by Team Experience
Chemistry may be something you can predict in a lab but in showbiz it's always been volatile, elevating some projects to unpredictable heights and dooming others with its absence or withholding or misdirections. Strong onscreen chemistry may be far less rare than capturing lightning in a bottle but it can feel just as miraculous. In the studio system they'd seize on any great example and repurpose it by ordering additional pairings of the stars involved. Modern Hollywood executive (and the stars themselves to some degree) have been notoriously dumb about capitalizing on incredible partnerships. This has made great onscreen chemistry basically a one & done phenomenon for the most part for decades... and thus all the more ephemeral and precious. So let's celebrate it.
We polled Team Experience on "best screen chemistry of 2020" and pooled the results. Sound off with your own in the comments...
20 Evan Rachel Wood & Gina Rodriguez (Odd Couple) in Kajillionaire
A love like theirs crept up on me before I even saw it was in the room, but once it was noticed it seemed immense, unmissable -- the big one!!! Writer/director Miranda July tasks this extremely odd couple with making the removal of press-on nails erotic and they do, do they ever. As Wood's Old Dolio says, "What, are you trying to get me all riled up?" Consider me riled. And as Emile Mosser's gorgeous score thrums around them and the sunlight blinks in and out together they made me believe in life after bubbles. - Jason
19 Anthony Hopkins & Olivia Colman (Father & Daughter) in The Father
The disorienting opening of The Father counts on emotional shorthand between father and daughter to raise the stakes. These two talented actors and Oscar winners step into their roles so effortlessly, we can easily believe their complex, frustrating, painful bond has been built over several decades. Hopkins and Colman pull this off within minutes, and their interactions fill in all the subtext. - Eurocheese
18 Jesse Plemons & Jessie Buckley (???) in i'm thinking of ending things
A symphony of anti-chemistry, perfect for Kaufman's intentions, Buckley & Plemons compliment each other like shards of a shattered mirror unshattering. They finish each other's sentences by swerving them off at right angles from their start -- right angle after right angle after right angle, forming a square, back to the start. They stutter like limbs of the same twitching thing. - Jason
17 Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried (Friends / Colleagues) in Mank
From the moment Herman "Mank" Mankiewicz and Marion Davies meet atop a fake on-set pyre, it's clear these two fun-loving if ultimately very different Hollywood alum march to the beat of each other's drum. Despite their age difference, Seyfried and Oldman make us believe that a young starlet and an aging drunkard would get along swimmingly as they stroll around the zoos and acres of San Simeon. Even when the friendship sours, their long glances cast a regretful pall over the previous hour, rendering what seemed frivolous in the moment as a true and meaningful bond. - Tony
16 Kristen Stewart & Aubrey Plaza (New Girlfriend and Ex Girlfriend) in Happiest Season
It's incredibly rare for audiences to come away from a rom-com wishing for the hero had chosen Other Girl over Lead Girl. Aubrey Plaza's Riley is just such an Other Girl, a reserved yet sardonic woman who's already revealed herself to the world. Plaza embodies that person who is free to be herself because she loves herself, and that endearing quality is like an intangible ray of light between her and her ex's new girl (Stewart) as they trade smiles over cocktails. - Tony
15 Principal Cast (Band of Brothers) in Da 5 Bloods
The surviving members of a band of brothers joyfully reunite at the Majestic hotel in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, and instantly the groundwork for the latest Spike Lee joint reveals its deep-rooted foundation. Using his arsenal of character actors, Spike creates a thorny but loose ensemble, with lived-in performances that complement and contrast one another. Peters’ calming presence sedates Lindo’s fire and furry, forming the film’s beating heart. Lewis’s faux machismo unites the unit before revealing their limitations, while Boseman’s radiating star persona is funneled through Norm’s hopeful ideologies, always inspiring his cohorts to rise up to the occasion while the underserved Whitlock Jr. is the glue that keeps the ensemble together, filling the screen with a hearty joie-de-vivre. -Patrick
14 Yuh-jung Youn & Alan S Kim (Grandmother and Grandson) in Minari
The parents (Steven Yeun and Yeri Han) shoulder the weight and soul of the narrative and have fine tetchy chemistry of their own, but its classic Korean actress Yuh-jung Youn and the young discovery Alan S Kim, who give the film it's humor and heart. Neither of them are what the other expects in an instant new family member and their stubborn sass as they refuse to comply to expectations is a thing of beauty and giggles... especially because you see the love coming right around the corner. - Nathaniel
13 Levan Gelbakhiani & Bachi Valishvili (Lovers) in And Then We Danced
I wish someone looked at me, when I dance around my living to Robyn songs, the same way that Irakli (Valishvili) looks at Merab (Gelbakhiani) in my favourite film of the year. Georgia is now on my list of countries to visit in 2021 - Baby Clyde
12 Principal Cast (Long-time Colleagues) in Another Round
While Mads Mikkelsen is unquestionably the star of Another Round, the movie wouldn’t work nearly as well as it does without the easy, free-flowing camaraderie between his protagonist and the three friends and colleagues (Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, and Magnus Millang) who join in his quest to stay buzzed in order to stay sharp. Even as their “experiment” in defeating middle-aged malaise goes predictably off the rails and reveals rather than heals deep psychological and emotional cracks, their collective bond of trust and support never weakens. Plus their increasingly ridiculous shenanigans look way more fun and way less pathetic than they should, in large part because the quartet clearly enjoy each other’s company, sloshed or sober. They’re like the Four Musketeers of day-drinking—all for one, and one for all. - Lynn
11 Carrie Coon & Jude Law (Spouses) in The Nest
The quintessential definition of the "fuck or fight" relationship. While the film showcases quite a bit of the fight, when it is the alternative, it is SMOLDERING. It's of little surprise when two actors of this caliber and this level of beauty fit so perfectly together. - Ben
10 Carey Mulligan & Bo Burnham (Lovers) in Promising Young Woman
Emerald Fennell's most brilliant and luckiest move (because you can't predict chemistry this good) is to plop a rom-com right down in the center of this rape/revenge comedy where it has absolutely no place being. That Carey as Cassandra and Bo as Ryan make you wish that a film like this could have a happy ending, while never going off-character to sell it, even as you know that this rom-com does not belong, is the electric charge of their complicated duet. - Nathaniel
09 Elisabeth Moss & Michael Stuhlbarg (Spouses) in Shirley
Stuhlbarg and Moss achieve a sort of poisonous telepathy as Shirley Jackson and Stanley Hyman in Josephine Decker’s Shirley. One of the great cinematic pleasures of 2020 was in decoding all those mischievous glances ricocheting back and forth between them as they wreak havoc on the poor saps who happen into their toxic orbit. - Michael
08 Bill Murray & Rashida Jones (Father & Daughter) in On the Rocks
Over the relationship of Laura and her lothario father exists a layer of scar tissue made of equal parts resentment and affection. Jones and Murray acknowledge that uncomfortable surface, though they're never overwhelmed by its ugliness, privileging rueful humor instead of heartbreak. They feel like father and daughter, as if they've learned how to play off each other over many years of mutual prickliness. - Cláudio
07 Marielle Heller & Anya Taylor-Joy (Mother & Daughter / Business Partners) in The Queen's Gambit
The miniseries may well be the perfect form for shifting chemistry as a relationship evolves. Initially their rapport feels lacking, purposefully, because its arranged and because Taylor-Joy plays up the on-the-spectrum aspects of her chess prodigy. But over the course of their episodes together their relationship morphs beautifully into a nearly comic business "arrangement" and a conforting companionship. You only see the unique emotion of the chosen-family bond they've grown into just as you're losing it, doubling the grief. - Nathaniel
06 Sydney Flanigan and Talia Ryder (Cousins) in Never Rarely Sometimes Always
They are family by blood but best friends by choice. And they are everything in between. The sacrifices the two make for one another and the lengths that each will go to protect the other, whether it’s dealing with creeps or stealing money for a last minute abortion, it speaks to how special their relationship is. The way Flanigan and Ryder look at each other makes it seem like one is essential to the other, the person always in their corner and a rock to stand on. - Ginny
05 Viktoria Miroshnichenko & Vasilisa Perelygina (Best Friends) in Beanpole
Two starkly different faces of trauma. Though, like Janus double visages, Iya and Masha are two halves of the same whole, forever bound by what they suffered, what they survived. If Miroshnichenko plays a paralyzed implosion, Perelygna is a freight train exploding outwards, always complementing each other with frightening beauty. - Cláudio
04. John Magaro & Orion Lee (Companions) in First Cow
The heart and soul of a film built on delicately layered implications and unbearably heavy realities. Magaro as "Cookie" and Lee as "King-Lu" contribute two of the quietest, loveliest performances of the year, creating a truly special bond as their partnership evolves. Whether you read First Cow as the latest entry in the “be gay, do crimes” cinematic genre or an astonishingly touching example of male camaraderie, the foundations of hardscrabble determination, dreams of prosperity, gentle confidence, and a clear, mutual sense of appreciation all inform one of this year’s most riveting, heartfelt duets. - Nick
03 Andy Samberg & Cristin Milioti (Lovers) in Palm Springs
Samberg and Milioti come into the film (and out of again of course) as expert comic actors, but Palm Springs gets that romantic comedies only ascend into greats of their genre when they nail both love and laughs. Samberg's Nyles and Milioti's Sarah are funny people but it's their fragile tentative love that proves the film's revelation with the actors getting a total dramatic workout, too, with this organic, deeply felt but jittery budding romance. Watch their eyes for all of this fling's nervous hopes and past scars. We're going to be disappointed if either of them is left out of the Golden Globes Best Lead Comedy Acting nominations- Nathaniel
02. Maya Erskine & Anna Konkle (Besties) in Pen15 (Season 2)
It takes real chemistry to make it through middle school together. Thirtysomethings Maya and Anna, brilliantly playing fictionalized versions of themselves as teenagers, are able to survive pool parties, divorces, traumatizing sleepovers, school plays and more thanks to their unbreakable friendship. "Vendy Wiccany" forever! - Christopher
01 Paul Mescal & Daisy Edgar Jones (Lovers) in Normal People
One of the most startling depictions of both intimacy and loneliness committed to screen. How did the actors manage such vulnerability and complexity in tandem? You see their attraction intellectually and physically, and also reluctantly understand their self-sabotaging incompability. They're together when they're apart and apart when they're together in agonizing contradiction. Mescal's Connor and Daisy's Marianne are such complete three-dimensional portraits on their own that their union and separations achieve extra dimensions; an otherwordly achievement but also unmistakably, regrettably human in every moment. - Nathaniel
Previously in 2020's Year in Review
- Stocking Stuffers - Team Experience
- Animals of the Year - Team Experience
- First time old movie watches - Christopher
- Style Icons - Cláudio
- Movies that inspired fan art - Nathaniel