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Directors on Directors: Filmmakers Analyze 2020 Favorites

  • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

    Directed by Jason Woliner
    Essay by Adam McKay

    How do you make a movie about the times we’re currently living through? Do you simply turn the camera on and document the careening disintegration? Or use story as a metaphor? Or maybe comedy can work as a release for dark and ludicrous truths?

    One director this year did all of the above. Jason Woliner’s “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” is a docu-comedia dell’arte-father-daughter quest film.

    And in many cases the movie was filmed during a pandemic and features actual radical white nationalists as unwitting main characters. To top it all off it contains a few of the more touching scenes of the year, including one featuring a sweet woman in a temple who shows a wildly anti-Semitic Borat unwavering compassion and love.

    Very few directors could drive this flaming Ralph Steadman monster truck of a movie as deftly as Jason Woliner. For a long time in the comedy world he’s been known as one of the more skilled absurdist directors.

    Finally the world exploded, and when the smoldering debris, confetti and rats came raining down Woliner knew exactly how to film it.

    Oscar-nominated for directing “The Big Short,” McKay’s other works include “Don’t Look Up,” “Step Brothers” and the series “Succession.”

  • Promising Young Woman

    “For your film, I felt the tone so consistently, and you took so many bold choices with the tone as well. Without giving anything away, it was miraculous that in 2020 you were able to have a twist — several, but one truly shocking twist — but your tone remains so consistent as you make these really bold choices, and that’s so fucking hard to do. I was amazed by that … I think that the best films are often Trojan horse films, that if you can lure someone in with the promise of entertainment and then leave them feeling something, you’ve done something valuable. Your film did that so beautifully, because the film itself is like its lead character: it lures you in with the promise of beauty and sexuality, and it’s so enticing and sparkly. And then it wakes up and says: ‘Hang on, I’m actually very sober and I’m going to tell you a fucking story.’ I love that about it.”

    — Olivia Wilde on “Promising Young Woman,” directed by Emerald Fennell, watch the full conversation here

  • The Father

    Directed by Florian Zeller
    Essay by Kenneth Branagh

    Florian Zeller makes a mesmeric directorial debut with “The Father.” As anyone who saw his play from which it is evolved can testify, there was already a powerful theatrical experience at work. How to make such theatrical brilliance cinematic? Firstly, he trusts his story. Its immediacy, its humanity and the raw recognition it offers to so many audiences.

    And then, he trusts his characters. He has two acting titans at the center of the film, and as a director, he clears the way for them to do their work. His visual style is spare, measured, elegant. It allows performance to be seen sharply at the center — intimate, darkly funny, ragged and deep. Zeller has a surgeon’s touch. He is delicate and precise with his cutting style, and yet it is never soulless.

    It is however forensic. He invites the viewer into a cinematic puzzle, where the question of what is real, and what is not real is all-pervasive. But in his clear and uncluttered frame he also manages to induce the slow mounting panic of a story that just will not be what it appears to be. The surface of the movie is all calm and clarity, and the underneath is all mounting dread and terror. This is a discordant chamber music of the soul, and it is conducted by Zeller with exquisite tenderness and pain.

    As Zeller the director, he has the smart and humble idea to get out of the way of Zeller the writer’s brilliant idea. In so doing he lets something ancient emerge from the drama. A Greek tragedy in a London apartment. Hopkins and Colman are magnificent, and their director has paid them the honor of leaving much to them. Their performances return the favor with soulful largesse. The result is an emotional thriller that wrangles with the mind, and fairly breaks the heart. Zeller the director has arrived — in triumph.

    An Emmy-winning and multiple Oscar-nominated director and actor, Branagh’s films include “Hamlet,” “Thor” and “Murder on the Orient Express.”

  • First Cow

    Directed by Kelly Reichardt
    Essay by Olivier Assayas

    The films of Kelly Reichardt are a blessing. They have illuminated by their beauty, their heartfelt simplicity, and their depth, the world of independent filmmaking. I have always been deeply admiring of how, with patience and quiet authority, she has followed the unique path of her inspiration.

    Ultimately she is about everything contemporary cinema seems to have rejected, or neglected, or despised; peace, grace, the frailty of human emotions you can only capture with the most delicate and the most nuanced touch, attention to the eternal beauties of creation.

    She’s been making her films off the track, actually off any track, trusting her vision, doing it on her own terms without ever compromising with an industry that has swallowed up so many gifted filmmakers. Without one false note she has created a remarkable, unique body of work that is entirely hers, in both its diversity and its impressive coherence. Very few have accomplished that.

    “First Cow” is a major addition. A modern film, but standing outside of time. An abstract, radical film, as demanding, as daring as anything she’s done, but also clear, simple, imbued with universal values of friendship and survival, capturing both the landscapes of the American heartland, and its very soul. No surprise, she’s already done it, but what higher goal than using your art and all your skills at connecting the present and the past, wilderness and civilization, reminding us where we come from and how the thread has never been broken.

    The generous, human, often heartbreaking art of Kelly Reichardt, the clarity of her vision, feels all the more urgent in the dark, confusing world we nowadays live in. She genuinely is a treasure of international cinema and we should be grateful to her.

    Assayas’ films include “Irma Vep,” “Summer Hours,” “Carlos” and “Personal Shopper.”

  • Da 5 Bloods

    “I love the film – it’s such a crazy film, it’s so you. It makes me look at all your work, and see how fucking crazy you are, and I love it. You take big chances all the way down the line. You’ve established a way of filmmaking that is very rare – you don’t see it often, but it’s very specific to you. I’ve seen it twice now. It’s a love poem to Black Vietnam soldiers, exclusively about that experience…and it hangs together in the sense of its poetry. And your style keeps changing all the time: I sat through that movie and I had no idea what the fuck would happen next. You keep me off-balance, nothing clichéd, nothing predictable.

    — Oliver Stone on ‘Da 5 Bloods,’ directed by Spike Lee watch the full conversation between the two directors here for Variety’s “Directors on Directors” series. 

  • Funny Boy

    Directed by Deepa Mehta
    Essay by Atom Egoyan

    The first twelve minutes of Deepa Mehta’s new film, “Funny Boy,” capture the spirit of childhood quite unlike anything I have seen. We see the exuberance and playful energy of a group of children running along a beach chasing a train, performing a mock wedding, having a fight, and playing a doomed cricket game. The camera swoons in and out of trees, doors, and windows. Through the gardens and rooms of a beautiful house, we’re introduced to a host of characters that will reverberate through this luscious story about the roots of difference, identity, tolerance and love.

    In one of my favorite scenes, we’re in a room with young Arjie and his very cool aunt. To the strains of Leonard Cohen singing “Famous Blue Raincoat” on a cassette machine, she dons her nephew, who was dressed as a bride in the children’s mock wedding and is drawn to wearing lipstick, with a fabulous red feather boa. Young Arjie rushes to a mirror to look at himself. It is the first time anyone has ever given him permission to be who he is. The aunt asks if he wants her to put make-up on his face. Arjie is unsure how to respond. She asks, “Is it wrong for a boy to do it?” Arjie hesitates, and then nods. “Why?” Aunt Radha asks, “Are you hurting anybody?” Aria shakes his head.

    “Will it make you happy? “Aunt Radha asks twice, granting the boy entrance to world of acceptance and liberation. She then paints his toenails, and we are briefly transported to an image of adult Arjie, painting the toenails of his male lover many years later. He has remembered this moment with his aunt all his life. This was his portal to a world of self-acceptance and spiritual and sexual integrity. Still, the aunt says it must be his “joyful secret.” This story is taking place in Sri Lanka, after all. A country where homosexuality is still banned and considered to be a criminal offence, punishable by ten to twenty years in prison.

    Deepa Mehta is a rare filmmaker, equally comfortable in very different worlds and completely fluid in transmitting these wildly different sensibilities of East and West with unerring confidence and skill. With “Funny Boy,” she has explored a world within a world, setting this story of forbidden love within the explosively violent history between Christian Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalese. It’s a Sri Lankan Romeo and Juliet story told with passion, insight and a deep sense of humanity. While it’s culturally specific, its underlying theme and message of hope is universal. “Funny Boy” is beautifully cast, performed with absolute conviction and shot with astonishing sensitivity and compassion. It’s about the best of times and the worst of times; seasons of darkness and seasons of light.

    Egoyan was Oscar nominated for best director for “The Sweet Hereafter.” His other films include “Exotica” and “Remember.”

  • Judas and the Black Messiah

    Directed by Shaka King
    Essay by Matthew A. Cherry

    The most important art has something to say, and Shaka King speaks with the confidence of filmmakers twice his age. Shaka never shies away from the tough conversations in “​Judas and the Black Messiah​,” and he leaves the audience with a well-rounded and complex depiction of Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party. ​The entire ensemble shines under Shaka’s confident direction, especially Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield and Dominique Fishback; no part proves to be too small.

    Upon the announcement and first description of​ Judas and the Black Messiah​ I, like many others, wondered why Shaka would take the approach of intertwining both Fred Hampton and FBI informant William O’Neal’s stories as opposed to just focusing on Hampton. As I continued to watch, it became clear that it was to show that you’re still choosing a side even when you choose to sit on the sidelines to avoid taking a political stance. We see how straddling the fence leads to O’Neal’s eventual corruption. We also see how his capitalist approach to changing his financial circumstances by any means necessary left him not only morally bankrupt, but also led to his own demise and robbed the world of a great young Black leader with a powerful voice on the verge of uniting Chicago during a tumultuous time.

    “Judas and the Black Messiah​” is a technical achievement that isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions and one can only hope that America is finally up to the task of answering them.

    Director of features “9 Rides” and “The Last Fall,” Cherry won the short film Oscar last year for “Hair Love.”

  • King of Staten Island

    “This is your latest, greatest movie in a long line of great movies, and it has another young, almost undiscovered talent that you again were way ahead in recognizing. It’s great that you have an actor in Pete [Davidson] who was comfortable and capable of showing vulnerability, and also knowing that that was a nice pathway to comedy as well. That’s something you’ve always been such a sniper with. You can find the humor in some of the broadest storylines, situations, characters, but also in the most human and raw and vulnerable characters and situations.”

    — Jason Bateman on “King of Staten Island,” directed by Judd Apatow

    (Check back soon to watch the full video conversation between Jason Bateman and Judd Apatow.)

  • Land

    Directed by Robin Wright
    Essay by Julian Schnabel

    Why do people make films? What is the need? What is the goal? To communicate what? One of the most difficult things to film is two people in a room, for it to ring true where actors are not acting they are being and maybe what’s even more demanding is to film one actor doing and being. Even more so when that actor is the director. The need to express the deep sense of loss, the inexplicable confrontation with death that we will all face, is the essence of being alive, to try to comprehend the never ending question of why?

    This film is a deep dive into that question and the determination of an artist, and whoever will go with them on this path to realize a truth that can be a tool to face this thing that we will all face. Through the mining of these impulses and the use of the tools of the actor-director’s body of talent, and deep commitment, we can channel her determination and be transformed, coming to value the essence of what we are. The air, the breath, the trees and the landscape, humans like leaves blown together touching each other for a divine moment of inexplicable clarity.

    Thank you, Robin Wright and Demián Bichir, for all the precision and insistence to find that high pitched inexpressible note that rarely is achieved in film. It is the ultimate topic and certainly not the easiest to present. Years of tracing the depths of feeling loss, sincerity, friendship, family, and just looking have not been wasted on this director and actor. It is my privilege and honor to know Robin and have seen how rigorous she has been in the different stages of editing the film to keep it so close to the bone and at the same time so free of spirit. Hard thing to do.

    Schnabel is the Oscar-nominated director of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” as well as “Before Night Falls” and “At Eternity’s Gate.”

  • The Little Things

    Directed by John Lee Hancock
    Essay by Scott Frank

    I remember the night, nearly thirty years ago, when I met John Lee Hancock. It was at a dinner somewhere up in the Hollywood Hills. There was this tall, handsome Texan holding the table in thrall with tales of his time spent with a particularly legendary homicide investigator in the L.A. Sherriff’s Department. John talked about the detective calling him up in the middle of the night and asking him if he had a sport coat. John was to put it on and meet him at a fresh crime scene. No idiot, John showed up, where hunched over the dead body, the detective said, for that night, John was one of them. He was to keep his mouth shut and learn. Certainly not your normal dinner table conversation, but by that point, who cared about dinner? We all sat in silent grip as John told one story after another. Any one of them could have been a movie. All of them expertly spun by this guy I’d just met for a few minutes before.

    Naturally, I hated him instantly. I wanted to be him. He made storytelling look so easy. Just as he does when you read any of his scripts or watch any of his films. You succumb to the story. Instantly. John’s knack for both widescreen composition and realistic dialogue make “The Little Things” a lot more than a mere crime film. John’s love for the “True Story” along with his eye for detail and sense of place render all of his work authentic and somehow larger than life at the same time.  And of course, the actors lucky enough to work with him have been known to win an award or two.

    John was in the middle of writing “The Little Things” that night we met. It was a good story then, and it’s a terrific film now. That’s the thing about great yarns. They don’t get old. Even close to thirty years later, they remain rock solid and ever meaningful. Just like a great friendship.

    A two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter, Frank’s directorial efforts include “A Walk Among the Tombstones” and the series “The Queen’s Gambit.”

  • Mank

    “The movie has both a deep and profound affection for filmmaking as an art, and also a very acute awareness of the absurdity of the whole process and the whole enterprise. I found in it an extremely astute observation of that sort of paradox: how you can feel totally ridiculous doing it, and yet somehow in it there is an art. Because you’re very smart, and because you’re sort of half-artist and half-engineer, I find you a sort of surgical filmmaker in your deliberate specificity. But this movie had such an enormous amount of affection and – dare I say – heart and appreciation of the humanity of the artist. … I think it’s a masterpiece, it’s my favorite of yours, and you know I love almost all your movies.”

    — Ben Affleck on “Mank,” directed by David Fincher, watch the full conversation here for Variety’s “Directors on Directors.”

  • Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

    Directed by George C. Wolfe
    Essay by Don Cheadle

    To make a good gumbo you need a good roux, and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” has as its rich and flavorful base the brilliant play by August Wilson, fashioned into a dynamic screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Maestro director George C. Wolfe masterfully brings it all to cinematic life with a control evident from the first four minutes, as the movie unfurls sans dialogue in the wooded darkness of Georgia circa 1927. The terrifyingly familiar sight of young black men running for their lives soon yields relief as Mr. Wolfe’s bait and switch delightfully transports us into the joy of a transformative performance by Viola Davis as Ma. Mr Wolfe’s use of close-ups and masters, both stillness and movement working in counterpoint, seamlessly weaves into the soulful blues washing over us. He centers the audience squarely in that tent, that time and place. You can almost smell it.

    Mr. Wolfe takes what in other hands might have been a piece reverentially focused on words and ideas, and opens the experience all the way up, exploring and exploding it, playing deftly with kinetic, Steadicam flow to capture the energy of Ma’s anxious band as they joust and needle. But then he settles down and settles in close when necessary — to educe the grave pain in Levee’s (Chadwick Boseman) eyes, or Toledo’s (Glynn Turman) somber soliloquy on “leftovers,” or Ma plopped squarely in a chair with one ear cocked to the side because “It sure done got quiet in here.” Periodically, he takes us beyond the literal narrative to refer to and reflect on Wilson’s characters and story with laconic, beautiful, interstitial shots of black men and women staring right at us, as if painted by Diego Velázquez, a challenge to never forget the people who shared in these struggles. Finally, Mr. Wolfe closes his exquisite circle, with Ma departing both triumphant and bested, the band irrevocably devastated, our blues woefully assimilated and all of us trying to catch our collective breath.

    An Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actor, Cheadle directed the film “Miles Ahead.”

  • Minari

    Directed by Lee Isaac Chung
    Essay by Bong Joon-ho

    ­­I think it takes a lot of courage to shoot a film about yourself or your family, since it’s autobiographical. But what I appreciated more about this film is that it doesn’t wallow in nostalgia. It’s a story about [Chung], but there’s a sense of distance too. So rather than it being about the history and story of a Korean immigrant family, the film can appeal to families all over the world or anyone who still carries the memories of their parents. Similar to Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” the little boy in this film is essentially you, but the film isn’t told from the boy’s perspective. It follows the perspective of multiple characters and it doesn’t feature any voiceovers or narration. I think that level of distance makes the film more beautiful and universal. The film is neither too cold nor too warm while carrying a lot of love. That’s not an easy feat. It really surprised me.

    Bong won the best director Oscar for “Parasite.” His other films include “Mother,” “The Host” and “Okja.”

  • Never Rarely Sometimes Always

    Directed by Eliza Hittman
    Essay by Debra Granik

    This is precision filmmaking, non-judgmental, quiet and methodical, each minute fully loaded. I felt like the film was doing the impossible, taking me on this young woman’s difficult journey with no sensationalizing and no compromises. It was like seeing someone quietly take the political gun aimed at reproductive rights, put it down, take out the bullets, and place it on the table for us all to see. Eliza Hittman has chosen her film language carefully in order to reinstate the humanity in this life passage, to take out the fear of physical danger, of botched, back-alley disaster. At the same time, the emotional weight that these two young women bear together is not minimized. The film brings us along with them to show this procedure as safe, clean, kindly administered by experts, sane, recoverable, even necessary. This is a rebellious film; with no overt protest. It simply will not participate in the tedious discourse of the last decades. It has moved on!

    Hittman incrementally reveals how the choices Autumn makes are logical and imperative, so that the forces who want to get in her way seem irrelevant, almost absurd. Within the confines of this moment in this teen’s life, the sting of wrenching pain, regret, and sorrow is not fetishized. Unlike so many films that deal with an unplanned or undesired pregnancy, her suffering from a bad relationship or social constructs of guilt are not the moral basis used to justify her actions. This is a fresh perspective, one that opens a space for positive normalizing of this inflamed issue.

    The interview scene at the clinic is austere screenplay poetry. The eponymous words “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” become an elegy to the raw edge of honesty and moving on. The repetition of the questions and the depth of the humane assistance in the voice of the reproductive rights guardian is an indelible moment of contemporary film. This is what caritas sounds like: exquisite, precise, searing.  We needed this film this year, and we’ll need it going forward. This depiction of a teen woman’s journey confronts and deconstructs the malignant imagery that has been churned out for as long as there were no women to make films like this one.

    Given the backsliding and insidious bloviating of 2020, the impact of the quiet of this film was stunning. For everything Autumn doesn’t say, we fill in the space of contemplation – we feel, we weigh, we deliberate, we identify. The filming is intimate and tight in the framing of the shots, of time, of place, so tight that it graphically excludes the amplified chatter of other people’s judgments. In the year of the loss and replacement of RBG, the film replied with charged audacity by following these two teen women who do not consent to the turmoil that is heaped on women’s bodily freedom. There is suspense in how they manage to defy the exhausted and limp male domination by court and pulpit and legislature. They avoid ensnarement of misinformation and manipulation from a clinic run by the religious right. This film is a vibrant counter-narrative in which young women navigate to safe harbor despite the obstacles that many still want to place in their paths.

    An Oscar-nominated director and screenwriter, Granik’s films include “Winter’s Bone,” “Stray Dog” and “Leave No Trace.”

  • News of the World

    Directed by Paul Greengrass
    Essay by Richard Curtis

    Writing about “News of the World,” I almost feel I’m writing about two films. I’ve seen it twice – and the obvious bit is that it’s a great movie and a great Western. It looks exquisite and the soundtrack by James Newton Howard is haunting and deep. It features two blazing central performances – one by Tom Hanks, who’s been acting for a thousand years, deep and sad and humane – and the other by Helena Zengel, who’s 12 and just as good as Hanks. It’s a strong story – and the action sequences are all you’d hope for from the director of my favorite Bourne films. It starts brilliantly and ends exquisitely – with a human smile that’s as powerful as a big bomb. It’s a love story about family love between two people who have both lost their families.

    But then there’s the other film inside – the film about now. I’m often skeptical about the idea that the best way to talk about the present is to make a film about the past. But in this film, Paul has addressed the question of how to move from the pain of the Trump years. The American Dream is tough to turn into reality – it takes determination, it’s full of sorrow, it’s the responsibility of every person and it’s always going to be hard. And telling the truth is risky – and love in action is complex. This is a road movie about the road ahead for every American, and it shows how it can be done. God bless America.

    An Oscar nominee for best screenplay, Curtis’ films as a director include “Love Actually,” “About Time” and “Yesterday.”

  • On the Rocks

    Directed by Sofia Coppola
    Essay by Jane Campion

    I get excited when directors give me an experience I haven’t had before, this is what I love, and I’ve come to learn it’s rare.

    The first film I saw of Sofia’s was “The Virgin Suicides.” Its dreamy gentleness and girl-centric beauty created an allure in shocking contrast to the heartrending adolescent sisters’ deaths.

    Sofia’s voice was particular from her first film—soft, feminine, intelligent, with an almost uncanny knowledge of how her voice can be used to powerful and sharp effect. On the way, she completely upends and opposes male-centric shooting convention, a lexicon primed for aggression, punchiness and impact.

    The genre of rom-com is new to Sofia and she adapts it to her personal style like she might a shirt, buttoned up and worn loose. “On The Rocks” introduces lead Rashida Jones as Laura, a smart, vulnerable, loving and confronting the possibility of her husband Dean’s infidelity. The story is set in an affluent New York where Sofia’s distinct sense of detail creates a flavorsome evocation of place.

    For all the good-natured father and daughter “detectoring” and light-hearted mood, there is an unspoken barb. It seems that Laura and her father Felix’s suspicion of Dean is unfounded, but as they deflate one suspicion after another, it equally raises the sense, at least in this viewer, that while Dean is innocent this time, the prospect of a guilty outcome seems unavoidable in the future. So, clever Sofia both clears him and smears him.

    The heart of this story’s romance is Laura and Dean, but the real partnership, fun, tussles and honesty is between the father and daughter detective team. Felix coaches Laura to be tougher and sharper about her faithless husband, and the inevitable Darwinistic, self-serving seed-spraying she should learn to expect of all human male primates. Father and daughter are an endearing study in opposites. Felix, Bill Murray, is an unconstructed, well-dressed and coiffed tomcat of a certain generation and superficiality, while Laura is suffering real anxiety and heartache, unsure if her marriage is, well, on the rocks. The two spat, and comment on each other in a way that Laura and her husband dare not do. Felix has escaped unscathed and untouched by his brush with life, and this is what he wants for Laura, but she has different instincts. She will put her heart on the line, hoping for better but knowing the truth—love is both glorious and cruel.

    The exceptional Sofia has kicked about a rom-com and calmly, quietly, weaponized it. I love this clever, entertaining film that carries its seriousness so lightly it’s hard to see.

    An Oscar-winning screenwriter and the only woman to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Campion’s works include “The Piano,” “Bright Star,” “The Power of the Dog” and the miniseries “Top of the Lake.”

  • One Night in Miami

    “I’m such a huge fan, all the way back to ‘227’ and ‘Poetic Justice’ and ‘Boyz n the Hood,’ and all those amazing films we grew up with, and seeing your progression as an actress into ‘Watchmen’ and ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ … it was really inspiring to see someone I respect so much as an actress come in and really take command of a set and be able to talk to actors in a way I could only dream of, and really have a strong visual language. And nowto see you with your first feature film, ‘One Night in Miami,’ about these incredible historical icons. Obviously there was such a responsibility when you’re dealing with speaking about Malcolm X and Sam Cooke and Muhammad Ali and Jim Brown. I’m imagining trying to do a story on just one of those incredible icons, Black men, much less to have all four of them and bring a view into such an intimate conversation.”

    — Melina Matsoukas on “One Night in Miami,” directed by Regina King watch the entire conversation on Variety’s “Directors on Directors” series

  • Palm Springs

    Directed by Max Barbakow
    Essay by Phil Lord 

    Max Barbakow couldn’t have known that his movie “Palm Springs” would become the movie of my quarantine. But he knows that everyone feels stuck in one way or another. And he knows that no one wants to be stuck for eternity with a sourpuss. From the jump, he imbues his film with something his characters find so fleeting… joy. We have spent all year staring out of windows, and from behind masks and shields. The delights of this movie (the wonderful Andy Samberg doing a sarcastic cha cha; Cristin Milioti returning the favor; and on and on) echo the delights that have made this year worth living. If we can’t go out dancing, we’ll dance at home. If we can’t have our freedom, we might as well have fun.

    Fun is an underrated value in movies. Someone I used to admire told me they had never loved a drama that didn’t make them laugh. (Someone I still admire greatly told me she never loved a comedy that didn’t make her cry.) I had the (who knew?) fleeting pleasure of watching Palm Springs with an audience and we laughed at the jokes and despaired with the characters and got all the big ideas. That’s no small feat. This movie about theoretical physics is clear and makes sense and even when I don’t know what’s happening, I know that clearly someone does, and they’re going to let me in on it soon enough. Barbakow juggles tones without ever sacrificing our engagement or dulling our surprise. His film uses fun as a cinematic tool to describe some really un-fun things. He finds angles, photographic and otherwise, that make us look at the same thing in a new way and oh by the way the performances are wonderful and heartbreaking and it’s fucking funny. That’s a Triple Lindy degree of directorial difficulty even the deftest filmmakers might fumble. That we’re in the hands of a first-timer makes Palm Springs nothing less than a triumphant debut.

    If we worry all this fun makes a movie any less worthy, I like to remember that “It Happened One Night” (five Oscars) is pretty darn fun. “Palm Springs” is a movie that happens all in one night except that night happens again and again. Just like all the nights this year spent curled up looking to our screens for a few hours of vacation from all this 2020-ness. The answer offered here is that the only escape is the choice we make about how we want to live, day to day, moment to moment. And I choose fun. So does Max. His wry voice behind the camera, a character akin to those in front of it, lets you know, I feel all this too. I’ve been there. I want to show you the way out, if I can still find it.

    Lord directed the films “The Lego Movie,” “21 Jump Street” and “22 Jump Street” alongside Christopher Miller. He won an Oscar as an executive producer of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”

  • Palmer

    Directed by Fisher Stevens
    Essay by Edward Norton

    There’s an old adage among film directors that animals, kids and shooting on water are the quickest ways to derail a smooth film production. Digital effects have made animals and water a lot easier to wrangle. But anchoring a film on the bet that you can pull a deeply affecting performance from a child is still truly an act of bravura and daring by a director. Basically it’s like hitting a major league curve ball.

    Fisher Stevens takes that swing in his film “Palmer” and absolutely crushes it out of the park for an emotional home run. With young Ryder Allen as his muse, Fisher sculpts the character of a boy named Sam with such nuance and tenderness that the transformative emotional effect he has on the other characters in the film isn’t just believable, we feel it ourselves, profoundly. The film is titled for the character Palmer (played with beautiful restraint and pathos by Justin Timberlake) and that’s appropriate…because I think Palmer is meant to be all of us, caught up in his own problems and only slowly coming to grasp that caring for someone else and standing up for their uniqueness is the key to opening up his own life, elevating him and giving him purpose.  Stevens gets terrific, complex, humanity out of all his excellent cast and makes the artistic assertion that people struggling to redeem and ennoble their lives is, by itself and without frills, great storytelling.

    It’s the kind of directorial work that Bruce Beresford did in one of my all-time favorites, “Tender Mercies,” which “Palmer” brought back to mind.  And if we’ve ever needed a reminder that simply caring for each other is heroic, we need it, and films like this one, now.

    A three-time Oscar nominee for acting, Norton’s films as a director include “Keeping the Faith” and “Motherless Brooklyn.”

  • Soul

    Directed by Pete Docter
    Essay by Frank Oz

    I love this movie. It’s a great movie. Not a great animated movie. A great movie. It’s warm and abstract, it’s funny and tender, it’s raucous and sublime, it’s accessible and challenging, and it’s stunningly beautiful. I mean really stunningly beautiful. What is it about Pete Docter’s movies that always hit home? I believe they come from a true place inside him. And that true place connects with our true places inside us. This time, with amazing music and a large idea that lingers in us long after the movie has ended, Pete and his brilliant Pixar artists, have done it again with “Soul.”

    Did I tell you that I love this movie?

    Oz directed such films as “The Dark Crystal,” “Muppets Take Manhattan,” “What About Bob?” and “Bowfinger.”

  • Sound of Metal

    Directed by Darius Marder
    Essay by Scott Cooper

    As we know, there was a time (well before streaming) when films were completely silent. Filmmakers then discovered sound as a powerful storytelling tool to help immerse the audience in their stories and bring them to life in rich and vivid detail. The first widespread success of sound movies occurred in 1927, with the release of Warner Bros.’ “The Jazz Singer,” an 89-minute long musical that featured synchronized dialogue and music. Filmgoing audiences never looked back.

    When used remarkably well, and in innovative ways, the power of sound can shape the emotion of the viewer more strongly, even, than dialogue or images. That’s precisely what happened for me in Darius Marder’s mesmerizing “Sound of Metal,” a film of intensity, subtlety, and grace. At the center of “Metal” is an unforgettable turn by a remarkable actor — Riz Ahmed — as a punk metal drummer who suddenly discovers he’s losing his hearing. As a musician, Ahmed’s “Ruben” is not only at risk of losing his hearing, but his identity. Ruben’s devotion to his craft has kept his addiction and self-destruction at bay; now his world deteriorates before our eyes and ears.

    From the opening moments, Marder thrusts us into Ruben’s world, in an explosion of sound and images — a deeply committed drummer unleashing a furious barrage at full tilt. Along with his sound designer, Nicolas Becker, Marder constructs a rich, nuanced, and extremely complex soundscape, allowing the viewer to burrow deeply into Ruben’s state of mind in a manner not experienced in a film in recent memory.

    Creating a soundscape for a film about a drummer losing his hearing is no simple feat. Rather than relying on a sound library, the filmmakers captured low-frequency vibrations and other very specific tones (perfectly adjusted to different moments in Ruben’s life) using the human body to generate the aural world Ruben experiences. From Ruben’s breathing, to his voice (and others’), and to his physical movements, the audience experiences Ruben’s deterioration in a remarkably intimate and heartbreaking manner. This is in full effect when Ruben, just before a show, is setting up a merchandise table when the sounds he’s experienced all of his life quickly dim — changing to muffled voices backed by a high-pitch ringing. The moment is stark and grim, but leads to an altered life for Ruben, changing how he sees (and hears) the world around him.

    But it’s this depiction of loss of sound, and the portrayal of deaf culture, where “Sound of Metal” departs from most every other film about deafness. This comes into stark relief in the second act, where Ruben visits a community for the deaf and learns that deafness isn’t a disability, but a culture. It’s during this section that another remarkable performance comes to life, that of Paul Raci, who portrays Joe, a community leader. It’s here where Paul says to Ruben, “Being deaf is not a handicap. It’s not something to be fixed.” This is not only a reminder for Ruben, but for us all. Thankfully, Darius Marder’s wondrous film not only offers us a complex and rich soundscape, but a reminder that the absence of sound will stay with us well after the credits roll.

    Cooper’s films include “Crazy Heart,” “Out of the Furnace” and “Antlers.”

  • The White Tiger

    Directed by Ramin Bahrani
    Essay by Fernando Meirelles

    Watching Ramin Bahrani’s new film is like being plugged into an oxygen tank, a breath of fresh air. Adapted from the Man Booker Prize winning novel by Aravind Adiga, it reveals an India in transition from an archaic society with many problems of inequality and corruption, to a modern India, with exactly the same problems. Instead of the country’s recent prosperity resolving social issues, it seems to be leading it to breaking point – as personified by Balram, played by the excellent Adarsh Gourav. Balram has such a common face that the police could not identify him if he committed a crime. And that’s exactly what he does.

    It is an uncomfortable experience to be served in India. Doors are opened, suitcases loaded, always with smiles. I never understood where that comes from. I live in an unbearably unequal country, Brazil, but the attitude of those who serve is different. And that’s what the film is about, the psychology of servants. Balram, the driver of a wealthy family, likens his class to roosters waiting docilely to have their heads cut off. The competition for an opportunity is so fierce that a servant is grateful for the opportunity to be exploited. Balram lives in this kind of Stockholm syndrome, until he becomes aware of his situation. As there is no political way to resolve the issue, his solution is radical. He breaks with tradition. Balram’s way out is every man for himself.

    The film navigates between a black comedy, a social drama and a thriller, but I also watched it as a documentary. Ramin changes the gears with elegance and mastery in a film where everything works beautifully. If Satyajit Ray revealed India to the world 60 years ago, now it seems like Ramin’s turn to take the baton.

    Meirelles received an Oscar nomination for “City of God.” His other films include “The Constant Gardener” and “The Two Popes.”

  • The United States vs. Billie Holiday

    Directed by Lee Daniels
    Essay by Craig Brewer

    Lee Daniels isn’t interested in black and white. Let me explain.

    Of course, there are strong elements of racial equality, empowerment, and injustice that courses through all his work. With his new film, “The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” the racial dynamic is in full force. The office of J. Edgar Hoover has declared war on a single song, Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” a riveting ballad of protest against the lynchings of Black Americans. From the set up alone, you can see the clear areas of turf each side of the conflict would occupy in a standard movie narrative: right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, black and white. But Lee’s characters are never that simple.

    Billie Holiday, played with chilling force by Andra Day, is not your standard Hollywood protagonist. Yes, she is cheated, abused, set-up, and beat down, but she also wounds the family around her with selfish abandon. Her continuous return to the needle breaks our hearts. She falls into the arms of manipulative men and literally flinches at the touch of genuine affection. In one scene, a Black elevator attendant refuses to allow Billie Holiday to enter, directing her instead to the service elevator. The crucible of emotions that Andra Day conjures ranges from humiliation and rage to a fleeting moment of sympathy for a man fearful of becoming “Strange Fruit” himself. And how does our heroine react? Not with a nod of understanding or a hand on his shoulder, but an angry flick of her lit cigarette to his chest.

    Like a volatile lover, Lee Daniels’ characters draw you in with genuine sympathy and strength, but don’t be fooled. You’re gonna get bit, you’re gonna get hit, and you’re gonna get hurt. And just when you want to slam the door and scream, “TO HELL WITH YOU!” you soon find yourself tangled in the sweaty sheets again.

    It’s messy love. And no one understands that better than Lee.

    Brewer’s films include “Hustle & Flow,” “Dolemite Is My Name” and “Coming to America 2.”

  • The Trial of the Chicago 7

    Directed by Aaron Sorkin
    Essay by Bartlett Sher

    In Act IV of Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” following the surprising victory in the Battle of Agincourt, the King stands with his men and does something you wouldn’t think would be very dramatic or satisfying as the climax of one of Shakespeare’s greatest History plays: he reads a list of names.  Of course, not just any names but of those who have died in battle that very day.

    Aaron Sorkin concludes his great history film, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” by reminding us of Tom Hayden’s bold effort to read the names of young men killed in Vietnam during the course of the trial.  It’s just a list, a series of human beings, anonymous to most of us, but it summons a pathos, an era; it’s a call for rebellion and truth, and it’s a great fucking end to a movie.

    But Aaron Sorkin the writer always begins with words, with extraordinary transactions between characters—fast, complex, claiming the high wire between great ideas and beliefs and country, and balancing them in the relationships and characters that have seized and made history.

    Aaron the director opens “The Trial of the Chicago 7” with a such an effortless breathtaking series of images that spin the viewer back to 1968, to a time when the republic felt on edge, precarious, and to a story where we get to look into the mirror of our past and then deeply inhale a lesson that offers us enough oxygen to sustain us through the present.

    Frankly, as a director who has been lucky enough to work with Aaron as a writer, I was humbled and gobsmacked by the directing in “Chicago 7,” and as any director will recognize, it summoned my deepest form of compliment: jealousy I was flat out jealous.  I was jealous of his graceful capture of the sweep of history against deep and contradictory characters, I found myself envious of his juggling of difficult trial scenes, his elegant use of stock footage, the surprising, smart transitions, the perfect casting (I mean, just Frank Langella being that bold, that unforgiving and cruel, that honest!), and doing that thing we all search for in our work: the way he dropped audiences into a spell, a time, and helped them emerge renewed, and thinking again about who we are.

    As a kid, I remember attending an outdoor, almost makeshift production of “Henry V” and being mesmerized by the battles and bluster, but in the end, finding myself on the brink of tears as a young actor read a list of names of those who had died in battle.  This wasn’t very long after Vietnam.  And you couldn’t ignore how art was healing. How our past and our stories and our myths could guide us.

    Aaron Sorkin made a movie where a list of names recited signified how truth can pierce the iron shield of injustice.  He reminded us again of our past. Our history.  And helped at a time when we need to rethink who we are, again.  But that is great directing…using story, images, words, a list of names, to give us the intimation that we could be a little bolder, and maybe a little better.

    A Tony-winning theater director, Sher’s work includes productions of “South Pacific,” “Cymbeline” and “My Fair Lady.”

  • Nomadland

    Directed by Chloe Zhao

    Essay by Barry Jenkins

    There’s a meticulousness to her craft, and yet it also feels kind of free. I think people watch her work, and they first assume, “Oh, they just showed up and things just happened.” But I know what it takes to get this framing and that framing. I think there’s this idea of things just happening, but there’s also the craft involved in knowing a place, getting there, understanding the light, and then creating an environment for your actors to just do this wonderful thing they do.

    II work at the Telluride Film Festival, and so I’ve done that drive. I’ve driven from Florida to southwest Colorado. I’ve driven from San Francisco and L.A. So I’ve passed people like the people in this film. I’ve been at the gas station and looked over and seen them. I’ve had a few conversations, but I’ve never really taken the time to try to understand who they are. I think with this film, she’s really taken the time to show us at least a glimpse of who these people are.

    Jenkins in the Oscar-nominated director of “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk.”

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