We didn’t have theaters in 2020. But oh, how we needed the movies.
It was Pixar’s “Soul” that really did it for me. I pulled it up on Disney+ Jan. 31, and it was just what the doctor ordered after a dim year. Leave it to cartoons to remind us of what makes us human and whole.
It’ll win best animated picture Sunday during the 93rd Academy Awards. Meanwhile, the movies listed below won’t get the love they deserve.
Here’s a toast to them for streaming straight to our living rooms when we needed them most:
“The 40-Year-Old Version”
Radha Blank appears in “The 40-Year-Old Version.” She also directed it.
In her feature directorial debut, Radha Blank stars as a playwright in the depths of a midlife crisis. She gets by on teaching while grappling with compromises to please white bosses and white audiences. How to stay true to herself? Through rap, she discovers. “FYOV,” she sings at one point. “Find your own voice. Fill your own void.” It’s an anthem that rings long after the credits roll.
Streaming on Netflix
“Da 5 Bloods”
And Spike Lee still awaits his Oscar for best director, a travesty dating back to 1989’s “Do The Right Thing.” In 2019, “BlaKkKlansman” earned three nominations, including best picture, while “Da 5 Bloods” — which I think is better — was nearly blanked but for an original score nod. Vietnam vets return to the forsaken jungle for the remains of their lost leader and buried treasure.
Streaming on Netflix
“Dick Johnson is Dead”
Get comfortable with the most uncomfortable fact of life. That is, of course, death. The documentarian will show you her father, who is near his real end, reach his faux demise several times. It’s OK: You can laugh each bloody occasion. You can laugh as old Dick Johnson frolics in heaven with his dearly departed wife. At the end, you can cry, too.
Streaming on Netflix
“Driveways”
It’s a heavy dose of sentimentality that might make the hardened cinephile cringe. Or maybe the dose was proper for 2020. Speaking of hardened, that’s Del. Brian Dennehy plays a widowed veteran who forms an unlikely bond with a sensitive boy who moves in next door. It culminates with an unforgettable curtain call for Dennehy, who died last year.
Streaming on Showtime; for premium subscribers of Hulu and Amazon Prime
”First Cow”
John Magaro in a scene from “First Cow.”
We transport to the frontier Pacific Northwest, where two quiet, gentle men don’t quite fit in. One is a cook in a rowdy fur trapping party. Another is an immigrant on the run. They band together to start a cake enterprise in a settlement where one rich man reigns supreme. He will own the territory’s first dairy cow, and that will change everything — including the lives of our two companions, who represent the losers of a brutal economy being born. At least they have each other.
Streaming on Hulu and Showtime
“I’m Thinking of Ending Things”
If the title sounds dark, it’s probably not what you think; in the opening scene, we listen to a woman’s conscience debate an innocent breakup. The movie is largely not what you think. It is a bizarre, psychological fever dream with subtle twists and turns seemingly to nowhere. Pay attention, and you might find something poignant about loneliness and lost time.
Streaming on Netflix
“One Night in Miami...”
Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) arrives at a place of peace by the end of “One Night in Miami.”
A round of applause to Kemp Powers, whom the Academy nominated for writing. He deftly imagined and crafted the screenplay, based on a conversation in 1964 that, other than its importance, remains unknown between Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown and the man who would be Muhammad Ali. The movie triumphs beyond the script. That’s thanks to the direction of Regina King and the men who do right by their vaunted characters. From the Miami hotel room, their words echo to today.
Streaming on Amazon Prime
“The Painter and the Thief”
Kind of like “Dick Johnson,” this is a documentary you watch and think: How can this be real? Only this one out of Norway is entirely real. At the trial for the man who stole her cherished paintings, artist Barbora Kysikova asks drug addict Karl-Bertil Nordland to come by her studio for a portrait. He agrees. So begins a deeply moving story of compassion.
Streaming on Hulu
“Palm Springs”
Sarah (Cristin Milioti) and Nyles (Andy Samberg) in a scene from “Palm Springs.”
It’s a hilarious, “Groundhog Day”-style trip. With creative complexities and a candy-colored setting complete with sci-fi, “Palm Springs” avoids being labeled a rip-off of the Bill Murray classic. Andy Samberg is Nyles, who has accepted his curse and chosen to party his way through the same wedding over and over. That’s until a romantic interest gets stuck in the time loop with him.
Streaming on Hulu
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