The 10 Best Films of 2020

6. Nomadland

In her first three films, Chloé Zhao has documented America on the margins, telling the stories of people trying to carve out an existence in the hostile modern West (if you haven’t seen her previous film, The Rider, there’s no time like the present to catch up). Her new movie, Nomadland, was filmed with a tiny crew and a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, anchored by a dynamic, prickly, deeply compelling lead performance from Frances McDormand. She plays Fern, a woman living out of her van after the 2008 recession and moving from community to community in search of independence. Zhao places the failed promises of the American dream alongside some of its most beautiful, breathtaking vistas, as Fern pursues a life that isn’t driven by a search for success and wealth.

5. Mank

Mank was another long-awaited filmmaking return, this one from David Fincher, bringing life to a project he’d nurtured for almost his entire directorial career. It somehow stands up to those expectations despite a sly, sideways approach to its subject, the troublesome screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman). In portraying the tortured process of creating Citizen Kane’s first draft, Fincher also surveys the history of Golden Age Hollywood, a laboratory of creativity and wonder under the control of cold-blooded tycoons. With his trademark acidity and a perfect mix of optimism and deep bitterness, Fincher tells the tale of a cynic who finally awakens to his artistic talents.

Read: Why a movie about 1930s Hollywood resonates today

4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Charlie Kaufman’s first directorial effort in five years was a strangely perfect fit for Netflix; it’s the kind of film best viewed at midnight, alone in your home, an experience so peculiar that you might wonder if you dreamed the entire thing. Based on Iain Reid’s novel, Kaufman’s movie focuses at first on a young woman (Jessie Buckley) who is going to meet the parents of her new boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) out in the countryside for the first time. But the couple’s jaunt becomes a harrowing, dark night of the soul, as the bounds of time seem to stretch and snap, and it becomes harder to tell whether their partnership is real or imagined. In other words, it’s a Charlie Kaufman movie—a challenging viewing experience that lingers for weeks and unfolds new meaning with every rewatch.

Read: Charlie Kaufman’s first movie in years is a mind-bender

3. The Nest

If Lovers Rock conveys the cinematic power of a full house, The Nest does the same for an empty one. Also set in 1980s Britain, Sean Durkin’s film is a family drama with an air of crushing, inescapable dread, one in which a family’s financial success presages a year of greed and emotional ruin. Jude Law and Carrie Coon do career-best work as a couple who move their family into a dramatic English mansion and then struggle to maintain their financial status; Durkin turns the environment against them in creative ways, making a haunted-house movie in which the ghost is crippling capitalist ambition. Even though The Nest is a character-focused drama, Durkin gives it the soundscape of a horror film, turning up every creak and groan of the house to reflect the couple’s growing fears about the future.