As Hollywood tried to bludgeon us back into cinemas in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were a number of satisfyingly engaging films that made this a hopeful year for cinema.
All of the titles listed here were released in cinemas, screened at festivals for SA audiences, or are available to watch, purchase or rent from locally accessible streaming platforms. Where possible, information about where to watch the titles is included.
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
Shaka King’s hard-hitting and provocative drama about the FBI’s infiltration of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and the agency’s role in the death of popular leader Fred Hampton earned a deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Daniel Kaluuya.
Where to watch it: Rent or buy from Apple TV +
NOMADLAND
Chloe Zhao’s Oscar-winning empathetic examination of the new post-recession, itinerant American underclass is a beautiful, nuanced tale held together by a standout performance by Frances McDormand.
Where to watch it: Buy from Apple TV +
THE FATHER
Florian Zeller’s moving adaptation of his own play about the devastating effects of age and dementia is an intelligent and inventive demonstration of how to use the medium of film to open up the interior world of a character on-screen anchored by a stellar turn from Anthony Hopkins.
Where to watch it: Buy from Apple TV +
FIRST COW
Kelly Reichardt’s gently touching Western bromance offers a sly fable about the soul-destroying demands of capitalism shot through with black humour and a keen appreciation for the rhythms of life in a different era.
Where to watch it: Mubi.com
MINARI
Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical drama about a Korean family’s search for their slice of the American dream in rural, Reagan-era Arkansas is a carefully self-contained portrayal of another side of the immigrant narrative that’s sympathetically evoked and strongly acted.
Where to watch it: Showmax
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Carey Mulligan shines in this bitter, black-humoured, #MeToo revenge tale that enacts the kind of viciously imagined justice that too many men deserve but don’t receive in the real world.
Where to watch it: Rent or buy from Apple TV +
THE CARD COUNTER
Paul Schrader continues his dedication to being the last and most committed of the ’70s generation of troubled, lonely men storytellers with this broody neo-noir about an Iraq war veteran and professional gambler, magnificently portrayed by Oscar Isaac.
PIG
Nicolas Cage takes full advantage of the opportunity offered by this strange, but quietly effective drama — about a dishevelled Oregon woodsman and his search for his prized stolen truffle pig — to prove that he can still really act, given the right material.
Where to watch it: Rent from Apple TV +
THE DISCIPLE
Director Chaitanya Tamhane’s subtly engaging, slowly unwinding drama about a Mumbai classical music vocalist’s years-long struggle to become a master of his craft. It’s a beautifully fashioned and elegantly realised meditation on sacrifice, crises of self-confidence and the dedication needed to master a unique, difficult and often elusive art form.
Where to watch it: Netflix
ZOLA
Janicza Bravo’s debut feature achieves the seemingly impossible task of taking a viral Twitter thread and turning it into a rollicking, bizarre and engaging film. It’s the “so crazy it had to be true” story of the meeting of two strippers and a mad, bad trip they end up taking to Florida. Funny, bittersweet and directed with plenty of style, it marks Bravo as a definite talent to watch.
Where to watch it: Rent or buy from Apple TV +
THE FRENCH DISPATCH
Wes Anderson’s most freewheeling film still displays his distinctive visual flair and familiar crew of talented acting collaborators in a series of loosely connected tales pulled from the pages of a fictional magazine that’s inspired by the director’s love of The New Yorker. A memorable and typically eccentric love letter to a golden age of journalism and the characters who created it.
Where to watch it: on circuit
DUNE
Denis Villeneuve’s epic and loyal first part of his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic is the kind of smart, breathtaking big-screen entertainment that’s sadly disappearing in the franchise-drenched mediocre malaise of our current moment. Mysterious, magical and spectacularly imaginative it’s a film well worth the wait that lives up to the hype and exceeds expectations.
Where to watch it: On circuit
THE POWER OF THE DOG
Benedict Cumberbatch gives a memorable, menacingly dark performance as a conflicted, repressed, macho-presenting 1920s Montana rancher in Jane Campion’s powerful return to feature films that’s one of her most nuanced and disturbing investigations of her favourite theme of unresolved desire and its consequences.
Where to watch it: Netflix
PASSING
Rebecca Hall steps behind the camera for this carefully controlled and excellently performed adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel about the nuances and tragedies of colourist and prejudice in the “roaring '20s” that still asks difficult questions about the thin artificially constructed lines that divide us.
Where to watch it: Netflix
SPENCER
Chilean director Pablo Larrain takes a much publicised, iconic woman and creates a fictional version of an incident from real-life to try to get into the mind of a person whose mythologisation over decades has only served to make some sort of appreciation of her inner psychological turmoil almost impossible. Played with quiet power by Kristen Stewart, Larrain’s Princess Diana is a complicated, unpredictable but empathetic mother and while the film will be sure to disappoint royalists and royal-watchers it’s a quietly brilliant and devastating work of mythical deconstruction and human-centred re-evaluation.
Where to watch it: On circuit
ANOTHER ROUND
Thomas Vinterberg’s Oscar winning drama about a group of middle-aged Danish men and their experimentation with the idea that a little bit of drinking may be good for their productivity and psychological wellbeing. It’s a tragicomic exploration of midlife crises and the struggle between individual freedom and social expectations that packs a provocative punch, thanks to a powerhouse performance from star Mads Mikkelsen.
QUO VADIS AIDA?
A searing indictment of the tragic turmoil and terrifying absurdities of war, director Jasmila Zbanic’s Oscar-nominated drama is set inside the chaos of the UN compound in Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995 on the eve of one of that conflict’s most terrible and traumatising massacres. It carefully implies its horror through its focus on the impossible choices that its characters must make in the most desperate and paralysing of circumstances.
