In 2018, the year that I graduated college, I watched 454 movies. It was a watershed moment for my cinephilia. I expanded my critical faculties and submerged myself in so many new films, including the work of perhaps my three favorite filmmakers Vincente Minnelli, Clint Eastwood and Jerry Lewis. I thought about movies more seriously than I ever had before. But when the year was over, 454 movies seemed like an obscene, shameful amount of films to have watched. Having witnessed my personal life crumble as I retreated to the escapism of the movies, I resolved to watch less in 2019, and I succeeded — albeit barely, as I still found time for 427 movies.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic made it socially acceptable to sit inside and watch movies all day. Naturally, I took advantage of this — as of this writing I’ve watched 532 movies this year, and I will undoubtedly see more before it’s all over. You may recall that the first few weeks of the pandemic were filled with so much fear and confusion that focusing on any kind of art proved difficult. Once we got over all of that, I was unleashed.
At a regular pace of 2 movies a day, freed of New York repertory screening schedules and personal/professional obligations, I spent the year catching up on so many random projects that I always wanted to undertake. I began intense marathons of various Hollywood auteurs (Robert Aldrich, Mitchell Leisen, King Vidor, Walter Hill, Fritz Lang) and then discarded them in favor of revisiting work by directors that I already loved (Michael Mann, Howard Hawks, Peter Bogdanovich, Nicholas Ray, Brian De Palma). I watched 25 movies starring Burt Reynolds, 16 with Jean Arthur, 15 with Tom Cruise, and 10 with Gary Cooper (enough to turn me from a long-time Gary Cooper hater to a Gary Cooper stan). I finally caught up with random 70s gems that have been on my watchlist since high school. I began a long-overdue exploration of Hong Kong cinema, which quickly became one of my constant and most rewarding sources of joy. The more I watched, the more I felt like I had only begun to scratch the surface of everything there is to see.
As we head into 2021, I’m not going to worry about whether I’m watching too many movies. But I am going to try and tamp down the obsessive urge to see everything all at once. That seems like a reasonable enough compromise to help maintain my sanity in the coming months. This being said, I already have an extensive list of projects I’d like to tackle in the New Year. As ever, old habits die hard.
At the end of every year, I usually prepare a list of my favorite films I watched for the first time. As a matter of principle, I do not usually include new releases on this list of favorite first watches. This year, without the act of actually going to the theater and getting out of the house for a couple of hours, the obligation to keep up with new releases disappeared, and I accepted that I would much rather just watch old movies instead. This is not to say that I didn’t see some great new movies in 2020 — Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, Tsai Ming-Liang’s Days, Abel Ferrara’s searing personal masterpiece Tommaso were all highlights. But my life has not been measurably improved by having watched Mank or I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the latest aggressively mediocre films from two of the more critically acclaimed directors working today, and I feel little urge to catch up with less distinguished movies like The Trial of the Chicago Seven or Palm Springs or whatever else the streaming services bestowed upon us this year. I will eventually watch Tenet, but I probably won’t like it.
Without further ado, I present my 25 favorite films that I watched for the first time this year, with helpful links to my writing. Of course, there are many runner-ups to this list, and the ranking is not set in stone.
Just for fun, I’ve also prepared a list of every album released in 2020 that I’ve listened to, with a numerical rating out of five:
Ichiko Aboa - Adan no kaze - 4
Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters - 4.5
Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher - 3
Charli XCX - How I’m Feeling Now - 4.5
Destroyer - Have We Met - 4
Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways - 4.5
Freddie Gibbs - Alfredo - 3.5
Haim - Women In Music Pt. III - 3.5
Tim Heidecker - Fear of Death - 3.5
Mary Lattimore - Silver Ladders - 4
Dougie Poole - The Freelancer’s Blues - 4
Run the Jewels - RTJ4 - 3
Bruce Springsteen - Letter to You - 4
Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension - 2.5
Taylor Swift - Folklore - 4
Taylor Swift - Evermore - 4
Yo La Tengo - Sleepless Night - 4
Yo La Tengo - We Have Amnesia Sometimes - 3.5
Neil Young - Homegrown - 4.5