Movie of the Week
Showmax suggests 2020’s best movies
With the strong catalogue Showmax had in 2020, this list is filled with great movies to try out.
US | Best horror movie (shared)
Kenyan Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther, 12 Years A Slave)) earned a 2020 Screen Actors’ Guild Award Best Actress nomination as Adelaide Wilson, a woman returning to her beachside childhood home with her husband, Gabe (Black Panther’s Winston Duke), and their two children. But their idyllic summer getaway turns to chaos when their doppelgängers begin to terrorise them.
Directed by Jordan Peele, Us has now won 70 awards and has a 93% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, who listed it at number 1 on their list of the best-reviewed horror movies of all time and number 2 behind Black Panther on their list of The 100 Best Black Movies Of The 21st Century. As The Wall Street Journal says, “It’s compulsory seeing for everyone who loves the horror genre, the movie medium and the notion of saying sage things about contemporary life without straying from entertainment’s twisty path.”
“I was drawn to this idea that we are our own worst enemy,” says Peele. “That’s something we all know intrinsically, but it’s a truth we tend to bury. We blame the outsider; we blame ‘the other.’ In this movie, the monster has our faces.”
Special mentions:
- Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, winner of Best Creature FX at the 2020 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
- 2020 Fangoria Chainsaw Awards nominees Child’s Play, Crawl, Pet Sematary, and The Prodigy
- Ma, with Octavia Spencer, nominated as 2020’s Campy Film of the Year by GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics
ROCKETMAN | Best musical movie
Rocketman, the fantastical musical biopic on Sir Elton John, scooped the 2020 Oscar for Best Original Song for I’m Gonna Love Me Again, co-written by Elton and his long-time lyricist Bernie Taupin.
Rock biopic meets musical fantasy in this fabulous rollercoaster of a movie about a little boy called Reginald Kenneth Dwight, who grew up to be one of the greatest musical icons of all time. It’s a celebration of the music, the dreams, and the larger-than-life persona that’s made Elton a legend. But it’s also the story of his struggle with addiction, and of his friendship with Bernie, which helped him through.
As Elton, Taron Egerton won the 2020 Golden Globe and was nominated for BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, People’s Choice and Teen Choice awards. The movie also stars BAFTA winner Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot, Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool), Golden Globe winner Richard Madden (Bodyguard, Game of Thrones), Golden Globe nominee Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World) and BAFTA winner Gemma Jones (Bridget Jones’ Diary). Rocketman has an 89% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics consensus says, “It’s going to be a long, long time before a rock biopic manages to capture the highs and lows of an artist’s life like Rocketman.”
Special mention:
- Yesterday, about an alternate reality where only one man can remember The Beatles, nominated in 2020 for Best Foreign Film by the Awards of the Japanese Academy and the Goya Award for Best European Film
BOMBSHELL | Best ripped-from-the-headlines movie
Based on a true story, this blockbuster drama is led by Oscar winners Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman with Oscar nominee Margot Robbie, all three of whom, Rolling Stone says, “come out blazing in this tale of how the women of Fox News brought down a predatory CEO.”
Penned by the Oscar-winning co-writer of The Big Short, Charles Randolph, and directed by four-time Emmy winner Jay Roach (Trumbo), in 2020 Bombshell won the Oscar and the BAFTA for Best Makeup, with Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Lead Actress (Theron) and Best Supporting Actress (Robbie). The supporting cast includes Oscar winner Allison Janney (Bad Education, The Help) and Emmy winner Kate McKinnon (Yesterday, Saturday Night Live), with Oscar nominee John Lithgow (Perry Mason, The Crown) as Roger Ailes.
Los Angeles Times calls it “A ferociously entertaining dramatization of how an unlikely group of women exposed and deposed media titan Roger Ailes. As harrowing as it is triumphant in its depiction of the way it all came to pass.”
Click below to read on about the remaining top 6 movies recommended by Showmax.
