The 50 Greatest Movie Moments Of 2020

Every year, the /Film team gathers to do what all websites must: make a big list about the previous year in cinema. And while 2020 offered its fair share of numbing, painful roadblocks, the movies were as good as ever, even as we watched them at home instead of at a movie theater. So compiling a list of the 50 Greatest Movie Moments of 2020 was hard not because there weren't any great moments, but because there were so many.

Here are our favorite moments – shots, scenes, lines of dialogue, gags, asides, action scenes, you name it – from the movies of 2020.

Note: This list began with 191 nominated moments, which was cut down over the course of a lengthy discussion/debate. That conversation was recorded and published as a two-part podcast, which you can listen to here and here. So if you wonder why a certain moment isn't on this list...well, you'll find your answer by listening to those podcasts! Once we had the final 50 scenes, the staff voted on the order, resulting in the final list.

This list contains major spoilers for many movies. If you haven't seen a movie, this is your warning to skim past its entry.

Though there are plenty of movies about teens trying to escape the dangers of their crime-filled, inner-city neighborhoods, none of them pull the rug out from under you in the way that Critical Thinking does. The film gives you the expected set-up about a troubled kid who suddenly takes an interest in the school chess club after being sent there for detention. After swiping a chess board and pieces from class, this seems like the start of a new passion. But this kid bumps into the wrong person on the street, ends up in a tense confrontation, and is shot point blank in the head. It's a grim start to the story of a chess team who unexpectedly rises in the state rankings, and one that reminds you things can take a fatal turn for these kids at any minute. (Ethan Anderton)

Color Out of Space isn't subtle. Director Richard Stanley's (loose) adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's terrifying short story – about an unexplainable alien entity poisoning a small farm and the family that lives there – is often entertaining, frequently creepy, and always (always!) ready to fly off the rails. Case in point: Nicolas Cage's lead performance as the family patriarch, who is convinced that his alpaca farm is going to be his ticket to success ("They're the animal of the future," he insists). And because Stanley clearly had no desire to ever tell Cage to tone it down, the world's weirdest movie star goes full ham, ranting and raving about alpacas in increasingly deranged moments that feel ready to be ripped to YouTube and shared all over the internet by the actor's acolytes. It all climaxes with the alpacas themselves being corrupted into mutant monstrosities that Cage must kill with a shotgun, but that scene pales in comparison to Cage's gonzo performance up to that point. (Jacob Hall)

Roy O'Hara (Jude Law) is a liar. He's a hype man, one of those guys who uses his looks and natural charm to bulls*** his way through business deals and contracts, hanging onto his life by the barest of threads. His wife, Allison (Carrie Coon), can't stand it anymore, and after a fancy dinner at which Roy tells some particularly galling lies in order to boost his social standing, the facade crumbles. She dresses him down in front of his colleagues and leaves him stranded at the restaurant, going by herself to a club and drinking and dancing the night away. For that brief moment, all of her responsibilities and the weight of keeping her family afloat and united fade away, and she's finally able to have one blissful night to herself. On that dance floor, nothing else matters. (Ben Pearson)

Run is a film with many familiar pieces, but each of those pieces is utilized in razor-sharp fashion. About halfway through Aneesh Chaganty's wily thriller, Chloe (Kiera Allen) finds herself locked in her upstairs bedroom by her deranged mother. The only way out is to climb through the window and traverse the rooftop to another window...which is easier said than done, since Chloe uses a wheelchair. In a film filled with smart characters making intelligent choices in the face of dangerous, hostile situations, this is the clear highlight. We watch as Chloe thinks through her predicament and conjures a painful solution that tests her body and mind in equal measure. It's made all the more wild to witness because Allen uses a wheelchair in real life and truly sells the physicality of her escape. (Jacob Hall)

Aspiring TV producer Sylvie (Tessa Thompson) is engaged, and her fiancé is overseas fighting in the Korean War. But the chemistry she has back in New York City with jazz musician Robert (Nnamdi Ashomuga) is undeniable, and after a few smoldering interactions and a date to see Robert play the saxophone on stage, excitement builds as the two walk up to Sylvie's stoop at the end of the night. After some back and forth about what constitutes a "date," the dam finally breaks and the two lock lips for the first time, going back for more in a way that feels a little cutesy but also true to life. It's the type of swooning, overly romanticized moment you've seen a million times on film – but then you realize this is one of the few times you've ever seen Black characters in the lead roles in a period setting like this. (Ben Pearson)

Underwater is a nifty deep-sea monster movie that more people need to watch. Sure, it's not very original, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. The film deals with a group of people trapped at a research and drilling facility at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The facility is collapsing, so our characters have to escape, but that's easier said than done because there are sea monsters lurking everywhere. The monsters are human-sized and mostly glimpsed in quick, fleeting jump-scare moments. But it's all building towards a big reveal, and I mean big: the smaller monsters are being spawned by a gigantic, Cthulhu-like creature. The reveal of the monster is wonderfully staged – you get a true sense of how massive and scary it would be to suddenly spot this thing in the dark depths. (Chris Evangelista)

After spending 95% of its run time as a survival thriller about a family battling an encroaching wolf, Hunter Hunter takes a sharp turn into a full-blown revenge horror flick in its last few minutes. When family matriarch Anne (Camille Sullivan) realizes that her husband (Devon Sawa) has been killed by the man (Nick Stahl) she helped nurse back to health, and that the killer is now alone in a house with her young daughter, Anne races back to the cabin – only for her worst fears to be confirmed. With nothing else to live for, Anne gets the upper hand and calmly begins skinning him alive, using the survival techniques she learned earlier in the film. One of the last shots reveals the extent of her handiwork: a stomach-churning mess of nerves and tendons whose skin – and face – has been completely removed from his body, leaving only a roving eye. The movie goes from a slow burn to standing on the surface of the sun in the span of about 30 seconds, and results in some of the most upsetting cinematic imagery of the century so far. (Ben Pearson)

Telsa is not your standard biopic, and when I'm trying to sell people on this fact, I always bring up one thing: a scene where Nikola Tesla sings karaoke. Needless to say, the real Tesla didn't go out and perform karaoke, but in Michael Almereyda's unique portrait of the inventor, Ethan Hawke's Tesla does just that. He performs a rendition of the Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" in one of several wonderfully strange and anachronistic moments. It's so strange and wonderful that you can't help but smile – and it almost didn't happen. "That was a last-minute addition. And a reckless one, because we didn't have the rights to the song," Almereyda said. "And we had to fight and beg for it. We were toward the end of the shoot, and we both (Ethan and I) realized there may be a way to be a little more daring and a little bit more fun. And then I mentioned that sometimes shy or sensitive people reveal themselves when they are doing a karaoke song. So, I came up with the song idea and Ethan embraced it. It wasn't just that the lyrics had some resonance, but it was also an upbeat song, and the movie would kind of crystalize at this point." (Chris Evangelista)

After putting up with a water shortage, their town literally disappearing from maps, and a corrupt mayor, the people of the small town of Bacurau have had enough. When a small group of armed white people invade, murder a young child, and try to pick off the townsfolk one by one, the indigenous citizens defend themselves by using weapons from their town museum, literally utilizing the power of their collective past to rise up against forces who blithely underestimated them. This climactic moment is a bloody but apt metaphor for the power of community, as well as a warning to treasonous politicians that feels more vital than ever in light of recent events in the U.S. (Ben Pearson)

Flight was the gift that Diana (Gal Gadot) most equated with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), her long-lost love miraculously returned to her in Wonder Woman 1984, and one that she most envied of him, she confesses during their flight to Cairo. "I'll never understand it," Diana confesses. "It's so easy, really," Steve replies, thoughtfully. "It's wind and air and knowing how to ride it, how to catch it. How to join with it." When Diana must lose Steve a second time in order to regain her powers from the Dreamstone, she lassoes a passing jet plane (another very cool moment) and there among the clouds, she finds that Steve's advice is true: she can fly. But it's a bittersweet newfound ability, as Diana revels in her ability to surf through the air while mourning the final "gift" that Steve has left her with. It's a scene that feels true to the Richard Donner-level awe that Wonder Woman 1984 emulates, especially in Diana's final Superman-like pose as she flies toward her final battle. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

The Vast of Night is about a small-time radio DJ and a switchboard operator who slowly realize that something's happening in the skies above their New Mexico town. Part of that realization comes through a lengthy phone call from a local listener named Billy (Bruce Davis), who calls into the show and drops some truth bombs about his time in the military which helps fill in some of the gaps of the film's central mystery. This phone call is one of the movie's most mesmerizing moments, with the characters and the audience hanging on Billy's every word as he slowly and deliberately describes his experience covering up something...otherworldly. Co-writer/director Andrew Patterson knows it's effective, too: he's so confident that he cuts to black a couple of times, letting Billy's voice be the only thing we hear. Thanks to Davis's dynamite performance and the excellent script, that's more than enough to keep us hooked. (Ben Pearson)

It was a forgone conclusion that plenty of shocking moments would come out of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, but no one was expecting it to go this far. After Borat's teenage daughter Tutar (adult actress Maria Bakalova) has managed to quickly spark a career as a right-wing news pundit looking like any of the blonde anchors you see on Fox News everyday, she lands an interview with former New York City mayor and Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani. What starts as a normal interview in a hotel suite turns into a flirtatious affair, and in the aftermath of the interview, Giuliani appears to be preparing himself to engage in some kind of sexual congress with this young woman, reaching down into his pants after she makes him a drink and takes off his microphone. This is the person legally representing the President of the United States, and half the country is totally cool with these events. It's repulsive and shameful, but it's undoubtedly one of the biggest movie moments of the year. (Ethan Anderton)

In Lee Isaac Chung's Minari, a Korean-American family moves to Arkansas, hoping for a better life. The family patriarch, Jacob (Steven Yeun) starts growing vegetables with the intent of selling them locally, but his wife Monica (Han Ye-ri) struggles with their new situation. She doesn't like living in a trailer, and she's grown concerned that all Jacob cares about his the farm, not his family. Things come to a head with a tense series of events that leads Monica to decide she needs to take the kids and leave Jacob, because he seemingly will always choose his dreams of the farm over them. But through a mishap, the barn where much of the picked and packed produce has been stored catches fire, threatening to have the family's livelihood go up in smoke. And the married couple run into the fire. The scene is perilous, with flames licking every corner of the frame and smoke making it nearly impossible to see what's going on. And despite their arguments, and their near-separation, Jacob and Monica save each other, with Monica trying to help save the things she believes her husband holds dear, and Jacob abandoning the produce in order to save Monica. The pair have been through a trial by fire, and it's only fitting that when the smoke has cleared, they're together again, out searching for water to start over.  (Chris Evangelista)

Promising Young Woman follows Carey Mulligan as Cassie, who works at a coffee shop by day but spends her evening striking fear into the hearts of "nice guys" who try to take advantage of incapacitated women out at the bar. She's driven by the lingering trauma of one of her best friends being raped in college and eventually killing herself, but she starts to snap out of her string of vengeance when she meets a seemingly nice guy in Ryan (Bo Burnham), a former classmate from her medical school days who asks her out. After going out one some dates and falling for Ryan, an incriminating tape of her late best friend's sexual assault reveals Ryan was actually present during this heinous deed. Though not entirely unexpected, it's a powerful gut punch that knocks the wind out of you just the same, and it's the ultimate betrayal that fuels the surprising conclusion of the movie. (Ethan Anderton)

Nomadland follows Frances McDormand as a widower from a small town struck by economic downturn who takes to a life out on the road, traveling from place-to-place in a van that has become her home, taking seasonal jobs, and spending her time with fellow nomads around bonfires. During one of these community gatherings, they pay tribute to one of their own who has passed away. While sitting around a fire, they share fond memories and thoughts about their departed friend, but one of the real-life nomads cast in the film chooses not to say goodbye. Instead, he merely says, "I'll see you down the road," knowing that one day he'll be reunited with his friend in the afterlife. It's a simple sentiment, but it's genuinely touching and heartbreaking, and it's even more meaningful knowing it's coming from this real nomad instead of just another actor. (Ethan Anderton)

The Painter and the Thief is a documentary blessed with one incredible moment after another, the kind of scenes that make you believe a cosmic force must have intervened to make sure cameras were present. And while the film astonishes until the final frame, it lets you know what you're in for within the first 20 minutes. Shortly after artist Barbora Kysilkova connects with troubled criminal Karl Bertil-Nordland, who literally stole two of her paintings off the wall of a gallery, she decides to make him her new muse. So Barbora paints him. And she invites him over to reveal the finished work. And it's gorgeous, a stunning portrait of Karl from someone who has chosen to look past his exterior and into his soul. Karl breaks down, totally overcome by not just the beauty of the work, but by the mere fact that someone has taken an interest in him, this seemingly broken and unfixable man. It's the beginning of a long, strange relationship for these two and a promise of what's to come: this will be raw and this will hurt, but you dare not look away. (Jacob Hall)

Every song in Hamilton is a banger, but there's something very special about "Satisified" as performed by Renée Elise Goldsberry. Playing Angelica Schuyler, sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton, Goldsberry belts out a song that requires her to speed through 5½-minutes of raw emotion as Angelica sings about missing her chance at true love with the founding father. Disney's filmed version of Hamilton is wildly entertaining, but let's be real: as a film, it's lacking. Save for some close-ups, the movie is a filmed version of the stage play, and it doesn't get very creative when it comes to capturing it all. In fact, the camera mostly just hangs back and lets the show unfold. And that's fine. But when it comes to "Satisfied," one of the most difficult numbers in the show, things change. Because not only are we watching this scene, we're also watching the actors on stage recreate the actions of the previous number, "Helpless." "Satisfied" goes back to show us events that happened during that previous song, which allows the filmmaking to get creative, complete with overhead shots, close-ups, and a constant sense of movement. But it's Goldberry's work that makes the entire scene a show-stopper. (Chris Evangelista)

There's a lot to love about Freaky, the body-swap horror-comedy that's also the best slasher movie since Scream. But what I loved most about the film is how sweet and sincere it is. The film follows Millie (Kathryn Newton), a shy high school girl who is targeted by a serial killer, played by Vince Vaughn. As movie-fate would have it, the two end up swapping bodies – Newton's character ends up inhabiting Vaughn's body, while Vaughn's character is now walking around with Millie. Through a series of events, Millie – now in Vince Vaughn form – ropes her friends into helping her get her body back. Also along to help is Booker (Uriah Shelton), the nice guy Millie has a crush on. Late in the film, Booker and Millie (again, in Vince Vaughn form) end up in the back seat of a car, confessing their feelings for each other. On the surface, this scene could be played for cheap laughs: seeing Vince Vaughn flirting with a high school guy. But even though there is humor in the scene, the script, by Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon, plays the scene for genuine emotion. It's cute, and charming, and, yes, sweet, and Vaughn and Shelton are both pitch-perfect in how they handle it. (Chris Evangelista)

There's something very wrong with Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial's (Wunmi Mosaku) new tenement house. The South Sudan refugees find themselves plagued by ghosts of Nyagak, their daughter who they lost in the treacherous crossing of the English channel, as well as a mysterious man who escapes into the walls. But it's not actually the house that is haunted, but them, as Rial realizes they're stalked by an apeth or "night witch" — a being that stalks thieves until they repay their debt. Rial insists that the only way to escape this curse is to return home, but Bol, in a fit of stubborn pride, summons the apeth himself by candelight. But Bol gets more than he bargained for, getting transported to a vision of a tragic night and forced by skeletal arms to watch as the apeth brings a dripping Nyagak out of the water and offers Bol a life-or-death deal. It's a striking image — a terrified Bol surrounded by corpses lying in the shallow body of water — and one that makes His House one of the most visually satisfying horror movies of last year. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams makes for an outstanding comedic and musical duo in Netflix's comedy Eurovision Song Contest: A Song of Ice and Fire. As Icelandic singers Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdóttir, Ferrell and McAdams are vying to represent Iceland in Europe's massive, real-life singing contest. Unfortunately, they're not quite good enough. But they suddenly get the opportunity of a lifetime when the winning Icelandic candidate and the rest of the country's most talented singers perish in a freak yacht explosion. That moment is funny in itself, but it's Rachel McAdams who makes this moment one of the funniest events of the year when she laments that the elves that she prayed to for luck have gone too far with this incident. It has the same energy as McAdams' moment in Game Night where she celebrates and immediately mourns the death of a henchman who just tried to kill her before getting sucked into a plane engine, and we're still laughing about both of these gags. (Ethan Anderton)

Let's give some serious props to Tenet, whose fractured narrative structure allows us to treat two scenes separated by an hour of screen time as a single sequence for the purpose of this list. Nothing is more Tenet-y than that. Early in the film, the Protagonist (John David Washington) and Neil (Robert Pattinson) plan a heist at a heavily-guarded freeport, hoping to learn about the time-inverting conspiracy to destroy the world. Their slick operation (which includes crashing an empty airplane into an empty building) goes smoothly...until they encounter resistance in the form of inverted, masked men, who are moving backwards through time as they move forward. Late in the film, both of our heroes must travel backwards through time themselves, returning to the scene of the heist and becoming the masked men they encountered while moving forward in time. It's an audacious action scene, one that only makes complete sense once it's told twice, from different perspectives, and from different trajectories in time itself. It's Tenet in a nutshell: ambitious, mind-bending, a little silly, and just plain satisfying to watch come together if you've given yourself over to Christopher Nolan's stylish lunacy. (Jacob Hall)

Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods follows a group of former Vietnam War buddies who return to Vietnam in search of the remains of their dead commander – and some gold. They're a group of men haunted by their past, and none seem more haunted than Paul, played by Delroy Lindo. Violent, volatile, and suffering from PTSD, Paul is a damaged man, prone to outbursts against his friends and his son. He dons a MAGA hat, much to the chagrin of those around him, and as Da 5 Bloods progresses, he grows more and more unhinged. It all builds towards a moment when Paul, separated from the others, staggers through the jungle – and begins talking. Paul's fractured mindset makes us think he's just rambling incoherently to himself at first, but that changes fast as Lindo looks directly into the camera as he continues a monologue. His eyes are fixed on us as he speaks, sweat soaking his face. He reveals he's dying of cancer – "You made me malignant," he practically spits. He blames Agent Orange – a tactical herbicide used during the war – for his terminal illness, and it's impossible to not draw a connection between that and Paul's embracing of the MAGA philosophy (if you want to call it that). Agent Orange is Lee's mocking pet name for Donald Trump – it even comes up in the film – and to hear Paul blame "Agent Orange" for something that's eating him up inside is apt. But he refuses to give in. He refuses to die. "I will choose when, and how, I die," he tells us. It's haunting, and Lindo's performance burns up the screen as we're forced to make eye contact with him the entire time. Lindo is an actor who has been delivering phenomenal work for years, but his performance in this film – and this scene in particular – is seismic. You can feel the ground shift beneath you as you watch.  (Chris Evangelista)

For much of Sound of Metal, Ruben (Riz Ahmed), a heavy metal musician and former addict who suddenly finds himself deaf, cannot bear silence. He rages against it, rebels against it, feels the need to compulsively fill it up with anything. We see from the beginning of Darius Marder's stunning directorial debut that Ruben is a man of intense physicality, whether it be waking up early every morning to squeeze in a quick workout routine in his and his girlfriend Lou's (Olivia Cookie) shabby RV while making breakfast, or attempting to do busywork while he's living at the community for deaf recovering addicts. The community's founder, Joe (Paul Raci), notices this restlessness in Ruben and attempts to help him learn to embrace the silence by allowing Ruben a room to sit every morning and get all of his anger out. But even as Ruben learns to be deaf and even becomes a beloved member of the deaf community, his restlessness never wanes but is focused elsewhere — he's still trying to keep busy, still working toward something. And he never does sit quietly in that room. But after Ruben has his cochlear implant surgery and has reunited with Lou, he finds that his dream of regaining his hearing is only a discordant echo of what it used to be. He leaves Lou's house to wander the streets of Paris, followed by the barrage of tinny street sounds all around him. It is not until that final scene when Ruben sits down on a bench and disconnects the implants, the loud world falling under a soft, pillowy quiet, does he learn to finally love the silence. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

This is the scene that takes The Invisible Man from a very good movie to a great one. Everything up to this point in Leigh Whannell's brilliant #MeToo horror movie works like gangbusters, but it's this scene in particular that solidifies the amazing work Whannell is doing. The set-up: Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) is being tormented by her boyfriend – a scientist who has found a way to turn himself invisible. Everyone else thinks the man is dead, and Cecilia's instance that he's not is alienating everyone around her. Even Cecilia's own family turns against her – a move that's exacerbated when the Invisible Man himself hacks Cecilia's email and sends her sister Emily (Harriet Dyer) a nasty letter. Later, after finding proof that she's right, Cecilia begs her sister to meet her somewhere so she can tell her what's really going on. Emily reluctantly agrees, and she and Cecilia meet up at a posh restaurant. Right away, Whannell is disarming us – the restaurant is crowded and well-lit, and it's hard to imagine anything bad happening here. Whannell continues to disarm us by introducing a comic relief water, the type who can't shut up about the specials. Our guard is lowered. We're amused by the waiter, and by Emily's droll dismissal of him. And we're just waiting for the moment where Cecilia finally tells Emily what's going on. But she never gets the chance. We see Emily react to something offscreen, a puzzled look on her face – and then Whannell cuts to another angle where we see a knife floating in mid-air. In one quick swoosh, the knife slices across Emily's throat, killing her in the process. It's shocking as hell and perfectly constructed – we've been so distracted by everything else going on in the scene that we're completely unprepared. Just like Emily and Cecilia. (Chris Evangelista)

In Pixar's Soul, Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) is a middle school band teacher who wants nothing more than to be professional jazz musician. When he finally gets the opportunity he's been waiting for with a famed touring jazz group – after going through The Great Beyond and The Great Before to get there – he comes away not being nearly as satisfied as he thought he'd be. Joe realizes that he's driven the young soul 22 in the wrong direction by making her think that the spark she needs to complete her personality should be something that gives her life purpose. This helps Joe to realize that just because he didn't achieve his dreams doesn't mean he can't have a fulfilling life. Joe might love jazz with a fierce passion, but it might have also kept him from truly living. By the end of the movie, Joe doesn't know what direction his life will take, but he knows that it will be one worth living. Once this nightmare of a pandemic is over, that's exactly what we all should be striving for everyday. (Ethan Anderton)