It’s fair to say that 2020 was not what any of us expected in a lot of ways, including at the local movie theater. But there were still new movies last year and quite a few great ones at that. As the year came to a close, lots of sites took various looks at the best of 2020, and we wanted to highlight a few of those here:

• The staff at Pajiba did a roundup of “the 10 best films of 2020”, with several recent films making the cut. In fact, their top film, Promising Young Woman is playing in theaters right now (where they’re open, obviously).


• Over at Film School Rejects they focused on the best non-English language movies of 2020, highlighting an often under-looked and under-appreciated segment (at least here in the States). Ashamed to say that I’ve only seen two of these, so I think I’ve got some homework to do.


• If you’re looking for one of the best documentaries of 2020, here’s a very comprehensive list from RogerEbert.com which includes my personal fave, The Painter and the Thief (one of those two movies from the Film School Rejects list that I’ve seen, no less!).


• Slashfilm highlighted eleven (“it’s one louder”) of the most memorable movie performances of 2020 which includes my personal favorite, Anthony Carrigan as robot Dennis Caleb McCoy in Bill & Ted Face the Music.


• Finally, the IndieWire crew compiled a list of the 10 best film scenes of 2020, except, it’s not actually a list. Rather, they made a great video of the scenes which “are some of the only souvenirs we hope to take with us from 2020:”