The Best Films of the 2020s (so far)
The greatest films of the 2020s so far, from the growth of auteur television to boundary-pushing metamodernism.
Mother Mary (2026)
As one burnt-out popstar and her former costume designer collide over old grievances in Mother Mary, David Lowery slowly unveils the ghost which has haunted both, refusing to release either from the possessive grip of shame, resentment, and regret.
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (2025)
Childhood may seem like an endless kingdom of wonder in Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, fantastically shifting with the vivid imagination of its young protagonist, yet so too does the inevitable discovery of its own transience awaken a soft, bittersweet sorrow.
2025 in Cinema
Josh Safdie propels a dubious table tennis champion toward compromised glory, Paul Thomas Anderson sends a washed-up revolutionary on a high-stakes mission, and Bi Gan dissolves the boundary between art and reality into a bittersweet exchange.
Opus (2025)
If celebrity is a cult in this modern media landscape, then veteran pop star Moretti crowns himself its messiah in Opus, as Mark Anthony Green illustrates a corrosive symbiosis between stardom and media that sustains its own self-perpetuating spectacle of power.
The Mastermind (2025)
The downfall of a narcissistic art thief in The Mastermind is not a dramatic collapse, but rather a desolate drift towards the inevitable, as Kelly Reichardt precipitates a chain of repercussions that pull him back to an unstable reality he has long sought to ignore.
Ballerina (2025)
Through one young assassin’s pursuit of vengeance against a cult, Len Wiseman offers a worthy addition to the John Wick franchise in Ballerina, reframing its world of contractual violence as a system to be navigated rather than escaped.
Die My Love (2025)
As one young woman falls into the resentful, fugue-like state of motherhood in Die My Love, Lynne Ramsay frays the boundaries of selfhood and domestic routine, casting her portrait of postpartum unravelling in pale greens and fragmented rhythms.
Magellan (2025)
Through Lav Diaz’s rigorously composed tableaux stretching from Portugal to Indonesia, Magellan deconstructs the mythology of its infamous explorer, applying an austere, postcolonial lens to the hubris which underlies such violent acts of conquest.
Woman in the Dunes (1964)
Through Hiroshi Teshigahara’s elemental metaphor in Woman in the Dunes, sand becomes the formless structure of one man’s existential imprisonment, trapping him in a Sisyphean struggle of labour that slowly absorbs him into a primordial, ever-shifting desert.