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The Best Films of the 2020s Decade (so far)
The greatest films of the 2020s so far, from the growth of auteur television to boundary-pushing metamodernism.
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All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
The violent sounds of battle may be confronting to hear, but in Edward Berger’s take on All Quiet on the Western Front, the true tragedy of war emerges in the still, lifeless aftermath where grief is born, painting out World War I’s carnage in scenes of harrowing beauty, and centring a group of traumatised German…
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The Fabelmans (2022)
Despite the odd flash of visual inspiration and dissection of cinema’s raw power, The Fabelmans is not so interested in pushing formal boundaries than offering a pure insight into the youth of its own director, Steven Spielberg, whose memories, fears, and passions eloquently flow through what is his most personal film yet.
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Whether it through deathly omens or visceral threats, violence in The Banshees of Inisherin never comes without warning, as Martin McDonagh powerfully settles an air of dread over a rural Irish community on the outskirts of civil war where his darkly comical fable of petty feuds and broken brotherhood unfurls.
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
The sentimental heart of Avatar: The Way of Water is not lost in Cameron’s ingenious, visual invention, but rather melds with its spectacle to sweep us away on waves of transcendent wonder, spectacularly building the world of Pandora out into alien islands and sentient reefs where we are left to marvel at the remarkable abnormality…
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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
Guillermo del Toro’s foray into gorgeous stop-motion animation is perfectly suited the Italian fable of Pinocchio, though true to his darkly monstrous obsessions, this interpretation is haunted by a tragic existentialism, using the historical setting of fascist Italy to frame questions around fatherhood, blind obedience, and the value of fleeting mortality.
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Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022)
Alejandro Iñárritu’s sprawling abstraction of one Mexican filmmaker’s existential musings may be absurdly funny at points, but in Bardo’s surreal, stream-of-consciousness dive into his lucid dreams, it is also a deeply spiritual work, building a mountain of rich visual metaphors to deliver one of the most formally complex and cinematically ambitious films of the past…