Here are our 20 favorite movies of the 2020s so far. Also, our show The Extra Credits ranked the best movies of 2023 below!
We've seen 'A Complete Unknown' and ranked the movies of Timothée Chalamet.
Listen to our YouTube review of Coralie Fargeat's 'The Substance' as we breakdown the discourse around the film and whether the narrative effectively tackles the male gaze in its maximalist allegory.
Kelsi and Trey are joined by The Ringer's Sean Fennessey of The Big Picture podcast to dive into the career of Ridley Scott.
Kelsi and Trey dive into Gladiator II with a non-spoiler review of Ridley Scott’s epic return to ancient Rome--the movie's supporting character shine, led by Denzel Washington.
Todd Phillips' newest Joker film highlights the audiences’ twisted need to celebrate and glorify disturbed figures. Read and listen to our critical deep dive of 'Joker: Folie à Deux'
Alien: Romulus Sanitizes the Alien Franchise
Today we explore Wes Ball's Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes as one of the more impressive and thoughtful blockbusters of the 2020s, then tackling the greater Apes universe, its sometimes-radical politics, and the future of this IP on our most recent episode. We also rank The Planet of the Apes films and explore the Caesar trilogy of Rise, Dawn, and War below!
Ranked
David Fincher is a myth. Click here for our episode unpacking his project and reviewing ‘The Killer’.
The Performances of Timothée Chalamet Ranked
Sydney🚀 241 films
Steffi 117 films
The Big Picture 34 films
David Sims 123 films
Sean Fennessey 102 films
Sophia Ciminello 105 films
A genuinely fucked up psychosexual, nightmarish thriller that arguably laid the foundation for South Korean cinema’s class-conscious suspense, yet its messy gender politics feel more like a blueprint for the misogynistic erotic thrillers that followed. The film vilifies women as volatile threats, not just seducing but dismantling male life. Its laughably intense melodrama brings some levity, but it struggles to critique male entitlement; psychologizing its working-class female lead without an empathetic lens. Watched this after Bong Joon-ho framed it as a…
Truly astonishing blend of practical and digital. The amount of seamless composites in this is mind-blowing, it’s like half the shots. Shoutout production designers and VFX artists making less-elevated genre films feel so real.
Taught The Woman King as part of our Global Middle Ages/Early Modern unit. As a Social Studies teacher, I sometimes use historical films as counter-narratives—especially to highlight perspectives erased or co-opted by European historiography. The Woman King is a complicated artifact; while it takes historical and dramatic liberties, its portrayal of the Dahomey Kingdom challenges dominant narratives and encourages critical engagement with the politics of historiography. Rather than accepting colonial accounts at face value—like the overused Robert Norris’ 18th-century writings,…
Has some of the most clever jokes of the Toy Story franchise but easily the lightest story. The most made-for-TV screenplay of the bunch. Very odd this became the “cool” sequel to name as an idiosyncratic sequel-favorite—very, very fun tho!
The Housemaid is basically only male anxiety. Male anxiety about what would happen if women treated men like how men treat women (systemically not individually). Our main male character is technically in the position of power as a patriarch and a teacher, and when his power goes unchecked, his world is safe and normal. But as soon as a student is inappropriate to him, his grip on male power (specifically sexual dominance) disappears. He is the one being desired inappropriately.…
Koepp is a reliable and even venerable hack who always tips you to the origin of the pitch; Fassbender is playing a bespectacled secret-keeper with an icy affect and a blind spot where his wife is concerned who is literally named George. Not subtle! (Too bad Fassbender couldn't convert this part into a proper Smiley audition, as Macfadyen landed the role just this week.) I thought Koepp's collaboration with Soderbergh in Kimi yielded the best results of the late period,…
flawed film / fascinating crisis of the auteur
a movie about how simping for your wife will save the world
Our podcast The Extra Credits ranks our 20 favorite movies of 2023 here!