My Top 10 Movies of 2021
2021 was an exceptional year for movies! And I’m not just saying that because movies were actually released, but also because a lot of them were really, really good. And so, I have compiled a list of my personal favorite movies from the past year. Before getting into the official list, there are a few bonus “awards” that I’m handing out. (You’re welcome, movies.)
Technically Not A Movie, But Deserves Recognition Award:
Inside (Dir. Bo Burnham)
For many, this was the defining piece of media for the COVID-19 pandemic era. I’m a fan of Bo Burnham, having enjoyed his specials in the past, and especially his first movie, Eighth Grade. But Inside is on a completely different level. It’s overly relatable, at times to the point of being upsetting, but more often cathartic and comforting to see that we’re all going through together in roughly the same way. A genuine, heartfelt piece of work that clearly was something Bo had in him to make, whether Netflix was paying him for it, or he was just going to upload it to YouTube. Might have made it near the top of my official list, but technically it’s a “special” and not a movie, so I’m fitting it in here.
My Brain Doesn’t Know How To Categorize These Movies Yet Award:
Dune (Dir. Denis Villeneuve)
Dune was certainly one of my most anticipated movies of this year, not because I’m a giant Dune fan (I only read the book for the first time last year), but because of Villeneuve’s previous work. It’s a visual spectacle, and I think a successful one, but for me, this story isn’t finished yet. The movie ends on a relatively unsatisfying cliffhanger, and the characters aren’t strong enough to make up for it. I’m hopeful that Part 2 will tie everything together and make Part 1 shine in retrospect, but for now, it doesn’t have a place on my official list.
The Matrix Resurrections (Dir. Lana Wachowski)
I’m an enormous fan of the Wachowskis and the original Matrix trilogy, but I wasn’t convinced that making a fourth movie in the franchise was a great idea… and I’m still not. (I don’t think the Wachowskis are either.) The approach to this movie (at least in the first half) is fascinating, and I love the meta narrative it starts to deliver. But I think it gets too caught up in also trying to deliver a “true” Matrix sequel, and doesn’t even come close to matching the heights of the action in the other three movies. Still, I’ve been thinking about it more than some other recent movies, and the online debate has been fascinating to me, between people who outright hated it and those who think it’s a subversive masterpiece. I have a feeling that given time, I’ll fall more in the latter camp, but currently it exists in a grey area of my mind.
And now my actual official top ten movies list of 2021:
10. Luca (Dir. Enrico Casarosa)
I’ve been pretty down on Pixar for a long time, but with last year’s Soul, and now Luca, I think they’re hitting their stride again. Luca avoids almost all the predictable cliches and story beats that Pixar and other animated kids movies seem to love including. There’s not really even an antagonist in this movie. Instead, it’s a fairly low key, low stakes, slice of life drama about a kid in Italy who happens to be a fishperson. Certainly not one of the most epic or ambitious stories Pixar’s ever told, but it still managed to “hit me right in the feels” as the kids say (sorry). A beautiful work reminiscent of earlier Miyazaki movies. It’s a shame it got relegated to a Disney+ release this year, and it deserves more love.
9. Titane (Dir. Julia Ducournau)
The French really do things different over there, huh. Titane is the story of a girl who gets in a car accident and has to have a titanium plate installed in her head. The movie isn’t about that, but that’s how it starts. Where it goes is… to several bizarre places that I never anticipated but was always fascinated by. The core of this movie is real, emotional human drama about loss and familial connections. It’s possible to get swept up in that aspect entirely before remembering that there’s also a layer of absurdist body horror on top of it. I’m not exactly sure what every aspect of this movie is about, but I can’t deny that it was magnetic and impossible to look away from. (Except for the several times I held my face in my hands and groaned as a result of what was happening on screen. But in a good way.)
8. Licorice Pizza (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Paul Thomas Anderson might be my favorite director of all time, so I always have high expectations for something new from him. Licorice Pizza is more like his earlier work Boogie Nights, or even Punch Drunk Love, than his heavier films like The Master and There Will Be Blood. No grand tale of loss or pondering the darkness of humanity here. It’s mostly a nostalgia piece about some kids in the 70s hanging out, almost in the vein of something like Dazed and Confused. And for me, that hit the mark just right. It’s light, it’s fun, and it’s charming, with great performances by Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim. A joy to watch.
7. Red Rocket (Dir. Sean Baker)
Speaking of great performances, both the leads in Red Rocket deserve some awards recognition. This is another one with a somewhat loose, freeform structure to it. But unlike the sweet and airy Luca and Licorice Pizza, there’s a real undercurrent of darkness running throughout Red Rocket. This movie is about a terrible person doing terrible things in a terrible place… but that terrible person happens to be charming, charismatic and funny (a lot like the movie itself). The viewing experience is a bit like watching a slow motion trainwreck - Is this guy going to get away with what he’s doing? Who am I supposed to be rooting for here? Ultimately, I think it’s a condemnation of this character and others like him (possibly even one whose name rhymes with Schmonald Schmump), but the way he’s portrayed is undeniably fascinating.
6. C’mon C’mon (Dir. Mike Mills)
Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best working actors today, which is good news for C’mon C’mon, since the majority of this movie is just him interacting with a 12 year old kid. Shot in black and white, there’s almost nothing to distract you from focusing on the purity of the relationship between these two characters (an uncle and his nephew). As a burgeoning uncle myself, I had a lot to learn from this about how to talk to kids. It also reminded me of how frustrating it was to be a kid. And, it convinced me that having kids is too hard and I will probably never do it. But for a couple of hours, it was great to live vicariously through the parentage on display in C’mon C’mon. A sweet, moving, easygoing examination of why kids can be so frustrating and so wondrous at the same time.
5. The Suicide Squad (Dir. James Gunn)
The Suicide Squad is one of the greatest comic book superhero movies ever made. I’m relieved that James Gunn is back on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but had that deal not been made, I think it would’ve been worth it so that he could go off and make this movie for DC. Margot Robbie finally gets a script as good as her performance to show off how great a character Harley Quinn is, and she’s joined by Idris Elba and plenty of other incredible, talented people. This is a superhero movie that isn’t afraid to kill off its characters, to shock you, repulse you, and make you laugh all at the same time. And there’s just enough sweetness sprinkled in by the end to counteract all the cynicism - it’s actually about something in addition to being fun as hell. This one’s the feel good movie of the year for me.
4. Annette (Dir. Leos Carax)
Annette might be the weirdest movie on my list, and that’s saying a lot considering I have Titane on here. I was introduced to the band Sparks this summer via Edgar Wright’s great documentary, The Sparks Brothers, so it was perfect timing that their first musical film came out just a few months later. This is a fully sung-through, operatic musical about a baby named Annette who is the daughter of a comedian and an opera singer. Also, the baby is represented by a creepy wooden puppet. I have come to love Sparks’ music, and while most of the songs in Annette aren’t exactly catchy in the traditional pop radio sense, they are infectious and beautiful in their own ways. This is a deeply sad movie, and also a deeply insane one - you might honestly interpret it as a tragedy or a comedy and be right either way. I love it for its willingness to be weird, and to recognize that sometimes you have to be weird to say what’s really important.
3. The Last Duel (Dir. Ridley Scott)
The Last Duel is the best movie Ridley Scott has made in a long time. While I did enjoy Prometheus, I honestly had dismissed Scott in recent years as being a director past his prime, but he proved me wrong with this one. A medieval period piece based on a true story about two competing soldiers, it’s also a stealth remake of one of the most pivotal works in film history. The characters and settings are strong enough that I feel I could’ve watched an entire TV season’s worth of this material, but it says everything it needs to say in just a couple of hours. It’s told in three chapters, and each new chapter brings new information and completely reframes what you’re watching in a fascinating way. What you think you know and feel about these figures is shifting right up until the very end. It’s the kind of historic epic that we don’t see too much of anymore, done by a master of his craft.
2. The Empty Man (Dir. David Prior)
Technically this movie was released in 2020, but since movie theaters near me weren’t even open at that time, I’m including this as a 2021 release according to its digital availability. (If you want to get real technical about it, this was a 2017 movie that was shelved for years, so who’s to say what year a movie comes out anyway?) Another hyperbolic proclamation here: The Empty Man might be the greatest Lovecraftian movie to date. And when I say Lovecraftian, I don’t mean that there are tentacle monsters and guys in robes chanting in ancient tongues. This movie actually gets to the heart of Lovecraft’s fiction, confronting themes of fear, paranoia, and genuine cosmic horror (minus the gross, racist parts). It’s also a thrilling procedural mystery in the style of David Fincher’s Zodiac (no coincidence I think, since this director has worked closely with Fincher in the past). The first fifteen minutes are one of the best openings to a movie I’ve ever seen - then, that’s followed up by a mystery narrative that kept me guessing the entire time - and then, the ending completely recontextualizes everything you’ve seen before and makes you want to watch it again to try to make sense of it all. Does it all make perfect sense? Maybe? It’s just ambiguous enough to keep me thinking about it, but I loved the journey either way. The Empty Man was unsuccessful at the box office (for reasons already mentioned) and not very well received by critics, but it seems to be well on its way to cult hit status now, and it deserves it.
1. Nightmare Alley (Dir. Guillermo Del Toro)
My favorite movie of 2021 comes from one of my favorite directors, and it’s Nightmare Alley from Guillermo Del Toro. In a strange way, this might actually be Del Toro’s most grounded work yet - there’s very little in the way of fantastical creatures. At the same time, it taps into the “misunderstood monster” motif like all his other works do so expertly. (Plus some monsters that are understood just fine.) Bradley Cooper plays a man who quite literally runs away and joins the circus, ingratiating himself with the local “freaks”, and trying to find a way to improve his station in life. His arc from beginning to end is one of the most interesting, well realized arcs and performances I’ve seen in recent memory, and every single part around him is played to perfection. It’s hard to pigeonhole this movie precisely - it’s not exactly horror, drama, thriller, noir, or crime, but it plays in all of those worlds. I thought Del Toro’s previous film The Shape of Water was one of his best, and this one is another high point in his career. Exciting, thrilling, and tragic, it drives your imagination like a circus freak show might have driven audience’s imaginations in the 1940s. And again, we have to ask - who are the monsters here? Why do we love to watch miserable creatures leading miserable lives, and what does it say about us? As long as Guillermo Del Toro continues to lead rings, I will be attending his circus.
And finally, here are ten more movies that didn’t quite make my list, but that I still greatly appreciated and highly recommend, in alphabetical order:
Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar (Dir. Josh Greenbaum)
The Card Counter (Dir. Paul Schrader)
The French Dispatch (Dir. Wes Anderson)
The Harder They Fall (Dir. Jeymes Samuel)
Last Night in Soho (Dir. Edgar Wright)
Pig (Dir. Michael Sarnoski)
Riders of Justice (Dir. Anders Thomas Jensen)
Stowaway (Dir. Joe Penna)
Tick, Tick...Boom! (Dir. Lin Manuel Miranda)
The White Tiger (Dir. Ramin Bahrani)
I really do think that this was a fantastic year for movies, and it was a great challenge to narrow down my list. The order might change in my head over time, but these are twenty movies that I wholeheartedly stand behind. Hopefully, we can still attend movies in theaters in 2022 for more of the same!