Great Movies of the 2020s

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Parasite (2019)
• Chapter 2 Tenet (2020)
• Chapter 3 Nomadland (2020)
• Chapter 4 Soul (2020)
• Chapter 5 Dune (2021)
• Chapter 6 The Power of the Dog (2021)
• Chapter 7 Drive My Car (2021)
• Chapter 8 Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
• Chapter 9 The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
• Chapter 10 Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
• Chapter 11 Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
• Chapter 12 Oppenheimer (2023)
• Chapter 13 Barbie (2023)
• Chapter 14 Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
• Chapter 15 The Zone of Interest (2023)
• Chapter 16 Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
• Chapter 17 Past Lives (2023)
• Chapter 18 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• Chapter 19 Godzilla Minus One (2023)
• Chapter 20 The Holdovers (2023)
• Chapter 21 Dune: Part Two (2024)
• Chapter 22 Anora (2024)
• Chapter 23 The Brutalist (2024)
• Chapter 24 Conclave (2024)
• Chapter 25 Emilia Pérez (2024)

The second decade of the twenty-first century began with a global pause, a collective breath that cinema both mirrored and resisted. While the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters and disrupted production pipelines, the movies that emerged from 2020 onward did not shrink from complexity. Instead, they redefined what a “great film” could be: intimate epics, philosophical animated adventures, genre-defying spectacles, and quiet human dramas all vied for attention in a fractured media landscape. This book examines twenty-five of those films, each chosen not only for critical or commercial success but for the way they captured the anxieties, breakthroughs, and unexpected beauty of a decade still in full motion. From Bong Joon-ho’s class-warfare masterpiece that bridged 2019 into 2020 to the bold experiments of 2024, these chapters offer a deep dive into the stories, people, and craft behind the decade’s most memorable cinema.

The promise of Great Movies of the 2020s is twofold: to celebrate the artistry that flourished during a period of unprecedented disruption, and to provide readers with a lasting record of why these particular films matter. Each chapter dedicates itself to a single movie, unpacking its history, cast, plot, reception, and the cultural context that shaped its creation and impact. You won’t find a dry recitation of facts here—instead, expect a nuanced exploration of how Parasite blurred boundaries between thriller and social commentary; how Nomadland turned the American road into a canvas for grief and resilience; how Everything Everywhere All at Once used a multiverse of hot-dog fingers and googly eyes to wrestle with existential emptiness. The scope ranges from blockbusters like Avatar: The Way of Water and Barbie to intricately observed dramas like Past Lives and The Zone of Interest, from monumental adaptations (Dune and its sequel) to wholly original visions (Anora, The Brutalist). Together, they map a decade that refused to be defined by a single genre or tone.

The tone of this book is analytical yet accessible, rigorous yet conversational. Film criticism can sometimes feel like a fortress of jargon, but the intention here is to invite everyone—from the casual viewer to the dedicated cinephile—to discover what makes these movies extraordinary. You’ll encounter discussions of cinematography, editing, and sound design, but always anchored in the human stories those technical choices serve. When we examine Soul, we’ll consider how Pixar turned jazz and the afterlife into a meditation on purpose; when we turn to Top Gun: Maverick, we’ll look beyond the fighter jets to understand how the film rebooted nostalgia for a new generation. The goal is not to crown a single “best” film, but to show how each work earns its place in a curated list that represents the variety and vitality of 2020s cinema.

For readers, this book offers value as both a guide and a companion. Perhaps you saw Oppenheimer in IMAX and want to revisit the layers of Christopher Nolan’s historical epic. Maybe you missed Drive My Car during its initial release and are curious why its quiet, three-hour journey through grief became an international phenomenon. Or you might be looking for recommendations that stretch your understanding of what a great movie can be—like Godzilla Minus One transforming a monster movie into a post-war elegy, or Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse pushing animation into new realms of visual language. Each chapter stands alone, so you can read in any order, but together they form a conversation about a decade that forced cinema to adapt, innovate, and sometimes just hold still.

The list itself reflects a deliberate balance of perspectives. It includes films from South Korea, Japan, France, and the United States; works directed by women and men; stories told in English, Korean, Japanese, French, German, and Spanish. The 2020s have been a time when the global film industry became more interconnected than ever, and the chapters here honor that diversity without losing sight of the universal emotions that draw us to movies. Whether it’s the intricate moral calculus of Anatomy of a Fall or the raw bombast of Tenet, each film in this collection forced audiences to pay attention—and to argue about what they saw.

So consider this introduction an invitation. Over the following pages, you’ll travel across time, from the pre-pandemic world of 2019 to the post-pandemic landscape of 2024, with all the disruptions, innovations, and strange joys in between. The twenty-five movies in Great Movies of the 2020s are more than a list; they are a chronicle of a decade that taught us, again, why we need cinema—to make sense of chaos, to find connection in solitude, and to see ourselves reflected in the flicker of a projector. Turn the page, and let the screen light up once more.

The Oscars ceremony on February 9, 2020, began like any other. The usual suspects filled the Dolby Theatre—celebrities in designer gowns, studio executives with rehearsed smiles, and a host who delivered the expected banter. But when Bong Joon-ho accepted the Best International Feature Film award for Parasite, something shifted. The South Korean director, speaking through translator Sharon Choi, thanked the audience for their attention to a film that, he joked, had “so many subtitles.” The room laughed, unaware that this was merely the prelude. By the night’s end, Parasite would win Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, becoming the first non-English-language film to claim Hollywood’s top prize. It was a watershed moment for cinema, but the story of how a black comedy about class stratification conquered the world began years earlier, in the busy streets of Seoul.

Bong Joon-ho was already a celebrated filmmaker before Parasite. His filmography included Memories of Murder (2003), a masterful crime thriller that announced his arrival; The Host (2006), a monster movie with political teeth; and Snowpiercer (2013), a dystopian train allegory that had tested his ability to work with international casts. But Parasite represented something new. In interviews, Bong described the project as originating from a simple question: “What would happen if two families, one rich and one poor, collided in a single house?” The idea gestated for years, with the director doodling floor plans and character sketches on napkins. He envisioned a story that would move like a thriller but feel like a tragedy, where every laugh would curdle into discomfort. The script took shape over several drafts, each one sharpening the contrasts between the Kims, a destitute family living in a semi-basement apartment, and the Parks, a wealthy clan inhabiting a architectural marvel designed by a fictional modernist.

The casting process reflected Bong’s meticulous approach. For the Kim family, he assembled actors who could embody poverty without sentimentality. Song Kang-ho, arguably South Korea’s most respected actor and a Bong regular since Memories of Murder, played Kim Ki-taek, the patriarch whose world-weariness masks a simmering resentment. Jang Hye-jin, a stage veteran, portrayed his wife Chung-sook, a former hammer thrower whose pragmatism borders on brutality. For the children, Choi Woo-shik took the role of Ki-woo, the college-bound son whose forged credentials set the plot in motion, while Park So-dam played Ki-jeong, the daughter whose artistic talents find an outlet in forgery. Against them stood the Parks: Cho Yeo-jeong as the gullible and anxious Yeon-gyo, Lee Sun-kyun as the stern but distracted Dong-ik, and child actors Jung Hyeon-jun and Kim Hyang-gi as their peculiar offspring. Every performer brought layers to characters that could have been caricatures, grounding the film’s social commentary in lived-in humanity.

Parasite’s plot unfolds with the precision of a Swiss watch. The Kim family, unemployed and folding pizza boxes in their cramped semi-basement, sees an opportunity when Ki-woo’s friend recommends him as an English tutor for the Park’s teenage daughter. Through a series of deceptions, each Kim infiltrates the Park household: Ki-woo becomes the tutor, Ki-jeong the art therapist, Ki-taek the chauffeur, and Chung-sook the housekeeper. They weave a web of lies, positioning themselves as unrelated professionals while slowly erasing the previous employees. The first half of the film plays like a caper, with the audience rooting for the Kims as they outwit the oblivious Parks. But Bong, ever the structuralist, planted landmines beneath the comedy. The Park family’s house, designed by a fictional architect named Namgoong Hyeonja, becomes a character itself—a glass-and-concrete monument where sunlight streams into the living room but shadows gather in the basement. That basement, it turns out, hides a secret that transforms the film from a social satire into a horror story about the spaces that capitalism leaves behind.

The production design of Parasite deserves its own chapter. Bong worked extensively with production designer Lee Ha-jun, who had collaborated with him on Snowpiercer and Okja. Together, they conceived the Park house as a physical manifestation of wealth: open, airy, and designed for visibility, with floor-to-ceiling windows that frame manicured gardens. The house was built entirely on a soundstage in Namyangju, allowing the crew to control every sightline and shadow. Contrast this with the Kims’ semi-basement, a cramped space where the window sits at street level, offering a view of passing feet and clouds of urine from drunks. Every frame of the film reinforces the spatial divide between its two families. The camera lingers on stairs—the Kims descend to their apartment, ascend to the Park house, then descend into the bunker-like basement that houses the film’s most shocking revelations. These vertical movements become a visual motif for the impossibility of social mobility, a literal and metaphorical ascent that always ends with a fall.

Bong’s direction in Parasite shows a filmmaker at the peak of his powers. He shifts tones with breathtaking speed, moving from farce to suspense to tragedy within a single scene. The famous “rain sequence” exemplifies this: what begins as a comedic effort by the Kims to hide their presence during a Park camping trip turns into a desperate scramble when a sudden storm floods their home. The camera follows the family through their submerged apartment, capturing the chaos with a mix of objective distance and intimate closeness. Bong uses the rain as both plot device and metaphor—it is the element that washes away pretension, exposing the fragility of the Kims’ upward mobility. Meanwhile, the Parks return from their trip, ecstatic about the weather that allowed them to camp indoors. The same rain that destroys one family rejuvenates another, and Bong cuts between these parallel experiences without commentary, trusting the audience to feel the injustice.

The theme of smell runs through Parasite like a bad odor that cannot be masked. The Park family repeatedly comments on a smell that emanates from their employees, a phrase they use to describe the Kims’ “class” rather than their hygiene. “Mr. Kim, you smell like radish,” says Park Dong-ik at one point, and later, more cruelly, “It’s the smell of old people.” This olfactory obsession reaches its climax in a tense scene where Ki-taek overhears his employer comparing his smell to that of a “cheap grilled meat” or a “very old radish.” The camera holds on Song Kang-ho’s face as shame transforms into rage, a silent performance that foreshadows the film’s violent conclusion. Bong has said that smell was the key element that allowed him to dramatize class conflict in a country where such divides are rarely spoken aloud. “In Korean society, we don’t talk about class,” he told interviewers. “It’s a taboo subject. But smell is something you can’t hide.”

Parasite premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019, where it received the Palme d’Or—the first Korean film to achieve this honor. The festival audience gave it a standing ovation that reportedly lasted over eight minutes. Critics were effusive. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it “a film of spectacular and riotous brilliance,” while David Ehrlich of IndieWire described it as “a masterclass in tonal control.” The film’s Cannes success set the stage for its unprecedented awards season run, which would eventually include four Academy Awards. But Parasite was more than a critical darling; it became a genuine commercial phenomenon. On a budget of approximately $11 million, it grossed over $260 million worldwide, with a significant portion coming from the United States, where audiences flocked to theaters despite having to read subtitles. The film’s distributor, NEON, smartly marketed it as a cultural event, emphasizing its genre-bending appeal. “You don’t need to know Korean to understand Parasite,” read one promotional tagline. “You just need to know what it feels like to be poor.”

The film’s release in the United States in October 2019 was carefully calibrated to build momentum. It opened in limited release, expanding gradually as word-of-mouth spread. By the time it reached multiplexes in November, Parasite had already established itself as a must-see. American audiences, accustomed to Hollywood’s treatment of class as an abstract concept, found the film’s specificity refreshing. Here was a story about poverty that did not romanticize the poor or demonize the rich, but instead showed how both groups were trapped in a system that pitted them against each other. The film’s ambiguous ending—which sees Ki-woo fantasizing about buying the house where he once worked—offered no easy resolution. Instead, it left audiences with an image of a young man dreaming of a future that might never come, a conclusion that felt both hopeful and devastating.

Bong Joon-ho’s direction during the awards season demonstrated the same playful intelligence that characterized his filmmaking. At the Golden Globes, where Parasite won Best Foreign Language Film, he noted: “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” The comment became a rallying cry for advocates of international cinema. At the Oscars, his acceptance speeches were models of grace and humor. He thanked his cast and crew, his wife, and the audience, all while acknowledging the surreal nature of the moment. The fact that he accepted several awards with translator Sharon Choi, who became an internet sensation herself, underscored the film’s central point: communication across cultural and linguistic divides is difficult, but possible, and worth the effort.

The critical consensus around Parasite has only solidified with time. On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 99% approval rating from critics, with the consensus stating: “An urgent, brilliantly layered look at social inequality, Parasite is a characteristically ambitious addition to Bong Joon-ho’s filmography.” Metacritic lists it at 96 out of 100, indicating “universal acclaim.” Academic analyses have examined the film through the lens of Marxist theory, spatial politics, and Korean modernity. Scholars have noted how the film’s staircase motif reflects the impossibility of social mobility, how the flooding sequence functions as a purge, and how the rock given to Ki-woo at the film’s opening symbolizes the weight of aspiration. Bong himself has resisted such readings, insisting that he simply wanted to make an entertaining movie. “I don’t think of myself as a political director,” he told The New York Times. “I just think of myself as a director who observes human behavior.”

Behind the scenes, Parasite’s production faced the usual challenges of ambitious filmmaking. The rain sequence required three weeks of shooting, with the cast performing in cold water for hours. The semi-basement apartment, authentic down to the fake cockroaches and moldy wallpaper, was built on a set that allowed the crew to control the quality of the flooding. The scene where the Kims fold pizza boxes was shot in a single long take, requiring precise coordination between the actors and the camera operator. Bong, known for his exacting storyboards, drew every shot before filming began, but he remained open to improvisation. Song Kang-ho, in particular, brought elements to his character that surprised even the director. The moment when Ki-taek takes the Park matriarch’s hand, feeling its softness, was improvised, adding an unexpected layer of intimacy and resentment to the scene.

Parasite’s influence on subsequent cinema has been immediate and far-reaching. It demonstrated that non-English-language films could achieve mainstream success in the United States, paving the way for other international productions. It also revived interest in Korean cinema, leading to increased distribution and exposure for directors like Park Chan-wook ( Oldboy ), Lee Chang-dong ( Burning ), and Hong Sang-soo ( The Woman Who Ran ). The film’s narrative structure—complete with a sharp genre turn at the midpoint—has been studied and imitated by screenwriters worldwide. Bong’s willingness to blend comedy, drama, and horror has been credited with expanding the boundaries of what a “prestige” film can look like. In an era of franchise filmmaking, Parasite proved that original stories still had the power to capture the global imagination.

The film’s exploration of class remains deeply relevant. In South Korea, where the gap between rich and poor has widened in recent decades, Parasite struck a nerve. The term “semi-basement” became a shorthand for precarious living conditions, and the film sparked debates about housing inequality and job insecurity. In the United States, the film’s release coincided with a presidential election year that saw economic issues take center stage. Audiences recognized the Kims’ desperation in their own lives—the scramble for work, the humiliation of service jobs, the fantasy of a better life just out of reach. Parasite did not offer solutions to these problems, but it provided a mirror for societies reluctant to examine their own contradictions.

Beyond its social commentary, Parasite endures as a technical achievement. The cinematography, by Hong Kyung-pyo, uses composition to tell the story without words. The camera glides through the Park house with the ease of its inhabitants, then jerks and stumbles in the Kims’ apartment, mirroring their precarious existence. The editing, by Yang Jin-mo, maintains a rhythm that keeps viewers off-balance, never letting them settle into a single mode of response. The score, by Jung Jae-il, shifts from classical motifs to electronic beats, underscoring the film’s tonal volatility. Every element of the production serves the story, creating a work that feels both meticulously planned and spontaneously alive.

The cast’s performances have been widely praised, but Song Kang-ho’s work stands out. His Ki-taek undergoes a transformation that is both subtle and devastating. Early in the film, he is a passive figure, resigned to his family’s circumstances. He observes the deceptions with a tired detachment, offering dry observations rather than active participation. But as the plot accelerates, his anger surfaces, culminating in a moment of violence that feels both shocking and inevitable. The final scenes, where Ki-taek disappears into the basement of the Park house, carry the weight of a man who has given up on the surface world. Song plays this descent with a quiet dignity that makes the character’s fate deeply affecting.

Parasite also functions as a critique of the very film industry that celebrated it. The Parks represent a class of cultural consumers who appreciate art without understanding the labor behind it. Yeon-gyo’s enthusiasm for abstract art, Dong-ik’s obsession with discipline—these traits mirror the attitudes of wealthy audiences who attend film festivals and buy expensive tickets without considering the economic realities of the people who make their experiences possible. The film’s win at the Oscars, in this light, becomes a kind of ironic triumph: a movie about the impossibility of social mobility achieving the highest recognition in an industry built on inequality.

As the decade progressed, Parasite’s reputation only grew. It appeared on numerous “best of the decade” lists, often at number one. It inspired a limited series adaptation directed by Bong for HBO Max, though the project remained in development. The film’s cultural reach extended beyond cinema: memes about “the smell of rich people” proliferated online, and the phrase “semi-basement” entered everyday vocabulary. In South Korea, the film’s success sparked a boom in film tourism, with visitors flocking to see the locations where it was shot. The actual semi-basement used for the Kims’ home became a minor tourist attraction, even as real residents of such apartments continued to face the economic pressures the film dramatized.

Parasite remains a film that rewards repeated viewing. Each watch reveals new details—the exact cost of the Parks’ furniture, the subtle glances between characters, the way the camera frames the Kims against the Park house’s sharp angles. The film’s central image, the glowing green rock that Ki-woo carries throughout, takes on different meanings with each viewing. Is it a symbol of ambition, of burden, or of something darker? Bong has refused to clarify, preferring to let the object remain ambiguous. This openness is part of the film’s enduring appeal: it does not tell the audience what to think but invites them to discover their own interpretations.