Staff Inquiry: Top Tens of 2021

2021 commenced with an air of uncertainty. Much of the prior year’s releases had either been relegated to VOD streaming services or postponed to an uncertain future, leaving many to wonder how long these new trends would persist in the wake of a global pandemic. As the widespread availability of vaccines and extensive safety measures have helped suppress the novel Coronavirus, cinemas started reopening up en masse, film festivals began taking place once again, and slowly but surely, people started going back to the movies.

2020’s final release schedule will always have an asterisk next to it, but even in comparison to its predecessors, 2021 revealed itself to be an incredibly strong year for film, which saw releases from old masters (two from Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog), the emergence of works from new voices (Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby, Rebecca Hall’s Passing), and the resurgence of blockbuster entertainment (No Time To Die, Dune, The Matrix Resurrections). As is tradition, we surveyed a series of top ten lists from our writers, who shared the films they loved and made them feel grateful to be back at the movies. Read on to see what they selected.

Note: for a film to be eligible for these lists, it must have seen some sort of official screening or release date in the writer’s country of origin.

FAISAL AL-JADIR

1. The Green Knight
2. Petite Maman
3. Benedetta
4. Boiling Point
5. Mass
6. Memory Box
7. Lamb
8. Pig
9. Censor
10. Another Round

David Lowery’s The Green Knight isn’t just a timeless reinterpretation of a fantasy parable; it demonstrates the pure unadulterated joy and ambition one can bring to the medium of storytelling. Right from the word “go,” there is fascinating alchemy at play. Our hero is introduced in a manner that invokes the chorus of Ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedies, while infusing a sense of cosmic horror and ominous doom into the contemplative atmosphere of a medieval adventure story.

Much like Martin Scorsese’s masterworks, Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy and The Last Temptation of Christ, there is almost a deliberate ambiguity surrounding what our anti-hero may perceive to be his dreams, desires, fantasies, and fears. Ultimately, every sense of reality seems to collapse onto each other like traveling through multiple dimensions in a carnival’s Hall of Mirrors. Dev Patel brings great empathy and gravitas to his flawed protagonist, who is not only engaged in what could be an epic battle, but also on a quest to reconcile with demons that burrow away at his psyche.

Lowery creates a sense of theatricality in the proceedings. The practical sets and locations. The fantastical creatures, ideas, and landscapes borne from art, literature, comic books, and video games. The excellent costume and make-up effects (especially the titular “antagonist,” brilliantly brought to life by Ralph Ineson). All invoke the innovative techniques of the grandfather of cinema, George Melies.

Like maestro visionary Guillermo Del Toro, there is literal magic at work in every single frame of the film. It demonstrates that no matter what genre you are working with, it all goes back to the approach: the childlike sense of optimism and wonder you bring to your world. An elegiac poem about courage and honour. A love letter to cinema.

Honourable mentions: Titane, The French Dispatch, Riders of Justice, Sator, Dune, Flee, The Card Counter, Natural Light, The Power of the Dog, Silent Night, Minari, and Nomadland.

STEPHANIE ARCHER

1. Don’t Look Up
2. The Power of the Dog
3. Spencer
4. Mass
5. Coda
6. Malignant
7. Inside
8. Pig
9. The French Dispatch
10. Judas and the Black Messiah

2021 felt like a continuation of 2020, a pandemic-infused purgatory rife with the feeling of divisive and unresolved cultural change. However, where 2020 left many with time to focus on the world, 2021 came rushing back with new artistic avenues of escapism, understanding, horror, and critical examinations that left not just entertainment, but concrete platforms of conversation. When compiling my top ten films of the year, I found my selections easily identifiable – my number one not so much.

2021 gave deep examinations of mental health, family, grief, climate change, toxic masculinity, and history, each with their own unique entry in their genres, and 2021. And while the hypnotizing and encapsulating beauty of The Power of the Dog holds strong, it was the undeniable power of Don’t Look Up that truly stood at the top. A film so divisive in its reception delivered an all-encompassing platform for conversation – when it is most needed. As 2021 brought historic weather events and boasted record-breaking temperatures, Don’t Look Up couldn’t have been more timely.

Infused with an aesthetic clearly influenced by the events of 2020, a stand-out ensemble cast, brilliant script, and a cleverly executed satirical narrative, Don’t Look Up is the film we need – whether we are ready to admit it or not. It is posed to be the cinematic entry history looks back on, acknowledging its foresight and hopefully having heeded its warning. And with the varying reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, the film is not too far from the potential mark.

What I find to be the most powerful element of the film was the conversation it garnered, and the varying reactions it generated. With its own polarizing response, it has shaped up to be a film one either hates or loves. And while the dangers surrounding climate change is and should be the central focus, the divisive response among audiences is its own equally interesting aspect. What is it that drives some to highly praise the film’s direction and, at times, in-your-face messaging, yet draws the same extreme opposite all the same. Could an audience response be its own mirroring of the individual response within the film itself?

While many of these questions are poised for a feature in-depth look all their own, it is the fact the film pushes questions forward from all sides that makes it the stand out of the year. It is not one we all agree is perfection or is a total bomb, its existence quietly residing into the celluloid history of films before it. Rather, it pushes itself into the mind, forcing thought and consideration, long after the film has ended.

DAVID FONTANA

1. The Power of the Dog
2. The Worst Person in the World
3. The Last Duel
4. Mass
5. Belfast
6. Malignant
7. Licorice Pizza
8. Pig
9. The Card Counter
10. The Mitchells vs. the Machines

2021 was an…interesting year, to say the least. For much of it, I wasn’t too impressed with the year’s movie slate, likely because a lot of them got moved towards the end of the year due to the pandemic. But then, in quick succession, we received a ton of good offerings. And nowhere is that more relevant than with Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog, which premiered in November, and I immediately knew it would be amongst my favorite movies of the year.

Jane Campion‘s slow-burning Western is admittedly not for everyone; even in its conclusion it sort of fizzles out rather than explodes. But there is power in its subtlety, whether it be the delicate framing of its subjects and of the isolated Western landscape, the quietly powerful performances of its cast, especially Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee, or the eerie, haunting soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood. There’s a lot to admire here, and though seemingly not a lot happens throughout the film, it’s more of what we don’t see that becomes impactful. It gives you a lot to think back on and analyze after the credits have rolled, not providing many definitive answers, and Campion‘s film is all the better for it.

I’ll admit that Westerns tend to occupy my #1 or at least close to the top of my list most years that we do this, since it is amongst my favorite genres. But rounding out the rest of my list this year is some offerings I did not expect. I really enjoyed Joachim Trier‘s The Worst Person in the World, which a lot of people seemed to enjoy, as well as Belfast and Licorice Pizza, but I did not expect The Last Duel to be as good as it was nor did I expect I would have as much fun with movies like Malignant and The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Rounding out my list is Pig, almost exclusively due to Nic Cage‘s wonderfully subdued performance, Mass, which was a brutal watch, and The Card Counter, which is a classic Paul Schrader story starring Oscar Isaac. Here’s to hoping for the best from 2022!

BAILEY JO JOSIE

1. The Power of the Dog
2. Dune
3. Encanto
4. Nine Days
5. Judas & the Black Messiah
6. Shiva Baby
7. Benedetta
8. Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
9. Lamb
10. The French Dispatch

As always, I’m hopelessly behind on current releases compared to my Film Inquiry colleagues (since I live in rural Japan), but I was actually able to get to see a lot more new films this year. I recently moved to a town with a Toho cinema that actually shows subbed versions of foreign films. This was honestly a game-changer and I’m so happy to have gotten to see so many great films this year!

I also was finally able to access Disney+ which allowed me to sit and watch (on repeat, like a fixated toddler) Encanto, the latest Disney animated movie. I can’t get enough of the music, the gorgeous character designs, or the story of generational trauma. Encanto does what a lot of my favorite films do – makes me evaluate my own life and relationships.

As an enormous fan of the books, I was so sure that Dune would be my #1 film this year, but it was ultimately bumped to #2 when I sat down to watch Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog. Once upon a time, I was on reading some random #FilmTwitter prompt that was like, ‘which film would have been improved on with a different director?’ and the first thing that came to my mind was Campion directing Legends of the Fall, the Brad Pitt movie set on a Montana ranch in the early 20th-century. Who could have known that this was in fact a manifestation? Campion‘s way of directing is so specific and her skill in telling a story that shows the many facets of vulnerability and grit easily makes her one of my favorite directors. It also makes The Power of the Dog, a Benedict Cumberbatch movie set on a Montana ranch in the early 20th-century, the best film of 2021.

LEE JUTTON

1. Drive My Car
2. Titane
3. Labyrinth of Cinema
4. Annette
5. Parallel Mothers
6. Licorice Pizza
7. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
8. No Time to Die
9. The Worst Person in the World
10. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

Back in 2018, I was amazed at how filmmaker Lee Chang-dong took a slight short story by Haruki Murakami and turned it into Burning, a two-and-a-half-hour thriller dealing with class and identity and featuring a career-best performance from Steven Yeun. So, I’m not necessarily surprised that another Murakami short story was the basis for Drive My Car, a gorgeous three-hour drama on grief and the struggle to move forward from filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi. What does surprise me is that Drive My Car isn’t the only masterpiece directed by Hamaguchi to be released this year.

It’s somewhat ironic that Hamaguchi’s other film, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, feels like three interconnected short stories when Drive My Car is actually adapted from one. Both films are suffused with melancholy, but in a way that actually leaves you with a sense of hope. Things are not terribly great right now, sure, Hamaguchi seems to say, but maybe in the future they’ll get better; maybe this unfortunate path we’re on isn’t inevitable.

Drive My Car is the tale of a grieving theater actor and director attempting to come to terms with his wife’s sudden death (and the various extramarital affairs she had in life). During lengthy car rides with his young woman chauffeur, who is also dealing with past tragedies, the two of them slowly begin to share their feelings and realize that even if they cannot change the past, the present and future are still unwritten. Carried by two powerful lead performances from Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tōko Miura, Drive My Car is a lovely slow-burn of a movie, its length and pace making our characters’ emotional journeys all the more impactful and real. The climatic sequence, which combines Uncle Vanya and sign language to great effect, is the best I’ve seen all year.

ALEX LINES

1. Licorice Pizza
2. The Card Counter
3. Nobody
4. Cry Macho
5. The French Dispatch
6. No Time To Die
7. Wrath of Man
8. Beckett
9. Red Rocket
10. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Hidden within my selection of titles that everybody expects from these annual lists (for good reason), Ferdinando Cito Filomarino‘s sparse but skittish directorial debut Beckett has persisted in my top 10 ever since it was unceremoniously dumped within Netflix’s labyrinthine algorithm all the way back in August of this year. This forgotten European John David Washington vehicle – another subversive action film that experiments with Washington‘s potential strengths as a leading man – may seem like a thriller on the surface, as the traditional noir trappings (an innocent civilian dropped into a complex, impenetrable political power-play) and beautifully rendered Greek landscapes coax its audience into thinking this is going to be another boiler-plate run-and-gun chase film that traps our hero and watches as he punches his way out of every escalating scenario he tumbles into.

There’s plenty of cotton-candy light Netflix fare to scratch that itch though, as Beckett instead subverts these notions at every opportunity, while Washington plays his disorientated American transplant with a relatable pragmatism. This protagonist isn’t Liam Neeson, so when Greek and American henchman start heading his way, the only direction he can go is the other way, no matter the peaks and valleys he must climb or descend. Easily one of them most underrated films of 2021.

MARK MCPHERSON

1. Pig
2. Annette
3. Dune
4. The Green Knight
5. Spencer
6. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
7. Benedetta
8. The Suicide Squad
9. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
10. Titane

2021 was a year of movies I loved that were either ridiculous comedies or somber contemplations on existential dread. Sometimes both at the same time.

CLEMENT OBROPTA

1. Labyrinth of Cinema
2. The French Dispatch
3. Rose Plays Julie
4. Shiva Baby
5. An Unexpected Christmas
6. Belfast
7. Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
8. Pig
9. The Night House
10. Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical

Another COVID-19 year, another crop of outstanding movies (that I haven’t seen). Given the pandemic, grad school, and a general malaise about the state of the film industry, I’ve been slacking on new releases and piling up the obscure decades-old content. My year-end list is not as thorough as it’ll be three months from now, but regardless, these are films that, whether theatrically or via MUBI, YouTube, or the Hallmark channel as I wrapped gifts on Christmas Eve, managed to touch me and remind me of why I study and write about film in the first place. Shoutout to An Unexpected Christmas on the Hallmark Channel.

LINSEY SATTERTHWAITE

1. Sound of Metal
2. The Power of the Dog
3. Promising Young Woman
4. Titane
5. The Green Knight
6. Nomadland
7. West Side Story
8. First Cow
9. Spencer
10. Censor

With Sound of Metal, a film about a drummer who suddenly suffers from hearing loss, Darius Marder has created a beautiful picture about what it means to find yourself, when all may feel adrift. It offers a look into a world that is not often seen on screen but is shown with tenderness, compassion, authenticity, and inclusion and which will stay with you, and which will come back into the mind in the stillest of moments.

For a narrative that deals with sound (and the loss of it), you would expect the film to have a meticulous design, but the work of composer/sound designer Nicolas Becker and his crew is astonishing, every fragment has a feeling of authenticity and a way to put us, the audience, firmly in Ruben’s world. From the wall of noise that comes from Ruben’s drums and Lou’s guitar to the smaller moments of beauty from the natural world or the beat that is felt through a children’s metal slide, everything takes on a deeper resonance. Meanwhile, the use of ASL captions in some scenes but the exclusion in others reinforce that us as the audience are bystanders in this world and the deaf community are at the forefront of the narrative.

Riz Ahmed, an actor who is never anything short of mesmerising as a performer, somehow still finds a way to take it to the next level, as Ruben he is electrifying and is able to say so much with so few words. Paul Raci meanwhile brings the heart and anchor to the film, his own experience of being a child to deaf parents adds an extra weight of verisimilitude and the warmth he exudes makes you feel he could guide even the most lost souls back to shore. The final scene between Ruben and Joe is a masterclass in acting, its subtlety leads to a devastating conclusion which my heart still has not recovered from.

KRISTY STROUSE

1. The Worst Person in the World
2. Titane
3. Petite Maman
4. Nine Days
5. The Power of the Dog
6. Pig
7. Little Fish
8. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
9. Lamb
10. The Lost Daughter

2021: what a year. While that exclamation isn’t meant (overall) in a good way, and I only went to theaters once due to anxiety, it was a fantastic year for film. With streaming options abundant I was able to catch up on a lot of the new releases. And wow…color me delighted, moved, and disturbed in the best of ways. There are movies that were in theaters only from some of my favorite directors that I couldn’t catch – Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, the Tragedy of Macbeth, to name a few – yet I still have an abundance of love and fondness for what I was able to see. Overall, when it comes to film, I feel overly elated and emotional with my choices. Yes, I’m swooning, and rightfully so for a batch of amazing cinematic delights.

I had quite a difficult time only choosing ten (a good problem to have), and my list ranges from films I saw early on in 2021 until the very end, spanning from horrors to indie gems, festival views, and beyond, from fairy tale feels to the most dramatic cooking and affecting dinner sequences you’ll see this year. There’s death, and there’s life, and there’s our struggle to hold on to those who we truly care about. Some gutted me, and some made my heart swell, but as an over-encompassing notion, this year of film reminded me why they are so important. They are forever, and they are needed in a time where we should be reminded of the love, the passion, and the beauty in the world. I have no doubt that all of my choices have left an impassioned impact on someone out there. If nothing else, they have on me. Don’t shrug off the honorable mentions either; a lot of my list could have been switched out with some of those, as they are all individually spectacular in their given genre and intent.

My favorite was realized as soon as I saw Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. We have all felt like our main, struggling character, but it is told in such a poetic yet familial way that it makes your heart flutter. It combined everything that I adored about this art form while making me feel as if it had been made just for me. That personal response is what makes something like this inherently special. It’s revelatory, beautifully performed, and gorgeously shot, given to us in a myriad of fashions both grounded and abstract.

Titane is a close second, as this movie also floored me, and surprised me on an emotional rollercoaster I was not quite ready for. All of my choices resemble an emotion, and beyond that, an extension of emotion itself, as it drew us into ourselves and yet expanded our outlooks to new worlds and places that felt like home, all driven by our desire to connect. Lovely, meaningful moments make up my favorite movie choices of the last year, that truly utilize creativity and imagination.

2021: you did your worst, but you also did some of your best. My film lover’s heart is forever grateful.

Honorable Mentions: Identifying Features, Saint Maud, C’mon C’mon, The Last Duel, The Green Knight, The Mitchells vs. The Machines, Together, Together, I’m Your Man, Summer of Soul

JAKE TROPILA

1. Drive My Car
2. The Worst Person in the World
3. Days
4. Memoria
5. Red Rocket
6. The French Dispatch
7. France
8. Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time
9. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
10. The Souvenir: Part II

Truth be told, I had my doubts as to whether we’d ever achieve “normalcy” again, at least in terms of cinemagoing. The year got off to a shaky start, but my fears ultimately dissipated when I sat nestled in a comfy multiplex seat and witnessed Bob Odenkirk lay waste to a gang of thugs on a metro bus. Movies were back, baby! Nobody may not have cracked my best-of list, but ten remarkable films did, as 2021 proved to be an embarrassment of riches from some of the world’s greatest filmmakers.

In fact, narrowing my selections down to just ten proved to be a difficult undertaking. Even accounting for any lingering blindspots I have (apologies to Joel Coen and Céline Sciamma), I am more than pleased with what I ended up with, from Hideaki Anno’s long-awaited and triumphant conclusion to his Rebuild of Evangelion series to Tsai Ming-liang’s erotic intersection of the lives of two strangers to Joachim Trier’s life-affirming odyssey into young adulthood.

But if there was one film that stood out from the rest, a film that emerged as the most miraculous and stunning achievement of 2021, it was Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car. A haunting and masterful journey through one man’s grieving process via artistic expression, Hamaguchi’s humbling epic quietly burrowed its way into my soul and has not separated since. Walking out of the theater following my first viewing, it made me feel so grateful to be alive. If you see this film, I can only hope you have a similar experience.

Honorable Mentions: No Time To Die, Pig, Titane, The Card Counter, The Power of the Dog, Malignant, Old, Cry Macho, Wife of a Spy, Licorice Pizza, The Last Duel, The Matrix Resurrections, No Sudden Move, Annette.

EMILY WHEELER

1. The Matrix Resurrections
2. Annette
3. Flee
4. C’mon C’mon
5. F9
6. Memoria
7. Drive My Car
8. Ninjababy
9. Bergman Island
10. The Last Duel

My list has a little something for everyone: a couple big franchise entries, two that border on slow cinema, a doc, a musical, some industry navel-gazing, and a smattering of Adam Driver’s year of terrible men. It all tickled my fancy, but much of it came late, making 2021 a backheavy year of cinema. Fitting, then, that my favorite swooped in as the year closed out.

The Matrix Resurrections pivoted within its iconic world to tell a story that’s more like the Hannah Gadsby joke about identifying as tired than anyone expected. I get why it threw people off: it’s older, wearier, and deeply queer, but I posit that it’s less an abandonment of what made the original trilogy successful and more an aging of its themes. No one wants to fight a war all their life, so the story shifts to a search for peace. Whether you read it as a trans allegory or as a more straightforward love story, what Neo finds at the end of Resurrections is worth screaming and crying for (I did both). Plus, Bugs is really cool.

As for the rest of the list, understand that I read the Fast & Furious franchise as a camp masterpiece (I wrote a whole article explaining that), please meet Bergman Island on its intentionally medium terms, and search out the Norwegian Juno riff Ninjababy when it becomes available. The rest don’t need defending.

TYNAN YANAGA

1. Drive My Car
2. The Tragedy of Macbeth
3. Petite Maman
4. Bergman Island
5. Licorice Pizza
6. Dune
7. Mass
8. Spencer
9. Test Pattern
10. Belfast

Ryusuke Hamaguchi is well aware of what he’s doing when the title credits show up 40 minutes into a three-hour movie. Because without an opening prelude about a husband and wife, the film, while never a dramafest, would lose a dose of its quiet power dispelled carefully over time. It never feels like the characters have an agenda in a movie sense. They have jobs and relationships, but they just seem to exist, share conversations, and gradually we come to understand them, even appreciate them. Our protagonist is a theater director, and so we spend our time observing the mechanisms of his multilingual production of Uncle Vanya. Although the lead role is earmarked for him, Kafuku-san ultimately casts a younger actor. It comes out later he had his apprehensions. After all, “Chekhov is terrifying. When you say his lines, he drags out the real you.”

In a movie about many things, Drive My Car becomes a story about how we replay our deepest regrets, and they stay with us – gnawing at our insides. If they lay dormant and generally unspoken in most of us then it’s even more common in Japanese culture. For instance, living in Japan, you rarely hug people, and so this film has one of the most tender embraces I can recall in recent memory. It requires so much, means so much, and the moment itself plays like an understated exclamation point. If you sit with the movie long enough perhaps you’ll know exactly what I mean.

JESSE NUSSMAN

What were your favorite films of 2021? Let us know in the comments below!