DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD, THE STAND (the doc, not the TV series remake), THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7, THE GLORIAS top Best of 2020 list

Yes, it was a shit year for just about everything. Except movies. Herewith, TrustMovies' list of his favorites for 2020, in pretty much the order during the year in which I viewed each. As usual, eclectic doesn't begin to properly describe things. You may notice that there are almost as many documentaries as narrative films in this year's list. (The Mole Agent very nearly compresses the two into a single uber-hybrid genre.) If a lot of major, year-end movies seem to have been left off, this is either because they were not special or 

surprising enough for me, or more likely, because I have not yet seen them. So some will be added to the list once I have done so.

The single film on the list so far that I did not officially review is Dick Johnson Is Dead, which I only caught up with this week via Netflix and was blown away by. What a wonderfully funny and moving testament to family and film it is! The Stand: How One Gesture Changed the World is one of those documentaries that was barely seen or acknowledged, but its importance is huge. It  

is as timely now as the events from the 1960s that it covers so well, while showing us how much -- and how little -- has since then changed. 

The Trial of the Chicago 7 offers Aaron Sorkin at his best, which is going some. It also gives us history, humor, and the chance to see past events and connect them to our present with both shame and hope. (Dateline--Saigon offers a documentary look at the Vietnam War that makes a fine companion piece to Sorkin's film.) The Glorias is far from a perfect film, but Julie Taymor's ability to 

weave Gloria Steinem's history into a fanciful, thoughtful, consistently interesting tale is hugely worth viewing (and more than once). It is feminist in the finest manner.

Paint is on my list because it handles art and the art world so amusingly and well, while Dead makes the cut for its delightful combination of the supernatural, dry humor and a certain other theme that oughtn't be given away by a reviewer.

As GLBT movies go, I warrant you have never seen one (and probably never will again) as original and amazing as Kill the Monsters: An American Allegory, which compresses an oddball gay love story into American history in a most creative manner, ending up with one of the funniest, put-him-in-his-place looks at the laughing-stock President who is about to leave office that you can imagine.

Knockout acting in a neo-noir thriller about guilt? See Blood on Her Name (above). A near-undefinable sui generis ensemble film about grace and connection? Try Change in the Air. A look at mental illness unlike just about anything else? Yes: Eternal Beauty. Capitalism as the Death Star? You've got several picks, from Capital in the Twenty-first Century to System Error and The Andorra Hustle (below) -- that last an amazing little doc about a place and an incident/situation of which you've most likely never heard. You'll remember it, however, once you've seen this film. Oh, and a musical comedy, The Prom, too delightful and self-aware not to include.

The movies are from all over the place, and the count -- at this point 35 -- is, as usual, too many. (Cutting back is not TrustMovies' forte.) For more information on each, simply click its title link. Here they are, plus this year a mention of a few worthwhile series, as well as a new streaming source:

Movies

CUNNINGHAM

THE TRUTH ABOUT MARRIAGE

BLOOD ON HER NAME

THE HUNT

KILL THE MONSTERS: AN AMERICAN ALLEGORY

THE TRAITOR

CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

CHANGE IN THE AIR

THE DOG DOC

URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD: INTO HER OWN

REWIND

SYSTEM ERROR

JAMES VS HIS FUTURE SELF

HOW TO BUILD A GIRL

MY DARLING VIVIAN

FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO

DATELINE--SAIGON

WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES

THE MOLE AGENT

THE AUGUST VIRGIN

THE STAND: HOW ONE GESTURE SHOOK THE WORLD

ETERNAL BEAUTY

DEAD

THE ANDORRA HUSTLE

THE GLORIAS

THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7

AN ALMOST ORDINARY SUMMER

PAINT

THE PROM

THE WEASELS' TALE

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD*

ANTEBELLUM

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI

JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

NOMADLAND

Streaming or Cable Series

GIRI/HAGI

DRACULA

MY BRILLIANT FRIEND

THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR*

THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT*

Special Cause for Celebration

The (relatively) new streaming service OVID

* seen but not officially reviewed by TrustMovies

THE ADVENTURERS OF MODERN ART: the 2015 style- and genre-melding French TV series

As co-directed by Amélie Harrault, Pauline Gaillard and Valérie Loiseleux, with writing credited to Dan Franck, this unusual French television series from 2015-- six epiosdes, each one around 52 minutes in length -- tells the stories of some of the most famous figures of modern art, more from the angle of their lives (expecially their love lives) rather than via their art -- though that art is present and clearly important. In THE ADVENTURERS OF MODERN ART (Les aventuriers de l'art moderne), we meet everyone from Matisse, Picasso and Braque to Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, Guillaume Apollinaire and Max Jacob (that last name perhaps the least know but among the most interesting characters in the series). 

What's most unusual about this series is that it is -- to a surprising extent, at least -- animated. And though that seems to be what most sets it apart from other film and television about art and artists, that animation -- unless TrustMovies' calculations are way off base -- is much less seen than is the footage devoted to the use of archival film documentary (and narrative film, too!). Occasionally the animation is even placed atop this archival footage.

This is probably a good thing, since that animation, though perfectly acceptable, seems to my eyes nothing all that special. It simply recreates scenes that, in other hybrid documentaries these days, would have been "enacted," using a cast of assembled performers to play the various roles. Further, the archival footage is particularly well chosen: often pointed, amusing, and seeming almost perfectly of its time and place.

Picasso (above), whatever you might think of his art, is presented as pretty much the asshole of a human being that he was. Many, if not most, males were exactly that back then (oh, right -- now, as well), but this guy managed to outdo them all. (The filmmakers seem particularly taken with the artist's eyes -- which we view in close up, animated or archival, over and over again.) 

While the series can be repetitive, it is also filled with so many little-known facts and/or speculations that one's interest rarely flags. And if Picasso earns little empathy, other folk like Apollinaire and Jacob (the also-ran among these artists, poets and cultural figures) earn our appreciation and caring in surprising ways.

The three episodes I've finished so far -- Bohemia: 1900-1906, Picasso and His Gang: 1906-1916, and Paris Capital of the World: 1916-1920 -- take us historically, artistically, culturally and especially love-life-wise into the lives of these artists and the places (from France to Spain to Germany and back) where they lived and worked. 

The series has a very nice build. It may take you some time to warm up to the animation (not so much to the archival stuff) and to these artists themselves, but once you're hooked, I suspect you'll stick with it and warm to it even more. We get Modigliani and Braque and poor, poor Soutine; World War I, the Spanish Flu, and Kiki of Montparnasse; and events of which I've only just now learned, such as Parade, the artistic collaboration of Erik Satie, Cocteau and Picasso -- which was not well-received upon its premiere but, still, must have been quite something to see and hear.  

As I say, I've only finished three of the six episodes but I'll be back for more. From Icarus Home Video, the series hit the street on DVD and streaming last week and is available now for purchase and/or rental).

A tasty documentary is turned inside out in Molly Dworsky/Dave Newberg/Zachary Capp's THE RINGMASTER

Who exactly is THE RINGMASTER of this eponymously titled new documentary? Seems to TrustMovies that there are actually four of them -- the most important being a Minnesota man named Larry Lang who is said (by many, many folk indeed) to have made the best-tasting, batter-laden, deep-fried onion rings in the whole wide world. Or at the very least in these United States of America. Larry is the ostensible subject of the documentary planned to be brought to fruition by a first-time filmmaker named Zachary Capp (shown at center, below, surrounded by what turns out to be this film's actual directors, Capp's friends Molly Dworsky, left, and Dave Newberg, right).

Mr. Lang (below) may be the ringmaster of those onions, and Capp of the documentary about them, but along the very bizarre, alternately funny and pretty damned sad journey that is this film, Ms Dworsky and Mr. Newberg must replace the original filmmaker. How and why make up the "plot" here, and quite a tale it turns out to be.

If onion rings are among your favorite food (as they are mine), I don't see how you will want to miss this movie and see and hear as those rings sizzle to a golden brown. (If only The Ringmaster were in Taste-O-Vision!) 

As filmmaker Capp determines to bring Lang's rings the acclaim they deserve, he and we viewers travel around the country watching various deals made so that the onions might become the "signature" food of important sport franchises, one of which is a certain famous football team who plans to move from Oakland to Las Vegas.

One major problem is that our Larry only wants his privacy and to be able to produce his rings in peace and quiet for whomever and wherever he happens to be working at any particular time. 

And, as we learn almost from the get-go here, our Mr. Capp is a reformed gambling addict, and addiction, as we are so often told, never dies. It simply sleeps, waiting for a new "something" to attract its attention and claws. For instance: filmmaking as a road to fame and fortune.

Yes, movie fans: In the long and varied history of hybrid documentaries, I think this one really does take the cake. Or the rings. Manipulation grows and does even more than its expected damage; even as we keep grinning, smiling and guffawing, the laughter begin to curdle in our throat. Onions are famous for making their chefs cry. So, I suspect, will be the case for viewers of this small-but-packed-with-observation documentary.

As the end credits roll, we learn the outcome for some of the folk we've met here. But what the rings themselves? Are they available anywhere now? Even as produced by Larry's sister Linda? Or are they to be consigned, as is so much else these days (including our country itself), to disappear down the river of full-out dementia? 

From 1091 Pictures and running just 88 minutes. The Ringmaster opens on digital and VOD platforms this Tuesday, October 6 -- for purchase and/or rental. (Even Gene Simmons and the band KISS get involved in all of this. Who knew?)

A CIAMBRA: Blu-ray/DVD debut for Jonas Campignano's docu-like tale of Romani in Italy

Laden with awards and nominations -- from international festivals and in its own country of Italy via the David Di Donatellos, the Italian version of our "Oscars" -- and also greeted with enthusiasm when it opened theatrically here in the USA earlier this year, A CIAMBRA (so named for an unfinished housing development and neighborhood, shown two photos below, occupied for some years now by a community of Romani people in the Calabria region of Southern Italy) is a hybrid documentary-style narrative film in which an enormous (and real) Romani family, all playing themselves, help tell the tale of one of its younger members, a teenager named Pio, who wants more than anything to become a criminal just like his weirdly adored older asshole brother.

As written and directed by Jonas Campignano (shown at right, of Mediterranea), the movie fairly reeks of reality. You could not ask for anything more "honest" -- from the performances (not simply "warts and all" but "warts and more warts") to the screenplay and dialog (which is noticeably sparse and seems quite believable) and direction and camera-work (by Tim Curtin) that could hardly be more immersive and on-the-mark.

The movie shows us the plight of the Romani in Italy as third-class (if that) citizens, barely a cut above -- in the eyes of the "real" Italians -- those black African immigrants who also flood the area. A Ciambra neither glamorizes nor in any way idealizes its protagonists; in fact, it shows them to be, in many cases, their own worst enemy -- dreaming of a more "romantic," on-the-move past, while doing little (except theft) to address the needs of the present, let alone the future.

And yet the movie itself is paced so slowly, with a plot as obvious and predictable in its own way as any Hollywood sit-com, that it quickly becomes a slough and a real ordeal to have to sit through, given that most viewers with any experience in watching either documentaries or narratives about the "downtrodden" will know exactly where it's going and pretty much how it will get there, too.

Fortunately, the film has as its leading actor a young name named Pio Amato (above), who has at least enough charisma to help carry the film along. We experience all that happens through his eyes and mind, and he does make an interesting and very problemed companion for much of the time. He has no interest in anything except becoming a criminal like his brother (Damiano Amato, below), which as he sees it, is the only viable way to help support his hugely extended family.

Along the way, he (sort of) befriends one of the more helpful Africans (Koudous Seihon, below) and a kind of bond is eventually created, tested, and -- in the film's most moving scene -- broken between them.

"Family first," a mantra too often heard in the world, from culture to culture, rears its ugly head and, via a particularly ugly betrayal, our non-hero sees his fondest wish come true. Surprise? Hardly. And at just two minutes short of two full hours, the movie -- with little plot machination other than that of my description above -- often seems endless.

No hope or even possibility of change is offered -- which is most likely on a par with reality, so far as the Romani are concerned. (Their links to the Mafiosi do not help matters.) And while the film takes place in Italy, one suspects the rest of Europe is quite similar -- as would the U.S. be, too, were the Romani to make any real inroads here.

In fact, one wonders if Signore Campignano would not be the right man to visit America, explore the innermost regions of poor, white, racist Trump country, and then make a movie about how these people, via their beliefs and behavior, are sealing their own -- as well as their country's -- death warrant.

From IFC Films and running 118 minutes, A Ciambra arrives on Blu-ray (the transfer is a decent one, and the bonus features plentiful) and DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, July 10 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Gilles Deroo/Marianne Pistone's MOUTON serves up a small seaside community via an unusual cinéma vérité narrative

Odd does not begin to describe the 2013 French movie first seen in the USA via the New Directors/New Films series in 2014 but only just now appearing on DVD so that movie buffs across the USA can finally view it. MOUTON (whever I see that word, which is French for sheep, I automatically hear Julia Childs saying it aloud in my mind), written and directed by the filmmaking team of Gilles Deroo and Marianne Pistone, tells the tale of a quiet, strange but sweet 17-year-old young man, who has been given that titular nickname.

Or at least it does this for more than half of the film's 100-minute running time. At that point there occurs a momentous and very nearly unfathomable event, after which the film shifts to the lives of a few of the townspeople who know and/or work with Mouton. We don't see Mouton again, except in a photograph and finally via a letter written to him, which we hear in narration at the finale.

Yes, this is frustrating, to say the least. But oddly enough, it ends up working better than you might imagine. Still, I can't help wondering what the intention of the filmmakers (shown above, with Ms Pistone on the right) actually were.

Surely the pair wanted to give us a full-bodied character in Mouton. And they do, sort of. Though we only get glimpses of the other characters, even after the movie shifts over to them, I am guessing the duo is more interested in capturing the "community" here, a little seaside fishing town called Courseulles-sur-mer.

The filmmakers' style, I think, is something akin to cinéma vérité, which began as a kind of documentary form but soon made its way into narrative, as well. (These two types of cinema were never nearly as "distinct" as we might like to think. Witness the ever-growing list of "hybrid" documentaries, as well as the work of Flaherty, Rogosin and many others.)

With Mouton, Deroo and Pistone don't claim to be making a documentary; they simply use that style to rather complete and full effect. From the opening scene, in which Mouton (played very well by Michael Mormentyn, shown above) is at last given a kind of freedom from his alcoholic, grasping mother to his time working in a restaurant, making friends with the owner and staff and falling into a relationship with a newly hired waitress (below), it all seems as real as life, if occasionally as slow-moving, too.

When the movie changes from its lead character to its supporting ones, this sense of reality never wavers, though one does wonder if the filmmakers mightn't have simply incorporated all this into a more singular narrative that included all the events and also seemed more of a fuller, complete piece. Perhaps they wanted that sense of "loss" we feel once Mouton has left the narrative.

Also, their use of inter-titles to explain what is happening in those final scenes seems a bit of a cheat. (Without the use of one of these -- "Mimi abandons a dog" -- I might not have understood exactly what was going on.) Yet these final scenes do offer some strange and wonderful moments: the twin brothers and the prostitute proves a humdinger combining sexual realism, kindness and need, while the scene that follows, featuring love and obeisance to a very large fish, together with the religious service practiced at the seaside wharf makes it absolutely clear how much this community owes its employment and its very life to the vast ocean and its many species (they could have called the movie Poisson, just as easily as Mouton).

By the end of this singular film, I felt I had indeed experienced the life of the community, it's small pleasures and joys, as well as its losses, chief among these, our sweet-natured (and maybe, yes, a bit slow) titular boy. From IndiePix Films, Mouton makes its DVD debut this coming Tuesday, August 29, for purchase and/or streaming rental via IndiePix Unlimited, the company's (relatively) new streaming service.

ALL THESE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS: Michal Marczak's entry into the hybrid doc genre

Something akin to the recently reviewed All This Panic, which covers the life of adolescent American girls in New York City as they come to terms with the adulthood that lies ahead, the new Polish hybrid documentary ALL THESE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS would appear to want to do the same using as protagonists a couple of young Polish men located in Warsaw. Both films, though said to be documentaries, are created with such visual immediacy and flair, using dialog that often seems written rather than spoken, that they more closely resemble narrative films.

Michal Marczak, the film's director and co-writer (along with Katarzyna Szczerba) uses a style that immediately immerses us in his protagonists and their world -- at least that part of their world that he chooses for us to experience. Mr. Marczak, shown at right, begins his film with an explanation of what he calls "The Reminiscence Bump": the tendency of human beings to hang onto memories of adolescence and young adulthood above all others.

And why not? Those are such formative and memorable years, after all. So gorgeously composed, shot and edited is the film that for some while it is easy to overlook the very sexist stance the movie adopts (and then runs with), as our two young men -- Krzysztof Baginski (above, right) and Michal Huszcza (above, left) -- talk to each other but then, when they interact with young women, talk at them. The ladies are objects to possess and play with, but god help the boys, particularly Krzys who becomes the main protagonist here, when some real intimacy is required.

The objectification continues via some full-frontal nudity, of  course featuring one of the young women, while our boys barely bother to take off more than a shirt. At one point, while playing their sex games, the girl mentions what an enormous cock Krzys possesses, but, while she can disrobe and show it all off, his body remains almost entirely off limits. Further, while a huge strain of homo-eroticism binds the two boys, this, too, is completely unexplored, save for some noticeable jealousy on the part of Michal.

All this builds up overtime, and because we learn almost nothing about the background of the two young men -- are they from wealth? Certainly neither seem to work nor even attend school -- the behavior of Krzys, in particular, grows tiresome and annoying. He takes self-involvement to new heights (or depths), even for an aging adolescent, and eventually we see him pretty much entirely as the rather typical male chauvinist prick. (Note the scene in which he walks through a traffic jam in which drivers have gotten out of their cars and are standing in the street to see what's going on. Krzys pays no attention to the one woman we see, nearly knocking into her door, while he carefully walks around all the men who are standing at the door of their cars.)

There's plenty -- too much, actually -- dancing and drugs along the way, which adds to the film's length while not giving us any more characterization. By the finale, I have the sense that the filmmaker wants us to feel happy and encouraged by the state of our "hero" who, looking rather drugged up, is now dancing in the midst of oncoming traffic. But as we've seen no real change or growth in our Krzys, we're just waiting for his next mini-meltdown.

Comparisons have been made between the style of this film and the French new wave. They may be apt, certainly in terms of how sexist were some of those earlier directors (Godard, anyone?). Visually, All These Sleepless Nights is indeed fun to view. And young Mr. Baginski (above) has a face the camera loves. But style, even when coupled to male beauty, can only go so far. From The Orchard and running a little-too-long at 104 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, April 7, in Los Angeles (at the Landmark NuArt) and San Francisco (at Landmark's Opera Plaza Cinema) and on April 14 in New York City (at the IFC Center).