Minority Report 2020: The Year's Most Overrated
2020 has been a very hard year for just about everyone. It's also been a very negative year, which is why I hesitated about writing this article and throwing more dissent onto the fire. But for all the other awful things to come out of this year, it's actually been a pretty solid year for movies, all things considered. Sure, we missed out on a lot of the big blockbusters—Marvel's Black Widow, Fast & Furious 9, and the next 007 film No Time to Die, to name just a few—but the year featured a surprisingly strong showing, as well as a more public platform, for independent films. You'll see that those make up most of my top films of the year (that article will be published Jan. 2), and you'd see the same from a lot of other writers as well. So given the unexpected strength of this year's film lineup, I figure there's still room to stir the pot. I've done my best to focus on bigger titles, for the most part, instead of ragging on some poor indie films.
I've chunked a handful of films into two categories: the first for blockbusters, and the second for awards hopefuls. Within each category, they're ordered, from largest to smallest, by the size of the swath between my opinion and the apparent consensus. Let's get stirring.
Blockblunders
The following movies were armed to the teeth—with big action, big names, and big budgets to appeal to wide audiences—and it seems they did. But apparently they didn't bring enough firepower for the cast-iron plating on my cold, dead heart.
Mulan (read our review here)
Rotten Tomatoes: 73% RT audience: 49% Letterboxd: 2.4 / 5 IMDb audience: 5.6 / 10 Metacritic: 66% Andy: 1 / 5
This one wasn't exactly loved by a wide audience, but I still think it got off way too easy. At this point, I'm pretty well settled on the idea that this is the worst movie of the year.
Like last year's The Lion King re-creation, this lifeless machine operates on the basic premise of the 90s animated classic, but with none of the personality, emotion, or fun. I know it's already kind of old-hat to to bag on these Disney live-action remakes, but there's honestly no excuse for the total lack of creativity and humanity in most of them.
I've seen many calling this movie "empowering," particularly for women, in the same way the original film was, and if those people felt empowered, I'm glad. But I just can't figure on how a protagonist with so little dimension could grab anyone. Especially having seen the original. Meanwhile, the emptiness of the whole thing is exacerbated by hokey special effects, floaty fight choreography, stiff and unfeeling dialogue, and incoherent editing. I don't think I really, truly enjoyed anything about this movie beyond the set and costume design. How a movie with so much money and such strong source material could turn out so grey and incompetent is beyond me.
Sonic the Hedgehog (read our review here)
Rotten Tomatoes: 63% RT audience: 93% Letterboxd: 2.9 / 5 IMDb audience: 6.5 / 10 Metacritic: 46% Andy: 1.5 / 5
Yeah, I get it. "It's a kids' movie, just turn your brain off and have fun with it."
I know, and if anybody had a good time with this, I don't want to take that away from them. But man, I think Sonic gets a lot of passes for just a couple specific reasons.
Firstly, the social media shitstorm surrounding the terrible original design for the titular character wound up really working in the movie's favor when the studio opted to accept the negative feedback and redesign the character before release. People really like being listened to, so when they throw a fit on Twitter and you do exactly as they demand, you're likely to earn some points. I don't like the implications and lessons-learned from that sort of audience-studio relationship, but hey, at least Sonic looks like Sonic.
Secondly, Jim Carrey as the villainous Dr. Robotnik felt, for a lot of people, like Jim Carrey back to his old antics after a long hiatus. While I love Jim Carrey, it personally felt to me like the film just relied too heavily on him. Where other people saw a credit to the movie for providing a stage on which Carrey could prance around and "do his thing," I felt a gaping hole in place of an actual identity for the movie, plugged up by familiar (even if effective) Carrey gags. Instead of trying to bring the rest of the movie up to the same level of absurd glee that Carrey was bringing to the table, the filmmakers opted to make a bland, factory-made family film and hoped that Carrey's over-the-top performance would split the difference. It felt cynical, especially when you take into account that it's yet another example of Hollywood reverse-isekai-ing a popular property to make it "palatable" to a larger audience.
For Your Castigation
These are the awards-season darlings, the "Oscar bait," the "For Your Consideration" super-campaigners; those hoping to deeply move you (or more importantly, awards committees) with their dramatic stories and showy star performances. These films either tried too hard or not hard enough for my attention, but apparently, they tried just right for most everyone else.
The Personal History of David Copperfield (read our review here)
Rotten Tomatoes: 92% RT audience: 54% Letterboxd: 3.5 / 5 IMDb audience: 6.4 / 10 Metacritic: 77% Andy: 2.5 / 5
I just couldn't figure out what this movie expected me to get out of it. It's a speed-run through the eventful (but apparently aimless) life of its titular character, wherein we meet a huge collection of quirky, one-note supporting caricatures who all have more personality and intrigue than David himself. I understand the value of a vague lead for the purposes of allowing the viewer to imprint themselves onto him, but I can't see the reason for that here.
Why are we following this man's entire life? Just to see all the weird and crazy people he meets? Why does that take over two hours to accomplish? Why does David just kind of drift through the whole thing without direction? Why isn't Tilda Swinton given more to do? It's just a waste of time, with a few fun appearances from some very talented actors.
News of the World (read our review here)
Rotten Tomatoes: 84% RT audience: 87% Letterboxd: 3.3 / 5 IMDb audience: 7.2 / 10 Metacritic: 73% Andy: 2.5 / 5
I didn't dislike this movie, but I couldn't find much of substance to latch onto. I wanted to like it because I like Tom Hanks, and I like westerns. But it just felt so aimless. The entire time, I was waiting for the moment where the film would take a turn and show me: this is why this story needed to be told.
But it just never came.
There's really not a lot to this movie. It's a patchwork of watered-down moments from other westerns and "frontier journey" stories, stitched together for no greater purpose than giving Tom Hanks a release this awards season. I liked the actual "news of the world" element of Hanks' character; I just wish it had more bearing on his personal arc and motivation, or at least on the story as a whole.
The Trial of the Chicago 7 (read our review here)
Rotten Tomatoes: 90% RT audience: 91% Letterboxd: 3.7 / 5 IMDb audience: 7.8 / 10 Metacritic: 77% Andy: 3 / 5
The biggest thing this movie has going for it is that it's entertaining. It is. But it's just so flippant and grandiose and smug—an exemplar of the flimsy but not entirely baseless conservative whining point about "liberal media" being so stuck up its own ass. Sorkin proves once again that he just can't resist a "cool" line, even when he's dealing with material so much bigger and more important than himself. When he's only writing, a cleverer director can temper (or at least properly aim) the showy ego that comes through in his dialogue. But with Sorkin directing his own script, it's like the woke awards-bait drama equivalent of an '80s action movie.
Honestly, I had a legitimately good time watching this. It's snappy and flashy and slick. But that kinda bothered me. The acting is great and, yeah, there's plenty of fun dialogue. But the more I think about, the more it annoys me. I think Sorkin should stick to writing, and stick to writing about people like himself.
Mank (read our review here)
Rotten Tomatoes: 84% RT audience: 62% Letterboxd: 3.5 / 5 IMDb audience: 7.2 / 10 Metacritic: 79% Andy: 3.5 / 5
I actually liked this movie, so my gripes about its praise being excessive are somewhat minor. And while its various online scores don't necessarily suggest it, I've seen loads of people in various forums and conversations touting this as one of the best of the year, of the decade, and of director David Fincher's very strong filmography. All of that, I think is rubbish.
This is probably Fincher's least accessible film (that I've seen) which is fine, but I'm not sure the movie is any better for it. I appreciate its detail in recreating the environment of 1930s and '40s movie bureaucracy. Fincher clearly loves the material, and that passion is a admittedly infectious. But it is a slog if you don't quickly latch on to Gary Oldman's Mankewicz; a hook that's even harder to snag due to the film's abrupt and headfirst opening act.
It's a great companion piece to Citizen Kane, and the decades-long debate about the genius behind the film. If you like film history, there's plenty to appreciate. I guess I'm just not entirely sure how effective it is at being anything else; not very, for my money. I enjoyed Jack Fincher's snappy writing in a similar way that I enjoy Sorkin at his very best (short of The Social Network—this ain't that), and David's direction is still top-notch, even if it's not very "Fincher-y." But I still much prefer his usual shtick, and I hope he gets back to that.
Dishonorable Mentions
These movies didn't make the cut for my greatest gripes, either because they weren't too massively acclaimed or because I didn't vehemently hate them, or both. Lightning round, here we go:
Wonder Woman 1984: Aims for Donner's Superman, lands closer to a '90s Schwarzenegger family film.
Hillbilly Elegy: the cast is really reaching to wow you here, but it's difficult to shake the tone-deafness and lack of empathy regarding the societal issues that plague so many people and promote poverty, addiction, and abuse.
The Nest: great lead performances and a good movie overall, but I desperately wanted the story to veer off into any direction other than the one that felt inevitable and obvious from the start. I had my fingers crossed that it would become an atmospheric horror movie for probably way longer than I should have. Still maybe my favorite "final shot" of any movie this year though.
Birds of Prey: it was fun to have a boldly feminine perspective on a superhero film that's still full of action and laughter, rather than an overly masculine one or a female lead stripped down to her most stoic and androgynous, but it still treads too much familiar tongue-in-cheek ground that we've already seen in films like Deadpool. Also kinda fails all of the Birds of Prey members besides Harley Quinn.
Onward: Very sweet and touching in a few moments, but it's largely a by-the-books buddy road movie that really should have committed further to its fantasy setting than the uninspired "haha it's like Dungeons & Dragons, but cool and casual."