The 2020s have been a great decade for film so far, contrary to popular belief. Although it can get distressing to think about the consolidation of media companies, the push to put new releases on streaming, the fragmented political reality, or the obsession with social media that has made it hard to actually attend screenings without disruptive moviegoers, there have been more than a few instant classics that make it easy to find hope.
The last seven years have seen filmmakers rising to the occasion by using new technology, modernist ideas, and creative distribution strategies to make films that are keyed into what is happening in the world today. While there will undoubtedly be many more masterpieces released by the time that the decade comes to an end, there are already so many options to choose from shows that cinema is alive and more powerful than ever before.
The Father is a staggering drama that explores the realities of aging in a manner that hasn’t previously been depicted in a cinematic way. Anthony Hopkins stars as an elderly man who has begun to lose his memories, and becomes increasingly confused when he realizes he no longer has control over his own thoughts. While it was adapted from the stage play of the same name, The Father feels like an accomplished and immersive piece of cinema thanks to the impressive direction from Florian Zeller, who made one of the decade’s most defining debuts.
The Father features one of the greatest performances ever from Hopkins, which is no small statement when considering that he has a better resume than nearly any living actor. Anyone who has ever had to deal with an aging or ill loved one will relate to this heartbreaking, painfully true dramatic masterpiece.
Asteroid City is a maturation of the themes that Wes Anderson has been exploring throughout his entire career, as it examines how storytelling and creation can be used as a medium with which to deal with loneliness, loss, and depression. Although it’s among the most sobering of Anderson’s films when it comes to the subject material, Asteroid City is also brightly lit and features a fun retro futuristic design that makes it feel distinct within his impressive body of work.
Anderson has rarely failed to put together an amazing ensemble, but Asteroid City might be the best performance he has ever gotten out of Jason Schwartzman; Schwartzman had his breakthrough starring in Anderson’s coming-of-age dramedy Rushmore, so it is fitting that they would reunite for him to play a loving father who has to pass along lesions to his own children.
Killers of the Flower Moon is another masterpiece from Martin Scorsese that signifies him as one of the few directors to have made an all-time classic in six different decades. It’s a film that allows Scorsese to reflect upon his own interest in true crime by examining how the murders and hatred for America’s indigenous people were covered up, allowing the nation to forget its original sins in the search of capitalist glory.
Killers of the Flower Moon united Scorsese’s two greatest leading men, as it was the first time that he directed both Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in the same film, and the third time that the pair of actors had worked together after This Boy’s Life and Marvin’s Room. However, it is the breakthrough performance from Lily Gladstone that makes Killers of the Flower Moon such a devastating watch.
The Green Knight is one of the greatest adaptations of Arthurian mythology because it reinterpreted a historical text with new insights, making for a thoughtful meditation on death and fate. The brilliant independent writer/director David Lowery was able to use an A24 budget to make a film that felt massive in scope, and blended CGI and practical effects to create a lucious, beautiful cinematic canvas.
The Green Knight is a deeply spiritual drama about coping with mankind’s inherent flaws and the pressures of mortality, but it’s also a riveting adventure that features the greatest performance of Dev Patel’s career. The 2020s have seen many adaptations of public domain properties, but The Green Knight actually has something new to say about the stories of King Arthur, and is able to draw from its greatest influences whilst making the material feel more timeless than ever.
Marty Supreme is perhaps the most purely entertaining film of the decade so far, as it is rare for a new release that is over 150 minutes long to not feature a single dull moment. Although Josh Safdie did an incredible job recreating the 1950s and filling it with period-specific details, Marty Supreme does not feel weighed down by its historical components, as it tells a story about striving for ambition that feels pitched to today’s generations.
Marty Supreme solidified Timothee Chalamet’s status as the definitive movie star of his generation. Although he had proven that he could portrayal historical figures like Bob Dylan, make the role of Paul Atreides in Dune his own, and offer a fun reinterpretation in Wonka, Marty Supreme is a film that allowed him to create a character from scratch that has already proven to be a cultural icon.
The Banshees of Inisherin is just as bleak and hilarious as one would expect from Martin McDonough, the singular Irish playwright-turned-filmmaker who can write sharp dialogue, complex characters, and morally nuanced situations like no one else working today. The Banshees of Inisherin is a film that is entirely reliant on strong characterization; that the plot is minimal is part of the point, as the film is still completely enthralling because of McDonaugh’s razor-sharp observations about male fragility.
The performances in The Banshees of Inisherin are exceptional, with Colin Farrell in the single best role of his career. Kerry Condon adds the heartfelt empathy that the film needed to work emotionally and Brendan Gleeson makes for the perfect nemesis for Farrell, but it was the heartbreaking performance from Barry Keoghan that turned The Banshees of Inisherin into a devastating, beautifully effective tearjerker.
One Battle After Another is one of the Best Picture winners ever, as Paul Thomas Anderson managed to get a “career trophy” for making the actual best film of 2025. One Battle After Another is a brilliant take on the divisions that haunt modern America, which both explores the confined failings of revolutionaries whilst also expressing hope that the next generation will be able to achieve something greater.
One Battle After Another includes the quirky humor, needledrops, and magnetic performances that Anderson has always been able to feature, but it’s also a compulsively watchable thrillride that has better action than a vast majority of the more traditional blockbusters released this decade. Between Sean Penn’s terrifying, Oscar-winning role as the ruthless Colonel Lockjaw, Leonardo DiCaprio in his most versatile part yet, and the breakout performance from Chase Infiniti, One Battle After Another has an impeccable ensemble.
Oppenheimer is the type of immersive, all-consuming historical epic that only Christopher Nolan would be capable of, as it’s an intently-researched expose on one of the most important moments in human history that also functions as a highly entertaining thrill ride in which three hours fly by.
Oppenheimer taps into the destructive power of genius with a thoughtful, subtle performance from Cillian Murphy that is strong enough to carry the entire weight of the film on his shoulders, even if he is surrounded by one of the century’s greatest ensemble casts. Although the actual nuclear testing scene is a feat of practical effects that is worth the price of admission, it’s the reveal of Lewis Strauss’ (Robert Downey Jr.) longstanding feud against Oppenheimer in which Nolan’s non-linear narrative device justifies itself in an act of cinematic bravura that demands to be seen on the big screen.
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
The Brutalist is an instant American classic that was made in an old-fashioned manner of independent ingenuity, as Brady Corbet managed to finance and envision a surprisingly low-budget film that has the scale and scope to feel like an Old Hollywood epic. It’s a fictional story that ties into the realities of Jewish immigration in the aftermath of World War II, crafting a message about artistic integrity that questions whether the journey or destination is more important.
The Brutalist features the performance of a lifetime from Adrien Brody, whose comeback performance showed why his commitment and emotional gravity made him feel like the next coming of Marlon Brando. Felicity Jones is also heartbreaking in a quiet, yet pivotal role, and the haunting performance by Guy Pearce is among the most effective, terrifying depictions of greed that has been seen in quite some time.
The Fabelmans is an autobiographical masterwork from Steven Spielberg, who returned to his own story of his childhood after making many classics about broken homes, troubled youths, and divided marriages. Although The Fabelmans allowed Spielberg to express revelations about the realities within his parents’ marriage that he did not fully process until he was an adult, it also allowed him to admit how he had relied upon filmmaking itself as a tool in which to avoid ever going to therapy.
The Fabelmans contains the craftsmanship and energy that only Spielberg can do, with another great score by John Williams and a brilliant finale that includes a cameo intended to appease any cinephiles in the audience. Spielberg has made two other great films this decade with Disclosure Day and his better-than-the-original remake of West Side Story, but The Fabelmans is a personal passion project that is worthy of being listed within his hall-of-fame.
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