Robert Pattinson, “The Lighthouse”, “Tenet” and “The Devil All the Time” Making “Best of 2020” Lists
UPDATED: I’ve changed this post to “best of” lists as Rob himself is making quite a few (updates added to beginning of post).
7 January 2021:
Slash Films The 11 Most Memorable Performances
Robert Pattinson, The Devil All the Time
Netflix’s star-studded Gothic thriller featured no shortage of memorable characters and moments, yet none could hold a candle to Robert Pattinson’s peculiar take on the despicable Reverend Preston Teagardin. Teagardin appears late in the film as the new, charismatic pastor the impresses his congregation with his pompous persona while sexually abusing minors on the sly. Pattinson makes bold choices in his approach to the character, including forgoing any Southern dialect coaching to concoct a bizarre accent entirely of his own making. The atypical accent would derail an insidious predator into pure comedy relief in lesser hands, yet Pattinson makes it work for his weirdly charming character. Pattinson continues to pick the unpredictable path in his career, and his appearance in The Devil All the Time shows why that’s a great thing.
IndieWire 50 Best Movies of 2020
8. “Tenetâ€
What kind of picture is it? Big, certainly: IMAX-scaled, and a hefty 150 minutes even after a visibly ruthless edit. It’s clever, too — yes, the palindromic title has some narrative correlation — albeit in an exhausting, rather joyless way. As second comings go, “Tenet†is like witnessing a Sermon on the Mount preached by a savior who speaks exclusively in dour, drawn-out riddles. Any awe is flattened by follow-up questions.
The Film Magazine 10 Best Films2020
No. 9 The Lighthouse
Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are simply unmissable in this old-timey horror fixated on the idea of what isolation will do to a person and inspired by remarkable art of centuries past. And under the never-flinching lens of Robert Eggers’ camera, the duo anchor one of North America’s most expressive pieces in a decade to something tangible and at times even relatable. …
AnOther Magazine Best Films of 2020
Standout releases for me include Antonio Campos’s playfully sinister The Devil All the Time (with its excellent cast of Robert Pattinson, Mia Wasikowska, Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgård and Riley Keough)
28 December 2020: From Indiewire – 10 Best Movie & TV Trailers:
DC Fandome The Batman trailer
Hollywood’s predictable trend of marketing tentpoles with moody song covers continued this year (see Hans Zimmer’s Pink Floyd cover in the first “Dune†trailer), which part of the reason “The Batman†teaser’s straightforward use of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way†felt so refreshing. The original version of the song also fits Matt Reeves’ vision for the Caped Crusader long a glove: slow-building tension and brooding rage. The first “Batman†trailer sticks the Dark Knight in the middle of a David Fincher serial killer thriller, and it works like gangbusters. The teaser is so good it made Warner Bros. delaying the film to March 2022 all the more painful.
From Uncut – Best Films of 2020:
5 The Devil All The Time
Director: Antonio Campos
The wood-smoked tones of novelist Donald Ray Pollock provided the voiceover for this adaptation of his Gothic saga of madness, corruption and violence on the Ohio-West Virginia border. Antonio Campos (Simon Killer, Christine) directed a strong cast that included Tom Holland, Riley Keough, Jason Isaacs, a ripely theatrical Robert Pattinson and neo-trad folk-swing crooner Pokey LaFarge.
12 Tenet
Director: Christopher Nolan
Many seriously expected Nolan’s film to ‘save’ cinema – at least, get a few multiplexes up and running again – and while it performed well, it wasn’t the panacea the industry dreamed of. It divided critics, but its palindromic story of an agent (John David Washington) trying to avert doomsday gave even genre sceptics plenty to puzzle over.
20 The Lighthouse
Director: Robert Eggers
The director of The Witch offered another exercise in period Gothic with a maritime nightmare in black and white that brought new meaning to the concept of self-isolation. With dialogue channelling Herman Melville and 19th-century mariners’ journals, it starred Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as two men coming to loggerheads at a remote ocean outpost.
25 December 2020: The best trailers of 2020 from Collider:
1. The Batman
From the opening sound of duct tape unraveling over red WB and DC logos, you just knew Matt Reeves would be serving up something special with this trailer, and that was before Nirvana’s “Something In the Way” kicks in a few seconds later. The trailer does a great job of introducing Robert Pattinson‘s goth Batman (combat boots first, black eyeshadow later) and his rogues gallery of villains, including the Riddler (Paul Dano) and cat burglar Catwoman (Zoe Kravitz), but the talk of this trailer was Colin Farrell‘s nearly unrecognizable turn as the Penguin.
The defining moment in this action-packed trailer arrives when Batman wallops an unnamed thug and continues to pound on him even when he’s on the ground before saying “I’m vengeance.” The beating makes it seem like Pattinson’s Batman is a little angrier than past iterations of the character. Following a smash cut to the Batmobile’s engine firing up, the trailer is off to the races, setting up some tension between Batman and the Gotham City police while teasing more of the cat-and-mouse game between the Riddler and the world’s greatest detective. In its closing moments, it also hints at a larger mythology that Batman is unaware of thus far, indicating that Reeves does indeed have some kind of master plan for a trilogy. Expectations could not have been higher for The Batman trailer, and somehow, Reeves and Warners delivered with an assist from Kurt Cobain. Bam! Pow! Bravo!
16. The Devil All the Time
The trailer quickly introduces a narrator who sets up the ensemble, including Jason Clarke as a perverted photographer, Sebastian Stan as a shady sheriff, and Robert Pattinson as a manipulative preacher who might as well be a snake oil salesman. Things pick up once Holland cocks his new gun and asks Pattinson whether he has time for a sinner.
19 December 2020: According to GQ India, The Devil All the Time is rated no. 10 in IDMb’s Highest Rated Movies (via @Monsieur_HJ):
Despite its slow pace, The Devil All The Time, directed by Antonio Campos, is among Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson’s best performances of the year. The plot introduces us to many sinister characters of a corrupt town as it follows Holland’s quest to seek revenge for a loved one.
18 December 2020: From What Culture (10 Actors Who Gave The Best Performance Of Their Careers In 2020):
No. 6 Robert Pattinson
While general audiences may be surprised to see Robert Pattinson delivering such outstanding performances in big blockbuster movies, fans of independent cinema know that this is nothing new for him.
He’s steadily been building a reputation for taking on challenging and insane roles that other actors might shy away from. The Lighthouse, High Life, and Good Time are just a few of the true gems that make his filmography shine.
If anything, starring in a mind-bending, time-travelling thriller from daring director Christopher Nolan probably feels like a well-earned break for Pattinson. His character is there to ground the movie, to act as a comforting guide for the audience as well as John David Washington’s Protagonist.
Pattinson expertly puts across the impression of a man in control, while also holding something back and keeping us guessing as to the true nature of who his character really is.
The final twist of his identity only works so well because of how authentically he’s been portrayed and guarantees that Tenet is a film that needs to be watched more than once to be fully appreciated.
Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian includes Rob in his nominations for the Braddies:
… the Braddies, my personal choices that exist separately from Guardian film’s best-of-the-year countdown. As ever, there are 10 nominees in 10 categories: film, director, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, documentary, cinematography, screenplay, directorial debut. … The nominees are listed in no particular order and readers are invited to vote below the line for their preferred winner and talk about omissions.
Peter’s nominations include Rob for Best Actor in both Tenet and The Lighthouse; Best Director & Best Movie for Tenet. The Lighthouse is also included in Best Cinematography and the Eggers bros for Screenwriters.
11 December 2020
It’s that time of year when Rob and his films land on “Best of ” lists. In what has been a difficult year, we somehow managed to be blessed with four films featuring Rob – The Lighthouse, Tenet, The Devil All the Time and Waiting for the Barbarians. Unsurprisingly The Lighthouse and Tenet are featuring in a few lists – more surprising is how many have overlooked The Devil All the Time.
From Empire:
“8) The Lighthouse
Subtext swirls and swells in Robert Eggers’ head-tripping psychological horror. Both adorned with outrageous facial hair, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are the ‘wickies’ – aka lighthouse keepers – stranded together on a rain-lashed rock, slowly losing their grip on sanity and displaying an obsession with the pulsating lamp at the top of the tower. Equal parts Lovecraftian and Freudian, Eggers’ film is a freaky and fascinating blend of folktale, sea myth, homoeroticism, and psycho-thriller, full of unforgettable imagery and deeply unsettling sound design. And Pattinson and Dafoe give raw, wild-eyed performances, hemmed into the frame by a near-square aspect ratio that lends the whole thing the feel of an unholy long-lost film reel, freshly dredged up from the ocean depths.
17) Tenet
After the CIA-wetwork-level secrecy, the hype, the endless headlines about its release-date slippages and whether it could save cinema, Christopher Nolan’s palindromic pulse-pounder turned out to be, well, just a film. But it was a film that kept us all talking throughout the dog days of summer, the actual 150-minute tale just a launchpad for feverish time-travel debates that made some at Empire turn into Charlie Day jabbing at an evidence board in It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. Not all the dialogue was audible. The third act required DIY flowcharts to track. And it’s debatable whether it needed to wrap up with a rap whose lyrics include “Last time I did the whippets (yeah)/ Last time I live reverse (yeah, yeah, ooh)”. But still, this was an all-caps EVENT MOVIE in a year with very few of them – and a staggeringly smart one too, scenes looking like a Bond flick but sounding like a Mensa convention. Tenet practically demands to be watched again at home over Christmas. This time with subtitles on.”
From Vulture (Bilge Ebiri)
“7. Tenet
Christopher Nolan’s labyrinthine blockbuster was overshadowed by debates over its theatrical release and its financial aftermath, which is perhaps understandable. And while the movie does deserve a big screen and demands your total attention (how novel!), I’m also hoping that a home video release will allow people to look past the industry blather and finally see Tenet for what it is: a crazy, exciting, even moving spy thriller that actually dares to trust its audience. And yeah, I’m still listening to the score.”
From Total Film (via @sallyvg)
“#6 The Lighthouse
It wasn’t just the eponymous, incandescent structure that shone in Robert Eggers’ sophomore feature – Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson were career-best as wild-eyed wickies Tom Wake and Ephraim Winslow, who lose the plot when they’re stranded on a wind-lashed island off the coast of New England. Shot in black and white using lenses manufactured in the 1930s, and in the archaic 1.19:1 aspect ratio, Eggers’ nightmarish vision felt anything but old hat. After years of credible indie character work, Pattinson put the final nail in Edward Cullen’s coffin while wrestling with vindictive seagulls and mermaid vaginas. As for Dafoe, no other actor could so convincingly spit pages of dialogue penned in authentic 19th Century Main dialect. “Nothing good happens when two men are trapped in a giant phallus,” quipped Eggers. We beg to differ – The Lighthouse was peerless filmmaking from a director emerging as one of contemporary horror’s true trailblazers.”
From People:
“8. Tenet
A dazzling — and frequently dizzying — time-bending action thriller. (On digital Dec. 15)”
From Associated Press (Lindsey Bahr)
“7. “Tenetâ€: “Tenet†was one of the only films this year that I saw on the big screen, having spent the first few months of the year on maternity leave and the rest in pandemic lockdown. Although it’s hard to separate from the experience of simply being in a theater, there was no more thrilling, glamorous and purely cinematic film this year.”
Total Film (via @sallyvg)
Tenet is No. 1 according to Total Film.
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