The 10 Best Movies of 2020 – Vanity Fair

A sweet family drama that never cloys, Lee Isaac Chungs semi-autobiographical film brought a much-needed grace and kindness to this often unkind, graceless year. The film concerns the Yi family, Korean-Americans who move from California (mom and dad are natives of Korea) to way-rural Arkansas in the early 1980s. Jacob (Steven Yeun) grew up in the country, and hopes to impart to his American-born kids the value of working the earth, of growing and making things from the soil of their adopted home. His wife, Monica (Yeri Han), is more skeptical, but she is tentatively willing to support her husband on his quest for this most traditional of American dreams. Hardship ensues, as do moments of warmth, triumph, and connection. Chung crafts his film with a delicate ache; Minari passes by in a lilting hush, haloed faintly in the glow of memory. The film really belongs to adorable young Alan Kim as David (perhaps Chungs stand-in) and the terrific Yuh-Jung Youn as Soon-ja, Monicas mother. She moves to the familys trailer all the way from Korea, bringing with her the attitudes of the old country, but also a refreshing levity, a good humor about this familys struggle that gently reframes their perspective. This is not a sassy granny movie, though. Chung resists that kind of cinematic indulgence, keeping his picture modest but deeply felt. Though there is plenty of sadness and strife in Minari, it remains resolute in its optimism, not so much about what America as an idea can provide for immigrants, but what decency can provide for people who need itwhat love can, too. From that goodness, a life can grow, even in a place as inhospitable as this.

Another migration story, of a sort. Sean Durkins bracing chamber drama follows a seemingly well-to-do 1980s family as they move from a comfortable life in America to a big, dark manor house in the English countryside. Its immediately apparent that things arent going to go well for them, but the pleasure of Durkins meticulously constructed film is the surprising shapes that inevitable ruin takes. At times, The Nest feels like it might become a haunted house movie, or maybe a marital thriller involving murder, or maybe a stark coming of age tale. Instead, Durkin and his castled by Jude Law and a towering Carrie Coondo something subtler, less easily defined. The Nest is about a particular time in the Western economic imaginationReagan and Thatcher were deregulating their houses down, thus creating a new kind of rapacious gold rush mentalitybut mostly it is about family, the tenuous bonds of blood and marriage, connections that can turn from dependable to peculiar in a terrible instant. Durkin manages to wrestle out some actual positive sentiment from that morass of distrust and disappointment. Which is, I think, the ultimate message of The Nest: there is still something left after its all come crashing down, still some collective spirit to cling to as we begin to forge something new. Its not quite a parable, nor is it exactly a cautionary tale. The Nest is something utterly singular, chilling and poignant, inviting and aloof. What a fine mess it makes. And then, just at the very end, maybe begins to clean up.

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The 10 Best Movies of 2020 - Vanity Fair

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero