Top 25 Movies of 2020

So here’s my absolutely lukewarm take: 2020 was a weird year for movies. The COVID-19 pandemic proved cataclysmic to the entertainment industry, delaying the release of most major tentpole franchise films, and only time will tell how Hollywood will recover. Still, if you knew where to look, there were plenty of cinematic gems to enjoy, and more than ever they streamed straight to our homes. 

The Oscars came a few months late this year, and so my list is similarly late, but I’m grateful to have gotten a little extra time to gestate and consider my favorites. As ever, this list is deeply subjective, but I think it represents what turned out to be an inexplicably solid year in film.

Honorable mentions: 

Soul (Disney +) - some convoluted worldbuilding on the front end makes way for an ultimately life-affirming Pixar story

Kid Detective (VOD) - a neo-noir pastiche/dark comedy starring Adam Brody! Yes please!

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Netflix) - Charlie Kaufman is off the rails with this one, but the cast is fantastic and I enjoyed thinking about it after the fact. More so than Tenet anyway.

Onward (Disney +) - this fantasy/adventure may not be peak Pixar, but it is fun and sweet and certainly earns its tears

The Invisible Man (HBOMax) - Elizabeth Moss is the latest to deliver a phenomenal genre performance and get ignored by the academy

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Netflix) - hard to believe this was written before the summer of 2020, it feels so damn timely!

Possessor (Hulu) - turns out Brandon Cronenberg is just as visionary (and just as freaky) as his dad

The Father (VOD) - Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman are revelatory in this experimental dementia drama, which is very good but such a tough hang

Happiest Season (Hulu) - Hallmark Christmas movie but make it gay! And actually GOOD!

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix) - RIP Chadwick, what a stellar performance to leave us with

The Wolf of Snow Hollow (VOD) - Jim Cummings’ sophomore feature combines small-town detective mystery with werewolves and an idiosyncratic sense of humor

Save Yourselves (Hulu) - an authentically Millennial alien invasion film that dares to ask the question: what if phones are good, actually?

My Octopus Teacher (Netflix) - a powerful true story about how nature can save us

Another Round (Hulu) - it’s the responsible ones you have to watch out for

Lover’s Rock (Amazon Prime) - part of Steve McQueen’s experimental Small Axe series, with THE scene of the year (“Funny Games”)

The King of Staten Island (Amazon Prime) - Pete Davidson plays himself so well

The Assistant (Hulu) - what if a predatory Hollywood executive was also Jaws from the movie Jaws?

Blow the Man Down (Amazon Prime) - seaside Fargo with an excellent Margo Martindale performance

The Nest (Hulu) - Carrie Coon is fantastic as the restless housewife of an ambitious but feckless businessman (Jude Law) in 1980s London

The LIST

25. Crip Camp - 9/10 (100% RT) Netflix

“I had to try to adapt. I had to fit into this world that wasn’t built for me.”

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution follows a group of disability activists in the 1970s and 80s who had met at camp decades before, and whose work was central to the passage of legislation aimed at creating a more accessible world. It’s a powerful story with a number of impactful moments, but the one that truly floored me was when disabled protestors crawled up the Capitol steps, in front of God and the American people. They were prophets, telling a hard truth to a hostile and unprepared world until things finally changed. Crip Camp inspires hope that the brave few can and do make a difference, while also offering a sober reminder that only vigilance, persistence and sheer audacity can sustain social change.

24. Collective - 9/10 (99% RT) Hulu

“When the press bows down to the authorities, the authorities will mistreat the citizens. This has always happened, worldwide, and it has happened to us.”

Before the last couple years, I wouldn’t have claimed to enjoy documentaries very much. I also wouldn't have identified as much of a foreign-film fan. How funny, then, that my list this year boasts more than a couple documentaries, and one of the very best was Romania’s Collective, which examines the 2015 Colectiv club fire, and the medical malpractice that resulted in dozens of hospital deaths in the following weeks. The first half of the story follows the tenacious journalists who uncovered the corruption underpinning Romania’s medical system, and in the second we meet the new Minister of Health, a bright-eyed young bureaucrat desperately trying to reform the system in the face of entrenched corruption. It’s 50% All the President’s Men, 50% Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 100% infuriating.

23. Time - 9/10 (98% RT) Amazon Prime

“They will cut from education, they will cut from health care, but they will not cut that [prison] budget.”

What is the purpose of our criminal justice system? Is it punishing wrongdoers? Or rehabilitating criminals? Restoration or retaliation? These are big questions, but the stakes are very real, and powerfully explored in the documentary Time, whose story centers on Sibil Richardson (Fox Rich), her two-decades-long incarcerated husband and their four now-grown sons. The film puts faces to one of America’s great moral failures: a criminal justice system which criminalizes blackness more than it doles out any legitimate form of justice.

22. Babyteeth - 9/10 (93% RT) Hulu

“I don't think the world would be this big or weird if we were meant to choose just one thing.”

The "sick girl" indie movie is well-trod territory, so it would take some real finesse and vision to make it feel fresh again. Enter Babyteeth, Shannon Murphy's Australian coming-of-age drama starring four absolute gems in central roles (Boys in the Trees' Toby Wallace, Little Women's Eliza Scanlen, The Babadook's Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn of a thousand villainous roles). This time Scanlen is our sick girl, but the story actually allows her some real personality, verve, vulnerability, even some rebelliousness. She never comes across as some etherial waif or noble sufferer. Babyteeth also allows her parents (Davis and Mendelsohn) to be complicated, fully-enfleshed characters themselves. The final product may not break entirely new ground, but it has all the emotional intelligence and heart that you could expect from a story like this.

21. His House - 9/10 (100% RT) Netflix

“Your ghosts follow you. They never leave. They live with you.”

I love when horror is leveraged to explore deeper themes, whether they be social (Get Out), familial (Hereditary), or psychological (The Shining). Rarely can a film accomplish all of these at the same time, but Netflix’s His House manages just that. Not only is it an excellent haunted house feature, it is also a powerful, relentless evocation of the refugee experience full of superb performances. It also offers the best answer I’ve ever seen to the classic genre question: if your house is haunted, why not just move away?

20. Relic - 9/10 (92% RT) VOD

“This house seems… unfamiliar.”

His House wasn’t 2020’s only psychologically-probing and thematically-rich horror movie. Indeed, Australian filmmaker Natalie Erika James’ debut Relic is the latest entry in the elevated horror cannon, utilizing haunted house tropes to explore the horrors of dementia. Sure, others have attempted this genre fusion before, but while 2014’s The Taking of Deborah Logan boasted some campy thrills, Relic is an emotionally honest, raw, sympathetic genre exercise which honors the severity and terror of losing one’s memory, while keeping everything grounded in character and familial love. It is also a contender for the best ending of the year. 

19. Birds of Prey - 9/10 (78% RT) HBOMax

“You know what they say: behind every successful man is a badass broad.”

Kathy Yan’s Birds of Prey was everything I wanted Suicide Squad to be and more. Margot Robbie gives her all 100% of the time in everything, and DC’s latest antihero team-up featured some of the best action set-pieces and fight scenes in any recent comic book movie PERIOD. This is the movie Harley Quinn deserves. Just goes to show that taking a chance and hiring indie directors for big franchise movies is a good instinct, but they don’t always have to be white dudes COLIN TREVORROW.

18. Da 5 Bloods - 9/10 (92% RT) Netflix

“War is about money. Money is about war. Every time I walk out my front door, I see cops patrolling my neighborhood like it’s some kind of police state. I can feel just how much I ain’t worth.”

Here’s my unified theory of the last year in cinema: In 2020, some of our greatest auteurs produced films that are not their best, but they are their most. Let me explain: Tenet is certainly not the best Christopher Nolan movie, but it may be the MOST Christopher Nolan movie. In it, all the director’s quirks and preoccupations (BIG ACTION SET-PIECES, NONLINEAR STORYTELLING, TIME) are on full display. Same with Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things (DEATH, EXISTENTIAL ENNUI, REGRET), or Aaron Sorkin’s Trial of the Chicago 7 (COURTROOM DRAMA, QUIPPY DIALOGUE, PROGRESSIVE POLITICS). My favorite of this bunch is Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, a shaggy, bombastic and didactic adventure story about the Vietnam War, buried treasure, and the exploitation of black soldiers abroad at a time when they were hardly treated like human beings at home. It’s Spike at his Spike-iest, but for one of our greatest living storytellers, that’s hardly a bad thing. 

17. Judas and the Black Messiah - 9/10 (96% RT) HBOMax

“Words are beautiful, but action is supreme.”

The Chicago Black Panther Party’s visionary young leader Fred Hampton showed up in two very different films last year, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah. While Sorkin’s courtroom drama paints Hampton’s death as unjust, it stops short of implicating the entire American system of government. One gets the impression that Sorkin fundamentally believes in our institutions, even while acknowledging their shortcomings. King’s Black Messiah, on the other hand, has revolution on its mind. In it we meet Hampton, see his humanity, his family life, his hopes and foibles, so we can feel the injustice of his assassination. Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Black Panther, Widows, Queen & Slim) brings Hampton to life with a characteristic fire, and may well bring home an Oscar for it.

16. Black Bear - 9.5/10 (90% RT) VOD

“Just tell me you love me. Please. You don’t have to mean it.”

Aubrey Plaza may have won 2020. I adored Happiest Season, in which she absolutely stole the show, but Black Bear is a different beast entirely. The former is a queer holiday crowd-pleaser; the latter a nasty, utterly riveting but nigh-inscrutible micro-budget indie mystery about the dysfunction of young creatives. Black Bear’s characters are truly abysmal to each other, a grotesque caricature of how Boomers imagine Hollywood liberals to be. All the performances are cryptic and compelling, particularly Plaza's lead but also Sarah Gadon and Christopher Abbott (who has no light in his eyes) in supporting turns. The whole thing is hazy and ineffable, like a Millennial Mulholland Drive. Not for everyone, but certainly for me.

15. Kajillionaire - 9.5/10 (90% RT) VOD

“Life is nothing. Just let it go without really thinking about it.”

There’s an otherworldly quality to Evan Rachel Wood, and a frank, down-to-earth sensibility to Gina Rodriguez. Miranda July’s Kajillionaire, a quirky crime dramedy unlike anything I’ve ever seen, plays the two off each other perfectly. Also blessing our screens are the iconic Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger, playing the parents of an adult daughter (Wood’s Old Dolio), the three together comprising a family of small-time con artists working minor grifts to scrape by. All told Kajillionaire boasts an excellent cast, an off-kilter sensibility that’s more compelling than cloying, and one of the year's best scenes in which the con-family plays house.

14. One Night in Miami - 9.5/10 (98% RT) Amazon Prime

Regina King’s name means “Queen King” and yeah... that about sums in up. What can’t she do?!? One Night in Miami may be the director's debut, but her years of absolutely owning it on-screen have paved the way for a directorial career marked by superb storytelling skills, excellent visual instincts and a way of pulling top-tier performances out of her actors. Leslie Odom Jr. is my pick for standout performance, playing singer-songwriter Sam Cooke against other historical figures like Malcolm X, Muhammed Ali and Jim Brown, but the cast is uniformly excellent, and the dialogue works well from a character perspective and as a representation of adjacent-yet-opposing world-views. Like another 2020 political drama, The Trial of the Chicago 7 (which I keep mentioning even though it didn't crack my top 25), King’s debut represents both moderate and radical voices with empathy and insight. And as 2020 stage-to-screen adaptations go, One Night in Miami has the slight edge over Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom for its visual inventiveness and cinematic flourishes.

13. The Vast of Night - 9.5/10 (92% RT) Amazon Prime

“You are entering a realm between clandestine and forgotten; a slipstream caught between channels; a secret museum of mankind; the private library of shadows; all taking place on a stage forged from mystery and found only on a frequency caught between logic and myth... you are entering 'Paradox Theater.”

The Vast of Night feels like it was made specifically to delight me. It has everything! Great visual instincts from first-time filmmaker Andrew Patterson, snappy, dialogue-driven scenes that keep the action intimate while showcasing the chemistry between well-matched leads, and an elegantly simple premise that manages to breathe new life into well-worn genres and tropes. Also aliens! Overall, The Vast of Night is first-rate indie sci-fi, like an old-fashioned radio serial come-to-life.

12. First Cow - 9.5/10 (96% RT) Hulu

“History isn't here yet. It's coming, but maybe this time we can take it on our own terms.”

Can gentleness and vulnerability survive in a harsh, brutal world? Kelly Reichardt’s latest suggests that the answer may be yes, but not without a little help from our friends. While the Meek’s Cutoff director tends to err on the slow side of storytelling, I found her latest feature to be utterly engrossing. Sure, First Cow’s pace may be slow, but the visuals of Oregon’s lush forests and rivers are breathtaking, and the heart of this story, the friendship between an on-the-run Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee) and a sensitive frontier cook (John Magaro), is emotionally rich and satisfying.

11. Love and Monsters - 9.5/10 (93% RT) VOD

My biggest surprise this year may have been Michael Matthews’ Love and Monsters, a post-apocalyptic coming-of-age adventure in the Zombieland vein. I have to believe this thing would’ve made a bigger splash if not for the pandemic; it’s just so fun! Following a young man who braves a hellish, monster-infested American landscape to find and save the girl he loves, Love and Monsters boasts so much heart, genuine humor, and a fresh voice that reinvigorates some admittedly-tired genre material. All that plus charming performances, poignant thematic material, and 2020’s Best Supporting Dog. God, they just don’t make ‘em like this anymore.

10. Promising Young Woman - 9.5/10 (91% RT) VOD

“Can you guess what every woman's worst nightmare is?”

Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman is a nasty little revenge thriller full of excellent performances (especially Carey Mulligan and Bo Burnham). Some have struggled with the film’s ending, and that’s certainly understandable if you expect any amount of catharsis from the story, but for my money I think Fennell threads the needle quite well. Promising Young Woman lays bare the predatory forces of toxic masculinity in nice-guy disguises, and the systems which enable their abuse, while also demonstrating the consequences of single-minded revenge (no matter how justified) on the human soul.

9. Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always - 9.5/10 (99% RT) HBOMax

“Your partner has frightened or threatened you; never, rarely, sometime, or always?”

Abortion is such a fraught political issue that it’s hard to remember how deeply personal it is for so many young women who undergo the procedure each year. No matter where you fall on the spectrum from pro-choice to pro-life, I recommend watching Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always, a soulful, quiet portrayal of two young women journeying from small-town Pennsylvania to New York City so one of them can terminate her pregnancy. I suspect this tender little story could help make the controversies less abstract and more tangible for you; it certainly did for me. The film’s titular scene, in which a clinician interviews the young protagonist (Sidney Flanigan in her debut role) about her history of abuse, proved especially convicting and harrowing.

8. Sound of Metal - 9.5/10 (97% RT) Amazon Prime

“The world does keep moving, and it can be a damn cruel place. But for me, those moments of stillness, that place, that's the kingdom of God.”

Sound of Metal is sort of a Quaker film when you think about it, preoccupied as it is with the interplay between spirituality and silence. It’s also a visceral portrayal of addiction, disability and communities born of solidarity and shared adversity. Anchored by Riz Ahmed’s raw, authentic performance as a heavy metal drummer experiencing sudden hearing loss, Darius Marder’s debut is one of the year’s very best films. Also worth noting is Paul Raci’s supporting performance as a recovering alcoholic who runs a shelter for deaf addicts. He’s truly exceptional in this late-in-career breakout role.

7. David Byrne’s American Utopia - 9.5/10 (98% RT) HBOMax

“What if we could eliminate everything from the stage except the things we care about the most?

If you like Johnathan Demme’s seminal concert doc Stop Making Sense, you will love the Spike Lee-directed American Utopia. In it Talking Head’s David Byrne waxes philosophic on the state of American life through his famously dry, eccentric lens. Byrne is clear-eyed about the challenges facing us, but his quasi-sermon, interwoven with classic Talking Heads songs, actually managed to make me feel hopeful. And his cover of Janelle Monae’s protest song “Hell You Talmbout” was one of the more powerful movie moments of the year.

6. Wolfwalkers - 9.5/10 (99% RT) Apple TV+

“We didn’t know the Wolfwalkers were real. That you were people.”

Traditional animation may be dead, but only in America. The rest of the world continues to craft painterly, visually resplendent animation, and some of my favorite animated features of the last few years have come from Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon studio (Song of the Sea, The Secret of Kels). Wolfwalkers may be my favorite of the bunch, with its stained glass landscapes, fierce characterizations and robust thematic wrestling with nature and the political forces that seek to tame it. Director Tomm Moore’s latest is timely, beautiful, heartbreaking and thrilling all at once. I really can’t say enough nice things about it.

5. Palm Springs - 9.5/10 (95% RT) Hulu

A handful of movies that came out last year managed to capture, almost uncannily, the experience of living in quarantine. The most potent example was Palm Springs, a high concept sci-fi comedy about two would-be lovers caught in a time-loop together. While some version of the premise has been done before (Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow), it sure hit different while we were all stuck at home, essentially living the same day over and over ourselves. Palm Spring’s laughs are genuine, its twists are shocking, and the chemistry between the two leads is unreal. In fact, Cristin Milioti is so much better than we deserve, and ought to have become a much bigger star by now. Also, Andy Samberg is a national treasure.

4. Dick Johnson is Dead - 10/10 (100%) Netflix

“What loving demands is that we face the fear of losing each other.”

My favorite documentary last year, which was inexplicably looked over by the Academy (a habit of theirs), was Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson is Dead. The cinematographer-turned-documentarian is best known for 2016’s Cameraperson, in which she explored feelings around her mother’s imminent passing through a tableau of eclectic footage from her career. Dick Johnson is Dead shifts focus to Johnson’s father, imagining dozens of potential death scenarios for the aging patriarch, who acts them out himself, over and over. While the premise may seem strange, the finished product is among the most life-affirming experiences I had last year, a time when I desperately needed one. It is a beautiful work of grace in the face of life’s ultimate hardship.

3. Minari - 10/10 (98% RT) VOD

“Minari is truly the best. It grows anywhere, like weeds. So anyone can pick and eat it. Rich or poor, anyone can enjoy it and be healthy. Minari can be put in kimchi, put in stew, put in soup. It can be medicine if you are sick. Minari is wonderful, wonderful!”

Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari is, fundamentally, a story about a boy and his grandma. It reminded me of a story of my own: My own grandma and I used to race each other, running up and down the halls of her house. When I was very little, she let me win. Then, when I got a little older, I let her win. One day she tripped on one of my toys, fell and broke her hip. She couldn’t race me after that, never again. I miss her very much, and was grateful for a story that evoked her memory so powerfully. Minari is a film full of grace, moments of blessed reprieve from life’s brutality. It is a deeply American story which manages to be clear-eyed about the turmoil of the immigrant experience while leaving room for light to shine through the cracks. Stunning.

2. Nomadland - 10/10 (94% RT) Hulu

“Maybe when I die, my friends will gather around the fire, and toss a rock into the fire in memory of me.”

Nomadland is a humanistic marvel, boasting all the intimacy of a close up and all the majesty of a sweeping vista. It’s as though Frances McDormand was able to harness all the fire she tends to unleash in her showier performances and focus it inward, creating a character just as gutsy and determined as your typical McDormand protagonist, but with such depth, such gentle pathos. Her vulnerability is absolutely devastating. Every moment she’s on screen, every micro-expression, brought me to the verge of tears. Director Chloe Zhao, with McDormand as her muse, was able to translate the raw potential of her last feature (2018’s The Rider) into a more polished, even more impactful piece of storytelling, while maintaining her characteristic concern for life on the margins, and her fascination with utilizing non-professional actors to populate the worlds she creates. What a sobering work of beauty and empathy. I am so grateful for it.

1.  Shithouse - 10/10 (97% RT) VOD

“Why is college so hard?”

I wasn’t sure 2020 would yield any fresh-faced coming-of-age indie comedies like years past (Lady Bird, Eighth Grade, Booksmart etc), but I’m so grateful to have found one: the provocatively-titled but ultimately guileless Shithouse. It was, truly, a balm for my weary soul. Writer/director/star Cooper Raiff’s debut is a perfect blend of sincerity and authenticity, like Richard Linklater meets Greta Gerwig, but with an added Gen Z flair because Raiff is 22 YEARS OLD. But the movie is so good I can’t even resent him for it. Thanks, Cooper. You managed to make something that, briefly, helped me forget what a dumpster fire 2020 was. I will be first in line for your next feature. Assuming the world doesn’t end first.