Why 2020 is the best year for movies

Starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, this thriller centers on an English entrepreneur in the s who moves his American family from the U. There, they must contend with a new life that poses financial and cultural difficulties. You may also like: 50 best space movies of all time.

After mistakenly killing a police officer, the leader of a gang of motorcycle thieves goes on the lam from the cops and his mob enemies with a bounty on his head. The vengeful spirit of a native Mayan woman returns to torment the man responsible for killing her and her three children during a military attack 30 years ago in Guatemala. Based on the eponymous novel, the story centers on a young Jewish boy in war-torn Eastern Europe who wanders the land seeking shelter and struggling to survive.

Two friends coming of age in Scotland are about to go down completely different life paths but are determined to attend an illegal rave before they have to part ways. A young woman contemplates breaking up with her boyfriend while en route to dinner with his parents on their isolated farmhouse, but the evening grows stranger by the minute. You may also like: Mistakes from the worst movies of all time.

This Georgian drama received a minute standing ovation upon its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. A look at the troubled life of INXS lead singer and songwriter Michael Hutchence, this documentary paints a touching portrait of an artist taken too soon. The film utilizes various media, including private home videos, rare archive footage, outtakes, and audio recordings from friends, family, and colleagues.

Though the two are set on never speaking again after the task is completed, the journey brings them together through unexpected means. A high school student leaves his remote home for the hub of Tokyo, where he meets an orphan girl who has the power to manipulate the weather. You may also like: How are women portrayed in top-grossing movies? Four Black Vietnam War veterans return to the country under the guise of a reunion—but with the intention of retrieving the lost body of their former squad leader and unclaimed riches hidden deep in the jungle.

Their journey is impeded by the lasting trauma of their time spent in battle. Lead actor Delroy Lindo garnered critical acclaim for his performance in the film, with an impending Oscar campaign on the horizon. An Australian teen diagnosed with cancer falls for a small-time drug dealer, and though her relationship with her disapproving parents becomes strained, she discovers a newfound zeal for life in the wake of her problematic romance.

The two must soon work together to keep the alien from being captured by a nefarious organization. An off-duty police chief whose wife recently died in a car accident begins to suspect that a local man may have been having an affair with her, and his determination to uncover the truth descends into unhealthy obsession. Though intended to be the last film in the series, a third film with a planned release has since been confirmed.

You may also like: monumental movies from film history and why you need to see them. Beloved Long Island superintendent Frank Tassone has spent his entire career working to craft an image of empathy, charisma, and achievement to maintain the prestige of his district. When a student journalist uncovers an elaborate embezzlement scheme, Frank must go to great lengths to cover it up. In the s, two kids in a small New Mexico town discover a mysterious radio frequency, and their quest to find the source leads them to the potential presence of alien life.

It is based on actual reported experiences people claimed to have had with extraterrestrials. A playwright struggling to make her big break in New York City decides to pivot her artistic pursuits to rapping, as her looming 40th birthday makes her desperate to salvage her creative voice.

The comedy is directed by, written by, and stars Radha Blank in a fictionalized version of her journey toward artistic fulfillment. This comedy-drama centers on a young woman who starts off her summer by getting an abortion and promptly follows it by beginning her stint nannying for the 6-year-old girl of a wealthy family, eventually forming a friendship.

You may also like: Mistakes from the 50 best movies of all time. Four Copenhagen teachers decide to embark on a drinking experiment—one which involves drinking enough and for long enough to stay at a consistent, low-level of intoxication—to see how it affects their daily lives. Upon his release from a juvenile detention center, a young delinquent, now reformed, seeks the opportunity to become a priest. The film was nominated for numerous awards, winning 11 Polish Academy Awards and garnering a nomination for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Oscars.

Inspired by the Paris riots of , this French drama follows a man who joins the Anti-Crime Brigade of Montfermeil, working alongside his unethical teammates and becoming privy to the mounting tensions between the different gangs within the district.

This documentary chronicles the blossoming of a unique friendship—one between a Czech artist and the man who robbed her two paintings. Over the course of three years, Barbora Kysilkova makes the thief the subject of her art while still searching for the work that he stole. You may also like: Best picture winner from the year you were born.

The newest film from acclaimed director-screenwriter Aaron Sorkin details the infamous trial of seven organizers of an intended peaceful protest at the Democratic National Convention, one which turned violent and ended with them charged for conspiracy.

This documentary-drama hybrid takes a look at the increasingly negative societal impacts of social media and its startling influence on everything from mental health to politics to conspiracy theories—including its exploitation of users via data mining and surveillance capitalism. When one of the characters, Pepe the Frog, is co-opted as a hate symbol by the alt-right, Furie begins his too-late struggle to reclaim and redeem his character.

The documentary won the U. In post-WWII Leningrad, two women both uniquely afflicted by their time spent in the war struggle to return to their lives amid the death and wreckage that surrounds them. Uniquely traumatized, an impressionable young nurse named Maud seeks an ardently pious path. Charged with the hospice care of a cancer patient, Maud becomes intent on reforming the former hedonistic dancer to save her soul before death.

You may also like: Hitchcock vs. Spielberg: How the legendary directors stack up. Female professional baseball players Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel have kept their love affair a secret from their families and finally come out seven decades later in this touching documentary.

The titular Cape Verdean arrives in Lisbon after the funeral of her husband, whose secret double life makes itself more known to her the longer she stays there. This Portuguese drama film stars non-professional actor Vitalina Varela telling the real story of her life. This documentary takes a look at how two different countries handled the coronavirus pandemic—the United States and South Korea.

Both discovered their first cases on Jan. After a friend of his died from COVID and the other was put on a ventilator, co-director Alex Gibney wanted to make a film to express how he felt the U. Following the death of the beloved matriarch of a Brazilian village, the villagers begin to experience a series of strange events, including their village disappearing from online maps.

The arrival of a group of foreigners reveals that the villagers are not all that they seem. A young boy and his mother go to the house of his late aunt to spend the summer cleaning out her things. Having difficulty finding friends his own age, he forms an unlikely bond with the Korean War veteran who lives next door.

You may also like: Movie trivia for the top films of all time. But when Sarah accidentally steps through the portal of a time loop, she learns Nyles has been stuck the whole time, and the two are now trapped living the same day together.

The rom-com held its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in , where it was sold to Hulu for a record-breaking price. In the s Northwest, two lonely travelers converge by chance and bond over their dreams of finding fortune in the United States.

You may also like: Worst movies from the last decade, according to critics. A thousand teenage boys come together at Boys State in Austin, Texas, a camp where they are made to build their own representative government. There, they navigate the unique challenge of participating in politics, as the documentary depicts the divisions already forming in the next generation.

It won the U. This harrowing documentary follows the Indianapolis Star reporters who exposed Dr. Taking a look at depictions of transgender people in Hollywood, this documentary follows how such portrayals have influenced both audience perceptions of trans people and affected the lives of trans people themselves.

Beginning in , this documentary chronicles Camp Jened, a facility in upstate New York for teenagers with disabilities, as well as those campers who eventually went on to become disability rights movement activists.

You may also like: best John Wayne movies. With her father quickly approaching the end of his life, filmmaker Kirsten Johnson decided to cope through an unusual means—staging and filming his death in a variety of humorous fashions.

In this offbeat documentary, Johnson explores mortality and celebrates the life of her father by confronting his death head-on.

But for those of us who still cherish the idea of communal viewing, and who still crave that feeling that occurs when the lights in a theater dim, the idea of those same house lights staying dark forever was one more casualty of life circa To say that there were no good movies in , however, is dead wrong — there were actually a lot of great movies that we were lucky to see this year.

We just ended up seeing them via virtual cinemas the unheralded saviors of cinephilia this year, support one today and VOD services and, of course, the now omnipresent corporate streamers.

But they were there, some of which were holdovers from last year, some of which finished production just under the shutdown wire, and some that managed to be completed in the most trying of circumstances. Here are the top 20 films of from a life-affirming concert movie to a soul-saving portrait of a dance party, a Romanian documentary to Guatemalan ghost story, a black-and-white throwback to Old Hollywood to a pulpy colonialist revenge thriller in vivid living color.

Newswire Powered by. You can see the fire in Leslie Odom Jr. Dropped on the streaming service right in the middle of lockdown, Hamilton was vital escapism — and completely democratised a theatrical experience that everyone should seek out.

Much was made of the sheer technical achievement of Sam Mendes' World War I movie, presented as one extended take through the Boschian hellscape of the frontlines.

And it is an astonishing feat — seamlessly stitched together, Roger Deakins' camerawork fluidly taking in every assault and eerie landscape. But is an emotional, visceral experience too, George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman putting in excellent, empathetic performances as the soldiers dispatched across No Man's Land to stop thousands of British soldiers walking into a devastating ambush. A frequently harrowing, heart-stoppingly tense cinematic odyssey — and filmmaking at its most immersive. Following two young African Americans who meet on a Tinder date and get plunged into a nightmare when a cop car pulls them over, Melina Matsoukas' film tackled police brutality and mass protest in scenes that echoed out in real life as the year progressed.

A road movie with an important destination, it gets there in style. Right from its opening minutes, the sense of time and place in the first of Steve McQueen's Small Axe films is utterly transportive. The filmmaker faithfully recreates s Notting Hill to shine a light on Frank Crichlow and the 'Mangrove Nine' — a true story of police brutality, institutionalised racism, and a Black community fighting for the right to live without the constant threat of unprovoked attack, right in the heart of London.

In a year where so much focus was on racial inequality in America, it felt vital to see a story make clear that this is also very much a British issue. But for all that the police attack sequences feel visceral and distressing, McQueen's camera doesn't linger on the brutality, and he creates space to depict the joy and interior life of the neighbourhood's West Indian residents.

Filled with powerful imagery of protests, and depicting a court case which saw Black British people defend themselves in their own voices, Mangrove is captivating and essential. A spiritual successor to Boy and Hunt For The Wilderpeople, it's another film about a lost boy and the role models he chooses to help him chart a path into adulthood.

As you'd expect with Taika, there are imaginary friends, meticulously framed images, and montages set to pop music. And… Nazis? Yes, because Jojo, living in Germany near the end of World War II, has unquestioningly swallowed Nazi propaganda, and his imaginary friend is a rancid, hate-spewing version of Hitler played by Waititi himself.

Waititi unwaveringly walks a tonal tightrope that moves swiftly from broad comedy to an unflinching embrace of the consequences of the war — and all with huge heaps of the heart that his films have had since day one, as young Jojo slowly bonds with the Jewish teenager Thomasin McKenzie his mother Scarlett Johansson is hiding in the walls of their home.

Long may Taika continue making his movie. In , the cheque might not be as blank, but it's clear Netflix or as they're here temporarily retitled, 'Netflix International Studios' have given David Fincher the carte blanche he deserves to make precisely the film he wanted to make: a typically meticulous monochrome masterpiece. The personal parallels are everywhere: in telling the story of a genius creative obsessed by a Hollywood he doesn't quite fit into, it may be the closest to a Fincher autobiography we'll ever get — given added personal dimension by the script, written by Fincher Sr.

But it's also a sad portrait of a self-destructive artist, making his best work at the expense of almost everything. The deep dives into the intricacies of Old Hollywood will be too specific for some, but for Golden Age film nerds, it's absolute heaven.

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. Aubyn, in a sensational debut as she sneaks out of her family home to go to a party in s West London. She always gives you an authentic truth.

But while the period details are specific, the story of desire and deceit is timeless. Christy Lemire. The title is the list of possible answers to a series of sensitive questions a social worker asks a pregnant teenager seeking an abortion.

As she tries to select the right option to answer each question, we see a dozen memories and emotions flicker across her face. It is one of the year's most unforgettable scenes. We never find out who is responsible for Autumn's pregnancy or what the circumstances were, but her answer to questions about whether she consented to sexual contact is not "always. Autumn and her cousin Skylar Talia Ryder take a bus from Pennsylvania to New York because that is the only way Autumn can get an abortion without her mother and stepfather finding out.

In an interview , Hittman told me she wanted to "reclaim the narrative" on reproductive rights with a woman's perspective. She tells the story with great tenderness, more protective of the two girls than the other characters are. Hittman's intimate, documentary tone illuminates the girls' vulnerability, their determination, and their resilience. Nell Minow. Its first major tragedy alone, involving the death of a child, may be too much for some to bear.

It is a masterful film that works on multiple levels—a deeply empathetic character study anchored by two breathtaking performances and also a study in Russian history made with some of the most impressive craft of the year.

The stunningly naturalistic Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina —both newcomers who should have long careers—play Iya and Masha, two very different survivors. Iya has deep trauma—both physical and mental—that leads to events in which she appears to simply freeze up, lost in horrible memory. It's further proof that cinema is a uniting force, finding the relatable emotion and humanity across culture and time.

Brian Tallerico. There aren't a million different stories to be told. Most stories, even personal ones, contain familiar elements or come from similar sources. For example, the story of NASA, told in countless films and documentaries, was incomplete until the "hidden figures" of African-American mathematicians and engineers were revealed. And so the lens got wider. The story didn't lessen in relevance, but expands because more people are included in it.

Jacob Steven Yeun and Monica Yeri Han , Korean immigrants, make the bold choice to leave their jobs as chicken sexers in California, to move to Arkansas with their two small children, chasing Jacob's dream to start a small farm.