Slant's The 50 Best Films of 2021
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By Slant Staff on December 10, 2021
A staggering number of visceral, ambitious, and glorious movies were released in 2021, covering a vast spectrum of tones, sizes, and intentions. And yet one always encounters people who continue to say that “cinema is dead.” Ask for elaboration and they often say that there’s nothing to see in the theaters, which isn’t, paradoxically, the same as saying that movies are well beyond their expiration date.
Instead, movies that people tend to remember and take seriously have mostly scurried to streaming outlets, where they’ve proliferated and mutated in the abundance of choice. For one, the thing we used to call a “documentary” has taken on particularly radical contours, and films like Robert Greene’s Procession, a formally and socially audacious documentary-slash-personal confessional, have come as close as modern cinema has to evoking a stream of consciousness. It’s also playing on Netflix, available to every subscriber, and could easily be mistaken by the uninitiated for the kind of routine true-crime shows in which the outlet specializes.
Such realizations lead us back to a familiar refrain: that there are lots of great movies without the theater experience to lend them a patina of exceptionalism. And this complication has been intensified by the Covid-19 pandemic and the panic that it’s understandably inspired in Hollywood, which is more determined than ever to rely on spectacle for the global bucks. The easiest short-term solution is to accept that this theatrical patina—save for the arthouses in the larger cities and the few formally adventurous filmmakers, such as Wes Anderson, who can get his work booked in big theaters—is an outdated notion and reacclimate to reality.
For people who aren’t fortunate enough to live near a venue playing, say, Janicza Bravo’s Zola or Hamaguchi Ryûsuke’s Drive My Car, theaters are bloated stadiums playing mega-act dinosaurs, and should be accorded appropriate respect or lack thereof, while the best films are usually hidden somewhere on a streamer’s menu between Hallmark Christmas movies and various seasons of Everyone Loves Raymond.
In other words, good movies require the effort of personal vigilance, and the films below merit the expansion of purview. In troubled times, these daring, highly disparate productions show that a cherished medium isn’t only not dying but may, in fact, just be beginning to get its sea legs. Cinema could be evolving into a form that’s more personal and eccentric than ever, in accordance with the newfound intimacy that arrives from learning that theaters can be lovely but are also essentially beside the point. Chuck Bowen
Click here for our contributors’ individual ballots.
Editor’s Note: Hong Sang-soo’s In Front of Your Face, which isn’t scheduled for release until 2022, has been removed from our list due to eligibility criteria. See you next year, Hong.
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1 new
Doraibu mai kâ
2021 — a.k.a. Drive My Car, in 11 top lists -
2 new
The Power of the Dog
2021, in 7 top lists -
3 new
All Light, Everywhere
2021, in 0 top lists -
4 new
Memoria
2021, in 2 top lists -
5 new
Gûzen to sôzô
2021 — a.k.a. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, in 3 top lists -
6 new
Licorice Pizza
2021, in 5 top lists -
7 new
Verdens verste menneske
2021 — a.k.a. The Worst Person in the World, in 6 top lists -
8 new
Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle
2019 — a.k.a. Just Don't Think I'll Scream, in 0 top lists -
9 new
Red Rocket
2021, in 2 top lists -
10 new
Madres paralelas
2021 — a.k.a. Parallel Mothers, in 0 top lists -
11 new
Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?
2021 — a.k.a. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, in 1 top list -
12 new
The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the...
2020, in 0 top lists -
13 new
Bergman Island
2021, in 2 top lists -
14 new
Rizi
2020 — a.k.a. Days, in 1 top list -
15 new
Petite maman
2021 — a.k.a. Petite Maman, in 4 top lists -
16 new
The Velvet Underground
2021, in 1 top list -
17 new
The French Dispatch
2021, in 1 top list -
18 new
Sin señas particulares
2020 — a.k.a. Identifying Features, in 1 top list -
19 new
Procession
2021, in 0 top lists -
20 new
The Souvenir: Part II
2021, in 1 top list -
21 new
The Card Counter
2021, in 2 top lists -
22 new
Zola
2020, in 1 top list -
23 new
Sheytan vojud nadarad
2020 — a.k.a. There Is No Evil, in 3 top lists -
24 new
This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
2019, in 3 top lists -
25 new
Titane
2021, in 4 top lists -
26 new
Domangchin yeoja
2020 — a.k.a. The Woman Who Ran, in 3 top lists -
27 new
Benedetta
2021, in 1 top list -
28 new
El Planeta
2021, in 0 top lists -
29 new
Doua lozuri
2016 — a.k.a. Two Lottery Tickets, in 0 top lists Check -
30 new
Shiva Baby
2020, in 0 top lists -
31 new
In the Same Breath
2021, in 0 top lists -
32 new
The Disciple
2020, in 0 top lists -
33 new
State Funeral
2019, in 0 top lists -
34 new
Faya Dayi
2021, in 2 top lists -
35 new
Undine
2020, in 0 top lists -
36 new
Ich bin dein Mensch
2021 — a.k.a. I'm Your Man, in 1 top list -
37 new
An Dà Shealladh
2020 — a.k.a. The Two Sights, in 0 top lists -
38 new
Passing
2021, in 0 top lists -
39 new
Om det oändliga
2019 — a.k.a. About Endlessness, in 0 top lists -
40 new
Labyrinth of Cinema
2019, in 0 top lists -
41 new
Flugt
2021 — a.k.a. Flee, in 2 top lists -
42 new
Azor
2021, in 0 top lists -
43 new
Dune: Part One
2021 — a.k.a. Dune, in 7 top lists Check -
44 new
A Shape of Things to Come
2020, in 0 top lists -
45 new
Ema
2019, in 1 top list -
46 new
Lost Course
2019, in 0 top lists -
47 new
Limbo
2020, in 0 top lists -
48 new
Pig
2021, in 1 top list -
49 new
Felkészülés meghatározatlan ideig tartó...
2020 — a.k.a. Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, in 0 top lists -
50 new
Come True
2020, in 1 top list
Last updated on Dec 16, 2021; source