My 20 Favorite Films of 2021

In 2021, I watched 81 current (2021) or recent (late 2020) films. I enjoyed most of them. Since I don’t technically review films for a living, I watch only what I want to watch and am reasonably informed so few turkeys cross my path these days. I have placed these in alphabetical order, but if I had to pick my favorite film this year, it would almost certainly be West Side Story.

Black Widow — This has been an exceptionally good year for Marvel on both film and television. I also really enjoyed The Eternals, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Spider-man: No Way Home. But somehow, this is the one I landed on as the best of this year’s superhero movies. I love the dynamics between Scarlet Johanson and Florence Pugh (who stole my heart this year here and in Hawkeye). This film demonstrated that superheroes can tell female-centric stories as well as they tell masculine power fantasies, not that this was in doubt after Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, but I would argue this one did it better than either.

CODA — One of the most heart-felt films I’ve seen in a long time. I was honestly touched by the struggles of this young woman, daughter deaf parents, who finds herself in music and struggles to figure out how she can separate herself from a family she knows needs her. Each character is so vividly drawn and each has their rasons, as the Renior quote goes.

Crip Camp — This is a powerful story of a group of disabled youth, who created an almost utopian world at a summer camp, and then forged a network that working together transformed the laws and policies that impact their lives. It’s remarkable that they have such compelling footage of these activists at various periods of their life and we are able to watch a small group of people lead the way to change the world.

Dune — This is a transformative experience. Sure, it’s a bit slow but it deftly lays the foundations for what’s the come. It is probably the most fully realized world on screen this year, succeeding where other artists have tried and to my eyes, failed to capture Herbert’s classic science fiction saga.

The Father — I have been haunted by this film since I saw it relatively early in 2021. The performances were compelling, but what I really remember vividly are the ways the mise-en-scene gets disrupted in subtle yet unsettling ways to compelling the perspective of the protagonist’s growing disorientation and memory loss.

The Green Knight — A haunting immersion into a mythic realm which puts a fresh new spin on the medieval classic.

Gunpowder Milkshake — I stumbled into this one on Netflix with no expectations and it may be my biggest surprise of the year. If you like John Wick, if you like female revenge action movies, if you liked the gunplay in early John Woo films, then this one is for you.

In the Heights — I saw the original Broadway production and I saw a ground-shaking performance in the West End more than a decade later, so I was primed for John Chu’s big screen version and I was not disappointed. I get the critiques of the film’s color-ism, but I also admire the beautifully staged musical number, especially the revamp of Esther Williams in the pool scene and some of the others which are alternatively soulful and celebratory. This was what I needed as I was coming out from my pandemic cacoon.

King Richard — I don’t like sports, except for fictional ones (wrestling, quidditch) but I do like sports movies, and this was a very compelling one, even if I still have reservations about centering the story of the Williams sister on their father. The film complicates this in so many ways, also offering a compelling portrait of their mother and acknowledging some critiques of their father’s hucksterism and bullying.

Lost Daughter — Olivia Coleman can act and Maggie Gyllenhaal can direct, damn it! I watched this one only a few hours before I am writing this post, so my emotions are still raw and have not settled into a long term perspective. But I wanted to watch every twitch of her face, as the film slow opens up its secrets and forces us to acknowledge the reasons why it sucks to be a mother in a patriarchal culture.

Luca— Disney also had a great year between this, Encanto, and Raya and the Last Dragon. I liked all three and I’ve kept swapping them on and off this list, but ultimately, this story of boyhood friendship across cultural difference — not to mention all of the call back to European art cinema — spoke to my Baby Boom heart.

The Mitchells Vs. The Machines — My favorite animated film this year. It’s imaginative, it’s funny, it plays with genre, and it has something to say about the continuing value of family. (I seem to be feeling a lot of traditional values this year,. It would seem that old ideas can be expressed in compelling new forms.)

Nightmare Ally — I am a big fan of Del Torro and of the original film noir and there’s a pretty decent graphic novel version, also, so I came into this primed and it did not disappoint me. I am a sucker for anything set at a circus or carnival, and this film captures that atmosphere with such vividness. It’s a pretty bleak narrative arc, to be sure, but It also teaches us a lot about how this world operates — how to do a cold read, how to develop codes to signal each other in mentalist acts, and why it is a bad idea to play with people’s faith and memory for money.

Passing — Another compelling period piece — this one set in midcentury Harlem, as two women, childhood friends, reconnect, and play out the consequences of their different life choices. What I found most striking here was the black and white cinematography — the play with light and shadow makes this story about crossing racial boundaries work.

Plan B — There have been three stories in recent years where two women travel together in search of an abortion or birth control. Never Rarely Sometimes Always made my list last year for a dramatic treatment of this same material. . I have-not yet seen Unplanned. But this one earns a spot on this list for its ability to merge raunchy sex comedy, the road trip, the post-feminist female friendship story, and some earnest advocacy into a rich mix.

Power of the Dog — I couldn’t take my eyes off Benedict Cumberbatch who moves through the film like a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike — the embodiment of toxic masculinity. He shed some of the braininess we associate with his on-screen persona in favor of a character who bullies everyone he meets. Again, this is a film where we watch as events gradually uncover what makes the characters tick, and the closing events managed to catch me by surprise, even if the seeds are planted for them almost from the first scenes.

The Sit In — Harry Belefonte was guest host of the Tonight Show in 1968 and managed to book a who’s who in politics and popular culture in the late 1960s. This documentary reconstructs what happened during a transformative moment in television history, which most of us never knew happened, from a fragmentary archive and helps to situate each of these figures for audiences who may not have been alive at the time.

Summer of Soul — Another great documentary about popular culture in the 1960s which taps a long hurried archive of materials and gives them currency for new audiences. Music is always my blind-spot so I did not expect to like this one as much as I did, so I resisted a lot of the hype and came to it late, but damn! I am just getting started with the Beatles documentary series on Disney Plus, but suspect if I had made more progress, it would have had a place on my list as another great representation of 1960s pop culture.

Tick, Tick, Boom — Let me just say that Lin-Manuel Miranda had one hell of a year! I am not a fan of Rent so I did not know what to expect here, but this portrait of a young musical composer was a loving tribute to Broadway and arrived just in time for me to mourn the loss of Steven Sondheim. It was both well-made and well-timed not only in relation to Sondheim’s death but the reopening of Broadway theaters.

West Side Story — Here’s another one which won me over despite some skepticism about remaking what has been a cinematic classic. But then there have been multiple Broadway stagings through the years, as each artist has struggled with the richness of this material and the limitations of the racial stereotypes at its heart. Tony Kushner’s screenplay goes a long way, throwing out most of the original dialogue, providing greater context for the core conflict, providing greater depth to the Puerto Riican characters, introducing rawer, less stylized violence, and demonstrating that a mix of Spanish and English dialogue still conveys the emotional ore of the story even for those who do not know Spanish (a fight with previous Broadway productions). Add to this moral authority that Rita Moreno brings to her part and a heartbreaking performance by Ariana DeBose as Anita. Spielberg’s direction often softens the blow, but this film hits hard, despite the bright colors and lively musical numbers.

Honorable mentions: Beyond the Disney and Marvel films already referenced. Jungle Cruise and Cruela were the only two films I saw twice in the cinema, and I enjoyed them both (no apologies) and will happily return to future installments of these franchises. One Night in Solo is an imperfect and ultimately disappointing film but it’s one that I kept thinking about weeks after I saw it, and that counts for something. Let me toss Ron’s Gone Wrong on the list of animated films which held my attention, but it pales before The Mitchells vs. The Machines in terms of telling stories of digital life.

This list was written without me seeing some of the films that have gotten attention at the end of the year including Don’t Look Up, Licorice Pizza, Meet the Ricardos, and Belfast, so do not read anything into their exclusion from this list. Circumstances have prevented me from seeing them yet.