A recent went looking for the essential movies of the 2020s, so far. It's a good question, and it doesn't feel weird to start looking now, given that this decade—which kicked off with Covid quarantines and progressed into multiple global wars and one of the most stressful Presidential campaigns pretty much ever—has been going for about 30 years at this point. So hey! Let's drown our high cortisol levels in some movie snacks, and take a look at some of the key movies of the almost half-decade.
Along the way, we might even uncover some themes that speak to our troubled, and generally annoying, times. If the title doesn't sum up the decade so far, I'm not sure what would. One of the darkest satires of recent memory, Ruben Östlund's surprising Oscar frontrunner feels like at least three movies in one, with narratives that take sharp right turns at unexpected moments, taking potshots at greed and skewering capitalism all the way—with a memorable central section onboard a luxury cruise ship divided between the haves (passengers) and have-nots (the crew) that climaxes in literal explosions of vomit and shit.
Brilliant and hilarious, if you've got the stomach for it. , Vera Drew's highly autobiographical film feels like at least two miracles at once: first, that the painstakingly crafted low-budget satire ever got made, and second, that it was ever released. Drew draws from clear love of DC Comics characters to tell her own story, after a fashion, using the Batman villain as .