Top Ten Films of 2020

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Top Ten Films? So that's Sonic the Hedgehog and... like, Onward?"

Truth be told, while 2020 can and should suck a bag of flaming dicks, I felt that this this was actually a great year for film. It felt super nice that the indies and the festival darlings made up the vast bulk of 2020's roster while the tentpoles/blockbusters that got dumped to streaming (mostly) fell flatter than month old soda. And with so much time at home to get to see so many of these films, I managed to see a lot, enough to actually make a pretty good Top 10 in my humble but objectively superior opinion.

But before I get into my list, I wanted to shout out some Honorable Mentions:

HM #1: One Night in Miami

Director: Regina King
Written By: Kemp Powers
Studio: Amazon Studios
Starring: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr., Lance Reddick

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HM #2: The Climb

Director: Michael Angelo Covino
Written By: Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Starring: Kyle Marvin, Michael Angelo Covino, Gayle Rankin, Talia Balsam, George Wendt

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HM #3: Possessor

Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Written By: Brandon Cronenberg
Studio: Neon
Starring: Andrea Riseborough, Christopher Abbott, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean, Jennifer Jason Leigh

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HM #4: Night of the Kings

Director: Philippe Lacôte
Written By: Philippe Lacôte
Studio: Neon
Starring: Bakary Koné, Steve Tientcheu, Jean Cyrille Digbeu, Rasmané Ouédraogo, Issaka Sawadogo

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HM #5: First Cow

Director: Kelly Reichardt
Written By: Jonathan Raymond and Kelly Reichardt
Studio: A24
Starring: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd

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Without further ado, the actual list:

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10. Soul

Director: Pete Docter
Written By: Pete Docter, Mike Jones, and Kemp Powers
Studio: Disney/Pixar
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Rachel House, Graham Norton, Questlove

Pixar entered the 2010s riding high on a string of some of the best films the studio would ever make, though with the exceptions of Toy Story 3, Inside Out, Coco, and, depending on who you ask (not me, as I thought it was simply okay at best), Toy Story 4, the 2010s turned out to be an otherwise disappointing, dud-filled period for the legendary animation studio. While Onward was a decent step forward for them entering the current decade, I knew their legacy would be marked by how well their next feature, Soul, an arguable spiritual sequel to the remarkable Inside Out, would fare.

While I certainly can’t say that Soul consistently rides on the same level of greatness as an Inside Out or an Incredibles, it still manages to mark another triumph for Pixar. While I feel that its more kid-movie elements (you’ll know what I mean when you see it, if you haven’t already) aren’t integrated into the story nearly as well as the aforementioned, it’s also quite easily one of the most mature, poignant, and unpredictable films the studio has ever produced, its themes of the meaning of living life and the passions that drive us through it explored with cerebral visual storytelling and playfully philosophical dialogue.

The characters are also great and are entirely relatable throughout; from the jaded and cynical 22 to the arrogantly dutiful Terry, they all remain entertaining, well-rounded, and real throughout. Joe Gardner himself is quite arguably one of the most complex characters in Pixar’s pantheon, his arc throughout the film going through several unusual places that feel wholly understandable from the first frame to its last.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame, of all people, along with his frequent cinematic collaborator Atticus Ross, have composed the best score of the year with this film. Its mix of plucky, glitchy electronica, lo-fi piano pieces, and combinations of the two lend themselves perfectly to the visually immaculate world(s) crafted in this film, and also gifts us with one of the greatest sequences ever created by Pixar period.

Hopefully this film’s success will spell great things for Luca later this year, but if even that’s as good as Soul, perhaps even better, Pixar may find itself back in the footing that made them the animation studio to beat.

9. Promising Young Woman

Director: Emerald Fennell
Written By: Emerald Fennell
Studio: Universal Pictures/Focus Features
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Alison Brie, Chris Lowell

Easily one of the most frustratingly anticipated movies of the previous year finally became available to view for most nearly a full year after its premiere at 2020’s Sundance Film Festival. Even in the wake of the #MeToo movement and all the undeniable progress that’s been made through it, newly-minted actress-turned-auteur Emerald Fennell unfalteringly states through her diamond-sharp feature debut that the surface of sexual assault and rape culture has only barely been scratched and that so much more work desperately needs to be done to bring an end to it.

Carey Mulligan turns in one of her best performances to date as certifiable greatest-friend ever Cassandra “Cassie” Thomas. While Mulligan is mostly known for her softer-spoken roles, she absolutely lets her girlboss flag fly high here and lets completely loose, being simultaneously dry and witty and terrifying and threatening at once throughout the story. While sharing her best chemistry with the ever-reliable and charming Bo Burnham and the equally spicy Laverne Cox, many of Mulligan’s best scenes are made with the actors who only have their one scene getting verbally and ethically eviscerated by her, especially the ones involving Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Connie Britton.

What’s also highly commendable about Promising Young Woman is Fennell’s ability to glide over, and at times gracefully cross, the line between light-hearted humor and searing blackness, at points feeling like Park Chan-wook helming a project that Paul Feig would normally direct. Easily the best example of this, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, is the scene between Cassie and her old Dean from college, a scene so mesmerizingly well-written and cathartic that it’s worth the viewing alone. It’s truly difficult to describe how effectual of an anti-hero Cassie is in this film and how innocuously twisted she is without spoiling the emotional impact and cunning of her actions throughout the film.

While (few) elements of this film and its story can be a bit predictable, the final act of this film is one that genuinely shook me to the core and completely subverted my already shattered expectations, all before wrapping everything up with an equally-satisfying climax that will certainly go down as one of the best of the year.

It’s a massively-successful first bound forward for Fennell and perhaps a bold new chapter in Mulligan’s career that I hope they both continue to ride indefinitely into much deserved glory.

8. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Director: George C. Wolfe
Written By: Ruben Santiago-Hudson
Studio: Netflix
Starring: Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, Michael Potts

Having greatly enjoyed 2016’s Fences upon first seeing it, I was looking forward to another Viola Davis-driven adaptation of an August Wilson play centered around the world of blues music, a genre that my family and I greatly admires and reveres. What I wasn’t expecting is one of the most effective historical social commentaries backed by one of the most solid full-cast performances that I’ve seen the entire year.

Viola Davis is utterly chameleonic in her turn as blues legend Ma Rainey, whose restrained, almost lethargic energy radiates with an intensity like hot coals that frequently cracks and spits with wit and resilience, gifting viewers with one of her best performances to date. Much of the film also takes place inside of a dingy studio basement where the cast playing Ma’s band engages in lively, and at times, pointed discussions on race and society that completely transcend their period trappings.

Even managing to soar leaps and bounds above them all is Chadwick Bosemen in his final appearance as arrogant, yet talented trumpeter Levee Green, and is indeed a towering triumph and quite possibly the brightest highlight to his devastatingly cut-short career. Despite the sheer unlikability of his character, Boseman ensures the undeniable passion and despair that Green’s character rests upon cuts like a wire through flesh at numerous points in the film, including a heart-pulverizing monologue about his childhood along with the devastating and shocking second-to-last scene.

Screenwriter Ruben Santiago-Hudson also puts his stage and screen experience to exhilarating use through his adaptation of Wilson’s play, allowing Wilson’s masterful dialogue and the more cinematic embellishments he adds to shine through together in equal luminance. I also adore the way director George C. Wolfe portrays 1920s Chicago as both brimming with life while also possessing a grungy seediness that provides a firm bedrock for the themes explored inside, providing an even greater burst of energy that the cast and script already exudes in spades.

It’s a sadly timeless, perfectly performed piece of filmmaking that, even if you’re more inclined to watch it for the music and may wind up disappointed as a result, you should check out anyway because it’s just that damned good.

7. Sound of Metal

Director: Darius Marder
Written By: Darius and Abraham Marder
Studio: Amazon Studios
Starring: Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff, Mathieu Amalric

I sadly haven’t seen too much of Riz Ahmed’s work outside of Nightcrawler, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and Venom, the latter of which left a distressingly sour taste in my mouth. That being said, I’m most certainly not unaware of his talents based on what I’ve heard about his Emmy-winning performance in HBO’s The Night Of (which I have since seen and have since come to adore), and I hoped that with his highly-acclaimed performance in this film, I’d have even less of an excuse to keep him off my radar, and I’m happy to say that after viewing this, he’ll never leave my sights again.

Without question, Riz Ahmed’s Ruben Stone is far and away the strongest performance of the entire year. The raw, unfiltered fury and anguish gushing from him is oppressive in absolutely the best way, and Ahmed bravely and expertly nails the despair of Stone’s situation without any reservation and hits every emotional beat with aplomb, including but not limited to thoughts of suicide and impending relapse into a previously-curbed drug addiction. Olivia Cooke’s Lou also does exceptionally well alongside Ahmed in the handful of scenes she is in, but one of the film’s unexpected surprises came in the form of Paul Raci as Joe, the leader of the deaf commune that Ruben moves into. Raci, a hearing-abled person born to deaf parents, is able to perfectly capture the pride and warmth of a man that has found peace with the loss of his hearing while empathizing with those who have lost it themselves, all the while still providing great touches of nuance throughout. The final scene between him and Ahmed is easily one of the best of the film and one of the biggest tearjerker moments of the entire year.

On top of having a slew of some of the strongest performances of the year, the film also benefits greatly from some of the most ingenious sound design that I’ve ever heard from a film. Much of the film puts you right in Ruben’s shoes (and head), and so you experience much of what he “hears” and feels throughout its runtime, and it gets especially creative by the end, where its majesty reaches an apex that may require a long, reflective sit on the couch (or whatever furniture you happen to watch this at) by the time the credits roll.

It’s an emotional roller-coaster that gets no less exciting from its first glorious frame to its equally glorious last. Do not miss it.

6. Palm Springs

Director: Max Barbakow
Written By: Andy Siara
Studio: Hulu/Neon
Starring: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Camila Mendes, Tyler Hoechlin

Far and away the biggest surprise of the year. What began as what I assumed would be a millennial’s fun, unassuming answer to Groundhog Day turned into one of the funniest, most mature meditations on the mundanity of life and the people in it that help break apart its monotony.

While not having gotten the chance to see him in 2012’s Celeste and Jesse Forever, I can otherwise say that Andy Samberg turns in one of his smartest and most complex roles to date as the nigh-omniscient Nyles, who remains unpredictable throughout its entire runtime as Samberg deftly matches his pace. Cristin Milioti’s Sarah Wilder also manages to go toe-to-toe with Samberg’s Nyles throughout the film’s runtime and proves to be an indispensable foil to him, creating some of the most palpable chemistry between two leads that I’ve seen all year. Also thrown into the mix is J.K. Simmons’ Roy, who gets one of the best character introductions and arcs in the entire film and is a total delight whenever he pops into the story.

Despite clocking in at only 90 minutes, Palm Springs makes sure every second and every frame goes unwasted. From the massively intriguing way it builds its premise to the number of fun and creative ways that Nyles and Sarah kill time together and on their own, the film implies that it was just as much fun to craft as it was to eventually shoot and assemble. Another tremendous aid in the hilariousness of the comedy is the editing, which I think could rival that of even some of the best Edgar Wright films. Particular highlights in this field include the numerous times Nyles outwits his cheating girlfriend Misty as well as a scene in which he recounts a list of past sexual partners to Sarah.

While certainly not the most prestigious film in this lot, it’s undeniably the one of the most joyous and underrated pleasures of the year, and I hope that it sees some much-deserved love in the near future.

5. Wolfwalkers

Director: Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart
Written By: Will Collins
Studio: AppleTV+
Starring: Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney, Maria Doyle Kennedy

And just like that, Cartoon Saloon finally puts out a film to rival and best Pixar, a Pete Doctor-directed one, no less. While not having seen another of their films prior to this one, Wolfwalkers was a fabulous introduction to Cartoon Saloon and one that demands future attention as well as a need to view their previous efforts.

There’s a lack of polish to the animation and the settings that gives it a wholly authentic and physical feel, the sketch outlines appearing beneath and around the characters showcasing something undeniably organic and handcrafted. Even then, the film manages to pull off some of the most visually sumptuous sequences I’ve seen in a film this entire year. And while the film gushes with obvious visual and narrative influence, especially that of Disney’s renaissance period from the late 80s through the 90s, along with serialized animations like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Wolfwalkers still manages to feel like its own unique beast.

The dynamic bonds the characters share and how they evolve throughout is also breathtakingly fresh, even if they do share some recognizable trappings as past animations. The dissonance between protagonist Robyn and father Bill is wonderfully understated and is brilliantly ingrained in the world they are cast in, allowing the more pleasant and loving qualities of their relationship to shine through more times than not. Her relationship and eventual friendship with the wolfwalker Mebh is also beautifully natural and complimentary, and the richness of their characters and personalities makes their camaraderie feel all the more earned. And while we’ve seen villains like the Lord Protector in similar films presented in an almost identical manner, there’s a maturity to the approach to his character that presents a real feeling of threat and danger whenever he’s on screen.

Unlike Pixar’s Soul, which managed to be very mature and cerebral and fell just short due to some minor structural flaws in its grand design, Wolfwalkers excels on a relatively simple, if not, familiar story told as perfectly and as passionately as one could tell a story such as this, and sometimes, simplicity can be far more than enough to win me over.

4. The Vast of Night

Director: Andrew Patterson
Written By: James Montague and Craig W. Sanger
Studio: Amazon Studios
Starring: Sierra McCormick, Jake Horowitz, Gail Cronauer, Bruce Davis, Greg Peyton

Andrew Patterson’s debut began making its rounds in the 2019 festival circuit after being rejected by over a dozen of them since its completion before finally being acquired by Amazon Studios and released in May of 2020. Such an inhumane treatment to what is quite objectively a micro-budget sci-fi masterpiece.

What looks like a glacially-paced burn with long, uncomfortable takes feels like Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds brought to the screen in exactly the right way. It feels like the film Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg should have always made together, with its cautious, yet optimistic outlook on the unknown to its dry and meticulous attention to detail. It is a film that is so laser-focused at leading its story to wherever it needs it to go that it’s impossible to ignore the bravery and talents of the people behind it.

For a former Disney starlet and a near no-name actor, Sierra McCormick and Jake Horowitz’s are some of the most underrated performances of all of 2020. The commitment they give to their characters and the way they interact with technology throughout the film (including a single-take shot of McCormick working a switchboard earlier in the film as if it were second-nature to her) is remarkable and suggests some very promising and rewarding roles in the future. Bruce Davis and Gail Cronauer, playing Billy and Mabel, respectively, are also just as talented, both coming off like enchanted campfire storytellers that make their stories real with their words alone.

It feels simultaneously like several decades of past films smoothly blended into one that yet manages to feel so modern, and its period trappings play into such an underappreciated part of the sci-fi genre itself, that being the struggle to understand something more advanced than ourselves. Fay and Everett can only do so much with what technology and resources that the 1950’s could offer, and because of how possibly incapable they are at uncovering this mystery, it adds that much more tension and craftiness to the story.

Andrew Pattinson is without question the one of the strongest voices in indie filmmaking going into the new decade, and if he breaks through enough to garner more widespread celebration, I truly think cinema as a whole will be objectively made better for it.

3. Mangrove

Director: Steve McQueen
Written By: Steve McQueen and Alastair Siddons
Studio: Amazon Studios
Starring: Shaun Parkes, Letitia Wright, Malachi Kirby, Jack Lowden, Sam Spruell

While I wasn’t able to catch The Trial of the Chicago 7 this year, I figured getting one of the social-justice-protests-turned-court-battle films of 2020 would be just fine by me, and I’m really happy I made Mangrove my film of choice.

Steve McQueen has always been renowned for pulling no punches when exploring the subject matter he tackles, from sexual addiction in 2011’s Shame, to the brutality of Antebellum-era slavery in 2013’s 12 Years a Slave. Here, McQueen sheds a light on the utterly racist police force and prejudiced judicial system of 1970’s England. Throughout its soul-flattening run, the film consistently makes its case for the impossibility of the subjugated to remain apolitical as a means of escaping their subjugation and the almost equally-impossible means of fighting back against it when inevitably forced to. Even more crushing is the subtle, unspoken fact that even half a century later after the events and the underbelly exposed by this very trial depicted in this film, things have hardly changed, if at all, today.

By McQueen standards, Mangrove is one of his more briskly-paced efforts, especially when compared to his earlier filmography, its fiery screenplay and urgent story fueling the energy behind it. And while the dialogue and performances are very era-and-location-conscious, which may compel some viewers to watch with subtitles to understand the slang and accents employed by its characters, the sheer passion of the performances and the visual storytelling through each shot’s composition and blocking can be enough of a translator to get its messages across.

The events leading up to, as well as the events of the trial of the Mangrove 9, are made all the more visceral and cathartic by its incredible cast, each actor giving the best performances of their careers, especially the ones given by Shaun Parkes and Letitia Wright as Frank Crichlow and Altheia Jones-LeCointe, respectively. McQueen’s confident, static direction also allows for a number of standout moments for them, including a powerful unbroken monologue from Wright later in the film, an utterly-tearjerking slow pull in on Parkes’ face upon the reading of the verdicts during the climax, and a truly exhilarating earlier takedown by Malachi Kirby’s Darcus Howe against one of the main instigating constables during his hearing.

While I feel that the subsequent four films in McQueen’s Small Axe anthology couldn’t quite rise above the bar Mangrove set for them, I feel as though this should only be expected considering that it is quite possibly the greatest cinematic achievement in Steve McQueen’s career.

2. Minari

Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Written By: Lee Isaac Chung
Studio: A24
Starring: Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Youn Yuh-jung, Alan Kim

While this has been one of the roughest years for one of the best distribution studios in the game right now, their 2020 tenure ranks right along some of their better years solely with the existence of this film.

Steven Yeun is quickly establishing himself as one of cinema’s most underrated actors, delivering a slew of wonderfully subtle performances in films such as Lee Chang-dong’s Burning and Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. Minari may be his best outing as an actor to date, where he’s able to tackle the complexities of a man trying to build a legacy for his family as his drive threatens to break it apart. And yet, Yeun’s tender and firm performance as Jacob allows him to cast his character in a positive light thoughout the vast majority of it. Han Ye-ri’s Monica is an equally compelling foil for him as she struggles to (almost literally) pull his head out of the dirt and keep her family stable in their unstable surroundings.

The two real stars of this film, however, come in the forms of Alan Kim’s David and Youn Yuh-jung’s Soon-ja. A24 almost always has some of the best child characters/performances in contemporary cinema from Jacob Tremblay’s Jack in Room to Brooklynn Prince’s Moonee in The Florida Project, and David Yi easily glides his way into the top tier of A24’s kid-character catalogue; his irresistible precociousness and faux bravado is a bright spot on an already bright film. And even before the end of her first scene, Yuh-jung completely and utterly stole my heart and continued to hold on tight to it throughout the remainder of the runtime, even managing a few moments of utter hilarity here and there, from her swearing at her grandkids while playing hanafuda or getting served a drink from David.

Director/writer Lee Isaac Chung clearly has fond memories of his rural upbringing, which is represented and portrayed through gorgeous, picturesque cinematography by Lachlan Milne and Emile Mosseri’s equally lush and ethereal score. Even more refreshing is the almost loving portrayal of the strange, but supporting community the Yi family moves into. Will Patton is the most prevalent representing player here as the tounges-speaking, cross-bearing Paul, who, despite the fanaticism often sputtering out from the character, is a wholly supportive and welcome presence in the lives of the Yi family throughout the film. While most characters aren’t graced with as much screentime, they are just as affectionately handled, creating an almost-wholly pleasant experience that allows the drama to remain on the inner workings of the family where it belongs.

I was fortunate enough to catch a virtual screening of this film back in December of last year to ensure it had a chance to make my year end list, and with it soon to hit streaming, it feels like my bestowed-upon duty to ensure that none of you reading this misses it. It’s nearly perfect.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Director: Charlie Kaufman
Written By: Charlie Kaufman
Studio: Netflix
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemmons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis, Guy Boyd

After seeing this film for the first time during the weekend of its release, I knew that I had seen something incredibly special and unique, even with its more cryptic elements clouding my fuller understanding of what I had just witnessed. Even so, I almost immediately bought and read the book by Iain Reid that it was based on, and just recently, I decided to rewatch the film with both “first” experiences still on my mind.

Though I will try to keep as many details hidden as possible to those who haven’t seen it and wish to go in as blind as possible or to those who have seen it and don’t want the film explained down to them, I’m putting in a SPOILER WARNING from this point on just in case any of the following reveals too much. That being said…

This is easily one of the most intricately and purposefully-written films I’ve ever seen. Every mundane and esoteric conversation shared by the two leads and the characters the story shunts them toward, as well as the calculated inconsistencies and visual cues therein, paints a deeply haunting and melancholy portrait of the failures, dysfunction, and decomposition of an individual who slowly comes to terms with the notion that any and all great things they could have obtained in their life have long since passed and will never come again. It is a character study of a highly personal, detailed, and cerebral nature that feels like the inner workings of a mental breakdown happening in real-time.

Charlie Kaufman has cemented himself as one of my favorite cinematic storytellers as of late. He is one of the few screenwriters alive today who seems to fully understand the human condition and be able to portray it onscreen in all its messy, cryptic splendor while still making it look so visually striking and cinematic. The fact that he can take a novel as universally-reaching, if not vague, as Iain Reed’s and inject a metric ton of extra specificities and nuances while still keeping it just above two hours is a level of talent I couldn’t even dream of aspiring toward.

Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemmons turn in their best performances ever through this film, the way they smoothly shift from affable to adversarial and back again to themselves and the others around them perfectly demonstrating the volatile nature of the situation happening within (and underneath) the story. Buckley especially does wonders with her facial expressions that her body movements and voice don’t do by themselves that breathes such life into her character, especially when sitting inside a cramped car for a hefty portion of the runtime. David Thewlis and Toni Collette are reliably revelatory as Plemmons’ Jake’s parents, with Collette nearly matching the pants-shitting levels of insanity and horror that she displayed three years ago in Ari Aster’s Hereditary. On top of that, Thewlis and Collette are made to act in different ages at certain points which, also thanks to the subtly brilliant makeup work, they appear to perfectly embody as if they’ve actually physically progressed and regressed before our very eyes, giving much needed stability to the wide-awake nightmare they seem to trap the leads in.

Cinematographer Łukasz Żal’s most notable (and acclaimed) work with Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski has been in black-and-white, but even with the splash of colors provided here, Żal manages to instill an oppressive bleakness and shadowiness to Kaufman’s world that brilliantly highlights the equally-dark and insidious underbelly of this film’s narrative. The film also has the best editing I’ve seen all year, the often disjointed back-and-forths between the road-trip-turned-gathering and the seemingly unrelated day in the life of a high-school janitor providing further context to the rapidly deteriorating headspace of our principle character.

Each and every component to the film is fine-tuned and synchronized in a way that makes the entire experience wholly rewarding, if not emotionally draining. It is a film whose cogs and gears within are just as mesmerizing to watch themselves as the machine they’re working to make function. It is another glowing triumph in Charlie Kaufman’s body of work that I’m also proud to name what I consider to be the best film of 2020.