2020 has been anything but a typical year for movies to say the least, but despite the theaters being closed and all the big releases getting bumped there have been a substantial amount of great movies from some fantastically talented people.
As with every year, we surveyed everyone on the Film Pulse team and compiled their current top 10s, which you can check out below. The good news is most of these titles are currently available on VOD or streaming subscription services so I’ll provide links to watch.
Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods was the standout, making it on six of the seven lists (and two top spots) and I’m super happy to see Danielle Krudy and Bridget Savage Cole‘s Blow The Man Down land on the top of two other lists.
Let us know in the comments what your top movies of the year are thus far.
Kevin Rakestraw
- Talking About Trees (Suhaib Gasmelbari)
- The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack) MUBI
- The Giverny Document (Single Channel) (Ja’Tovia Gary) YouTube
- Girls Always Happy (Yang Mingming) OVID.tv
- First Cow (Kelly Reichardt) Amazon
- Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman) Amazon
- Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles) Kino Marquee
- Fourteen (Dan Sallitt) Grasshopper Film
- Guaxuma (Nara Normande) Aeon.co
- Deerskin (Quentin Dupieux) deerkin.vhx.tv
Blake Crane
- Blow the Man Down (Danielle Krudy, Bridget Savage Cole) Amazon Prime
- Bad Education (Cory Finley) HBO
- Underwater (William Eubank) Amazon
- Color Out of Space (Richard Stanley) Amazon
- The Beach House (Jeffrey A. Brown) Shudder
- Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) Netflix
- The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson) Amazon Prime
- After Midnight (Jeremy Gardner, Christian Stella) Amazon Prime
- Gretel & Hansel (Oz Perkins) Amazon
- The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood) Netflix
Amanda-Marie Howard
- Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) Netflix
- The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson) Amazon Prime
- Shirely (Josephine Decker) Hulu
- Palm Springs (Max Barbakow) Hulu
- Extraction (Sam Hargrave) Netflix
- The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter) Netflix
- Bad Education (Cory Finley) HBO
- Miss Juneteeth (Channing Godfrey Peoples) Amazon
- Stockton on my Mind (Marc Levin) HBO
- Black is King (Beyoncé, Blitz Bazawule, and Emmanuel Adjei) Disney+
Adam Patterson
- The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell) Amazon
- Blow The Man Down (Danielle Krudy, Bridget Savage Cole) Amazon Prime
- Deerskin (Quentin Dupieux) deerkin.vhx.tv
- Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles) Kino Marquee
- First Cow (Kelly Reichardt) Amazon
- Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) Netflix
- The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson) Amazon Prime
- Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman) Amazon
- Residue (Merawi Gerima) Coming to Netflix September 17th
- Underwater (William Eubank) Amazon
Ken Bakely
- Blow the Man Down (Danielle Kurdy and Bridget Savage Cole) Amazon Prime
- Driveways (Andrew Ahn) Amazon
- Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) Netflix
- Bad Education (Cory Finley) HBO
- The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson) Amazon Prime
- Palm Springs (Max Barbakow) Hulu
- Emma. (Autumn de Wilde) Amazon
- Shirley (Josephine Decker) Hulu
- The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell) Amazon
- The Half of It (Alice Wu) Netflix
Raul de Leon
- A Whisker Away (Junichi Sato) Netflix
- Bacurau (Kleber Mendoca Filho, Juliano Dornelles) Kino Marquee
- Crip Camp (James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham) Netflix
- Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) Netflix
- The Painted Bird (Vaclav Marhoul) Amazon
- The Painter and the Thief (Benjamin Ree) Hulu
- Palm Springs (Max Barbakow) Hulu
- Rewind (Sasha Neulinger) Amazon Prime
- Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis) Amazon
- Tommaso (Abel Ferrara) KinoNow
Chris Luciantonio
- Da Five Bloods (Spike Lee) Netflix
- Babyteeth – (Shannon Murphy) Amazon
- The Wild Goose Lake – (Diao Yinan) Amazon
- On-Gaku: Our Sound – (Kenji Iwaisawa)
- First Cow – (Kelly Reichardt) Amazon
- Labyrinth of Cinema – (Nobuhiko Obayashi)
- The Invisible Man – (Leigh Whannell) Amazon
- The Lodge – (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala) Hulu
- Capone – (Josh Trank) Amazon
- Tigertail – (Alan Yang) Netflix