Empire's ultimate list of 2020's best films

How many have you seen?

Author: Ben TravisPublished 4th Dec 2020
Last updated 22nd Dec 2020

Well, 2020 didn’t quite go how anyone expected it to did it? At the start of 2020, the future looked bright – another year packed with cinematic treats from big blockbusters like Bond, Black Widow, and Wonder Woman 1984.

Then, in March the world turned upside down, lockdown began, and cinemas shuttered for months on end.

There’s no getting around it – 2020 has been a tough, tough year for so many people, in so many ways. But despite everything, despite the film venue closures, despite the lack of communal viewing experiences, a slew of incredible films still managed to make their way into the world over the last 12 months.

The complete shake-up of the cinematic landscape brought on by the pandemic inevitably makes for a very different end-of-year list. But as you look through Empire’s best movies of 2020 – as compiled from top ten rankings submitted by members of the entire Empire family – you’ll still see a selection of must-watch movies that kept us engaged and entertained as the year went on.

Take a look at the Top 10 of Empire's ultimate list of 2020's best films:

10) Jojo Rabbit

'Taika Waititi is making his movie again' may one day become a stick with which to beat the Kiwi writer-director, but not as long as he continues to make movies as original and invigorating as Jojo Rabbit. A spiritual successor to Boy and Hunt For The Wilderpeople, it's another film about a lost boy and the role models he chooses to help him chart a path into adulthood. As you'd expect with Taika, there are imaginary friends, meticulously framed images, and montages set to pop music. And… Nazis? Yes, because Jojo, living in Germany near the end of World War II, has unquestioningly swallowed Nazi propaganda, and his imaginary friend is a rancid, hate-spewing version of Hitler (played by Waititi himself). Waititi unwaveringly walks a tonal tightrope that moves swiftly from broad comedy to an unflinching embrace of the consequences of the war – and all with huge heaps of the heart that his films have had since day one, as young Jojo slowly bonds with the Jewish teenager (Thomasin McKenzie) his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding in the walls of their home. Long may Taika continue making his movie.
Read the Empire review

9) Mank

In 1941, RKO gave Orson Welles an effective blank cheque to make Citizen Kane. In 2020, the cheque might not be as blank, but it's clear Netflix (or as they're here temporarily retitled, 'Netflix International Studios') have given David Fincher the carte blanche he deserves to make precisely the film he wanted to make: a typically meticulous monochrome masterpiece. The personal parallels are everywhere: in telling the story of a genius creative obsessed by a Hollywood he doesn't quite fit into, it may be the closest to a Fincher autobiography we'll ever get — given added personal dimension by the script, written by Fincher Sr. But it's also a sad portrait of a self-destructive artist, making his best work at the expense of almost everything. The deep dives into the intricacies of Old Hollywood will be too specific for some, but for Golden Age film nerds, it's absolute heaven.
Read the Empire review

8) The Lighthouse

Subtext swirls and swells in Robert Eggers' head-tripping psychological horror. Both adorned with outrageous facial hair, Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are the 'wickies' – aka lighthouse keepers – stranded together on a rain-lashed rock, slowly losing their grip on sanity and displaying an obsession with the pulsating lamp at the top of the tower. Equal parts Lovecraftian and Freudian, Eggers' film is a freaky and fascinating blend of folktale, sea myth, homoeroticism, and psycho-thriller, full of unforgettable imagery and deeply unsettling sound design. And Pattinson and Dafoe give raw, wild-eyed performances, hemmed into the frame by a near-square aspect ratio that lends the whole thing the feel of an unholy long-lost film reel, freshly dredged up from the ocean depths.
Read the Empire review

7) Lovers Rock

There's not much plot to speak of in Lovers Rock, which follows Martha (Amarah Jae St. Aubyn, in a sensational debut) as she sneaks out of her family home to go to a party in 1980s West London. But what Steve McQueen's second – and arguably best – Small Axe entry lacks in narrative, it makes up for with its loving exploration of Black British culture. That includes close-ups of women preparing goat curry stew that you can almost smell through the screen, and evocative dance sequences that make you long for the pre-pandemic parties of old. The most joyous moment of the film – and perhaps 2020 – comes during the instantly iconic 'Silly Games' sequence, in which everyone on the dancefloor sings Janet Kay's 1979 hit acapella for four euphoric minutes. That McQueen still finds the time in this 68 minute film to gently yet effectively remind us of the harsh world that exists outside this bubble of Black bliss is a sign of a director at the top of his game.
Read the Empire review

6) The Invisible Man

Rising from the ashes of the Dark Universe, the iconic Universal Monster got a thrilling reinvention from Leigh Whannell. His take centred not on the Invisible Man himself, but on his victim – Elisabeth Moss' Cecilia, who, in a breathlessly tense opening sequence, escapes from her abusive relationship with optics engineer Adrian Griffin. Despite appearances that Griffin has committed suicide, Cecilia is convinced he's still haunting her. Whannell imbues shots of empty spaces with a sense of utter dread (could Adrian really be lurking there?), that combined with Moss' incredible wild-eyed performance makes the fantastical set-up feel completely real and grounded. The result is a deeply effective meditation on gaslighting and trauma, but one that still absolutely works as a tense and terrifying horror-thriller – with one of the most downright shocking moments of 2020.
Read the Empire review

5) Saint Maud

It's hard to remember the last time a British horror debut was this finely calibrated. Rose Glass's first film is an instant classic, taking the genre's usual devil-worshipping tropes and flipping them on their head. In Morfydd Clark's Maud – a traumatised nurse who communicates with 'God', determined to save the soul of the hedonistic terminal cancer patient she's caring for – we get a new kind of holy terror, a character who's equal parts pitiful and powerful, her fearsome fervour fuelling her increasingly dangerous detachment. Like its central character, the film around her is brittle and jagged but carefully controlled, with a tone that shifts seamlessly between ghoulish dark humour, psychosexual imagery and bloody frights. A searing, visionary work, centred on an incredible star-making turn. Praise the Maud.
Read the Empire review

4) Rocks

This chaotic and loving ode to friendship is the best British teen movie in years. Set in East London, the film follows Rocks (Bukky Bakray), an aspiring makeup artist who is abandoned by her mother and forced to care for her younger brother Emmanuelle (D'angelou Osei Kissiedu, the undisputed star of 2020). At her side, however, are a group of fiercely loyal friends who try their best to keep Rocks' feet on the ground. Director Sarah Gavron and screenwriters Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson workshopped the film extensively with their predominantly street cast ensemble. The result is a collaborative celebration of female spirit and resilience that's never romanticised but always raw, tender and blissfully funny. The year has done its best to stifle the connections between friends as a wave of isolation has swept across the world. Rocks reminds us that we need these connections more than ever.
Read the Empire review

3) Uncut Gems

The Safdie Brothers took their ability to create pure cinematic anxiety to new heights with a thriller that plays more like a sustained panic attack. Adam Sandler puts in a career-best performance as reckless diamond dealer Howard Ratner, who owes money all around town – and while a rare Ethiopian black opal looks set to improve his fortunes, he can't help but make yet more deeply dangerous decisions. Between Sandler's jittery performance (you'll root for him, while cursing every single terrible choice he makes), the hectic soundscape of overlapping chatter, and a wobbly Jenga tower of dodgy deals that threaten to collapse at any second, it's a pulse-pounding adrenaline ride without a single action set piece.
Read the Empire review

2) Portrait Of A Lady On Fire

On an isolated island in 18th Century Brittany, artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant) is commissioned by a noblewoman (Valeria Golino) to paint a picture of her daughter Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) as a means of attracting wealthy suitors. The hitch? Heloise refuses to have her likeness painted, so Marianne has to pull off the portrait covertly. Out of this high concept, writer-director Celine Sciamma has created a masterpiece – a thrilling, intoxicating love story that has no truck with cliché or sentiment or male worldviews (this is a film where men are relegated to the background). Anchored by two terrific central performances, few films have so economically captured feelings of longing and love without diluting an ounce of passion. The filmmaking is impeccable – take a bow, DP Claire Mathon, for some of this year's most lucid imagery – all in service of a film about a connection so intense it burns a hole in the screen.
Read the Empire review

1) Parasite

Bong Joon Ho has been concocting heady genre fusions for years – and Parasite found the Korean auteur at his most intoxicating. Is it a thriller? Or a dark comedy? Or a tragedy? Or a satire? All of the above, and more. The intertwined stories of the hardscrabble Kim family and the wealth-dripping Parks is deeply layered, richly thematic – and, most of all, breathlessly exciting, twisting and turning in such unexpected ways that you're never quite sure what comes next. Bathed in Hitchcockian suspense, nodding to decades of Asian horror movies, peppered with laugh-out-loud lines, it's a supremely entertaining ride, flawlessly executed by Director Bong with precise craft and a knockout ensemble cast. Before 2020 went off the rails, it began with a miracle: for once, Best Picture really did go to the best picture.
Read the Empire review