COVID changed a lot, and it’s not relevant right now to cover just how much it changed or altered when it came to how people lived their lives beyond mentioning what it did for the film industry. Go elsewhere if you want more information or commentary about other things, but for the first couple of years of the 2020s, cinemas definitely felt a little emptier than usual, thanks to movies getting delayed and more people staying home.
What follows is a look at some of the best movies released since the pandemic… though that’s tricky and needs defining, since some experts believe the pandemic is ongoing, and some don’t. But the public health emergency of international concern was deemed over on 5 May 2023, so that’s the date being used for the pandemic’s “end,” for present purposes. And what follows are some of the best – and closest to perfect – movies released since that particular date.
10
‘Perfect Days’ (2023)
Perfect Days is basically perfect, so they picked a good title for it. The film probably doesn’t sound perfect, though, if you give someone a fairly broad overview of what actually happens… or, more accurately, what doesn’t happen. It’s about a man who cleans toilets for a living, and largely goes about his life on his own, albeit sometimes connecting with people he encounters through his various routines.
And it’s weirdly captivating, as a character-focused drama, feeling life-affirming and emotionally complex in ways that are better just experienced, rather than read about. There’s very little else out there like Perfect Days, and it feels likely that it’ll remain compelling and probably even important as the years and decades go on, with all that time unlikely to ever wear down the film itself.
9
‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024)
In 2021, Dune was released without Dune: Part Two being a sure thing, which is kind of wild to think about, considering how there’s no real attempt to have any finality at the start of that story. And sure, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ends with so much left hanging, but that trilogy was always going to be a trilogy, with the three films shot at once, and the same was not done for Dune.
Anyway, thankfully, we live in the universe where Dune (2021) made enough money and Dune: Part Two got greenlit, and then it also ended up being an even more impressive epic than the first. It had the juicier material to work with, when looking at the original novel, and you get a conclusion of sorts here while there is room left for a third Dune movie to go. At the time of writing, it’s a satisfying duology, but hopefully, in time, it’ll become a great trilogy.
8
‘Robot Dreams’ (2023)
If you’re after a great animated movie released since the pandemic started winding down, they don’t get a whole lot better than Robot Dreams. This one takes place in an alternative New York City where no one really talks, but they don’t need to, because the anthropomorphic animals that populate it seem to get by without conversing with each other, and Robot Dreams, the film, also conveys its narrative without the viewer ever feeling like words are necessary.
While Robot Dreams is family-friendly, it’s also surprisingly hard-hitting on an emotional front, and it proves effortlessly moving and bittersweet.
There’s a friendship (or something more) between a lonely dog and his robot here, and then things get complicated when they’re separated one day, and both have to spend a long time trying to find the other. While Robot Dreams is family-friendly, it’s also surprisingly hard-hitting on an emotional front, and it proves effortlessly moving and bittersweet, in the end.
7
‘One Battle After Another’ (2025)
Paul Thomas Anderson has made plenty of dramas before, and some dark comedies, too, but One Battle After Another saw him embracing the action/thriller genres to a greater extent than ever before, all the while making what might well be his funniest movie to date. It’s very much of its time, too, unpacking politics and conflict related to political/social/cultural issues in a way that feels, for better or worse, very 2020s in nature.
But it has fun doing all that, and so it’s a big, ambitious movie with lots that’s funny, and also with lots to say on a thematic/commentary front. One Battle After Another somehow coalesces into something coherent, exciting, and fresh, and though it probably all seems a bit unwieldy and messy on paper, the execution here does genuinely make it feel like something very special.
6
‘Godzilla Minus One’ (2023)
Godzilla, as a series, still has legs about 70 years on from the original, and Godzilla Minus One demonstrates that incredibly well. There have been some fun American Godzilla movies in recent years for sure, but Godzilla Minus One is probably the best Godzilla movie made since the early 2000s (and even then, it’s understandable that quite a few people will single it out as the best 21st-century film in the series so far).
Narratively, Godzilla Minus One makes the simple but striking decision to travel back in time a little, with the titular monster attacking Japan right after the end of World War II, which makes the battle to defeat him feel extra difficult and intense. It’s a very entertaining and easy-to-appreciate film, and, in the end, if the 1954 film feels too old for you personally, as a gateway movie into appreciating the Japanese Godzilla films, then Godzilla Minus One is a similarly strong/striking entry point.
5
‘The Substance’ (2024)
The Substance is one of the more daring horror films in recent memory, and is probably one of the best of the 21st century so far, too. It’s got a simple body horror sort of premise that it unpacks in unflinching detail across a rather lengthy runtime, but it keeps things fast-paced and never really boring, with the whole narrative concerning certain consequences that come about when an aging celebrity tries a risky procedure to become young again.
Even if one tried to explain where this film eventually goes, the person being explained to probably wouldn’t believe the explainer anyway. And it wouldn’t be as thrilling if you did know, since the ride The Substance provides is so bold and distinctive. It feels like it could be a bit of a modern classic, albeit one that, for now, is definitely an acquired taste (it could be more approachable decades from now, in the same manner that horror films from, say, the 1930s or 1940s aren’t particularly frightening anymore, even if you’re someone who scares easily. BOO! Ha, got you).
4
‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)
While Godzilla Minus One looks at anxieties around nuclear technology and weapons with a sci-fi/horror sort of approach, Oppenheimer looks at comparable themes, but as a biographical movie. It’s a good deal heavier and more grounded, as a result, with time spent on the lead-up to World War II, from the perspective of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and then time following the use of nuclear weapons at the end of that conflict, but not spending time depicting the war itself.
Also, it’s all jumbled up chronologically, in that Christopher Nolan kind of way, but he makes it work here, and Oppenheimer is endlessly fascinating on a structural front. It’s one of the best war movies that’s about war without necessarily showing war itself, but it doesn’t let you off easy, since those fears surrounding nuclear weapons, and the idea of another war happening at some point that involves the use of such weapons? Such anxieties shine through here louder and clearer than you might want them to.
3
‘Better Man’ (2024)
You don’t have to be a fan of Robbie Williams and his music to appreciate Better Man, which could well be the most underrated and overlooked movie of the 2020s so far. It’s a biographical film about Williams, sure, and the structure and some of the beats it hits here will be familiar if you’ve seen your fair share of biopics before, but there is a lot more to Better Man than the basics.
Williams is depicted as a chimpanzee throughout, for example. Also, Better Man works as a musical, albeit a very intense one. And, further, it eventually goes to some darker territory than you might expect from a biopic about a musician, and it’s that weirdly brutal honesty about the life story being told here that makes it resonate emotionally more than you might expect. It’s weird, technically impressive, and cleanly told on a storytelling front while also taking risks and doing things in its own way, with the film ultimately impressing and working surprisingly well.
2
‘Sinners’ (2025)
2025 was a year when the best movie was probably one belonging to the horror genre, and said movie was Sinners. Actually, it’s more than just a horror film, since it’s also a movie about music, it’s got a historical setting, it starts out like something of a crime/drama film, and then it gets pretty action-packed and thrilling by the time the final act rolls around.
Sinners just cycles through genres quite effortlessly, and even if all the elements here might be ones you’ve seen before, in some capacity, it’s the way they’re all blended that makes Sinners a winner overall. It does so much within the one movie that it makes most other non-epic-length movies feel unsatisfying or even ungenerous in comparison (and even then, there’s more crammed into 138 minutes here than some movies one or two hours longer manage to cover).
1
‘All of Us Strangers’ (2023)
There’s always going to be a risk of over-hyping a movie like All of Us Strangers, but if something makes you want to push things into potentially hyperbolic territory, maybe that’s also a good sign. It’s a romantic drama of sorts, but there’s also a fantastical angle here that’s surprising and understated, not to mention quite mysterious for most of the film’s duration, which does make summarizing the whole thing without saying too much feel hard.
It’s worth sitting with and giving your time to. Maybe that’s the most important thing. All of Us Strangers is beyond rewarding, and if you’re not too devastated emotionally after one watch, it does benefit immensely from being revisited. Without a doubt, it’s one of the best-crafted movies of the past decade or two, and there’s a good chance it’ll be considered a genuine classic one day, too.
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