The best films of 2020 revealed - and the winner is streaming on Netflix
The National Board of Review has named Spike Lee s Da 5 Bloods, Sound of Metal starring Riz Ahmed and Disney s Soul as the best of 2020
Updated
Spike Lee’s Vietnam War movie Da 5 Bloods was named the year’s best film by the US National Board of Review (Image: (Netflix/PA))
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The road to Radha Blank’s intimate and hilariously autobiographical debut film, “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” began with her losing her first screenwriting job.
Blank puts it even more bluntly. “One of my roles as an artist is to demystify things,” she says. “I got
fired off that job. And I just wanted to create something I couldn’t get fired from.”
A longtime struggling playwright, Blank developed her life story into a script about a 40-something Harlem-based theater artist who finds an unexpected outlet as an amateur rapper. “It was not my initial intention to make it as a film,” she says. Blank originally “took a note from my millennial brothers and sisters” and conceived it as a DIY web series.
Courtesy Of Jeong Park/netflix
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST Blank plays a onetime wunderkind hitting middle age in her fresh, funny comedy. Our streaming entertainment options are overwhelming and not always easy to sort through. This week, I caught up with playwright and TV writer Radha Blank s
The Forty-Year-Old Version, a Netflix original that is popping up on some 2020 best of lists.
The deal When she appeared on a prestigious 30 under 30 list, playwright Radha (Blank) thought her star was ascending. Now, as the lifelong New Yorker approaches her 40th birthday, even the high school kids she teaches rib her about her stalled career. Her love life? Also a nonstarter, as the smart-mouthed guy who lives on her neighbor s stoop is all too eager to remind her.
Ishaan Rahman:
Sacha Baron Cohen makes a return in
Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm, a sequel to his 2006 mockumentary hit. Cohen plays a filmmaker from Kazakhstan, Borat, who is sent to America to improve relations with President Donald Trump. This time, he’s joined by his fifteen-year-old daughter, played by Maria Bakalova with innocence and farce. Bakalova’s character has been raised in Kazakhstan and preconditioned to believe every chauvinist female stereotype.
The film’s over-the-top satirical comedy brings countless laugh-out-load moments, each ranging from light-hearted to borderline disturbing. Though unlike its predecessor, the film is very focused and timely, particularly on US politics and the November elections.