6 Movies From the Year 2020 That Are 10/10 Masterpieces

Published Nov 9, 2026, 12:31 AM EST

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Back in 2020, when lockdown shrank life down to repetitive loops like scrolling through a phone half-asleep, reheating tea for the third time, and losing track of what day it was, movies became an anchor. A handful of films stood out because of the vivid moments they left behind. A scene of someone running through the woods, a quiet game of cards with a grandmother, or an entire room belting out a song brought a sense of life back into the room long after the credits rolled.

That is what great cinema does when everything else is on pause. It stays alive in the smaller moments, like a look across a dinner table, a track to hunt down on Spotify, or a decision that feels open to debate forever. Those lasting details are what set this ranking. The number one pick in this list is simply the movie worth putting on again tonight, even with the ending spoiled by memory.

6 'Wolfwalkers' (2020)

Image via Apple TV

In Wolfwalkers Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) begins convinced she can do her father’s (Sean Bean) work by carrying a crossbow into the woods to kill wolves. The Lord Protector (Simon McBurney) keeps the town behind its walls, and Robyn’s father has been hired to hunt the animals outside them. Then she meets Mebh (Eva Whittaker), a girl who runs barefoot through the forest and becomes a wolf while asleep. Their friendship is not instant softness. Mebh is furious, suspicious, and busy trying to find her mother, Moll MacTíre (Maria Doyle Kennedy), who is trapped in wolf form.

Robyn’s choices become harder in specific ways as she must hide Mebh, question what her father has told her, and face the fact that the hunt threatens the people she wants to protect. The animation makes the town’s straight streets and the forest’s movement feel different to watch, but the most memorable moment is plain. A child sees a frightened mother in a cage and knows the adults are wrong. The rescue gives Robyn courage. But, it does not make her suddenly fearless.

5 'I’m Thinking of Ending Things' (2020)

Image via Netflix

At first, Jake’s (Jesse Plemons) girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) is rehearsing a breakup in her own head while Jake drives her through snow to meet his parents. It is already an unbearable car ride because he keeps talking, changes the radio, and misses her cues while she cannot decide what she means when she imagines ending things. At the farm, his mother (Toni Collette) and father (David Thewlis) age and change between visits, and dinner becomes a test of whether she belongs there. She notices the basement door and does not go down. Later, she does.

I’m Thinking of Ending Things refuses to let anyone settle on who this woman is or what happened. At the high school, the janitor (Guy Boyd) cleans hallways and watches a student production of Oklahoma!, while the film ties him to an older version of Jake. At the barn, they find a pig covered in maggots. Anyone watching leaves wanting to rewind the opening just to hear how much their car conversation has already told them. Even the small changes in her name feel like clues missed while listening to Jake.

4 'Minari' (2020)

Image via A24

Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica’s (Han Ye-ri) new Arkansas home is a mobile house on dry land. The water tastes wrong, the soil is hard, and Jacob tells the family he can grow Korean vegetables there. David (Alan Kim) has a heart condition, so his parents watch him closely. Then Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) arrives from Korea to live with them, and David decides she is not a proper grandmother because she swears, plays cards, and does not bake cookies.

Small details stand out the most, such as Soon-ja teaching David Go-Stop, their walk down to the creek where she plants minari, and his resentment giving way to affection. When her stroke leaves her confused, she accidentally starts a fire that destroys Jacob’s crop storage. Nobody has the energy for a neat apology. Later, David runs after her when she tries to leave and guides her back home. Minari lets the family be tired, proud, frightened, and loving in the same scene, making every change in David’s face feel believable.

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Ballot sealed

Movies/Academy Awards/Best Picture

Collider · Best Picture Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie? Five winners · ten questions · one envelope

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be and what it can do to you. One of them is the film made for the way your mind works, and ten questions will work out which. The nominees

2020Parasite

2023Everything Everywhere All at Once

2024Oppenheimer

2015Birdman

2008No Country for Old Men

Open the envelope

Reel01 / 10

Question 01 of 10TONE

01 What kind of film experience are you really after? The best movies do not just entertain. They leave something behind.

ASomething that pulls the rug out, that makes me think I am watching one kind of film and then reveals I am watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming: funny, sad, absurd and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty, a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I am watching. DSomething formally daring, a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless, pure tension with no wasted frame.

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Reel02 / 10

Question 02 of 10THEME

02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What is yours?

AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of holding your life together while everything falls apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you are still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order exists at all or we just tell ourselves it does.

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Reel03 / 10

Question 03 of 10STRUCTURE

03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.

AGenre-twisting. I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending: comedy, action, drama and sci-fi in one ride. CEpic and non-linear, cutting between timelines to build a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow. I want to feel like I am living it in real time with no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise, every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

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Reel04 / 10

Question 04 of 10VILLAIN

04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?

AA system: invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self, and the ways we sabotage, abandon and fail the people we love most. CHistory, and the unstoppable momentum of events no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry, the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil, a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.

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Reel05 / 10

Question 05 of 10ENDING

05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?

AShock and inevitability, a conclusion that recontextualizes everything before it. BEarned emotion. I want to cry, laugh and feel hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur, an ending that leaves me sitting in silence for a few minutes. DAmbiguity, something open enough that I am still turning it over days later. EBleakness, an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it is.

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Reel06 / 10

Question 06 of 10WORLD

06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything: mood, stakes, what is even possible.

AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside, beauty masking rot and wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite, the multiverse inside one ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point, where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood, fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape, desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.

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Reel07 / 10

Question 07 of 10CRAFT

07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature, the element that makes it unmistakable.

AProduction design and mise-en-scène, every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control, the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design, music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you see. DCinematography as performance, the camera not recording events but taking part in them. ESilence and restraint, what is left unsaid doing more work than any dialogue could.

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Reel08 / 10

Question 08 of 10PROTAGONIST

08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you follow says something about you.

ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws cannot be separated from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.

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Reel09 / 10

Question 09 of 10PACE

09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint. Others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.

AI love a slow build when the payoff is going to be seismic. Patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum. I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime does not scare me. If the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it propulsive even when nothing is technically happening, restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried. I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.

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Reel10 / 10

Question 10 of 10AFTERMATH

10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?

AUnsettled, like I have just seen something I cannot fully explain and cannot stop thinking about. BMoved and energized, like the film reminded me what matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled, like I have been in the presence of something important and overwhelming. DExhilarated, like I have just watched cinema do something it has never quite done before. EHaunted, like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.

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Reveal my film

The envelope, pleaseAnd the Oscar goes to

★ Best Picture, 2020 Parasite Bong Joon-ho, 2019 A film that hides its true intentions until the moment it is ready to reveal them.

You are drawn to films that operate on several levels at once, that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. From the Collider file

• The first film not in the English language to win Best Picture, in the Academy's 92-year history to that point.
• It took four Oscars in one night: Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and International Feature.
• It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2019 by a unanimous jury vote, the first Korean film to do so.
• The Park family's modernist house was not a location. It was built from scratch on an outdoor lot.

Reads between the lines Loves a reveal Attention to detail

★ Best Picture, 2023 Everything Everywhere All at Once Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022 A film that refuses to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful.

You want it all, and this one gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is among the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse science fiction, family drama, existential crisis, and an emotional core that sneaks up on you in the middle of the chaos. You respond to ambition. Being overwhelmed is the design, not the side effect, because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what the film is about. From the Collider file

• Seven Oscars, including three acting wins for Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
• Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress.
• The visual effects were handled by a team of fewer than ten people, most of them self-taught.
• Ke Huy Quan had all but left acting for two decades before this role brought him back.

Wants everything Big swings Soft center

★ Best Picture, 2024 Oppenheimer Christopher Nolan, 2023 A film about the gap between what we can do and what we should do.

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale, films that treat history not as a backdrop but as a force, then place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer sits inside one of the most consequential moments in human history and refuses to look away from it. You want your films to feel important without being self-important, earning their ambition through craft and the gravity of the subject. This one is enormous, complicated, and offers no easy comfort. From the Collider file

• Seven Oscars, including Nolan's first wins for directing and for Best Picture.
• Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. both took their first Academy Awards for it.
• Kodak engineered a black-and-white 65mm stock that did not previously exist so Nolan could shoot those sequences on IMAX.
• A three-hour, R-rated drama about theoretical physics that passed 950 million dollars worldwide.

Thinks in decades Scale and weight No easy comfort

★ Best Picture, 2015 Birdman Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2014 A film doing something that probably should not be possible.

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction, where the how of the filmmaking becomes part of the what it is about. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Birdman, stitched to appear as one continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera make something unlike anything else: a film about creativity, relevance, self-destruction and never quite knowing whether your work means anything at all. From the Collider file

• Four Oscars, among them Best Picture and Best Director for Iñárritu.
• Emmanuel Lubezki's win here was the middle of three consecutive cinematography Oscars, after Gravity and before The Revenant.
• Antonio Sánchez's improvised drum score was ruled ineligible for the score category, which caused a minor uproar.
• The long-take illusion was built from a handful of extended shots joined by hidden cuts.

Formally daring Camera as character Ego and art

★ Best Picture, 2008 No Country for Old Men Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007 A film that treats dread as a form of meaning.

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, refuses to explain itself, and lets unease do the talking. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is about the arrival of a new kind of evil: implacable, arbitrary, and indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of things. It is one of the most tightly controlled films ever made, and that control is the source of the terror. You want your films to haunt you rather than comfort you, and you have no interest in a resolution that would be a lie. From the Collider file

• Four Oscars: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, and Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem.
• Adapted from Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, with much of his dialogue carried over intact.
• Carter Burwell's score runs about sixteen minutes and is nearly inaudible by design.
• Roger Deakins was nominated twice that year, for this and The Assassination of Jesse James, and won for neither.

Trusts silence Dread over answers No tidy endings

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3 'The Father' (2020)

Image via Sony Pictures Classics

The Father keeps changing the room while Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) insists that the space is familiar. A daughter named Anne (Olivia Colman) says she is moving to Paris, but later, a man named Paul (Rufus Sewell), whom Anthony does not recognize, is living in the flat and says he is Anne’s husband. Anthony searches for his watch, questions the people caring for him, and tries to catch the lie that will explain why his life no longer adds up. That disorientation surfaces through the smallest interruptions, like a face replaced, furniture shifted, or a conversation repeated with one detail changed.

Anthony reacts with sharp irritation when people correct him, shifts to charm when he thinks he holds the upper hand, and collapses into terror when he cannot place his own daughter. Right before the credits roll, he cries for his mother. He asks to go home. Unraveling which version of the flat is real no longer matters. Someone just needs to stay with him. Someone needs to answer gently.

2 'Lovers Rock' (2020)

Image via Amazon Prime Video

Before Martha (Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) arrives, people are carrying chairs, choosing records, cooking, and doing each other’s hair. The room fills. Couples dance close, friends shout across the music, and plates get passed along. Franklyn (Micheal Ward) notices Martha, and they flirt and dance, then slip away briefly from the crowd.

The most memorable moment centers on Janet Kay’s Silly Games. The DJ lets the song play, then the crowd sings so loudly that the track almost disappears. People who have been dancing in pairs now sing together, still shoulder to shoulder, and nobody rushes them to move on. That is the pleasure of Lovers Rock, where a few hours feel important because the people in the room make them so. When Bammy (Daniel Francis-Swaby) sexually assaults Cynthia (Ellis George) in another room, the evening changes, and the others respond with anger and care. The film does not pretend the party makes the assault less serious. Standing at the edge of that room for just one song would be enough.

1 'Nomadland' (2020)

Image via Searchlight Pictures

Nomadland follows Fern (Frances McDormand), whose home is a van, and she has learned the small maintenance tasks that keep it usable, such as finding work, parking overnight, keeping her belongings in order, and deciding what she can carry. After the gypsum plant closes in Empire, Nevada, she takes seasonal work at an Amazon warehouse and meets fellow travelers Linda May (Linda May) and Swankie (Charlene Swankie).

The film does not treat every day as freedom. Fern’s hands are tired after work, she has to find a bathroom, fix what breaks, and decide whether to accept Dave’s (David Strathairn) invitation into his family life. When she visits his son, the baby is there, the house is warm, and Fern could stay. However, she leaves. Later, she returns to Empire and walks through the empty house where she lived with Bo before going back to her van. That choice hurts because Dave is asking her into a real family, and she cares about him. Fern’s life is hers, and the film lets anyone feel what it costs her to keep choosing it.

Nomadland