The Best Movies of the 2020s So Far

We’ve heard of films within a film, but it’s crazy how many layers Through the Olive Trees operates in. Writer-director Abbas Kiarostami completes his metanarrative journey in the Koker trilogy through a slice-of-life comedy about a couple in the periphery of the previous installment And Life Goes On. As the young man Hossein repeats his plea for marriage to Tahereh, casted as his wife, the insistence can be slightly grating, but in doing so, the everyday dealings of the Iranian village hint at what’s underneath– the earthquake from four years ago that still shapes their lives, the socioeconomic and culture barriers, and the mirrored struggle of creating the artistic vision of the film within the film.

Not everybody holds a good relationship with their sisters, but ideally, we get to reunite and repair things in a good time. Unfortunately, for some families, the only time they reunite is due to a parent nearly dying. This is the case in His Three Daughters, where the three sisters meet after years living apart. It’s a common plotline, mostly depicted in the feel-good, family friendly variation, but writer-director Azazel Jacobs makes the three sisters distinct by taking the easy assumptions many people would make about them, and naturally push them to reveal the opposite. Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen form a great trio, delivering equally excellent performances under the same roof.

Hurt people hurt people, the saying goes, and nowhere is that more evident than in Hard Truths. Directed by Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Happy-Go-Lucky), Hard Truths follows two sisters who couldn’t be more different. One is Chantelle, a cheerful hairdresser who has raised equally ebullient daughters, and the other is Pansy, a hardened woman who lashes out at everyone from her family to the people queuing up in the grocery. Pansy is brutal, the sort of person you’d roll your eyes at if you were unlucky enough to encounter her in public. But Leigh gives us a glimpse into her internal struggle; nothing too obvious, as is the naturalistic director’s style, but we feel her pain whenever she goes out of her way to avoid the people closest to her, or when she savors a moment alone and hides her tears. There is no linear plot in Hard Truths; instead, it’s a collection of lived moments and ordinary joys and sorrows. It’s also a welcome reflection of our fractured reality. Loneliness, grief, anger, anxiety—these feelings are often inexplicable, and they come out of us in ways that are never immediately understandable or direct. So why should Pansy be? The film is an exercise in sympathy as well as a mirror to our own complicated and invisible hurt.

From Aaron Sorkin, the creator of every liberal’s favorite 2000s political drama, The West Wing, The Social Network, and the master of the “walk and talk”, comes the dramatization of a sadly true American story from the mid-last century. In 1968, different groups from all over the country travelled to Chicago to protest the Vietnam War at the Democratic National Convention. The Chicago police greeted them in full riot gear, purposely attacking the peaceful protesters. Five months later, eight of them (charges against Black Panther leader Bobby Seale were dismissed) were arrested for inciting riot. As the title suggests, the film details the trials that followed, which highlight the still ongoing battles within American society and politics: racism, ineptness, corruption, complacency, you name it. On a lighter note, while you wouldn’t necessarily call this an ensemble cast, the number of unlikely familiar faces in this film is off the charts: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Sascha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eddie Redmayne. It also features some of the greatest supporting actors in American TV history like John Carrol Lynch, Frank Langella, and the amazing John Doman aka Bill Rawls from The Wire.

The culture of propaganda and cover-ups that kicked off the pandemic is the subject of this compelling documentary by award-winning director Nanfu Wang (One Child Nation). Wang, who traveled with her family to China in January 2020, saw and filmed the pandemic firsthand, and wrote to major newspapers like The New York Times to convince them to write about it. They never did. 

Media and government in both China and the U.S. played down the threat, and this documentary asks how different everything would have gone otherwise. More dauntingly, it’s an examination of how the Communist Party in China managed to use the event to its advantage. 

Belfast stars Outlander’s Caitríona Balfe as the mother of a working-class Northern Irish family during The Troubles. Religious tension and the lack of opportunities put the family in a difficult position: they’re the first in many generations to think about leaving the city of Belfast. They all have to navigate so many difficult questions on belonging, religion, and identity.

The story,  based on the director’s own childhood, is packaged in a noise-canceling black and white format. Also stars Judi Dench.

There are only two main characters in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande: Nancy, a retired teacher who was recently widowed, and Leo, an adept sex worker with a mysterious past. They’re almost always in one place and work on a single goal: pleasure. But despite the seeming monotony, the movie is crackling with wit and sensuality every step of the way. It doesn’t waste any time getting to the heart of the matter. Nancy and Leo go back and forth about their past, with Nancy divulging much about the stigma of aging and Leo about the stigma of sex work. They also dive into the shame attached to pleasure, ultimately revealing more than just their naked bodies to each other and to the audience.

Whether or not you’re a fan of Nick Cave’s contemplative, idiosyncratic style of music, This Much I Know to Be True still works on a purely experiential level. There’s confusion, then a rush of euphoria, then an overwhelming sense of peace when listening to Cave’s (and musical collaborator Warren Ellis’s) cryptic lyrics and delicate compositions—shot with breathtaking use of studio lights by director Andrew Dominik and cinematographer Robbie Ryan.

And things only get more emotional when you consider how far Cave has come, that these performances are happening several rough years from the untimely death of his son. And suddenly even all the unrelated B-roll footage included in the film—of Cave talking about his sculptures, talking to Ellis, answering profound fan emails—takes on a greater urgency. This sounds like music for mourning, but in its own way it’s music for celebration, too, and gratitude despite everything.

A twitchy, uncomfortable noir film for the digital age, Decision to Leave blends the trappings of a restless police procedural with an obsessive forbidden romance. Here, director Park Chan-wook flips every interrogation and piece of evidence on its head, pulling us away from the whodunit and towards the inherently invasive nature of a criminal investigation. It’s a movie that remains achingly romantic even if everything about the central relationship is wrong. For detective Hae-jun and suspect Seo-rae (played masterfully by Park Hae-il and Tang Wei, respectively), the attraction between them is built entirely on distrust and suspicion—illustrating the danger of falling for the idea of someone rather than the person themself.

You don’t have to be a theater kid to enjoy this feel-good mockumentary set in a summer camp for junior thespians. While there are plenty of in-jokes here for those who might have spent a summer or two somewhere like AdirondACTS, Theater Camp also good-naturedly lampoons every instantly recognizable stereotype of theater kids and the classic failed-performer-turned-teacher. 

Amongst the note-perfect ensemble, particularly hilarious standouts include co-writer Ben Platt and co-director Molly Gordon as camp instructors and best friends Amos and Rebecca-Diane. Both are Juilliard rejects with codependency issues and a classic case of actorly self-indulgence — as encapsulated in the moment they accuse a young attendee of “doping” for using artificial tears during a performance (“Do you want to be the Lance Armstrong of theater?”). But even seasoned performers like Platt and Gordon can’t pull the spotlight away from the film’s absurdly talented young ensemble, who are just as game for poking fun at their passion: standouts include Luke Islam, Alexander Bello, and Minari’s Alan Kim as a pint-sized “aspiring agent” who skips dance class to make business calls. All this self-satirising never obscures the movie’s heart, though; what begins as a self-deprecating ribbing of theater-heads ultimately becomes a rousing love letter to those very same misfits.