The 10 Best Movies of 2020

Vanity Fair said #10: The film was rendered all the more poignant by the fact that this year, that kind of personal development was put on hold for so many kids around the world.

Vanity Fair said #9: The film conjures up an arresting, enveloping mood, pondering art and mortality with a rueful chuckle. I laughed; I sighed; I considered booking a cruise for when this is all over.

Vanity Fair said #8: Freaky is a clever, zippy good time, as curiously transgressive as it is an homage to well-worn tropes.

Vanity Fair said #7: Watch Bacurau with a defiance in your heart—but allow yourself to be entertained, too.

Vanity Fair said #6: Hittman has made a breathtaking, exacting delineation of what choice really means—especially to those so often denied it.

Vanity Fair said #5: There are the breathtaking American vistas—captured with a loving and curious eye by Zhao—and there are the moments of small personal transcendence, which give Fern’s hardscrabble life—and so many others’—the fuel it needs to churn on.

Vanity Fair said #4: Bad Education doesn’t graft neatly onto the kleptocrats looting America right now—mostly because the latter camp’s villainy was so immediately obvious—but it does say something instructive about what people think they can get away with, and about how greed can topple even the most outwardly noble pillars of community.

Vanity Fair said #3: The film ends on a note more rattling, more devastating than anything else I’ve seen this year—in movies, or in the news.

Vanity Fair said #2: Though there is plenty of sadness and strife in Minari, it remains resolute in its optimism, not so much about what America as an idea can provide for immigrants, but what decency can provide for people who need it—what love can, too. From that goodness, a life can grow, even in a place as inhospitable as this.

Vanity Fair said #1: The Nest is something utterly singular, chilling and poignant, inviting and aloof. What a fine mess it makes. And then, just at the very end, maybe begins to clean up.