Doc Corner: The Best Documentaries of 2020

By Glenn Dunks

Before this column takes a few weeks break, it’s that time of the year to make lists! I have spent the last few weeks churning through screeners trying to ensure I saw enough of 2020’s documentary output to justify a list of the year’s best, although I do not have the time nor the inclination to watch 238 of the damn things! Nevertheless, below are 30 non-fiction titles (or non-fiction adjacent, but we’ll get to that later) that I believe are among the year’s best movies. I stuck to the 2020 calendar as much as possible because, like Nathaniel, I want to keep some order to it all.

If you were to sit down and watch every film below, you would be taken from rural towns in the heart of the Florida peninsula to rural towns in the heart of the Ukraine via the protests of Hong Kong and a nursing home in Chile. There are serious themes, important subjects, powerful ideas... and hand sanitizer.

There’s also a stripper named Nomi. Something for everything, I reckon...

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Year in Review: 20 Style Icons of the Screen

by Cláudio Alves

We Are Little Zombies

A with last year, I'm merging two of my dearest personal obsessions, costume design and the madness of list-making, for year's end. From colorful comic book inspired styles to detailed period fashions, 2020 was rich with interesting sartorial choices in both film and TV. To celebrate, here are some of the best-dressed characters from fiction and real-life. Even if this has been an annus horribilis like no other, there's still plenty to admire from the world of entertainment. Because it's 2020, there are 20 entries. One may think there would be a dearth of options to fill so many positions, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, here are some that didn't quite make the cut before we that list of 20...

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Doc Corner: 'Mucho Mucho Amor' and 'House of Cardin'

By Glenn Dunks

When we look back at our 2020 times stuck indoors for endless hours, I wonder what people will remember. Among the much more high profile television series and surprise album drops, I suspect one title many will find themselves reaching for in their memories is Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado. I have to admit to being entirely oblivious to the focus of Cristina Costantini and Kareem Tabsch's documentary except a well-timed ‘appearance’ on RuPaul’s Drag Race just a week before the film premiered on Netflix. Unless I caught him on an episode of Sally Jessy Raphael, I guess. 

What I discovered—and what I imagine is what will allow for fond remembrance of the movie once we are long out of isolation hubs—was something so very sweetly tender. A film that’s every bit as fabulous as the elaborate, bejewelled cloaks and capes its subject was famed for.

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