Seen / read / heard 2020
Or read the best things of 2020
— January
— February
— March
— April
— May
— June
— July
— August
— September
— October
— November
— December
— All caps, bold: MOVIE
— All caps, bold, asterisk: SHORT* or ONLINE VIDEO* or TV*
— All caps, Italics: ART / LIVE EVENT / THEATRE
— Italics, bold: Book or Short Story
— Quotation marks: “Audio”
— Italics: Article ^^
December 2020 #
31/12 — SANTA CLAWS
30/12 — THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES PART TWO
28/12 — THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES
( < 27/12) — DEATH TO 2020*
27/12 — SOUL
26/12 — NOELLE
25/12 — THE MORNING SHOW* ( < 23/12)
25/12 — I GIVE IT A YEAR
( < 25/12) — How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell
23/12 — HER SMELL
( < 22/12) — THE RIPPER*
22/12 — THE FAREWELL
21/12 — THE BEACH BUM
20/12 — LANCE*
20/12 — SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE
19/12 — TED LASSO* ( < 18/12)
18/12 — SONG EXPLODER: VOLUME 2* (NIN and The Killers)
18/12 — ARCTIC
( < 16/12) — Such a Fun Age
On the eve of the millennium everyone was afraid that all the computers in the world were going to go haywire. Could we imagine, then, that the real nightmare would be their non-stop use?
14/12 — AVA
( < 11/12) — White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination by Jess Row
07/12 — MANK
07/12 — SMALL AXE: ALEX WHEATLE*
06/12 — AD ASTRA
( < 06/12) — The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith
05/12 — I HATE SUZIE* ( < 03/12)
05/12 — SONG EXPLODER: VOLUME 1: “R.E.M. - LOSING MY RELIGION”*
05/12 — 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world by Elif Shafak ( < 15/11)
04/12 — LE MANS 66 (FORD v. FERRARI)
04/12 — ZANELE MUHOLI
- 03/12 — FALLING DOWN
November 2020 #
30/11 — THE UNDOING* ( < 15/11)
30/11 — INDUSTRY* ( < 10/11)
25/11 — SMALL AXE: LOVERS ROCK*
24/11 — GROUNDHOG DAY
22/11 — TRIAL 4* ( < 21/11)
21/11 — PAWN SACRIFICE
21/11 — DARK WATERS
20/11 — 21 JUMP STREET
16/11 — SMALL AXE: MANGROVE
14/11 — HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
13/11 — The Devil all the time by Donald Ray Pollock ( < 25/10)
12/11 — WHITE BOY RICK
12/11 — THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT* ( < 06/11)
08/11 — REALITY BITES
08/11 — *An Architecture Critic Looks at Four Seasons Total Landscaping
“Perhaps it was sabotage on the part of a minion who had had enough. There’s speculation on Twitter that Trump announced an event at the Four Seasons (hotel) before it had been booked, and aides had to scramble to find any venue that made his words true. None of these explanations makes sense, because the site was simultaneously too perfect to be accidental and too elaborate to be intentional. The end of an administration marked by episodes of sordid sex, wishful thinking, and mass death took place next door to a dildo-and-porn store named Fantasy Island and across the street from a crematorium. If you were hunting for such a symbolically rich stage, how would you even Google it?”
06/11 — SARAH COOPER: EVERYTHING’S FINE*
01/11 — A MOST VIOLENT YEAR
October 2020 #
( < 25/10) — BORGEN*
24/10 — THE WASHINGTON SNIPERS
24/10 — SORRY WE MISSED YOU
23/10 — The Plot Against America by Philip Roth ( < 26/09)
23/10 — TIME
23/10 — BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM
22/10 — OKJA
18/10 — ELF
17/10 — Red Pill, Blue Pill — James Meek on the conspiracist mind
17/10 — FISH TANK
17/10 — ARTHUR CHRISTMAS
16/10 — THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7
15/10 — GAME NIGHT
14/10 — MY OCTOPUS TEACHER
13/10 — Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored by Jeffrey Boakye ( < 20/09)
12/10 — TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG
( < 11/10) — COBRA KAI: SEASON 2*
09/10 — THE BOYS* — SEASONS 1 & 2 ( < 05/09)
04/10 — THE GENTLEMEN
01/10 — DARK RIVER
September 2020 #
27/09 — AMERICAN FACTORY
27/09 — CUTIES
25/09 — COBRA KAI: SEASON 1* ( < 24/09)
23/09 — CHALLENGER: THE FINAL FLIGHT*
22/09 — Gun Love by Jennifer Clement ( < 15/09)
20/09 — RGB*
19/09 — BOMBSHELL
19/09 — Dancing With the Octopus by Debora Harding review – kidnapped at 14
“Her mother had a peculiar response to the attack. Decades later she told her daughter’s husband, quite matter-of-factly, that the kidnap had never happened. Harding was so unsettled by her mother’s belief that the abduction was just a fantasy, she began to question her own memory. Could she have concocted such an event in her mind? She and her husband begin an investigation into the assault, scouring FBI records and newspaper reports to uncover the details of what took place. Records confirmed her memories were entirely correct.”
17/09 — Gene Weingarten: A neighbor asked for a tomato. This is where the story gets weird.
15/09 — Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk ( < 04/09)
14/09 — THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD
13/09 — THE SOCIAL DILEMMA*
13/09 — NOT OUR PROBLEM*
Video about the experience of being black and living in Southwark in 1984. A Blackrod Production for Southwark council focusing on the issues of racism that the Black and Asian communities living in the borough are facing, and how the systems of education and housing are trying to combat these. Part of Peckham & Nunhead Free Film Festival
12/09 — AMONG THE TREES at the Hayward Gallery
12/09 — Ofqual and the Algorithm
“Algorithms of one sort or another have been used in university admissions for years. In 1979, St George’s Hospital Medical School began using a computer algorithm to screen applications to its undergraduate programme. Unlike Ofqual’s algorithm it was remarkably accurate, agreeing with the judgments of a human selection panel 90 to 95 per cent of the time. It achieved this accuracy partly by mimicking the panel’s prejudices. Candidates with ‘non-European-sounding’ names were marked down and as many as sixty applicants a year were excluded on that basis. The Commission for Racial Equality was alerted in 1986 and the algorithm was scrapped. An article in the BMJ called it ‘a blot on the profession’. The algorithm was nakedly racist, though it’s worth noting that while it was in use the proportion of non-European candidates accepted at St George’s was higher than at other medical schools.”
“The most widely reported bias followed from the judgment that any form of statistical adjustment would be methodologically unsound in classes with fewer than five students and only a slight adjustment should be allowed in classes with between five and fifteen students. Since smaller classes are much more common at private schools than at state schools and further education colleges, private schools’ results were much less likely to be downgraded.”
11/09 — THE COP IN OUR HEADS AND THE COP IN OUR HEARTS*
“It’s hard to know what to do with your fear, especially when in isolation. Early on in the pandemic, I noticed what felt like an uptick in public scoldings of others deemed insufficiently obedient to the demands of the COVID lockdown. That might be benign enough, if it weren’t also that authorities were setting up “non-compliance” lines all over the country, resulting in increased calls to the police and then increased police harassment and punishment. At this moment of reckoning with police violence, I wanted to make a “quarantine” film that looks out, not in, and so decided to make this small rumination on the internalization of police culture and how it can turn neighbours against one another.” – Brett Story
06/09 — BURNING
02/09 — A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa ( < 29/08)
August 2020 #
29/08 — The Orange by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.( < 27/08) — WATCHMEN*
26/08 — THE AMERICANS* ( < 11/07)
25/08 — *Mindf*ck: Inside Cambridge Analytica’s Plot to Break the World* by Christopher Wylie (18/08)
24/08 — Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine ( < 10/08)
15/08 — Spring by Ali Smith ( < 11/08)
10/08 — Home by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as wellyour neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.09/08 — The Decent of Man by Grayson Perry ( < 02/06)
07/08 — King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild ( < 18/07)
“ Leopold’s letters and memos, forever badgering someone about acquiring a colony, seem to be in the voice of a person starved for love as a child and now filled with an obsessive desire for an emotional substitute, the way someone becomes embroiled in an endless dispute with a brother or sister over an inheritance, or with a neighbor over a property boundary. The urge for more can become insatiable, and its apparent fulfillment seems only to exacerbate that early sense of deprivation and to stimulate the need to acquire still more.”
( < 02/08) — THE RISE OF THE MURDOCH DYNASTY
01/08 — JOJO RABBIT
01/08 — “The Great Post Office Trial ( < 06/06)
July 2020 #
30/07 — I MAY DESTROY YOU* ( < 26/07)
30/07 — Ramble Book (audio) by Adam Buxton ( < 10/05)
26/07 — TELL ME WHO I AM
26/07 — “Burn It Down” — This American Life
26/07 — “Ziwe May Destroy Hamilton” — Still Processing
26/07 — 20 must-see documentaries to explain the world in 2020
1— Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich2— I Am Not Your Negro3— The Last Dance 4– Spaceship Earth 5— On the Record 6—Welcome to Chechnya7— The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files8— Our Planet9— 13th10— Seahorse11— Tiger King12— For Sama 13— Honeyland 14— Miss Americana15— Tell Me Who I Am16— Hail Satan?17— The Great Hack18— Midnight Traveler19— The Edge of Democracy20— Knock Down the House25/07 — PAIN & GLORY
22/07 — TOY STORY 2
21/07 — INSIDE OUT
19/07 — “Ep. 406 - A Side of Franchise. 99% Invisible
19/07 — Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera ( < 18/07)
17/07 — TOY STORY
12/07 — The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova ( < 23/06)
11/07 — ”Your Call Is Important to Us“
10/07 — CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (The new one)
09/07 — JEFFREY EPSTEIN: FILTHY RICH* ( < 04/07)
07/07 — LYNN + LUCY
04/07 — QUEEN & SLIM
03/07 — WELCOME TO LEITH
02/07 — HOMICIDE
01/07 — HONEY BOY
June 2020 #
29/06 — BLACK & BRITISH: A FORGOTTEN HISTORY* ( < 22/06)
27/06 — KNIVES OUT
26/06 — ATHLETE A
25/06 — DA 5 BLOODS
24/06 — WILD AT HEART
( < 24/06) — The Women of Brewster PlaceDitched for now(18/07)14/06 — BLACKS’ BRITANNICA*
( < 07/06) — ”The View from Somewhere podcast“
"Objectivity is the ideology of the status quo.”
Hallin’s spheres of consensus
07/06 — “Politics Podcast: What History Can And Can’t Teach Us About Today’s Protests”
( < 06/06) — THE INNOCENCE FILES*
03/06 — CHRIS VOSS TEACHES THE ART OF NEGOTIATION* Masterclass ( < 28/05)
03/06 — “Winds of Change” podcast series ( < 17/05)
02/06 — A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James ( < 23/04)
May 2020 #
30/05 — BLUE STORY
29/05 — WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
17/05 — DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE
16/05 — NORMAL PEOPLE* ( < 02/05)
09/05 — Shape Up - Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters by Ryan Singer
08/05 — Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (audiobook) ( < 09/04)
02/05 — “Fiona Ex Machina - Still Processing”
01/05 — GARFIELD’S FUN FEST
April 2020 #
25/04 — UNORTHODOX* ( < 18/04)
21/04 — Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli ( < 19/04)
19/04 — Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli ( < 04/04)
19/04 — COVID REPORT 14 04 20
19/04 — Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster
On January 24 Matt Hancock told reporters the risk to the UK public was “low”. Johnson missed four Cobra meetings on the virus and he didn’t attend one until March 2nd.
UK in a poor state of readiness for a pandemic. Emergency stockpiles of PPE had severely dwindled and was out of date after becoming a low priority due to austerity. Training had been put on hold for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.
The government shipped 279,000 items of its depleted stockpile of protective equipment to China.
The last rehearsal for a pandemic was a 2016 exercise codenamed Cygnus which predicted the health service would collapse and that there would be a lack of PPE and intensive care ventilators.
The British In Vitro Diagnostics Association, which represents 110 companies that make up most of the UK’s testing sector did not receive a meaningful approach from the government asking for help until April 1
By February 21, the virus had caused 2,300 deaths in China and was taking a foothold in Europe with Italy recording 51 cases and two deaths the following day. Nonetheless, Nervtag, one of the key government advisory committees, decided to keep the threat level at “moderate”.
17/04 — THE NICE GUYS
16/04 — THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS
16/04 — The Arrestables by Jeremy Harding
“XR had three demands and addressed them to government: it should ‘tell the truth’ by admitting to a ‘climate and ecological emergency’; it should ‘act now’ to bring carbon emissions to net-zero by 2025 and halt the decline in biodiversity; it should create a citizens’ assembly to advise government on how to reach the 2025 target. Managing a ‘just transition’ away from carbon – rebuilding livelihoods for workers in declining sectors of the economy, for instance – would be the objective; spreading the pain of the transition fairly, at home and in the Global South, would be the utopian principle.”
“Crucially, they believe that it only takes 3.5 per cent of a population – sometimes less – to mount a non-violent protest and achieve success.”
15/04 — GARFIELD GETS REAL
13/04 — THE SERVANT ( < 12/04)
12/04 — PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE ( < 11/04)
09/04 — BOOKSMART
09/04 — “Wipe Out” — 99% Invisible
( < 05/04) — Something, Something, Something Murder by Damon Lindelof
A almost-daily serialized story for NextDraft to help us, and him, through the quarantine
04/04 — A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan ( < 14/03)
( < 03/04) — TIGER KING: MURDER, MAYHEM AND MADNESS*
“Frosted Flakes” — Still Processing. What Tiger King says about America’s unique relationship to freedom.
03/04 — “Delicious Vinyl” — Still Processing
02/04 — IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA: SEASON 14* ( < 16/03)
March 2020 #
29/03 — NOUGHTS + CROSSES* ( < ?)
26/03 — BACKDRAFT
“It’s a living thing, Brian. It breathes, it eats, and it hates. The only way to beat it is to think like it. To know that this flame will spread this way across the door and up across the ceiling, not because of the physics of flammable liquids, but because it wants to.”
20/03 — “Everyone’s a Critic” — This American Life
“The music was loud, repetitive, and vacuous. Church is to elevate us to God, not bring him to human level.” Two stars. From France, “This is a scam. The children singing are circus animals.” One star. From Italy, “Don’t choose this place if you are expecting the gospel style of Sister Act.” One star.
15/03 — WHITE BOY
Documentary about White Boy Rick
14/03 — Hostile Environment - How Immigrants Become the Scapegoats by Maya Goodfellow ( < 07/03)
13/03 — MAN ON A LEDGE
12/03 — “Confronting a Pandemic” — The Daily
10/03 — UNCUT GEMS (again)
09/03 — THE FIGHTER
( < 09/03) — “13 Minutes to the Moon - Series 2 - Apollo 13”
07/03 — NARCOS: MEXICO: SEASON 2* ( < 16/02)
07/03 — The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe ( < 16/02)
01/03 — How Stephen Miller Manipulates Donald Trump to Further His Immigration Obsession
01/03 — I will make you pay
February 2020 #
( < 24/02) — BETTER CALL SAUL - SEASON 5*
18/02 — “How do you track extremists online?”
16/02 — She Said by Jodi Kantor & Megan Twohey ( < 11/02)
15/02 — HUSTLERS
15/02 — “Wake - Still Processing”
14/02 — “The Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow” ( < 27/11/19)
11/02 — “Chasing Cosby” ( < 14/01)
Six-part podcast series. Essential listening - although some of the details are difficult going. In the week where Snoop Dogg called out Gayle King and ended with “Free Bill Cosby” and where Bill Cosby thanks Snoop Dogg for calling for his freedom - it is worth remembering how monstrous Cosby was for years.
‘You can hear their pain’: Chasing Cosby and the rise of #MeToo podcasts
09/02 — SNOWPIERCER
09/02 — PARASITE
08/02 — UNCUT GEMS
08/02 — The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy ( < 01/02)
08/02 — McDonalds Is Impossible
07/02 — “The Woman Defending Harvey Weinstein”
“I was almost done interviewing Weinstein’s defense attorney when I decided to ask one more question: had she ever been sexually assaulted? “I have not,” she said at 23:50. “Because I would never put myself in that position.” Then things really heated up.”
01/02 — The Night of the Gun by David Carr ( < 23/01)
January 2020 #
( < 31/01) — HIGH LIFE
29/01 — Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro (Audio) ( < 16/01)
See Robert Caro
26/01 — THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY*
A new film argues that Brazil teeters on the brink of authoritarianism. It’s true
( < 26/01) — William Blake Now: Why He Matters More Than Ever by John Higgs
26/01 — STEVE McQUEEN YEAR 3 at Tate Britain
- 26/01 — WILLIAM BLAKE at Tate Britain
- 25/01 — LUCIAN FREUD: THE SELF-PORTRAITS at The Royal Academy
25/01 — PICASSO AND PAPER at The Royal Academy
How Picasso’s Muse Became a Master
“And lives were trampled. Picasso died, at the age of ninety-one, in 1973. In 1977, Marie-Thérèse Walter hanged herself; eight years later, Jacqueline Roque, Gilot’s successor and Picasso’s second wife, shot herself in the head. Paulo, his son with Olga, drank himself to death, in 1975, and Paulo’s son, Pablito, killed himself by swallowing bleach when he was barred from attending his grandfather’s funeral. This is a body count out of Greek tragedy.”
24/01 — “Episode 10: Charlie Brooker, screenwriter” on In Writing with Hattie Crisell
24/01 — “Kantor and Twohey: The Reporters Who Broke the Harvey Weinstein Story” on Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin
24/01 — THE TIME YOU HAVE (IN JELLYBEANS)*
24/01 — AN INVOCATION FOR BEGINNINGS*
24/01 — GOLDMAN v SILVERMAN*
24/01 — JOHN MULANEY AND STEPHEN COLBERT EXPLORE EACH OTHER’S DEEPEST ANXIETIES*
“The worst dancer at a wedding is the one not dancing”
23/01 — An American Marriage by Tayari Jones ( < 12/01)
There’s a lightness in the way it unfurls by alternating first hand narratives — race and gender the constant under (and over) current. The impact of society’s ills in the form of a cruel event. Real and fully formed — yet flawed — characters helpless, shaped by the world (and their upbringings) and yet determined despite it.
“But someone was going to pay for what happened to Roy, just as Roy paid for what happened to that woman. Someone always pays. Bullet don’t have nobody’s name on it, that’s what people say. I think the same is true for vengeance. Maybe even for love. It’s out there, random and deadly, like a tornado.”
20/01 — HARD UP*
( < 18/01) — THE OUTSIDER*
14/01 — FIGHT CLUB ( < 13/01)
‘No chapter was longer than a music video’: Chuck Palahniuk on how he wrote Fight Club
12/01 — On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal by Naomi Klein ( < 28/12)
I didn’t really understand what the Green New Deal was. I didn’t connect with it and when it was spoken about in the U.S it was the missteps which came first and then the inevitable pushback.
This book, which comprises 10 years worth of Klein’s writing, helped me to understand. FDR’s original New Deal was a response to a national emergency — The Great Depression. During the New Deal decade, 10 million people were directly employed by the government, hundreds of thousands of buildings were built, 2.3 billion trees were planted and hundreds of thousands of public works were created. Supporters of the Green New Deal are intentional with reworking the name because the climate crisis requires an equally bold, adventurous — government backed — and immediate response.
- A Hole in the World (2010) — The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (the largest spill in US waters). BP refused to contemplate failure — spending $39 billion over 3 years on oil and gas exploration and $20 million a year on accident prevention.
- Capitalism vs. The Climate (2011) — The belief in some quarters on the right that “climate change is a Trojan horse designed to abolish capitalism and replace it with some kind of eco-socialism.” The shift, over time, in perceptions around climate change and the declining belief that fossil fuels are a cause. There used to be bipartisan support (up to ~2008) and now its a key part of the ongoing culture wars. While those on the right see things as a conspiracy — their conclusions in themselves aren’t wrong. Capitalism is antithetical to what needs to happen (that said Soviet-era state socialism was a disaster for the climate too)
( < 12/01) — TRAVELERS (s2)*
12/01 —
MACGRUBERDitched( < 11/01) — Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
11/01 — TRAVELERS (s1)* ( < 06/01)
11/01 — Nam June Paik
11/01 — 1917
09/01 — The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow ( < 8/12)
08/01 — A BIGGER SPLASH
( < 07/01) — “The D.C. Snipers — You’re Wrong About”
05/01 — POINT BREAK
05/01 — ROMAN J. ISRAEL, ESQ.
It’s a strange film because it’s played like a “based on true events” but isn’t. Denzel Washington is great. Colin Farrell too easily eases away from scumbag to ally and what’s to be made of the ending: success by filing?
04/01 — THUNDER ROAD ( < 03/01)
Starring, written and directed by Jim Cummings. His acting is something to behold. I found his changing facial expressions and moods mesmerising. The opening scene originally based on this short. The flipside to the Blinded By the Light coin.
01/01 — MYSTIFY: MICHAEL HUTCHENCE*
A bit confusing in parts (the bit between MaxQ and INXS, haircuts and back), sometimes the home shot footage really worked and sometimes you could see they didn’t quite have enough. Some fascinating details about Michael which I didn’t know though — the splitting up of his family, his brother and the 'hit over the head’ theory was compelling. We know how it ends but still very sad watching it happen.
01/01 — THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2019: A VIDEO COUNTDOWN*
The full list:
1— Portrait Of A Lady On Fire,2— Parasite,3— Little Women,4— Ad Astra,5— The Farewell,6— The Souvenir,7— Uncut Gems, 8— Synonyms,9— Her Smell,10— Knives Out,11— The Irishman,12— Once Upon a Time In Hollywood,13— Pain and Glory, 14— Midsommar,15— High Life, 16— Varda par Agnès, 17— Diamantino, 18— Transit, 19— Atlantics,20— A Hidden Life, 21— I Lost My Body,22— The Beach Bum,23— The Hottest August,24— Us,25— Hustlers