Every Movie I Saw in 2020

You didn’t think I was going to let something like a mere global pandemic stop me from making my annual movies list, did you?

Now, you may say, “But Todd, there were barely any movies last year!” I’ve seen several people I know say something similar to this, and I want to spend most of this annual post pushing back on that, because it’s dead wrong. 

I saw 74 new releases in 2020. That’s 74 honest-to-God, real movies, nearly 1.5 movies per week. Granted, that is a bit of a down number for me, seeing as in 2019 I saw **checks notes** uh, 72 new releases. Well, I guess there were plenty of movies this year!

To be fair, I understand what people get at when they talk about the lack of movies, and it generally refers to big event films. We didn’t get most of our summer tentpoles or holiday blockbusters. There were no Marvel movies, no James Bond, no Jurassic Park, and no Fast and the Furious. And most of the bigger-budget prestige films, including films from the likes of Wes Anderson, Ridley Scott, and Steven Spielberg, were pushed back as well. Plus, from March onward, most of us either were unable to access the typical theatrical experience, either by government decree or basic concern for the safety of ourselves and others, so certainly 2020 was a year mostly devoid of going out to the movies.

That said, when you take a look at the bigger picture of what WAS released, it’s still a pretty expansive pool of cinema that includes a wealth of options. This was still a year where we got films (of varying quality) from notable directors Christopher Nolan, Kelly Reichardt, Charlie Kaufman, Thomas Vinterberg, Judd Apatow, Patty Jenkins, Ron Howard, Kenneth Brannagh, Paul Greengrass, Spike Lee (he made two), Steve McQueen (he made five!), Aaron Sorkin, George Clooney, Michael Winterbottom, Sofia Coppola, Ryan Murphy, Steven Soderbergh, Miranda July, David Fincher, Armando Ianucci, Pete Doctor, and Werner Herzog. And we also got impressive debut directorial efforts from Radha Blank, Emerald Fennell, Max Barbakov, and Regina King. That’s a roster of talent that any year could be proud of.

Obviously a lot of this is only possible because of the increased presence of streaming movies.   Nearly one third of the movies on my list are Netflix films, and I know a lot of people still are reluctant to consider those to be “real” films. But particularly in this year, where we all had to make an effort to find joy and art where we could get it, now seems like a bad time to make arbitrary decisions about what is and isn’t a movie.* So with that said, here’s all the honest-to-God, real movies I saw in 2020, ranked from best to worst. Please tear apart my ranking accordingly.

(Oh, one brief note before going forward: You’ll notice some big awards contenders like Nomadland, Minari, The Truffle Hunters, and The Father aren’t on my list. That’s because of altered Oscar eligibility rules, which mean despite it being the end of January, I still haven’t gotten a chance to see them yet. I didn’t want to wait until the middle of March to put my list out, so as far as I’m concerned, all of these flicks that are staging awards-releases in February onward are 2021 films, and you can wait until next year to see what I think about Frances McDormand traveling the country or Anthony Hopkins dealing with dementia)

The List:

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

2. Wolfwalkers

3. Dick Johnson Is Dead

4. Sound of Metal

5. American Utopia

6. Palm Springs

7. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

8. The Assistant

9. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

10. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

11. First Cow

12. Promising Young Woman

13. Showbiz Kids

14. I Used to Go Here

15. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

16. Soul

17. Kajillionaire

18. Lovers Rock

19. Onward

20. On the Rocks

21. News of the World

22. The Old Guard 

23. Horse Girl

24. Red, White and Blue

25. Mank

26. One Night in Miami

27. Another Round

28. The Forty-Year-Old Version

29. Class Action Park

30. Happiest Season

31. Extraction

32. Da Five Bloods

33. Greyhound

34. The Invisible Man

35. Boys State

36. Devil All the Time

37. His House

38. The King of Staten Island

39. Crip Camp

40. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds

41. The Prom

42. You Should Have Left

43. Eurovision Song Contest: Story of the Fire Saga

44. Birds of Prey

45. Shithouse

46. Saint Frances

47. Holidate

48. Uncorked

49. Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind

50. The Wolf of Snow Hollow

51. The Lovebirds

52. The Wild Goose Lake

53. The Rental

54. Tenet

55. Underwater

56. Bad Hair

57. The Trial of the Chicago 7

58. Education

59. Coded Bias

60. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

61. The Mortuary Collection

62. Wonder Woman 1984

63. Hillbilly Elegy

64. The Midnight Sky

65. Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robinson and The Band

66. Rebecca

67. Chemical Hearts

68. Hubie Halloween

69. Capone

70. Friendsgiving

71. Sonic the Hedgehog

72. Wild Mountain Thyme

73. Dangerous Lies

74. Artemis Fowl

And to round things out, some awards

Best Director: Kirsten Johnson, Dick Johnson Is Dead (Runner-up: Tomm Moore and Ross Steward, Wolfwalkers)

Best Actress: Jessie Buckley, I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Runner-up: Amanda Seyfried, Mank)

Best Actor: John Magaro, First Cow (Runner-up: John Boyega, Red, White, and Blue)

Worst Performance: Ferdia Shaw, Artemis Fowl (Runner-up: Eddie Redmayne, The Trial of the Chicago 7)

The Chris Pine Memorial Award for Best Performance in a Bad Movie: Jon Hamm, Wild Mountain Thyme (Runner-up: Linda Cardellini, Capone)

(Chris Pine in Wonder Woman 1984 would have been in strong consideration for this award were it not already named after him for his impressive list of good performances in bad movies)

Best Dog: Reggie (played by Chunk), The Rental (Runner-up: Zeus, The Invisible Man)

Best Scene: Never-Rarely-Sometimes-Always, Never Really Sometimes Always (Runner-up: Pauline Kael, I’m Thinking of Ending Things)

Movies I Regretfully Never Got Around To: Pieces of a Woman, The Way Back, Bad Boys for Life (highest earning movie at the box office of 2020!), Relic, Mangrove, Alex Wheatle, Project Power, The High Note, The Vast of Night, City So Real, The Trip to Greece, The Personal History of David Copperfield, Let Them All Talk, The Painter and the Thief, Bacarau, Vitalina Varela, The New Mutants

*I did violate the spirit of this and make one arbitrary movie/not a movie distinction. I left Hamilton off the list, despite it’s filmed release on Disney+, because to me it’s a stage production that just happened to be filmed, which is different than a movie. Another filmed stage production, American Utopia, DID make my list, because despite being similar to what was done with Hamilton, American Utopia features decisions ranging from insert shots to unique camera angles to a brief outdoor coda that make it something more than just a recorded piece of theatre. This has been my TED Talk, thank you for coming.