DA 5 BLOODS (2020) and LET THEM ALL TALK (2020)

2020 saw two of America's most celebrated auteurs, Spike Lee and Steven Soderbergh, exploring the thin divide between boomers and millennials in surprisingly similar ways. Though DA 5 BLOODS is a free-wheeling and aggressive tale of Black Vietnam vets and LET THEM ALL TALK is a steady examination of old college pals reuniting on a transcontinental cruise, the character dynamics aren't all that dissimilar: the old friends have similar ranges of success and bitterness, each accepting the other' differences without ever internalizing them. Additionally, they are both followed on their trips by a member of the younger generation in a fruitless search for elderly wisdom.

Lee and Soderbergh remain two of the most formally daring and incisive filmmakers working today, and it's telling that they both gravitated to this material. Each film is a lamentation of how time can erode even the strongest bonds, no matter the circumstance or the generation.