Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

A wide array of new movies releases this weekend and it’s impossible to pick just one actor to highlight, so I picked five. I ultimately bypassed two names. The first was Billy Crystal whose new comedy, Here Today, co-stars Tiffany Haddish, whom I did include below. I struggled to find an adequate film to represent Crystal that I would say I enjoyed more than these other films. The other I thought about including was Rosario Dawson, who features in this week’s The Water Man, but for similar reasons to Crystal, I couldn’t choose a film that I ultimately cared for more than the below.

Now to the five actors I ultimately selected. Alongside Dawson, The Water Man features David Oyelowo and Alfred Molina. Haddish, as mentioned above, is in Here Today while Andrew Garfield is front and center in this week’s Mainstream. Finally, there’s Jason Statham, an actor whom I generally cannot stand, and his new film Wrath of Man looks like more of the same, but who did deliver one performance that finally made me appreciate him…but only that one time. Now, to the five films that I chose to represent Garfield, Haddish, Molina, Oyelowo, and Statham.

Never Let Me Go

Before becoming well known as the second big screen incarnation of Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield had amassed an impressive list of acting credentials, including this 2010 dystopian drama from director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland. The film co-stars Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightly as a trio of childhood friends who discover that their lives may well be meaningless as their fates are to be used as organ donors.

Garland got his start in cinema with a writing credit on Danny Boyle’s acclaimed zombie feature 28 Days Later, following up with Sunshine, uncredited rewrites of 28 Weeks Later, and then this film. His penchant for dystopian sci-fi dramas was well known prior to his emergence as a breakthrough directorial voice with Ex Machina, though each of his scripts have been excellent. Never Let Me Go was an adaptation of an acclaimed novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, but it never managed to emerge from the pack for the 2010 Oscars in spite of being deserving of attention.

Night School

In spite of a sparse film career, Tiffany Haddish broke out with her acclaimed performance in 2017’s Girls Trip, from which she emerged as a prominent comedic voice in cinema with Night School a personal favorite. Opposite Kevin Hart, Haddish plays a night school teacher tasked with helping her students test for and pass their GEDs. Although Hart is initially resistant to his need for a re-education, he comes to understand better the type of learning disability he has and hopefully it’s soon enough to achieve his goals.

While the film is ostensibly about Hart’s antics, Haddish plays the key role of mentor. Her straight-laced performance is hilarious and elevates a film that could have felt so much more derivative. The core concept of the film that elevates it to success is its focus on learning disabilities and how to best cope with those issues. Supported by a terrific cast of comedians including Rob Riggle and Mary Lynn Rajskub, Night School is a movie that is a natural fit for Hart and Haddish, but also has something keen and observant to say.

Promising Young Woman

Taking no credit for his role in Promising Young Woman, Alfred Molina is nevertheless crucial to the film, providing a late-film turn that enables Carey Mulligan’s Cassie to reconsider her approach and to perhaps open her up to the notion that not every man is irredeemable. In a film about toxic masculinity, sexual assault, and rape, that’s a crucial point of view to acknowledge, especially since our protagonist has positioned herself as the lone weapon in a fight women face daily and struggle to win.

Director Emerald Fennell scored a Best Directing nomination for this Best Picture nominee and took home the award for original screenplay, a deserved citation that unfortunately marked the sole Oscar for the film. Mulligan gives a tour-de-force performance in a movie with a hard-hitting edge. It is the best movie I’ve seen from 2020 so far, but I doubt there will be much to replace it as I no doubt catch up on a lot of what I’ve missed due to the pandemic.

As small as Molina’s role is, it’s a potent one and adds a layer to the story that was crucial to the film’s ultimate success. A finely tuned dance, Promising Young Woman is a film we’ll still be talking about in generations and we can only hope its cultural and creative impact will be keenly felt in the near-term.

Selma

Ava DuVernay’s third feature film is an exploration of the Civil Rights movement that reached a crucial turning point during Martin Luther King Jr.’s march from Selma, Alabama to the state capital in Montgomery. Written by Paul Webb, Selma is a fascinating look at a man whose prominence in our modern political landscape was a result of hard work and effort in pushing towards equal treatment under the law for Black Americans.

David Oyelowo plays the charismatic King with fierce conviction, pulling the audience along without the aid of many of King’s most famous oratories. While the speeches he’s given have a ring of truth to them, they are clearly inferior. Regardless, Oyelowo’s performance and DuVernay’s film were superlative achievements that were under-recognized by the Academy thanks to a studio campaign that got off to a slow start and ultimately blamed DuVernay for tinkering to the last-minute. Had the film been given more time to breathe, it might even have earned an Oscar for Best Picture and Best Actor (Oyelowo wasn’t nominated, but should have been) rather than simply winning for the inspirational tune “Glory.”

Spy

I was conflicted about including this film on the list, not because Spy is an inferior film, it really is wonderful, but because the featured actor hasn’t delivered anything even in the same ballpark as his performance in this film. Paul Feig’s inspired comedy refashions the traditional spy thriller into a gender-swapped action comedy starring Melissa McCarthy as a CIA analyst supporting field agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law) from the home office. Getting pulled into a massive international case that requires McCarthy’s Susan Cooper to go into the field and rescue Fine while also stopping the daughter of a Russian oligarch (Rose Byrne) from selling or using a nuclear device.

McCarthy has never been funnier and Byrne is terrific in roles that have typically been played by men in cinema’s history of spy thrillers. It’s a clever shift in tone and focus that enables the audience to experience what it might be like if the tables were turned and turned they are. A subversive comedy that both lampoons and celebrates a male-dominated genre, Spy is a fantastic experience. Statham’s role in the film is that of another CIA agent who quits the agency after learning that Susan will be the taking point on the case as he and several other prominent agents are now known to the enemy. He ridicules every character he’s ever played with the expertise and precision of a finely-trained comedic actor. That he’s never shown an ounce of this talent in his other efforts is disappointing, but expected in a genre that still, in spite of this film’s goals, relies on the masculine rather than the feminine.