The best films of 2021: The ballots
Here's how 10 critics voted in our annual poll on the year in movies
Film Lists Films
When it comes to retrospective lists, The A.V. Club is a unified front: These are the best movies of the year, we say authoritatively, as if engraving the results onto a stone tablet. But the truth is that our just-published rundown of 2021’s finest films only looks like an act of consensus. It is, by its very nature, more of a compromise—a list assembled from many other lists, an aggregation of respective tastes. For a more complete picture of the last 12 months in cinema, you have to look beyond the official ranking to the respective opinions of those who made it—a group of 10 contributors who spent all year in the A.V. Club review trenches. The ballots that follow, which we combined semi-scientifically (we did a little massaging here and there; don’t check our math), offer an alternative vision of 2021. Through passion picks and superlatives—including some outliers, a.k.a. movies that that made one list and no others—they paint a fuller picture of what made this year in movies so memorable.
14 Comments
Biggest Disappointment: Not to include Ignatiy
IV has been reviewing all those C- films all year for you, and this could’ve been the opportunity to show his favorites.
I share your disappointment and fear your Most Overrated. 😉
I have to agree with Vikram on Titane. The trailer got me excited to see a transgressive journey into madness, but the actual film felt like a loose jumble of ideas with a misting of provocation. Mind you, the lead performance was pretty damn good and there are individual scenes that worked (I particularly liked the one where she keeps trying to leave the scene after murdering, only to keep running into room-mates).
“I’m likewise baffled by the praise lavished on Kristen Stewart’s” – DowdI think this was a phenomenal performance and was completely immersive, I forgot it was Stewart almost immediately which is hard to do for a lot of A-list celebrities. I’m baffled how someone could ever consider this stunt casting, and I think that you might have walked in thinking it was stunt casting so that’s how you perceived it throughout.Great list by Rife, Power of the Dog at the top and Last Night in Soho truly being a big sad and super cheesy disappointment. lol at the attempt to vouch for Woman in the Window, that was a lazy ass movie.
As per A.A.’s opening, they did massage the list somewhat from the mathematical ballots (using their old 1st = 15pts, 2nd = 14pts, etc. formula). Here’s how the top 25 shakes out mathematically with tie-breaking procedures:1. The French Dispatch (83pts)
2. Petite Maman (66pts)
3. Red Rocket (54pts)
4. Licorice Pizza (52pts)
5. Memoria (48pts)
6. The Power of the Dog (47pts, 5 votes, 1 #1 vote)
7. A Hero (47pts, 5 votes, no #1 vote)
8. West Side Story (40pts),
9. Pig (38pts, 4 votes, 2 top 3 votes)
10. Summer of Soul (38pts, 4 votes, 1 top 3 vote)
11. The Green Knight (35pts)
12. The Worst Person in the World (34pts)
13. Bad Luck Banging… (31pts)
14. The Card Counter (29pts)
15. Titane (27pts, 3 votes, 1 #1 vote)
16. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (27pts, 3 votes, no #1 vote)
17. The Souvenir: Part II (25pts)
18. Drive My Car (24pts)
19. Annette (23pts)
20. Bergman Island (21pts)
21. About Endlessness (20pts)
22. The Killing of Two Lovers (17pts, 2 votes, 1 top 3 vote)
23. French Exit (17pts, 2 votes, no top 3 vote)
24. The Tragedy of Macbeth (16pts)
25. Flee (15pts, 3 votes)
How does one go about making a top 15 list of your favorite movies of the year? Is it a running tally type thing where the first film of the year is slotted in the #1 spot, and from then on other films get ranked higher or lower? Like the second film you see you like better than the first so that’s now the new #1. Or do you look at a list of all the films at the end of the year and decide on the 15 you liked best and then rank them?I’ve never made a best of the year list for anything, and I’m curious just how people go about it.
I know that I try my best to not go too list-crazy throughout the year; it’s tempting to keep a running list, but I try to keep it to just mentally long-listing stuff until at least October or November, and then try to sort those into a list.
That said, when I see something that I think is the best thing I’ve seen since the beginning of the year, I can usually tell. So while I wasn’t especially meticulous about making and remaking my list, I can say I remember that In the Heights struck me as the best 2021 movie I’d seen so far back in June, as did The French Dispatch when I saw it in September, as did Licorice Pizza a couple months later… though the best is when, as happened this year, I see such a flood of excellent stuff (in this case, because of the New York Film Festival) that I sort of lose track of it all and have to re-group later.
I still haven’t seen C’mon C’mon, Macbeth, Green Knight, French Dispatch, Titane, Drive My Car/Wheel of Fortune, Licorice Pizza, Red Rocket, Memoria, or Worst Person in the World. So my list is likely to change, but at the moment my top 15 are:1. Pig
2. Val
3. Mitchells vs. the Machines
4. The Harder they Fall
5. Judas and the Black Messiah
6. Swan Song
7. Space Sweepers
8. Dead Pigs
9. Raya and the Last Dragon
10. Dune
11. Censor
12. Power of the Dog
13. Passing
14. Luca
15. No Sudden Move
Honorable Mentions: Quiet Place 2, Bad Trip, Bard & Star, Riders of Justice, Concrete Cowboy, Saint Maud
Also haven’t seen West Side Story or In the Heights.My biggest Disappointment was Annette and Reminiscence. I desperately wanted to love an original sci-fi/non-IP aimed at adults, but it was only okay.
If you haven’t seen The Green Knight I recommend you see it ASAP. My personal #1 of the year.
I definitely want to see it. I generally wait until a movie hits a streaming service before I watch it, because I already pay enough money for movies without adding to it with rentals. Which is why I still haven’t seen Minari, to see if I need to add it to my best of 2020 list…
Here’s my top 15 (keeping in mind I haven’t seen Licorice Pizza or West Side Story)1) Titane2) The Green Knight3) Annette4) Drive My Car5) Pig6) The Card Counter7) Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar8) Dune9) Bo Burnham: Inside10) The Power of the Dog11) Derek Delgaudio’s In & Of Itself12) Some Kind of Heaven13) Judas and the Black Messiah14) Old15) No Sudden Move
Seen less than I would’ve liked to by this point in the year, so I’m dedicating now until the 31st for a catch-up period, but as of now, this is my Top 15:1) French Dispatch2) Pig3) Dune4) West Side Story5) C’mon C’mon6) Judas and the Black Messiah7) Shiva Baby8) Green Knight9) The Card Counter10) Zola11) The Mitchells vs the Machines12) Riders of Justice13) Barb and Star14) Velvet Underground15) Old(Annette, Bad Trip, Last Duel, No Sudden Move, and Together Together were all tough to cut from the list)
A single vote cast for Dune? lol…