{"id":19942,"date":"2021-01-01T01:00:46","date_gmt":"2021-01-01T06:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/?p=19942"},"modified":"2022-01-16T16:45:57","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:45:57","slug":"top-10-of-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/2021\/01\/top-10-of-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 10 of 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

*Click on the ‘Lists & Logs’ tab to see lists from previous years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This list will be updated each time I see a film from 2020 (world premiere\/imdb date) that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. DAU. Degeneration (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Ilya Permyakov)<\/li>\n
  2. Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)<\/li>\n
  3. Fauna (Nicol\u00e1s Pereda)<\/li>\n
  4. The Last City (Heinz Emigholz)<\/li>\n
  5. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)<\/li>\n
  6. DAU. Three Days (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel)<\/li>\n
  7. Let Them All Talk a.k.a. The Fall of 2019 (Steven Soderbergh)<\/li>\n
  8. The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel)<\/li>\n
  9. DAU. Brave People (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Aleksey Slusarchuk)<\/li>\n
  10. The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Polls Top 10<\/span><\/strong> (Eligible titles [will] appear here<\/a>.) (Note: This year I started including streaming-only releases on this list; eligibility determined by my whims and moods.)<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Libert\u00e9 (2019, Albert Serra)<\/li>\n
    2. The Giverny Document (Single Channel) (2019, Ja’Tovia Gary)<\/li>\n
    3. DAU. Degeneration (2020, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Ilya Permyakov)<\/li>\n
    4. I Was at Home, But… (2019, Angela Schanelec)<\/li>\n
    5. DAU. Three Days (2020, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel)<\/li>\n
    6. Fourteen (2019, Dan Sallitt)<\/li>\n
    7. About Endlessness (2019, Roy Andersson)<\/li>\n
    8. Young Ahmed (2019, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)<\/li>\n
    9. DAU. Brave People (2020, Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Aleksey Slusarchuk)<\/li>\n
    10. The History of the Seattle Mariners (2020, Jon Bois)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

       <\/p>\n

      My Top 10 Discoveries During 2020<\/span><\/strong> (for first-time viewings of films made before 2010)<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. The Fountainhead (1949, King Vidor)<\/li>\n
      2. Variety (1983, Bette Gordon)<\/li>\n
      3. Stella Dallas (1937, King Vidor)<\/li>\n
      4. The Wedding Night (1935, King Vidor)<\/li>\n
      5. Happy Here and Now (2002, Michael Almereyda)<\/li>\n
      6. Woman on the Beach (2006, Hong Sang-soo)<\/li>\n
      7. Street Scene (1931, King Vidor)<\/li>\n
      8. Night and Day (2008, Hong Sang-soo)<\/li>\n
      9. The Power of Kangwon Province (1998, Hong Sang-soo)<\/li>\n
      10. Koyaanisqatsi (1982, Godfrey Reggio)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

         <\/p>\n

        Other 2020 films I\u2019ve seen<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

          \n
        • Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu) – 6.8<\/li>\n
        • The History of the Seattle Mariners (Jon Bois) – 6.8<\/li>\n
        • The Lobby (Heinz Emigholz) – 6.7<\/li>\n
        • Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) – 6.7<\/li>\n
        • Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross) – 6.7<\/li>\n
        • DAU. Natasha (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 6.7<\/li>\n
        • Tesla (Michael Almereyda) – 6.6<\/li>\n
        • Microphones in 2020 (Phil Elverum) – 6.6<\/li>\n
        • Inventing the Future (Isiah Medina) – 6.6<\/li>\n
        • Hopper\/Welles (Orson Welles) – 6.6<\/li>\n
        • The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (Anders Edstr\u00f6m & C.W. Winter) – 6.5<\/li>\n
        • Slow Machine (Paul Felten & Joe DeNardo) – 6.5<\/li>\n
        • s01e03 (Kurt Walker) – 6.5<\/li>\n
        • City Hall (Frederick Wiseman) – 6.5<\/li>\n
        • The Monopoly of Violence (David Dufresne) – 6.5<\/li>\n
        • Circumstantial Pleasures (Lewis Klahr) – 6.4<\/li>\n
        • The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo) – 6.4<\/li>\n
        • Red Post on Escher Street (Sion Sono) – 6.4<\/li>\n
        • Time (Garrett Bradley) – 6.4<\/li>\n
        • Beginning (Dea Kulumbegashvili) – 6.3<\/li>\n
        • Boys State (Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss) – 6.3<\/li>\n
        • The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell) – 6.3<\/li>\n
        • The Killing of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian) – 6.3<\/li>\n
        • So Late So Soon (Daniel Hymanson) – 6.3<\/li>\n
        • Build the Wall (Joe Swanberg) – 6.2<\/li>\n
        • Atarrabi and Mikelats (Eug\u00e8ne Green) – 6.2<\/li>\n
        • Second Star to the Right and Straight On \u2019Til Morning (Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross) – 6.2<\/li>\n
        • Maggie\u2019s Farm (James Benning) – 6.1<\/li>\n
        • Expedition Content (Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati) – 6.0<\/li>\n
        • The American Sector (Courtney Stephens & Pacho Velez) – 6.0<\/li>\n
        • Tenet (Christopher Nolan) – 5.9<\/li>\n
        • Isabella (Mat\u00edas Pi\u00f1eiro) – 5.9<\/li>\n
        • The Nest (Sean Durkin) – 5.9<\/li>\n
        • DAU. String Theory (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Aleksey Slusarchuk) – 5.9<\/li>\n
        • I\u2019m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman) – 5.8<\/li>\n
        • Kokoloko (Gerardo Naranjo) – 5.8<\/li>\n
        • DAU. New Man (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Ilya Permyakov) – 5.8<\/li>\n
        • We Are Who We Are (Luca Guadagnino) – 5.7<\/li>\n
        • The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror (Ra\u00fal Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento) – 5.7<\/li>\n
        • One Night in Miami (Regina King) – 5.7<\/li>\n
        • Shithouse (Cooper Raiff) – 5.7<\/li>\n
        • Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi) – 5.7<\/li>\n
        • DAU. Katya Tanya (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 5.7<\/li>\n
        • Intimate Distances (Phillip Warnell) – 5.7<\/li>\n
        • Kajillionaire (Miranda July) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • Undine (Christian Petzold) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • Saint-Narcisse (Bruce LaBruce) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse (Nicol\u00e1s Zukerfeld) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • Short Vacation (Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Han-sol) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • Some Kind of Heaven (Lance Oppenheim) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • French Exit (Azazel Jacobs) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (Werner Herzog & Clive Oppenheimer) – 5.6<\/li>\n
        • The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili) – 5.5<\/li>\n
        • Mank (David Fincher) – 5.5<\/li>\n
        • Dick Johnson is Dead (Kirsten Johnson) – 5.5<\/li>\n
        • Palm Springs (Max Barbakow) – 5.5<\/li>\n
        • Things We Say, Things We Do: Love Affair(s) (Emmanuel Mouret) – 5.4<\/li>\n
        • Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman) – 5.4<\/li>\n
        • Gunda (Viktor Kossakovsky) – 5.4<\/li>\n
        • Education (Steve McQueen) – 5.4<\/li>\n
        • Sportin’ Life (Abel Ferrara) – 5.4<\/li>\n
        • DAU. Nikita Tanya (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • Her Name Was Europa (Anja Dornieden & Juan David Gonz\u00e1lez Monroy) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • Wife of a Spy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • Blue Eyes and Colorful My Dress (Polina Gumiela) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • Enemies of the State (Sonia Kennebeck) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • The Wolf of Snow Hollow (Jim Cummings) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • The Truffle Hunters (Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • Death of Nintendo (Raya Martin) – 5.3<\/li>\n
        • Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhang-ke) – 5.2<\/li>\n
        • DAU. Nora Mother (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Jekaterina Oertel) – 5.2<\/li>\n
        • David Byrne\u2019s American Utopia (Spike Lee) – 5.2<\/li>\n
        • A Shape of Things to Come (J.P. Sniadecki & Lisa Malloy) – 5.2<\/li>\n
        • IWOW: I Walk on Water (Khalik Allah) – 5.1<\/li>\n
        • Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen) – 5.1<\/li>\n
        • Siberia (Abel Ferrara) – 5.0<\/li>\n
        • Uppercase Print (Radu Jude) – 5.0<\/li>\n
        • Liminal (Philippe Grandrieux, Manuela de Laborde, Lav Diaz, & \u00d3scar Enr\u00edquez) – 5.0<\/li>\n
        • Zero (Kazuhiro Soda) – 5.0<\/li>\n
        • Identifying Features (Fernanda Valadez) – 5.0<\/li>\n
        • The Calming (Song Fang) – 4.9<\/li>\n
        • Spring Blossom (Suzanne Lindon) – 4.9<\/li>\n
        • Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman) – 4.9<\/li>\n
        • Bicentenario (Pablo Alvarez Mesa) – 4.9<\/li>\n
        • Summer of 85 (Fran\u00e7ois Ozon) – 4.9<\/li>\n
        • All In: The Fight for Democracy (Liz Garbus & Lisa Cort\u00e9s) – 4.9<\/li>\n
        • Preparations to Be Together For an Unknown Period of Time (Lili Horv\u00e1th) – 4.8<\/li>\n
        • Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine (Alex Piperno) – 4.8<\/li>\n
        • ma\u026cni \u2013 towards the ocean, towards the shore (Sky Hopinka) – 4.8<\/li>\n
        • Pieces of a Woman (Korn\u00e9l Mundrucz\u00f3) – 4.8<\/li>\n
        • MLK\/FBI (Sam Pollard) – 4.8<\/li>\n
        • Last and First Men (J\u00f3hann J\u00f3hannsson) – 4.8<\/li>\n
        • Viena and the Fantomes (Gerardo Naranjo) – 4.7<\/li>\n
        • A l\u2019abordage (Guillaume Brac) – 4.7<\/li>\n
        • Night of the Kings (Philippe Lac\u00f4te) – 4.7<\/li>\n
        • Orphea (Alexander Kluge & Khavn) – 4.7<\/li>\n
        • Nasir (Arun Karthick) – 4.7<\/li>\n
        • Purple Sea (Amel Alzakout & Khaled Abdulwahed) – 4.6<\/li>\n
        • Los Conductos (Camilo Restrepo) – 4.6<\/li>\n
        • Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell) – 4.6<\/li>\n
        • Shirley (Josephine Decker) – 4.5<\/li>\n
        • There Is No Evil (Mohammad Rasoulof) – 4.4<\/li>\n
        • The Year of the Discovery (Luis L\u00f3pez Carrasco) – 4.3<\/li>\n
        • Night for Day (Emily Wardill) – 4.3<\/li>\n
        • Epicentro (Hubert Sauper) – 4.3<\/li>\n
        • Nomadland (Chlo\u00e9 Zhao) – 4.2<\/li>\n
        • Red Moon Tide (Lois Pati\u00f1o) – 4.1<\/li>\n
        • I Carry You with Me (Heidi Ewing) – 4.1<\/li>\n
        • Ammonite (Francis Lee) – 4.1<\/li>\n
        • Mangrove (Steve McQueen) – 4.0<\/li>\n
        • Minari (Lee Isaac Chung) – 4.0<\/li>\n
        • Corporate Accountability (Jonathan Perel) – 3.9<\/li>\n
        • Rebecca (Ben Wheatley) – 3.9<\/li>\n
        • Tragic Jungle (Yulene Olaizola) – 3.8<\/li>\n
        • She Dies Tomorrow (Amy Seimetz) – 3.7<\/li>\n
        • The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin) – 3.7<\/li>\n
        • Alex Wheatle (Steve McQueen) – 3.7<\/li>\n
        • Long Gone Summer (AJ Schnack) – 3.7<\/li>\n
        • Ploy (Prapat Jiwarangsan) – 3.6<\/li>\n
        • Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner) – 3.6<\/li>\n
        • On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola) – 3.5<\/li>\n
        • Home Front (Lucas Belvaux) – 3.5<\/li>\n
        • The Empty Man (David Prior) – 3.4<\/li>\n
        • The Viewing Booth (Ra\u2019anan Alexandrowicz) – 3.4<\/li>\n
        • New Order (Michel Franco) – 3.4<\/li>\n
        • All the Dead Ones (Marco Dutra & Caetano Gotardo) – 3.1<\/li>\n
        • Irradiated (Rithy Panh) – 2.6<\/li>\n
        • The Devil All the Time (Antonio Campos) – 2.5<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          *Click on the ‘Lists & Logs’ tab to see lists from previous years. This list will be updated each time I see a film from 2020 (world premiere\/imdb date) that is better than at least one of the films already on the list. DAU. Degeneration (Ilya Khrzhanovskiy & Ilya Permyakov) Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19942"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21319,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19942\/revisions\/21319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blakewilliams.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}