The 50 best films of 2020 in the UK: 50-41
50 Boys State
This eye-opening film looks at a role-play event to teach kids how politics works, organised by the American Legion. Here the Texas version is scrutinised, with debates and power struggles reaching a crescendo in a mock election. Read the full review.
49 White Riot
Document a r y about the groundbreaking Rock Against Racism movement that helped to stem the rising tide of far-right support in 1970s Britain, with its benefit gigs featuring the likes of the Clash and the Tom Robinson Band. Read the full review.
48 Only the Animals
This is an ingenious, witty thriller from the French director Dominik Moll (Harry, He’s Here to Help), one involving interconnected stories of six disparate people and stretching from the south of France to Ivory Coast. Read the full review.
47
The County
There’s a harsh Icelandic backdrop to this tough corruption drama: Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir plays Inga, a farmer who takes on the mafia who run the local co-op, trying to circumvent the monopoly by selling produce on the internet. Read the full review.
46 The Perfect Candidate
The fourth feature by Wadjda director Haifaa al-Mansour sees the Saudi film-maker return home for a politically inflected drama that interrogates the country’s supposed new liberalism, following a female doctor’s attempt to run for office after she is denied a permit to travel abroad. Read the full review.
45 Bacurau
A Brazilian horror-western with an exceptionally disquieting tone, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. A woman returns to a remote outback town – the fictional settlement of Bacurau – which appears to have fallen off the map, as a violent group of foreigners assemble nearby.
Read the full review.
44 Shirley
Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss stars as celebrated horror writer Shirley Jackson ( best known for The Lottery) in a fictionalised biopic that speculates on what happens when a younger couple interrupts her tepid domestic life with husband Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg). Read the full review.
43 Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Individual films don’t often change the course of history, but by humiliating Donald Trump acolyte Rudy Giuliani, this follow-up to Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 hit comedy may have done just that. This time around, the Kazakhstani journalist tries to offload his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova). Read the full review.
42 The Invisible Man
An enterprising adaptation of the HG Wells classic, reconfigured for the #MeToo era by horror specialists Blumhouse. Elisabeth Moss is a woman who believes she is being stalked by her controlling boyfriend, who was thought to have killed himself. Read the full review.
41 Saint Frances
Nicely observed US indie written by and starring Kelly O’Sullivan, who plays a woman in her mid-30s whose unexpected pregnancy coincides with her getting a job as a nanny for a kid called Frances (Ramona Edith Williams). Read the full review.
•Placings were calculated by a weighted average score from critics’ votes. Voters are: Peter Bradshaw, Cath Clarke, Ellen E Jones, Leslie Felperin, Phil Hoad, Mike McCahill, Benjamin Lee, Catherine Shoard, Andrew Pulver, Steve Rose