I have finally seen all the feature films on my yearly watch list, and so now, as awards season draws to a close, I present to you my ten favorite films from 2021, along with several honorable mentions that almost made my list here: everything hyperlinked to one of my reviews was in the final running for my list, and each counts as a personal favorite. Please note that I designate 2021 films based on when they were widely released and accessible!
Okay, before we get started, I just really need to pop this one in here. It may not have a place on my actual list, but the audacity of dropping three whole movies on Netflix this year that were all part of the same cycle and depend on each other for coherence is stunning. And then for those movies to be intelligent, terrifying, hilarious, stylish, and a ton of fun? What a fabulous and inspiring cultural product from writer and director Leigh Janiak, who adapted the stories from R.L. Stine with no small amount of debt to everyone from Wes Craven to the Duffer Brothers, and from Steven Spielberg to Ryan Murphy. But these movies are very much their own thing, and through their meditation on time and place, I found them, together, to be one of the most entertaining and intellectually satisfying pop-horror productions I've ever seen.
Disney didn't do much for me this year (outside of the MCU, which is consistently killing it), but this movie rang in 2021 with one of my new all-time animated favorites. Hilarious and heartwarming, it tells the story of an empowered young woman rising to the task of uniting disparate political factions, saving the environment, and learning how to trust others. Some of the timeliest and most daring topics right now -- and, obviously, in March 2021 -- are couched comfortably between major star turns from actors, animators, and designers in a movie as feel-good as it is challenging. I really loved Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar for its escapism and good humor this year, and it was sorely needed as 2021 got off to its rocky start, and I also loved Don't Look Up for whatever the opposite of escapism and good humor is because it felt like a hilarious and terrifying way to end a very weird year.
9. Candyman
This requel might be the best we've seen yet. Not only does this Candyman honor the significant legacy of the 1992 original, it actually helps make the loose ends of that film make more sense. It turns the Candyman myth, which once felt limiting in its specificity to location and culture, into an endlessly accessible and fraught vehicle to deliver nonstop horror. Brutal emotionally as well as viscerally, Candyman triumphantly rises above expectations and breaks through its walls into reality, turning its central premise into as hot a topic as many in our headlines, where saying the names of victims of racism and police brutality invokes a charge as old as our country itself. As much as I loved The Forever Purge, A Quiet Place Part II, and especially Halloween Kills, nothing scared me as much as Candyman did this year. But don't say his name five times, whatever you do!
This requel might be the best we've seen yet. Not only does this Candyman honor the significant legacy of the 1992 original, it actually helps make the loose ends of that film make more sense. It turns the Candyman myth, which once felt limiting in its specificity to location and culture, into an endlessly accessible and fraught vehicle to deliver nonstop horror. Brutal emotionally as well as viscerally, Candyman triumphantly rises above expectations and breaks through its walls into reality, turning its central premise into as hot a topic as many in our headlines, where saying the names of victims of racism and police brutality invokes a charge as old as our country itself. As much as I loved The Forever Purge, A Quiet Place Part II, and especially Halloween Kills, nothing scared me as much as Candyman did this year. But don't say his name five times, whatever you do!
For me, the best horror movie of the year was also the star turn Rebecca Hall has long deserved. Understated until it's not, the film is a profoundly deep meditation on loss, grief, and suicide in such literal terms that it is often hard to endure. I'm still not entirely sure the extent to which it is allegorical and generic (meaning typical of haunted house genre, not that it is in any way a typical film), but it is definitely both at once, each informing the other interpretation. Lean, mean, and with every moment utterly crucial, it's a terrifying descent into despair and, finally, an empowering guide back into the light. Other crucial female-led horror films this year included Last Night in Soho and The Woman in the Window.
Greed, especially in the family business, causes loyalties to fray and civility to dissolve, and Ridley Scott's masterful exploration of the phenomenon makes this movie sing. Taking the true story that is essentially soap and eyeing it with the veteran panache of operatic excesses, Scott forces us into a parable dressed in drag, a high camp fever dream determined to push buttons you didn't even know you had. It's a messy, brazen, glamorous cocktail of sin and style, as audacious in its faith to storytelling as it is to its own sickly beauty. I loved the similarly theatrical style and chameleonic performances in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, but this was by far the top queer movie of 2021.
Uncanny in its timelessness, Guillermo del Toro's latest feature feels like a throwback to films noir of the 1940s even as it absorbs our senses in a visceral and urgent way. A character study of antiheroes, a stylistic meditation on circular narratives, a haunting parable about losing yourself to your vices, this sumptuous, sensual movie has it all. Two of the most interesting fictional characters on screen this year, played by two of our best actors at the height of their careers, and some of the year's best filmmaking to convey their odyssey into the dark heart of avarice. I also loved Being the Ricardos and The Father for acting (and the latter for production design and casting), but there's just not much that compares with this Gothic beauty.
A year of superheroes, mostly brought to us via MCU streaming specials and new characters, would not have been nearly as spectacular if not for us finally getting Zack Snyder's Justice League. And it completely blew me away in surprising and devastating ways. A stunning, glorious monument to storytelling, style, substance, and pure unadulterated entertainment, this was the vindication I've longed for while being a fairly vocal fan of the DC film series all along. The third installment of Spider-Man matched my feeling of elation, and its techniques that bothered me were largely smothered by the amount of perfectly executed, sensitively developed fan service that brought together the disparate parts of Marvel cinematic efforts over the last two decades.
4. The Last Duel
Despite a few questionable choices, Ridley Scott's first film release of this year has stuck with me like few others. It's a damning condemnation of toxic masculinity from a filmmaker often accused of sacrificing female perspectives and stories to that of men, and yet it reinforces the simple fact that no one does period war dramas better than Scott. It makes a case that no one does better than Scott in a lot of ways, but between this and House of Gucci, he ruled awards season this year in my books. The barbarism of medieval gender politics here feels far too relevant, and the film's grayscale grittiness brings a dark level of urgency to the story that I did not expect. I also really loved The Harder They Fall this year due for its similar historical revisionism in a crime drama determined to raise hackles across the board; but what can I say, I prefer the Gothic film.
Despite a few questionable choices, Ridley Scott's first film release of this year has stuck with me like few others. It's a damning condemnation of toxic masculinity from a filmmaker often accused of sacrificing female perspectives and stories to that of men, and yet it reinforces the simple fact that no one does period war dramas better than Scott. It makes a case that no one does better than Scott in a lot of ways, but between this and House of Gucci, he ruled awards season this year in my books. The barbarism of medieval gender politics here feels far too relevant, and the film's grayscale grittiness brings a dark level of urgency to the story that I did not expect. I also really loved The Harder They Fall this year due for its similar historical revisionism in a crime drama determined to raise hackles across the board; but what can I say, I prefer the Gothic film.
3. TIE: In the Heights / West Side Story
It's amazing that these two films were made in the same year, and that both were uncommonly -- impossibly -- perfect movie musicals. One was a brand new vision that transported us from stage to screen and then directly up to cloud nine, the other was a remake that actually improved on the original groundbreaker. Both feature transcendent cinematography and production design, eye-popping choreography, Spanish language without subtitles, and extraordinarily talented young and old performers. They feel like companion films about hope, perseverance, overcoming prejudice and poverty, and dealing with loss of loved ones and of identity. Just amazing.
A consummate story, David Lowery's latest film is a myth about mythmaking, a story more about storytelling than about its own narrative. From its title, curiously blurring its protagonist, onward, the film's brilliance manifests in every single shot, and sometimes even between shots with editing that constantly challenges our expectations of period films, adventures, fantasies, and action films. Some of the best scholarly writing of the year will surely come from this, as each scene seems pandering to scholars and theorists with ambiguity and metaphor. I'm rarely this shocked, mesmerized, and consistently frustrated by films, and even after four separate viewings, The Green Knight still holds me under its spell. I also really loved The Power of the Dog, which similarly examined the bildungsroman through competing masculinities, the influence of nature and life on the edge of civilization, and what we learn during the passage of time.
This one may cause a ruckus, as it was formally awarded things during the last cycle, but since it was widely released in 2021, I've waited a year to honor it on this damn blog. Judas and the Black Messiah is a timeless film, one that feels ancient and urgent at once, yet so clearly reflects the time of its subject that it feels more like a documentary than a drama. Much like last year's The Trial of the Chicago 7, the film concerns William O'Neal, the Judas to Fred Hampton's Jesus, during the formation of the Rainbow Coalition and J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO efforts to eliminate perceived threats to the status quo. I also really loved Passing this year for its incisive look at racial dynamics in the 1920s, but the compelling real drama, in Shaka King and the Lucas Brothers' hands, of Fred Hampton's revolutionary life and its tragic, untimely, and downright evil end has devastated me for an entire year.
What were YOUR favorite movies this year? Let me know and we'll chat about some stellar cinema!
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