{"id":20262,"date":"2022-01-19T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/?p=20262"},"modified":"2024-11-08T09:06:22","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T15:06:22","slug":"top-10-films-of-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Top 10 Films of 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"

2021 turned out to be stellar, largely due to the year-end influx of festival favorites and pandemic holdovers. Had you asked me in September what kind of movie year 2021 was, I would have said, \u201cAverage at best.\u201d But almost every week in the fourth quarter\u2014the last few weeks in December, in particular\u2014introduced something special, to the extent that my Top 10 list went from a foregone conclusion to a downright challenge to compile.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then again, every year is a good year for movies. In my 15 years of writing on Deep Focus Review, I haven\u2019t experienced a single bad year of moviegoing. Some years have been better than others, but none of them have been bad\u2014not when you see hundreds of movies. So it always ends up feeling like a struggle to organize my favorites and, after a couple months, there\u2019s usually a title or two that I regret not placing higher on my list.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With the impermanence of best lists in mind, here is my list of the Top 10 Films of 2021, plus a couple of extras. What\u2019s on your list? <\/span><\/p>\n

HONORABLE MENTION: <\/b>PG: Psycho Goreman<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>The audience for <\/span>Psycho Goreman <\/span><\/i>is narrow. If Troma-style gore and over-the-top dark humor is your thing, you\u2019ll enjoy this splatterfest. If you\u2019re nostalgic about the aesthetic of bad \u201880s genre fare, you\u2019ll appreciate its throwback production. Here\u2019s a movie that gets a laugh from exploding heads and power-crazed little girls. Admittedly, I watched this movie three times in 2021, largely because it\u2019s so damn funny and shocking and absurd. It\u2019s a movie I showed to friends or told them to watch (those into this sort of thing, anyway), and I wasn\u2019t disappointed with their responses. And while it may be difficult to justify as great art next to any other title on my list of favorites this year, I cannot deny the stupid smile it puts on my face each time I watch it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

RUNNER UP:<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>There is No Evil<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>It\u2019s rare for anthology films to work so well on me. But Mohammad Rasoulof\u2019s devastating four-part drama cuts into the Iranian state\u2019s practice of required military service, which may lead to a conscripted citizen having to carry out capital punishment. The four stories consider how the effects last well beyond the act itself\u2014some live their entire lives with their conscience pressing on them. Barely screened in the US, <\/span>There is No Evil <\/span><\/i>wasn\u2019t easy to see\u2014a reality that will only become more pronounced as the months and years pass. Seeking it out is an act of support for an artist who, after his film was banned in Iran, smuggled it out of the country to ensure audiences could see it. Such defiance is commendable in itself, but the level of personal expression and humanism on display is staggering.<\/span><\/p>\n

10. Drive My Car<\/a>
\n<\/i>One of the year\u2019s most awarded films, Ryusuke Hamaguchi\u2019s patient, inward drama places the viewer into an uncertain headspace and mode of inner searching. Hidetoshi Nishijima stars as a widower who reflects on his marriage to his deceased, unfaithful wife\u2014all while overseeing a production of <\/span>Uncle Vanya<\/span><\/i>, managing relationships with his actors, and embracing the quiet he shares with his new driver (T\u014dko Miura). Hamaguchi\u2019s long, immersive, and ponderous storytelling occupies an imposing three-hour runtime, but it races by thanks to curiously precision-like editing and intentionally structured narrative. Along with <\/span>Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy<\/i><\/a>, Hamaguchi demonstrated in 2021 that he\u2019s a major contemporary filmmaker whose entire filmography demands to be explored.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

9. The Power of the Dog<\/i><\/a>
\n<\/i>When I think of Jane Campion\u2019s revisionist Western, I think of clockwork. It\u2019s such a perfectly calibrated system of intricate characters and intentionally placed details, ticking away moment after moment toward an inevitable conclusion. Campion\u2019s mastery as writer-director, and also a director who guides her actors\u2014Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemmons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee are all terrific\u2014is something to behold. Watching the film is like appreciating a Swiss clock for all its efficient inner workings and the beauty of its construction. Campion elegantly establishes her characters and watches them topple over in fascinating ways that have proven ripe for analysis. You might think such precision would put the audience at a distance, but the surprising reality is that it\u2019s all the more engrossing for it.
\n<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/b>8. The Last Duel<\/a>
\n<\/i>Ridley Scott\u2019s latest Medieval epic is among his most thoughtful and well-constructed films, thanks in large part to the expert screenplay by Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon. Dissecting the events that led to the final duel-to-the-death in France\u2019s history from three perspectives (represented by Damon, Adam Driver, and Jodie Comer), the film reminds us that the majority of Western history has been written by white men, leaving women secondary or altogether robbed of their agency. Without resorting to overt messages, the film\u2019s subtle shifts between perspectives immerse the viewer in the characters\u2019 subjectivity, underscoring how privilege is unshakably entrenched. Scott\u2019s production is massive and gorgeous, ending with a breathless duel that uses intense action to underscore its themes.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/b>7. <\/b>Annette<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>French auteur Leos Carax teamed with Ron and Russell Mael, better known as the band Sparks, for one of the strangest films of 2021. The term <\/span>musical <\/span><\/i>doesn\u2019t begin to classify this dazzling and eventually sobering story about a volatile stand-up comedian (Adam Driver), an opera singer (Marion Cotillard), and their marionette child Annette. Employing classical imagery to post-modern effect, the film immerses you in each moment, even if the entire picture can sometimes feel erratic and tonally imbalanced. But its unpredictability, along with its curious way of feeling both within and outside of every moment, is part of its charm. By the final scene, featuring the year\u2019s best child performance by Devyn McDowell, <\/span>Annette <\/span><\/i>reveals the sneaky way it has worked its way under your skin. And weeks later, after you can\u2019t get it out of your mind, you realize just how special it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. <\/b>Quo Vadis, Aida?<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>Bureaucracy leads to atrocity in Bosnian director Jasmila \u017dbani\u0107\u2019s disquieting film about the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. A United Nations translator (Jasna \u0110uri\u010di\u0107, in an astounding performance) races to save her family as the Bosnian Serb Army, headed by Ratko Mladi, rounds up Muslims from the area. Tragically, red tape prevents her from intervening, and slow communication between UN officials, who have bigger fish to fry, mean thousands will die. Shot with documentary realism, the film brings to light a story that, even at the time, remained underrepresented by the news media. The same is true of this movie, which demands to be sought out and confronted, even if the subject matter proves challenging. \u017dbani\u0107\u2019s film acknowledges that some have chosen to forget, which is the only way they know how to heal, while others live with the reality every day. This is urgent, humanist, and political filmmaking that\u2019s also somehow beautiful in its execution.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b>5. <\/b>Petite Maman<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>C\u00e9line Sciamma explores an entire lifetime of parent-child bonding in the 72-minute span of <\/span>Petite Maman<\/span><\/i>, her follow-up to 2019\u2019s <\/span>Portrait of a Lady on Fire<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/i>. The performances by real-life twins Jos\u00e9phine and Gabrielle Sanz, playing daughter and mother respectively, capture how every child becomes their parent in some way or another. Whether you categorize it as a time-travel yarn or a coming-of-age story, the film’s subtle way of unraveling doesn\u2019t call attention to the mechanics of its plot\u2014only the emotional core. Sciamma\u2019s story is tender and endearing, but never overly sentimental. I spent much of my review comparing the film to Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s <\/span>My Neighbor Totoro<\/i><\/strong><\/a> <\/i>(1988), which is the highest praise I can think of for a fantasy about imagination and family. <\/span><\/p>\n

4. <\/b>Nightmare Alley<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>Films like <\/span>Nightmare Alley <\/span><\/i>don\u2019t get made all that often anymore. Then again, they were never made quite like this. Guillermo del Toro adapts the grimy, relentless book into a cinematic fantasy that could only exist onscreen in such alternatively grotesque and shimmering delight. It\u2019s part film noir, part elaborately staged period piece, yet it might be the film that best exemplifies del Toro\u2019s obsession with monsters. Bradley Cooper\u2019s smart but doomed huckster arrives on a sublimely constructed carney scene only to find his way into the mentalist circuit, where his inner monster is tempted out of its hole by a seductive Cate Blanchett, embodying a femme fatale. Del Toro assembled the year\u2019s best ensemble (in addition to Cooper and Blanchett: Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn, Holt McCallany, Clifton Collins Jr., and Tim Blake Nelson) for a faithful literary adaptation and, ultimately, a boldly cynical story of one man\u2019s downward spiral.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Parallel Mothers<\/i><\/a><\/b>
\n<\/b>Pedro Almod\u00f3var once again demonstrates that, as he gets older, his willingness to confront the past head-on deepens. Pen\u00e9lope Cruz, the director\u2019s late-career muse, gives the year\u2019s finest female performance as a photographer who hopes to unearth family secrets buried since the Spanish Civil War. In her personal life, her willingness to confront the parentage of her newborn child marks a similar conflict, representing the national need to acknowledge trauma to overcome it. Although Almod\u00f3var resists many of the more flamboyant touches that define his aesthetic (it\u2019s a gorgeous and elaborately designed film, regardless), he confronts political factors directly after years of addressing them only through analogy and symbolism. In some ways, it\u2019s his most straightforward film on formal terms, but it\u2019s also achingly emotional, raw, and sophisticated filmmaking.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. <\/b>Licorice Pizza<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>Licorice Pizza <\/span><\/i>is the kind of film I\u2019ll want to revisit again and again. Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s nostalgic and episodic story of an unlikely romance follows two people who belong together, even if they probably shouldn\u2019t be together. Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman give two of the year\u2019s most transfixing performances in a film that looks and sounds like it was made in the 1970s. It\u2019s a wandering experience of ups and downs, seemingly random detours, and memorable cameos (Bradley Cooper, Sean Penn, Tom Waits) that ultimately build a heartening love story. Every moment of Anderson\u2019s superb direction and eye for immersive period design completely submerges the viewer in the setting. Best of all, the film feels like something deeply personal for the director, who assembled friends and family to make a sprawling, nonjudgmental, and unselfconscious look at a bygone era and its free-wheeling sense of danger and romance.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b>1. <\/b>Titane<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/b>If there\u2019s a common thread among several films in my 2021 list, it\u2019s that they\u2019re each a sensation machine\u2014films with an undeniable force behind them, driving their emotions, formal choices, and moment-to-moment experience. <\/span>Licorice Pizza<\/span><\/i>, for instance, sweeps us up in a propulsive romance. <\/span>Titane<\/span><\/i>\u2019s sensations are far more unpleasant on the surface. No other film challenged my empathy with such visceral filmmaking than Julia Ducournau\u2019s provocative masterpiece\u2014a film often reductively described as \u201cabout a woman fucking a car.\u201d But that\u2019s just the launchpad for this wildly unconventional and inspired story about a murderess who becomes a surrogate son. Not only have I never seen anything quite like the film, which is praise enough, but I also have never seen a filmmaker embrace deviation with such sublime beauty.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ducournau explores slasher killings, self-mutilation, parenthood, bodily changes, and above all non-binary gender in ways that will challenge most. As I wrote in my review, \u201c<\/span>Titane <\/span><\/i>employs these potent tools\u2014the stuff of fire, metal, sex, death, and birth\u2014to get at something thematically elemental about how labels like \u2018male\u2019 and \u2018female,\u2019 often perpetuated by patriarchally established modes of understanding the world, are woefully inadequate.\u201d But by the incredible final sequence, all the pain and abjection leads to a tender moment that defies expectation. It\u2019s a one-of-a-kind film, and a Palme d\u2019Or winner, that might leave you speechless, repelled, weeping, or exhilarated\u2014and if you\u2019re lucky, all of the above.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2021 turned out to be stellar, largely due to the year-end influx of festival favorites and pandemic holdovers. Had you asked me in September what kind of movie year 2021 was, I would have said, \u201cAverage at best.\u201d But almost every week in the fourth quarter\u2014the last few weeks in December, in particular\u2014introduced something special, to the extent that my Top 10 list went from a foregone conclusion to a downright challenge to compile.\u00a0 Then again, every year is a good year for movies. In my 15 years of writing on Deep Focus Review, I haven\u2019t experienced a single bad year of moviegoing. Some years have been better than others, but none of them have been bad\u2014not when you see hundreds of movies. So it always ends up feeling like a struggle to organize my favorites and, after a couple months, there\u2019s usually a title or two that I regret not placing higher on my list.\u00a0 With the impermanence of best lists in mind, here is my list of the Top 10 Films of 2021, plus a couple of extras. What\u2019s on your list? HONORABLE MENTION: PG: Psycho Goreman The audience for Psycho Goreman is narrow. If Troma-style gore and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lists","topic-lists"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTop 10 Films of 2021 | Deep Focus Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Top 10 Films of 2021\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"2021 turned out to be stellar, largely due to the year-end influx of festival favorites and pandemic holdovers. Had you asked me in September what kind of movie year 2021 was, I would have said, \u201cAverage at best.\u201d But almost every week in the fourth quarter\u2014the last few weeks in December, in particular\u2014introduced something special, to the extent that my Top 10 list went from a foregone conclusion to a downright challenge to compile.\u00a0 Then again, every year is a good year for movies. In my 15 years of writing on Deep Focus Review, I haven\u2019t experienced a single bad year of moviegoing. Some years have been better than others, but none of them have been bad\u2014not when you see hundreds of movies. So it always ends up feeling like a struggle to organize my favorites and, after a couple months, there\u2019s usually a title or two that I regret not placing higher on my list.\u00a0 With the impermanence of best lists in mind, here is my list of the Top 10 Films of 2021, plus a couple of extras. What\u2019s on your list? HONORABLE MENTION: PG: Psycho Goreman The audience for Psycho Goreman is narrow. 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Had you asked me in September what kind of movie year 2021 was, I would have said, \u201cAverage at best.\u201d But almost every week in the fourth quarter\u2014the last few weeks in December, in particular\u2014introduced something special, to the extent that my Top 10 list went from a foregone conclusion to a downright challenge to compile.\u00a0 Then again, every year is a good year for movies. In my 15 years of writing on Deep Focus Review, I haven\u2019t experienced a single bad year of moviegoing. Some years have been better than others, but none of them have been bad\u2014not when you see hundreds of movies. So it always ends up feeling like a struggle to organize my favorites and, after a couple months, there\u2019s usually a title or two that I regret not placing higher on my list.\u00a0 With the impermanence of best lists in mind, here is my list of the Top 10 Films of 2021, plus a couple of extras. What\u2019s on your list? HONORABLE MENTION: PG: Psycho Goreman The audience for Psycho Goreman is narrow. If Troma-style gore and […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/","og_site_name":"Deep Focus Review","article_published_time":"2022-01-19T15:00:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-11-08T15:06:22+00:00","author":"Brian Eggert","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Brian Eggert","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/"},"author":{"name":"Brian Eggert","@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#\/schema\/person\/78dca551bce4d5099340e94d4bf1b40f"},"headline":"Top 10 Films of 2021","datePublished":"2022-01-19T15:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2024-11-08T15:06:22+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/"},"wordCount":2020,"commentCount":2,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#organization"},"articleSection":["Lists"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/","url":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/","name":"Top 10 Films of 2021 | Deep Focus Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#website"},"datePublished":"2022-01-19T15:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2024-11-08T15:06:22+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/top-10-films-of-2021\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Top 10 Films of 2021"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/","name":"Deep Focus Review","description":"Movie Reviews, Essays, and Analysis","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#organization"},"alternateName":"DFR","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#organization","name":"Deep Focus Review","alternateName":"DFR","url":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/cropped-DFR-Favicon-5.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/cropped-DFR-Favicon-5.png","width":512,"height":512,"caption":"Deep Focus Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.deepfocusreview.com\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/deepfocusreview\/","https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/deepfocusreview\/","https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/deep-focus-review\/","https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@deepfocusreview","https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/deepfocusreview.bsky.social"],"description":"Brian Eggert is a Tomatometer-Approved critic who writes about classic, independent, and mainstream cinema on Deep Focus Review. 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