Film critic Sean Burns reviews his favorite films from 2020, including "Bacurau," "First Cow," "Collective" and "Beanpole." (Courtesy)
The last time I went to the movies was on Tuesday, March 10, the day before the NBA suspended its season and Tom Hanks announced that he and his wife were sick. Over the previous week or so it had slowly begun to dawn on all of us how much trouble we were really in with this thing, and after a patience-trying afternoon press screening of “The Hunt,” I made my way over to the Harvard Film Archive for what had just been announced would be their final event of the semester. Local news crews were interviewing students carrying cardboard boxes as they hastily moved out of their dorms, and when I stopped for dinner at the nearly empty Hong Kong Restaurant, the elderly matron of the eatery smiled at me and said, “Nobody here sick.” There was hardly anybody at the HFA for “Wendy and Lucy,” the closing night screening in their Kelly Reichardt retrospective. Looking out at a sparse crowd, socially distanced by default, the director dolefully introduced her film by saying, “Welcome to the last picture show.”