Year in Review: Top 10 First Watches of 2020

by Christopher James

Many people discovered new hobbies while under quarantine. I, however, re-discovered my love for movies. As many film fans can attest, it sometimes feels like you have to watch so many new films each year that it can be hard to find time to fill in classic blind spots. But with the 2020 quarantine (plus the fun of insomnia), I turned to the Criterion Collection and basically got a whole second film school education. As 2020 comes to a close, I’ve had over 120 new-to-me watches for the year, not counting films released in 2020. They span from silent era cinema through Camp (2003). 

Since the final week of December is always about lists, here are my top 10 favorite first-time-for-me watches from 2020...

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20:20 (Pt 4) Contrarian takes, gay comedies, and a KStew double

Part One | Part Two | Part Three 
We're occassionally surveying the films of 2020 that are already streaming, whether they're great, terrible or anywhere inbetween in case you're looking to get caught up on the film year before December/January's "year in review" style media mania. We're freezing them at the 20th minute and 20th second just for streaming roulette kicks. How many of these twelve 2020 pictures have you seen?

-What are we getting?
-Uh... nothing good.

UNDERWATER (William Eubank, US)
20th Century Fox. Original release date: January 10th. Streaming on HBOMax

KStew's dialogue right there is suddenly how I'm feeling about the cinema of 2020. I know I know we're supposed to be saying it was rich. Well, I was feeling like it was rich until I started drafting up the annual Film Bitch Awards and realized it was a wasteland once I removed all the festival titles that don't have distribution in 2020. Still have to get through another 20 pictures though and if half of them are wonderful the problem will be solved?  I promise that I'm not just in a grumpy mood though the following text might suggest otherwise as I had an entirely lovely Thanksgiving. How about you? 

They were actually hillbilly royalty because my pawpaw was related to the guy who started the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

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20:20 (Pt 3) Mind games, mood pieces, and Spanish winners

Since the year will soon wind to a close we're surveying the films of 2020 here and there -- terrific, terrible, and anywhere in between -- based on what's available to stream by freezing them at the 20th minute and 20th second. (Though please note that some services' time stamps make this difficult to get exactly right). What comes up? That's the fun of it. (Here are Part One and Part Two if you missed 'em).

Does this captured moment make you wanna investigate any of these 20 films?

Oh, and there's a murderer in the woods, so stay close.

FIRST COW  (Kelly Reichardt, US)
A24. Original release date: March 6th, 2020. Streaming on Showtime

I must confess that I have never jumped on the Kelly Reichardt bandwagon. Other than Wendy & Lucy I haven't yet been blown away but this is on my list to catch up with. Especially after reading the pieces right here about it from Jason, Claudio, and Daniel. 

This is a total great piece. Absolutely.

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20:20 (Pt 2) Power chords, romantic comedies, and unseen gems?

Due to our ongoing fetish for freezeframing movies at random and for the practical reasons of looking for which 2020 releases are streaming --we are rapidly approaching "year in review" list-season so we gotta catch up --we're freezing 2020 pictures at the 20:20 mark. If you missed part one, that's here. The movies were chosen entirely at random ....so long as they were easily accessible for viewing.

How many of these 15 movies have you seen? Any you've been meaning to catch up with?

Are the people ready to make opening arguments?

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20:20 (Pt 1) Prodigious Bribes, Wonky Spells, Silent Judgment

Thirteen years ago (gulp) we launched a series called 20:07 which was immediately popular and imitated around the web (back when everyone had blogs, natch). In the series we froze a movie at just that spot, a punny play on time stamps vs the year we were living through. Occassionally we revisited the series with a different timestamp in other years due to our ongoing fetish for freezeframing movies at random. But we haven't done it in forevs. So since half the internet believes that, like, 'no movies came out in 2020' let's revisit 2020 releases that happen to already be streaming and freeze them at 20:20* just because. If you enjoy or if it piques your interest, we'll keep going for a whole 2020 release library ;).  The movies were chosen at random. How many of these 11 pictures have you seen? (We're going to have to start bingeing 2020 releases ourselves in order to catch up in time for the Film Bitch Awards. This will be the first year where those awards don't exactly line up with the Oscars, eligibility wise, since we want to stick to calendar year since that's what we've always done. 

* timestamp is not exact. DVD counters were exact but streaming tends to be difficult to read exact time stamps due to backwards counting on some sites, the lack of frame by frame ability, time stamps disappearing with pausing, pre-movie ads, and the like depending on the service, so these are "approximations". 

Always wondered what Grandma kept in those locked closets. Turns out it was full of medicinal herbs and elixirs and old books about ancient healing.

THE WITCHES (Robert Zemeckis, US) 
Warner Bros. Original release date: Oct 22nd. Streaming on HBO Max

I was such a fan of the 1990 version and Anjelica Huston's amazing performance as the Grand High Witch that I haven't yet had the heart to watch this remake despite sturdy Octavia Spencer not to mention Anne Hathaway camping it up. Have any of you watched this yet? 

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