End of Year MOVIE JOURNAL 2020

[Chris Knipp]

THE HALF OF IT (Alice Wu 2020). A 15-years-later followup to Wu's debut film, SAVING FACE, it's a Cyrano story set at in high school in a remote Wash. state town. The spokesperson for the inarticulate, sweet football hunk Paulie (Daniel Diemer) who's in love with Aster Flores (Alexxis Lemire) is small, smart, gay Chinese American Ellie Chu (eah Lewis), who's also in love with Aster. But a beautiful friendship between Ellie and Paul grow up. A conventional feel-good story which yet breaks new ground and is smart, it was on Variety's "The Best Under-the-Radar Films of 2020" list. Netflix, Dec. 27. Metascore: 74%.