of Southerners disapprove of. It's not a perfect parallel (not yet, anyway), but the fact Jefferson's reading of the news opens with an update on the meningitis epidemic that is, "spreading without prejudice" and had thus far claimed ninety-seven souls in a two month period, allows for said parallels and furthermore, said regressions, to feel all the more timely and - hopefully - eye-opening. A magnified look at our past with direct ties to our realized future, News of the World is a handsomely mounted and sturdily told tale that sports a modern spirit through the guise of one of America's most revered and respected genres.    

WONDER WOMAN 1984 Review

Wonder Woman 1984 is not a good movie. Unfortunately. It's not that it's soul-crushingly bad, but it's just not good and it for one reason or another feels like it's completely mistaken silly for entertaining. Absurdity for ambition. There is a wealth of good intent imbued on the project as writer/director Patty Jenkins returns to continue crafting the titular character into more of a beacon of hope than ever, but come the end of this bloated two and half hour epic it's nearly impossible to see how anyone associated with the project could have mistaken it for quality rather than recognizing the bizarre (and often times extremely cheesy) choices that were made, not to mention the incredibly preposterous nature of it all. It's almost as if the film actively goes out of its way not to necessarily make its message more convoluted, but rather like it's trying to do or say more than what is actually on its mind. In other words, it's trying to make the simple idea at its center feel more complex and therefore more sophisticated when in reality said execution simply feels perplexing. The oddity that is this Wonder Woman sequel is difficult to describe as it's still somewhat mind-blowing that Jenkins along with co-writers Geoff Johns (a former executive at DC Entertainment and a prolific writer and producer) and Dave Callaham (seasoned franchise screenwriter) submitted this screenplay to Warner Brothers with the confidence not only that it would be approved, but that it was good while it's even more confounding that Warner greenlit this $200 million experiment. All of this is difficult to come to terms with as I very much am in the bag for excessively bombastic superhero films that have a distinct point of view and while Wonder Woman 1984 is most certainly excessive and most definitely carves out where it wants to stand in the pantheon of the genre none of what transpires on screen ever feels satisfying despite the virtue of what the film is trying to convey. Its a baffling misfire, an ill-conceived attempt at looking to the past in order to enlighten us about our future, but most of all it's disappointing. With the first Wonder Woman film three years ago Jenkins crafted an equally ambitious, but more balanced film that honed in on the titular character’s optimism and slight naivety while utilizing the tangible and rather terrible world she entered as a way of highlighting those qualities. 2017's Wonder Woman found the right avenues to take in order to balance the many ambitions it hoped to accomplish with its story and characters whereas Wonder Woman 1984 crams in so many disparate ideas and goes so far out of its way in such ludicrous fashion in order to say what it wants to say that hardly any of it resonates.

Official Teaser Trailer for COMING 2 AMERICA Starring Eddie Murphy

Amazon Studios has released the official teaser trailer for Coming 2 America, the upcoming sequel to 1988's Coming to America. Admittedly, I've never seen the original film as my dad was more of a Beverly Hills Cop/48 Hrs. guy and never spent near as much time relaying lines from Trading Places or Coming to America. I feel like I've seen bits and pieces of the film, but I know for a fact I've never sat down to watch the whole thing back to front. Needless to say, one of my earliest New Years Resolutions will be to rectify that and watch Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall's 1988 collaboration in anticipation of the thirty-three year-later sequel that not only reunites Murphy and Hall and Murphy and Hall and Murphy and Hall in a dozen or so roles, but also brings back the likes of Garcelle Beauvais, James Earl Jones, John Amos, Shari Headley, Louis Anderson, and Vanessa Bell Calloway. The sequel was directed by Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan) who also directed Murphy in the acclaimed Netflix movie Dolemite Is My Name in 2019. Of course, this isn't all nostalgia as the new film will center on Murphy's Akeem, now the king of the fictional and very prosperous African nation of Zamunda, as he returns to New York City after thirty years in search of the son he never knew he had. Newcomers to the Coming 2 America cast include Wesley Snipes, Jermaine Fowler, Teyana Taylor, KiKi Layne, Tracy Morgan, and Leslie Jones. Though it's difficult to say without having seen the first yet it will be fascinating to note the differences and similarities in watching the only two films in a franchise essentially back to back despite being made over three decades apart. Given the last time Akeem visited the U.S. was when Ronald Reagan was president there should be a fine amount of relevant material to work with in the political and social commentary realm as well, but we shall see; I'm eager to dive into these films and find out what I've been missing and what I have to look forward to. Amazon acquired Coming 2 America from Paramount Pictures and while Amazon typically has a pretty good theatrical set-up in terms of a window prior to release on Prime it seems as if this acquisition will be skipping theaters altogether and will instead be an exclusive streaming release. Initially, that release was set for December of this year before getting pushed to March 5, 2021.

MINARI Review

Minari is a film based largely on writer/director Lee Isaac Chung's own experiences of being of Korean descent and moving to middle-of-nowhere Arkansas in the 1980's in order for his family to start anew and his father to start a farm. It is then, obviously, a very personal story and therefore undoubtedly includes what must be several specific details that transport Chung back to what he likely remembers as a very brief, but meaningful time in his life. I say this up front because of how much the red hat the character of the father wears in the film struck me. Nothing is ever said about it, nothing really happens to it or with it, but it's always there; it's as if it is Jacob's (Steven Yeun) safety blanket and a staple of his appearance critical to how his children will always remember and picture him. I have a certain shirt I always associate my own father with and I'm sure this is true for many others as well, but it is the fact Chung's screenplay and eventual film make sure to include this level of detail while never zeroing in on it that really relays why Minari is not only a story of the American experience as seen through the lens of Korean heritage, but simply a story of the American experience; maybe even the most American of experiences. 

As Jacob along with his wife and children emerge from their vehicles after pulling up to their new house - on their new land - it's not hard to sense the contribution that at least Jacob is ready to make even if the rest of his family aren't sold on the idea yet. Much in the way a character later plants the Korean vegetable minari from which the film takes its name, Jacob is ready to put down his own roots, but unlike the minari Jacob is somewhat hesitant to begin to assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of his new surroundings. It's in this kind of juxtaposition of Jacob wanting to utilize the land to fulfill his own dreams and his own purposes while expecting the land to take nothing from him in return that a sense of the family dynamic can be observed as well. As much as Jacob wants to fulfill the idea of the American dream that he's been chasing since moving from Korea a decade or so prior he is simultaneously driving away what would make achieving said dream worthwhile. Minari is a story of a family assimilating into their new environment, yes, but it's more specifically a story of the adjustment period within their own circle than it is with the one around them. It is due to the specificity in Chung's writing and the gentleness of his direction that the whole of the film is as significant as each individual moment. A masterclass in presenting complex emotions through a simple guise, Minari is an exceptional work.