by Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy

A couple weeks before the end of the year (and what a year it’s been), I asked everybody to list their top five movies that they’d seen so far. This is always a tough chore because people are trying to cram in the films they’d heard about but missed throughout the year and then there’s the Christmas Day releases that only a few people have seen by that point. This means that people will always look back at their list in a year or two and find things that they wish they would've included, but just hadn’t seen yet. I feel like this year has exacerbated that situation because everyone has had to settle into finding films through different avenues.

Here, I’ve compiled everyone’s rankings and responses to give the MovieJawn Top Ten for 2020.

MovieJawn Top Ten (11 because of ties)

1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

2. Palm Springs

3. First Cow

4. Relic

5. Minari

6. TIE Martin Eden and The Wolf of Snow Hollow

8. TIE American Utopia, Birds of Prey, Da 5 Bloods and Kajillionaire

Below, you can see everyone’s individual rankings and a brief description of one of their favorites. For the majority of the films, you can click the title to see MovieJawn’s review on that particular title.

Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport

1. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

2. A Mermaid in Paris

3. The Wolf of Snow Hollow

4. Kajillionaire

5. Shirley

Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a critical and necessary story that knocked the wind out of me. It is so important to not just have these stories told, but for them to be made by women. It not only shows the horrors of healthcare in our country, but the horror of being a woman and grappling with a situation that no one truly wants to talk about. It is not a matter of whether you are pro-choice or pro-life - it is facing the fact that many of us truly don’t understand the situation, that our society continues to perpetuate a culture of uneducated human beings that then face dire conditions when faced with truly important decisions to make.

Ryan Silberstein, The Red Herring

1. Da 5 Bloods

2. First Cow

3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

4. David Byrne's American Utopia

5. Mank

With Da 5 Bloods, Spike Lee has crafted a postwar epic. In this film about Black soldiers returning to the jungles of Vietnam for the first time since they served, Lee pulls on archival footage, flashback, music and cinematography choices to tell a layered story that serves a meaningful examination of the war and its lasting legacy. Equally entertaining and thought-provoking, Da 5 Bloods is pointed in its message without sacrificing nuance.

Benjamin Leonard, Best Boy

1. Relic

2. The Wolf of Snow Hollow

3. Stockton on My Mind

4. Sylvie's Love

5. Blow the Man Down

Stockton on My Mind was one of my favorites from this year because it was so damned inspirational (as well as entertaining). It’s not just a documentary pointing out all the problems in society. It shows you who’s out there working to fix it and how they’re doing it. Marc Levin put together a terrific documentary about Michael Tubbs, the young, new mayor of Stockton, CA and his battle to keep his city and the people in it alive.

Hunter Bush

1. Color Out of Space

2. The Wolf of Snow Hollow

3. Iron Mask (a.k.a. Journey to China: The Mystery of Iron Mask)

4. The Vast of Night

5. Sheep Without a Shepherd

Color Out of Space is everything I love in a movie: psychedelic existential horror made by an actual wizard (Richard Stanley) starring Nic “My cat once ate a bunch of my mushrooms, and then I took some so he wouldn’t be high alone” Cage. All that plus a well-mixed variety of visual effects coalesce to make a film that’s a unique viewing experience and a ton of fun, to say the least.

Jaime Davis, The Fixer

1. Minari

2. Herself

3. Small Axe (all 5 of the installments including Mangrove, Lovers Rock, and Red, White and Blue)

4. One Night in Miami

5. Black Bear

To me, Minari is perfect: superb acting, moving script, gorgeous score and it's lovely to look at. Just a beautiful film about what it means to be American, at a time when America really needs the reminder.

Liz Locke

1. Let Them All Talk

2. Emma.

3. Rebecca

4. I Used to Go Here

5. The Gentlemen

In regards to Let Them All Talk, this movie felt like everything I've been missing in 2020, and what I'm most looking forward to post-COVID: in-person conversations with friends, drinks in a dark bar, travel, sailing and waiter service. But in addition to all that, I adored how natural this movie felt, like I was let into a private dinner party with three of the most fascinating women in the world. Candice Bergen better be on everyone's Oscar list- I know she's on mine!

Matt McCafferty

1. Palm Springs

2. Sorry We Missed You

3. A White, White Day

4. Dick Johnson Is Dead

5. The Assistant

Palm Springs was, by far, my most enjoyable watch of the year. Being fun and enjoyable are not necessarily must-have qualities that I look for in a movie to be considered among the best of the year, but these things sure did help in 2020. As you can see from the rest of my list, fun would not be a top descriptor for those films. Even with the borrowed Groundhog Day formula, Palm Springs managed to deliver one of the most inventive stories that I’ve seen in a while. It’s being referred to as the perfect pandemic movie for all of its quarantine parallels. But I think, over time, it will be thought of more so as one of the best romantic comedies to come out in years.

Alex Rudolph

3. Swallow

Kajillionaire isn't quirky. Quirks are superfluous, they're LOOK AT ME details that can be fun but don't contribute to anything bigger. Kajillionaire is a movie where everything contributes to the theme, where the characters played by Evan Rachel Wood, Gina Rodriguez and the Richard Jenkins/Debra Winger combo are all fully sketched out and have interior lives. The costumes and make-up are as minutely considered as any detail in a Kubrick or Cameron movie, but they don't look fussed over. It's an unnatural situation with unnatural characters, but everything is so well done, by everybody involved, that it feels natural. The heart is real and Kajillionaire is a triumph.

Dan Santelli

1. Days

2. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

3. To the Ends of the Earth

4. TIE First Cow and Fourteen

In Days, the Taiwanese master of the master-shot style returns to features for one of his slowest and quietest films. For 127 minutes (and in only 46 shots), Tsai's camera patiently and observantly regards a series of purported mundanities — from cooking a meal in real-time to therapeutic treatment of physical maladies — while occasionally sneaking in gestures of "oversized emotion". Another portrait of urban alienation, and maybe the swansong for recurring protagonist Kang (Lee Kang-sheng), Days finds Tsai reveling in the moment and emphasizing that there are connections to be made, even if for just a brief moment in time, in the most foreign places and in the most unexpected circumstances.

Audrey Callerstrom

1. Relic

2. Blood On Her Name

3. I Used to Go Here

4. Black Bear

5. Shirley

Relic is a horror film about how the mind deteriorates rapidly due to Alzheimer's disease. But it's not exploitative, and it handles the subject carefully. There is not a single wasted moment in this devastating debut film from Natalie Erika James.

Ian Hrabe

1. Sound of Metal

2. Boy's State

3. The Place of No Words

4. You Cannot Kill David Arquette

5. The King of Staten Island

In Sound of Metal,Riz Ahmed continues to prove that he is a superstar in the making here in his turn as a heavy metal drummer who suddenly loses his hearing and has to adapt to his new life. Director Darius Marder probes what happens when the thing that defines us is taken away, and how that new path can be one of both struggle and grace. The end result is one of the year's best acted and most affecting films.

Gary Kramer

1. Martin Eden

2. The Painted Bird

3. First Cow

4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

5 Antebellum

My favorite film this year is Martin Eden which features an extraordinary performance by Luca Marinelli as the title character. This is a compelling period drama, based on the Jack London novel, about love, class, politics, and education. Moreover, films about writers are my weakness. I was enthralled throughout Martin Eden and it made me want to read the novel so I could replay the film in my head.

Emily Maesar

1. Shithouse

2. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn

3. Palm Springs

4. Miss Americana

5. Host

Shithouse is my favorite from this year because it takes a classic coming-of-age story and breathes so much life into it. It's the story of the people who always go to parties, but quietly watch from the corner with a drink. Shithouse is a smart flick that fires on all emotional cylinders and explores how past trauma carries with you into adulthood. It's a film I wish had existed when I was going through shit in college, and I'm beyond myself that it'll be here for future sad kids to take solace in.

Sara Clements

1. Nomadland

2. Minari

3. Martin Eden

4. The Lodge

5. Wolfwalkers

Chloé Zhao's Nomadland floored me. Dreamy cinematography of the American frontier wraps around a slice of life we don’t normally see. One about people who had their lives ripped from under them but manage to live in a tranquility we’ll never know in our concrete jungles. A beautiful and impactful modern western with one of the best scores of the year that exudes hopefulness.

Ryan Smillie

1. Bacurau

2. Beanpole

3. First Cow

4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always

5. Palm Springs

Kleber Mendonça Filho made a name for himself with his politically conscious and technically accomplished Brazilian films (Neighboring Sounds, Aquarius), but Bacurau (directed with Mendoça's usual production designer, Juliano Dornelles) more than exceeds the high expectations for his third feature. Drawing from nearly any genre imaginable - simultaneously a futuristic western, a bloody dark comedy and an anti-colonialist thriller - Mendonça and Dornelles craft a riveting and incisive critique of 21st century politics, both local and global. I can guarantee you've never seen anything like Bacurau, and I doubt you will again any time soon.

Garrett Smith

1. David Byrne's American Utopia

2. I'm Your Woman

3. Dinner In America

4. Possessor

5. The Invisible Man

At the end of the longest year in recorded history, this joyful expression of what it means to be a part of the human community restored life to my dead soul. In David Byrne's American Utopia, Spike Lee captures and highlights the incredible stagecraft on display without it merely feeling like a document of a performance. There is something inherently cinematic about Lee's shot and editing choices that elevate this beyond a typical concert film. And Byrne displays a warmth throughout this that I did not expect from the man. The simple message presented in such an entertaining way put me into a fit of tears that lasted the entirety of the runtime, draining me of all the pent up emotion of the past year, and that is a movie experience I'm never going to forget.

Fiona Underhill

1. TIE Shirley and True History of the Kelly Gang

3. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

4. Da 5 Bloods

5. Lovers Rock

Shirley and True History of the Kelly Gang have more in common than may be immediately apparent. Both are based on fictionalized novels which feature real-life historical figures - the notorious Australian outlaw Ned Kelly and the American horror author Shirley Jackson. They both are about adaptation, myth-making, telling your own or other's stories, legacy and the layering/blurring of truth and fiction. Both are fascinating films to return to, pick apart and analyze - the performances, cinematography, scores and costume design in both are exemplary. They are, by a long way, my favorite films of 2020.

Liz Wiest

*Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn*

1. Palm Springs

2. Animaniacs

3. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn

4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

5. Happiest Season

Released in the early portion of 2020, Birds of Prey is the underdog DC villain story that did not get nearly enough of the recognition it deserved. Executed under Cathy Yan’s brilliant direction, the chemistry of the cast set against the comic book-esque backdrop brought us into the world of Gotham in a way we haven’t seen before. Zany, eccentric and very “girl-power”, this movie brought fun back into supervillain arcs and reminded us that we are all the heroes of our own stories, as crazy as those stories may be.