I've seen 82 titles from 2021 so far. With each new one I see, I'll add to this post.
==My Top Ten==
1. DUNE - Denis Villenueve is now the king of epic sci-fi. He takes Frank Herbert's dense novel about intergalactic war and makes it grand and intimate at the same time. It's only the first half of the novel, so we'll have to wait until 2023 to see how he wraps it up.
2. SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME - The Avengers: Endgame of Spider-Man movies. The multiverse means that bad guys from previous iterations, including Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doctor Octopus, show up here to torment Tom Holland's Spider-Man, and the whole thing is a blast from start to finish. This is Marvel at its most fun.
3. TICK TICK... BOOM! - Before he wrote Rent, Jonathan Larson wrote this autobiographical rock-opera about his struggles to write the next Broadway hit. Andrew Garfield's had quite the year, and he caps it off with his endearing performance and surprisingly good singing voice.
4. LICORICE PIZZA - Paul Thomas Anderson's back in rare form in this seductively playful romance between a 25-year-old lost girl (Alana Haim) and a 15-year-old hustler (Cooper Hoffman) in 1973 Los Angeles. It's the acting debuts for both of them, but PTA gets such natural chemistry out of them, it's hard to believe they're not old pros. And we get fun extended cameos like Sean Penn as William Holden and Bradley Cooper as Jon Peters.
5. THE BOY BEHIND THE DOOR - Low-budget thriller about two abducted boys, but one escapes and hides in the walls of the house. The tension is high for nearly the entire movie. Worth seeking out.
6. KING RICHARD - Will Smith is definitely a character here, and he may get an Oscar for this, which I wouldn't mind. One of those biopics that doesn't feel like it's hitting all the required rise-and-fall notes; just a dad with focused dedication to his talented daughters.
7. THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES - Disney and Pixar tend to put out the best animated movie each year, but for me, I think I liked this one the most. Picture the Griswold family having to fight off an alien invasion. It's silly, colorful, and never takes itself too seriously.
8. THE POWER OF THE DOG - Tightly-wound Western about a cattle rancher (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his increasing conflict with his brother's new bride (Kirsten Dunst) and her quirky son (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Tension builds with every scene.
9. WEST SIDE STORY - Steven Spielberg improves on the original 1961 film with this vibrant update.
10. CODA - Child of Deaf Adults is the acronym. This little drama is about a high school girl who navigates the trouble of being the only hearing member of her deaf family, and she discovers she has a real talent for singing. Emilia Jones (Locke & Key) is great, but I can see why Troy Kotsur as her dad is getting award buzz.
==Alphabetically, 11-20==
THE BEATLES: GET BACK - Basically an eight-hour documentary movie where we get to hang out with the Beatles right before and leading up to their final live performance together. It's fascinating to watch the genius of Paul McCartney pull "Get Back" out of thin air.
CAVEAT - Creepy tale about a man hired to check in on a landlord's niece, who lives by herself on an island. The catch is that he must wear a chained harness while there. One of the most effective slow-build thrillers of the year.
THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE - Jessica Chastain loses herself in the role of the naïve Tammy Faye Bakker, and up to the task is Andrew Garfield as the oily Jim Bakker. Tammy Faye was always a walking cartoon to me, but now we get to see a little more of her humble Midwest soul. This feels like a good prequel to The Righteous Gemstones at times.
FREE GUY - Ryan Reynolds as a background character in a video game has an existential crisis when he learns exactly who he is. It's a good premise that they could have gone the easy-joke Pixels route, but it has more creativity than that, and the film's secret weapon is Jodie Comer.
GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE - The best Ghostbusters movie since the original.
IN THE HEIGHTS - Lin Manuel Miranda's first Broadway hit gets the big-screen treatment, and the movie does a decent job of capturing the play's spirit.
NIGHTMARE ALLEY - Guillermo Del Toro's lush noir thriller is a journey. At first it feels like a big-screen remake of Carnivale, but it becomes its own thing as Bradley Cooper's conman Stanley learns the ropes of being a carny and mastering the techniques of being a mentalist. His ambition is bottomless, and he keeps building to bigger marks. Suffers a bit toward the end - it didn't really need to be 2 1/2 hours - but it sticks the landing.
SHANG-CHI: LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS - I'm a sucker for Marvel or DC done well, and this is done well. This has two of the best fight scenes of any comic-book movie. Very impressive.
STREET GANG - Doc about the early days of Sesame Street. Might not be as insightful as Won't You Be My Neighbor was about Mr. Rogers, but it's still full of behind-the-scenes pleasures, and it gives justice to songwriter Joe Respero and director Jon Stone, who deserve as much credit for Sesame Street's success as Jim Henson and company. It made me wish it had been twice as long.
ZACK SNYDER'S JUSTICE LEAGUE - It still has its flaws but this 4-hour version is miles better than the 2.5 hour bastardization Joss Whedon threw together when Snyder had to leave the original 2017 movie. The heroes are deeper, the villains are better, and the story arcs all have time to resonate. I watched it when I had Covid so I just laid there with no energy and let it wash over me, and it did the trick.
==The Middle 51==
21. FLEE - Animated foreign documentary about a gay Muslim man in Afghanistan who must flee for his own safety. It's a harrowing journey, well told.
22. SPENCER - Kristen Stewart does for Princess Di here what Natalie Portman did for Jackie Kennedy. Makes sense, as it's the same director. Stewart is able to capture Diana well here.
23. RAYA & THE LAST DRAGON - If Disney made Avatar: The Last Airbender, it'd be something like this.
24. SUMMER OF SOUL - A look at the lost story of the 1969 Harlem Musical Festival, which happens merely week sand a few hundred miles away from Woodstock. It's a treat to see performers like Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight in their primes in one of the most pivotal years in American pop-culture history.
25. THE HARDER THEY FALL - A stylized spaghetti Western that'd make Sam Raimi proud, this features a host of talented Black actors shooting guns and having fun. Jonathan Majors (MCU's Kang the Conqueror) shows real star power, Lakeith Stanfield elevates every movie he's in, and I never knew I wanted a fight scene between Zazie Beetz and Regina King, but hey, we get it here!
26. THE LAST DUEL - Ridley Scott knows how to do medieval combat, but here he takes a Rashomon approach to this true story of the last legal duel in France. Jodie Comer stands out as the pawn, a victim of a rape whose accusation must be proved by her husband fighting the perpetrator to the death.
27. BELFAST - Kenneth Branagh's personal story about life in 1969 Belfast, Northern Ireland. Good performances, albeit lighter on plot than I thought it'd be.
28. THE SUICIDE SQUAD - James Gunn's nihilistic R-rated semi-sequel is much more in line of what a Suicide Squad movie should be than the Will Smith-led dud. Margot Robbie naturally stands out as Harley Quinn, but there's some good stuff from Idris Elba as Bloodsport, John Cena as Peacemaker, and Peter Dastmalchian as Polka-Dot Man.
29. VACATION FRIENDS - Speaking of John Cena, he is much better in comedic roles than straight-forward action.
30. MY HEART WON'T BEAT UNLESS YOU TELL IT TO - Intriguing low-budget take on vampirism, in which two siblings must seek victims in order to keep their younger brother alive.
31. ENCANTO - Beautifully animated movie about one young woman trying to fit in a family where everyone else has special abilities.
32. BLACK WIDOW - Scarlett Johansson gets her own movie, and she's good, but the movie gets stolen by her younger sister (Florence Pugh).
33. A QUIET PLACE PART II - Not an unworthy sequel. It just ended more abruptly than I'd anticipated.
34. THE NIGHT HOUSE - Rebecca Hall gives a powerhouse performance as a woman struggling with depression who loses her husband to suicide and then starts hearing things going bump in the night in their house. Is he trying to communicate from beyond the grave? Has a couple good scares, but it's more of a psychological thriller.
35. DON'T LOOK UP - Dream cast put mostly to good use, in this biting satire about two scientists trying to warn the world about a meteor headed toward Earth than will wipe out all of human life... if only they could get the media and politicians to care.
36. THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH - I'll never miss a chance to watch Denzel Washington deliver the Bard's words. Joel Coen's decision to film in black and white, with lots of shadow and fog, amongst cold sets reminiscent of a cross between De Chirico and Erich Lessing paintings... well, it doesn't make the material more accessible, though I was tickled how he managed to make it end with a supernatural twist.
37. THE LOST DAUGHTER - Fantastic acting from Olivia Colman as a woman on holiday who finds herself obsessing with a young mother vacationing with her family. Most of the tension it builds winds up wrapping up too neatly, but Colman's work is award-nomination-worthy.
38. THE TRIP - Entertaining dark comedy about a husband and wife who plan to kill each other during their weekend getaway, but they have to work together when they face a bigger threat. Gets cartoonishly violent toward the end.
39. CRUELLA - Emma Stone vamps with the best as a classic Disney villain reimagined in her own Devil Wears Prada setup.
40. BEING THE RICARDOS - Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem don't do impressions of Lucy & Desi but seem to catch the essence of the people they're portraying. Aaron Sorkin writes and directs, which means there's plenty of witty dialogue and distorted history. I marveled how much it reminded me of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, where he shows the creation of comedy to be so... joyless. Nevertheless, it's a good movie when it's focused on the behind-the-scenes steeliness of Lucille Ball.
41. RON'S GONE WRONG - Technology with a heart. In the very-near future, every child will want a b-bot, an AI machine that operates as an iPhone/My Buddy, but hijinks ensue when our protagonist's b-bot malfunctions.
42. THE GREEN KNIGHT - Dev Patel is good as Gawain, in this dreamlike adaptation of the Arthurian legend that combines a few different myths, which works sometimes, and other times, does not.
43. THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS - Probably the best of the Matrix sequels, with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss returning for some meta reimagining of what the Matrix actually is. It leaves itself open for a sequel, but I'd urge Lana Wachowski to leave it where it is. Some franchises need to end.
44. NOBODY - Bob Odenkirk gets the John Wick treatment, and somehow it works.
45. LUCA - Lighter fare from Pixar; perfect for a Disney+ debut.
46. BAD TRIP - A series of hidden-camera pranks strung together with a paper-thin plot. Eric Andre is fearless with some of the places he dares to go.
47. CANDYMAN - Okay revisiting of the Tony Todd classic.
48. V/H/S 94 - This horror anthology is gory as ever, but the cleverness of different filmmakers making use of the found-footage tropes finds new effect here. I enjoyed it overall.
49. LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
50. VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE - Silly, fun, and doesn't wear out its welcome at only 95 minutes long. A little better than the first one.
51. ANTLERS - Director Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace) knows how to make grim drama, and he brings that sensibility to this horror movie about an abused boy covering for his possessed father. It's more like a bleak gory thriller than actual horror.
52. HOUSE OF GUCCI - It's a 2 1/2 hour epic, and it does drag in parts. The tone also shifts. Some scenes we're supposed to take seriously; other scenes, well, you half-expect JR Ewing to stroll in to buy a piece of the Gucci empire.
53. THE FRENCH DISPATCH - Wes Anderson's most precious film to date. Some good writing and an amazing cast, but Wes is in danger of self-parody here.
54. THE KING'S MAN - Ralph Fiennes' central performance is what makes this prequel to Kingsman worth watching, but it's tonally all over the map. The shifts from comedy to action to tragedy can be jarring, and about forty minutes in, I was like "The filmmakers haven't given us a reason to care yet."
55. COPSHOP - Joe Carnahan's latest machismo-laced actioner finds a conman (Frank Grillo) who gets himself arrested on purpose in order to escape a hitman (Gerard Butler) who gets himself arrested on purpose as well so he can be in the same county jail with him, but more hitmen and corrupt cops are descending upon this jail and it's up to one officer to hold them all off. It's fun for what it is.
56. THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK - A really good prequel to The Sopranos as a TV show, like a two-episode special. As its own movie? Ehh, not so much. If you've never watched The Sopranos, this movie will mean nothing to you.
57. MALIGNANT - James Wan lets his hair down with this off-the-wall horror flick that goes some daring directions, even if it makes less and less sense as it goes.
58. NO SUDDEN MOVE - Crime caper that should be up Steven Soderbergh's alley, but it had so many twists that it stopped mattering.
59. THE TOMORROW WAR - Chris Pratt fights aliens in the future. It's fine.
60. SNAKE EYES - This GI Joe origin story plays like a low-end Marvel wannabe, but it never really gets off the ground.
61. OLD - Admirably diverse cast buoys this picture for a while, but after an hour I was anxious for them to just get to the twist ending already.
62. ETERNALS - The MCU's weakest entry to date. Too long, too ponderous, too many characters where we don't really learn enough to care about them. The best thing about it is what the post-credits scenes portend for the Marvel Universe going forward.
63. GAIA - I'll give someone bolting-upright-from-a-nightmare once or twice in a horror movie, but not twelve times.
64. MORTAL KOMBAT - It's okay, but we don't really get a tournament. Feels like one big setup for the next movie, if it happens.
65. ARMY OF THE DEAD - Zack Snyder's zombie heist movie didn't really need the epic 2 1/2 hour treatment, but there are pleasures to be had in the different take on zombie mentality and seeing how Tig Notaro was edited into the movie at the last minute.
66. BARB & STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR - It's like if Zoolander 2 starred two middle-aged women instead. The humor gets a little too bizarre sometimes.
67. SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW - If I ranked all of the Saw movies, this one would land in the bottom half somewhere. It has some of the most gruesome traps in the franchise's history, and the final reveal is kinda cool, but it's not really concerned about being scary. Just gross. Jigsaw's traps always allowed his victims a chance to live if they followed his instructions precisely, but the copycat killer here doesn't have that ethos, which makes it less interesting.
68. THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW - All-star cast can't save this Rear Window-wannabe about an agoraphobe who sees her neighbor murder his wife. But when she calls the cops, they can find no body.
69. RED NOTICE - Exists solely for Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, and Gal Gadot to sleepwalk through buddy-comedy and heist-movie clichés. Pretty forgettable.
70. BOSS BABY: FAMILY BUSINESS - Brothers Ted and Tim are now grown-ups but they have to take a special baby formula to help them return to their infant bodies on a secret mission to take down a sinister daycare service. Unnecessary, noisy sequel.
71. THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT - Least effective of the Conjuring movies, though not as bad as Conjuring-verse movies like The Nun.
72. GODZILLA V. KONG - They have their showdown, but they're surrounded by uninteresting humans who are there to marvel at the greenscreens where monsters will be added later.
==The Bottom 10==
10. CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG - The CGI never quite works, and that's a big problem with a movie like this.
9. THE VOYEURS - Two young people spy on their sexy neighbors in this lurid Hitchcockian knock-off that goes to some uncomfortable places when people start dying.
8. PAW PATROL: THE MOVIE - Strictly for kids with one digit in their age. It is what it is.
7. JUNGLE CRUISE - Cheesy, predictable "fun for the whole family" Disney shtick. At least Jesse Plemons has fun playing a German.
6. TOM & JERRY - The animated parts are fine. Unfortunately this movie is mostly about the live-action humans around them.
5. COMING 2 AMERICA - Falls flat in just about every way. Eddie Murphy waited too long to revisit this material.
4. THE HITMAN'S WIFE'S BODYGUARD - Loud, dumb, cluttered, and completely unnecessary. The first one wasn't that great, and the filmmakers decided to double-down on having everyone yell their lines at all times.
3. HALLOWEEN KILLS - All the goodwill from the reboot is killed by a sequel that returns to every horror cliché crutch there is.
2. LAST MAN DOWN - A Norweigan action film that tries to ape 1980's style of Sylvester Stallone-Chuck Norris flicks and fails miserably.
1. SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY - Lame overload of all Warner Bros IP thrown into one movie. LeBron James has played himself before to better effect (Trainwreck), but he can't really save this cynical cash-grab.
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