The 15 Best Movies of 2020, According to Vogue Editors

It has been, to put it mildly, a very strange year at the movies, what with the scrambled release dates, virtual festivals, and industry infighting. Still, the films that did manage to come out had a largely captive audience: scores of lonely, restless people even more eager for a good story than usual. 

From adaptations of beloved classics to tales that grapple with very real social issues, these are the recent films that made Vogue editors and writers laugh, cry, and otherwise disassociate from our stranger-than-fiction moment, at least for a few hours.

Emma (on Amazon)

Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma is, at its heart, a sparkling romance that feels unexpectedly timely. De Wilde’s background is in music and fashion photography, and her first foray into feature filmmaking is overtly gorgeous: a riot of feathered bonnets, corkscrew curls, and colorful carriage dresses. “It’s like swimming in a giant cupcake,” says star Anya Taylor-Joy. A supporting cast that includes Johnny Flynn as Mr. Knightley, Mia Goth, Callum Turner, Bill Nighy (who renders Emma’s endearingly hypochondriacal father with comic aplomb), and Miranda Hart, as the eager neighbor Miss Bates, gives additional dimension to the sumptuous setting. —Harriet Fitch-Little 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (on Hulu)

A portrait subject becomes an object of desire in this achingly romantic movie from director Céline Sciamma. Noémie Merlant plays a painter hired to render the likeness of a privileged young woman (Adèle Haenel) before her betrothal, but—this being a French film—the two quickly fall into a forbidden affair that perfectly features Vivaldi in key scenes. —Emma Specter 

Kajillionaire (on Amazon)

In September, Chloe Schama deemed Miranda July’s third feature “a strange and slippery film. Nominally, it’s the story of a family of untethered grifters, liberated from the quotidian responsibilities of 9-to-5 jobs and consumerist urges. They eschew lifestyle trappings—fancy clothes, restaurant dinners, gift certificates for massages—and they live in a bleak, abandoned office space attached to a soap factory, their cubicles-cum-bedrooms periodically invaded by a seeping pink foam.” She continued, “In the questions Kajillionaire poses about the way we organize our lives—what we prioritize and what we seek—July has made a film that feels particularly resonant at a moment in which many of us have detached from whatever it is we formerly considered reality.”

On the Rocks (on Apple TV+)

In October, Keaton Bell reported that On the Rocks, starring Rashida Jones and Bill Murray, was always meant “to offer a slice of breezy escapism.” Little did director Sofia Coppola know just how much we would need it. “Shot on location in Manhattan last year, On the Rocks became an unintentional time capsule of a pre-pandemic New York City,” he wrote. “Sprinkled with references to institutions like the Knickerbocker and Bemelmans, Coppola’s eighth feature is a gin-soaked love letter to the swanky bars, maskless restaurants, and crowded sidewalks of her hometown.”

Palm Springs (on Hulu)

As Bell put it, “The romantic comedy has been declared a dying breed in multiple think pieces a year, but Palm Springs is a perfect example of how the form only continues to evolve. Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti play two wedding guests who accidentally stumble upon a time loop that makes them relive the same day over and over again in a comedy that’s part Groundhog Day, part Before Sunset. As a stellar showcase for its charismatic leads with a tone that finds the perfect intersection of sour and sweet, Palm Springs is hilariously breezy summer entertainment that also packs a surprising amount of heart.”

The Personal History of David Copperfield (Rent on Amazon)

Wrote Taylor Antrim in June: “Fans of Armando Iannucci’s fiercely excoriating brand of satiric comedy (The Death of Stalin, Veep, In the Loop) will approach his new film, The Personal History of David Copperfield, as one might a prizefight—expecting the jokes to land like blows. But the most surprising thing about this adaptation of Charles Dickens’s beloved doorstop of a novel is how gentle it is, how winningly heartfelt. In an act of color-blind casting that suits Iannucci’s subtlely modern retelling, Dev Patel plays the titular character, who endures fortune and misfortune in Victorian England with wide-eyed aplomb. Iannucci’s movie bursts with energy—and with scene-stealing British acting. Here is Tilda Swinton as batty Betsey Trotwood; there is Ben Whishaw as villainous Uriah Heep; Morfydd Clark plays Copperfield’s mother and his dog-loving wife Dora Spenlow; we have turns from Darren Boyd, Gwendoline Christie, Hugh Laurie, Peter Capaldi. The film, like its source material, is a maximalist delight.”

Saint Frances (Rent on Amazon)

The difficulty of growing up—at any age—is placed front and center in this film, directed by Alex Thompson and written by star Kelly O’Sullivan. It follows a 34-year-old aspiring writer who takes a job as a nanny for the young daughter of a lesbian couple and finds herself enmeshed deeper in their family than she could have imagined. —E.S.

Bacurau (on Amazon)

In March, Antrim compared the film from Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles to Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite: “How’s this for relevant? In the near future, a small town becomes isolated from the rest of the world and an underclass must fight for survival against marauding agents of capitalism. Such is the scenario of the wildly entertaining and strikingly strange Brazilian Western meets thriller meets globalism critique Bacurau.”

Lovers Rock (on Amazon)

In November, Marley Marius wrote that after Lovers Rock (which belongs to the anthology series Small Axe) premiered at the New York Film Festival in September, “early reactions to the film, directed and cowritten by Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave; Widows), fixated on its ‘vibes’—some heady combination of joyfulness, sensuality, and just a hint of danger. Set mainly at a bustling Notting Hill house party in 1980, the roughly hour-long drama, starring Micheal Ward and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn (in her screen debut), takes its name from a subgenre of reggae popular in the 1970s, using the thrummy 1979 ballad ‘Silly Games’ by Janet Kay as its pseudo theme song.” You can also stream the whole of McQueen’s five-part film series on Amazon.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (on Hulu)

Eliza Hittman’s exploration of what it takes to get an abortion in 2020 America isn’t for the faint of heart, but it should be required viewing. In Never Rarely Sometimes Always, a young woman from a conservative Pennsylvania town escapes to New York with her cousin—without much money or a place to stay—to obtain a second-trimester abortion. Shot almost like a documentary, this film brings to light just how many barriers still stand between pregnant people and the freedom to make decisions for their own bodies. —E.S.

The Nest (Rent on Amazon)

In September, Antrim called The Nest, a thriller starring Jude Law and Carrie Coon, “an acting tour de force—and Coon, a stage-trained actor who has broken out on TV’s The Leftovers and Fargo, is especially revelatory. Watching her and Law go toe to toe”—the two play a couple who moves into an English country home and swiftly falls into financial ruin—“is a reminder that marriages have fault lines and bonds that keep damaged people together. It is a period piece set (exquisitely) in the 1980s and recalls those patron saints of privileged domestic angst—Yates, Updike, A.M. Homes, The Ice Storm—but in its air of lockdown and stasis, The Nest also has lots to say about our current reality. It’s one of the very best films I’ve seen in this very strange movie year.”

An Easy Girl (on Netflix)

Technically, An Easy Girl (Une Fille Facile) came out in 2019, but it was new to American audiences when it landed on Netflix this summer. Helmed by French director and screenwriter Rebecca Zlotowski, it’s a coming-of-age story set on the Côte d’Azur, where a teenager (Mina Farid) and her beguiling older cousin (Zahia Dehar) fall in with a sophisticated yachtsman (Nuno Lopes) and his assistant (Benoît Magimel). It’s a film about class and race and sexuality, but it’s also evocative and subtly moving, with one memorable dinner-party scene set to music by John Coltrane. —Marley Marius

His House (on Netflix)

In October, Karen Smith-Janssen said that His House, from director Remi Weekes, “blends instability, paranoia, and culpability against the backdrop of a migrant’s safe haven turned haunted house. Central to the story is the very real horror of the asylum experience: the lack of orientation, the lack of information, the attempt to ’be one of the good ones,” as one caseworker advises. Weekes’s feature directorial debut sees Rial (Lovecraft Country’s Wunmi Mosaku) and Bol (Gangs of London’s Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù) flee South Sudan under duress and endure a harrowing, tragic boat trip to the U.K. When they’re given an estate council flat of their own, the not-quite-home is tainted not only by unwelcoming neighbors but also the increasingly aggressive supernatural.”

Sound of Metal (on Amazon)

Some might find this story of a noise-punk drummer (Riz Ahmed) losing his hearing hard to watch, but when I saw Sound of Metal, written and directed by Darius Marder, at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, I found it to be an acting tour de force and an elegant and emotional portrait of disability, addiction, and survival. It’s an aggressive film in that it reproduces, through sound design, the experience of losing your hearing, but I was profoundly moved by it and reminded how incredibly talented Ahmed is. —Taylor Antrim

Let Them All Talk (on HBO Max)

In Steven Soderbergh’s funny, cringey, largely improvised latest, an author, Alice Hughes (Meryl Streep), gathers her two dearest friends from college (Dianne Wiest and Candice Bergen) to sail the Queen Mary 2 to England, where she’s due to collect a major prize. They’re joined by Alice’s nephew, Tyler (a typically charming Lucas Hedges), and—unbeknownst to Alice—her new agent, Karen (a very good Gemma Chan), who is keen to find out what she’s been working on. As the ship makes its crossing, memories are swapped, new friends are made, and old wounds are reopened, before an affecting twist snaps everything into perspective. —M.M.