Pulled from Rotten Tomatoes Top Movies section:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/?year=2020
UPDATED: 2/22/22
Latest releases with IMDB score 6.7+ and minimum votes 10000+
Original Edition (2003) + additions (2004-2021) in that order. http://1001films.wikia.com/wiki/The_List
2021 Edition Additions:
The Vast of Night (2019)
The Assistant (2019)
Rocks (2019)
Saint Maud (2019)
Tenet (2020)
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)
Soul (2020)
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
Lovers Rock (2020)
Nomadland (2020)
Prime Video, also marketed as Amazon Prime Video, is an American Internet video on demand service that is developed, owned, and operated by Amazon. It offers television shows and films for rent or purchase and Prime Video, a selection of Amazon Studios original content and licensed acquisitions included in the Amazon's Prime subscription.
Excludes superhero/supervillain movies
This list will be frequently updated as movies move in-and-out of contention.
Updated 1/19/2019:
Final update for the year. Removed all films not nominated for at least one of the 4 major awards shows and added missing Oscar nominees.
Updated at 2024-05-24
Includes all the films of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die Book, including films culled to make way for newer releases, up to the 2021 edition.
HollyWood Movies based on Popularity
01–20 / tiff 2019: gala presentations
21–75 / tiff 2019: special presentations
76–80 / tiff 2019: special events
81–90 / tiff 2019: midnight madness
91–145 / tiff 2019: contemporary world cinema
146–156 / tiff 2019: masters
157–166 / tiff 2019: platform
167–203 / tiff 2019: discovery
204–240 / tiff 2019: wavelengths
241–266 / tiff 2019: tiff docs
267–321 / tiff 2019: short cuts
322–327 / tiff 2019: tiff cinematheque
328–333 / tiff 2019: primetime
2020 Film Independent Spirit Awards nominees and winners:
- Best Feature: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05. | 02 - The Farewell.
- Best First Feature: 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11. | 06 - Booksmart.
- Best Director: 03, 12, 13, 14, 15. | 03 - Uncut Gems (Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie).
- Best Male Lead: 03, 08, 12, 14, 16. | 03 - Uncut Gems (Adam Sandler).
- Best Female Lead: 05, 09, 17, 18, 19, 20. | 17 - Judy (Renée Zellweger).
- Best Supporting Male: 07, 12, 13, 13, 21. | 12 - The Lighthouse (Willem Dafoe).
- Best Supporting Female: 02, 14, 15, 16, 22. | 02 - The Farewell (Shuzhen Zhao).
- Best Screenplay: 01, 03, 05, 23, 24. | 01 - Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach).
- Best First Screenplay: 10, 20, 25, 26, 27. | 10 - See You Yesterday (Fredrica Bailey, Stefon Bristol).
- Best Cinematography: 12, 13, 15, 28, 29. | 12 - The Lighthouse (Jarin Blaschke).
- Best Editing: 03, 12, 16, 29, 30. | 03 - Uncut Gems (Ronald Bronstein, Benny Safdie).
- Best International Film: 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36. | 31 - Parasite.
- Best Documentary: 37, 38, 39, 40, 41. | 38 - American Factory.
- Robert Altman Award (ensemble cast, dir. and casting dir.): 01. | 01 - Marriage Story.
- John Cassavetes Award (Best Feature Under $500,000): 16, 19, 21, 42, 43. | 16 - Give Me Liberty.
- Truer Than Fiction Award: 44, 45, 46, 47. | 47 - Jaddoland (Nadia Shihab).
- Someone to Watch Award: 07, 29, 43. | 43 - Premature (Rashaad Ernesto Green).
Updated at 2024-05-24
For one blissful month, it seemed like the defining moment of movie culture this year might be the most joyful one, too. Bong Joon Ho’s class warfare crowd-pleaser, Parasite, had beat the odds, shattered precedent, and overcome an American aversion to subtitles to win the Oscar for Best Picture. What a thing it was to experience live—a wonderful glitch in the simulation! Sadly, that night now feels miles away, a distant glimmer in the rearview mirror, a speck of light from the before times of ancient February. Just a few weeks after Parasite made history, James Bond made other plans: He would not be coming soon to a theater near anyone. In retrospect, this was the first sign that a whole industry—along with the rest of normal life as we knew it—would soon screech to a halt. 2020 would be a movie year like none before it.
That’s not hyperbole. For as long as Hollywood has been Hollywood, movies have made their way to theaters at a steady clip; you basically have to rewind to the days before the studio system to find a month on the calendar when nothing new was opening. 2020 gave us five months of that, an unprecedented drought. When theaters began reopening, tentatively and prematurely, back in August, blockbusters went bust; turns out most people weren’t willing to risk their lives just to see a new Christopher Nolan movie. The big pause on the big screen was felt in multiplexes and the arthouse alike, as superheroes flew to later dates and film festivals shrank and migrated online. Movie theaters haven’t disappeared yet, but they’re definitely in deep trouble. (AMC, one of the country’s leading chains, will reportedly go broke come January.)
It’s possible COVID has just accelerated a change that was already in progress. Streaming platforms have been angling to keep moviegoers on their couches for years now. In 2020, they won the fight by default, earning a (hopefully temporary) monopoly on a whole country’s viewing habits. If there were big hits after February, they were streaming fodder (like the Netflix quarantine time-waster Extraction) and movies originally slated for theaters (like My Spy and Mulan). Who knows how far off we were from instant, at-home access to the year’s splashiest titles, but that speculative future is suddenly a reality, as superhero sequels and Pixar adventures abandon their box office dreams to court streamers without subscriptions. Even the Academy has laid down arms: To keep their annual party alive, they’ll waive the usual requirement that a movie go big (screen) or go home; one year after Parasite broke the glass ceiling for foreign language fare, will Best Picture go to a Netflix original?
All of which it to say, it’s a scary and uncertain time for the movie industry, and for anyone invested in the survival of the theatrical experience. But as we noted a few months ago, when we rattled off some highlights at the half, a weird year for movies isn’t the same as a bad one. In fact, you could argue that the implosion of the release calendar—and a general absence of “bigger” projects sucking up all the oxygen in the room—has been a boon to the visibility of films otherwise in danger of being left out of the annual year-end conversation. These include a true bumper crop of exceptional movies by women, though they’d look rich, thoughtful, or daring no matter what year they came out.
Below, we proudly present the 25 best films of 2020, assembled from the ballots of a dozen A.V. Club contributors. In this year without blockbusters (and less middlebrow awards contenders), our critics cited documentaries, intimate independent dramas, adventurous visions from overseas, a bona fide avant-garde project, the kind of mid-budget Hollywood thriller the Oscars usually ignore, and the best installment of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology, whose five individual entries were all deemed eligible, even as the complete series earned a spot on our TV list. (In this purgatorial age of watching only from home, why split hairs about classification—especially when talking about one of the most ambitious dramatic projects of the year, regardless of specific medium?) And if we’ve successfully piqued your interest in any of the films cited, the goods news is that most are available right now to stream or rent. That makes 2020 unprecedented in at least one welcome respect.
https://film.avclub.com/the-best-films-of-2020-1845889675
Science Fiction
by MOVISTVIP 9