Marvel Cinematic Universe mastermind Kevin Feige’s style and design for the look and feel of the content he produces for his Disney overlords has calcified with his latest entry, Eternals. I use the dreaded word content – it’s a word that makes me throw up in my mouth a little; it’s more at home in a marketing meeting than discussions about art or entertainment – because that’s what Eternals feels like, rather than a story or a movie.
At an interminable 157 minutes, it’s an attempt at entertainment that bolsters Martin Scorsese’s assertion that Marvel movies are more theme park attraction than storytelling. Even as a 200-million-dollar rollercoaster, Eternals is lifeless and largely joyless. The only fun thing about it is a few of the performances where a human spark peaks through the calculatedness of it all.
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Director Chloé Zhao’s inspired blurring of truth and fiction in her newest film Nomadland reveals an emotional truth about the American spirit that is more profound than even the most probing documentary could capture. Her movie, in its own quiet way, celebrates the beauty and grandeur of American western landscapes and the human desire to drink them in, much like Sean Penn’s Into the Wild. It also documents, like a modern-day Grapes of Wrath, the crushing poverty that forced these beauty-seekers on the road in the first place. It’s the blending of these two aesthetics that make Nomadland such a delicate treasure.
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The North Texas Film Critics Association (NTFCA), of which I am a member, voted last month to honor the best films of 2020. As an organization, the NTFCA is proud to call attention to outstanding achievements in the craft of filmmaking. I consider movies to be not only entertainment, but in the best examples, they are also art. They teach us about the human condition. Here are the winners for each category in which we voted:
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