movie reviews 2020

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The 50 Best Movies of 2020, According to Over 230 Film Critics

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Nominations for the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards have turned the likes of “Nomadland,” “Mank,” “Promising Young Woman,” “Minari,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” “Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom,” and “Borat Subsequent Film” into major Oscar season contenders. What do all of these films also have in common? They were all selected as the best films of the year in IndieWire’s annual 2020 critics poll. Per tradition, IndieWire asked over 200 film critics around the world to rank their favorite films of last year. We tallied up the numbers and present the 50 highest rated titles below. The poll featured reviewers from major trade publications such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, as well as critics from local newspapers and websites, freelancers, and contributors on film from across Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

While the top 50 list includes many films now in the running for top Oscar season film awards, it also includes overlooked indie film gems such as “Vitalina Verela,” “Shirley,” and “Fourteen.” One of the rare studio films to appear on the list is “The Invisible Man,” the Universal-released horror movie starring Elizabeth Moss.

For the first time in the IndieWire Critics Poll’s history, the No. 1 film is directed by a woman (Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland”). Female directors had a strong showing in this year’s results, with the top three films of the year all hailing from female filmmakers (joining Zhao are Eliza Hittman with “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and Kelly Reichardt with “First Cow”). The poll’s Best First Film category was also topped by Fennell, while the Best Documentary category was led by Kirsten Johnson’s “Dick Johnson Is Dead.”

The full critics poll includes selections in various categories such as Best Performer (Riz Ahmed took the honor in 2020 for “Sound of Metal,” followed closely by Frances McDormand in “Nomadland” and Chadwick Boseman in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), Best Director (“Nomadland” director Chloe Zhao topped the list, just as she did at NYFCC and LAFCA), and Best First Feature (Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman,” which cracked the top 15 of the IndieWire Critics Poll).

Check out the complete list of the IndieWire Critics Poll top 50 films of 2020 below.

1. “Nomadland”

Director: Chloé Zhao

Cast: Frances McDormand, David Strathairn, Linda May, Charlene Swankie, Bob Wells

Accolades: Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Read IndieWire’s review : “Nomadland” is the kind of movie that could go very wrong. With Frances McDormand as its star alongside a cast real-life nomads, in lesser hands it might look like cheap wish fulfillment or showboating at its most gratuitous. Instead, director Chloé Zhao works magic with McDormand’s face and the real world around it, delivering a profound rumination on the impulse to leave society in the dust.

2. “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”

Director: Eliza Hittman

Cast: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin, Ryan Eggold, Sharon Van Etten

Accolades: Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival

Read IndieWire’s review : Hittman’s ability to write and direct such tender films has long been bolstered by her interest in casting them with fresh new talents, all the better to sell the veracity of her stories and introduce moviegoers to emerging actors worthy of big attention. With “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” Hittman continues her traditions with her most vivid work yet, one all the more impressive for its studio pedigree. (This is not the kind of film many mainstream outfits would support and make, and more power to Focus Features and Hittman for endeavoring to bring it to a large audience.) 

3. “First Cow”

Director: Kelly Reichardt

Cast: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shephard, Gary Farmer

Read IndieWire’s review : Few filmmakers wrestle with what it means to be American the way Kelly Reichardt has injected that question into all of her movies. In a meticulous fashion typical of her spellbinding approach, “First Cow” consolidates the potent themes of everything leading up to it: It returns her to the nascent America of the 19th Century frontier at the center of “Meek’s Cutoff,” touches on the environmental frustrations of “Night Moves,” revels in the glorious isolation of the countryside in “Certain Women,” and the somber travails of vagrancy at the center of “Wendy and Lucy.”

4. “Lovers Rock”

Director: Steve McQueen

Cast: Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn and Michael Ward

Read IndieWire’s review : Set across a single night in 1980 and loaded with a soundtrack from the eponymous reggae music, “Lovers Rock” is a paean to an energized youth culture taking control of its surroundings, despite the social unrest around them. Experienced on its own terms, this delightful snapshot of boozy dance-floor seduction plays like an artist unleashing years of repressed good vibes by applying his lyrical style to pure, unbridled bliss for almost the entirety of its 68 minutes.

5. “I’m Thinking of Ending Things”

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Cast: Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis

Read IndieWire’s review : If “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” feels like both an act of self-parody for its director and also a radical departure from his previous work, that’s because it takes Kaufman’s usual fixations and turns them inside out. While this leaky snow globe of a breakup movie is yet another bizarre and ruefully hilarious trip into the rift between people, it’s not — for the first time — about someone who’s trying to cross it. On the contrary, Kaufman is now telling a story about the rift itself. 

6. “Beanpole”

Director: Kantemir Balagov

Cast: Viktoria Miroshnichenko, Vasilisa Perelygina, Konstantin Balakirev, Andrey Bykov

Read IndieWire’s review : Inspired by Svetlana Alexievich’s book “The Unwomanly Face of War,” Balagov’s frigid “Beanpole” tells a glacially paced but gorgeously plotted story about two women — two best friends — who grow so desperate for any kind of personal agency that they start using each other to answer the unsolvable arithmetic of life and death.

7. “Time”

Director: Garrett Bradley

Read IndieWire’s review : A woman’s 20-year fight to free her husband is captured on home video and cut together into a profoundly moving story of hope. On its surface, Garrett Bradley’s “Time” asks a simple question: How can you convey the full length of 21 years in the span of a single film, let alone a documentary that runs just 81 minutes? And from its degraded opening images — borrowed from the first of a thousand video messages that a black Louisiana woman named Sibil Fox Richardson (aka “Fox Rich”) recorded for her husband as she waited for him to be released from the State Penitentiary — offers a similarly simple answer: You don’t measure it in length, but rather in loss.  

8. “Da 5 Bloods”

Director: Spike Lee

Cast: Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Paul Walter Hauser, Jean Reno, Chadwick Boseman

Read IndieWire’s review : “Da 5 Bloods” doesn’t always gel as it careens through overstuffed plot twists and disparate tones, with some big moments better executed than others. Still, that freewheeling energy is in short supply, and this pure distillation of a Spike Lee joint illustrates the rarity of an American filmmaker so confident in his sensibilities and style that nothing can slow them down.

9. “Martin Eden”

Director: Pietro Marcello

Cast: Luca Marinelli, Carlo Cecchi, Jessica Cressy, Vincenzo Nemolato, Marco Leonardi

Read IndieWire’s review : Pietro Marcello’s “Martin Eden” is a dreamy and surprisingly faithful Jack London adaptation made with more than 100 years of hindsight, one that doesn’t bend over backwards to prevent modern audiences from missing London’s points. London’s novel is all the more powerful because it’s not prescriptive — because it gives readers just enough rope to hang themselves, and sets them all the same traps that Martin himself falls into. 

10. “Bacurau”

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles

Cast: Sônia Braga, Udo Kier, Bárbara Colen, Thomas Aquino, Silvero Pereira, Karine Teles

Accolades: Jury Prize at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival

Read IndieWire’s review : “Aquarius” director Kleber Mendonça Filho returns with a wonderful and demented Western about the perils of rampant modernization. In some respects, the film can be seen as a logical continuation of the Brazilian critic-turned-auteur’s two previous features. Much like 2012’s revelatory “Neighboring Sounds,” for example, “Bacurau” is a patient and sprawling portrait of a Brazilian community as it struggles to defend itself against the dark specter of modernity. And much like 2016’s unshakeable “Aquarius,” “Bacurau” hinges on an immovably stubborn woman who refuses to relinquish her place in the world — who won’t allow our blind lust for the future to bury her meaningful ties to the past.  

10. “Mank”

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Arliss Howard, Charles Dance

Read IndieWire’s review :

Though forged in a meticulous 1930s backdrop that merges historical detail with the style and tone of that era, “Mank” is hardly a playful throwback. Fincher has made a cerebral psychodrama that rewards the engaged cinephile audience in its crosshairs, but even when cold to the touch, the movie delivers a complex and insightful look at American power structures and the potential for a creative spark to rankle their foundations.

11. “Dick Johnson Is Dead”

Director: Kristen Johnson

Read IndieWire’s review : The title of “Dick Johnson Is Dead” doesn’t lie, but it’s not exactly truthful, either. Dick Johnson dies many times in his daughter Kirsten’s poignant and personal documentary, starting with the opening credits. And yet he’s very much alive the whole time, playacting in an elaborate form of cinematic therapy with his filmmaker offspring as she wrestles with the anxiety of losing him.

13. “Minari”

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Cast: Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Alan Kim, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, Will Patton

Accolades: U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival

Read IndieWire’s review : Told with the rugged tenderness of a Flannery O’Connor novel but aptly named for a resilient Korean herb that can grow wherever it’s planted, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical “Minari” is a raw and vividly remembered story of two simultaneous assimilations; it’s the story of a family assimilating into a country, but also the story of a man assimilating into his family.

14. “Promising Young Woman”

Director: Emerald Fennell

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Laverne Cox

Read IndieWire’s review : Emerald Fennell’s raucous debut, “Promising Young Woman,” twists its buzzword-laden, spoiler-free synopsis — it’s a #MeToo rape revenge thriller with bite! — into something fresh and totally wild. Thank both Fennell’s wicked mind and star Carey Mulligan’s somehow even more wicked performance for that. Cooked up by Fennell and dizzyingly embodied by an incendiary Mulligan, Cassie is an anti-heroine for our times, and a wholly unique one at that.

15. “Kajillionaire”

Director: Miranda July

Cast: Evan Rachel Woods, Debra Winger, Richard Jenkins, Gina Rodriguez

Elevated by an extraordinary Evan Rachel Wood performance that finds her character literally discovering her free will, “Kajillionaire” splits the difference between “Shoplifters” and “Parasite”: It’s an understated dramedy with bite, oscillating from the implication that family bonds are bullshit to the conclusion that everybody deserves a little tough love.

16. “Collective”

Director: Alexander Nanau

Read IndieWire’s review : “Collective” starts as one of the greatest journalism movies of all times, and then it goes one step further, exposing democracy at war with itself. Romanian director Alexander Nanau’s bracing, relentless documentary tracks the aftermath of the 2015 fire that killed 64 people, hovering at the center of a system on the verge of collapse. And then it does, much like the flames that engulfed Bucharest’s Colectiv nightclub and sent the nation into a tailspin, as “Collective” sits at the center of the chaos with an unflinching gaze.

17. “One Night in Miami”

Director: Regina King

Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr.

Read IndieWire’s review : Directed by Regina King (already an Oscar and Emmy winner for her acting) and adapted by Kemp Powers (who first launched the project as a stage play), “One Night in Miami” is both a formidable debut for King (who has previously directed a slew of episodes of high-profile television series) and a strong argument for Powers’ medium-crossing skills. It’s also one of the year’s best acting showcases, including turns from Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X, Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke, Aldis Hodge as Jim Brown, and Eli Goree as Cassius Clay.

18. “Vitalina Verela”

Director: Pedro Costa

Cast: Vitalina Varela and Manuel Tavares Almeida

Accolades: Golden Leopard and Best Actress winner at 2019 Locarno International Film Festival

Read IndieWire’s review : The mystery and wonder of Pedro Costa’s filmmaking defies any specific category other than his own unique blend. The Portuguese director conjures dark, dreamlike visions of post-colonial neglect and yearning that hover somewhere between fantasy and neorealism, horror and melodrama, spirituality and desperation. “Vitalina Varela,” Costa’s fifth journey into the shantytown Fontainhas outside of Lisbon, once again showcases Costa’s masterful ability to mine cinematic poetry from a unique environment and the mournful figures who wander through its murky depths.

19. “The Nest”

Director: Sean Durkin 

Cast: Jude Law, Carrie Coon, Charlie Shotwell, Tobias BA Macey, Oona Roche, Adeel Akhtar

Read IndieWire’s review: In Durkin’s icy, slow-burn drama, every frame benefits from masterful composition. Carrie Coon and Jude Law deliver sizzling performances defined by mutual indignation, but it ultimately amounts to little more than talent spinning its wheels on both sides of the camera.

20. “The Sound of Metal”

Director: Darius Marder

Cast: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric

Read IndieWire’s review : As Ruben, the heavy-metal drummer going deaf at the center of the mesmerizing debut from writer-director Darius Marder, Riz Ahmed conveys the complex frustrations of losing touch with the world around him no matter how much he fights to hold onto it. This devastating conundrum relies on the best use of sound design in recent memory, as Marder immerses viewers within the confines of Ruben’s deteriorating relationship to the world around him, and he sorts through the wreckage to construct a new one. Ahmed’s brilliant performance coasts on a complex soundscape that resonates even in total silence.

21. “The Trial of the Chicago 7”

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Cast: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sacha Baron Cohen, Daniel Flaherty, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Eddie Redmayne, Noah Robbins, Mark Rylance. Alex Sharp, Jeremy Strong

Read IndieWire’s review : “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is exactly as advertised — a giant, giddy burst of earnest theatricality, loaded with a formidable ensemble that chews on every inch of the scenery, that overall makes a passionate case for the resilience of its formula more than using it as an excuse.

22. “The Assistant”

Director: Kitty Green

Cast: Julia Garner, Matthew Macfadyen, Makenzie Leigh, Kristine Froseth

Harvey Weinstein doesn’t appear in “The Assistant,” and nobody mentions him by name, but make no mistake: Director Kitty Green’s urgent real-time thriller marks the first narrative depiction of life under his menacing grip. “Ozark” breakout Julia Garner is a revelation as the fragile young woman tasked with juggling the minutiae of the executive’s life, arranging a never-ending stream of airplane trips, staving off angry callers, and picking up the trash left in his wake.

23. “David Byrne’s “American Utopia”

Read IndieWire’s review : “American Utopia” isn’t just a concert doc, but also a life-affirming, euphoria-producing, soul-energizing sing-along protest film that’s asking us to rise up against our own complacency. 

24. “Soul”

Director: Pete Docter

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Questlove, Phylicia Rashad, Daveed Diggs, Angela Bassett

Read IndieWire’s review : The first entry in the Pixar canon to center on a Black character is a magical crowdpleaser that embodies the Pixar Touch. While Disney’s decision to bypass a theatrical release for the film to post “Soul” straight onto Disney+ on Christmas Day doesn’t do any favors to the sorry state of exhibition, “Soul” is well worth signing up for the service, as it’s one of the very best Pixar efforts in years.  

25. “The Invisible Man”

Director: Leigh Whannell

Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Storm Reid, Harriet Dyer, Michael Dorman, Oliver Jackson-Cohen

Read IndieWire’s review : Whannel makes his “Invisible Man” an unbearably tense ride through his blocking choices, which often use negative spaces to induce fear in the viewer. Whether it gets Oscar buzz or not, “The Invisible Man” is bound to go down as one of the strongest reviewed studio films of 2020.

26. “The Whistlers”

Director: Corneliu Porumboiu

Cast: Vlad Ivanov, Catrinel Marlon, Rodica Lazar |

Read IndieWire’s review : Corneliu Porumboiu’s enjoyable riff on the heist movie tradition has a unique hook, and is begging for an English language remake. This entertaining noir is a polished mashup of genre motifs that suggests what might happen if the “Ocean’s 11” gang assembled on the Canary Islands.  

27. “Ammonite”

Director: Francis Lee

Cast: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secăreanu, Fiona Shaw

Read IndieWire’s review : Lee’s restraint is successful. The film never delivers obvious platitudes about how difficult it was to be a 19th-century woman who loved other women, and how any dreams of a happy life together are all but impossible. Although Mary’s mother occasionally shoots the pair biting glances, the film doesn’t wield the threat of discovery. It’s clear that this romance is not one for public eyes and Lee trusts his audience to understand that with a minimum of information.

28. “News of the World”

Director: Paul Greengrass

Cast: Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel

Read IndieWire’s review : These are the moments where “News of the World” is at its most urgent — when this bittersweet but richly sentimental Western pauses to reflect on the double-edged power of the stories we tell ourselves, and the power that telling them to each other gives us to change what happens in the next chapter.

29. “Possessor”

Director: Brandon Cronenberg

Cast: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Read IndieWire’s review : A queasy and intriguing horror-inflected techno-thriller that gets lost somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle between “Mandy,” “Inception,” and “Ghost in the Shell,” Brandon Cronenberg’s “Possessor” is so drunk on its own sick potential that it doesn’t have the time (or the balance) required to realize most of it. On the other hand, 90 minutes of Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott engaging in ultra-gory psychic warfare over control of the latter’s body is more satisfying than what most of the current Best Picture nominees have to offer, so maybe it’s wise not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

30. “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets”

Director: Bill and Turner Ross

Read IndieWire’s review : The film is both a grand cinematic deception and a bold filmmaking experimentation from two of the most intriguing directors working in non-fiction today. This has been the Ross brothers’ motif since their earliest work, the expressionistic midwestern snapshot “45365” and “Tchoupitoulas,” which followed three prepubescent kids across a single meandering New Orleans night. “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” sits on the same continuum. The movie pretends to be a fly-on-the-wall observational tale, but in the process of assembling its remarkable homegrown universe, becomes a legitimate one anyway.

31. “Palm Springs”

Director: Max Barbakow

Cast: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, Peter Gallagher, J. K. Simmons

Read IndieWire’s review : “Palm Springs” offers a novel way to explore why the decision to share your life with someone can be more than just a band-aid placed atop a gaping wound of loneliness. Sure, “Groundhog Day” arrives at essentially the same place, but — start to finish — this winsome bauble of a movie is uniquely eager to embrace the idea that life isn’t quite as limitless as it seems.

32. “Wolfwalkers”

Director: Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart

Cast: Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney, Maria Doyle Kennedy

Read IndieWire’s review : With “Wolfwalkers” — the final installment of the studio’s informal trilogy of films about Irish folklore — Cartoon Saloon has realized its true potential at last. Far and away the best animated film of the year so far (one worthy of such hosannas no matter how limited the competition has been), this heartfelt tale of love and loss is the most visually enchanting feature its studio has made thus far, as well as the most poignant.

33. “Shirley”

Director: Josephine Decker

Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, Odessa Young, Logan Lerman

Read IndieWire’s review : “Shirley” is no more of a biopic than “Bright Star,” “An Angel at My Table,” or “Shakespeare in Love.” Adapted from the Susan Scarf Merrell novel of the same name, Decker’s characteristically sawtoothed and delirious new film is set in the same latent space between fact and fantasy — a story and its telling — where she located all of her previous work.

34. “Another Round”

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang, Lars Ranthe

Accolades: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay at the European Film Awards

Read IndieWire’s review : Thomas Vinterberg’s absorbing dark comedy turns into a lively and fascinating referendum on booze, with Mads Mikkelsen’s fierce and unsettling performance vibrating at its center. Teaming up for the first time since their similarly unnerving character study “The Hunt” in 2012, the Danish actor and director join forces for a wily character study that enhances the one-note premise through the sheer gusto of its execution.

35. “Mangrove”

Cast: Letitia Wright, Shaun Parkes, Malachi Kirby, Rochenda Sandall, Alex Jennings, Jack Lowden

Read IndieWire’s review : The dramatic story of the Mangrove Nine, when a group of Black British activists fought back against racist police raids in a tense series of courtroom showdowns, practically pitched itself as a movie when it unfolded in 1970. (They were acquitted of most charges, but the raids didn’t stop.) It only took 50 years, but writer-director Steve McQueen’s “Mangrove” works overtime to fill the gap, resulting in a delectable crowdpleaser both specific to its moment and relevant today.

36. “City Hall”

Director: Frederick Wiseman

Read IndieWire’s review : As attention spans dwindle and the complex mess of American governance grows murkier than ever, Wiseman’s immersive dive into Boston’s city services ignores the pressure to dumb things down and marvels at the complexity of a system designed to make the world run right.

“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm”

Director: Jason Woliner

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova

Read IndieWire’s review : Cobbled together in the midst of the pandemic and rushed out ahead of the presidential election, the new “Borat” plays like a prankish wakeup call to the lunacy he’s been pointing towards for ages. At a time when satire often feels too soft, this brilliant, vulgar plea for a better world cuts deep.

38. “Fourteen”

Director: Dan Sallitt

Cast: Tallie Medel and Norma Kuhling

The fifth feature by revered critic, compulsive cinephile, and occasional filmmaker Dan Sallitt, “Fourteen” is a modest but gradually — and, in the end, greatly — affecting sketch of how even the closest of friendships can shift and wither over the years. People change in different ways. Some don’t change at all. It helps when there’s a clear reason beneath the shifting tectonic plates that cause the rifts between us, but it still hurts all the same.

39. “The Vast of Night”

Director: Andrew Patterson

Cast: Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz

Read IndieWire’s review : This is a thriller nostalgic for the days of letterman jackets, rotary phones, Cold War-era conspiracy theories, and when everybody, even kids, smoked. With his retro, lo-fi, low-budget first feature, director Patterson should easily expect Hollywood to soon start throwing plenty of higher-concept genre fare at him, and on the basis of the supreme confidence of “The Vast of Night” alone, he’s ready for it.

40. “Sorry We Missed You”

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Kris Hitchen, Debbie Honeywood, Rhys Stone, Katie Proctor

Read IndieWire’s review : “Sorry We Missed You” is the latest installment in this sprawling pantheon of cinematic activism, and delivers another tough, poignant look at desperate characters trapped by the only system that allows them to survive.

41. “She Dies Tomorrow”

Director: Amy Seimetz

Cast: Kate Lyn Sheil, Jane Adams, Kentucker Audley, Katie Aselton, Chris Messina, Tunde Adebimpe

Read IndieWire’s review : “She Dies Tomorrow” is a gripping seriocomic apocalyptic thriller that combines classic David Cronenberg body horror and with the scathing surrealism of Luis Buñuel. Envisioning a disease where the afflicted believe they’ll die by morning, the movie taps into a timeless anxiety with hilarious and disquieting results, often delivered in the same dose.

42. “Undine”

Director: Christian Petzold

Cast: Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski

Accolades: Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival and the European Film Awards

Read IndieWire’s review : Much like the “Vertigo”-inspired “Phoenix,” Petzold imbues the material with a Hitchcockian build, as subtle moments drop hints of dark, invisible forces conspiring to complicate the situation. Undine may be losing her grip on reality, but reality has a few surprises in store for her as well.

43. “On the Rocks”

Director: Sofia Coppola

Cast: Rashida Jones, Bill Murray, Marlon Wayans, Jenny Slate

Read IndieWire’s review : It’s the first Sofia Coppola movie that feels — if only during its flattest stretches — as if it could have been made by somebody else, and yet at the same time it also plays like the loose and tipsy self-portrait of a maturing filmmaker being visited by the ghost of her greatest success.

44. “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”

Director: George C. Wolfe

Cast: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts

Read IndieWire’s review : An actor’s showcase for Viola Davis as the show-stopping singer and the late Chadwick Boseman as the scheming trumpeter angling to steal her spotlight, director George C. Wolfe’s reverential adaptation livens up the material with sizzling color and vivid closeups. Save for a few digressions, however, Wolfe and screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson have put the play into the movie, rather than vice versa.

45. “The Young Ahmed”

Director: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Cast: Idir Ben Addi, Olivier Bonnaud, Myriem Akheddiou, Victoria Bluck as Louise

Read IndieWire’s review : While propelled by a handful of gripping encounters and the Dardennes’ usual economical storytelling, “Young Ahmed” never quite gets beyond the fundamental challenge Ahmed faces to provide deeper insights into his behavior, even as it delivers on its timely, provocative concept in rather straightforward terms.

46. “Let Them All Talk”

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Cast: Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Gemma Chan, Lucas Hedges, Dianne Wiest

Read IndieWire’s review : With “Let Them All Talk,” Soderbergh has gone from making movies informed by his “let’s just do it and be legends” ethos to making a movie about the futility of perfection, and the consequences of imposing it on an unruly world. If this gentle and luxuriant floating gabfest isn’t the least bit hostile towards Fincher or anyone else, it’s still a clear shot across the bow at the idea that artists have the final say over how people live with their work.

47. “Emma”

Director: Autumn de Wilde

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Josh O’Connor, Callum Turner, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart, Bill Nighy

Read IndieWire’s review : Director Autumn de Wilde’s lavish but loyal “Emma” (stylized “Emma.”), an indulgent movie about indulgent people that dares to imagine how — on a long enough timeline — the whole of human existence might be no more important than a straw hat shaped like a fortune cookie, or a navy blue shirt popping against a mustard peacoat, or the romantic misfortunes of an unsophisticated teenage girl as they reverberate through a vain pocket of the English gentry.

48. “Tenet”

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth Debicki

Read IndieWire’s review : What kind of picture is it? Big, certainly: IMAX-scaled, and a hefty 150 minutes even after a visibly ruthless edit. It’s clever, too — yes, the palindromic title has some narrative correlation — albeit in an exhausting, rather joyless way. As second comings go, “Tenet” is like witnessing a Sermon on the Mount preached by a savior who speaks exclusively in dour, drawn-out riddles. Any awe is flattened by follow-up questions.

49. “His House”

Director: Remi Weekes

Cast: Wunmi Mosaku, Sope Dirisu, Matt Smith

Read IndieWire’s review : One of the best debuts of the year, Remi Weekes’ shrewd, tender, and sometimes terrifying “His House” begins with a clever premise — the immigrant experience as a horror movie — and expands on that idea in knowing and unexpected ways. 

50. “The Painter and the Thief”

Director: Benjamin Ree

Read IndieWire’s review : Benjamin Ree’s nuanced and beguiling new documentary is about the various things we all take from each other…It’s a frequently riveting movie that’s full of raw and loaded encounters. Ree shoots “The Painter and the Thief” with the probing composure of a scripted European drama (few documentaries make it so easy to imagine their narrative remakes).

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Year in Review: The 20 Best Movies of 2020

By David Fear

This was not the year we were promised. It started off on a series of high points: a fruitful Sundance, a history-making Oscar win for Parasite, the release of several notable 2019 fest-circuit gems for general-public consumption. Movie theaters were still filled with annoying texters and talkers, but they were open for business. We looked forward to seeing Daniel Craig’s Bond farewell, Christopher Nolan’s latest question mark of an IMAX thriller, Wes Anderson’s tribute to old-timey newspaper folk, a Peter Jackson documentary on the Beatles’ Let It Be sessions; we braced ourselves in anticipation (and also with some trepidation) about new Marvel movies, a belated Top Gun sequel, yet another Ghostbusters franchise coffer filler. We speculated on what would make the cut for Cannes in the spring, and by extension, the lineups of Venice, Telluride, and Toronto in the fall. We debated whether First Cow ‘s bovine star Eve the Cow should be considered a best supporting actress or more of a co-lead.

And then in late February and early March, as if it was buried deep in a soundtrack’s mix, you’d hear the faint voices of news anchors talking about this virus that was showing up with alarming frequency in Asia, and Europe, and now the United States.…

We all know what happened next: Release schedules became endless games of musical chairs, communal spaces like cineplexes were treated like crime scenes, film and TV production grinded to a halt, and so many studio movies slated for huge screens were Hail Mary passed to home screens. Nolan’s supposed savior of the theatrical experience, Tenet, did eventually go big even as those of us in the U.S. stayed home — but if a complicated thriller about time, space, and people in tailored suits running from explosions played to empty seats, did it really ever get released? Movies being punted to summer, then late summer, then early winter, then 2021, or some TBD great beyond were often the least of our worries as the world shut down. 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 2020.

To say that there were no good movies in 2020, 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 2020: 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.

‘Mank’

David Fincher’s look at the origin story of Citizen Kane’ s screenplay is neither a valentine nor a poison-pen letter to Ye Olde Hollywood; it’s not even an attempt to “rescue” the reputation of one Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman, pitch-perfect and practically emanating gin fumes), who’s portrayed here as a lout, a drunk, and a one-man battalion of his own worst enemies. And no, for God’s sake, it’s not a kiss-off to one O. Welles, Boy Genius Auteur, either. What the Zodiac director has delivered is a game-recognizes-game drama about navigating the fine line between speaking truth to power and being complicit in the systems — studio, class, political — that keep those same folks calling the shots. Even if Mank ends up winning the long-game war with his vendetta of a script, American (spoiler alert: it will be retitled), he still loses every single battle along the way. A witty, audacious, exhilarating throwback of a movie, down to its creator’s formal in-joke of making it sound as if you’re watching the film in some drafty revival house. Extra shout-outs to Amanda Seyfried and Arliss Howard, whose respective Marion Davies and Louis B. Mayer performances up the sweet-and-sour quotient substantially.

‘The Assistant’

How do you try to tackle something as thorny, massive, and paradigm-shifting as the #MeToo movement? If Kitty Green’s story of an entry-level personal assistant (Julia Garner) to a powerful and highly toxic male film producer can be seen as a template, the answer is: You go at it sideways and concentrate on the damage done within its perimeter. Any resemblance to a real-life indie-movie mogul/monster is not coincidental, even if we never do see the perpetrator in question. What we do witness are the dozens of tiny details — a stain on a couch here, an odd line item on a financial spreadsheet there, the parade of young hopefuls directed to “private meetings” in closed-door offices and hotel rooms — that suggest a much larger picture of abuse enabled at every level. And thanks to Garner, we also see the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of one person’s soul while stuck in this ogre’s orbit.

‘La Llorona’

Guatemalan filmmaker Jayro Bustamante’s third feature takes a welcome detour into supernatural horror, as the elderly Gen. Don Enrique (Julio Diaz) is brought before a war-crime tribunal to account for his transgressions. He refuses to acknowledge he’s done anything wrong, and soon finds himself trapped in his palatial estate along with his wife (Margarita Kenéfic), daughter (Sabrina De La Hoz), and extended family members, as a mob rages outside his gates. Then a mysterious young Mayan woman (María Mercedes Coroy) shows up, announcing she’s the new servant — at which point you remember that the film takes its name from a mythological character doomed to perpetually weep and mourn. It’s a deeply unsettling ghost story that doubles as an exorcism for social ills and historical political sins, and an exemplary cri de coeur about the past never being done with us; the fact that the general is loosely based on an actual dictator only gilds the narrative lily.

‘Boys State’

For decades, the American Legion has run a program called “Boys State,” in which promising young men are selected to form a mock government in one week, complete with stump speeches and elections. Filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine ( The Overnighters ) embed themselves with a host of Texas teens as they get a firsthand look at how the sausage of modern politics is made — and observe how tomorrow’s Obamas, Trumps, and Karl Roves replicate the agonies and ecstasies of our broken two-party system, right down to the last smear campaign. An absolutely compelling and often alarming tag-along doc that, in an election year rife with divisiveness and dirty-trick attempts to destroy the foundations of our democracy, only became more resonant as this cursed year comes to a close. These kids are our future. You pray that our present moment hasn’t curdled their ideology or given them any “bright” ideas.

‘She Dies Tomorrow’

What if the paranoid thought that your death was a mere 24 hours away was not just a parasite gnawing away at your mental stability, but an actual contagion? This is the question percolating at the center of writer-director Amy Seimetz’s existential nightmare, in which a young woman (indie MVP Kate Lyn Sheil) is suddenly gripped with the feeling that she has less than 24 hours to live. She mentions this unshakeable sensation to a friend, who then later finds herself suffering from the same fatalistic ennui and mentions it to acquaintances at a birthday party — and soon, the fear that it’s all coming to an end is everywhere. There were any number of films you could plausibly dub “the movie of 2020,” but Seimetz’s low-fi horror flick was one of the only movies that actually captured the center-cannot-hold vibe of 2020 itself. The longer you watch these folks succumb to communal self-destruction, the more you recognize their collective madness.

‘The Vast of Night’

Welcome to Cayuga, New Mexico, your typical 1950s Smalltown, U.S.A. hamlet likely located a stone’s throw from Roswell. Two alpha-nerd A.V.-club teens — Everett (Jake Horowitz), a tech whiz and late-night disc jockey, and Fey (Sierra McCormick), who connects folks at the local switchboard — find themselves dealing with an odd blast of sound coming over the airwaves. Fey fields a panicked phone call about … something that may or may not be of this Earth. The military seems to be involved as well. Then things get weird. The debut of writer-director-editor Andrew Patterson is chock full of virtuoso filmmaking (those long, serpentine tracking shots!) and enough sustained Spielbergasms that it technically qualifies as a close encounter of the fourth kind. But all of those chops and retro Twilight Zone stylings — down to a fake TV show paying homage to Rod Serlings’ landmark series — are put into the service of a slow-burn dread that lingers with you. Watch the skies, people. Watch the skies.

‘Night of the Kings’

In an Ivory Coast correctional facility, the “Dangôro” is the alpha male who lords over everything — and must take his own life when he can no longer rule. But when it’s time for Blackbeard ( Les Miserables ‘ Steve Tientcheu), the current king of the cellblocks, to step down, he picks a fresh-fish convict (Koné Bakary) to take on the exalted position of “Roman,” the jail’s resident storyteller. The young man must entertain his fellow criminals with an epic tale or else. He may also have to fulfill an even larger duty in the grand scheme of things. Filmmaker Philippe Lacôte’s extraordinary, singular take on prison dramas starts as an anthropological look at life in West Africa’s notorious Maison d’Arret et de Correction d’Abidjan, before taking some left turns into magical realism, colonialist allegory, folklore, fantasy, and meta-commentary on the power of a good yarn. Just when you think things couldn’t get better, Beau Travail ‘s Denis Levant shows up as an eccentric inmate. C’est magnifique.

‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’

Boy (Jesse Plemons) meets girl (Jessie Buckley). Boy takes girl home to the family farm, to meet his parents (Toni Collette and David Thewlis). Things fall apart, and the center cannot hold. Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation — or maybe “adaptation” is more appropriate — of Iain Reid’s novel is one long, strange trip down memory lane, though whose memory and which lane are mysteries that the viewer is left to unravel. As with his much-lauded screenplays and his 2008 movie Synedoche, New York, the writer-director’s latest resides squarely in the sweet spot between funny ha-ha and funny WTF?, but beneath all of the Oklahoma references and cringe-comedy grotesquerie is a genuinely heartbreaking story of loneliness and regret. There’s absurdity and irony galore, for sure. And then the emotional weight of what’s really going on behind the narrative loop-the-loops suddenly wallops you in the back of the head.

‘Beanpole’

Her name is Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), but most folks call this lanky young lady “Beanpole.” A former anti-aircraft gunner who served on WWII’s Western front, she now works as a nurse in Leningrad. Soon, her friend Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina) shows up to pay a visit — and we begin to understand the complicated history between these two women, and that a debt needs to be repaid. The breakout movie from Russian filmmaker Kantemir Balagov is a dual character study that sometimes veers very close to being a bleak, caustic buddy comedy. But most of all, Beanpole is a stunning exploration of postwar trauma, post-ceasefire collateral damage, and the process of healing that uniquely prioritizes the female perspective. Some wounds never heal.

‘Tigertail’

Based very loosely on his dad’s formative years in Taiwan and assimilation into American life, Master of None co-creator Alan Yang’s directorial debut has a way of gingerly lifting you up then quietly breaking your heart. Pin-Jui (Hong Chi-Lee) grows up working in a factory, dancing to Sixties beat pop, and falling in love with a childhood-friend-turned-sweetheart named Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang). An opportunity in the U.S., however, beckons him to leave. Decades later, the elderly Pin-Jui, who now goes by Grover (Tzi Ma in one of the year’s best performances), looks back on his life and begins to wonder if this “better life” really was better after all. Yang has a keen sense when to let an emotional exchange play out in silence, and when to glide by moments most other filmmakers would milk for maximum treacle — which makes a difference when you’re reminding people that every immigrant’s story is both singular and, at its core, an experience shared by millions. That last shot is a killer.

‘Nomadland’

Gleaned from author Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book on 21st century AARP-age migrants, Chloe Zhao’s character study of a community focuses primarily on Fern (Frances McDormand), a widow ready to hit the road after her small town is economically forced to shut down. She hooks up with fellow RV travelers — many of which are real nomads — who occasionally stop, drop, and work, then make their way across the U.S.A. to where the next gig or mobile-home park takes them. A travelogue that treats its subjects with near-divine tenderness and zero didacticism, this observant drama is both a level up for The Rider writer-director and a showcase for a legendary actor who continually makes you forget you’re watching a movie star. It’s such a rich portrait of rootlessness as a way of life, and how a big-picture social failure is somehow reframed by certain types into a pivot toward personal liberation. Yet the film never tries to upsell an economic downturn as an excuse for a makeover. It has too much respect for these real-life vagabonds and your intelligence.

‘Martin Eden’

It feels like some lost Italian masterpiece from the 1970s, unearthed from a locked vault after decades of gathering dust and slotted into the middle of a late De Sica/midperiod Francesco Rosi triple feature. But Pietro Marcello’s adaptation of Jack London’s 1909 novel is the sort of movie that restores your faith in an art form — or, at the very least, in the craft of turning a bygone era’s paragraphs on a page into an urgent, po-mo moving picture. As our hero (played by Luca Marinelli in a breakout role) goes from working-class sailor to would-be writer to Literary Wastrel, Superstar, you get a very clear sense of Martin’s hunger — for the aristocratic object of his desire Elena (Jessica Cressy), for fame and fortune, for a place at the gilded table, for political causes, and, ultimately, to be left alone. For good measure, Marcello throws in tinted documentary footage and some nods to the country’s neorealism cinematic heyday to add extra textures.

‘Dick Johnson Is Dead’

Or rather, Dick Johnson is slowly succumbing to dementia — so Kirsten Johnson ( Cameraperson ) does what any good daughter would do and makes a film about him. Did we mention that said documentary is filled with staged scenes of him shuffling off this mortal coil via falling air conditioners, hit-and-run accidents, and fatal cardiac arrests? This may be the most lighthearted, uplifting movie about death ever concocted, as well as an act of catharsis for both those behind the camera and in the audience. The more Johnson inoculates herself against future grief one grisly mock killing at a time, the more you sense the love and affection behind what is really a celebration of an ordinary life. Come for the sight of an old man getting “stabbed” in the jugular vein; stay for the Pierre et Gilles -like heavenly scenarios involving celebrity tap dancers, confetti, and an exasperated Christ.

‘Minari’

The title refers to a leafy, green plant used in a number of Korean dishes that can grow anywhere and still retain its characteristics. And drawing on his own backstory as a Korean American kid growing up in 1980s Arkansas, filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung ( Munyurangabo ) reminds you that the way you tell a coming-of-age story is just as important as what you choose to include in it. Having uprooted his entire family from California to the South’s Natural State, an ambitious immigrant (Steven Yeun, absolutely killing it here) tries to establish his own farm, and threatens to fray the ties that bind in the process. His wife (Yeri Han), elderly mother-in-law, and two kids have to deal with their own fish-outta-water experiences; it’s Chung’s screen counterpart, a seven-year-old named David (Alan Kim), who provides the wide-eyed perspective to the triumphs and tragedies that lie ahead. It’s a work of cinema à clef that’s a symphony of grace notes, buffered by a wonderful ensemble cast and a gentle sense of looking back at the past with the benefit of wisdom.

‘Time’

After her husband went to prison for bank robbery, Fox Rich began keeping a sort of black-and-white video diary. Her son was four; she was also pregnant with twins. Over the next two decades, Rich would raise her kids to be outstanding young men, become a bestselling author, lecture groups about the art of the memoir, and establish herself as a prison-reform activist. She would also work tirelessly to get her spouse freed from a life sentence. A stream-of-consciousness trip through one woman’s story, Garrett Bradley’s documentary assembles both Rich’s home movies and her own footage to craft an intimate, inimitable look at the toll that the mass-incarceration epidemic takes on everyone involved. Yet it never treats its subject as a case study or this family’s journey as a Dateline human-interest episode, and simply presents a highly personal interpretation on the title’s numerous meanings — the passage of time, doing time, time waits for no one. And just when you think things could not get more emotionally resonant, the movie turns what might have been a gimmicky trick into a sublime realization of how what’s been lost can be magically recaptured. Simply stunning.

‘Bacurau’

Already a contender for modern arthouse/grindhouse classic status, Brazilian filmmakers Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Western/horror/white-hot bullet of a movie introduces us to the good (and not so good) people of a rural village that’s been wiped off the map — literally: Almost overnight, you can’t find the town of Bacurau on satellite grids. It seems that a local politician may have sold out the populace to high-paying tourists interested in human prey for sport hunting. Except this prey has a long history of fighting back. A violent, neo-exploitation-flick slant on the ways the rich get richer and the poor get the picture, this tweaked take on the ol’ Most Dangerous Game scenario couldn’t be a more cathartic call to arms. This is what a satire looks like when you give it serrated edges and an abundance of blood splatter. This is what rage looks like when people get mad as hell — at imperialism, at capitalism, at ugly Americans, at Udo Kier — and refuse to take it anymore. Plus, you get the mighty Sonia Braga as the resident doctor with a chip on her shoulder and the spirit of Che Guevara in her heart.

‘First Cow’

A manifest-destiny epic in D minor, Kelly Reichardt’s moody, brooding, brilliant Western follows a cook (John Magaro) — named, what else, “Cookie” — and a fugitive, King Lu (Orion Lee), who decide to partner up for a business venture. Cookie makes the best “oily cakes” for miles around; Lu knows how to market them to hungry prospectors and furriers dying for a taste of home. It’s a frontier capitalism success story, albeit one predicated on the duo stealing milk from a cow owned by an an effete Englishman (Toby Jones). Reichardt’s vision of a nation in transition is so beautiful, modest, and delicate on the surface that you might miss the disruptive David-versus-Goliath narrative burbling underneath it all. The seeds of corporate America are already starting to spout. The little guys don’t stand a chance. “History isn’t here yet, but it’s coming,” Lu declares. “Maybe this time we’ll be ready for it.” If history has proven anything, it’s that we’re never ready for it even when we do glimpse it on the horizon.

‘American Utopia’

David Byrne’s greatest-hits revue-cum-performance art piece ran on Broadway from November 2019 until February 2020. If you didn’t manage to catch it live, don’t worry: Spike Lee has your back. And like Jonathan Demme, he’s treated the opportunity of working with the former Talking Heads frontman in the spirit of artistic collaboration as opposed to simply press-play documentation. Opening up the show by placing his roving cameras up, down, sideways, backstage, and seemingly everywhere but the Hudson Theatre’s restrooms, the filmmaker is as much a part of this production as the singer, the gray-suited musicians onstage, or the visual slide show happening all around them. (The way he enhances Byrne and Co.’s cover of Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout” turns the show’s already wallop-packing take into a gut punch.) That his American Utopia still keeps the intimacy of the original production is a testament to his skills and the solidity of its creator’s high-concept stage presentation. Seeing Byrne and his multicultural crew spill into the audience during a raucous, marching-band take on “Burning Down the House” — and seeing such a giddy example of community at a moment when so many of us needed exactly that feeling — was enough to make the tears flow. It’s a canon-worthy concert film that gave this critic the second most joyous moviegoing moment of 2020.…

‘Lover’s Rock’

… And here’s what was responsible for our single most joyous moviegoing moment in 2020. Steve McQueen’s ambitious, five-part whatsit Small Axe — is this an anthology series, a suite of feature-length films, a dessert topping, a floor wax? Discuss. No, please, by all means, endlessly discuss — takes a look back at black life and West Indian diaspora culture in Britain from the late Sixties to the early Eighties. Each of the chapters focuses on a different story, from the police harassment of a restaurant owner and his clientele ( Mangrove ) to a scathing indictment of the Thatcher-era public-school system ( Education ). But it’s the second of the five movies, which revolves around a “blues” house party, that stands head and dressed-to-the-nines shoulders above the rest. We see the DJs setting up their sound system and women cooking Jamaican food in a West London flat. We see Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) sneaking out her window so she can meet up with her girlfriend and get ready, a young man named Franklyn (Michael Ward) make flirtatious small talk with her once she gets to the soirée, and roughnecks and would-be Casanovas strut their stuff as the reggae music kicks into gear. And then, when Janet Kay’s “Silly Games” comes on, we see Martha and Franklyn — along with a dozen other couples — slow dance and sing along. (Cue the endorphin rush.) McQueen’s masterpiece of a joyous, moving memory piece is peerless when it comes to evoking a mood, channeling a bygone moment, and using sound and vision in a way that’s simply transcendental. He makes you feel like you are right there on that cramped dance floor, sweating alongside these folks, swaying and jumping, forgetting everything else around you and getting right into a communal groove.

‘Collective’

On October 30th, 2015, in a rock club in Bucharest named Colectiv, a fire killed 27 people and injured another 180. There was enough public outrage to cause protests and a shift in Romania’s government. And then a journalist at a sports newspaper began to hear about some of the club patrons dying while convalescing in the hospital. He and his team of investigative reporters decide to dig a little deeper, and soon, a massive scandal involving power, corruption, lies, and even the Mafia slowly begins to come into focus. For moviegoers who’ve been following the Romanian New Wave since it started cresting in the mid-aughts, Alexander Alexander Nanau’s documentary will play like a perfect nonfiction companion piece to the country’s bounty of fictional dramas and black, bleak comedies. For everyone else, this muckraking procedural will feel like a docu-version of films like All the President’s Men and Spotlight, where tense conversations around conference tables, writers huddled over computers, and editors issuing orders from behind desks make for compelling drama.

It would be an extraordinary work regardless of when it may have reached your screens (its run in festivals last year helped build an early word-of-mouth campaign before eventually being picked up for distribution). But to see it at this moment in 2020 is to see the world reflected back in the most profound ways. It’s a story of a nation’s inability to take care of its citizens during a crisis. It’s a tale of a government more concerned with lining its own pockets and holding onto power. It’s a story of a fourth estate that is lauded rather than designated an enemy of the people. And ultimately, it’s a movie whose title takes on a whole different meaning by the film’s end. This only works when we’re in this together, Collective reminds us. There is indeed strength in numbers.

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The Best Movies of 2020

By Richard Brody

Since March, the year in cinema has been defined by a near-total absence of significant theatrical releases—first, because theatres across the country were shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic and, subsequently, because even after they reopened people largely stayed away. The new 007 film and the new Wes Anderson film, among dozens of others, were bumped to next year’s schedule; “Soul” and “Wonder Woman 1984” are being released on streaming sites rather than in theatres; the Cannes Film Festival was cancelled, and many others, such as the New York Film Festival, were held online. In spite of this, 2020 has been, against the odds, a wonderful year for new movies. The absence of tentpole-type films—superhero spectacles, familiar franchises, star vehicles—had the welcome effect of thrusting independent films to the foreground. With “virtual cinema” releases, art-house venues such as Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center have stepped up to become, in effect, distributors; streaming behemoths, including Netflix, Amazon, and the newcomer HBO Max, are playing the part of art houses; and less prominent sites, digital versions of film festivals, and online self-distribution have taken the place of limited theatrical releases. Nevertheless, I had the sense, through much of the year, that even the best new independent films were being met with a muted response, stemming in part from (as I wrote about a month ago) a lack of media buzz but also, relatedly, from a collective sense of numbness in the face of the pandemic’s collective and inequitably borne tragedy and the disastrous political response to it.

New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.

The reality is that there isn’t a movie on the list of thirty-six below that has made a scintilla of difference in the nation’s crises this year, even if there are some great ones that address major political matters directly and movingly. It’s hardly the filmmakers’ fault. There’s no reason to expect movies to make a practical difference in electoral politics (despite Michael Moore’s longstanding efforts). But, at a time of emergency, in which the very survival of Americans and American political institutions has been in question, the impotence of movies to make a difference is an inescapable aspect of watching and thinking about cinema. Considering the changed state of movies in the face of the pandemic is impossible, and immoral, without also considering the governmental failures—rooted in indifference, incompetence, malevolence, and greed—that have made the pandemic an ongoing medical and social catastrophe.

This year has served as a terrible reminder that there’s no such thing as normalcy—for many individuals and for society at large, crisis is a permanent state of affairs, and what’s normal, alas, is the systemic failure to recognize and respond to it. Yet movies, generally speaking, aren’t up to the demands of depicting extraordinary events, whether they are the extremes of seemingly private life (violence, death, sex) or the enormities of politics and abuses of power. The movie business as a whole—both Hollywood and independent—internalizes and reflects norms. It emphasizes unity over candor, a good story over what’s really happening; it shapes stories to fit arcs rather than creating forms to accommodate realities. It fails to dramatize the connections between private life and the political situation, inner life and public power. Because of generalized, ingrained, and internalized guardrails against the kind of imaginative freedom required to do so, filmmakers tend to be disinclined to break a dramatic framework in order to say what’s on their minds. As a result, even some movies of progressive intent contribute to the drone of media conventions, and to their distortions; their tone and form fatally undermine their substance.

In a time of crisis, form appears frivolous, style is suspect, and beauty is undervalued—mistakenly. (Some of this year’s best films overtly confront this conflict.) The inner truth of experience and the authenticity of emotion are, in and of themselves, cleansing to a defiled mediasphere. The best of modern, post-classical filmmaking has always been an act of resistance, whether or not those films’ subject matter is expressly political. The fundamental politics of movies is the expansion of cinematic form, the creation of new possibilities of expression—most significantly, the expression and inclusion of experiences and ideas otherwise kept out of movies, whether owing to intentional suppression or falsely innocent conventions of storytelling. Progress in the arts, like progress in politics, isn’t linear; it’s dialectical, in multiple dimensions, and involves unforeseeable responses to unforeseeable events, including sudden and dramatic eruptions of creative originality and visionary imagination. At its best, filmmaking (like film criticism) points not at the present but toward the future. I’m anticipating a peaceful transition of political power at the beginning of next year, and also looking ahead to as yet unfathomable varieties of cinematic revolution to come.

A note on my list: I’ve counted as a 2020 release any new film that was made available online for any length of time this year, including those shown in online versions of festivals and special series. I didn’t, however, include some notable ones that were available online but also have upcoming releases by active distributors planned for next year, such as Matías Piñeiro’s “ Isabella ” and Jia Zhangke’s “ Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue ,” both of which would have figured high on the list. So would several films that came out this year but have been sitting in the vaults for some time, including “ Hill of Freedom ” (2014, Hong Sang-soo), “ And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead ” (2015, Billy Woodberry), and “ Jayhawkers ” (2014, Kevin Willmott). Also, Steve McQueen’s series “ Small Axe ” isn’t, as some have maintained, a TV series; it’s a set of five feature films that he made in a short period of time—that’s quite an achievement in itself, which is rendered all the more imposing by the great artistic merit of them all. All five are, separately, among my best films of the year.

1. “ Kajillionaire ”

Miranda July’s exuberant yet terrifying drama, about a patriarchal family of scammers and a young woman’s spirit of resistance and liberation, is realized with an exhilarating imaginative freedom.

2. “ Da 5 Bloods ”

Dramatizing the inseparable link between the battle for justice and the battle for historical truth, Spike Lee’s film follows a group of Black veterans of the Vietnam War who head back to Vietnam with motives as mixed now as they were then.

3. “ The Whistlers ”

The Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, who’s obsessed with the political implications of language, turns a classic dirty-cop thriller into an epistemological mosaic that’s centered on a Canary Islands language which uses whistling instead of speech—and on how it’s used to avoid government surveillance.

4. “ Dick Johnson Is Dead ”

When the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson learned that her elderly father, Richard, a psychiatrist, was exhibiting symptoms of dementia, she invited him to live with her and filmed their new shared adventure. The result, which includes staged tragicomic sequences feigning Richard’s death and afterlife, plus the behind-the-scenes story of producing them, is a metafictional exploration of the metaphysical.

5. “ An Easy Girl ”

In Rebecca Zlotowski’s daringly subjective drama, a sixteen-year-old girl living in Cannes and unsure of her future is unexpectedly visited by her twenty-two-year-old cousin from Paris, a young woman who lives the fast life and draws her into it; the girl’s ensuing whirl of reckless behavior proves radically and surprisingly transformative.

6. “ Never Rarely Sometimes Always ”

Sidney Flanigan plays a seventeen-year-old high-school student in rural Pennsylvania who, unable to get an abortion in that state without parental consent, travels to New York for the procedure. The writer and director, Eliza Hittman, emphasizes the bureaucratic obstacles and administrative infrastructure abortion involves—and the inseparable connection of private life and public policy.

7. “ On the Rocks ”

Sofia Coppola’s comedic drama, about an artist who confronts the gale-force personality of her worldly, suave father, is a bitterly ironic challenge to the venerable ideal of male Hollywood cool.

8. “ Lovers Rock ”

The second film in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” cycle is a bracingly original musical centered on a house party by and for Black Londoners of West Indian descent, where joy and expectation meet romance and danger. McQueen, working with the cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, develops a boldly original style for dance and its emotional world.

9. “ Time ”

Sibil Fox Richardson, whose husband, Robert, was imprisoned for a bank robbery in which they both took part, made video recordings of her life with their children—and of her efforts to overturn his unconscionably long sentence. The filmmaker, Garrett Bradley, draws on Fox Richardson’s archives and films her ongoing quest for Robert’s liberation, bringing together personal and political history and revealing the unredressed legacy of Jim Crow.

10. “ City Hall ”

Focussing on the activities and administration of Boston’s mayor, Marty Walsh, a Democrat who expressly embraces ethnic inclusion and equality of opportunity, Frederick Wiseman’s latest documentary presents a comprehensive vision of politics as meticulous and rational management guided by authentic empathy.

11. “ Fourteen ”

In Dan Sallitt’s intimately scaled and audaciously wide-ranging drama, the lifelong friendship of two thirtyish women in Brooklyn is shaken by the unaddressed fault lines of their stifled conflicts and the powerful implications of their diverging ways of life.

12. “ Yes, God, Yes ”

Karen Maine, in her first feature, tells the story of a Catholic-school teen-ager’s resistance to the preachings and teachings of sexual abstinence; the drama of her quiet but consequential revolt emerges with textured physicality and deeply nuanced evocations of the inner life—along with bitterly ironic comedy.

13. “ Shirley ”

Josephine Decker directed, with melodramatic intensity and a furiously probing image repertory, this historical fantasy about Shirley Jackson’s effort, around 1950, to break through her agoraphobic terrors and write a novel—and to engage a young lecturer’s wife in the psychodrama of her research.

14. “ Cuties ”

For her first feature, the French director Maïmouna Doucouré tells a story of personal import that emphasizes the disturbing power of multiple dimensions of patriarchy: in Paris, an eleven-year-old girl of Senegalese descent is angered at learning that her father is preparing to take a second wife—and, in response, repudiates her family’s belief in modesty by joining classmates in a provocative hip-hop dance performance.

15. “ Mangrove ”

Steve McQueen’s first “Small Axe” release is a historical drama set in the late nineteen-sixties and centered on a Black-owned restaurant that serves as a social hub for the West Indian community in London. The gathering place becomes a target of police harassment, resulting in a historic court battle; McQueen focusses on the intellectual background that comes to the fore under pressure and develops into a mass movement.

16. “ Talking About Trees ”

The once vital and now stifled Sudanese film industry is the subject of this documentary, by Suhaib Gasmelbari, in which a group of now elderly and involuntarily retired filmmakers attempt to reopen a long-shuttered movie house in the city of Omdurman and, in the process, bring to light the country’s arbitrary politics and reflect on the power of the cinema itself.

17. “ The 11th Green ”

Christopher Munch wrote and directed this wildly imaginative inside-the-Beltway sci-fi tale of an investigative journalist—the son of a recently deceased Air Force general—who uncovers evidence of a military conspiracy involving alien contact and alien technology, and who becomes the target of a government surveillance campaign that echoes Cold War-era machinations.

18. “ The American Sector ”

From a modest and oblique concept—the effort to find and photograph the dozens of fragments of the Berlin Wall that are dispersed throughout the United States, in public and private hands—the filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez engage in a fascinating range of happenstance conversations from which a grand vision of historical resonance and political consciousness emerges.

19. “ The Forty-Year-Old Version ”

Radha Blank wrote, directed, and stars in this intimate and vulnerable comedy, about a Black female playwright whose latest play is produced by a white man who demands distorting compromises for its largely white audience—and her efforts to rediscover her uncompromised voice by way of hip-hop performance.

20. “ Paris Calligrammes ”

The German director Ulrike Ottinger’s documentary, about her development as a young artist in Paris in the nineteen-sixties, is both a bildungsroman and an unfolding of modern German history from the perspective of other, elder German artists in Parisian exile.

21. “Red, White, and Blue”

The third of McQueen’s “Small Axe” films is based on the real life of Leroy Logan (played by John Boyega), a young Black scientist who, in 1983 , joined the London police force. Logan’s explicit aim was to reform the department—owing, in part, to the fact that his father was brutalized and wrongly arrested by white officers—and McQueen films his story with a poised widescreen aesthetic of analysis and contemplation.

22. “Alex Wheatle”

This “Small Axe” film is based on the true story of Alex Wheatle, a Black writer who was imprisoned because of his involvement in the 1981 Brixton riots.

23. “Education”

The fifth of the “Small Axe” films tells a story, based on Steve McQueen’s own experience, about an eleven-year-old Black boy in London who, despite his evident intelligence, is relegated—as are many minority students—to a special-education school.

24. “ Joan of Arc ”

The ten-year-old Lise Leplat Prudhomme stars in the second musical drama by the extravagantly inventive Bruno Dumont. It’s about France’s sainted savior, and it features extended dialectical disputations, military scenes staged as production numbers, and music by the singer-songwriter Christophe.

25. “ Residue ”

Merawi Gerima’s sharply perceptive first feature is the story of a young Black filmmaker who returns to his family’s neighborhood in Washington, D.C., in order to make a film about the traumatic gentrification that it’s undergoing—and who discovers that he’s an outsider to his former friends.

26. “ The 24th ”

This passionate and analytical historical drama by the prolific director and screenwriter Kevin Willmott assembles an extraordinary cast (including Trai Byers, Mykelti Williamson, Aja Naomi King, and Bashir Salahuddin) for the story of soldiers in a Black regiment during the First World War who are subjected to the menaces of Jim Crow and take grave risks to defend themselves.

27. “ Bacurau ”

Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho directed this bold political and supernatural fantasy about a rural Brazilian village that, during an electoral campaign, is subjected to attack by a band of mercenaries and organizes a disciplined and imaginative resistance.

28. “ She Dies Tomorrow ”

In this apocalyptic fiction of contagion, directed by Amy Seimetz, the anticipation of death is itself a malady that spreads on contact—and reflects psychological ills endemic to the modern bourgeoisie.

29. “ The Assistant ”

Kitty Green’s psychologically agonizing drama of predatory workplace practices is centered on a young woman who works at a New York film company and gets inklings of her male boss’s abuse of his office for sex with other young women.

30. “ Gatsby in Connecticut ”

In this engaging rabbit-hole documentary, a nonprofessional filmmaker pursues his obsession with “ The Great Gatsby ,” tracing key elements of Fitzgerald’s story to Westport, Connecticut—and connecting with a writer who published a related report in The New Yorker .

31. “ Ham on Rye ”

Tyler Taormina’s first feature takes a finely nuanced, boldly supernatural, and photographically exquisite view of the rituals and transitions associated with the end of high school.

32. “ Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker ”

The copious archive of the late artist David Wojnarowicz is at the center of Chris McKim’s documentary, which considers in detail the connections between the AIDS crisis in the nineteen-eighties, the era’s culture wars, and the political and social oppression of homosexuals.

33. “One Night in Miami”

Regina King’s finely imagined and fervently acted directorial début tells the story of a meeting, in 1964, between Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Brown, and Muhammad Ali (still known at the time as Cassius Clay).

34. “ Build the Wall ”

Joe Swanberg’s light-toned drama looks with quietly passionate detail at solitary artists as they age, collaboration as it develops, and friendship as it curdles.

The core of David Fincher’s flashback-centric drama about Herman Mankiewicz’s work on the screenplay of “Citizen Kane” is Mankiewicz’s confrontation with the right-wing politics that he discovered in the Hollywood of the nineteen-thirties.

36. “ Santiago, Italia ”

Nanni Moretti, best known for directing and starring in autofictions such as “ Dear Diary ,” made this documentary about the resistance of the Italian Embassy in Chile to the Pinochet coup and its aid to the victims—and he comes out from behind the curtain, to crucial effect.

2020 in Review

• The funniest cartoons , as chosen by our Instagram followers.
• Helen Rosner on the best cookbooks .
• Doreen St. Félix selects the year’s best TV shows .
• Ian Crouch recounts the best jokes of the year .
• Sheldon Pearce on the albums that helped him navigate a lost plague year.
• Sarah Larson picks the best podcasts .
• New Yorker writers on the best books they read this year.
• Amanda Petrusich counts down the best music .
• Michael Schulman on ten great performances .

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By The New Yorker

By Amanda Petrusich

By John Cassidy

The 50 best films of 2020

Our annual poll of the year’s top movies – at cinemas, festivals or online – as chosen by over 100 of our contributors from around the world.

11 December 2020

See much more of our review of the year in our Winter 2020-21 double issue

Our biggest-ever issue takes stock of 2020 with our annual polls of the best films and television of the year and surveys of the state of different regions and genres.

50. The Vast of Night

Andrew Patterson, US

A radio operator and a presenter discover a menacing sound on the airwaves in this scintillating retro UFO  tale.

We say : “The pandemic may have delayed the release of mega-bucks sci-fi extravaganzas like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, but Andrew Patterson’s film was an exhilarating discovery for dark lockdown times and further proof, if you ever needed it, that a small budget (less than $1 million) is no barrier to the sublime. The storyline is textbook 1950s B movie, but the film’s innovative sound design and tracking shots, along with the director’s dynamite blend of anxiety and awe, take it far beyond pastiche.” (Isabel Stevens)

Where to see it : On Amazon Prime

49. The Truth

Koreeda Hirokazu, Japan

Koreeda’s naturalistic drama sees Catherine Deneuve play a monstrous movie star and Juliette Binoche the daughter outraged by her euphemistic memoir.

We said : “Koreeda’s French adventure is a substantial success, not least because he’s brought a lot of ideas and motifs from his Japanese films to the party. The Truth consolidates the shift in his recent work to looser and more conceptual plotting, but it also reaches all the way back to After Life (1998) for some wry reflections on summing up life trajectories and the practical uses of artifice.” (Tony Rayns)

Read our review :  The Truth: Catherine Deneuve plays a monstrous movie star in Koreeda’s French adventure

Where to see it : On Curzon Home Cinema, Blu-ray and DVD

48. The Invisible Man

Leigh Whannell, US

Elisabeth Moss is tormented by an unseen assailant in a smart, timely update of the horror mainstay.

We said : Whannell’s film gives a feminist spin to H.G. Wells’s classic, emphasising the fear of being watched. The voyeurlike camerawork – lingering on every nook and cranny, insisting on empty spaces – gives the film a distinctive thrill, and the pacing is characterised by slow build-ups over racing emotions. As Covid-prompted lockdowns led to increasing levels of domestic violence, The Invisible Man held a mirror up to the routine horrors scarring many everyday lives. (Chrystel Oloukoi)

Where to see it : On Blu-ray, Amazon Prime and other digital platforms

47. Richard Jewell

Clint Eastwood, US

Paul Walter Hauser portrays the security guard who discovered the Atlanta Olympics bomb only to find himself accused of planting it, in Eastwood’s all-American tale of apostasy.

We said : “Sam Rockwell rediscovers himself as a superlative straight man and is a small miracle. Even more so is the other half of the double-act: Jewell as played by Paul Walter Hauser. Ever the unflinching and somewhat dour realist, Eastwood presents us with an American landscape that has largely been denuded of the picturesque. The film has a feel for life on the lowest rung of the middle class.” (Nick Pinkerton, S&S , February)

Read our review :  Richard Jewell explores how an unlikely hero loses his religion

Where to see it : On digital platforms, Blu-ray and DVD

46. Collective

Alexander Nanau, Romania

A thrilling exposé that uncovers a vast trail of corruption following a fatal nightclub fire in Bucharest.

We said : “Nanau refuses to regard the uncovering of wrongdoing as an achievement in itself; he constructs his film from interwoven strands which offer a broader perspective on the administrative toil involved in effecting lasting change, and the crucial contributions of both individual moral choices and wider democratic movements in enabling such a process.” (Trevor Johnston, S&S , December)

Read our review:   Collective takes a scalpel to the contagion of corruption

+ interview:   “Incompetence was killing the victims”: Alexander Nanau on his health-service exposé Collective

Where to see it : On various digital platforms

45. Clemency

Chinonye Chukwu, US

Chukwu’s spare, unsparing prison drama cuts to the heart of the injustice and inhumanity of America’s death penalty.

We said : “Uncomfortable, emotional and resolutely unflinching in its gaze, Chukwu’s film is a clear-eyed exploration of the contentious debate surrounding America’s death penalty and, particularly, the way in which death row disproportionately targets African-American men. Alfre Woodard puts in a phenomenal performance, expressing Bernadine’s churning inner turmoil through her resigned expression, downcast eyes and hunched shoulders.” (Nikki Baughan, S&S , September)

Read our review :  In Clemency, death row walls in Alfre Woodard’s warden

Where to see it : available to buy or stream on  BFI Player, iTunes, Amazon Prime and other platforms

44. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Jason Woliner, US

Caustic satirist Sacha Baron Cohen triumphs in his mission to restore Kazakhstan’s reputation with a smart evolution of his Borat character.

We said: “If the times are a-changin’, thankfully so is Sacha Baron Cohen’s approach. In fearless, scene-stealing newcomer Maria Bakalova, he has found a worthy ally for his carefully planned chaos. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm offers more proof of Baron Cohen’s admirably serious comic evolution, as well as of Borat’s enduring ability to go viral, with several set pieces to bring the house down.” (Leigh Singer)

Read our review:   Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is another dose of superbly executed chaos in America’s heartlands

Where to see it: On Amazon Prime

43. Birds of Prey

Cathy Yan, US

A hyper-violent entry from the DC Extended Universe, with Margot Robbie’s comic villain leading the blood-soaked jamboree.

We said : “Seeing the women crack skulls and femurs along with the lads has been the main through-line for the female characters of superhero franchises. Margot Robbie reprises her role from 2016’s Suicide Squad as the psychopathic Harley Quinn with a lippy, audacious girlishness and a gnat’s attention span. Birds of Prey is a whole bunch of glittery, satisfying fun – especially the unkempt, cheerful, chaotic energy of its protagonist.” (Christina Newland)

Read our review :  In Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn lets her hair down

Where to see it : On DVD , Blu-ray, iTunes, Amazon Prime and other digital platforms

42. Another Round

Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark

Four drinking buddies test the theory that a steady blood-alcohol level is the key to peak human performance.

We said : “Breezy and boozy, joyful and melancholic, occasionally wild and often wise, Another Round is a heady cocktail swiftly downed, with a late kick like a particularly euphoric mule. A drinking movie that presumes to caution about using alcohol as a crutch while also daring to suggest that sometimes it’s a very useful crutch indeed. It’s about male friendship, midlife crisis and the cruelty of the modern human condition.” (Jessica Kiang)

Read our review :  In Another Round, Mads Mikkelsen and pals uncork their spirits

Where to see it : Postponed due to lockdown, rescheduled for 5 February 2021

41. About Endlessness

Roy Andersson, Sweden

The Swedish master of wan deadpan ratchets up his world-historical gaze in a series of sublime microcosmic tableaux.

We said : “About Endlessness continues in the style that Andersson has pursued since his return in 2000. It comprises a string of vignettes, almost all playing out in a single take, viewed by a locked-down camera with a static frame that holds its human subjects in the philosophical distance of a deep-focus long shot. Andersson is nothing if not consistent in the bittersweet pessimism of his worldview, leavened by brief glints of glimpsed joy.” (Nick Pinkerton)

Read our review :  About Endlessness takes Roy Andersson’s sad-sack sketches to the great beyond

+ interview:  “In my pictures you can’t hide”: Roy Andersson on humour and truth

Where to see it : On Curzon Home Cinema

40. The Personal History of David Copperfield

Armando Iannucci, UK

Dev Patel makes for an energetic lead in this inspired and fast-paced adaptation of Charles Dickens’s literary classic.

We said : “With its ostentatiously colour-blind casting, not only of the energetic and enterprising Dev Patel as Charles Dickens’s typically intrepid, buffeted young wayfarer, but in a slew of roles rich and poor peppered throughout, Armando Iannucci’s rollicking adaptation announces itself as a radical reclamation of the heritage ‘lit pic’ from the off.” (Tom Charity)

Read our review :  The Personal History of David Copperfield gives Dickens a radical, rollicking twist

Where to see it : On DVD , Blu-ray, BFI Player and other digital platforms

39. The Forty-Year-Old Version

Radha Blank, US

A down-on-her-luck New York playwright, desperate for a breakthrough before she turns 40, reinvents herself as rapper RadhaMUSprime.

We said : “This is a highly personal story about being torn between ‘making it’, selling out, and forging a path as an MC . And there’s more than a hint of the metatextual. Shot in black-and-white 35mm, The Forty-Year-Old Version paints a loving portrait of parts of New York City that aren’t represented with such care, if at all, in narrative films of this scale. Blank’s achievement makes a convincing case for a new list category: ‘40 in their 40s’.” (Violet Lucca)

Read our review :  In The Forty-Year-Old Version, Radha Blank hoists her own star

Where to see it : On Netflix

Christopher Nolan, US

Nolan’s brainteaser builds a rollercoaster spectacle out of temporal spaghetti.

We said : “Nolan has mentioned that he’d rather like to direct a Bond movie, and for much of its two-and-a-half-hours Tenet comes across as a 007 romp that’s been force-fed a course in temporal relativity and advanced nuclear physics. (Nobel Prize-winning physicist Kip Thorne, Nolan’s consultant on Interstellar, shows up again here in the credits.) As the film’s palindromic title hints, a lot of the action runs both forwards and backwards, often simultaneously on screen, making for some impressively virtuosic spectacle.” (Philip Kemp)

Read our review :  Tenet: Christopher Nolan throws time for a loop

Where to see it : On DVD , Blu-ray, Amazon Prime and other digital platforms

37. She Dies Tomorrow

Amy Seimetz, US

Fears of impending mortality haunt writer-director Amy Seimetz’s existential horror movie, a bleakly satirical exposé of moral emptiness and foreboding.

We said : “It remains an open question whether the condition the film posits is a collective madness, or something more supernatural… This moral emptiness, presented as a corollary of our innate mortality, is what makes this film so unnerving. It is a horror movie which reduces its central fear to the most fundamental form of existential dread.” (Anton Bitel)

Read our review :  She Dies Tomorrow sends Kate Lyn Sheil’s death drive viral

Where to see it : On BFI Player , Curzon Home Cinema and other digital platforms.

Natalie Erika James, Australia

A dread-filled horror of the human condition, starring Emily Mortimer as one of three generations of women affected by grandmother Edna’s dementia.

We said : “The real bogeyman in Relic, far more terrifying than any genre monster, is the decline and death that are part of the human condition. As Kay and Sam watch it coming, the dark rot gradually staining the house and its occupants serves, no less than the family’s hand-me-down relics, as a macabre memento mori… The result is creepily affective, hitting hard anyone who has witnessed a grandparent or parent slowly vanish.” (Anton Bitel)

Read our review :  Relic finds fear in a labyrinthine house of horrors – and in intergenerational illness

+   “There’s heartbreak in someone losing themselves”: Relic director Natalie Erika James on her love of gothic and Asian horror

+   Who’s afraid of fear? The real-life horrors of Relic

Where to see it : On BFI Player and other digital platforms

35. Mogul Mowgli

Bassam Tariq, UK

Tariq’s visceral directorial debut, co-written with Riz Ahmed, follows Zed, a rapper whose life spirals out of control when, on the cusp of success, he succumbs to a debilitating illness.

We said : “Some moments echo the confrontational, direct to camera stares of Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) it’s focused purely on the dynamics of Zed’s family and friends, the cast mostly populated by British-Pakistani actors. Mogul Mowgli is confident and confrontational, exhilarating in its willingness to constantly shift gears between absurdist comedy and vulnerable, introspective narrative.” (Kambole Campbell)

Read our review :  Mogul Mowgli confronts Riz Ahmed’s rapper’s battle of the soul

Where to see it : On BFI Player and coming to Blu-ray and DVD in February 2021

David Fincher, US

Fincher’s portrait of writer Herman J. Mankiewicz.

We said : “Mank enshrines the myth of a town full of idiots. But myth it is. For one thing, Herman’s main credit competitor remains Orson Welles, the furthest thing imaginable from an idiot. Richard Meryman said of Herman: “I wanted to find out how, when he was all but finished as a writer, he could turn around and write Citizen Kane.” Mank’s answer is that Mankiewicz always had the ability to write something that good; it was Hollywood holding him back. Perhaps, but it was also Hollywood that gave him immortality.” (Farran Smith Nehme)

Read our review : Mank nips itself in the Rosebud

+   Mank prints the legend of Hollywood as a gilded cage

Ben Sharrock, UK

This culture-clash chamber piece finds wit as well as heartache in four migrants’ exile to the dampest corner of Europe – Scotland.

We said : “The film reminds us, at a moment when empathy often feels in short supply, that the real boats crossing the North Sea are carrying real people. People with families, hobbies, traditions and songs. It’s a reminder, without ever being piteous, that when we watch television news or social media feeds, we’re only seeing a partial story. Look beyond your limited worldview, Limbo says, and see the bigger, more complicated picture.” (Rebecca Harrison)

Read our review :  Limbo gives a Scottish welcome to four far-flung refugees

Where to see it : In cinemas and on Mubi in 2021

Rob Savage, UK

A feat of socially distanced production-as-story, Rob Savage’s haunted housebound horror, taking place entirely on the videoconferencing platform Zoom, was the film for our locked-down, logged-on year.

We said : “Host was conceived, cast, shot and edited in 12 weeks. Because everything was done remotely, the film can’t help but reflect the dispersed, contingent conditions of its production – given its subject matter, a feature, not a bug. The sheen of fragmented authenticity, combined with the fraught lockdown context in which it’s been viewed, has led to Host being received as a minor DIY classic – a Blair Witch Project for the Covid era.” (Adam Nayman)

Read our review :  Host: Zoom-bombing with the astral plane

+   “We did a real séance on Zoom”: Rob Savage on video call horror Host

Where to see it : On Shudder

Pablo Larraín, Chile

Larraín’s latest unleashes Mariana Di Girólamo as a peroxide pyromaniac dancer involved in a wild plot to reclaim her adopted son.

We said : “Adding an entirely unexpected new register to the filmography of an already dazzlingly eclectic filmmaker, Larraín’s Ema is about as lovable as a genius-level sudoku puzzle, but in it, the cinema of what-the-hell-did-I-justwatch uncategorisability has a new title for its pantheon. There simply are no women – no people – like Ema. As elastically portrayed in a performance of event-horizon strangeness and self-possession by newcomer Mariana Di Girólamo, Ema is an unfathomable singularity.” (Jessica Kiang)

Read our review : Ema: Pablo Larraín lights some kind of delirious inferno

Where to see it : On DVD , Blu-ray, Amazon Prime and other platforms

30. Martin Eden

Pietro Marcello, Italy

This stylistically dazzling adaptation of Jack London’s autobiographical novel – about a working-class writer who climbs the ranks of society – transposes the story from the US to Naples and mixes drama with archive footage to create a unique fable.

We said : “Marcello’s adaptation is an exercise in streamlining and condensation. Martin’s trajectory from wide-eyed proletarian to jaundiced celebrity is drawn in one fluid stroke, the struggles and successes of his dual pursuit of a writing career and Elena Orsini’s hand all integrated within the same inexorable motion. Marcello elaborates the story’s symbolic thrust through an ambiguous treatment of period. The initial impression that the film takes place, like the novel, towards the start of the last century is contradicted through subtle anachronisms. What is left is a cautionary tale about the corrupting power of wealth and success.

“This is reinforced rather than offset by Marcello’s signature use of archival footage. As in his earlier experiments in hybrid storytelling, short clips interspersed throughout serve as lyrical counterpoints to the narrative. ” (Giovanni Marchini Camia)

Where to see it : Lockdown postponed its planned November UK release to 2021

29. Little Women

Greta Gerwig, US

An astute adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved coming-of-age story that liberates its Civil War-era sisters without taking liberties.

We said : “Gerwig presents a faithful adaptation of Alcott’s traditional tale, while also taking care to highlight its progressive views. It’s a commanding blend of the sweetly sentimental and the bitingly political. Gerwig’s decision to rework the structure of the novel, bouncing back and forth in time from the girls being engaged together in the innocent pursuits of childhood to facing the realities of adult life separately – Jo as a writer in New York, Meg married with children, Amy on a claustrophobic European tour, Beth facing her own devastating fate – proves a masterstroke. Gerwig focuses on the novel’s key coming-of-age themes rather than individual moments: the loss of childhood, the importance of forging one’s own path, tentative steps towards female emancipation. It is a fresh, dynamic approach that may seem spun from modern feminist thought, but actually makes explicit ideas that Alcott vocally espoused. All four leads are excellent, but Florence Pugh quietly steals the show as Amy.” (Nikki Baughan)

Read our review :  Little Women emancipates Louisa May Alcott’s spirited sisters

28. Les Misérables

Ladj Ly, France

Ly offers an insider’s view of how police brutality ripples through a deprived banlieue in the French capital.

We said : “Developed from a 2017 short of the same title, Ly’s debut feature is ostensibly a banlieue film (a genre of the life of marginalised suburban, mostly male youth in French housing estates) – but with the difference that Ly himself grew up in Montfermeil. Unlike the directors of earlier works such as La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) and Etat des lieux (JeanFrançois Richet, 1995), he offers an insider’s view of the social tensions that shape the lives of his characters. The very existence of this film – the product of the suburb, of racial and social solidarity – is something to be celebrated: a flower sprung from concrete. Its depiction of the ways various individuals survive in a society lined with touchpaper is tremendously subtle and accessible. So it’s jarring when, in its final moments, the film descends suddenly and steeply into the abyss, with a shockingly violent and nihilistic coda. Perhaps it’s naive to cling to Les Misérables’ early vision of hope. Perhaps the only solution to a corrupt system is to burn the whole thing down.” (Catherine Wheatley)

Read our review :  Les Misérables: 24 hours of violence in the Paris streets

+ interview :  Ladj Ly on Les Misérables: “Film is a tool. It changes things.”

Where to see it : Available now on DVD in the UK

27. His House

Remi Weekes, UK

This canny first feature from Remi Weekes finds fresh terrors for two South Sudanese refugees in the back rooms beyond British social realism.

We said : “First-time director Remi Weekes, working from a story by Felicity Evans and Toby Venables, doesn’t take the comparatively standard approach of establishing a social-realistic context and then letting the supernatural seep in. From the outset, this manages to inhabit both a Ken Loach-type drab urban space and an insidious netherworld. Grounded by nuanced, unhistrionic work from leads Sopé Dìrísù and Wunmi Mosaku as the married Majur couple, His House shifts focus from exterior threat to the cracks in the marriage, exacerbated by disagreements about assimilation – though at the heart of the horror is a particular, personal crime which must be atoned for. Weekes stages a number of stunning moments – a pull-back from Bol sat at an unfamiliar table to show a chunk of the wall of his house floating in a remembered night-sea; and repeated manifestations by the formidable night witch and the skull-masked spectre of the lost girl. In the end, this makes for a terrifying ride with an ambiguous, unsettling conclusion.” (Kim Newman, S&S , December)

Read our review :  His House gives a displaced couple no happy home

+ intervieew:  “I like cinema that cracks open your sense of the world”: Remi Weekes on His House

Where to see it : On Netflix in the UK

26. The Disciple

Chaitanya Tamhane, India

The director of the acclaimed ‘Court’ (2014) won a Fipresci prize in Venice for this Mumbai-set drama about a man (played by real-life musician Aditya Modak) striving to attain his teachers’ artistic and spiritual standards as he pursues a career performing classical ragas.

We said : “The film seems to embody Indian cinema in the contemplative tradition of Satyajit Ray or Mani Kaul, but also makes room for the lurid realities of Indian TV talent shows. The hero’s lonely nocturnal scooter rides make a mesmerising visual thread, and his quest for the ideal in a commercial world makes the film as much a statement about cinema as about music.” (Jonathan Romney, S&S  online)

Read our review :  The Disciple: Chaitanya Tamhane considers the limits of musical control

Where to see it : Awaiting UK  release

25. Babyteeth

Shannon Murphy, Australia

Shannon Murphy’s debut feature, an adaptation of Rita Kalnejais’s 2012 play, stars Eliza Scanlen and Toby Wallace in a beautifully acted exploration of the pain and absurdity of the young love between a terminally ill teenager and an older drug dealer.

We said : “Babyteeth is a tough one to categorise and the better for it. Far more than a ‘terminal illness’ movie or even a typical coming-of-age story, Murphy’s debut captures the humanity of suffering while resisting the need for sentiment or mawkish pandering.” (David Opie, S&S  online)

Read our review :  Babyteeth bridges teen romance and terminal illness

Where to see it : On DVD , Blu-ray and digital platforms

Christian Petzold, Germany/France

Petzold’s fantastical ode to Berlin concerns an art historian who has a passionate affair with a diver, and appropriates the mythological figure of the undine – a water nymph – to fashion a love story that doubles as a myth about the city.

We said : “In an early scene, Undine gives a guided tour to a group of tourists. While she outlines Berlin’s urban development across the 20th century, the camera glides over miniature models of the capital. The undine of lore comes out of the water to find love and thus obtain a soul. Berlin, a city that emerged from a swamp, has embarked on this quest again and again. Petzold’s ambiguously hopeful film is a declaration of love.” (Giovanni Marchini Camia, S&S  online)

Read our review :  Undine is Christian Petzold’s slippery love song to Berlin

Where to see it : Not yet available in the UK

23. The Inheritance

Ephraim Asili, US

Asili’s debut weaves together the histories of the MOVE Organization, the Black Arts Movement and his time in a Black Marxist collective. It centres on a man who inherits his grandmother’s house and turns it into a Black socialist collective.

We say: Asili’s excellent debut feature is a ‘speculative re-enactment’ of his time in a West Philadelphia Black socialist experiment in collective living. The actual space is rendered in vibrant 16mm hues and the human interactions observed with warmth and playful humour, without ever losing sight of serious political purposes and the potential for poetry therein, nor of the bigger historical picture. This last aspect is beautifully and heartbreakingly articulated through archive and informal talks by former associates of MOVE , several of whose members were butchered by the police in 1985. (Kieron Corless)

Where to see it: Not currently available in the UK , but available to stream on Vimeo-on-Demand in some territories

22. Possessor

Brandon Cronenberg, Canada/ UK

Brandon Cronenberg’s science fiction film about an assassin (played by Andrea Riseborough) who inhabits people’s bodies is a supremely enjoyable and paranoid story of biohacking and psychological turmoil.

We said : “There is so much associated with the Cronenberg legacy that can be found in Possessor – cut-throat corporate skulduggery, weird sci-fi tech, body horror, mannered character names, extreme violence and ‘new flesh’ (here literalised).

“The biggest influence is Cronenberg Sr’s eXistenz (1999), which is similarly concerned with assassins who risk losing themselves in the personae that they adopt as their gaming ‘skins’ – and that film’s lead actress Jennifer Jason Leigh is here cast as Tasya’s handler Girder, a once skilled Possessor now determined to pass down the mantle to the next generation.” (Anton Bitel)

Read our review :  Possessor sends Andrea Riseborough out of her mind

Where to see it : On BFI Player , Curzon Home Cinema, Amazon Prime and other platforms from 27 November, and released on Blu-ray and DVD on 8 February 2021.

21. The Year of the Discovery

Luis López Carrasco, Spain/Switzerland

Mixing videotape shot in a café in the Spanish city of Cartagena with archive footage of news bulletins and commercials, and told through split-screen compositions, Luis López Carrasco’s feature explores the decisive year of 1992 in modern Spanish history.

We said : The title of this fascinating exploration of the disastrous ground-level effects of the neoliberal turn refers to 1992, when Spain hosted the Seville Expo, marking the quincentenary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, and the Barcelona Olympics. The projected image of a country taking giant modernising strides was somewhat at odds with a cruel reality in certain areas, one such being the coastal city of Cartagena, which was decimated by deindustrialisation in the 90s. Luis López Carrasco’s film is shot in a bustling workers’ café-bar in the city centre where it gathers the testimonies of people who lived through the period. As with Carrasco’s El futuro (2013), a reconstruction of a party to celebrate the incoming Socialist government in 1982, the lessons of history are never transparent or easily gleaned, a philosophical perspective signalled here by the use of split screen and Hi-8 video, the constructed set-up, and a subtle interplay of past and present. At 200 minutes the complexities of the situation are given scope to reveal themselves in a manner that feels just and thoroughly invigorating. (Kieron Corless)

Where to see it : On Festival Scope

20. Kajillionaire

Miranda July, US

July sets aside her usual kooky style with this piquant story of the Dynes, a breadline grifter family.

We said : “The economic realities of the Dynes’ daily routine are shot through with comic originality. At one point, Old Dolio tries to stay out of sight of the landlord as she walks past his fence, craning her body sharply backwards rather than squatting; it’s a loopy and inspired piece of limbo-esque slapstick which transforms her into one of Robert Crumb’s ‘Keep on Truckin’’ figures. It would be overpraising Kajillionaire to claim that it is the equal of anything by Aki Kaurismäki but there’s a similar blend here of the bleak and the blithe. Con-trick movies, from House of Games (1987) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) to Matchstick Men (2003), usually end with a last-minute switcheroo, and Kajillionaire is no exception. What has changed is the emphasis. Loss is reconfigured cleverly as a gain, and two queer women are not so much swindled as left with the blessing of a blank slate, freed from the blueprints for family life that have held them back so far.” (Ryan Gilbey)

Read our review :  Kajillionaire: Miranda July pulls off a salty family con drama

Where to see it : In UK cinemas and coming to Blu-ray and various digital platforms.

19. WolfWalkers

Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart, Ireland/France/Luxembourg

Moore and Stewart’s playful and stirring animation conjures an interregnum Ireland of 1650, caught between pagan spirits and the boot of English invaders.

We said : “WolfWalkers follows the Irish director Tomm Moore’s hand-drawn cartoon films The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014). Each has children drawn into natural wonderlands of myth and magic, into adventures about protecting and healing rather than fighting. Like the adult animation of Bill Plympton or the teen-skewed anime of Shinkai Makoto, Moore’s visual style is instantly identifiable. His films’ drawings can look naive and artless, but they’re wondrously composed with swirls and circles and glorious colours, flattened spaces and playful perspectives. WolfWalkers is more of an action-adventure than Moore’s other films, especially in its extended climax. Some set pieces feel inspired by Miyazaki Hayao’s Princess Mononoke (1997). It is hugely successful in engaging us with the enchantingly expressive girls.” (Andrew Osmond, S&S , December)

Read our review :  WolfWalkers redraws the bounds of old Ireland’s hunters and hunted

Where to see it : Out now in UK cinemas and on Apple TV +

18. The Woman Who Ran

Hong Sangsoo, South Korea

A Seoul woman meets friends and makes conversation while her husband is on a business trip, in Hong’s latest characteristically talky, deceptively modest offering.

We say : Arguably world cinema’s number one UK -distribution dodger (though gratitude to the film streaming platform Mubi for rectifying this situation of late), the South Korean maestro of neurotic miscommunication and absurdism Hong Sangsoo resurfaces after a lengthy – by his standards – two-year absence with this somewhat unusual addition to his burgeoning canon.

The film stars his regular muse and partner, Kim Minhee, as the apparently happily married Kim catching up, in turn, with three old female acquaintances over several days when her husband heads off on a business trip – her first time alone for several years. The main surprise in a typically episodic and lo-fi narrative – if it can be called that – is the more or less exclusive focus on women, where previously tensions between the sexes have been the director’s abiding preoccupation. (Here, the few encounters with men tend to the fleeting and show them broadly as irritating hurdles for the female protagonists to surmount.) So what we get is a series of chatty, casual, occasionally awkward meetings with, respectively, a contentedly unmarried older woman, a wannabe artist and a career woman married to a famous man – all rendered in Hong’s patented offhand naturalism and for the most part stripped of the tricksier elements of his customary aesthetic.

It makes for an intimate, perceptive, occasionally humorous snapshot of these women’s lives, the subtle shifts in perspective belying the seeming artlessness. Are we to surmise that these situations reveal what-might-have-been scenarios for Kim; or potential futures for her should she decide to leave her husband (although there’s no real hint of that being on the cards)? As ever with Hong, and even in the context of one of his more direct and readable works, a pleasurable elusiveness pervades matters. (Kieron Corless)

Read our review : The Woman Who Ran turns circles telling stories

Where to see it : On Mubi from 20 December, along with two earlier Hong Sangsoo films – Tale of Cinema (2005) and Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013)

17. Bacurau

Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles, Brazil

Brazil’s bad blood rises in a small corner of the country’s northeastern hinterlands as Udo Kier’s brigade of gringos besieges Sonia Braga’s small-town community, in this way-out western.

We said : “It was always likely that in his third feature Kleber Mendonça Filho was going to take on Jair Bolsonaro. But as in his previous film, Aquarius (2016), fascism works in mysterious ways in his WTF western. And Mendonça Filho keeps the real enemy tantalisingly out of focus. Bacurau is a small impoverished town in the arid north-eastern hinterlands of Brazil; but it’s also a utopia of sorts, with its tight-knit community who stand firm against exterior threats. So far, so western as the village increasingly comes under siege: it bizarrely disappears off the map, mobile signal disappears and corpses pile up. Throw in psychotropic drugs, a drone that resembles a 1950s B-movie flying saucer, assassins in neon motorcycle suits and a posse of foreign mercenaries thirsty for blood, and what emerges is a shape-shifting genre yarn with surprises aplenty but maybe at times too much on its plate.” (Isabel Stevens)

Read our review :  Bacurau is a tough and timeless Brazilian frontier western

+   Bacurau first look: a way out weird western for menacing times

Where to see it : On Blu-ray and to stream on Mubi

16. David Byrne’s American Utopia

Spike Lee, US

David Byrne’s Broadway show is captured in dynamic, exhilarating fashion in Spike Lee’s concert film.

We said : Leonie Cooper talked to Byrne for our December issue, and asked him why he went to Spike Lee for the project: “We’ve never really worked together, but we’ve crossed paths a lot so it was easy, I had his phone number! Also, because of a lot of the issues that are brought up in the show, I thought, ‘He’s gonna get this.’ We first met in the 80s. In a sense we were coming up together on parallel paths, me in music, him in film and somehow I got invited to the premiere of Do the Right Thing… Like Stop Making Sense, I think this has an arc. There’s a beginning and a middle and an end. The lead character, that would be me, or whoever I’m playing, goes on a journey. You start in one place and end up somewhere quite quite different. I realised that this show, like that one, is not simply us performing a series of songs, ending with our biggest hit. It’s really constructed to take the audience somewhere.” ( S&S , December)

Read our review :  David Byrne’s American Utopia doesn’t burn down the house

+   “If there was a song Spike Lee loved, we’d see him pop up in the aisle”: David Byrne on his concert doc American Utopia

Where to see it : On digital platforms from 14 December and on disc from 11 January 2021

15. Shirley

Josephine Decker, US

Josephine Decker’s adaptation of Susan Scarf Merrell’s teasingly fantasy-refracted portrait of the supernatural horror writer Shirley Jackson, played here by Elisabeth Moss.

We said : “This fictionalised portrait of the American author Shirley Jackson commences with young bride Rose Nemser (Odessa Young) reading Jackson’s short story ‘The Lottery’ while on a train journey with her husband Fred (Logan Lerman). The film is at its most effective and affecting not when it attempts the high drama of unsolved murders (the two women briefly involve themselves in a real-life case presented as influential on Jackson’s 1951 novel Hangsaman), extramarital affairs and suicide attempts, but when it depicts more subtle and intimate forms of betrayal and manipulation. Stanley’s superficial charm and shameless self-interest is depicted with particular insight, and beautifully played by Michael Stuhlbarg. We glimpse an infinite expanse of historical male entitlement in the brief scene in which Stanley co-opts Rose into taking over Shirley’s neglected household chores.

“Moss, tasked both with portraying a well-known and visually distinctive real-life person and with playing multiple scenes that may or may not be occurring only in the realm of fantasy, has the harder job. Though persuasively edgy, angry and strange – and provided by Sarah Gubbins’s fine script with plenty of savage witticisms and sharp observations – her Shirley is not someone to whom the film brings us close. Rather, she is a catalyst, her strangeness stirring others into anger or action.

“Maybe Shirley does not quite come together here because such a large part of what forms her has been left out. While openly fictionalised portraits owe negotiable fealty to biographical truth, it’s startling for a film concerned with the impact of domestic and reproductive labour on women’s intellectual and creative lives to erase the fact that its protagonist’s real-life embodiment had four children. They’re present in Merrell’s novel, but vanished here. The omission of her experience of motherhood renders this version of Jackson the ‘witch’ she jokes about being, irrationally angry at abstract forces, rather than understandably burned out from tending offspring, husband and career.” (Hannah McGill)

Read our review :  Shirley doesn’t wholly come together as it picks Shirley Jackson apart

Where to see it : Curzon Home Cinema

14. The Assistant

Kitty Green, US

The post-#MeToo drama stars a superb Julia Garner as an employee whose film producer boss uses his position to abuse women.

We said : “The Assistant provokes a visceral physical reaction; the churning of the stomach, the gritting of the teeth, the white-knuckle gripping of a seat edge. It has malevolent monsters and horrified victims, and hums with a palpable sense of threat. It is, without doubt, a horror movie. Yet, while writer-director Kitty Green’s sensitively made yet hard-hitting feature debut plays out in a dark, cold world full of secrets, lies and isolation, hers is no nightmarish fantasy landscape. Instead, she deftly – and devastatingly lays bare the fears that come with being made to feel like a voiceless, helpless, insignificant woman in an aggressively male environment. The greatest strength of The Assistant is that it forces us to understand how easy it is to turn the other way, to become complicit, because it’s impossible to do anything else. It demands that we pay attention to those who are brave enough to take a stand; that it is up to all of us to amplify individual voices that would otherwise go unheard.” (Nikki Baughan)

Read our interview :  Kitty Green on The Assistant: “We all know what happens behind that closed door”

Where to see it : On  BFI Player ,  Curzon Home Cinema  and other digital platforms.

13. Mangrove

Steve McQueen, UK

The centrepiece in McQueen’s five-film ‘Small Axe’ anthology depicts the true story of the protests and landmark court case involving the ‘Mangrove Nine’ that followed discriminatory police raids on a Notting Hill restaurant.

We said : “The scorching Mangrove suggests a return to the kind of distilled, focused storytelling and socially relevant themes that distinguished BBC ’s Play for Today. With ‘Powell for PM ’ graffiti glimpsed on the streets, McQueen and cinematographer Shabier Kirchner immerse us in the community in heartfelt, sensuous ways. When the characters are out, partying on the street, the camera is right there with them, a joyful participant, fluid and tactile, the music perfectly complementing the images.

The camera is right in there, too, in the painful scenes of the raids, and in the central protest sequence – after which the film narrows down from a community portrait to the courtroom drama of Frank and his associates’ trial. Among the most important films of the year, and certainly one of its filmmaker’s finest, Mangrove sets the bar high for the rest of Small Axe. Connecting us to the past, Mangrove enlightens and empowers us in the present. ” (Alex Ramon)

Read our review :  Mangrove relays Black British struggles of the past

+   Mangrove gives voice to Black British Power

+   “These are the untold stories that make up our nation”: Steve McQueen on Small Axe

Where to see it : On BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime

12. Da 5 Bloods

Lee’s bravura, breakneck war drama, about a group of Black Vietnam veterans returning to the country decades after the war to recover the body of a fallen comrade, follows the blood line of America’s racial wrongs, from the civil rights era to Black Lives Matter.

We said : “Da 5 Bloods fires shots at American revisionism of the Vietnam War through the viewfinder of African-American soldiers. Using his now familiar Brechtian storytelling style, Lee continually breaks the fourth wall, mixing archive footage, stills photography and fiction to link past and present and weaving a tale in which a turbulent father-and-son relationship and the murder of civil rights leaders is an allegory for historical American wrongs leading to the Black Lives Matter movement. Da 5 Bloods is quite some undertaking. By and large Lee succeeds, even if along the way the story hits some cul-de-sacs with cursory plotting involving Jean Reno’s evil trafficker, the work of landmine removal, and a pot of gold taken straight out of John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Where the film does chime magnificently is in the performance of Delroy Lindo as Paul, and the suggestion that past failings undermine present-day relationships. The opening salvo, featuring archive footage from America and Vietnam from the late 60s and 70s, including speeches by Muhammad Ali, Kwame Ture and Angela Davis, feels like it could be for a Black Lives Matter rally. Here, Lee asks the audience to make a connection between Paul’s failure to come to terms with his past, which has led to him voting for Trump, and the way that America’s failure to deal with its history of slavery has contributed to feelings of white supremacy embodied in the Trump presidency.

“The savvy decision to allow the actors to play their younger selves in flashback sequences reinforces the film’s central thesis that past and present are intertwined. Paul’s PTSD , which sees him descend into the heart of darkness, is a reflection of America’s broken conscience. By closing with a Martin Luther King Jr speech and an end-credit intertitle about his assassination, Lee – with mixed success – positions the civil rights leader as present-day America’s father, whose assassination is the country’s Rosebud.” (Kaleem Aftab)

Read our review :  Da 5 Bloods: Spike Lee brings the Vietnam War home

+   “Why fight for a country when they lynch you?” Spike Lee on Da 5 Bloods and American lies

11. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Bill Ross IV & Turner Ross, US

The Ross brothers’ poetic portrait of the denizens of a Las Vegas bar mixes documentary and fiction in a heady brew.

We said : “There was much hubbub at Sundance 2020 over the way Bill and Turner Ross made their stellar Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, including some pearl-clutching over the fact that it was even programmed in the US Documentary Competition at all. The brothers have long embraced the elasticity of the form; the ‘realness’ of their second film Tchoupitoulas was questioned in various corners, and their third documentary Western was a genre film with all the constructedness that implies. They carefully cast their new film, which observes a ragtag group of regulars on the last day of their favourite bar, faked the location and worked closely with their subjects/ stars to create bracingly real emotion within a partially constructed scenario.

“The brothers made Bloody Nose this way for many reasons, including ethical considerations (getting folks drunk while filming requires a certain level of control and familiarity, for example). During a session at the Based on a True Story (Boats) conference that I co-programme at the University of Missouri, which runs concurrently with the True/False Film Fest in March, Ross brother Turner talked about searching for the perfect bar on the perfect night, a desire to conjure a deeply true feeling that couldn’t be ‘found’ like a news story. The love and pain shown in Bloody Nose is heartbreakingly real; the insights into human experience alive with value. The brothers evoked Lionel Rogosin’s seminal classic On the Bowery (1955), embraced the collaborative, broke any made-up rules they needed to and used cinema to salvage nonfiction. ‘You can manufacture an experience,’ Turner said at Boats, ‘but it doesn’t have to be a manufactured experience.’

“The debates over truthiness that swallowed Bloody Nose at Sundance felt irrelevant and backwards. What counts as ‘documentary’ is always expanding, but if we want to make linear nonfiction films that are relevant, we need to move past these old debates. There is, emphatically, no boundary between fiction and documentary, but truth matters more than ever.” (Robert Greene)

Read our report :  The shape of documentary to come

Where to see it : In UK cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema from 24 December 2020

Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan

Bringing his ailing muse Lee Kang-sheng together with a younger generation in the form of Anong Houngheuangsy, Tsai returns to feature filmmaking with his most tender depiction of physical and emotional coupling.

We said : “Poignant and intensely moving, Days gestures towards a reconciliation with themes of desire and sexuality that have troubled Tsai’s cinema since the beginning. Following the Venice premiere of Stray Dogs in 2013, Tsai had vaguely announced his retirement, citing exhaustion with the production model of feature films. What followed was a quick succession of smaller scale, more intimate works in various formats, including an excursion into virtual reality. Maintaining a gentle rhythm and almost wholly eschewing dialogue, for its first hour Days oscillates between depicting Anong’s daily life and following Lee as he travels to Bangkok to seek acupuncture treatment. The two strands eventually converge in a hotel room, where Lee has hired Anong to give him a full body massage, which culminates in sex. This scene, extending across a good half-hour, functions as the film’s centrepiece and offers the most tender rendition of sex to be found in Tsai’s filmography.

“It wouldn’t be a stretch to interpret the nature of Lee and Anong’s eventual coming together, and its inherent power imbalance, as a reflection on the intermingling of the personal and the professional in Tsai’s relationship with his actors. In its deliberate pacing and rigorous focus, Tsai’s deeply compassionate portrait generates the most acute investment in his characters.” (Giovanni Marchini Camia)

Read our review :  Days: Tsai Ming-liang makes his peace with sexual release

Where to see it : Still awaiting UK  distribution

Sarah Gavron, UK

A London teenager (Bukky Bakray) grows up fast and is burdened with adult responsibilities when her mother leaves the family home. It’s a joyous but gritty drama for which director Sarah Gavron and writers Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson sought to enable the all-female crew and cast of teenage girls to tell their story in their own honest way.

We said : “The celebratory, boundary-pushing story behind Rocks isn’t one of liberal goodwill from white gatekeepers who’ve chosen to decentre themselves. As Ikoko points out, ‘That implies that all of the responsibility, therefore all of the kudos, is on them. Actually, it is a team of a hundred women who took centre-stage, and it wasn’t given to us or sacrificed for us. Nobody stepped aside – we all stepped up.’ It’s a point Gavron says she agrees with entirely.

“It was by design that the film’s young subjects would be given both the opportunity and the resources to tell their own story, on their own terms. To do this, the team would need to do away with hierarchy and so it was established from the beginning of the project that there would be no conventional chain of command.

“Instead of the usual setup, the filmmaking would be organised around the idea of reciprocity, and the girls’ individual ideas considered with seriousness. Associate director Anuradha Henriques describes ‘a shared value system’ led by the voices of Black and Brown women telling stories as an antidote to traditional, top-down filmmaking. ‘For me, as a younger filmmaker, that’s one of the things I can’t compromise on now,’ she says. This model isn’t a kind of feminist utopia – it’s a necessity.’” (Simran Hans)

Read our review :  Rocks follows a London girl growing up fast and letting go slowly

+   “We gave them too much power”: how Rocks became a gem by giving its young cast license to shine

8. Nomadland

Chloé Zhao, US

Frances McDormand is magnificent in Zhao’s powerful film about the people cast aside by today’s unforgiving economy, and forced to live on the road in the American West.

We said : “In a story based on Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book, McDormand plays a Nevada woman who joins the masses of American nomads – the new dispossessed who migrate in mobile homes, eking out a living from job to job. Alongside McDormand and David Strathairn are a host of non-professionals, including Bob Wells, a guru of contemporary American nomadism. McDormand is endlessly watchable in a very open, generous performance where, with the least rhetoric, it’s clear that she’s channelling the contemporary experience of multitudes. A sober, moving film about isolation and community.” (Jonathan Romney)

Where to see it : After lockdown postponed its release, the film is now slated for February 2021.

7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Eliza Hittman, US

A young woman named Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) travels to New York to terminate her pregnancy, in Hittman’s sensitive drama, which both exposes the inhumanity of the US healthcare system and offers a paean to female solidarity.

We said : “In steady, sparing takes that often rest on Flanigan’s face – vivid despite its expressionlessness – the story unfolds with procedural curiosity. Hittman’s previous films, It Felt like Love (2013) and Beach Rats (2017), were both coming-of-age stories. But her third feature is fully mature: like Ryder’s lovely, clouded, wise-before-her-years gaze, it is informed by an almost ancient weariness at the way we treat young women, and the way the resilience and agency of girlhood is so frequently overlooked or condescended to. Never florid, rarely contrived, sometimes painful, always true, Hittman’s film is far more than the abortion story it so single-mindedly follows. It is also a deeply moving prayer of admiration for girls – the wary, watchful ones who have learned to expect nothing of anybody except one another, from whom they expect, and regularly receive, the world.” (Jessica Kiang)

Read our review :  Never Rarely Sometimes Always: Eliza Hittman’s abortion tale traces the burdens of girlhood

Where to see it : On DVD , Blu-ray and streaming platforms

6. Dick Johnson Is Dead

Kirsten Johnson, US

Johnson’s superbly inventive movie confronts the trauma of her father’s imminent death with multiple advance stagings of it.

We said : “If there’s any sublimated anger at all in Johnson’s desire to symbolically serial-kill her progenitor, it’s not delved into here. Johnson’s project is about the management not of filial ambivalence, outsized parental legacies or unfinished emotional business, but of love. As Dick begins to show signs of confusion, her lament is disarming in its straightforwardness: “He won’t be able to follow what I’m saying, so I won’t be able to ask him for any more advice, and the whole time will just be trying to get by.” In the face of this encroaching loss, what is the value of this patricidal tableaux? We undergo at a stranger’s remove a version of her efforts at mental preparation for the inevitable. We see Dick robbed of animation and of dignity; we experience relief at his revival; we appreciate him anew. What we don’t do is become inured to the idea of his death; conversely, we attach to his living image more, a process that Johnson acknowledges and encourages by keeping us guessing until the final hour about Dick’s actual condition.” (Hannah McGill)

Read our review :  Dick Johnson Is Dead: resurrections beat the blues

5. Saint Maud

Rose Glass, UK

After debuting at festivals in 2019, and with its original spring release date pushed back, this potent debut feature from Rose Glass finally emerged into cinemas in the autumn, and became the British horror hit of the year, tackling themes of religion, death and self-harm with a remarkably deft touch. It put us into the fervent hands and head of Morfydd Clark’s troubled young care worker as she brings her ministrations to Jennifer Ehle’s terminally ill ex-dancer.

We said : “Glass’s film follows the story of a burned-out, self-harming young palliative care nurse looking for purpose, forgiveness and someone to save in a bleak seaside town, loomed over by a large house on the hill in which Amanda, a middle-aged American dancer with great taste in art deco wallpaper, is dying of cancer. Saint Maud is a compelling and impactful film, a remarkable debut, and one of the most human and empathetic horrors of recent times. As such, Glass deserves the attention, and the excitement around her as an important future figure in British film is justified.

A broken health service, a dereliction of duty of care, a desperation for a connection of any kind, an unseen malevolent force playing tricks with the mind. Maud’s horror is our horror. Her time – and that of her creator Rose Glass – is very much now.” (Mike Williams)

Read our review :  Saint Maud: a heady British horror duet, up close and devoted

+   “Sometimes the scariest place to get trapped is inside your own mind”: Rose Glass on Saint Maud

Where to see it : Still playing in selected cinemas across the UK . The film will be released on DVD , Blu-ray and digital platforms, including Amazon Prime, in early 2021

4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Charlie Kaufman, US

Kaufman’s claustrophobic chamber theatre piece-cum-road movie-cum-psychological horror – made for Netflix and released straight to the streaming platform, bypassing cinemas – stars Jessie Buckley as a young woman who travels with her boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to meet his parents, played by Toni Collette and David Thewlis.

We said : Jonathan Romney spoke to Kaufman about his film, and his new novel Antkind, for our October issue. In comments that didn’t make it into that feature, Kaufman told Romney:

“I’d been looking over the years for something to adapt and I came across this novel. It was very dreamy and somewhat nightmarish, which appealed to me, but it was also very contained – it was basically four characters, and it takes place in a car and in a farmhouse. I thought, “This isn’t going to cost a lot; maybe somebody will be willing to take a chance.” I haven’t reread the book since I made the movie, but I did change a lot, and I definitely changed the character of the young woman a lot – I wanted something more for an actress to play but I also wanted to give her agency, so that it felt more about things that happen in an actual relationship, rather than the thing that the book is.”

When Romney asked Kaufman what place he felt he had in the world today, Kaufman replied in characteristic fashion: “I don’t feel secure at all. I don’t know how anyone could feel secure in the world as it is right now. Everything is up in the air, and also in some odd way feels irrelevant. Things are so awful, so who cares where my career is? (Laughs)”

Read our review :  I’m Thinking of Ending Things: Charlie Kaufman’s new nightmare surpasses all expectations

+   “I don’t know how anyone could feel secure in the world as it is right now”: an interview with Charlie Kaufman

3. First Cow

Kelly Reichardt, US

Reichardt gives us a deliciously laconic vision of the pioneer American melting pot with this playful, poignant fable of a couple of furtive cakebakers in 1820s Oregon.

We said : “First Cow has the down-at-heel period authenticity of, say, Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller married to the poignancy of Sam Peckinpah’s westerns, and it’s couched in an always playful anti-macho mood of laconic going-with-the-flow, while subverting the clichés of westerns. Its use of detail the paraphernalia of pioneer existence – is exquisite. What’s really impressive too is its use of a prelapsarian mood to portray an America built on racial and social diversity.” (Nick James)

Read our review :  First Cow: Kelly Reichardt’s milk-rustling western rises like a treat

Where to see it : Yet to be released in the UK

Garrett Bradley, US

Bradley’s diary film follows Sibil Fox Richardson, who for nearly two decades has been campaigning for the release of her husband, Rob, after he was sentenced in 1999 to 60 years in prison for a robbery.

We said : “The success of Time speaks to the revelatory power of its twinned perspective: its combination of Fox’s video diaries with Bradley’s artfully shot vignettes of the Richardson family’s daily lives. As Fox and her sons persevere through limbo narrating their lives to Rob in the home videos, visiting courts, receiving reverse-charge calls, and going about their jobs in Bradley’s footage – we also see them grow and change.

Fox transforms from a young, vulnerable and defiantly optimistic mother to a jaded, polished but still resolute matriarch; her boys emerge as passionate and resilient young men. Blending autobiographical and observational modes, and interweaving the past and the present, the film offers both an epic and an everyday account of incarceration’s thefts – of time; of intimacy.

Stylistically, Time recalls Bradley’s previous film, America (2019), an archival and speculative monochrome meditation on the gaps in the records of Black American cinema. Where America sought to reclaim lost histories, Time endeavours to commit to the screen an obscured, often ungraspable reality: the American prisonindustrial complex.

Time appeals to our most fundamental desires: for love, affection, community – and it makes a more powerful case for the abolition of prisons than any polemical statement might.” (Devika Girish)

Read our review :  Time is a powerful distillation of lives divided

+  “I wanted it to feel like a river, like memory”: Garrett Bradley on Time

1. Lovers Rock

A house party thrown by young Black Britons in London in the early 1980s becomes a haven in the rapturous, sublime second film in Steve McQueen’s landmark five-film Small Axe collection. Lovers Rock celebrates the reliefs of kinship and intimacy, as it tells the story of the tentative romance between Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) and Micheal Ward (Franklyn), while at the same time offering a wonderfully immersive and nostalgic ode to the musical genre that gives McQueen’s film its name.

The broadcaster and renowned historian of Black British history David Olusoga spoke to Steve McQueen for the cover feature of our December issue, and asked the director about his film:

David Olusoga : The making of the films and the content says: ‘Here is Black creativity, here’s what we can do, here’s what we can create.’ I loved the amount of time you gave in Lovers Rock to the conversion of a normal London house into a blues party – the getting out of the furniture and the building of the sound system. Here are Black people making something for themselves, people who aren’t wanted somewhere else.

Steve McQueen : For me, it was about ritual. The process is just as important as what it ends up being. To take you on that journey where it gets to a point where it transcends, even beyond the people in the room. It becomes church. Some people say the Holy Spirit or whatever, but you know, it did happen. When I was shooting [the dance scenes in Lovers Rock], that was for real. I became invited into that situation. It was an honour to be there. As an artist, you wish to be invited, and that’s what happened.

I’d never experienced that before. It was a spiritual experience. It wasn’t performative. Something happened in that room, and we happened to have a camera there to record it. It was Black people seeing other Black people, feeling what they were feeling, and a Black director, a Black cinematographer, and the fact they could see each other and vibe off each other – and be each other, as you rightly said – that’s what happened.

Read our review :  Lovers Rock finds a sanctuary for Black love

+   Lovers Rock finds respite and rapture in a Black London house party

+  Lovers Rock is a precious hand-me-down of hazy weekends past

Further reading

The best film books of 2020, the best television series of 2020.

By James Bell

The best Blu-rays and DVDs of 2020

The best films of 2020 – all the votes, sign up for sight & sound’s weekly film bulletin and more.

News, reviews and archive features every Friday, and information about our latest magazine once a month.

Other things to explore

The best video essays of 2023.

By Queline Meadows

The best films of 2023 – all the votes

Martin scorsese on winning sight and sound’s best films of 2023 poll with killers of the flower moon.

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The 37 Most Anticipated Movies of 2020

From christopher nolan's tenet to wonder woman 1984 and soul , we look ahead to the biggest movies still to come in 2020..

TAGGED AS: dc , DC Comics , dceu , Marvel

The early months of 2020 saw unprecedented changes in the movie industry as Hollywood attempted figure out how best to respond a global crisis. Part of that response was to bring movies to the home market earlier than usual, with at least one film,  Trolls World Tour , opting to release on home entertainment media on the same day as its scheduled theatrical debut. For others, it has meant postponing opening weekends, even if no new date has been announced (you can find those films in our TBD section below).

With all of that said, there is still a wealth of exciting movies this year, even if we have to wait a little bit longer for some of them. We’ve still got a new entry from Pixar in Soul , and Gal Gadot embraces the ’80s in  Wonder Woman 1984 . Plus, we’re also getting a slew of new thrillers, horror films, animated treats, action-adventures, and more. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly turned things upside down this year, but there are still some things we can look forward to, so start marking these titles in your calendar.  [Updated on 11/5/20]

Jan-Mar | Apr-June | July-Sep | Oct-Dec | TBD

Breakdown of 2020 Movie Delays

The Best Movies of 2019  | The Most Anticipated Movies of 2021

The Grudge (2020) 20% Directed by:  Nicolas Pesce Starring:  Andrea Riseborough, Betty Gilpin, John Cho, Demian Bichir, Lin Shaye Opening on:  January 3, 2020

A remake of the American remake of the Japanese horror favorite,  Grudge  once again focuses on a vengeful ghost with a long memory. Critical darling Andrea Riseborough stars, and director Nicolas Pesce has some form: critics called his  The Eyes of My Mother  a haunting slasher.

Bad Boys for Life (2020) 76% Directed by: Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah Starring: Will Smith, Martin Lawrence Opening on:  January 17, 2020

Bad Boys and Bad Boys II  may both be Rotten, but they live in the hearts of many action fans as exemplary buddy-cop flicks, and both have Audience Scores of 78%. While original director Michael Bay is not coming back for  Bad Boys for Life , producer Jerry Bruckheimer is overseeing the film, and we have confidence that directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah of Black and Gangsta will match his signature style and pace.

Dolittle (2020) 15% Directed by: Stephen Gaghan Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Michael Sheen, Antonio Banderas, Tom Holland, Selena Gomez, Marion Cotillard, John Cena Opening on:  January 17, 2020

After a pair of poorly received films starring Eddie Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. is ready to take up the mantle of Doctor Dolittle in a new screen adaptation directed by Stephen Gaghan ( Gold , Syriana ). This film will be based more on the second book by author Hugh Lofting, and it will co-star Antonio Banderas and Michael Sheen, with the voices of Tom Holland, Marion Cotillard, Selena Gomez, John Cena, Emma Thompson, and more.

Weathering With You (2019) 92% Directed by:  Makoto Shinkai Starring: Kotaro Daigo, Nana Mori, Tsubasa Honda, Shun Oguri, Sakura Kiryu Opening on:  January 17, 2020

The latest animated adventure from Makoto Shinkai, the acclaimed director of  Your Name , centers on a pair of teens, one of whom can control the weather, who meet and form a bond with each other, before one of them reveals a secret that will change both of them forever.

The Gentlemen (2019) 75% Directed by:  Guy Ritchie Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding Opening on:  January 24, 2020

After a bit of a departure with 2019’s live-action  Aladdin remake, Guy Ritchie returns to his roots with this British gangster tale about an American expat (Matthew McConaughey) with a weed empire in London whose imminent retirement from the business spawns a criminal free-for-all for his territory. Fans of Ritchie’s early work are excited to see him at the helm of another crime caper, and it’s hard to beat the sight of a slimy-looking Hugh Grant playing against type.

The Rhythm Section (2020) 28% Directed by:  Reed Morano Starring:  Blake Lively, Jude Law, Sterling K. Brown, Max Casella Opening on:  January 31, 2020

Blake Lively stars in the latest troubled female assassin movie, based on the eponymous novel by Mark Burnell. She plays Stephanie Patrick, a plane crash survivor who wants to get to the bottom of the disaster that killed her family and discovers it was no accident, which sets her on a path of revenge.

Gretel & Hansel (2020) 62% Directed by:  Oz Perkins Starring:  Sophia Lillis, Sammy Leakey, Alice Krige Opening on:  January 31, 2020

From the director who previously brought us  The Blackcoat’s Daughter and  I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House comes a dark new take on the classic fairy tale about a brother and sister who fall prey to cannibalistic witch that entices them with tasty treats. Sophia Lillis ( It ,  Sharp Objects ) and Sammy Leakey star as the titular duo, who embark on a desperate search for food, only to encounter something far more evil than we’ve seen in any previous iteration of the story.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) 79% Directed by:  Cathy Yan Starring:  Margot Robbie, Jurnee Smollett-Ball, Mary Elizabeth Winstead Opening on:  February 7, 2020

We last saw Margot Robbie’s wily Harley Quinn get in all kinds of trouble in Suicide Squad . What happens when she joins Birds of Prey, DC’s all-ladies team of adventurers? Sheer. Unadulterated. Mayhem. Along for the ride will be Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who were cast as Black Canary and Huntress, respectively, in September, and Rosie Perez, playing Renee Montoya. They will face off against Ewan McGregor as the Black Mask.

The Lodge (2019) 75% Directed by: Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz Starring:  Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh, Richard Armitage Opening on:  February 7, 2020

Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, the duo who brought us 2014’s chilling psychological thriller Goodnight Mommy , return with another striking horror film. Riley Keough plays Grace, a young woman who is left alone at a winter lodge with her boyfriend’s two children — but not everything, or everyone, is quite what they seem, and as secrets are revealed and tensions rise, there may be more than just personal history to worry about.

The Photograph (2020) 75% Directed by:  Stella Meghie Starring:  LaKeith Stanfield, Issa Rae, Chelsea Peretti, Courtney B. Vance, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Lil Rel Howery, Rob Morgan Opening on:  February 14, 2020

LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae star in this romantic drama about a woman named Mae whose mother dies and leaves behind a photograph that reveals secrets about her past. As Mae delves deeper into her mother’s life, she begins to fall for a journalist assigned to write a story about her.

Downhill (2020) 36% Directed by:  Nat Faxon, Jim Rash Starring:  Will Ferrell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Miranda Otto, Kristofer Hivju, Zach Woods Opening on:  February 14, 2020

Nat Faxon and Jim Rash helm this remake of the 2014 Swedish comedy-drama  Force Majeure , which centers on a married relationship on the rocks after the husband abandons the family during an avalanche scare. In this version, that couple is played by Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, indicating it may lean a little harder on the comedy than the drama, and what more perfect way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than to watch another couple in a passive-aggressive tug of war?

Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) 64% Directed by:  Jeff Fowler Starring:  James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Tika Sumpter, Neal McDonough Opening on:  February 14, 2020

The first trailer for this adaptation of the classic video game famously drew the ire of Sonic fans around the world, prompting the studio to announce that it would be updating the look of the character. This led to a push back from its original 2019 release date – but on the plus side, those same fans were all about Jim Carrey as villain Dr. Robotnik. An updated trailer featuring a redesigned Sonic that was released in November of 2019 was met with wholehearted approval from fans, so here’s hoping the rest of the film is up to snuff.

Blumhouse's Fantasy Island (2020) 8% Directed by:  Jeff Wadlow Starring:  Lucy Hale, Maggie Q, Portia Doubleday, Charlotte McKinney, Michael Peña, Michael Rooker Opening on:  February 14, 2020

Moviegoers of a certain age may remember the popular TV drama  Fantasy Island , in which visitors to the titular vacation spot would be granted a chance to live out their wildest fantasies for a price. Blumhouse has decided to twist the concept into one of its horror offerings to bring it to the big screen, as this adaptation centers on a group of guests whose fantasies spiral out of control dangerously, and they must figure out how to survive.

The Call of the Wild (2020) 63% Directed by:  Chris Sanders Starring:  Harrison Ford, Omar Sy, Karen Gillan, Dan Stevens, Bradley Whitford Opening on:  February 21, 2020

The classic Jack London novel gets the big screen treatment again, and judging from its first trailer, it would seem that it focuses only on a small portion of the source material, much like the 1935 adaptation starring Clark Gable. In this film, a St. Bernard/Scotch Collie mix named Buck is stolen and transported up into Yukon territory, where he befriends a man named John Thornton and embarks on an adventure. Harrison Ford takes the lead human role, while Buck himself looks to be entirely CGI.

The Invisible Man (2020) 92% Directed by: Leigh Whannell Starring:  Elisabeth Moss, Aldis Hodge, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Storm Reid Opening on:  February 28, 2020

After 2017’s  The Mummy failed to launch Universal’s cinematic universe of classic monsters, they handed the reins of  The Invisible Man over to their horror partners at Blumhouse for a modern, updated standalone feature. Elisabeth Moss stars as the former lover of an abusive sociopath who has committed suicide — or has he? Maybe that’s him breathing over her shoulder and lighting things on fire in her house.

Onward (2020) 88% Directed by:  Dan Scanlon Starring:  Tom Holland, Chris Pratt, Octavia Spencer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus Opening on:  March 6, 2020

Marvel stars Tom Holland and Chris Pratt lend their voices to Pixar’s latest film, a fantasy adventure set in a contemporary world filled with magical creatures about a pair of elf brothers who set off on a road trip — with the reanimated lower extremities of their deceased father — to discover if there is any real magic left to be found.

Bloodshot (2020) 31% Directed by:  Dave Wilson Starring:  Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, Sam Heughan Opening on:  March 13, 2020

Who is Bloodshot? If the Valiant Comics assassin’s relaunch series was any indication, that  is  the big question. An unstoppable super-soldier powered by nanomachines, Bloodshot’s past is a mystery to him, and he’s on a mission to find out who he is and who – or what – is controlling him. With Vin Diesel as the titular character, expect a heavy side of testosterone with this slice of sci-fi.

Trolls World Tour (2020) 72% Directed by: Walt Dohrn, David P. Smith Starring: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake, Jamie Dornan, Sam Rockwell, Rachel Bloom, Anderson.Paak Opening on:  April 10, 2020

After saving their colors and learning the true value of happiness in the Certified Fresh Trolls , the high-haired crew returns for another groovy adventure with Anna Kendrick again starring as Queen Poppy. She will be joined by a star-studded cast including Sam Rockwell, Rachel Bloom, Anthony Ramos, Anderson.Paak, Karan Soni, Flula Borg, Jamie Dornan, Kelly Clarkson, and more.

SCOOB! (2020) 48% Directed by:  Tony Cervone Starring:  Zac Efron, Amanda Seyfried, Gina Rodriguez, Frank Welker, Will Forte, Mark Wahlberg Premiering on VOD on:  May 15, 2020

Warner Bros. offers up a new animated film based on the classic Hanna Barbera characters, this time focusing on the relationship between Shaggy (voiced by Will Forte) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker). We get to see how the two met and became best buds before teaming up with Fred (Zac Efron), Daphne (Amanda Seyfried), and Velma (Gina Rodriguez) to solve crimes. Also, Scoob talks in full sentences now. Originally slated for a theatrical release, the film is now scheduled to go straight to VOD rental instead.

The Lovebirds (2020) 66% Directed by:  Michael Showalter Starring:  Kumail Nanjiani, Issa Rae, Anna Camp Premiering on:  May 22 on Netflix (formerly April 3, 2020)

Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae star in this romantic comedy about a couple on the verge of a break-up who become embroiled in a murder mystery and must work together to clear their name. Veteran comedy writer Michael Showalter, who previously directed Nanjiani in the sleeper hit  The Big Sick , is back in the director’s chair for this one, with  Pitch Perfect ‘s Anna Camp in a supporting role. After being pulled from its initial theatrical release, it was announced that  The Lovebirds  would move directly to Netflix, but a launch date for the comedy has not been announced yet.

Artemis Fowl (2020) 8% Directed by:  Kenneth Branagh Starring:  Ferdia Shaw, Judi Dench, Josh Gad, Colin Farrell, Hong Chau Premiering on:  June 12 on Disney+

Director Kenneth Branagh and stars Judi Dench and Josh Gad, who all worked together on last year’s  Murder on the Orient Express , reunite for this adaptation of the popular fantasy book series that centers on a young criminal mastermind who kidnaps a fairy in hopes of ransoming her to an evil pixie in exchange for his father. With all of the release date shake-ups due to the coronavirus outbreak, Disney has decided to skip  Artemis Fowl’ s theatrical release altogether, opting instead to release the film directly on its streaming service, Disney+.

Greyhound (2020) 78% Directed by:  Aaron Schneider Starring:  Tom Hanks, Elisabeth Shue, Stephen Graham, Lee Norris, Rob Morgan Opening on:  Premiering on Apple TV+ on July 10, 2020 (formerly June 12, 2020)

Tom Hanks is no stranger to WWII movies (see:  Saving Private Ryan ), and he’ll return to the theater of war to command the naval ship Greyhound, which was pursued by German U-boats across the Atlantic Ocean along with 36 other Allied ships. Director Aaron Schneider ( Get Low ) won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short back in 2003.

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) 92% Directed by:  Armando Iannucci Starring:  Dev Patel, Peter Capaldi, Aneurin Barnard, Ben Whishaw, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Gwendoline Christie, Benedict Wong Opening on:  August 28, 2020 (formerly May 8, 2020)

Dev Patel stars in a reimagining of the classic Charles Dickens novel, told through a comedic lens by Armando Iannucci, the man behind such scathing satires as  In the Loop ,  The Death of Stalin , and HBO’s  Veep . The production boasts an impressive cast that includes Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Ben Whishaw, and Peter Capaldi.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) 82% Directed by:  Dean Parisot Starring:  Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Samara Weaving, Jillian Bell, Kristen Schaal, Anthony Carrigan Opening on:  August 28, 2020 (simultaneous VOD and select theater release)

Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan have all grown up, but their time-traveling adventures aren’t over yet. In this decades-later sequel, the goofy duo are visited by someone from the future who tells them they must create a song to save the world. Will the Wyld Stallyns be up to the task? Of course they will.

The New Mutants (2020) 36% Directed by:  Josh Boone Starring:  Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga Opening on:  August 28, 2020

The Fault in Our Stars  director Josh Boone collects some of today’s hottest young stars — including  Split ’s Anya Taylor-Joy,  Game of Thrones ’ Maisie Williams, and  Stranger Things ’ Charlie Heaton — to play next-generation X-Men from Marvel’s comic book series of the same name. But the  New Mutants ’ dark path is riddled with horrors as they discover their abilities while imprisoned in a secret facility.

Tenet (2020) 69% Directed by:  Christopher Nolan Starring:  John David Washington, Elizabeth Debicki, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, Himesh Patel Opening on:  September 3, 2020 (formerly August 12, 2020)

We knew for a while that Christopher Nolan’s next film would be called  Tenet , and we knew who was on board to star in it, but outside the fact that the story would have something to do with international espionage, we knew little else. The trailers for the film are cryptic enough that we still kind of don’t know what’s going on, but we do know that John David Washington will play some sort of agent who is able to experience time both forwards and backwards, sometimes simultaneously…? We think…? Originally scheduled for a July release, the film will now open in 70 markets worldwide on August 26 and in select theaters in the US on Labor Day weekend.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) 82% Directed by:  Charlie Kaufman Starring:  Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, David Thewlis Opening on:  September 4, 2020 (on Netflix)

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman ( Anomalisa , writer of  Adaptation  and  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ) returns to the big screen after a five-year hiatus. Details are thin on his next film, though it’s been described as a dramatic thriller about a couple en route to meet the boyfriend’s parents — even as the girlfriend is considering breaking up with him — who are forced to take a detour that ends up being more perilous than they expected.

Mulan (2020) 72% Directed by:  Niki Caro Starring:  Yifei Liu, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, Gong Li Opening on:  September 4 , 2020 ($29.99 on Disney+)

Following Disney’s live-action remake trend comes  Mulan , directed by Niki Caro of  Whale Rider  and  North Country  fame. Featuring Chinese star Liu Yifei as the titular character and a host of other Chinese legends like Donnie Yen, Gong Li, and Jet Li, this one is poised to conquer the global box office and – if it taps into the animated original’s magic – our hearts.

Antebellum (2020) 31% Directed by:  Gerard Bush, Christopher Renz Starring:  Janelle Monáe, Jena Malone, Jack Huston, Kiersey Clemons, Eric Lange Premiering on VOD on:  September 18, 2020 (formerly August 21, 2020)

This psychological mystery’s first teaser trailer didn’t give a whole lot away, which is probably a good thing. We do know from the film’s synopsis that it centers on a successful writer played by Janell Monáe who becomes trapped in some sort of alternate reality — possibly one set in the slavery-era American South — and must figure out a way to break free. It’s definitely giving off some  Get Out  and  Us  vibes, which isn’t too surprising, considering the film has played up the fact that “the producer of” those films is behind this one as well.

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) 89% Directed by:  Aaron Sorkin Starring:  Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Frank Langella, Mark Rylance, Jeremy Strong, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Michael Keaton Opening on:  September 25, 2020 (Limited) followed by premiere on Netflix on October 16, 2020

Aaron Sorkin began writing the script for this historical drama back in 2007, but the project suffered several setbacks that delayed it for more than a decade. Now, with an impressive cast on board and Sorkin in the director’s chair, we’ll finally get his retelling of the controversial trial of seven men who were charged with conspiracy and inciting to riot during the anti-Vietnam War protests in the late 1960s.

Roald Dahl's The Witches (2020) 49% Directed by:  Robert Zemeckis Starring:  Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci Opening on:  October 22, 2020 (on HBO Max in the US), October 28, 2020 (in theaters worldwide)

Robert Zemeckis will direct this remake of Roald Dahl’s  The Witches , which was first brought to the big screen by director Nicolas Roeg in 1990. Zemeckis has some big shoes to fill: the original tale of an annual convention of the world’s witches that is interrupted by an inquisitive young boy sits at 100% on the Tomatometer (and its opening sequence has been terrifying young kids for decades). Anne Hathaway, who will star as the Grand High Witch, has even bigger shoes to fill, though: Anjelica Huston’s performance as the world’s head witch has made the character one of the most memorable kids’ villains in cinema.

Mank (2020) 83% Directed by:  David Fincher Starring:  Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, Tuppence Middleton, Charles Dance Opening on:  November 13, 2020 (limited, followed by release on Netflix on December 4)

Working from a script written by his father Jack Fincher, director David Fincher tackles a piece of Hollywood history in  Mank , which centers on screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz’s battles with Orson Welles over writing credits on Welles’ masterpiece  Citizen Kane . Gary Oldman is set to star in the title role, with supporting turns from Amanda Seyfried, Lily Collins, and Tuppence Middleton.

Happiest Season (2020) 82% Directed by: Clea DuVall Starring:  Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy Opening on:  November 25, 2020

Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis star in this holiday rom-com about a woman who plans to propose to her girlfriend at her family’s holiday party, only to discover she hasn’t come out to her conservative parents. This is actress-writer-director Clea DuVall’s sophomore feature, which she co-wrote with Mary Holland, and it should be out just in time for Thanksgiving.

The Croods: A New Age (2020) 77% Directed by:  Joel Crawford Starring:  Ryan Reynolds, Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone Opening on:  November 25, 2020

We don’t know if the creatures in  The Croods  were prehistorically accurate, but we do know the family adventure was prehysterical! (Sorry about that.) The whole family returns for the sequel, with Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, and more reprising their roles. Original co-director Kirk DeMicco is off making  Vivo  (see November releases), and so first-time feature director Joel Crawford, a veteran story artist, takes the reins.

Soul (2020) 95% Directed by:  Pete Docter Starring:  Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, John Ratzenberger, Daveed Diggs Opening on:  December 25, 2020 on Disney+ (formerly November 20, 2020)

The second Pixar offering of the year features Jamie Foxx as a jazz-loving middle school teacher whose soul is separated from his body during an accident and transported to a training center for newer souls preparing to enter the bodies of newborn babies. There, he meets a soul in training (voiced by Tina Fey) who has been trapped there for years.

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) 58% Directed by:  Patty Jenkins Starring:  Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal Opening in theaters and streaming on HBO Max on:  December 25, 2020

As villain Cheetah,  Bridemaids ’ Kristen Wiig climbs aboard the  Wonder Woman  sequel, which sees Gal Gadot returning to her Amazon-princess role that catapulted the first film to a $412.5 million box office, a Certified Fresh 92% Tomatometer score, and the No. 2 spot in our list of the  64 Best Superhero Movies of All Time . The action is set during the Cold War in the ’80s and finds Chris Pine reappearing as Wonder Woman’s love interest Steve Trevor, despite his apparent death in the first film.

Promising Young Woman (2020) 90% Directed by:  Emerald Fennell Starring:  Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Alison Brie, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Adam Brody, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon Opening on:  December 25, 2020 (formerly April 17, 2020)

Killing Eve  showrunner Emerald Fennell makes her feature writing and directing debut with this thriller starring Carey Mulligan as a vigilante who pretends to be drunk at bars, luring men who claim they want to help her, and then confronts them when their advances inevitably turn sexual.

The Best Movies of 2019 |  The Most Anticipated Movies of 2020

Thumbnail images by Joshua Richards/©Searchlight Pictures, ©Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

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30 Highest Rated Movies of all Time: Movies With 100% on Rotten Tomatoes

For 23 years, Rotten Tomatoes has been the go-to for those looking to get the scoop on what is new in movies. Aggregating opinions from fans and critics across the country, Rotten Tomatoes uses its “Tomatometer” system to calculate critical reception for any given film. If 60% of reviews are positive, the movie is given a “Fresh” status, but if positive reviews fall below that benchmark, it is deemed “Rotten.” A popular piece of media will typically fall between the 70-90% range, but rarely, a project will receive a 100% score. This means every last review from critics was positive.

Close to 480 films with at least 20 reviews have achieved a 100% score, with many coming very close. Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” had a 100% rating with 196 positive reviews before a critic submitted a negative one, knocking it down to 99%. The immortal classic “Citizen Kane” had a 100% rating until a negative review from a 1941 issue of the Chicago Tribune was rediscovered, revoking its 100% status.

Here are Rotten Tomatoes’ highest-rated movies that have managed to maintain a 100% score and have the highest number of reviews.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

“The Philadelphia Story” is based on the 1939 Broadway play and follows a socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the arrival of her ex-husband and a tabloid magazine journalist. Directed by George Cukor, he film stars Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart and Ruth Hussey.

“It’s definitely not a celluloid adventure for wee lads and lassies and no doubt some of the faithful watchers-out for other people’s souls are going to have a word about that,” Variety ‘s review said. “…All of which, in addition to a generous taste of socialite quaffing to excess and talk of virtue, easy and uneasy, makes “The Philadelphia Story” a picture every suburban mamma and poppa must see – after Junior and little Elsie Dinsmore are tucked away.”

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Christmas musical film “Meet Me in St. Louis” follows a year of the Smith family’s life in St. Louis leading up to the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, in the spring of 1904. The film stars Judy Garland, Margaret O’Brien, Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Tom Drake, Leon Ames, Marjorie Main, June Lockhart and Joan Carroll and directed by Vincente Minnelli, who Garland later married.

“‘Meet Me in St. Louis’ is wholesome in story [from the book by Sally Benson], colorful both in background and its literal Technicolor, and as American as the World’s Series,” Variety ‘s review said. “Garland achieves true stature with her deeply understanding performance, while her sisterly running-mate, Lucille Bremer, likewise makes excellent impact with a well-balanced performance.”

Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

The musical romantic comedy “Singin’ In the Rain” follows three Hollywood stars in the late 1920s dealing with the transition from silent films to talkies. Starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, the movie was one of the first 25 films selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry.

“‘Singin’ In the Rain’ is a fancy package of musical entertainment with wide appeal and bright grossing prospects,” Variety ‘s review said. “Concocted by Arthur Freed with showmanship know-how, it glitters with color, talent and tunes, and an infectious air that will click with ticket buyers in all types of situations.”

Seven Samurai (1954)

Epic samurai action film “Seven Samurai” follows the story of a village of farmers in 1586 who seek to hire samurai to protect their crops from thieves. The film was the most expensive movie made in Japan at the time.

“Director Akira Kurosawa has given this a virile mounting,” Variety ‘s review said. “It is primarily a man’s film, with the brief romantic interludes also done with taste. Each character is firmly molded. Toshiro Mifune as the bold, hairbrained but courageous warrior weaves a colossal portrait. He dominates the picture although he has an extremely strong supporting cast.”

The Terminator (1984)

Sci-fi action film “The Terminator” follows a cyborg assassin (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose son will one day save mankind from extinction from artificial intelligence, Skynet. Co-written and directed by James Cameron and co-written and produced by Gale Anne Hurd, the film topped the U.S. box office for two weeks and grossed $78.3 million.

“‘The Terminator,’ which opens today at Loews State and other theaters, is a B-movie with flair. Much of it, as directed by James Cameron (‘Piranha II’), has suspense and personality, and only the obligatory mayhem becomes dull,” wrote Janet Maslin in a New York Times review. “There is far too much of the latter, in the form of car chases, messy shootouts and Mr. Schwarzenegger’s slamming brutally into anything that gets in his way. Far better are the scenes that follow Sarah (Linda Hamilton) from cheerful obliviousness to the grim knowledge that someone horrible is on her trail.”

Toy Story (1995)

Animated comedy film “Toy Story” follows the first adventures of cowboy doll Woody and space cadet action figure Buzz Lightyear. Owned by a boy named Andy, Woody and Buzz are a part of a group of toys that spring to life when humans aren’t around. Birthed after the success of Pixar’s short film “Tin Toy,” “Toy Story” was the first feature film from Pixar and the first entirely computer-animated feature film.

“To swipe Buzz’s motto –“To infinity and beyond”–“Toy Story” aims high to go where no animator has gone before,” wrote Leonard Klady in a 1995 Variety film review . “Fears at mission control of the whole effort crashing to Earth proved unwarranted; this is one entertainment that soars to new heights.”

Toy Story 2 (1999)

“Toy Story 2” continues Woody and Buzz Lightyear’s journey as the co-leaders of the toy group. When Woody is stolen by a toy collector, Buzz and the other toys must find set out to find him. During his time with the collector, Woody meets Jessie and Stinky Pete, other toys also based on characters from the TV show “Woody’s Roundup.” The animated film was originally supposed to be a direct-to-video sequel, but was upgraded to a theatrical release by Disney.

“In the realm of sequels, “Toy Story 2″ is to “Toy Story” what “The Empire Strikes Back” was to its predecessor, a richer, more satisfying film in every respect,” wrote former chief film critic Todd McCarthy in a 1999 Variety film review . “The comparison between these two franchises will be pursued no further, given their utter dissimilarity. But John Lasseter and his team, their confidence clearly bolstered by the massive success of their 1995 blockbuster, have conspired to vigorously push the new entry further with fresh characters, broadened scope, boisterous humor and, most of all, a gratifying emotional and thematic depth.”

Deliver Us From Evil (2006)

“Deliver Us From Evil” is a documentary that follows the case of convicted pedophile Oliver O’Grady, who molested approximately 25 children as a priest in northern California between the late 1970s through early 1990s. Filmmaker Amy Berg tracks O’Grady down to Ireland, where he was deported after being convicted of child molestation in 1993 and serving seven years in prison.

“Given how strong this kind of testimony is, “Deliver Us From Evil’s” decision to hype it more than it needs to be is unfortunate,” L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan said about the film in a 2006 review. “The film has a weakness for over-dramatization, for unsettling music and portentous close-ups of O’Grady’s hands and lips that are distracting and unnecessary.”

“There is nothing over-dramatic, however, about the deeply painful testimony of the adults who were victimized as children and their still traumatized parents,” he continued. “’He was the closest thing to God that we knew,’ one mother says. ‘I let the wolf in through the gate.'”

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007)

“Taxi to the Dark Side” is a documentary film directed by Alex Gibney about the 2002 killing of an Afghan taxi drive named Dilawar, who was beaten to death by American soldiers while being detained without a trial and interrogated at a black site, a detention center operated by a state where prisoners are incarcerated without due process or court order.

The film was a part of the “Why Democracy?” series, produced by The Why Foundation, which consisted of 10 documentary films examining democracy.

“Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) has crafted more than just an important document of systemic abuse — he’s stripped the rhetoric from official doublespeak to expose a callous disregard for not only the Geneva Conventions but the vision of the Founding Fathers,” writes Jay Weissberg in a Variety film review . “All enemies in wartime are perceived as animals, but Gibney uncovers the ways the White House and Pentagon have encouraged torture while distancing themselves from responsibility.”

Man on Wire (2008)

James Marsh’s “Man on Wire” documents the death-defining hire-wire stunts of Philippe Petit, who in 1974, performed a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. “For contemporary audiences, Petit’s moment of mastery is inevitably shot through with a sense of loss; the following scenes, which reveal the band’s subsequent dissolution, reaffirm the bittersweet truth that triumph is but fleeting,” wrote Catherine Wheatley, who reviewed the film for Sight and Sound in 2010. “The film’s vision, though, is ultimately uplifting: relationships, like buildings, can collapse into rubble, but as [Annie Allix] tenderly puts it, sometimes ‘It is beautiful that way’.”

Poetry (2010)

Lee Chang-dong’s “Poetry” chronicles the life of Mija, a Korean grandmother who is simultaneously dealing with an early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis and the violent crime committed by her teenage grandson. “Now is the time to bestow on yourself the gift of one of the most, well, poetic films of 2010,” Lisa Kennedy wrote for the Denver Post in 2011. “And by ‘poetic,’ we mean rich with soulful pauses that are at once visual and aural and deeply observant of the dance of routine and quiet surprise.”

Waste Land (2010)

Lucy Walker’s “Waste Land” follows modern artist Vik Muniz to Jardim Gramacho, Brazil, the world’s largest landfill. There, he photographs the work of “catadores,” men and women who collect the refuse to recreate classical art. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times in 2011, “I do not mean to make their lives seem easy or pleasant. It is miserable work, even after they grow accustomed to the smell. But it is useful work, and I have been thinking much about the happiness to be found by work that is honest and valuable.”

The Square (2013)

“The Square” is a documentary film by Jehane Noujaim, which follows Egyptian revolutionaries during the Egyptian Crisis, a period that started with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 at Tahrir Square and lasted for three years. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and won three Emmys.

“Continuing to follow a group of activists as they rally against the undue powers of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Army, ‘The Square’ understands that the Revolution itself is a work in progress, and while its immediacy means it, too, will soon be superseded, it stands as a vigorous, useful account,” writes Jay Weissberg in a 2013 Variety film review .

Gloria (2013)

Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria” follows the relationship between an aging divorce and an amusement park operator after their chance encounter at a singles disco. “With someone else in the central role, ‘Gloria’ might have been cloyingly sentimental or downright maudlin,” wrote Joe Morgenstern in his 2014 Wall St. Journal review. “With [Paulina García] on hand, it’s a mostly convincing celebration of unquenchable energy.”

The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2014)

Isao Takahata’s “The Tale of Princess Kaguya” tells the fable of a beautiful young woman who sends her suitors away on impossible tasks in hopes of avoiding a loveless marriage. In a 2015 review for Sight and Sound, Andrew Osmond wrote, “While the characters feel very simplified at times, there are scenes that put great weight on performance and subtle expressions, in a way that’s nearer to the classical Disney tradition than most Japanese animation.”

Seymour: An Introduction (2014)

Ethan Hawke’s documentary “Seymour: An Introduction” chronicles the life of Seymour Bernstein, a concert pianist who, at age 50, gave up performing to become an educator and composer. “Coming off of his superb one-two performances for Richard Linklater in ‘Before Midnight’ and ‘Boyhood,’ Hawke continues to work at a creative high level,” wrote Bruce Ingram in his 2015 review for the Chicago Sun-Times. “He demonstrates a rapport and openness with his subject that proves exceptionally affecting.”

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2014)

From directors Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” follows an Israeli woman’s three-year battle to separate from her husband who refuses to dissolve their marriage. “Ultimately the movie is wearying, but then it’s likely supposed to be,” Tom Long wrote for Detroit News in 2015. “If Viviane’s going through the wringer, you’re going through the wringer too.”

One Cut of the Dead (2017)

Shin’ichirô Ueda’s “One Cut of the Dead” follows Director Higurashi and his crew who attempt to shoot a zombie movie at an abandoned WWII Japanese facility. Things go wrong when they realize they are being attacked by real zombies. In his 2019 Los Angeles Times review, Carlos Aguilar called the film, “A master class in endless narrative inventiveness and an ode to the resourceful and collaborative spirit of hands-on filmmaking, ‘One Cut of the Dead’ amounts to an explosively hilarious rarity.”

Leave No Trace (2018)

Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace” follows a father and daughter hiding in the forests of Portland, Ore. When a misstep tips off their location to local authorities, they must escape and find a new place to call home. Peter Travers wrote in his 2018 Rolling Stone review, “Debra Granik’s drama about a damaged war vet (Ben Foster) living off the grid with his teen daughter, brilliantly played by breakout star Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, is hypnotic, haunting and one of the year’s best.”

Summer 1993 (2018)

Carla Simón’s “Summer 1993” is told through the eyes of six-year-old Frida, who watches in silence as her recently deceased mother’s last possessions are packed into boxes. “Some creatures are able to grow new limbs,” wrote Joe Morgenstern in his 2018 Wall Street Journal review. “Frida, given more than half a chance after demanding it, achieves something no less remarkable. She grows new joy and hope.”

Minding the Gap (2018)

“Minding the Gap” follows the relationship of three boys who use skateboarding as an outlet to escape their hardships at home. “The film captures more than a decade long documentary footage showcasing their friendship. In some documentaries, the filmmakers attempt to make themselves invisible. Despite Liu’s camera-shyness, he never pretends to be anything other than a part of the story, hitting his subjects with direct, deeply personal questions,” wrote Peter Debruge, who reviewed the film for Variety in 2018.

Honeyland (2019)

“Honeyland” is a Macedonian documentary film that was directed by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov. The movie follows a woman and her beekeeping traditions to cultivate honey in the mountains of North Macedonia. Guy Lodge from Variety describes “Honeyland” as it begins as a “calm, captured-in-amber character study, before stumbling upon another, more conflict-driven story altogether — as younger interlopers on the land threaten not just Hatidze’s solitude but her very livelihood with their newer, less nature-conscious farming methods,” he said.

Welcome to Chechnya (2020)

“Welcome to Chechnya” released in 2020, exposes Russian leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his government as they try to detain, torture and execute LGBTQ Chechens. “A vital, pulse-quickening new documentary from journalist-turned-filmmaker David France that urgently lifts the lid on one of the most horrifying humanitarian crises of present times: the state-sanctioned purge of LGBTQ people in the eponymous southern Russian republic,” wrote Guy Lodge from Variety in 2020.

Crip Camp (2020)

“Crip Camp” is based on Camp Jened, which was a summer camp for teens with disabilities in the ’70s that inspired real-life activism. The film eliminates stereotypes and challenges the way people think about disabilities. “It may be startling for those who haven’t spent time with people with cerebral palsy or polio to see how a paraplegic gets from his wheelchair into the pool,” wrote Peter Debruge for Variety in 2020. “On closer inspection, it becomes clear that these teenagers…are having the time of their lives.”

76 Days (2020)

“76 Days” is a documentary released on Netflix in 2020 that shows the struggles of medical professionals and patients in Wuhan, China dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. “As an artifact alone, the result is remarkable, capturing all the panic and pragmatism greeting a disaster before its entire global impact had been gauged, while strategies and protocols are adjusted on the hoof,” wrote Guy Lodge for Variety in 2020. “That it’s so artfully and elegantly observed, and packs such a candid wallop of feeling, atop its frontline urgency is testament to the grace and sensitivity of its directorial team, not just their timely savvy.”

His House (2020)

“His House” is a horror movie that initially released on Netflix and terrified audiences. The plot follows a refugee couple that try to create a new life for themselves in an English town by escaping South Sudan but find their new home is haunted. Jessica Kiang reviewed the film for Variety in 2020 and wrote “‘His House’ is at its most persuasively terrifying when it gets out of the house and into the existential terror of reality. Out there are aspects of the refugee experience that contain greater horrors and mortifications than all the blackening plaster, childish ghostly humming and skittering presences in the walls could ever hope to suggest.”

Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020)

“Quo Vadis, Aida?” documents the journey of Aida, a translator for the U.N. in Srebrenica interpreting the crime taking place when the Serbian army takes over the Bosnian town. “This is not historical revisionism, if anything, ‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ works to un-revise history, re-centering the victims’ plight as the eye of a storm of evils — not only the massacre itself, but the broader evils of institutional failure and international indifference,” wrote Jessica Kiang, who reviewed the film in 2020 for Variety.

Hive (2021)

“Hive” tells the true story about a woman, Fahrije, who becomes an entrepreneur, after her husband goes missing during the Kosovo War. She sells her own red pepper ajvar and honey, and recruiting more women to join her. “Within the heavily patriarchal hierarchy of the country’s rural society, this places these maybe-widows in an impossible situation, especially when, like Fahrije, they have a family to care for,” writes Jessica Kiang for Variety . “They are expected to wait in continual expectation of their breadwinner-husbands’ return, subsisting on paltry welfare handouts, because to take a job or set up a business is looked on not only as a subversion of the natural order, but as a sign of disrespect to the husband and possibly loose morals.” 

Descendant (2022)

Netflix described its 2022 film, saying, “Descendants of the enslaved Africans on an illegal ship that arrived in Alabama in 1860 seek justice and healing when the craft’s remains are discovered.” “This past remains present, Brown shows, as activists explain how the land on which Africatown (formerly Magazine Point) was established once belonged to Meaher, who sold some of it to former slaves.,” wrote Peter Debruge for Variety . “Talk of racial injustice calls for nuance, and it’s impressive just how many facets of the conversation Brown is able to include in her film.”

20 Days in Mariupol (2023)

“20 Days in Mariupol” tells the story of a group of Ukrainian journalists who are trapped in Mariupol during the Russian invasion and struggle to continue documenting the war. The film is directed by Mstyslav Chernov, a Ukrainian director and it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film in 2024. “Powerful as those glimpses were to international viewers, Chernov doesn’t spare his documentary more brutally sustained moments,” wrote Dennis Harvey for Variety . “There’s no political analysis or sermonizing here, just a punishingly up-close look at the toll of modern warfare on a population.”

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The 10 best action movies of the 2020s so far ahead of the fall guy, share this article.

With Ryan Gosling’s new stunts-driven extravaganza The Fall Guy opening this weekend, we’ve decided to take a look at some of the best action films of the decade so far.

While, yes, it’s only the beginning of May 2024 and we’ve literally got a George Miller Mad Max movie coming in a couple of weeks, it’s still fun to take account of how action movies are faring in this decade, one that’s closer to being halfway over than you’d expect.

When making this list, we’ve decided to focus on films completely centered on their action, rather than films of other genres that feature stellar action sequences (like the excellent Dune films and the spectacular Avatar: The Way of Water ).

While this is never a perfect process, we hope this represents a look at some of the best action movies of our decade so far.

Dan Trachtenberg’s exciting entry into the Predator series stripped down all the nostalgic jargon that can typically plague a franchise rebirth of this magnitude and plotted a refreshingly lean, tactically thrilling predator versus prey action film with lots of invention and gritty determination.

9. Monkey Man

Dev Patel’s loving, full-forced tribute to the action movies that he loved growing up is one of the most striking directorial debuts in the genre in some time. It’s just relentless like succeeding punches to the face, but with all the fun of only being on the sideline for the brouhaha. The stylistic comparisons to John Wick are apt, but the headrush of passion is uniquely Patel’s.

8. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Tom Cruise doing Mission: Impossible movies will never get old, and this high-flying latest installment was such a great distillation of why these movies (like their star) just don’t age. We could watch 100 more Ethan Hunt adventures, as long as Chris McQuarrie is directing them.

7. Ambulance

Michael Bay delivered one of the best movies of his career two years ago with Ambulance , a thrill ride of muscle and mayhem (ahem, Bayhem) that keeps your heart pounding and your senses ablaze with all the shocking fun that Bay can bring to the table when working within his element. It’s perhaps the most purely exciting “this vehicle isn’t stopping; great actors are on board; and wacky things are about to happen” movie since Speed .

Bob Odenkirk: action star might not be the first thought that comes to your mind, but the impossibly fun Nobody puts the legendary comedic actor in full John Wick-mode for one of the biggest surprises of the decade so far in action. You will not believe how smooth and just flat-out joyous a movie like this is with Odenkirk doling out the punishment. It’s just a delight.

5. No Time to Die

The grand finale to Daniel Craig’s James Bond tenure was exactly what it needed to be, as it packed in as many mind-blowing action sequences and sheer 007 spectacle as one can hope for with a movie starring the greatest British MI6 agent of all time.

4. John Wick: Chapter 4

The most influential action series of the last decade gave John Wick his proper sendoff (?) with what was easily the strongest installment in the franchise since the original. Wick has come a long way since the days of defending his poor dog’s death, and director Chad Stahelski basically perfected the John Wick model with this gripping fourth film that boasted some of the series’ best action sequences yet. The big Sacré Coeur stairs fight in Paris, France, is something else.

3. Top Gun: Maverick

There’s not much else left to say about what’s probably the biggest non-Barbenheimer movie of the decade so far other than the adrenaline-fueled, high-five-the-person-next-to-you genius of Cruise’s grand return to the cockpit in Top Gun: Maverick just hit different. It’s a singular spectacle.

2. The Northman

Robert Eggers’ brash, skull-crushing Viking epic The Northman is one of the most impressive action films of the decade. This blistering revenge epic just never lets up, leaving your jaw agape at just how far Eggers is willing to push the boundaries of the genre to new heights.

Christopher Nolan’s criminally underappreciated mind-bender Tenet gets better and better as time goes on, and hopefully, some metaphorical inversion will let audiences catch up with just how truly great this is and always has been over time. However, for action movies this decade, this movie is the standard. There is just nothing as stunning as Nolan in his zone plotting big-scale action.

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Screen Rant

This $115m guy ritchie movie's release on netflix could not be better timed.

A 2020 box office hit from Guy Ritchie just landed on Netflix after its spin-off series of the same name opened to great reviews just months ago.

• The Gentlemen movie follows Mickey as he tries to sell his empire, leading to chaos.
• Despite mixed reviews, The Gentlemen movie earned an 84% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
• The Gentlemen offers classic Guy Ritchie vibes and is a better choice over his latest film playing in theaters.

Guy Ritchie's celebrated caper action comedy The Gentlemen just dropped on Netflix at the perfect time. Following the popularity and critical acclaim of Ritchie's The Gentlemen series starring Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, and Daniel Ings, Ritchie's The Gentlemen movie is now available to stream on Netflix, just under 2 months after the celebrated series first came out. The Gentlemen's (2020) cast is led by Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, and Colin Farrell. Despite earning somewhat mixed reviews among critics, The Gentlemen movie earned an 84% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes .

The Gentlemen was a commercial success upon its January 2020 release, earning $115 million worldwide against its relatively modest budget of $22 million . It generated more than $10.5 million in its opening weekend, slightly more than Ritchie's latest film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare , which opened to just under $9 million since releasing on April 19, 2024. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare stars Henry Cavill in his first movie since the massive box office flop Argylle , and his first collaboration with Ritchie since 2015's The Man from U.N.C.L.E. The Gentlemen and The Covenant are the highest-rated movies of Ritchie's directorial filmography.

Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen Is Now On Netflix - Here's What It's About

Mickey aims to sell his highly lucrative weed empire in London to an American billionaire named Matthew Berger so that he and his wife can retire comfortably, but things don't go according to plan.

The Gentlemen (2020) movie follows a talented American graduate of Oxford University named Michael Pearson, played by the effortlessly cool Matthew McConaughey. Michael or 'Mickey' was an incredibly intelligent Rhodes scholar before dropping out to form his enormous criminal empire and becoming one of the most notorious American expats in the United Kingdom. Mickey aims to sell his highly lucrative weed empire in London to an American billionaire named Matthew Berger (Strong) so that he and his wife can retire comfortably, but things don't go according to plan. A series of blackmail attempts and various schemes to take control of Mickey's business unfolds.

The Gentlemen is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a critic score of 75% despite a Metascore of 51 . Some of the more positive reviews of The Gentlemen movie commented on the film's relentless entertainment value and its fun-spirited cast of supporting characters. Brian Lowry of CNN noted in his review that The Gentlemen is " Filled with crosses and double crosses, the plot is mostly irrelevant, but the outlandish flourishes make for a good deal of foul-mouthed fun ." Tom Russo of The Boston Globe wrote, " It's a diverting if slightly undercooked throwback that could offer more genuine intrigue, but that's still worth it to see the cast gamely chuck out the window manners and vanity. "

20 Movies To Watch If You Loved The Gentlemen

The gentlemen movie is perfect to watch after the tv show on netflix.

Even though The Gentlemen movie isn't required viewing to understand or learn more about The Gentlemen television series, it's still the perfect movie to watch for fans of The Gentlemen series.

Although The Gentlemen 2020 movie and The Gentlemen 2024 television series are both created by Ritchie and share a cinematic universe, the characters do not overlap or connect other than existing in the same story world. Even though The Gentlemen movie isn't required viewing to understand or learn more about The Gentlemen television series, it's still the perfect movie to watch for fans of The Gentlemen series. The movie has similar themes, costumes, and an overall vibe that will resonate with fans of The Gentlemen series , even if there is no Theo James in the 4-year-old film.

The Gentlemen also offers something within the vein of classic Guy Ritchie movies dating back as far as 2008. The Gentlemen was cut from a similar cloth as Ritchie's 2008 gangster classic RocknRolla , which starred Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, and Thandiwe Newton. It's also thematically along the same lines as 2000's Snatch starring Brad Pitt and Jason Statham, which is arguably the best movie of Ritchie's directing career. The timing of The Gentlemen movie's release on Netflix allows just enough time for fans of The Gentlemen to finish up the 8-part series in anticipation of a potential season 2.

The Gentlemen Show vs Movie: 9 Ways Guy Ritchie Remade His Own Story

The gentlemen movie offers an even better guy ritchie movie than the one in theaters right now.

Ritchie's latest film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is underperforming at the box office and is on track to be Henry Cavill's second blockbuster flop of 2024.

The Gentlemen is rated among the best of Guy Ritchie's movies, along with Snatch and his breakout film debut Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), which both quickly cemented Ritchie's classic visual and narrative styles. On the contrary, Ritchie's latest film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is underperforming at the box office and is on track to be Henry Cavill's second blockbuster flop of 2024. For fans of The Gentlemen series who'd rather spend their time watching a modern Ritchie classic than The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare , The Gentlemen is the perfect choice.

Netflix's The Gentlemen Makes Us Want 1 Other Guy Ritchie Show

The gentlemen.

Based on the film of the same name, the Gentlemen is a crime drama series created for Netflix by Guy Ritchie. The series follows Eddie Horniman, who inherits his father's estate, only to discover he has inherited a vast cannabis empire - and all of the rivals that come with it.

• Cast & crew

After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana journeys to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she has ever... Read all After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana journeys to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she has ever faced. After receiving an unexpected call from her wayfinding ancestors, Moana journeys to the far seas of Oceania and into dangerous, long-lost waters for an adventure unlike anything she has ever faced.

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8 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about.

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By The New York Times

A feature-length stunt reel (in a good way).

‘The Fall Guy’

After the lead of a blockbuster action movie goes missing, his stunt double, Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling), must try to find him. This action romp includes an impressive array of stunts.

From our review:

Directed by David Leitch, “The Fall Guy” is divertingly slick, playful nonsense about a guy who lives to get brutalized again and again — soon after it starts, Colt suffers a catastrophic accident — which may be a metaphor for contemporary masculinity and its discontents, though perhaps not. More unambiguously, the movie is a feature-length stunt-highlight reel that’s been padded with romance, a minor mystery, winking jokes and the kind of unembarrassed self-regard for moviemaking that film people have indulged in for nearly as long as cinema has been in existence. For once, this swaggering pretense is largely justified.

In theaters. Read the full review .

CRITIC’S PICK

Fresh out of the toaster, a corporate saga.

‘unfrosted: the pop-tart story’.

Jerry Seinfeld imagines a heavily embellished version of the invention Pop-Tarts in this kooky comedy. The film also features Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan and a host of other famous faces.

As junk food goes, “Unfrosted” is delightful with a sprinkle of morbidity. Building on last December’s publicity stunt where an anthropomorphic Pop-Tart cooked and served itself to the Kansas State Wildcats, we’re here treated to a funeral where the deceased is given Full Cereal Honors. I will spoil nothing except to say Snap, Crackle and Pop have a ceremonial duty. The jokes spill forth so fast that there’s no time for the shtick to get soggy.

Watch on Netflix . Read the full review .

It’s not technically Harry Styles fan fiction, but it’s close.

‘the idea of you’.

Anne Hathaway stars as Solène Marchand, a 40-year-old mom who has a chance encounter with a (much younger) member of a wildly popular boy band. The two must navigate the complications of celebrity and romance.

It’s probably coincidental that “The Idea of You” comes on the heels of Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” on which she strongly implies that her carefully cultivated fandom has made her love life a nightmare. But spiritually, at least, they’re of a piece — even if the origins of the film’s plot seem as much borne of parasociality as a critique of it. And that makes Hathaway’s performance extra poignant. She’s been dragged into that buzz saw before. And somehow, she’s figured out how to make a life on the other side of it.

Watch on Prime Video . Read the full review .

Jeanne du Boring.

‘jeanne du barry’.

The most prominent mistress of King Louis XV, Jeanne du Barry, gets the “girl boss” treatment in this historical drama written, directed by and starring Maïwenn alongside Johnny Depp.

The meticulous and lush production design by Angelo Zamparutti, captured with practically dewy appreciation by the cinematographer Laurent Dailland, makes the movie easy on the eyes, but every so often its prettiness edges over into souvenir-shop kitsch.

Through the TV looking glass.

‘i saw the tv glow’.

In this feature from writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, two teenagers bond over their love for a mysterious television show, but the fictional universe starts to feel more real (and less stifling) than their suburban reality.

We’ve forgotten how hard being a fan used to be. You had to labor at it in multiple media: scouring listings and keeping tabs on schedules, reading books of lore and compiling episode recaps. … “I Saw the TV Glow” captures this obsessive, anticipatory submersion in a long-form weekly TV show, to the point where it ignites the same feeling. A lot of movies tell you stories, but the films of the writer and director Jane Schoenbrun evoke them; to borrow a term, they’re a vibe. Like “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” Schoenbrun’s previous film, this one isn’t quite horror, but it gives you the same kind of scalp crawl. In this case I think it’s the mark of recognition, of feeling a tug at your subconscious.

The coming-of-age movie goes to therapy.

‘turtles all the way down’.

Adapted from John Green’s YA novel of the same name, Hannah Marks’s drama follows Aza (Isabela Merced), a teenager with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as she struggles to manage her anxieties.

What “Turtles” does offer in surplus is texture, thanks to Marks’s springy, stylish direction. Any time Aza confronts a thought spiral about germs, Marks pairs voice-over of Aza’s frantic inner monologue with images of neon-colored microbes writhing in a petri dish. These moments are intrusive and unsettling, and together form one of the more dynamically authentic on-screen depictions of O.C.D. that I’ve seen.

Watch on Max . Read the full review .

Who’s afraid of Flannery O’Connor?

Ethan Hawke directs his daughter, Maya Hawke, in a Flannery O’Connor biopic that mixes in visualizations of the American writer’s famously unnerving short stories.

Maya Hawke’s performance, in turn, is muddled; she can be strong as O’Connor, but in the fictional pieces, her portrayals are often reduced to clumsy caricatures. The period re-creation is striking and helps generate occasionally spellbinding imagery, but the enduring sense of the film is of a family project that is by turns frustrating and briefly enlightening.

The dark side of glamping.

‘evil does not exist’.

In a small village outside Tokyo, Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) and his daughter (Ryo Nishikawa) contend with a development company that plans to build a glamping site that may well spoil their rural oasis. It’s the latest from writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”).

I have watched “Evil Does Not Exist” twice, and each time the stealthy power of Hamaguchi’s filmmaking startles me anew. Some of my reaction has to do with how he uses fragments from everyday life to build a world that is so intimate and recognizable — filled with faces, homes and lives as familiar as your own — that the movie’s artistry almost comes as a shock.

Bonus Review: An Asexual Romance

“Slow,” a relationship drama from Lithuania in theaters now, offers an understanding of intimacy that is rare in romance movies.

Elena (Greta Grineviciute), a contemporary dancer, meets Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas), a sign language interpreter, at a class for deaf adolescents — she teaches the steps; he translates her instructions. The 30-somethings begin a modest flirtation that inches toward the physical, but Dovydas pulls out a wild card when Elena invites him to her room: He is asexual.

“Slow,” directed by Marija Kavtaradze, takes this difference as its point of departure. What does a relationship look like when you factor out the sex? It’s clear that Elena has a hard time accepting Dovydas as he is. Grineviciute and Cicenas, however, give depth to a story that becomes stuck on the sorrows of the couple’s discrepancies. Throughout Dovydas enthusiastically performs a kind of sign language karaoke. The film makes too little of this intuitive connection between lovers, both adept, in their own ways, at communicating passion by other means. — Beatrice Loayza

Explore More in TV and Movies

Not sure what to watch next we can help..

The Netflix stalker series “ Baby Reindeer ” combines the appeal of a twisty thriller with a deep sense of empathy. The ending illustrates why it’s become such a hit .

We have entered the golden age of Mid TV, where we have a profusion of well-cast, sleekly produced competence, our critic writes .

The writer-director Alex Garland has made it clear that “Civil War” should be a warning. Instead, the ugliness of war comes across as comforting thrills .

Studios obsessively focused on PG-13 franchises and animation in recent years, but movies like “Challengers” and “Saltburn” show that Hollywood is embracing sex again .

If you are overwhelmed by the endless options, don’t despair — we put together the best offerings   on Netflix , Max , Disney+ , Amazon Prime  and Hulu  to make choosing your next binge a little easier.

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I Wish You Were My Mother (2020)

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Amazon Prime Day 2024: Here's what to expect, tips, and tricks

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Amazon Prime Day has grown into one of the biggest sales events of the year, with discounts rivaling those of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With so many retailers selling on Amazon, Prime members can save on just about anything, from viral beauty products to new unlocked smartphones.

The best Prime Day deals we saw last year included all-time lows on brands like Apple, Vitamix, iRobot, Dyson, Crocs, and, of course, Amazon-owned products like the Fire TV , Kindle e-reader , and Echo smart speakers . We expect to see more of the same this year as well.

It'll be the first major deal holiday of the year, so it's an awesome chance to score summer discounts on big-ticket items and household staples. The retailer's 10th Prime Day event has officially been announced to arrive in July, but the actual days are still unknown. In the meantime, we're keeping tabs on all of the latest Prime Day news, and we'll keep you updated with our findings here.

• Shop the latest deals at Amazon

When is Amazon Prime Day 2024?

Amazon Prime Day is officially coming this July, though the exact days have not yet been announced. In past years, it kicked off on the second Tuesday of the month. If Amazon follows the same trend, it will take place on July 9 and 10. We'll keep this story updated as more details are announced.

What is Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day is the retailer's annual mega sale and one of the major benefits of Prime membership. It's a two-day sales event, usually during the summer, that features products from every category, from fashion staples to hot new tech. 

Though it used to be a deal holiday of a much smaller scale, Prime Day has grown exponentially since the first one in 2015. Now, you can find almost everything on sale for all-time low prices, matching discounts we see during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

What should I buy during Amazon Prime Day?

Everything is fair game to buy during Amazon Prime Day. Whether you've been holding out on a pricey new TV or just need to stock up on toiletries, Prime Day is a good time to make your move. 

Last year, we saw incredible prices on tech, including 4K TVs , Fire TV streaming devices , Apple products, Kindle e-readers , PC gaming accessories, Echo smart speakers , and top headphones picks. Prime Day tech deals featured brands like Logitech, Bose, Jabra, Sony, Roku, Samsung, TCL, and more. 

If you're looking for style and beauty deals during Prime Day, last year, brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Tatcha, Laneige, Levi's, Carhartt, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Adidas, and Marc Jacobs all featured products at rare low prices. That means skincare, makeup, shoes, men's clothing, women's fashion, and accessories will all be available for less. 

Home and kitchen products saw no shortage of Prime Day deals either, with big names like Dyson, Shark, iRobot, Philips, KitchenAid, Nespresso, Casper, Leesa, and OXO down to all-time lows for the event. So, whether you need an air fryer , robot vacuum , mattress , or just some sturdy mixing bowls, Prime Day is a good time to buy. 

You don't need to be focused on fancy new gadgets or treatments to shop smart during Amazon Prime Day either. We also catch tons of affordable household essentials available for even less every year, like toilet paper, dish soap, doggy bags, and makeup wipes. These deals are sweet, since they save you money on stuff you needed to buy anyway. 

How long do Prime Day deals last?

How long a Prime Day deal lasts differs between items, but in general, the best discounts will start during the event and end before the 48-hour holiday is over. Some will last the whole two days while others will only last one, so it's always wise to act on a good sale when you see it. Lightning deals especially go fast, the most popular of which dwindle away in less than an hour.

I always recommend buying a product you've had your eye on as soon as it's highlighted as a Prime Day deal. Regardless of how long it's set to last, oftentimes the best sales run out of stock, resulting in shipping dates being pushed out, or the deal no longer being offered at all. We'll be providing all of the deal context you need to shop confidently and quickly, so be sure to check our roundups of the best discounts when the event rolls around. 

Do you need to be a Prime member to shop Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day is locked to Prime members only. It's one of the major benefits of subscribing to the service, in addition to other perks like free two-day shipping and Prime Video streaming. 

If you have yet to become a member, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial to test it out. Once the official Prime Day dates have been announced, you can even time your free period to overlap with the sale, but it's not a guarantee since sometimes retailers will lock out free members from shopping the best deals.

Do other stores participate in Prime Day?

Although Prime Day is an Amazon-specific event, it's grown so large that other major retailers have started kicking off competing sales to overlap with it. No one has announced a competing Prime Day sale just yet, but if past years are any indication, Walmart, Target, and Best Buy will likely be holding their own events.

These are definitely worth checking out; they often match the best deals on popular items you can find from Prime Day. We'll also be rounding these deals up so you can shop from the retailer that best suits you, whether you're a Target Circle cardholder, My Best Buy Plus member, or Walmart Plus subscriber. 

Is Prime Day an international event?

Prime Day occurs in several other countries, but not all of them. Here's a list of countries where Prime Day will be available to shop:

• Netherlands
• Saudi Arabia
• The United Arab Emirates
• The United States
• The United Kingdom

Want to see what Amazon has on sale right now? We've spotted some hefty price cuts on electronics, fashion, home, kitchen, laptops, and more on its main deals page .

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Anne Hathaway makes her fashion-filled TikTok debut: ‘The queen is here!’

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Anne Hathaway is on TikTok now? Shut. Up.

The “Princess Diaries” actress, 41, made her debut on the popular social media platform on Thursday, posting a fashion-filled montage of her life over the past few years.

“⏰⏰⏰⏰ 😳🫢🫡🤗,” she captioned the video , which began with text that said “Since 2020 I’ve…” before adding that it was actually just a “partial list.”

While the clip paid tribute to Hathaway’s many career accomplishments — including starring in the movie “The Witches,” AppleTV+’s “WeCrashed,” and her latest project, Prime’s “The Idea of You” — she made sure to remind fans of some of her memorable style moments, too.

Not only did Hathaway show off the colorful Christopher John Rogers look that she wore while doing press for “WeCrashed,” she also included highlights from the 2023 Met Gala , where she showed up in a safety pin Versace dress and reunited with her costar from the mini-series, Jared Leto, who was dressed as a cat.

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There were also shots of Hathaway’s vibrant pink look from Valentino’s Haute Couture Fall 2022 show , her white Cannes 2022 dress , a golden gown she wore while “dripping in Bulgari,” and a bikini and jeans combo, which she rocked alongside trainer Monique Eastwood.

Hathaway even poked fun at her viral videos instructing fans to “calma” while in Italy, including three different clips of herself speaking to crowds, before adding some “Not calma ✅ 🤪” moments, like when she twerked in a checkered Versace set .

Of course, the “Devil Wears Prada” alum had to include her unforgettable SAG Awards reunion with Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, during which she gave a nod to the film in cerulean blue .

She also shared the time she became “besties” with designer Donatella Versace, with the two women laughing on a couch.

The TikTok concluded with some of Hathaway’s stunning press tour outfits from promoting “The Idea of You,” and as the as the background music fades, the star, who is decked out in form-fitting red gown, jokingly tells her team she “forgot to make a TikTok.”

For more Page Six Style …

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Naturally, many fans took to the comments section, making references to Hathaway’s films. Even the official TikTok account shared its excitement, writing “THE QUEEN IS HERE!!!!!!!!!”

The star surely has a lot to celebrate. On top of both producing and starring in “The Idea of You,” which is now available to stream on Prime, she recently told the New York Times that she’s “over five years sober.”

“That feels like a milestone to me,” she told the publication.

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This originally ran on March 13, and we are re-running because of its early VOD drop.

Craig Zobel ’s “The Hunt” is filled with more memes than plot. The incendiary film, which caused much online handwringing last fall, was eventually shelved after the president weighed in with an uninformed opinion. Almost everybody’s opinion came sight unseen because few eyes had even watched “The Hunt” at all. No matter, after much sound and fury the movie is more of a molehill than a mountain. Betty Gilpin deserves better and so do we. 

The film opens on a bombastic overture and a stiltedly staged group text that will retroactively become important. We are then whisked onto a luxury jet where the liberal rich are feted and random poor conservatives from different parts of the country have been drugged and tucked out-of-sight in the back of the plane. The next scene opens on the kidnapped victims waking up gagged and heading towards a mysterious box in a field, like the cornucopia from “ The Hunger Games .” Once their restraints are off and the shooting begins, the most dangerous game’s afoot. 

It’s easier to single out what I enjoyed about the movie before delving into its messy politics. There are a handful of thrilling, suspenseful sequences like the first shootout in the field and some hand-to-hand combat. Zobel leans into the exploitative possibilities of recreating Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game  for a new audience, including bloody boobytraps, a grenade thrown down a guy’s pants and many, many painful-looking splattery wounds from arrows, knives and bullets. 

Standing tall and stern-faced in the middle of the violent squall is Crystal (Gilpin), the movie’s secret weapon and its saving grace. Hardly any of the other characters on either side of the liberal/conservative divide ever rise above a trite stereotype, and while there’s not too much more depth to Crystal, Gilpin’s performance as a reluctant warrior makes her kind of a hero. She plays Crystal with a tight-lipped and restrained presence, perhaps a holdover from tolerating rotten customers at her car rental agency job. Later, we learn she served in the military, and Gilpin embodies this moving rigidly but quickly, showing that some of her discipline has worn off over the years through a few nervous ticks. Still, her eyes remain on survival and never lets her guard down, like Rambo by way of Mississippi. For those of us who have watched her as Liberty Belle on Netflix’s “Glow,” she’s playing someone completely against type and it’s exhilarating to watch.  

Apart from Gilpin, the movie falls apart. The villains in this story are liberal elites lead by a woman named Athena ( Hilary Swank ) who have a preposterous social media backstory fueled by a conspiracy theory known as Manorgate. It’s one of the many borrowed and tweaked headlines used in “The Hunt,” which despite all its copy and pasting of popular terms and internet slurs, doesn’t add up to anything beyond its superficial violence. Written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof , “The Hunt” proves how “both-siderism” doesn’t always logically pan out. How could a pack of liberals easily upset by the sugar in soda, climate change and gendered language turn to kill for sport? Instead, the movie plays into the conspiracy fears about crisis actors and theories that rich liberal elites are out to kill them, and that is where things get less funny. 

Zobel, Cuse and Lindelof made a movie to own the libs and the conservatives, which might be the most capitalist (or nihilist) attitude towards politics yet. The unoriginality of “The Hunt” extends to its cinematography, which Darran Tiernan paints with one shade of grey and maroon bloodstains, its unremarkable production design by Matthew Munn , and its stereotype-reaffirming wardrobe from costume designer David Tabbert . The movie is both disposable in its inability to say something—anything!—about the current political climate beyond “Oh, it’s dicey out there,” and as a strange cultural artifact of the times. It’s just as likely that this movie would have flown in and out of theaters without much notice were it not for its momentary blip on social media. Perhaps there’s more of a lesson to be learned from “The Hunt” than what happens in “The Hunt.”

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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The Hunt (2020)

Rated R for strong bloody violence, and language throughout.

115 minutes

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