Favorite Films by Decade: the 2020s

By Bruce Dancis

     My assignment: Choose a movie from each decade of my life that has had the most personal impact, starting with the 1940s and ending in the 2020s.

     Today’s list on the 2020s is the last in our series, as we’ve already covered the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s and 2010s. These aren’t necessarily the “best” movies of the past half decade or the most innovative; they represent the films that resonated most with me.

     Some rules to keep these lists doable: 1) Only one film each decade by a particular director; 2) only English-language movies, due mainly to gaps in my knowledge about foreign-language films except for Italian neo-realism, French New Wave and the works of Akira Kurosawa, and 3) no TV miniseries. 

    I’m sure I’ve missed some great movies that should be on these lists. Yet this still leaves hundreds, if not thousands, of movies to choose from.

     Let the arguments continue.

The 2020s: 

“Oppenheimer” (2023): 

    Director/writer/producer Christopher Nolan’s carefully nuanced film about the development of the atomic bomb expertly explores the contradictions behind the noble effort to create a weapon to defeat the Nazis and bring a rapid end to World War II in the Pacific with the horrors such a creation unleashed on Japanese civilians in 1945 and the threat of its use in the future.

    The vast destruction caused by nuclear weapons has affected me, as it has for many, since I became an adult. 

    Back in the summer of 1967, I was arrested along with 11 other demonstrators for taking part in an anti-war sit-in on August 6, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The sit-in took place on a Hudson River pier in New York where a U.S. Navy destroyer just back from Vietnam was docked.

    In the mid-1970s, I was a grad student in American history at Stanford and my advisor, Bart Bernstein, was one of the country’s experts on the use and proliferation of the atomic bomb and later, of the hydrogen bomb. 

    Although Bernstein was a staunch critic of U.S. foreign policy and unflinchingly discussed the devastating impact of the bomb on human beings and the dangers of the subsequent nuclear arms race, he also recognized that the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably forestalled the deaths of perhaps a million Americans and Japanese had the U.S. carried through its plan to invade Japan. He taught me that it’s a complicated subject with few easy answers to the questions it raises. 

    In the 1980s, I took part in protests calling for a freeze on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

    The origin of the nuclear age is a subject that is handled with intelligence and care by Nolan and star Cillian Murphy, both of whom won Academy Awards for their work on the film. The movie won seven Oscars overall, including best picture, supporting actor (Robert Downey, Jr.), cinematography, original score and editing.

    “Oppenheimer” represents one of the rare occasions when a big-budget Hollywood movie took on a difficult, controversial and complex subject and presented it with serious thought and artistic skill. 

Also: 

“Barbie” (2023): A totally unexpected delight, Greta Gerwig’s feminist satire deliciously pokes fun at consumer culture, the roles usually assigned to women in our society, sexism and the men who are oblivious to it. 

“A Complete Unknown” (2024): Timothee Chalamet is a terrific Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s insightful examination of the young Dylan’s life in Greenwich Village’s early ‘60s folk scene through his controversial decision in 1965 to swap his topical protest songs for flights of poetic imagery and replace his solo acoustic guitar and harmonica with a loud and electric rock and blues band. 

“Judas and the Black Messiah” (2021): Director Shaka King tells the tragic story of charismatic Black Panther leader Fred Hampton (played by Daniel Kaluuya) and the efforts to silence his voice and his organization’s fight for black liberation.

“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2020): Set in a 1927 Chicago recording studio, the explosive performances of Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in director George C. Wolfe’s screen adaptation of August Wilson’s play almost burst off the screen. 

“Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised”) (2021): Directed by Questlove, the leader of the Philadelphia hip hop group The Roots, this musical documentary celebrated the long-neglected 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival which presented the music of Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly & the Family Stone, B.B. King, The Staple Singers, The Fifth Dimension, Hugh Masekela and other outstanding performers.

But, you may be wondering, how could he leave out “Da 5 Bloods,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Mank,” “Nomadland” and “The Boys Who Said No! Draft Resistance and the Vietnam War” (even though the latter would represent a shameless plug for a documentary film in which this writer appears)?

Bruce Dancis spent 18 years as the Arts & Entertainment Editor of the Sacramento Bee, after previously serving as an editor for the Daily Californian, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, M.I. (Musicians’ Industry) Magazine, Mother Jones and the Oakland Tribune. He also wrote about Film and TV History in a weekly column about DVDs that was syndicated by the McClatchy and Scripps Howard news services. Since 2003 he has co-chaired a summer film program at the Three Arrows Cooperative Society in Putnam Valley, NY. He is the author of “Resister: A Story of Protest and Prison during the Vietnam War” (2014, Cornell University Press). He lives in Cardiff, CA, and Putnam Valley, NY.