25 Best Movies of the 2020s So Far, Ranked (2024)

The 2020s so far, as a decade, could be defined in any number of ways, arguably few of them positive. Still, at least the years from 2020 onwards have provided the world with a good many iconic films that will one day be considered classics, even if one of the decade's defining events so far - the COVID-19 pandemic - impacted the film industry considerably. Productions were halted, films were delayed, and it wasn't until 2022 that things started to feel a little more normal in the world of cinema.

And then came two wide-scale strikes in America during 2023, both from the Writers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, disrupting things further (the ramifications will likely affect releases in 2024, possibly even longer). But to focus on what's already happened, rather than what's to come, 2022 and 2023 were both ultimately fruitful years, and there were still some gems that got released during 2020 and 2021, while the pandemic was at its most disruptive. What may look like recency bias isn't; it's really just that more great films came out in '22 and '23 because there were more high-profile releases in general. The decade as a whole might not even be half over yet, but it's still worth exploring just what it's had to offer film lovers so far. Some of the most noteworthy titles from the 2020s are ranked below, from great to greatest.

25 'The Boy and the Heron' (2023)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

A new Hayao Miyazaki movie is always something worthy of celebration, especially when it comes out a decade after his most recent feature. This was the case for 2023's The Boy and the Heron, his first since 2013's The Wind Rises. The latter was once thought of as Miyazaki's final film, but The Boy and the Heron showed he still had a drive in him to continue his filmmaking career. Whether this ends up being his final artistic statement remains to be seen.

Still, if The Boy and the Heron is the last film the world gets from Miyazaki, it'll represent him going out on a high. It's a breathtaking, strange, beautiful, and thematically rich viewing experience, containing tons of imaginative fantastical elements and a great deal of subtext, given that parts of it can be read as Miyazaki looking back on his legacy. It's an odd and ambitious movie that rewards repeat viewings and analysis, and stands as another classic from the great Japanese filmmaker.

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24 'Top Gun: Maverick' (2022)

Director: Joseph Kosinski

An action movie has to be very good to be considered a classic of its genre just a year or so after its initial release, but Top Gun: Maverick is undeniably a very good action movie, to say the least. Released 36 years after the original Top Gun, it brings back Tom Cruise as the titular Maverick, older and a little wiser, but still a rebel at heart. The premise is simple: he's given a group of young recruits to train, and the movie follows them preparing for a daring and action-packed climactic mission.

For as iconic and charming as the original could be, it is a flawed movie in some areas, and it feels like Top Gun: Maverick fixes many of its shortcomings, most notably when it comes to having a well-paced, concrete story alongside more meaningful character development. That it can exceed the original in terms of quality while also treating its legacy with respect is admirable. Plus, the action in Top Gun: Maverick is out of this world, and has to be seen to be believed.

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23 'Barbie' (2023)

Director: Greta Gerwig

One half of an iconic 2023 double feature (more on the second half later), Barbie was always going to be a big movie, but it was surprising how huge it actually ended up being. It was the biggest earner at the box office for 2023, and while box office earnings don't always line up perfectly with quality, in the case of Barbie, it does just so happen to be a great movie that also earned a great deal of money worldwide (well over $1 billion).

It took a well-recognized property and did something fresh and subversive with it, managing to celebrate, modernize, and occasionally satirize the titular doll, all at once. From the perfect casting to the creative production design to the hilarious and heartfelt screenplay by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie lived up to the hype created by its outstanding marketing campaign, and deservedly became a true cinematic juggernaut for 2023.

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22 'Godzilla Minus One' (2023)

Director: Takashi Yamazaki

There are close to 40 Godzilla movies in total, released over the past seven decades. Even if you just look at Godzilla movies released in the 21st century alone, there are still almost a dozen of them. Naturally, this gives any high-profile Godzilla movie big shoes to fill, and thankfully, Godzilla Minus One was up to the task (even if this iteration of Godzilla is smaller than many before him, and so probably would wear smaller shoes... if Godzilla wore shoes).

Godzilla Minus One goes back to the late 1940s, being set even earlier than the first film in the series, which came out in 1954. Japan and its citizens are still recovering from the aftermath of World War II, and so the emergence of a new threat in the form of Godzilla proves especially devastating. Minus One re-energizes the series while also paying homage to many of the Godzilla films that came before it, in the process being an exciting, tense, emotional, and hugely entertaining ride.

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21 'Marcel the Shell with Shoes On' (2021)

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is adorable, heartwarming, and very funny, being one of the best and most moving animated movies in recent years. The titular Marcel is brought to life using stop-motion animation, and he interacts with a mostly live-action world that appears gigantic to him, considering he stands at only one inch tall.

His large world feels tragically empty, as he's been separated from most of his fellow shell friends and family members, with much of the film revolving around his attempts to find them once more. Along the way, he becomes friends with a documentary filmmaker who himself is dealing with a recent break-up, leading to the pair striking up an undeniably sweet bond. It's a simple yet great film, with Marcel providing a unique and sometimes eye-opening look at things in life that may seem mundane to folks of a more ordinary height.

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20 'The Worst Person in the World' (2021)

Director: Joachim Trier

Coming-of-age movies often deal with children or teenagers navigating the world, while dramas about adults trying to get by will often look at the struggles of going through a midlife crisis. The Worst Person in the World feels like it sits directly between these two realms, as it follows a young woman named Julie who starts the film in her late 20s and ends it in her early 30s. Neither a "young" adult nor a middle-aged one, she feels stuck in life, both professionally and romantically, and the film's a direct exploration of how she tries to get by.

The Worst Person in the World came out at a perfect time, because in 2021, people were still reeling from various aspects of life being put on hold, owing to that aforementioned pesky pandemic. It's a movie about being stuck and finding oneself unable to move in any meaningful way, with The Worst Person in the World finding both humor and heartbreak in such a premise. For anyone feeling the same things Julie does, this film could well hit dangerously close to home.

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19 'The Fabelmans' (2022)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg seems unwilling to slow down with age, as in his 70s, he's shown himself to still be capable of making great films. For evidence of this, one need not look any further than 2022's The Fabelmans, a film that was heavily inspired by Spielberg's own life as a young boy and teenager. It begins in the early 1950s and ends in the 1960s, showing how a young man named Sammy finds himself developing a passion for filmmaking.

The Fabelmans works as a coming-of-age story, a love letter to cinema, and an emotionally intense family drama, as a good deal of time is spent on Sammy's parents (played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano) and their separation, as well as the impact this has on Sammy. It's heartbreaking at times, but also life-affirming at other points, being emotionally complex as well as incredibly well-made and well-acted throughout, as one would expect from a drama film with Spielberg's name attached to it.

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18 'Never Rarely Sometimes Always' (2020)

Director: Eliza Hittman

At the very start of the 2020s, numerous films got delayed, with the aforementioned Top Gun: Maverick, for example, being largely filmed in 2018, but ultimately delayed numerous times until eventually coming out in 2022. This meant that many of the earliest great movies of the 2020s were smaller films that weren't delayed, either because they were planned for release on streaming or because they were unlikely to ever be blockbusters. As such, 2020 in particular was a year when very small-scale and challenging films like Never Rarely Sometimes Always got a genuine opportunity to shine.

It's an incredibly moving and character-focused drama, following the struggles two teenage girls go through when one of them decides she wants to terminate an unplanned pregnancy. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, therefore, is a movie about abortion, and such an emotionally intense (and still divisive) premise might well turn people off. But it's the execution that makes this remarkable, because it's undoubtedly empathetic, extremely authentic-feeling, and immensely well-acted. Small-scale dramas don't get a whole lot more powerful than this, in all honesty.

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17 'TÁR' (2022)

Director: Todd Field

TÁR might feel like a biographical film about a divisive figure within the world of music known as Lydia Tár, especially given how real Cate Blanchett, in the lead role, makes the titular character feel. Yet this film about the rise and fall of a provocative and outspoken conductor is entirely fictional, though it does unpack real-world issues and topics of discourse that have been pervasive in culture over the past few years, including things like cancel culture and professional misconduct allegations.

The film takes an unusual and challenging approach to these topics, and for better or worse, TÁR is a movie that can be - and has been - interpreted in many different ways. It's a movie about, in part, passionate online discourse and debate that has itself inspired plenty of passionate discourse and debate, especially online. That feels more like a feature of the film, rather than a bug, and given that's likely what filmmaker Todd Field was going for, it's easy to call the execution of this ambitious psychological drama a job well done.

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16 'Minari' (2020)

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Minari was a small-scale drama released in 2020 that ended up being a highlight from the decade's first year. It's a quiet and moving film about a South Korean immigrant family trying to make it in America during the 1980s, with the plot seeing them move from California to Arkansas, hoping to start a farm that will grow and sell Korean produce.

Minari does have a relatively slow pace throughout, but patient viewers will find the experience engrossing, and it's one of the best "slice-of-life" type of movies in recent years. It unpacks the cultural differences between South Korea and the U.S. in an honest and emotional way, managing to be simultaneously heartwarming and bittersweet throughout in equal measure. It might not sound like anything remarkable on paper, but the way it's all pulled off makes Minari something of a modern classic.

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15 'RRR' (2022)

Director: S. S. Rajamouli

Modern-day action movies don't get much more epic and explosive than RRR, an Indian film that managed to achieve worldwide success and recognition in 2022, including an Oscar win for Best Original Song. It's a film with a historical setting, though it takes some knowing liberties with historical fact, given the main premise revolves around two Indian revolutionaries who didn't meet each other in real life - Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem - meeting, becoming friends, and battling British colonial forces together.

It does still take the issues tied to this premise seriously, and when it's not focused on action or music numbers, it can also work as a hard-hitting drama about a grim period in India's history. The fact RRR can take a heavy story and make it explosive and inspiring through fictionalizing and reinterpreting history (perhaps similar to what Quentin Tarantino did in Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) is impressive, with the film being an overall blast to watch.

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14 'The Banshees of Inisherin' (2022)

Director: Martin McDonagh

An unpredictable emotional rollercoaster of a film, The Banshees of Inisherin is equal parts funny and soul-crushing. It takes place on a small island where the population is minuscule enough that everyone knows everyone, and there seems to be little else to do other than drink and gossip. The conflict of the film kicks off when one friend decides he no longer wants anything to do with another, which sets off a series of dramatic and tragic events.

Essentially, The Banshees of Inisherin is a break-up movie, but focused on a friendship rather than a relationship. It's another winner from filmmaker Martin McDonagh (who also made In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), and features fantastic work from a talented cast, most notably the likes of Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, and Barry Keoghan.

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13 'Anatomy of a Fall' (2023)

Director: Justine Triet

The winner of 2023's Palme d'Or, Anatomy of a Fall puts a new and interesting spin on the well-worn courtroom drama genre. It begins simple enough, with a case that involves a wife being suspected of murdering her husband, with the only real witness being the couple's blind son. It takes numerous twists and turns from there, all throughout a premise that unfolds over approximately 2.5 hours, and proves continually riveting to watch.

It's a French film that's undeniably found success outside its country of origin, being another great example of an international film finding true global recognition. It's already looking likely that Anatomy of a Fall will be hailed as an all-time great courtroom drama as the years go on, and it becomes old enough to be considered a classic, meaning it's already more than possible to highlight it as a, well, highlight of the decade so far.

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12 'All the Beauty and the Bloodshed' (2022)

Director: Laura Poitras

Even though the Academy Awards and other awards shows like to separate feature films and documentaries, the latter is just as worthy of praise, and deserving of being considered alongside "traditional" feature films, which tend to get more publicized. Certainly, All the Beauty and the Bloodshedis one of the best documentary films in recent years, and undeniably has the right to be considered one of the best releases of the 2020s so far.

It provides an overview of the incredibly eventful life of Nan Goldin, an activist and artist well-recognized for her distinctive photography and her activism. The latter includes raising awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and, more recently, targeting the Sackler family for their role in worsening the U.S.'s devastating opioid epidemic. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is incredibly well-balanced between being about Goldin's life and looking into such broader societal issues, in turn being a powerful and astoundingly moving piece of documentary filmmaking.

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11 'The Zone of Interest' (2023)

Director: Jonathan Glazer

The Zone of Interest is one of the most disturbing and impactful films of the decade so far, notably having an immense impact through what it doesn't show, rather than what it does. It's a film that centers on Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his attempts to live life with his family while residing beside the infamous World War II concentration camp. The horrors of the camp are persistent, but always just off-screen, which has an undeniably unnerving effect.

The idea of the banality of evil has been explored before in films about the Holocaust, particularly in the powerful and lengthy 1985 documentary Shoah, which was also notable for being about the horrors of Nazi Germany's Final Solution without showing archival footage or featuring dramatizations. The Zone of Interest does some of what that documentary did but in the format of a feature film, and with a shorter runtime. It proves similarly impactful and difficult to watch, but it's a necessary film that explores a kind of evil, stubborn indifference/willful ignorance that isn't often explored through film.

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10 'The Father' (2020)

Director: Florian Zeller

Even in his 80s, Anthony Hopkins is still capable of doing some of the very best work of his entire career, as demonstrated by his Oscar-winning turn in The Father. He's a big reason why this cinematic exploration of dementia is so powerful, because he's the only real constant in the film, by design. Other characters seem to change appearance and personality, all the while his living space seems to warp in increasingly unexpected ways.

It's all intentional, because The Father works as a film that attempts to simulate the experience of living with a mind that is slowly forgetting more and more. It's not easy to put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from dementia, but doing so inspires empathy for those who are living with the condition, and find each waking moment comparable to those minutes - 97 grueling ones - that make up the runtime of The Father. It's a moving film that gives viewers a great deal to think about, that's for sure.

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9 'Drive My Car' (2021)

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

The 2020s has, so far, been a particularly great decade for Japanese cinema, as demonstrated by the aforementioned The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One. Yet perhaps the best Japanese film of the 2020s to date is Drive My Car, which unfolds slowly but surely over a rather epic runtime of 179 minutes. It's principally about the relationship that builds between two people: one a stage director struggling with intense grief, and the other a young woman assigned to him as a personal driver.

Maybe some people might think that sounds a little boring or needlessly long, but Drive My Car earns its runtime, thanks to the depth of its characters and the slow-burn nature of its central story, as well as the understated beauty inherent in its visuals. It can be hard to put into words why the film is worth one's time, but without a doubt, it is, and few character dramas of the past few years can claim to be quite as impactful as Drive My Car.

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8 'Poor Things' (2023)

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Yorgos Lanthimos was very prolific from the mid to late 2010s, putting out three films in relatively quick succession: 2015's The Lobster, 2017's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and 2018's The Favourite. All were great and largely well-received, though viewers and critics alike ended up having to wait five years to see if Lanthimos could top them. With the release of 2023's Poor Things, it's now possible to claim that yes, Lanthimos has outdone himself once more.

It's perhaps the director's strangest film yet, which is certainly saying something. It revolves around a young woman being brought back to life, and learning how to fit into a world that she had initially intended to leave for good, relearning various things along the way. Poor Things itself resurrects and revitalizes a Frankenstein-type of story, doing its own thrilling thing with a comparable premise and standing as one of the most visually remarkable and memorable movies in recent years.

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7 'Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)' (2021)

Director: Questlove

With the well-received re-release of Talking Heads'Stop Making Sense, as well as the huge success of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, it's possible to see the 2020s as one where the concert film is making a comeback. Yet the resurgence arguably started a little earlier than those two aforementioned releases might suggest, because 2021 saw the release of the excellent Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), which is perhaps the decade's best documentary so far.

It showcases various performances from the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, which was around the same time as Woodstock, though not as widely publicized, at least at the time. Interviews in the present day do a good job of explaining what the festival meant, and how groundbreaking it was, but Summer of Soul is arguably at its best when it lets these musical performances speak for themselves, with great footage of artists like Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, and Nina Simone, to name just a few.

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6 'Killers of the Flower Moon' (2023)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese has been making feature films for well over half a century at this point, and 2023's Killers of the Flower Moon shows that the legendary filmmaker - now in his early 80s - is still capable of greatness. This is a grim epic about a terrible event from history, taking place largely in the 1920s and showing how various individuals conspired to marry into - and kill members of - Osage families who possessed wealth, thanks to finding oil reserves on the land they owned.

It does see Scorsese returning to the crime genre, but gone is the thrill present in his rise-and-fall stories, and those committing crimes here are no longer anti-heroes by any means; they're plainly evil, and astoundingly cruel. It's an exploration of malice and greed that digs deeper than many comparable films, making Killers of the Flower Moon uncompromising and, at times, difficult. The subject matter and length (nearly 3.5 hours) might turn some people off, but it's the sort of challenging watch that's worth sticking with.

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