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Best Movies of 2021

Even when a film wasn’t great, filmgoing was. But there were some truly wonderful releases, ranging from music docs and musicals to westerns and the just plain weird.

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By A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis

A.O. Scott | Manohla Dargis

The 10 best arguments for the importance of movies.

This year, it felt to me as if every good movie was also an argument for why movies matter. There is a lot of anxiety, pandemic-related and otherwise, about what the future of the art form might look like. Will everything be streaming except a handful of I.P.-driven spectacles? Will streaming platforms (and their subscribers) be receptive to daring, difficult, obnoxious or esoteric work? Anyone who claims to know the answers is a fool. What I can tell you for sure is that these 10 movies, and the 11 that almost made the list, do what they can to resist the dishonesty, complacency and meanness currently rampant around the world. They reward your attention, engage your feelings and respect your intelligence. Every little bit helps.

1. ‘ Summer of Soul ’ (Questlove)

This documentary about a series of open-air concerts in Harlem in 1969, interweaving stunning performance footage with interviews with musicians and audience members, is a shot of pure joy. The lineup is a pantheon of Black genius, including Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone, the Staple Singers, Mahalia Jackson and many more. But the film is more than a time capsule: It’s a history lesson and an argument for why art matters — and what it can do — in times of conflict and anxiety. ( Streaming on Hulu . )

2. ‘ Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn ’ (Radu Jude)

From its hard-core opening to its riotous conclusion, this category-defying Romanian film captures the desperate, angry, exhausted mood of the present almost too well. A Bucharest schoolteacher (the brilliant, fearless Katia Pascariu) finds her job endangered after a sex tape she made with her husband goes semiviral. Meanwhile, the Covid pandemic and simmering culture-war hostilities turn everyday life into a theater of grievance and anxiety. Holding everything together — barely — is the abrasive intellectualism of Jude’s direction and the earnest rage that fuels his mockery. (In theaters.)

3. ‘ The Power of the Dog ’ (Jane Campion)

There are a lot of talented, competent, interesting filmmakers working today. Then there is Jane Campion, who practices cinema on a whole different level. The craft in evidence in this grand, big-sky western — the images, the music, the counterpointed performances of Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee — evoke the best traditions of old-style Hollywood storytelling. But there is nothing staid or conventional in the way Campion tackles Thomas Savage’s novel of jealousy, power and sexual intrigue. (Streaming on Netflix .)

4. ‘Petite Maman’ (Céline Sciamma)

The death of a grandmother, the grief of a parent, the acquisition of a new friend — these ordinary experiences, occurring over a few weeks in the life of an 8-year-old girl, provide the basic narrative structure of this spare, perfect film. Whether it’s best described as a modern-dress fairy tale, a psychological ghost story or a low-tech time travel fantasy is up to you. What’s certain is that the performances of Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz, real-life twins playing possibly imaginary friends, have a clarity and purity that Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”) deploys for maximum emotional impact. (Coming to theaters.)

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Hollywood reporter critics pick the best films of 2023.

A romantic collision of past and present, a subversive feminist fairy tale, a metaphysical ghost story, an epic retelling of a horrific footnote in American history and a sublime anti-rom-com are among this year’s highlights.

By David Rooney , Jon Frosch , Lovia Gyarkye , Sheri Linden December 13, 2023

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Any year in which an unlikely summer double bill became a global moviegoing event — with one film soaring toward $1.5 billion in worldwide grosses and the other closing in on $1 billion — can’t be considered bad news for Hollywood. But the Barbenheimer phenomenon aside, bad news plagued the film industry for much of 2023.

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Theatrical grosses remained inconsistent, struggling to regain pre-pandemic momentum for most genres except horror (all hail, new scream queen M3GAN ; a big hand for Talk to Me ), and even the once-reliable cash cow of the superhero blockbuster sputtered more often than not.

The Marvels was a major flop for the MCU, as was The Flash for DC, and although many of us found Blue Beetle an unexpected delight that overcame our weariness with folks in spandex and capes, the movie’s considerable charms failed to translate into healthy ticket sales.

No one knows what’s a safe bet at the box office anymore.

Still, the annual task of whittling down the year’s releases to a Top 10 was more challenging than ever. As is invariably the case, the best of them were festival discoveries. My list is bookended by Sundance premieres, with titles from Cannes, Venice and Telluride occupying every spot in between.

This was a year to celebrate auspicious debuts by women filmmakers whose command of the medium was matched by thematic maturity and an ability to coax transfixing performances from their female leads. In addition to Celine Song’s Past Lives and Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama , both of which appear on my list, that includes Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt , Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean , A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One and Tina Satter’s Reality .

The documentary field delivered too many highlights to name, but the nonfiction films that stayed with me included Wim Wenders’ visually seductive Anselm ; D. Smith’s intimate portrait of Black trans sex workers, Kokomo City ; Maite Alberdi’s shattering glimpse into one couple’s lives together, The Eternal Memory ; and Jesse Shortbull and Laura Tomaselli’s searing indictment of the theft of sacred land from its Indigenous owners, Lakota Nation vs. United States .

Two music docs were among my most exhilarating viewing experiences this year — Lisa Cortes’ rip-roaring bio of a singular rock pioneer, Little Richard: I Am Everything ; and Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s you-are-there account of a sui generis marathon concert by one of our most original performers, Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music .

Finally, seasoned documaker Roger Ross Williams segued into narrative features with the uplifting Cassandro , giving Gael García Bernal his best role in years, as a trailblazing queer lucha libre wrestler.

Read on for my ranked Top 10, plus 10 honorable mentions, followed by those of my brilliant comrades in the THR critics’ trenches, Jon Frosch, Lovia Gyarkye and Sheri Linden. I know I speak for all of us in saying 2023 was such a stellar year for movies that our lists could easily have been twice as long. — DAVID ROONEY

2. Poor Things Yorgos Lanthimos has been irreverently thumbing his nose at genre constraints since his Greek Weird Wave breakout with Dogtooth . But nothing in his unique filmography can compare with the fantastical flights of this inspired riff on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . Led by a spectacular high-wire act of physical comedy, intellectual curiosity and gleeful licentiousness from a never-better Emma Stone, this adventurous adaptation of Scottish cult author Alasdair Gray’s novel is part absurdist comedy, part picaresque feminist Candide and 100 percent breathtaking original. There’s not a weak link in a supporting cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Kathryn Hunter and Christopher Abbott.

3. All of Us Strangers There was no tighter ensemble this year than Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy in Andrew Haigh’s dreamy metaphysical ghost story. While it’s a companion piece of sorts to the Brit writer-director’s 2011 breakthrough, the instant queer classic Weekend , the new film mirrors its contemplation of romantic love with an equally thoughtful probe into familial love. Imaginatively adapted from a Japanese novel, this emotional depth charge plumbs the complex relationships between gay men and their parents with uncommon compassion, while also reflecting on the scars of a generation that came of age during the AIDS crisis.

5. Fallen Leaves Six years after Finland’s poet of the proletariat murmured about retirement following his typically idiosyncratic Syrian refugee story, The Other Side of Hope , Aki Kaurismäki returns with an expertly chiseled tale of romantic missteps that lead — with patience, playfulness and humor simultaneously deadpan and steeped in melancholy — to the exultant possibility of love. Laced with winking cinephile references to the director’s auteur heroes, this deceptively modest film is both dour and droll, every frame finding beauty in a dingy milieu that seems frozen in time. As the lonely souls fumbling for connection, Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen are gloriously attuned to Kaurismäki’s wavelength, while his own dog nails a scene-stealing supporting role.

7. Showing Up Comedy has not factored much in the films of Kelly Reichardt, but the director’s latest collaboration with frequent muse Michelle Williams and Pacific Northwest author Jon Raymond has a low-key vein of humor that often recalls the eccentric American microcosms of vintage Robert Altman. Set around the now shuttered Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, it tracks the frantic preparations of Williams’ flinty sculptor for a solo gallery show as she deals with the headaches of her messy family, her fellow artist landlord (a hilarious Hong Chau) and a wounded pigeon. Rich in seemingly casual but telling observations, the film is equal parts funny and affecting; it might be Reichardt’s most personal work in its depiction of the challenges of making art amid chaos.

9. Perfect Days A serene film for chaotic times, Wim Wenders’ best narrative feature in years returns to the Japanese capital, almost four decades after he retraced the footsteps of Ozu in the documentary Tokyo-Ga . The great Kōji Yakusho plays a middle-aged man living a life of monastic austerity, greeting each new day with gratitude in his morning routine and approaching his job of cleaning restrooms in the city’s public parks with almost religious devotion. Little by little, hints are dropped of the more complicated earlier existence he left behind, as the rewarding drama becomes a poetic, unexpectedly moving account of one man’s hard-earned peace and contentment.

10. Passages Another German actor, like Hüller, who had a major breakout year is Franz Rogowski, playing the narcissistic film director at the center of Ira Sachs’ bruising Paris-set drama. Rogowski’s Tomas is an emotional wrecking ball, blithely beginning a relationship with Adèle Exarchopoulos’ French schoolteacher without anticipating the wedge it will drive into his marriage to Ben Whishaw’s seemingly more mild-mannered English printmaker. Caustically amusing, sexy, sad and unflinchingly intense, this is an intimate study of the formation and collapse of a romantic triangle, played with an invigorating absence of sentiment by three actors at the top of their game.

Jon Frosch’s Top 10

1. Killers of the Flower Moon 2. Anatomy of a Fall 3. Passages 4. Afire 5. May December 6. Fallen Leaves 7. Showing Up 8. The Zone of Interest 9. Kokomo City 10. All of Us Strangers

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): Asteroid City ; The Holdovers ; Maestro ; Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros ; Oppenheimer ; Other People’s Children ; Past Lives ; Poor Things ; Totém ; You Hurt My Feelings

Lovia Gyarkye’s Top 10

1. Showing Up 2. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt 3. Earth Mama   4. Passages     5. Our Body 6. Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros   7. Anatomy of a Fall   8. Fallen Leaves 9. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret 10. Totém

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): The Boy and the Heron ; Fair Play ; Killers of the Flower Moon ; May December ; Monster ; Oppenheimer ; Orlando, My Political Biography ; Our Father, the Devil ; A Still Small Voice ; A Thousand and One

Sheri Linden’s Top 10

1. Showing Up 2. May December 3. Anatomy of a Fall 4. Killers of the Flower Moon 5. Past Lives 6. Oppenheimer   7. Pacifiction 8. Asteroid City 9. Passages 10. The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): The Boy and the Heron ; A Compassionate Spy ; The Delinquents ; Maestro ; Occupied City ; The Peasants ; Rodeo ; The Taste of Things ; The Teachers Lounge ; The Unknown Country

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Maestro review: Bradley Cooper's new film has flashes of genius

The Leonard Bernstein biopic marks his second film as both director and star.

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

There's an eternal temptation with public figures to convince ourselves that, because we see and hear them so often, we must actually know them. But listening to someone's musical output for decades, or watching their every TV appearance, doesn't necessarily bring us any closer to understanding the movements of their heart or the decisions they make. That unknowability of celebrity (and of everyone!) is the central idea behind Bradley Cooper 's new film Maestro . Though it tells the story of iconic American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein , Maestro 's impressionistic style — its preference for producing beautiful images over reciting biographical details — goes a long way to distinguish it from bog-standard biopics.

In addition to directing Maestro , Cooper also stars in the lead role — just as he did in 2018's A Star Is Born . In his directorial debut, Cooper explored the allure of artistic fame in America: how it can seemingly come out of nowhere; how it can fulfill the rags-to-riches dream that his country has always promised; and how, eventually, it can drain you dry. Maestro is not really concerned with either end of that spectrum (Bernstein did not burst onto the stage fully formed, nor did his reputation spiral later in life), but one thing it does share with A Star Is Born is its meaty lead actress role. As Bernstein's wife Felicia Montealegre, Carey Mulligan is the heart of Maestro . It is through her powerfully restrained performance that we can connect the various fragments of Bernstein's life that we glimpse in the film.

Felicia haunts the frame even before Mulligan appears. Maestro opens with an aged Bernstein in full color and makeup, sitting at his piano, lamenting about how he sometimes sees a ghostly afterimage of his late wife lingering around their house. The film then transitions into black-and-white, taking us to Bernstein's youthful vigor, when he was energized by the awesome power of music. Literally: We see him wake up in bed beside another handsome man, before triumphantly running through the corridors of a concert hall and eventually onto a stage, all to the sweeping sound of Bernstein's own compositions.

Such surreal, symbolic imagery (prioritizing emotional experiences and remembered feelings over didactic "then this happened…" structure) continues throughout Maestro , to great effect. When Bernstein meets Montealegre at a cocktail party, their flirtation is framed beautifully. The two of them, standing outside to share a cigarette, are shown in silhouette against a window within which we can see the rest of the partygoers carrying on — until another couple slams their faces against the window, breaking the illusion of separation between foreground and background (echoing the song said couple performs at the beginning of the party, about someone getting so caught up in the magic of a movie that they physically attack the screen).

Scenes like this demonstrate how Cooper is not employing black-and-white just for a cheap evocation of "the past" but to utilize the format's unique storytelling capabilities. The same is true for his use of full color; when the film leaves black-and-white behind, this change is evident not just in the character's faces but in how the camera luxuriates in the lush foliage of the Bernsteins' Connecticut estate.

Much later in the film (and in their relationship), husband and wife are having a fierce argument in a side room amidst their family's Thanksgiving gathering. As the two shout past each other, the overlapping audio makes it hard to discern the specifics of what each is saying…that is until Montealegre unleashes a truly cruel put-down, the harshness of which is emphasized not by Oscar-bait over-acting but by the bleakly hilarious sight of a gigantic Macy's parade balloon floating past the windows behind them. What emotional understanding we do get of these characters is achieved through awesome images like this rather than recitations of their Wikipedia pages.

The couple is fighting because, even though Bernstein loves his wife dearly, their marriage has never been a reason for him to stop carrying on affairs with handsome — and younger — men. Maestro does not shy away from the complications of its subject's sexuality; instead, it takes viewers back to a time that can now seem foreign even though it wasn't that long ago, when queer people had to live within heteronormative structures of marriage while still finding ways to express their real desires. Interestingly, Maestro depicts how Bernstein's truth was resented by his family. Maya Hawke's performance as daughter Jamie Bernstein, for instance, recalls Dan Futterman's character from The Birdcage — a straight scion who resents their queer parents. That's always weird to watch, and must have been even harder to live through.

Throughout the film, Cooper's Bernstein is asked by interviewers and loved ones about what motivates him. The only answer he gives is a simple one: It all comes back to his love for music. We see that in action during scenes where he's conducting orchestras and choirs, with Cooper embodying the sweaty passion of Bernstein's many recorded performances. Whatever this tells us about the character, it also indicates what drew Cooper to direct a film that had previously been pursued by some of America's greatest living directors ( Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese , both producers on Maestro , were at various earlier points slated to direct it themselves).

That precious feeling, of guiding a collective of artists in combining their talents to make music greater than the sum of their parts, must be the reward not just of conductors such as Bernstein but of directors including Cooper, who clearly relish the precise combination of varied filmmaking elements to achieve his vision. His own acting performance is just one part of that recipe, and though some have criticized the prosthetics he wears to imitate Bernstein (which may particularly grate considering that Cooper once played the lead role in The Elephant Man on Broadway without any makeup at all), it does seem to be of a piece with his goal of creating as immersive a film as possible. Viewers' mileage with that decision may vary, as with everything else in this singular film.

Precisely because Maestro is such an auteur vision that eschews many standards of biopics, it's possible it could only have been made by Netflix. At the same time, Maestro interestingly cuts against the worst tendencies of Netflix's original programming. This is not a movie made for second-screen viewing; anyone glimpsing at their phone for even a moment may miss a key character moment or plot detail that is conveyed visually. It will be best to see in a theater during whatever release window Netflix provides — but even when viewed at home, Maestro deserves the same level of respect from viewers as one of Bernstein's public performances of the music of Mahler. Grade: B+

Maestro opens Nov. 22 in select theaters and will be available to stream Dec. 20 on Netflix.

Want more movie news? Sign up for Entertainment Weekly 's free newsletter to get the latest trailers, celebrity interviews, film reviews, and more.

Related content:

• Bradley Cooper endured 5 hours of makeup at 1 a.m. so he could direct Maestro as Leonard Bernstein
• Leonard Bernstein's family defends Bradley Cooper's prosthetic transformation for Maestro
• Maestro keeps time with a symphonic love story in first trailer

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‘Passages’: The Best Movie About the Worst Person You Know

A Parisian love story turns toxic for Ben Whishaw

There comes a time when you must date the worst person. Instantly charming (though not half as charming as they believe themselves to be), enthusiastic and caring, they come into your life, both dream-like and out of nowhere. And you will watch those qualities shift: excuses are made about boring things, work or the weather, until this person disappears completely, with an even more boring explanation, or more likely, none at all. If you have not dated this person, your best friend has, or else your colleague. Worst case scenario: this person is you. While they may not be fun to experience, they do make for good art. And here is the excellent Passages , the latest film from Ira Sachs ( Forty Shades of Blue , Married Life ), about a very bad man named Tomas, played very well by Franz Rogowski.

Tomas is a hot, exacting German filmmaker married to an English printer Martin (Ben Whishaw). They live in Paris, they drink wine in a nice kitchen, they escape to their country house. But then, at the wrap party of his new film, Tomas sleeps with a teacher, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). To call it cheating betrays the open-endedness of this film, in which Sachs resists any urge towards definitiveness. Whatever the open-ness of Tomas and Martin’s marriage – who asked for it? What are the limits? – the heterosexual liaison does its damage. Over the next hour and a half, Tomas pushes away from Martin, falls in with Agathe, pulls away from Agathe, falls back in with Martin. He is ceaseless, undecided, hurtful.

What does Tomas want? The simple answer is, what he can’t have. But Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias explore more complex and modern causes than what might be defined blandly as narcissism in contemporary pop psychology. He misses Martin’s care and attention, of course, and reacts badly to some of Agathe’s domestic demands (which, really, aren’t demands at all but nice things). Most telling is his confession that he misses being in a gay relationship which, for Tomas, entails limitless freedoms. Throughout this spiral, Whishaw and Exarchopoulos play the secondary roles with admirable depth: robust deckchairs that have been whipped in a hurricane. But this is Rogowski’s film. The German actor’s face, both bratty and beyond his years, draws you in while simultaneously repulsing you.

Bad people have existed forever, but Tomas presents a very modern, neurotic view of masculinity: with everything he could wish for – a beautiful home, great knitwear, a creatively fulfilling career – he is crippled by options. Only when those possibilities, or to borrow the film’s title, passages, narrow, does Tomas begin to feel any consequence. That Sachs treats him as a fully-formed character, and not the villainous stereotype we have seen in so many righteous romantic dramas before, makes Passages a must-watch, akin to Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World and Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir .

The film is not as steamy as headlines would lead you to believe, but it does have a stand-out sequence (you will know the one I mean when it arrives), which makes the case for sex scenes, somehow now controversial among certain circles: yes, they can be pointless, yes, they can drive the plot, and yes, both cases are absolutely fine. Given the actors’ chemistry, you may hope for more. The film is talky, but we are grown-ups, and when it starts to flag at two thirds, the ending jolts into action, with a closing cycle ride for the ages. Perhaps you will feel some justice has been dealt to Tomas. Perhaps you would like more justice to be done. Perhaps, and isn’t this always the case with such people, you may no longer care.

‘Passages’ is out in cinemas 1 September

Henry is a senior culture writer at Esquire, covering film, television, literature, music and art for the print magazine and website. He has previously written for the Guardian, The Telegraph and The Evening Standard. At Esquire, he explores entertainment in all forms, from long reads on Lost in Translation ’s legacy to trend stories about Taylor Swift, as well as writing regular reviews of movies and television shows. He has also written many profiles for Esquire, and interviewed the likes of George Clooney, Austin Butler and Mike Faist.

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100 Best Movies on Netflix Ranked by Tomatometer (September 2024)

In our world of massive entertainment options, who’s got time to waste on the below-average? You’ve got a subscription, you’re ready for a marathon, and you want only the best movies no Netflix to watch. With thousands of choices on the platform, both original and acquired, we’ve found the 100 top Netflix movies with the highest Tomatometer scores! Time to get comfy on the couch!

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