49 Best Movies & Shows Released in 2020 (Page 3)

This documentary from Ken Burns is a selection of stories from prisoners enrolled in a competitive college program. Many of the prisoners are in maximum-security facilities, some for serious crimes.Seeing their difficult imprisonment conditions, the struggles they come from, and yet their incredible determination to excel in their education - it’s all such a humbling and emotional affair.

This high-production-value German series is about a junior investment banker who finds herself at the center of events that will cause a big financial crash. The show starts with the crash then goes back a year to tell the story of how the young Jana Liekam got caught in the middle of it. Bad Banks functions sometimes as a cautionary tale on the dangers of investment banking but it's mostly just a simple, good, and enjoyable corporate thriller. It's also a great introduction to quality German TV, if you're ever looking for one.

For three years, the makers of this docuseries gained in-depth access to ICE and other government agencies to document the current state of the U.S. immigration system.Immigration Nation looks at how ICE functions from within, but it also focuses on the human toll of its methods. When a migrant freezes to death, an officer calls his distraught father to notify him. It quickly becomes apparent that the officer is using the same call to try to establish if the father is in the U.S. legally or if he should be deported.The show also makes an important point of noting that the harshness of the U.S. immigration system didn’t start with the current administration. “Prevention through deterrence” Clinton-era policies, for example, forced migrants towards desert routes, killing around 10,000 people from dehydration.

Hanna the movie was the perfect mix between a coming-of-age story and a Bourne-Trilogy-type thriller. It was suspenseful, edgy, and so original.How to make these attributes stick when the movie is stretched to a TV show? As it turns out, more of the same does the trick.The majority of events have been imagined especially for the show, and it doesn’t stop there. The series is packed with great new talent who bring their uniqueness to the story. Hanna herself is played masterfully by British actress Esme Creed-Miles. Her father - much more present in the show than the movie - is also amazingly played by Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman (you may recognize him from House of Cards or The Killing).High production value and incredible suspense make Hanna an enjoyable and prolonged thrill ride. It’s even more fun if you’ve never watched the movie, as all plot developments will be new to you. 

This creepy miniseries stars Jason Bateman, Bill Camp, and Ben Mendelsohn. Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, it follows an investigation into the horrific murder of a child where all evidence leads to the local baseball coach, Terry Maitland (Bateman). However, Terry's demeanor and his shock when the police come to arrest him raise questions about whether he actually committed the crime. It's a grim and slow-burning story with immaculate acting although it suffers from the thing it aspires the most to: the (not entirely satisfying) book. Created by The Wire writer Richard Price.

This comedy is about a girl whose family moves to the U.S. on September 2001. She grows up to excel academically but, as she asks from the shrine in her room on her first day of sophomore year, she has yet to be cool. “I want to be invited to a party with hard drugs,” she prays, “not to do them, but just to say: no cocaine for me, thanks. I’m good.”The show is narrated by tennis legend John McEnroe who was known for his explosive temper (played recently by Shia Laboeuf in Borg vs McEnroe). It’s a genius arc because Devi is a “hothead”, exactly like McEnroe. Instead of recoiling, Devi keeps boiling over, making for a fresh and original high-school comedy.