The Best Movie From Every Year of the 2020s So Far

Oh, 2020s. You’re still going. Look at you go. And we’re all living through you, trying to survive you. At least the movies have been good, even if other parts of life are stressful to think about… okay, except for that one part right at the start of the decade when cinemas were shut down for a while, and lots of cool movies got delayed, and that time a few years later when people went on strike, and more movies got delayed. Hey, there were solid reasons why those delays happened, in both cases. Public health and people being paid enough to live are things we can all agr– wait, what’s that? We might not be able to agree on those things anymore? Oh. Okay.

Look, let’s focus on the good times, as Tony says to his family at the end of the first season of The Sopranos, even if he forgets he said it at the end of the sixth and final season of The Sopranos. There have been at least a handful of good movies released every year of the 2020s so far (yes, even 2020, albeit not many of the blockbuster variety), and what follows is an attempt to highlight the very best one from each year. And only one from each year that, at this current moment, has concluded. It would feel a little weird to include 2026, at the time of writing, because it’s not even one-third done yet, but if you really want to know… it’d probably be, uh, Project Hail Mary. For now. Maybe not in seven or eight months’ time, but we’ll see.

6

‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ (2020)

Image via Super LTD

The thing that leaps out the most when it comes to Quo Vadis, Aida? is how brutally heavy it is, but with good reason, because it’s about the lead-up to a real-life atrocity that occurred during the Bosnian War. The protagonist is a woman working as a translator for the United Nations, and follows her increasingly desperate situation which involves not only being caught up in a tense situation with countless lives on the line, but also trying to save members of her family who are stuck in said situation. They – and thousands of others in the town – are seeking shelter from forces who want them dead.

It’s a lot to unpack, but Quo Vadis, Aida? does effectively lay out the desperation and scale of the situation, which occurred within a broader conflict that is not as widely discussed on an international scale as some other wars of the era. It is an excellent and untraditional war movie, even if the emotional intensity of it all can make it hard to recommend to anyone looking for something more conventionally entertaining or escapist in nature. But, as mentioned before, there weren’t as many big, broad, and unapologetically entertaining movies released in 2020, and that’s maybe reflected by something challenging and unwaveringly somber being singled out to take the 2020 spot.

5

‘The Worst Person in the World’ (2021)

Image via SF Studios

The Worst Person in the World is a little less grim than Quo Vadis, Aida?, just because it’s kind of a dramedy, and so you get some comedy alongside the drama. But then again, the funnier parts sort of work to make the heavier parts feel even more so, by contrast, and the parts that hurt punch you in the gut harder than the parts that don’t hurt pat you on the back. Does that make sense? It might not, but does being a young adult make sense, when you’re in the thick of it? Because that’s what The Worst Person in the World is largely about.

Julie is not actually the world’s worst person, but she’s flawed, and she’s used as a way to explore the human condition, and how everyone feels like the worst sometimes. She juggles relationships, a professional life, and questions surrounding what she’s to do when she gets older, and all of it takes place over a number of years in a manner that might look jumpy and all-over-the-place on paper, but works in execution. There’s a lot to feel with The Worst Person in the World, is the main thing. Calling it one of the best dramedies in recent memory (or maybe even of the century so far) wouldn’t feel like too bold a statement, in all honesty. And if that’s the worst opinion in the world, sorry. Maybe Julie wrote this. Maybe she’s just doing her best.

4

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)

Image via A24

To call Everything Everywhere All at Once one of the most maximalist movies in recent memory would still be doing it a disservice, in terms of just how ambitious it is and how much it wants to do across a runtime of 140 minutes. It begins as a movie about a woman dealing with taxes and various issues within her family, but then it explodes into something about the fate of all the universes out there in the multiverse being in danger of destruction, and then somehow, the more mundane problems faced early on are very much related to the high-stakes stuff.

From there, Everything Everywhere All at Once does a bit of everything genre-wise, having sci-fi and fantastical concepts simultaneously, and then also being incredibly funny and exciting, as a martial arts film. Plus all the other things. We’d be here all day trying to go over everything, but the wildness and grandness of it all make Everything Everywhere All at Once one of the most rewatchable films of the century so far. Its success also included some huge Oscar wins, including for Best Picture, and so it helped 2022 stand out as one of those years where the right movie definitely had the most by way of success at the Academy Awards.

3

‘Past Lives’ (2023)

Image via A24

There are certain romance movies that are unusually intense, and then there are some, like Past Lives, that prove oddly exhausting because they’re just undeniably sad. And these are all in contrast to the happy sort of feel-good romance movies that tend to be more popular, at least as far as comfort watches go, yet movies about the harder side of love are needed. Plus, it would probably get boring if every romance film were too close to a certain formula.

With Past Lives, it’s all about longing and wishing things could’ve been different. It’s almost like if La La Land had a less colorful and dreamlike ending that was also stretched out to feature film-length. Okay, not a perfect comparison, but that sense of looking at what could have been (and what ultimately wasn’t) is shared across both movies. Past Lives is super quiet and simultaneously super devastating in a really unusual and hard-to-describe way, but you definitely feel it, and that’s probably what matters most, with the story and thematic material at hand.

2

‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024)

2021’s Dune was up there among the best movies of its year, but it was only the first half of what ended up needing to be a two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, and the more interesting stuff in that book is, arguably, found in its second half. Well, it’s a bit of a The Lord of the Rings situation, where you need a more reserved first half or so before getting particularly grand nearer to the end, so Dune: Part Two does, obviously, need to be considered alongside Dune (2021) to be properly appreciated.

The first movie has a conflict erupting, and then the second movie has a quest for vengeance as a result of that conflict spiraling out of control, and becoming something much bigger than just a personal vendetta. Dune: Part Two looks and feels incredible throughout, being a truly immersive sci-fi epic that concludes an overall impressive adaptation well, all the while leaving intriguing territory to be explored in Dune: Part Three, which is set to adapt Dune Messiah (but, with some of the changes to the source material made in Dune: Part Two, it’ll be interesting to see how faithful that adaptation ends up being).

1

‘Marty Supreme’ (2025)

Image via A24

Marty Supreme is, like Dune: Part Two, a movie that stars Timothée Chalamet, and he is quite incredible in both movies. Dune: Part Two gave him a lot to do, but Marty Supreme feels like it gives him just about everything an actor could do, within the one movie. He plays a hustler who has dreams of becoming an all-time great table tennis player, but he’s also really good at making enemies and digging himself into holes, so he spends most of the movie not playing table tennis, but trying (and usually failing) to dig himself free.

It’s more of a darkly comedic thriller than a sports movie, though, for what it’s worth, all the table tennis scenes are done really effectively, too. Marty Supreme is also like a really gritty and down-to-earth almost-epic, and the sort of thing that’s easy to recommend if you’re into anxiety-provoking cinema. It’s just intense, and sometimes it’s also funny while it’s intense, and then by the end, it reveals itself to have a little heart (somehow), too. Chalamet did sort of become the villain of 2025’s Oscar season, but he was also just staying true to Marty Mauser, committing to the bit possibly a bit too forcefully for most people. But also, it’s a hustle that’s easy to respect (and not knock), now that the dust has settled on 2025 and that always-exhausting Oscar season is over.