The 50 Best Movies of 2020

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – January 6, 2021

Here is Metacritic's final list of the 50 best-reviewed movies of 2020, ranked by Metascore. This list only includes films receiving at least 7 reviews from professional critics.

All films released between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 in at least one U.S. theater or directly to streaming or VOD/digital services were eligible for inclusion. Titles are ranked by Metascore (a weighted average of scores from top professional critics) prior to rounding based on scores as of January 3, 2021.

19 of 25 photo by Amazon Studios

91 Time

(#5) Garrett Bradley's poetic Prime Video documentary uses a combination of intimate video diaries and newly shot footage to follow the decades-long effort by mother of six Fox Rich to secure the release of her husband, who is serving a 60-year prison sentence after being convicted of robbery in the 1990s. Critics were moved by the love story at the heart of the film as well as Time's examination of mass incarceration (and, indeed, the very passage of time) through the specific lens of this one couple.

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“Time can make you weep for a hundred reasons, from joy, pain or recognition, but its wounds and its glories are finally inextricable from one of the paradoxes of moviemaking itself. Cinema can magically compress decades into hours and transform lives into narratives, but what it erects here is ultimately a monument to something irretrievable. Cherish every moment of this movie, because each one stands in for all the others that have been lost.” —Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

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