My Favorite Movies of 2020

There were many bright spots in the year when a global pandemic marred and reshaped the film world. These are my ten favorite.

If an optimistic point is to be made to about 2020 as a year for movies, it’s that we certainly had a lot of time on our hands to watch them. When it became clear in March that the COVID-19 pandemic would have an existential impact on our lifestyles, and we collectively withdrew into our homes for each other’s sake, I eagerly planned to use quarantine as an opportunity to immerse myself in the work of directors and movements that I hadn’t yet been acquainted with. It would be a month, maybe two, of free-time that I could devote wholly to film-watching without guilt; a small silver lining during a global catastrophe.

We are now almost 11 months into quarantine, and the novelty has long worn off. While I easily recall what moviegoing was like pre-pandemic, that ritual seems like a relic of history as we live deeper and deeper into this crisis. Before the pandemic, I would routinely take a train to Boston from my college campus, to see independent and international films that weren’t showing at the local theater. Everything about that ritual, in which I rode with, walked by, and sat in the same room with hundreds of strangers in close proximity without wearing a mask…