It certainly wasn’t a typical year for, well, anything, including movies. As Hollywood packed up shop and pushed a lot of their projects to 2021 or streaming services, questions arose about how to critically assess such an unusual time for cinema. Some groups like the Academy pushed their awards back to make a longer window for inclusion while some writers lamented the lack of quality overall. They just weren’t looking hard enough. In the end, it was a very solid year for the form, and the lack of blockbusters only allowed for more room to assess the movies that might have otherwise gone under the radar. Let’s just say that it was not hard to come up with 20 films that we feel represented the quality of 2020. And great movies didn’t even make the cut. Every single one of the 20 films below will stand the test of time, remaining important works of art even after the din of this horrible year is behind us. Art endures.