#The 20 Best Shots of 2020

This article is part of our 2020 Rewind. Follow along as we explore the best and most interesting movies, shows, performances, and more released in this very strange year. In this entry, we explore the best frames and shots of 2020.

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Chopping the year into twenty Perfect Shots is a stressful endeavor and leaves the editor agitated. Despite what some may say, 2020 was a damn fine time at the movies and on TV. Hundreds of films and shows saw release, and thousands of shots feel worthy of attention. What you will find below is a collection of frames and shots in an order I’m happy with today. Ask me tomorrow, and I’ll feel altogether different.

Following the mold from last year, we’re looking to celebrate beyond the typical credits of director and cinematographer. Many creative minds work to realize these images, and we tried to highlight the responsible departments involved with each selection. The concept of cinema continues to morph as both television and features deliver bewitching artistry. Rather than have the two mediums fight it out, we chose to hold both deliver systems on equal footing.

We hope that your favorite shots made the list, and if they didn’t, you know how to reach us: tweet @OnePerfectShot.

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20. Tenet

• Cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema
• Directed by Christopher Nolan
• Starring John David Washington

Choosing a singular moment from Tenet is challenging. Any number of shots could qualify for a list such as this one. The inverted hallway fight is littered with elements that drop viewers’ jaws. Christopher Nolan is a meticulous craftsman, and every frame results in a picture pretty enough for your wall.

However, with Tenet, my mind drifts back to those earliest images experienced in the trailers. The above one stuffed cheekily toward the end of the first advert. This is THE moment of the movie when John David Washington takes his first steps into a world he can never come back from. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s camera stays tight on the actor, keeping just a few feet ahead of him. Washington sucks in his O2 and sallies forth a changed man.

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19. Lover’s Rock

• Cinematography by Shabier Kirchner
• Directed by Steve McQueen
• Production Design by Helen Scott
• Costume Design by Lisa Duncan & Jacqueline Durran
• Music Edited by Lewis Morison

The shot before this one centers on a record needle drop. The Revolutionaries’ “Kunta Kinte Version One” pierces the air. Shabier Kirchner’s camera then wades into the crowd and bops along with the dancers. As the rhythm picks up, the energy of the men in the room does as well. They lose themselves to their passions, letting the lions within out. The scene is a cathartic outburst of relief. Where they begin and the music ends blur.

Steve McQueen doesn’t nail you to a time or a place or a moment. He envelops you. Every department crescendos in this dance, and through the lens, the audience becomes another player on the floor.

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18. Tesla

• Cinematography by Sean Price Williams
• Directed by Michael Almereyda
• Starring Ethan Hawke

In a film lathered in anachronisms, the sequence in which Ethan Hawke’s Nikola Tesla takes hold of a microphone and belts out “Everybody Wants to Rule The World” while standing before a rear-projected cloudy sky is the pièce de résistance. Michael Almereyda delights in absurdism. He’s having fun with his protagonist and those who bought their tickets to his movie. Tesla could not get out of his own way. There was an opportunity to rule, but he couldn’t bash his big electric dream into a commercial space. He’s a joke. He’s a champion. He’s an icon.

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17. David Byrne’s American Utopia

• Cinematography by Ellen Kuras
• Directed by Spike Lee
• Lighting Design by Rob Sinclair 
• Starring David Byrne

From one musician to another. Spike Lee expertly translates the broadway stage production for HBO. The camera is never bored, always moving, only taking moments to rest on unique angles like this one. We all know what it’s like to sit in the seats of a theater. Some positions are better than others. In their version, Ellen Kuras and Lee take you to spots nobody could ever reach. Rather than watching a show, you feel like you’re living in David Byrne’s brain.

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16. Star Wars: The Clone Wars – “Old Friends Not Forgotten”

• Lighting Cinematography by Joel Aaron
• Art Direction by Kilian Plunkett
• Directed by Saul Ruiz
• Directing Supervised by Dave Filoni

Thanks to The Mandalorian, 2020 will go down as the year mainstream Star Wars fans discovered Ahsoka Tano. However, for The Clone Wars diehards, her greatest moment on screen this year did not occur in live-action but in the animated realm. After the series was callously cut short, season seven arrived earlier this year, resurrected on Disney+, and delivered what might be the single strongest run of Star Wars stories ever assembled.

The shot above is the hero moment for Ahsoka Tano. With the Jedi preoccupied with Count Dooku’s assault on Coruscant (see Revenge of the Sith), Tano is left to defend Mandalore from the clutches of Darth Maul. She meets his armies without fear, free-falling to the surface below, and sticking a landing that would make Iron Man blush. In a franchise built on heroic bravado, Tano nails one of its finest examples.

15. She Dies Tomorrow

• Cinematography by Jay Keitel
• Directed by Amy Seimetz
• Starring Kate Lyn Sheil

Amy Seimetz plants the viewer right atop the characters. She Dies Tomorrow features multiple portraits where the players stare down the camera’s barrel so we may consider the hell clouding their minds. If you knew for certain that you would die the next day, would you live your remaining minutes to their fullest or wallow in despair? Jay Keitel takes you through the question using a flush or radical colors. They wash over the screen and soak inside the audience. The experience is hypnotic, a little dizzying, and utterly inescapable.

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14. Emma.

• Cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt
• Directed by Autumn de Wilde
• Production Design by Kave Quinn
• Costume Design by Alexandra Byrne
• Starring Anya Taylor-Joy

Emma. is another film where the simple act of pause could result in a One Perfect Shot™. Selecting a single image is an act of excruciating, subjective judgment. This shot exquisitely captures our heroine’s feeling of love lost. Having danced the night before with Mr. Knightley, her romance for him simmers, but it was not to be. Here, Emma curls herself up in a nook, along her father’s painfully narrow hallway, and withers. Until spotted below, through the window, Mr. Knightley comes charging up her courtyard.

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13. The Painter and the Thief

• Cinematography by Kristoffer Kumar & Benjamin Ree
• Directed by Benjamin Ree
• Starring Karl Bertil-Nordland & Barbora Kysilkova

The Painter and the Thief is an incredible documentary. One of those stories where if it were to be fictionalized, you would not believe it. Karl Bertil-Nordland is the drug-addicted thief who stole one of Barbora Kysilkova’s precious paintings while on display in a gallery. When she confronts him in court, rather than recoil at his facade, Barbora chooses to understand and discovers friendship through the understanding.

Here we witness Karl see Barbora’s portrait of him for the first time. The experience rocks him to the core. He’s reduced to tears and quivering skin. All they can do at the moment is embrace. This shot is a succinct documentation of the connective power of art.

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12. The Forty-Year-Old Version

• Cinematography by Eric Branco
• Directed by Radha Blank
• Starring Radha Blank

Radha Blank, playing some iteration of herself, stares daggers into the mirror before her. She’s finally willed her play onto the stage. It’s not the version she necessarily imagined, but she is not the version she once imagined either. During intermission, she has a few seconds to ponder success and doubt. Into the bathroom rush a gaggle of her audience, and she flees for an empty stall to hide inside.

The Forty-Year-Old-Version is a DIY beauty. Eric Branco’s black-and-white cinematography is crisply defined, matching the mood and energy of Blank’s script. The film rests in this frame; a confrontation of self. You gotta get right with you before you can get right with anything else.

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11. Insecure – “Lowkey Lost”

• Cinematography by Ava Berkofsky
• Directed by Prentice Penny
• Starring Issa Rae 

Television rarely affords time to achieve perfection. This tiny blissful scene from the latest season of Insecure was seized in less than an hour. Crammed onto the balcony were Prentice Penny, Ava Berkofsky, and Issa Rae, plus the focus puller and the first AD. The only communication passed between the crew was the name of another movie: American Honey. With that fantastic flick in mind, the crew knocked it out of the park.

10. Shirley

• Cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen
• Directed by Josephine Decker
• Costume Design by Amela Baksic

Manifesting obsession is iffy. A performer can run wild with the motivation, but how do you convey it in a singular image? In Shirley, for a brief moment, Josephine Decker takes us inside the mind of her novelist. The protagonist is lost in her work, straining to envision her subject’s face, the missing college student Paula Jean Welden. Shirley can almost pull Paula out of her mind and onto the page, but as the mystery woman turns, her face softens out of focus. Whatever character she creates will belong to Shirley, not reality.

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9. Sound of Metal

• Cinematography by Daniël Bouquet
• Directed by Darius Marder
• Starring Riz Ahmed

Watch a universe slip into oblivion. Riz Ahmed’s Ruben struggles to hold onto his life as his hearing disappears. Through his drumset, he attempts to rock the concept of sound back into his body. Daniël Bouquet’s camera pushes in on him, and the only thing that gets louder is the panic on Ahmed’s face. The shot lasts minutes, but the agony remains for much of the film’s brutal runtime.

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8. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

• Cinematography by Lukasz Zal
• Directed by Charlie Kaufman
• Production Design by Molly Hughes
• Costume Design by Melissa Toth
• Starring Jessie Buckley

The beginning of the end. We move toward Jessie Buckley’s Young Woman as she contemplates her imprisonment, shackled alongside her boyfriend. How long have they been together? A month? Six weeks? Maybe seven? As snow topples upon her and she snags a few flakes with her tongue, her head crumbles with worry. It’s about as perfect a start to a Charlie Kaufman adventure as you can get.

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7. Birds of Prey

• Cinematography by Matthew Libatique
• Directed by Cathy Yan
• Production Design by K.K. Barrett
• Starring Jurnee Smollett & Ewan McGregor

As Ewan McGreggor’s crime boss slinks his way through his club, Jurnee Smollet’s Black Canary aims her song in his direction. She sends each lyric with the thrust of a blade, culminating in this grand gesture, a high note that boils martinis and shatters glass. Fury personified.

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6. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime

• Cinematography by Don Hertzfeldt
• Directed by Don Hertzfeldt
• Digital Compositions by Taylor Barron

Three episodes into his sci-fi short film series, Don Hertzfeldt reaches animation nirvana. What we see here is our poor, heroic stick figure David traversing the hellish wastelands of a planet he can barely comprehend because he’s been forced to remove chunks of his memory to maintain a message implanted in his brain when he was a baby. The corpse at his feet is a clone of himself, and in the distance, we can spot dozens upon dozens of similarly ill-fated copies. Such simplistic dread splashed atop a lovely, lavish hilly backdrop evokes both giggles and sorrow.

5. His House

• Cinematography by Jo Willems
• Directed by Remi Weekes
• Production Design by Jacqueline Abrahams
• Special Effects Supervised by Stefano Pepin & Max Schoonraad
• Visual Effects Supervised by Pedro Sabrosa 
• Starring Sope Dirisu

Having fled South Sudan, losing their daughter in the crossing, Bol (Sope Dirisu) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) are dumped into a flophouse by the British government. It’s a rotting husk of a shack, but it’s their rotting husk of a shack. Safety does not reside within their walls once a night witch starts to haunt their corridors. Bol dismisses his wife’s superstition, telling her, “This is our home.”

The camera pulls away from their kitchen as Bol digs into his dinner. Cinematographer Jo Willems drags the picture even further back, revealing Bol alone at his table, and the table and kitchen floating in a sea of red-nightmare. The sight is a bone-chilling warning. Bol cannot ignore the terror any longer.

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4. First Cow

• Cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt
• Directed by Kelly Reichardt
• Starring John Magaro, Orion Lee, & Evie the Cow

Kelly Reichardt calls First Cow her heist film, and it’s about as good a descriptor as any. Cookie (John Magaro) and
King-Lu (Orion Lee) secure a mini-fortune stealing Evie the Cow’s milk to make and sell biscuits. The old girl lost her calf in the journey across the west and into Oregon. Her only moments of affection come when Cookie appears in the night to milk her. A friendship forms, and it’s dangerous.

Evie belongs to the Chief Factor (Toby Jones), the big man who tastes “Home” every time he gnashes on Cookie and King-Lu’s biscuits. When he invites the two over to his property for a looksy, Evie offers a knowing snuggle against Cookie’s hand. Cookie wants to reach out, but he dare not, for his head is on the line. The movement is brief, sweet, and deadly.

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3. Vast of Night

• Cinematography by M.I. Littin-Menz
• Directed by Andrew Patterson
• Starring Sierra McCormick

This frame kicks off an astonishing, “how the hell did they do that?” four-minute and fifteen-second long-take. When phone operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) transmits a mysterious signal to her radio DJ friend, the camera passes through her doorway as she lights up a smoke and goes racing across the small-town streets. The long-take is a mixture of cameras on go-karts and gimbles, plus a modest amount of digital stitchwork. No drones. Mostly, a lot of sweat and planning.

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2. Lovecraft Country – “Holy Ghost”

• Cinematography by Robert McLachlan
• Directed by Daniel Sackheim
• Starring Jurnee Smollett

“Get the fuck out of my house!” This year, no performer knocked me on my ass as hard as Jurnee Smollett did in the “Holy Ghost” episode of Lovecraft Country. Terrorized by white faces on the outside of her North Side Chicago home as well as within, Smollett’s Leti stands rock solid in defiance. She screams her rage at the malevolent ghost plaguing her property, and the damn thing has no choice but to listen.

With the house clean, Robert McLachlan eases the camera back slowly. Smollett controls her force. She’s exhausted but not annihilated. She’s victorious. A total badass.

1. Da 5 Bloods

• Cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel
• Directed by Spike Lee
• Starring Delroy Lindo & Chadwick Boseman

The shot begins with Delroy Lindo’s Paul speaking directly to camera. His monologue is part confession, part tirade, part explanation. His last line to the audience is punctuated with a wink, and that’s when he sees something out of the corner of his eye. As he’s startled, the camera arches upward and falls on Chadwick Boseman’s Stormin’ Norman.

Until this second, Boseman’s character has been confined to flashbacks, differentiated by the traditional box aspect ratio of 9:3. Erected in widescreen and spotlighted by a sunbeam, Normin’ almost appears alien…or angelic. He shoulders his machine gun and begins the process of Paul’s healing.

Da 5 Bloods is another Spike Lee confrontation with the present via its history. Throughout the film, he injects fictional segments with reality — news footage, archival photographs. Everything comes crashing down in this one shot. Past and future don’t live apart from each other. They’re one and the same.