Film Log, 2020

For 2021 I’ve shifted to doing this on Letterboxd, but here’s my list from 2020:

• Hustlers (2019), Lorene Scafaria
• Stoker (2013), Park Chan-wook
• Gloria Bell (2019), Sebastian Lelio
• Parasite (2019), Bong Joon Ho
• Ready or Not (2019), Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
• Transit (2019), Christian Petzold
• Long Day’s Yourney Into Night (2019), Bi Gan
• Atlantics (2019), Mati Diop
• Burning (2018), Lee Chang-dong
• The Souvenir (2019), Joanna Hogg
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Céline Sciamma
• Carol (2015), Todd Haynes
• Storm the Gates (2018), Daniele Anastasion, Josie Swantek, and Catherine Yrisarri
• Arrival (2016), Denis Villeneuve
• Crimson Peak (2015), Guillermo del Toro
• Downton Abbey (2019), Michael Engler
• Pacific Rim (2013), Guillermo del Toro
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Wes Anderson
• Personal Shopper (2017), Olivier Assayas
• The Long Goodbye (1973), Robert Altman
• Moonstruck (1987), Norman Jewison
• The Age of Innocence (1993), Martin Scorsese
• Irma Vep (1996), Olivier Assayas
• History is Made at Night (1937), Frank Borzage
• Fish Tank (2009), Andrea Arnold
• The More the Merrier (1943), George Stevens
• Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), Agnès Varda
• The Red Shoes (1948), Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
• Girlhood (2014), Céline Sciamma
• The Vast of Night (2019), Andrew Patterson
• Tokyo Story (1953), Yasujiro Ozu
• The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), Joe Talbot
• A Muse (2020), Jimmy Bontatibus
• Respire (2015), Mélanie Laurent
• Paddington 2 (2017), Paul King
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Christopher Nolan
• Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), Miranda July
• Emma. (2020), Autumn de Wilde
• Hamilton (2020), Thomas Kail
• Sorry to Bother You (2018), Boots Riley
• Bringing Up Baby (1938), Howard Hawks
• Superman (1978), Richard Donner
• Down with Love (2003), Peyton Reed
• Alien (1979), Ridley Scott
• Jaws (1975), Steven Spielberg
• Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont
• Deadwood (2019), Daniel Minahan
• Zombi Child (2019), Bertrand Bonello
• Palm Springs (2020), Max Barbakow
• A Quiet Place (2019), John Krasinski
• The Fall (2006), Tarsem
• Losing Ground (1982), Kathleen Collins
• Booksmart (2019), Olivia Wilde
• Pride & Prejudice (2005), Joe Wright
• Looper (2012), Rian Johnson
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Orson Welles
• Mortal Engines (2019), Christian Rivers
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Gore Verbinski
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), Gore Verbinski
• Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), John Patrick Shanley
• Thoroughbreds (2017), Corey Finley
• Anna Karenina (2012), Joe Wright
• Pain and Glory (2019), Pedro Almodóvar
• The Invisible Man (2020), Leigh Whannell
• The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), John McTiernan
• The Philadelphia Story (1940), George Cukor
• In the Family (2012), Patrick Wang
• Modern Romance (1981), Albert Brooks
• The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Elaine May
• Lust, Caution (2007), Ang Lee
• Princess Cyd (2017), Stephen Cone
• Working Girl (1988), Mike Nichols
• Little Women (2019), Greta Gerwig
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), Hayao Miyazaki
• Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Howard Hawks
• The Assistant (2020), Kitty Green
• The Passionate Friends (1949), David Lean
• Lost in America (1985), Albert Brooks
• Enola Holmes (2020), Harry Bradbeer
• Shame (2011), Steve McQueen
• Rebecca (1940), Alfred Hitchcock
• Privilege (1990), Yvonne Rainer
• Brief Encounter (1945), David Lean
• Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Brian De Palma
• Spirited Away (2001), Hayao Miyazaki
• If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Barry Jenkins
• Emma (1996), Douglas McGrath
• Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1 (2013), Lars Von Trier
• An American in Paris (1951), Vicente Minnelli
• The Whistlers (2020), Corneliu Porumboiu
• Femme Fatale (2002), Brian De Palma
• Gone Girl (2014), David Fincher
• The Lovers (2017), Azazel Jacobs
• Passion (2013), Brian De Palma
• Metropolitan (1990), Whit Stillman
• Phantom Thread (2018), Paul Thomas Anderson
• Gilda (1946), Charles Vidor
• Warm Bodies (2013), Jonathan Levine
• Variety (1983), Bette Gordon
• In a Lonely Place (1950), Nicholas Ray
• Always Shine (2016), Sophia Takal
• Holiday (1938), George Cukor
• Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Robert Aldritch
• Leave Her to Heaven (1945), John M. Stahl
• Canvas (2020), Frank E. Abney III
• Double Indemnity (1944), Billy Wilder
• The Big Sleep (1946), Howard Hawks
• The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Ernst Lubitsch
• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Frank Capra
• The Apartment (1960), Billy Wilder

For 2020 I decided to watch more movies, and at the outset I thought that this would result in me reading less. But due to the Covid-19 crisis I wasn’t commuting, so my consumption of both was quite even: 110 films, 99 books.¹

I found that my viewing sources were heavily weighted to three:

• My local video store, Viva Video²
• The Criterion Channel³
• HBO Max⁴

This year I signed up for Netflix’s legacy DVD service, to fill in the gaps. Usually if something isn’t streaming I can find it at my video store, but there are occasional dead spots in their library.