The Comey Rule (2020, Billy Ray)
This Showtime miniseries, based on former FBI Director James Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, details the events leading up to, and immediately following the fateful 2016 election of Donald Trump. Jeff Daniels depicts a quietly personable and experienced lawman caught between his apolitical, investigative motivations and the fears voiced by his family and those around him of the consequences of going after Hillary Clinton in an election year. Brendan Gleeson delivers probably the most sobering Trump seen on screen yet; cold, aggressive, garrulous. While critics might decry a minimisation of Comey’s tactical errors, Billy Ray’s series paints a dark and harrowing picture of the FBI and the Department of Justice attempting to maintain their integrity as the incoming Administration bends politics, law, and truth to its unscrupulous will.
The Vast of Night (2020, Andrew Patterson)
This highly impressive debut from Andrew Patterson is an eerie sci-fi mystery set in a small New Mexico town in the 1950s. Fay, a teenage switchboard operator, comes upon a peculiar audio signal interfering with her equipment. Recruiting Everett, her disc jockey friend, the two embark on a crosstown investigation involving claims from callers of government conspiracy and UFOs, while the townsfolk are gathered watching the game at the local basketball stadium. Against this central concentration of light and sound, the remote town’s outer streets drown in an unsettling darkness that almost serves as a character unto itself, a menacing shadow from which it seems anything might emerge, and no one will escape.
Kajillionaire (2020, Miranda July)
Kajillionaire is a compelling and oddball film about a family of professional scammers endeavouring to do almost anything to survive. Evan Rachel Wood is almost unrecognisable here as Old Dolio Dyne (not a typo!), the nervewracked twenty-six-year-old daughter of Robert (Richard Jenkins) and Theresa (Debra Winger), who suspects that her parents might be manipulating her as much as the marks they target.