Any movie can achieve a moment of greatness. We’re talking about those few minutes that stick with you for a lifetime, even after everything around them fades from memory. You’ve heard of a TV show jumping the shark? This is the shark jumping Sam Jackson; when the world has forgotten Deep Blue Sea, his gloriously interrupted pep talk will live on in the collective imagination. It’s a principle we here at The A.V. Club try to keep in mind every December, when we’re putting together the list you’re about to scroll through. Sure, there’s inevitable overlap between a year’s great movies and its best individual scenes, which is why some of the titles appearing in this feature will show up again next week, when we count down our favorite whole films of 2020. But great scenes can come from all sorts of movies—even, say, a nattering family-friendly video game adaptation we’d otherwise prefer to forget. You’ll find that and more on the list that follows, unranked save for the selection of a single scene that we settled on as our consensus favorite of 2020. Oh, and reader beware: Although we tried to stick the more revealing descriptions toward the end, there will be spoilers throughout. Because no matter where the scene comes from, explaining its greatness requires some, you know, explaining.
