However, we kept going and even in this year’s darkest moments we still could look forward to an incredible array of releases. And 2020 certainly had a range of terrific cinematic moments to celebrate.

Below is the list of our favourite films of the year and they’ve certainly helped us get through this difficult time, and given plenty of joy in the process.

10. Unhinged

Russell Crowe delivered an incredibly scary and full frontal attack of a performance as an unnamed man who suddenly flips and takes out all of his aggression and anger on an innocent woman in Unhinged. This was popcorn cinema at its most thrilling. Unhinged didn’t let up for a moment, and Crowe’s scary performance had us on edge the whole time. It was a simple premise that was executed with perfect delivery by its filmmaking team and as an audience member you were holding your breath right up until the very end frame. This was a pulse-pounding piece of thriller cinema at its best and Crowe’s performance as this nameless and violent thrill killer was sure to give you nightmares.

9. Downhill

Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus brought out plenty of long-simmering tensions in Downhill and this was one dark-comedy that kept its audiences on their toes the entire time. Examining the nature of loyalty, cowardice and a clash of opposites, Downhill kept you guessing from the start and made for a very intelligent piece of cinema. Director’s Nat Faxon and Jim Rash teased out the long-held resentments between Ferrell’s Pete and Louis-Dreyfus’s Billie, and all throughout the film’s proceeding events you are constantly wondering whether or not their marriage is actually going to survive their so-called ‘dream holiday’. Downhill was something completely different and proved to be a very intellectually stimulating watch for audiences,

8. Words On Bathroom Walls

While you might think you understand and know the teen genre, you really needed to think again with the likes of Words On Bathroom Walls. Showcasing incredible sincerity with its subject matter and mind-bending creativity with its production, Words On Bathroom Walls was a piece of cinema that tugged at your heartstrings. The main character Adam Petrazelli is a complicated young man, made even more so by his underlying schizophrenia that he is battling with on a daily basis. Add to this teenage angst, young love and the hardships of not quite being normal and you have a recipe for an incredibly compelling piece of cinema that pulled audiences inwards towards its narrative.

7. Onward

It’s been a strong year for Disney- Pixar and director Dan Scanlon’s fantastical fantasy tale of brotherly adventure in Onward was a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. Scanlen and his team turned the fantasy genre on its head with this one and there was a great inventiveness and creativity presented through this epic, heavy-metal, fantasy road trip. Actors Christ Pratt and Tom Holland made a perfect combination as the delightful Lightfoot brothers, and Onward told a story of rediscovering the magic and what it means to ultimately find your father. The geniuses at Disney-Pixar made 2020 that little bit brighter with Onward and this was a delightful film on every single level.

6. Nomadland

Two-time Academy Award winner Frances McDormand bore her soul with an introspective performance that was utterly beautiful to watch in Nomadland. Directed by rising talent Chloé Zhao, Nomadland was a powerful film of second lives, the open road and being forced to rediscover yourself while travelling down a new path. Both its striking imagery and the magnificence of McDormand’s performance seared themselves into your very soul, and this film was truly unforgettable. Nomadland was a film filled with depth, discovery and humanity and is a piece of cinema that audiences should cherish, especially after the events of this year.

5. The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie returned to his native England and wound up his sleeves to jump back inside the gangster genre with The Gentlemen, which made for one of 2020’s coolest cinema experiences. Led by Matthew McConaughey as the impressive and stylish drug kingpin Mickey Pearson, and featuring a stellar supporting cast including Charlie Hunnam, Henry Goulding, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant, this was a film that went from A to Z in a flash and everywhere else in between and was certain to put a certain strut into the step of the audience. Ritchie radiated his own unique brand of ‘alpha male’ cool with The Gentlemen, and for audiences who were looking for a stand-up good time, well, they were sure to find it with this slick piece of gangster cinema.

4. Savage

Raw and unflinching in equal measures, Sam Kelly’s Savage hit with the force of a ball-peen hammer and took audiences inside the brutal world of New Zealand’s gang culture. Kelly didn’t hold anything back in exploring the scary reality that gripped so many and took audiences inside the traumatic world of the state boarding schools that shaped innocents into monsters and then sent them out into a world filled with nothing but seething pain and relentless rage. Savage was a shocking watch, but this was all a part of the extreme honesty that Kelly used to showcase the reality of this world and the handling of his subject matter certainly struck a nerve with audiences. Praise also needs to be lauded on the performance of Jake Ryan as Danny aka Damage, a brutal, Frankenstein’s monster of a man who knows only violence, but who is in reality is just searching for a way back home. Savage was a film that hit us hard in 2020 and it was without-a-doubt one of the year’s best.

3. Mank

Director David Fincher returned to cinema in a long-held obscene since 2014’s Gone Girl and the master filmmaker did not disappoint in presenting a marvellous project in Mank. Chronicling the production behind what many claim is the greatest film of all time, Citizen Kane, Mank was a detailed exploration of one man’s creativity and ethics in a town which normally does away with such things. In terms of the narrative experience, everything came together in Mank. Production design, cinematography, location, costume design, hair and make-up and musical score all served to tell an incredible story and long-time film aficionados were sure to bask in the glow of this radiant portrait of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Mank was a deeply held passion project for Fincher and he delivered an incredible radiant piece of cinema that was well worth the watch.

2. Let Him Go

How far would you go to protect your family? That was the simple premise behind director Thomas Bezucha’s adaptation of Let Him Go, a revenge tale burning with the fury of Old Testament frontier justice and this was a thriller that stripped its audience back to the bone. Featuring career-best performances from the likes of Diane Lane and Kevin Costner, Let Him Go was a simple and to-the-point thriller which was delivered with maximum intensity and hit the audience like the force of a Winchester rifle. It’s burning Western-setting brought to life in the style of Cormac McCarthy, and Bezucha certainly knew how to get the most out of the impressive pairing of Lane and Costner. Let Him Go was that rare kind of film that harkened-back to the True Grit days of John Wayne and delivered audiences a searing drama of family loyalty and justice that was certain to take them to the edge.

1. The Way Back

But if there had to be one movie that we crown as our favourite film of 2020 it is without-a-doubt Gavin O’Conner’s portrait of sports and addiction in powerhouse drama The Way Back. Starring Ben Affleck as washed-up alcoholic, and former high school basketball star Jack Cunningham who finds a second chance gifted to him, The Way Back was a searing drama that gripped your soul and wrestled your emotions as you saw a flawed man trying for a second chance. Borrowing from Affleck’s own personal life and battle with addiction, The Way Back is an extremely heavy film that examines themes of loss and triumph, addiction and love, heartbreak and hope and O’Conner and Affleck truly gave their all to this project. This film moved me to an incredible degree and as an audience member, I could not look away from the events that were unfolding on screen. The Way Back was powerful in its presentation and it’s third act twist hit you like a stone wall and made the film that much more powerful because of it. Film’s like The Way Back don’t come along that often and when they do they need to be celebrated.

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These are the questions asked by director Chloé Zhao and actress Frances McDormand in Nomadland, a presentation of cinema that feels like a new development in the art form, and which delivers an incredibly moving and powerful drama that will linger with you long after you leave the cinema.

Nomadland follows Fern (Frances McDormand), a woman in her sixties who, after losing everything in the Great Recession of 2007-2009, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

Director Chloé Zhao offers a very simple, yet emotionally deep narrative in Nomadland, as she follows the film’s central protagonist, Fern (Frances McDormand), who travels across America seeking work and a new life having lost everything in the Great Recession of 2008. For Zhao, who is rapidly becoming a remarkable new voice in modern cinema, Nomadland is storytelling stripped back to its basic form of subject and setting. From its opening moments, you feel that this is going to be something completely different. And it is. Zhao shoots Nomadland in an almost documentary, point-of-view style, and she expresses her narrative through images over dialogue. Very little might be spoken, but much is said, and Nomadland is a deep metaphorical analysis of one person’s life in a changing world.

By its setting and time, Nomadland is a seminal piece of filmmaking, with its narrative commenting upon the decline of the American Dream, and the beginning of a new one. Notions of a career for life, a two-storied home with a white picket fence, and a dog sitting on the front porch where irreparably changed following the Great Recession, and for many, this was the beginning of something new. Zhao paints a portrait of a whole generation who had their livelihoods taken from them and who were forced onto the road and a new way of life. It’s a startling presentation of an ageing generation who have to find themselves again, and who set out on the road to do it. And Zhao presents this through honesty and understanding that is beautiful to watch.

Through everything that we see on screen in Nomadland, the happy and the sad, the challenging and the joyful, Zhao presents a very authentic and sincere portrait of Fern and her fellow nomads. And she is extremely empathetic to their journeys and the directions that their lives have taken. Her approach to capturing this is almost like a photographer, as she and McDormand embedded themselves alongside real-life nomads to capture their authentic experience. Zhao’s eye is exceptional in what she captures, and she pulls her audience into a new America that few have witnessed.

Fresh off her second Academy Award-winning performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Frances McDormand has selected an incredible challenge in the character of Fern. Presented as an everywoman, who has suffered a great tragedy in her life, she sets out on the open road to live as a nomad, and undergoes an incredible growth of character, spirit and soul during the film’s narrative. In inhabiting the role of Fern, McDormand leaves all presence of herself behind and instead just exists as this one character. McDormand gives a raw and real performance as Fern and holds nothing back in presenting the life of a modern-day nomad, and this is very much the performance of her career.

Like Zhao, whom she has crafted a stunning partnership with, McDormand offers up an incredibly rich performance shaped by great empathy. She exists side by side with fellow nomads and as she has disappeared into the character of Fern, McDormand very much became one of them. She opens herself up to the audience with a beautiful performance of a character who has lost so much to ‘the American Dream’, but who now on the open road has the ability to live an authentic life that is true to her nature and character. McDormand is incredibly honest in her performance, and this honesty transcends itself from the screen to the audience.

The experience of Nomadland is one to be savoured by an audience. As a film that measures its narrative through images, over sound and dialogue, it is beautiful to look upon thanks to the talented eye of cinematographer Joshua James Richards. Through Richards’ visuals and Zhao’s direction, Nomadland captures a new, almost undiscovered frontier that has been left behind in America’s race to capitalistic supremacy. As Fern moves across the country in search of work and prospects, she takes time out to marvel at her great nation, and the sights and images that we witness are incredible to look upon. These images make the experience of Nomadland that much more involved and beautiful to view as an audience member, and the narrative is much richer because of them.

Nomadland is one of the most moving and important films to be released all year. It is a film filled with great empathy and a powerful narrative of discovery. Audiences will completely be pulled into the story of its central character’s search for a new life. In a year that has been so difficult for so many, pictures like Nomadland remind us that just down the road brighter times await and all we have to do is just keep driving towards them.

Image: 20th Century Studios

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