a) Trolls World Tour
In a completely bizarre way, Trolls World Tour may go down as the most consequential film of 2020, since it became the hugely successful test subject for a COVID-19 quarantine digital release of a movie that was meant to have a traditional theatrical run, and created a rift between Universal Pictures and AMC Theatres that may change the entire cinematic landscape in the future. Like millions of other families, I rented the movie so my kids could watch it a few times, and was amused by its completely bizarre personifications of different genres of popular music as warring tribes of troll dolls. At least Rachel Bloom got to have fun singing some karaoke favorites in a huge hit movie, though.

b) Extraction
Chris Hemsworth's effortless movie star charisma as Thor rarely seems to translate to non-Marvel movies, and Extraction feels like a shrewd effort to give Hemsworth a traditional action movie vehicle that happens to be directed by Sam Hargrave and written by Joe Russo, both of whom worked on many MCU movies. This approach works to an extent, but Hemsworth's character peaks in coolness in his first 2 minutes onscreen and from there it's kind of a rote attempt at a Man On Fire-type movie. And Golshifteh Farahani upstages that later with the James Bond-level cool of the scene where she shoots a guy while wearing a glamorous gown. Also notable: this movie has like 13 minutes of credits, which is just insane, like it was a record when Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King had 9 minutes of credits.

c) Horse Girl
Alison Brie co-wrote this movie, which was really one of the more interesting projects I've seen from the rapidly growing "actors from popular TV comedies make a really dark depressing low-budget feature" genre. Brie's performance was really committed, it had some interesting things to say about mental illness and media, and the ending was pretty unexpected and I've thought a lot about how I felt about it. But a lot of the movie was just watching a sympathetic character who had trouble connecting with anyone around them have a psychotic break and lose control of their life, and it was really difficult to watch.

d) Portrait Of A Lady On Fire
This was great, definitely shouldn't have been shut out at the Oscars. I enjoy movies like this where the story is so simple, it really could've been told in like 15 minutes, but things play out between Marianne and Heloise in these small, slowly unfolding moments that really let you feel what they're feeling, the ending was really something.

e) The Report
This was directed by Contagion and The Informant! screenwriter Scott Z. Burns and exec produced by Steven Soderbergh. It was pretty good, but dry at times, I couldn't help but imagine it being a little more creatively or artfully directed if Soderbergh had done it himself. Adam Driver was excellent, though, was kind of a nice palate cleanser after that overrated Marriage Story performance.

f) Haywire
A minor Soderbergh that I missed when it was new and decided to go back and check out, Gina Carano is obviously kind of a novice actor but the stunt work and fight scenes were incredible and they stacked the supporting cast with good actors, nice quick thrilling movie, kind of pulled off what Extraction tried and failed to do.

g) Beyond The Brick: A Lego Brickumentary
My 5-year-old son whose primary interests in life are watching cartoons and building with Legos has taken the leap into non-animated TV to watch the show "Lego Masters," and he liked it so much that he also asked to watch this documentary about Legos, it really excited him to see adults build really complex Lego stuff, and it was pretty interesting for a breezy light doc.

h) Arctic Dogs
I'm allergic to all things Jeremy Renner and he seemed so ill-equipped to career a talking animal cartoon that I was kind of glad this bombed. But my kid watched it and it was charming and competent enough, not a disaster or anything.

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