Rope/Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most accessible directors from Hollywood’s golden age, primarily due to his signature mastery of suspense. But just because his films are crowd-pleasing thrillers doesn’t mean they lack depth. Take Rope, for example: it’s a movie best known for looking like one continuous shot, and while its technical prowess is the primary attraction, it’s not wasted on a fleeting story. The film’s clever script –– which depicts two elitist Harvard grads hiding a body during a dinner party –– is overtly philosophical, and cautions against destructive moral frameworks, but also warns against intellectual stimulation divorced from reality and tangible action. The movie stacks tension upon tension with solid acting and constant camera movement, making the viewer feel like an invasive ghost who’s watching a dinner party and its aftermath in real time. Jimmy Stewart stars as the evening’s most curious partygoer. Read more here.
Stewart also plays the lead in Vertigo, one of Hitchcock’s densest films. It’s somehow a perfect-looking and perfect-sounding romantic mystery, a love letter to San Francisco, a cautionary tale in getting what you wish for, an exemplary case of curiosity killing the cat, a ghost story, and so much more. My family did not love this one because of one particularly odd “twist” reveal, so I guess it’s not for everyone, but I think it’s a beautiful movie with a ridiculous amount to unpack, and so many fascinating ideas can be projected onto it. Read more here.
Rope and Vertigo are available for rental at any digital retailer.
Stop Making Sense/Love & Mercy
It can be tough to capture a musician’s spirit through filmmaking, perhaps because so much of their artistry comes from the electrifying authenticity of a live performance. Yet Jonathan Demme has no trouble converting the concert experience into movie format with Stop Making Sense, his brilliant Talking Heads documentary. Every song has a distinct visual identity, and offers an intriguing glimpse into David Byrne’s psyche. Even if you’re not a fan of Byrne’s art-rock sensibilities, it’s impossible to deny the film’s uniquely energizing effect. It makes you want to start a band, run a marathon, jump out of a plane, or watch Stop Making Sense again. Read more here and here.
And it’s probably even harder to make a compelling musician movie with zero live performances, which makes Bill Pohland’s Love & Mercy even more of a miracle. His biopic of Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson opts to split his subject’s life into two distinct timeframes –– one where Paul Dano plays Wilson in the midst of writing Pet Sounds in the 1960s, and another where John Cusack portrays the songwriter as he falls in love and rebels against his abusive caretaker (Paul Giamatti). The twin performances show distinct sides of Wilson’s personality –– Dano shows his tortured genius in the recording studio, and Cusack plays into his eccentric romanticism –– and they combine for a moving portrait of a deeply complicated figure. Read more here.
Stop Making Sense is available on Amazon Prime Video. Love & Mercy is available on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.
Funny Face/Wait Until Dark
Audrey Hepburn fully deserves her iconic status, but seems to be primarily remembered for some of her worst work. Two of her most well-known movies, My Fair Lady and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, are pretty sexist and terribly paced, despite the actress’s best efforts to save the projects. Roman Holiday is the only one of her massive movies that lives up to its reputation.
My two favorite Hepburn projects haven’t remained at the forefront of the public consciousness as much as the aforementioned movies, but they serve as brilliant pieces of entertainment and evidence for her surprising range. Funny Face, directed by Singin’ in the Rain’s Stanley Donen, allows Hepburn to go into full-on musical mode –– the actress dances up a storm and provides all her own vocals for the exuberant soundtrack (as opposed to My Fair Lady, which opted to dub her with a different vocalist). The film boasts some of the most immaculate design I’ve ever seen in a movie –– the magnificent sets and dazzling costumes make every second a visual treat. Her chemistry with costar Fred Astaire is practically nonexistent, but the Paris setting helps make the film romantic nonetheless. Read more here.
Wait Until Dark is a complete 180 for the actress –– in this Hitchcockian thriller, Hepburn plays a blind woman trying to avoid threatening intruders in her apartment. Based on a stage play, almost the entire film takes place in Hepburn’s apartment, yet never relents in its tension. A young Alan Arkin proves to be a worthy adversary for the actress, vacillating between coolness and rage. Read more here.
Funny Face is available on Amazon Prime Video. Wait Until Dark is available for rental at any digital retailer.
Phantom Thread/Inherent Vice
After watching every Paul Thomas Anderson movie this year, I can add my voice to the crowd of writers and fans who insist that his filmography is practically flawless. Every one of his movies is pretty much as perfect as its premise allows. Although audiences can safely expect electrifying performances and gorgeous camerawork from the director’s movies, it’s almost impossible to predict what the next PTA project will look like. Look at 2017’s Phantom Thread: I don’t think anyone expected the filmmaker to tackle a gothic romantic comedy about dysfunction and passion. The central dynamic between the two lead performers (and their perfectly irritating third wheel) is one of the most unique, nuanced relationships I’ve ever seen in fiction, and it doesn’t quite reveal its full nature until the finale, which means this is a perplexingly entertaining upon first watch, but will undoubtedly improve upon repeat viewings. I also think that, although it primarily focuses on fashion, Phantom Thread is one of the best food movies ever made. Anderson elegantly positions mealtime as the most essential relational avenue for the central couple –– every mouthwatering dinner functions either as an occasion for twisted intimacy or a battleground for heated arguments. Read more here.
Anderson’s previous film, Inherent Vice, is a little less accessible –– it’s a drug-fueled neo-noir hangout comedy that doesn’t deliver a particularly satisfying mystery, but that’s almost certainly by design, as the convoluted plot reflects the protagonist’s constant daze. The plot barely matters, though, because nearly every second of the film is visually gorgeous and bizarrely hilarious. And that’s not to say that it’s fleeting, light entertainment — on the contrary, the movie is unbelievably dense thematically, grappling with the various power struggles that ensued as the elite rejected ‘60s progressivism at the end of the decade (and all of that is through the lens of a romantic breakup!). As usual, it looks and sounds gorgeous, and Joaquin Phoenix and Josh Brolin give two of the funniest performances of the 2010s. Read more here.
Phantom Thread is available on HBO Max. Inherent Vice is available for rental at any digital retailer.
The Apartment/Glengarry Glen Ross
Jack Lemmon gave two of his best performances over thirty years apart. In Billy Wilder’s 1960 hit The Apartment, the actor plays an employee at an insurance company who attempts to climb the corporate ladder by loaning his apartment to his superiors for their extramarital affairs. On the surface, it’s a widely accessible romantic dramedy built around a classic love triangle and clever Billy Wilder humor, destined to be a crowd-pleaser. Yet it also succeeds as a dark, bold, and very obvious indictment of corporatized society — we see the immorality of the men at the top of the capitalist food chain and the desperation instilled in everyone below them. Lemmon carries the movie with charming mania. Read more here.
Lemmon’s even more desperate for a promotion in 1992’s Glengarry Glen Ross, as he brilliantly embodies the bitterness and defensiveness of a fast-fading veteran salesman. He’s the most likable character in a pretty unlikable movie –– the players in David Mamet’s fast-paced script are willing to lie, bribe, con, steal, and, perhaps worst of all, commodify relationships, all in order to get on top of the corporate food chain. The main appeal here is seeing one of the strongest ensembles in American cinema deliver juicy dialogue –– Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and Alec Baldwin are all competing to be the best part of the movie. Read more here.
The Apartment and Glengarry Glen Ross are available for rental at any digital retailer.
Mother/Office Space
My family understandably gravitated toward watching a lot of comedies, particularly at the beginning of lockdown. Two of the funniest ones felt like wish fulfillment –– characters fight back against the mundane restrictions that keep us from fulfilling our potential. Albert Brooks’ Mother sees a neurotic writer move in with his mother to confront the relational issues that shaped him. Brooks creates a hilarious and satisfying experience as he calls out his family’s idiosyncrasies and microaggressions. It’s a lovably low-stakes affair with a pitch-perfect Debbie Reynolds as Brooks overbearing (or underbearing?) mother. Read more here.
The hero of Mike Judge’s Office Space fulfills a similar fantasy: ceasing to care about his awful job and forgoing the formalities and politeness that it entails. I cannot think of another movie where an average guy ceases to care about what people think of him, which makes this film a distinctly gratifying watch, because so much of my energy is devoted to caring about what other people think. Ron Livingston is thoroughly convincing (and insanely funny) in the lead role. Read more here.
Mother and Office Space are available for rental at any digital retailer.
The Birdcage/Closer
Before 2020, the only Mike Nichols movie I’d seen was his most iconic, The Graduate. This year, I enjoyed exploring three movies from the last decade of his career. While wasn’t a huge fan of the unfortunate misfire Charlie Wilson’s War, I adored the other two Nichols projects I watched. The first was The Birdcage, a remake of a French farce in which Robin Williams and Nathan Lane portray a Floridian gay couple who have to “play it straight” when they meet their son’s conservative future in-laws. Lane, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, and Hank Azaria all give fantastic comedic performances, with Williams surprisingly serving as the straight man who holds them all together. The near-perfect script imbues every detail with eventual importance and follows each character thread to their hilarious conclusions. Nichols maintains a brilliant theatricality that most movies never achieve. Read more here.
2004’s Closer s another cinematic adaptation of a stage play, but it’s sharply different in tone from The Birdcage. The film tells a sprawling, years-long story of sex, romance, intimacy, and betrayal using only four actors, and every scene only features two of them (except for one near the beginning that briefly has three). Nichols directs his tiny cast to amazing performances –– each of the four characters alternately feel like monsters, victims, and everything in between. Rarely have my alliances to characters shifted so swiftly and so frequently as in this film, which is a testament to the incredible writing from Patrick Marber. Everyone is funny, sympathetic, and awful throughout the entire movie, thanks to Marber’s sharp, poetic dialogue. Read more here.
The Birdcage and Closer are available for rental at any digital retailer.
About Time/A Man Called Ove
Few movies are able to evoke It’s a Wonderful Life’s ability to reflect on a full lifetime’s worth of heartwarming victories and crushing defeats. This year, I watched two that come close. 2013’s About Time echoes the time loops of other great movies like Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, and Source Code, but sets itself apart by handing its protagonist, Tim, control over the time travel, and he can go much farther than one day back. Rather than using his power to stop terrorists or fight aliens, our hero travels through time to achieve maximal outcomes in his personal life: he can retry conversations, undo that awkward kiss, or even stop a loved one from meeting that horrible boyfriend. At first, Tim uses his unique ability to pursue a charming romance, but filmmaker Richard Curtis quickly pivots the film’s focus to something far more touching: a bittersweet family drama. Tim loves his family, but thanks to some clever time-travel restrictions, he frequently has to choose between his beloved past with his childhood family and his unpredictable future. It’s a stellar conflict for a time travel movie that’s entirely character-driven and often heartbreaking to watch. Read more here.
The multifaceted Swedish film A Man Called Ove succeeds as both a black comedy and a heartwarming character study of the quintessential grumpy old neighbor. This is a simple little movie, but it’s incredibly poignant and consistently moving as it reveals the titular character’s backstory through flashback. Everyone has a story of love and loss, even if they seem like an old fart right now. Read more here.
About Time is available on Netflix. A Man Called Ove is available on Amazon Prime Video.
