Since everyone’s getting December off at Drunk Monkeys, I thought we’d sum up the year here and now. You’re reading this in November. Hopefully, the election period as a whole is finished, whenever you read this. Hopefully, it was something just beyond the grip of a complete disaster. Hopefully.

Me, I’m still watching movies. Regardless of whether or not the world is actually going to end soon, somewhere in the midst of everything else, I’ll be watching movies. For me, film exists to not only help me escape from reality for a moment, but to also help me be more present in the world. Anyone who tells you movies are too political nowadays is a fucking imbecile. They have ALWAYS been political. Even the dumbest direct-to-VOD Steven Segal movie is shaped by the politics of everyone involved. You can’t watch movies, and not be aware of these things. I know I’m not.

2020 was no different from any other year of my life, as far as movies were concerned. Obviously, the way many of us watch movies, and the very foundation of how films are created, was shaken by COVID-19 and other complicated, hideous circumstances. I’m not diminishing those things. I just kept watching movies. I’m never without something to watch, and 2020 had more good releases than poor for me this year.

Films like Host proved you could still make a good movie in a pandemic. Tenet reminded me that the overblown blockbuster genre desperately needs to take a vacation. Shirley, Da 5 Bloods, and Bill & Ted Face the Music were all new releases I’m glad I saw this year. I saw more films by Black filmmakers in 2020 than in any other year of my life. I deepened my appreciation for South Korean cinema. I decided I personally didn’t give a shit if Disney ever made another Marvel movie again.

A lot of these “accomplishments” are just gentle improvements over things I was doing last year. I’ll take it.

2020 was awful. There is no guarantee 2021 will be even a smidgen better. I’m aware of that. Among other thoughts, I’m grateful there will be movies, old and new, for me to find. If anything about 2020 at the movies truly surprised me, it would be the fact that in all likelihood, Bill & Ted Face the Music is the best new film I’ve seen this year. Surprising, but I’m personally okay with that, too.

Ganja & Hess (1973): A

Gradual horror, a fever nightmare atmosphere, and fascinating dialog. These are just a few of the reasons why Ganja & Hess, written and directed by Bill Gunn, has been finding an increasingly large audience of admirers. Neglected for many years after its release, streaming services like Shudder and Criterion Channel have introduced it to the larger audience it deserves. I’m happy to be among them.

What begins as a study on ancient African history by Dr. Hess Green, an independently wealthy, quietly disillusioned Black man (Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead) becomes a vampire movie that continuously challenges your expectations. This is apparent in the way Hess comes to know, and eventually consummate a relationship with Ganja Meda (Marlene Clark), the widow of his recently-deceased assistant (Gunn). The relationship is really where the movie spends its attention, with supernatural elements working within the grain of that, even as the complex behaviors and words of these characters become overwhelmed by these elements. It’s fascinating to watch Gunn relax with his characters, while simultaneously pulling everything around down.

Ganja & Hess does indeed take a while to get going. It also doesn’t always seem to fit, until you get to the end. Call it a conclusion that seems to disappear into thin air. That’s not a bad thing. The movie just ends as all very, very strange dreams do.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974): A+

Not that I’m completely immune to them, but movies like Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul make it particularly hard to tolerate Oscar bait movies about race. Fear Eats the Soul isn’t perfect, but it gets closer to exploring relationships that cross cultures and local communities in a meaningful, even transforming way, than a lot of the garbage we see these days (The Last Shift sure seems like a good example of what I’m talking about).

While the movie does depict an unusual relationship between a German woman (Brigitte Mira) and a decades-younger Moroccan man (El Hedi ben Salem) to make a point, it doesn’t exploit these characters to do that. Fear Eats the Soul remains an extraordinary example of storytelling. This is because it creates interesting characters, develops them, and uses their relationship to tell us everything we need to know about their world.

Obviously, their world is our world. Not a whole lot has changed in the past couple of generations either. Love is important, and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul makes an incredible, impassioned case for that. However, despite a fairly upbeat ending, love is also clearly not enough. It can change the world, but is cursed to do this much too slowly. With much too high of a physical and emotional body count.

Ad Astra (2018): C-

On the other hand, not all slow burns work for me. Ad Astra, about an astronaut (Brad Pitt) who is tasked with finding his father (Tommy Lee Jones), a fellow astronaut who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, proves that in no uncertain terms.

While those mysterious circumstances are compelling at times, Ad Astra is just as aimless as its protagonist. Brad Pitt, an actor who continues to surprise me, is good with a character who is so tired of living in the past, yet can’t stop chasing it. There just isn’t much more to him than that. You can only take so many soft, sad speeches from Brad. There can only be but so many times he can stare longingly, weighed down by middle age, out the window. 

I’m not trying to pick on this movie. It just smacked to me of high-mindedness with very little to back that up. Stunning visual effects of the journey Pitt’s astronaut takes to find his father, somewhere in the vastness of space. It just never really goes anywhere. Certainly, the payoff for the mystery is anything but satisfying.

Ad Astra suggests extraordinary beneath its premise, short-changes that expectation, and then insists the journey was better anyway. That just doesn’t work for me.

Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (1997): A+

One of Errol Morris’ best-known documentaries, I didn’t see this until recently. I knew I would enjoy it. Four distinct-yet-somehow-connected stories about four impressively unique human beings. This is Morris in the mode of revealing the extraordinary in the everyday. Yet I stayed away for years. Why?

This question occurred to me recently, when I came across it again. I hoped watching it would help me to understand why I resisted it. After all, I’ve greatly enjoyed every Errol Morris film I’ve seen thus far. What’s the problem? Why do we sometimes hold off on movies we know we’ll enjoy?

As I dug deeper into this film’s people and their stories, with the segments focusing on an M.I.T. professor who builds bizarre robots being the most fascinating/unsettling, I didn’t really get to answer that question to my satisfaction. The best I can guess is that sometimes, I just don’t have the energy for other people’s humanity, which Morris tends to present in its most straightforward form.

More than just sometimes, maybe.

Regardless, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control reminds me to fight against that specific type of weariness as much as possible. Doing so might be more important than at any other time in my life.

They All Laughed (1981): B-

One Peter Bogdanovich’s numerous costly failures, with a rare 1980s appearance by Audrey Hepburn, They All Laughed is actually one the writer/director/Sopranos-notable’s best films.

Mostly remembered now, if at all, for featuring Dorothy Stratten, who is good in this, They All Laughed is basically an old-timey caper movie about private detectives and the women they love. The movie isn’t more complex than that. It really doesn’t have to be. Instead, it establishes the premise in simple terms, and then leaves the four main characters to set the bulk of the pace and tone.

Something like this can be mistaken for a mess of too many things trying to happen at once. I disagree. I think each component of They All Laughed works to the advantage of the finished form. This is a particularly entertaining semi-obscurity for casting Ben Gazzara somewhat against type, with his scenes opposite Hepburn being the kind of thing that works on-screen instantly.

I also love They All Laughed for suggesting that under different circumstances, it shouldn’t have taken John Ritter so long to shake off his Three’s Company success. If you want to miss a beloved, underrated actor, this is going to be perfect to that end.

Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. His books Love and Quarters and Bondage Night are available through Moran Press, in addition to A Ludicrous Split (Alien Buddha Press) and Clouds of Hungry Dogs (Kleft Jaw Press). He is also a writer, performer, and producer with Belligerent Prom Queen Productions. He lives on a horrible place called Long Island.