Then he extends it all the way to the Black Lives Matter movement today. Lee weaves that strand of history into the broader canvas of the 1960s and ’70s, from the civil rights movement to the moon landing. (The late Chadwick Boseman also plays a small but pivotal role.) Da 5 Bloods takes on myriad issues, starting with the US government’s treatment of Vietnam veterans, a sharply disproportionate number of whom are Black and who were left to live with the traumatic remnants of a pointless war long past when the rest of the world had moved on. Da 5 Bloods stars Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and a magnificent Delroy Lindo in a story about four Black Vietnam vets who return to the country, decades after their tours of duty, in search of gold and their fallen buddy’s remains. I’m a little upset by how few people seem to know that Spike Lee released a new movie this summer - not to mention that it’s one of Lee’s best.
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How to watch it: City Hall is available nationwide through virtual theaters (short-term rentals that benefit local theaters) check the film’s website for listings. Refreshingly - and maybe even a little surprisingly - it’s a portrait of a government that actually seems to be working for its citizens. The result is not a portrait of a city, really. Periodically, the filmmaker floats away from Walsh to watch a wedding being performed, observe a budget presentation, or listen in as a committee dedicated to public housing reform debates how to prevent people from becoming unhoused. His camera mostly follows Mayor Marty Walsh as Walsh crisscrosses the town to meet senior citizens in a church basement, veterans in a community hall, real estate developers in a hotel boardroom, and citizens at open-air rallies. Bill & Ted Face the Musicįrederick Wiseman is a legendary chronicler of American institutions ( here’s a guide to his films) who’s spent more than five decades making lengthy, intimate portraits of everything from high schools to welfare offices to the New York Public Library for his latest film, Wiseman spent weeks in Boston, anchored at City Hall. They’re all worth seeking out and watching again and again - and would be no matter when they were released. Those audacious films are the ones that fill my list of the 25 best movies of 2020, and the ones I’ll remember for years to come, long after more predictable offerings return to the calendar. Even if we tired of watching movies from our couches instead of in a movie theater, it felt like every week brought fresh, interesting new faces and voices to our screens. Without flashy, slick Hollywood fare flooding the zone, the more risky, daring, and original films - with smaller budgets and no nostalgia to rely on as a built-in, audience-grabbing crutch - were the films we got to focus on, and they were often a joy.
There was a silver lining, of a sort, for people who write about movies. (I had a lot of conversations that began, “So what are you doing without any new movies to write about?”) Without the marketing engine behind them that massive franchise properties command, and with most debuts happening on streaming services, undifferentiated from one another - or moving to unfamiliar “virtual cinemas” - a lot of people seemed to lose track of film altogether. So while many, many great movies came out in 2020, it felt like most people didn’t really know about them. And each big delay of an anticipated film spurred a new wave of headlines.
Perhaps most bizarrely, the tentpole releases that normally prop up the calendar disappeared, pushed into a future that we trust will arrive eventually. The rules and dates for next year’s Oscars changed too. Only a few film festivals - usually anchor points for the year - happened in person, and the rest shifted online or were canceled altogether. Theaters were closed for months, and remain closed in major markets. Writing about movies in 2020 was, in a word, bizarre.