20 great movies from the past 20 years: Alien on Stage

[Hi everyone – I was planning on going a bit longer on today’s movie, but sometimes life happens and gets in the way. My family’s beloved dog Gus passed this week after 14 wonderful years together, so I’m going to keep today’s shorter than expected. This week’s Weekend Watchlist is officially questionable – if one doesn’t come through this week, count it as a double rec to watch today’s movie.]

I’m counting down to my 2025 best-of-the-year picks by recommending 20 of my favorite movies from the past 20 years. Here are the previous entries, if you want to catch up:

2005: Caché
2006: Undisputed II: Last Man Standing
2007: Sunshine
2008: Speed Racer
2009: Vengeance
2010: Unstoppable
2011: The Three Musketeers
2012: Eega
2013: Rope A Dope
2014: Hill of Freedom
2015: SPL 2: A Time for Consequences
2016: Love & Friendship
2017: Mersal
2018: Infinite Football
2019: Dark Waters
2020: Riders of Justice
2021: The Mushroom Speaks
2022: Hundreds of Beavers
2023: Jigarthanda DoubleX

One more thing before today's pick: the latest episode of Sports Movies That Don't Suck is now live, talking Masaki Kobayashi's great 1956 baseball movie I Will Buy You with Eephus director Carson Lund! Give it a listen.

When I wrote about The Mushroom Speaks a few weeks ago, I mentioned first seeing the movie as a part of the virtual pass to the Indie Memphis Film Festival. There were many terrific films that left a mark during that week, but none more so than the hilarious, inspiring documentary Alien on Stage, which blew me away when we first saw it in 2022. The movie follows a group of English bus drivers who put on an amateur theatrical production of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic. Filmed by a pair of first-time filmmakers, it’s an endearing passion project that is one of the most enjoyable movies I’ve seen in years, and a funny, touching story about community and art. After being held in release limbo for a few years, it finally became available to stream in 2024.

Alien on Stage is delightful, hilarious, and warmly and quietly revelatory about the ways we connect with each other through art – especially people for whom art is not their job. It’s also just a great time, with a cast of funny, extremely human characters trying their best to make a remarkably ambitious project work.

The two first-time filmmakers – Lucy Harvey and Danielle Kummer – saw the bus drivers put on a pantomime at their local arts center the year before, and became so enamored with the effort that they became strongly motivated to both tell this group’s story and help them get a performance booked in London. After a successful Kickstarter, they were able to get the movie off the ground, getting well-deserved rave reviews on the festival circuit and making Alien on Stage an appealing underdog story both within the story and as a piece itself.

“The one anxious moment that I had was the idea that people would be ridiculing them,” Harvey told Film Stories magazine. “I had a lot of anxiety over the fact that they're mostly working class. I was raised working class and I don’t want them to ever get the feeling that we’re making fun of working class people.”

There hasn’t been a theatrical release yet, but the filmmakers are still angling for one. In the meantime, you can watch Alien on Stage for free with ads on Tubi, or rent it on VOD platforms.