Best Films of 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 radically altered the cinema landscape (and that of television, which I’ll address shortly) for at least the foreseeable future. Productions were shut down. In-development projects were put on hold. Festivals were canceled or reconfigured as digital events. Films scheduled for theatrical release were pushed back indefinitely or sold to streaming platforms. The drive-in experience was revived, but indoor movie theaters were shuttered—many, independents and chains alike, now facing uncertain survival.
I’ve already spent hours discussing (speculating, really) the long-term implications of the pandemic for the film industry on my podcast, so I won’t bore readers here. Suffice to say it’s entirely in flux, and the only clear takeaway at this point is that COVID-19 has accelerated the timeline for the inevitable convergence of film and television. After all, we watched movies and television the same way all year: from the couch, through streaming platforms (to be honest, I’m still a champion of physical media, so I watched many movies on disc, but that’s a topic for another day). And Steve McQueen’s critically-acclaimed Small Axe anthology series of five films, three of which premiered in film festivals before the entire series was commercially released through Amazon Prime streaming, completely blurred the lines between the two mediums. My stance: it qualifies as both—as one thematically-conceived and geographically-connected series for best TV lists and as distinct, standalone films for best movie lists. For that reason, along with the fact that I just didn’t watch as much new television programming in 2020, I’m including my TV favorites in this piece instead of a separate article.
In contrast to past years, I’m not drawing connections or analyzing recurring themes for the 2020 year in film. Because the movie calendar was thrown into disarray, and so many films we were supposed to get have been moved to 2021 (hopefully), it’s a less compelling and complete exercise. Moreover, the total upending of our world in 2020 makes it a futile effort to identify something as representative of this moment. Let’s be honest: the only true “essential cinema” of the year was recorded on smartphones at protests and in hospitals and broadcast to the world through social media.
Taking all of the above into consideration, it’s no surprise that the 2020 film year underwhelmed. Hundreds of movies were still released (the vast majority straight to digital), but, generally, it was harder to keep track of the what, where, and when for Video On Demand releases, and this diminished enthusiasm even among my cinephile friends. In terms of moviegoing, I was only able to watch five films in a theatrical setting (compared with my historical average of 80), and one of those was an uneasy trip to see Tenet in IMAX, which necessitated Contagion-level pandemic precautions and Christopher Nolan-worthy precision timing. Not the ideal viewing experience! Tenet, of course, was one of the only big-budget, Hollywood tentpole films that saw the light of day, and between its foolhardy theatrical release and mixed reviews (though my appreciation of it grows with each successive viewing), it didn’t set the box office on fire. So spectacle was missing in a major way. The few comedies that came out didn’t hit the same in such a somber setting (and, to be candid, I often turned to TikTok for comic relief, not movies). Really, all entertainment landed differently in 2020, and many people gravitated toward content that was familiar and pleasurable to provide some comfort in a suddenly scary, unstable world. I know my own viewing habits shifted in that direction, and I did less cinematic “exploring” in 2020.
Using the word “best” to describe my annual list is always a dubious move, but it’s doubly so for 2020. That is to say, I’m not sure I even trust my own opinion after nearly a year of lockdown life and quarantine brain rot! I may need to revisit the 2020 slate again under more normal circumstances someday. Was 2020 a weak year for movies? At this moment, I would say yes. Granted, 2019 was unusually strong, and the disparity might therefore be magnified. My assessment, after watching 130 films from last year, is that there are actually quite a few strong to great 2020 pics, though perhaps only one bonafide masterpiece. But time will tell. After all, hindsight is… 20/20.
Below you will find my lists. First up is television. I’ve kept that section short because I didn’t deem it to be nearly as strong of a field as others have claimed. Maybe I just didn’t watch the right stuff. Notably unseen: The Boys, The Crown, Dark, The Great, High Fidelity, How To with John Wilson, Insecure, Mrs. America, Normal People, Ozark, The Plot Against America, Search Party, Unorthodox, We Are Who We Are, What We Do in the Shadows, and many more of your faves. Further down you will find the film list broken into three sections: additional films worth seeking out (“best of the rest”), honorable mentions, and the top ten. (Note: To be eligible, a film needed a U.S. commercial release, digital or theatrical, in 2020. Not eligible are films receiving early 2021 releases on account of the modified calendar for the 93rd Oscars in April.)
TV
Honorable Mentions
High Maintenance | Perry Mason | The Queen’s Gambit
Top Ten
10. PEN15 - More adolescent awkwardness and cringe comedy from co-creators and stars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle. I don’t know if it improves on S1, but it continues to resonate for this old millennial.
9. DEVS - I think it’s held back by the miscalibrated lead performance at the center of the story, but Alex Garland’s provocative, sci-fi vision is beautifully realized.
8. THE GOOD LORD BIRD - This historical fiction miniseries about abolitionist John Brown gives Ethan Hawke a juicy, outsized role as the notorious firebrand.
7. CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM - S10 won’t contend for best season, but Larry David’s series continues to be one of the most clever and consistent television comedies.
6. RICK AND MORTY - The fanboys have really tarnished this show’s reputation, huh? Unfortunate. After an underwhelming metatextual opener, S4p2 really soars as the familial tension continues to mount.
5. THE MANDALORIAN - S2 is such a vast improvement over S1 that it became appointment TV for me. Favreau and his team have honed the serialized structure, and I appreciate their commitment to the use of practical effects, e.g. puppetry. Unsung MVP: the end credits! Love the animated story art and Ludwig Göransson’s theme.
4. SMALL AXE - Steve McQueen’s five-part exploration of London’s West Indian immigrant community in the ’70s and ’80s is a storytelling feat and a formal dazzler. There’s a clear standout entry (which I’ll talk about it in the film section), but the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts.
3. BOJACK HORSEMAN - S6p2 is a beautiful, fitting conclusion to BoJack’s journey. It’s my all-time favorite animated series.
2. I MAY DESTROY YOU - A smart, timely depiction of sexuality, consent, trauma, and identity. That description makes it sound like a slog, but it’s not. Creator, writer, star, and showrunner Michaela Coel announces herself as a major creative force with her second series.
1. BETTER CALL SAUL - Are we ready to talk about how BCS is already as good as Breaking Bad and could surpass it in its next and final season? It’s a crime—and simply inexplicable at this point—that Rhea Seehorn’s work hasn’t been nominated for an Emmy. Tony Dalton’s performance as Lalo might be my favorite of the TV year.
FILM
Best of the Rest
The Assistant | Bacurau | Blow the Man Down | City Hall | Driveways | Ema | Feels Good Man | Fourteen | The Grand Bizarre | Mangrove | Never Rarely Sometimes Always | On the Rocks | Palm Springs | Promising Young Woman | A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon | Sibyl | Soul | Tenet | To the Ends of the Earth | Tommaso | The Twentieth Century | The Whistlers | The Wolf House | World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
Honorable Mentions
[Click the images for descriptions]
Top Ten
10. NOMADLAND
Chloé Zhao follows up her earnest and tender rodeo drama, The Rider, with another modern western in Nomadland. A loose adaptation of a non-fiction text, this soulful, fictionalized film follows the wandering path of Fern, who takes up a nomadic lifestyle shortly after her husband passes away. Living out of her van and traveling wherever she can find temporary work, Fern builds relationships with people of various nomadic communities as she grapples with an uncertain future. It’s a modest film of significant worth, detailing three striking landscapes: the American west (there’s so much natural beauty on display here), 21st century economic insecurity and inequality (which faintly preoccupies most of Fern’s interactions), and Frances McDormand's visage. McDormand, on whose shoulders the film largely rests, has one of the most demonstrative faces in cinema, and she knows how to use it.
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9. KAJILLIONAIRE
In the middle of Miranda July’s Kajillionaire, there is a scene in which a codependent family of grifters (two parents and their adult daughter), along with a complicit outsider, are asked by a dying man to perform a mundane bit of familial domesticity as they attempt to discreetly steal money from his house. Thus, the grifters are forced to playact in roles they’ve never fulfilled in their own lives. It’s a quirky, bittersweet moment of illumination for both the viewer and the characters, as well as an ideal example of July’s storytelling. Balancing off-kilter humor with tender, human moments is July’s bread and butter, and Kajillionaire, her third feature, is her best yet: a fully-formed and entirely unpredictable adult coming-of-age narrative of awakening, connection, and love, but filtered through the multi-hyphenate artist’s distinctive whimsy. It’s an unabashed sui generis piece of filmmaking.
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8. THE INVISIBLE MAN
The biggest surprise of the 2020 movie year is the artistic triumph of Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man. Not a remake of Universal’s 1933 The Invisible Man so much as a reworking of the material, the 2020 film flips the perspective from perpetrator to victim, which provides the horror picture a far more terrifying narrative basis. It’s a fresh, modern take that taps into the zeitgeist while also letting Whannell demonstrate his superb craftsmanship. By using fixed long shots and ample negative space in his compositions, Whannell trains the audience to constantly scan the frame for any slight, suspicious movement, turning even the most uneventful shot into an exercise in suspense. In my estimation, only Kiyoshi Kurosawa has so effectively deployed this technique before. But it would still all fall apart if not for the sublime work of Elisabeth Moss, whose fear and paranoia are chillingly palpable from the tense opening sequence onward. If we must reboot every old property, let’s hope they are tackled with the same ingenuity and virtuosity as Whannell’s The Invisible Man.
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7. POSSESSOR
Brandon Cronenberg appears poised to succeed his father, David Cronenberg, as the premier purveyor of body horror cinema. His second feature, Possessor, a gruesome psychological horror-thriller represents a major step forward in filmmaking for the young Canadian. In an alternative modern world, technology that allows a person to enter the mind of another and control their body is being used for corporate assassinations. Tasya Vos is one such assassin, whose repeated exposure to the mind-melding process has begun to destabilize her own psyche, which leaves her vulnerable on her new job to kill a tech CEO through the body of a troubled young man. Cronenberg realizes his sci-fi milieu with idiosyncratic production design (including eccentric, quasi-analog retro tech), eye-popping special effects, and nightmare fuel imagery. Punctuated by horrific, grisly violence, this offbeat, elliptical mind-trip explores the act of concealing and confronting one’s true identity. As gruesome as it is gripping, Possessor will likely earn a cult following, and rightfully so.
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6. A WHITE, WHITE DAY
There’s an unforgettable scene in Hlynur Pálmason’s A White, White Day that observes the path of a rock as it skips down a vast cliffside before finally coming to rest on the sea floor. Certainly there’s a metaphorical aspect to this environmental set piece, but it’s also a prime example of the unique eye of the Icelandic filmmaker, who between his debut feature, Winter Brothers, and his latest, is soon to be a major cinematic voice on the world stage. This tough, spare drama centers on the private grief of a small-town police chief who is mourning the accidental vehicular death of his wife. He would prefer to suppress his feelings, but he is forced to confront them when he finds evidence suggesting she was having an affair shortly before her passing. What follows is a reckoning with the isolating toxicity of the “strong, silent type” brand of masculinity. Pálmason’s cogent, arresting vision is reminiscent of Paul Thomas Anderson in its aesthetically cockeyed and narratively enigmatic but undeniably hypnotic investigation of wayward men.
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5. THE VAST OF NIGHT
Andrew Patterson announces himself as a filmmaker to watch with his sci-fi mystery, The Vast of Night. An exciting hybrid of ’60s sci-fi television (there’s even a Twilight Zone-esque introduction) and early Spielberg adventure, Patterson’s film shadows two teens, a radio disc jockey and a switchboard operator, in a ’50s New Mexico town who hear an unusual sound over the radio and embark on an eerie journey of discovery. That simple setup allows Patterson to explore the medium, infusing an old-fashioned campfire story with cinematic verve, like cutting to black when a radio caller shares his theory about what’s happening in their small town. It’s a canny formal choice that invites the viewer to imagine the scene (like one would at campfire!) and also functions as a paean to radio drama. This is why The Vast of Night is so great: despite it being a small-scaled, micro-budget indie, there’s an unbridled enthusiasm to and ambition in the storytelling and filmmaking. First-time director Patterson looks to have a bright future.
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4. THE WILD GOOSE LAKE
Diao Yinan’s The Wild Goose Lake is a blast of pure, pulpy neo-noir. Recalling elements of Carol Reed’s classic noir Odd Man Out, this narrative, set in Wuhan, follows a small-time gangster’s efforts to evade both the police and rival gangs after he accidentally kills a police officer. It’s a predicament ripe for deception, betrayal, and escalating violence. Diao stages the film’s dazzling set pieces—one involving the most memorable use of an umbrella since Batman Returns—with panache, making expressive use of neon, shadow, and architecture. It’s a spellbinding, hard-boiled genre picture fashioned with a grim beauty exposing a sordid underbelly of desperate people. A supreme stylistic feat and the best cinematography of the year.
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3. TIME
Garrett Bradley’s feature debut is the documentary of the year. Through the perspective of matriarch Fox Rich, Time tracks the Richardson family’s trials and tribulations with the American criminal justice system—in particular, its racial disparity and bureaucratic absurdity. While her husband is incarcerated for two decades (he received an obscenely long sentence of 60 years for armed robbery), Fox struggles to raise her children while also advocating for prison reform. To emphasize the passage of time, Bradley merges her present-day footage of the Richardsons, shot in crisp black and white, with segments of Fox’s grainy home video recordings from the previous twenty years. The result is a depiction of resolute endurance in the face of great challenges. Bradley’s film is one of time lost, time together, time served, and time for change. It’s a heartbreaking but potent piece of cinematic poetry that builds to the year’s most stirring final scene.
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2. LOVERS ROCK
The second film in Steve McQueen’s five-part anthology series (yep, McQueen delivered five features in 2020, no big deal), Lovers Rock is the clear standout. The 70-minute film, constructed entirely around a lively house party, is a narrative and tonal departure not just from the other Small Axe films but McQueen’s entire oeuvre. It’s a joyful, sensual, and sonically enchanting evening of reggae music, potential romance, and communal euphoria (of course, there are incidents that threaten to undermine the good vibes, too). McQueen knows precisely where to place the camera (for instance, showing hands, hips, and torsos in motion on the dance floor) and which intimate moments to capture in order to create a sensorial, immersive experience, as if we’re right there in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood in 1980 spending a few hours with these young lovers. Lovers Rock is McQueen’s best film since 2008’s Hunger, and it supplies the year’s best soundtrack.
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1. FIRST COW
Indie auteur Kelly Reichardt has become our greatest filmmaker of stories about life in the Pacific Northwest, and she returns to the region for this understated revisionist western centered around the bond of two strangers—one a soft-spoken cook, the other an entrepreneurial Chinese immigrant—and their perilous business venture that requires surreptitiously milking the local dairy cow. This languid slice of pioneer life places at the center of its 4:3 frame a pair of characters who are often on the periphery not only in westerns but in our historical understanding of the American frontier, as if Reichardt and co-writer Jon Raymond have unearthed a story lost to time. “History isn’t here yet,” says the savvy and well-traveled King-Lu, “Maybe this time we can be ready for it. We can take it on our own terms.” And so these two men set about shaping their own future amid a lush, verdant territory Reichardt so elegantly captures on screen. First Cow is a warm portrait of friendship and a cold account of private enterprise and capitalism more broadly. It’s an essential American picture and the best of 2020.
