Remember yesterday when I said that my music list was the one that was least impacted by the pandemic? Well, today's film list is easily the most colored by it. COVID-19 may very well have killed the theater industry as we know it.
Usually in the intro to this list, I lament the movies that I hadn't been able to see because they were only released at the end of the year for critics and big cities in order to make awards contention. This time around we're all basically in the same boat, as there's a long list of movies we thought we'd be getting coming into 2020, but were delayed until next year or later. Dune, Black Widow, A Quiet Place Part II, No Time to Die, F9, Candyman, Top Gun: Maverick, The French Dispatch, Last Night in Soho, West Side Story, the list goes on -- so many big movies that, to varying degrees, had a shot at making this list were shelved.
As a result, my new movie intake dropped dramatically. I saw a total of 48 new releases in 2020, compared to last year's 75. The closing of theaters and delay of tentpole films play a large part in that, but I also didn't feel much desire to watch many of the movies that were released directly to VOD during lockdown. I probably would have seen something like the poorly received Antebellum in theaters for $7 on a Sunday afternoon in a normal year, but it was much harder to justify watching it at home for $20 when there were so many other options to stream.
So I was left with a difficult decision to make regarding this list: Do I buck tradition and not have 20 films on it for the first time? The films in my 16 through 20 spots are ones that I liked a fair amount, but they just didn't excite me the way movies that usually qualify for the end of the year list do. Couple that with having to also write up five more honorable mentions and it just felt disingenuous to attempt to work up the enthusiasm to declare merely solid films as being the best of 2020. Hence, we have 15 films on the official list this year. Still, despite the smaller playing field there were a handful of films at the top that were truly fantastic. 2020 wasn't a complete wash when it came to cinema, and this list is here to show some reasons why it wasn't.
The rules: Things are a little different this year since most movies didn't get a theatrical release. So let's make it easy and consider any film that got their first non-festival release in 2020 -- whether that's theatrically, on VOD, or exclusively on a streaming service -- qualifies for this list.
