What a strange year. Many of the films that were supposed to be released have not been released; some have gone directly online, while the largest has been postponed. The only blockbuster that wanted to hit theatres at all costs, Tenet, turned out to be less than we had hoped for (both in terms of receipts and as a result). 2020 was marked by smaller titles, those that usually struggle to get noticed and who instead had word of mouth all for themselves, often only intended for online release. Result: our ranking of the year's best films has never been so full of first works or authors hitherto unknown. A new generation has emerged, and therefore new ways of making films. And although we have seen fewer of them, we have nevertheless seen large ones.
10. Another round
It is the latest work by Thomas Vinterberg, the same one who rocked the world of auteur cinema in 1998 with Festen, with a crucial factor of our time: Mads Mikkelsen. The story has a brilliant idea: a group of high school professors decides always to stay a little drunk to live better, drink only during the day and work hours, never in the evening or at the weekend. A lot and a lot of bad things will happen (obviously). Still, it will then be the incredible ending to celebrate a vitality linked to alcohol that moves on a strange ridge between the immoral, the condemnable, and the extraordinarily true. There is a desire to enjoy life to the full, which is truly moving, and a desire to embrace contradictions which is refreshing. Another round has been released in several countries, but not yet in our country.
9. Digital contingencies
After a theatrical appearance, this devastating French comedy will soon be available for hire. Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern are two authors of literally hilarious demented works. They have unique and different humor from the others; with the one in Unexpected digital, they face the absurdities of modern digital life that cinema, who knows why never tells. There is always a political idea behind it that goes hand in hand with the last remaining outside of any change.
8. My name is Francesco Totti
It was to be another of Francesco Totti's many celebrations, an official documentary about him: his story told through archival material, family videos, and some images shot from scratch. Nothing that hasn't already been seen. Instead, Alex Infascelli's work has become the totem pole of an era, the epic of a straightforward existence in absurd and gigantic conditions. A man like many others with something unique. One of the few films in which the emotion does not come from the dramas is recognizing a similar person with surprising evidence in a person.
7. The predators
Presented at the Venice Film Festival and stealthily released in a moment of freedom from the lockdown, Pietro Castellitto's debut is (finally) something different. A comedy that is more like a comic film. Everything makes you laugh without jokes but with sudden events, thanks to an incredible comic tempo that the director possesses and manages to instill in the actors and obviously in the editing. The revelation of a new talent who has an admirable desire not to make the films that others do.
6. The invisible man
Universal has decided to brush up on the classic monsters. Among these also The Invisible Man. He contracted out the task of modernizing it to the Blumhouse, the main house of the scary cinema of our years. Plus, this also had to be a militant feminist work. Leigh Whannell, therefore, moved among a thousand rules. Still, he had the winning idea: the whole film is seen through the victim's eyes, a woman beaten by her husband who runs away from him and is convinced that he is invisible and is continuing to haunt. She looks at blank spaces and thinks he is there; wherever she goes, she is terrified. The invisible man is real fear and is full of surprises until the end. She manages to be everything: feminist with a sense, scary, commercial, and good to revive the original, just as Universal wanted.
5. The immensity of the night
This is one of the most interesting American independent films, the revelation of Andrew Patterson's talent. And it came out directly on Amazon Prime Video. In short: it is the story of UFO sightings as we have never seen, all played out in a strange long night of the 1950s on local radio, between interviews, reconstructions, and racing in the dark. The ability to create an atmosphere between excitement and fear, paranoia, and revelation tickles the skin and uses mystery to excite. Very beautiful.
4. Colectiv
We have learned that documentaries can be more exciting than films. And then, the more specific they are, the more they tell a small story instead of a huge one, the more incredible they can be. So is Colectiv, not yet released by a probable contender, and us for the Oscar. It tells the exciting story of a pool of Romanian journalists investigating a crazy scandal in the national health system. The incredible feature is that the camera is always with them, from start to finish, and in all the most sensational junctions of the story: it is in the rooms that matter, it records the most important conversations and has access to reality like the movies (which can afford to film even the intimate of the characters).
3. A long journey into the night
It was released in June in Italian cinemas, even if it is from 2018. It is one of the most incredible, strange, and dreamy films of recent years, a truly captivating delirium full of ideas. A man returns to a rural region of China searching for a woman from his past and, as he does, remembers that past. You can really be completely captivated by A long journey into the night, which reinvents the dream journey and seems never to stop. A true triumph of suggestions and feelings, which all seem to be inside the viewer, and the film only does the job of arousing them.
2. Dear comrades!
Seen at the Venice Film Festival and ready for an Italian release (which with the current times is not clear when it will happen), it has a great true story behind it. Above all, it is an incredible ability to tell people. The event was hidden, but in the 1970s in the Soviet Union, there was a strike against working conditions. The regime could not allow the news to come out, especially due to the combative tones that the protest was taking. Therefore, it chose to repress everything in blood, with unspeakable violence, and then wash the clashes' streets resurfaced until everything was clean. And ordered as before. Anyone who saw it would be imprisoned. A woman was forced to meddle, trying to stay alive, to find her daughter missing and possibly dead in the demonstration. The state is a murderer, but the Russians, the dear comrades of the title, are of a touching sweetness and solidarity.
1. Rough diamonds
There is little to do; it is the revelation of the year. The Safdie brothers are on their fourth film (plus an avalanche of shorts and music videos), and through Netflix, they have found the success that had not yet arrived. Also, thanks to Adam Sandler, who thus cemented his status as a true actor. The story is tough and comical simultaneously, with a frenetic character at the center in a world that borders on the criminal and flirts with it all the time. The surprising thing is how the directors use all the languages of cinema for a very canonical plot: the language of horror (with the cursed stone), that of comedy, violence, drama, and in the ending of the thriller. The result (miraculous): it is not a mosaic of different parts but a single flow fed by a drum of dialogue and the mellifluous greed of the protagonist.
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