10 best movies of 2021

This is the year we return to theaters (after almost a year apart), go to film festivals (if we really, really lucky), and enjoy viewing a range of the world’s best cinema offerings. While by no means the only great movies of 2021, here are ten of my favorites. They are invigorating reminders of how the art form can transform, transport, and enlighten — especially when viewed in the dark, ultimately away from the couch.

This year has seen many movies about the stinging and burning of nature, but few are made as subtly, convincingly as Mia Hansen-Løvegraceful mood piece. Vicky Krieps, cautious and brilliant, plays Chris, a filmmaker struggling to come up with ideas for a new movie. She could be Hansen-Løve herself, or she could just be another in this famous filmmaker’s carefully drawn protagonists.

Only how many meta classes included Bergman Island is a question the film begins to ask as Chris’ ideas become reality, a story within a story. Mia Wasikowska sensitively presents Chris’ fictional construction, wandering the same Swedish windy paradise where Chris has found himself. Bergman Island whispers with melancholy, rustles with light humour. At first glance, the film seems a bit old-fashioned. But there’s a sneaky depth here, a murky meaning creeping in from each old floorboard. Bergman Island will make you want to do something; hug a loved one like you’ve never met (maybe you’ve never met); and jumped on a boat to the Baltic, notebook in hand.

David Lowery As a filmmaker who thinks about death a lot. Like all of us, perhaps. Instead of shunning the big questions of the end, Lowery has, in his fascinating patchwork of films, headed straight for them, creating wonderful and terrifying visions of life and endings. its. With Green Knight, Lowery takes the ancient legend of Sir Gawain and delves into its most obvious implications. As Dev PatelBrave young knights marching towards the possibility of doom, Lowery’s film evokes an atmosphere of horror and awe.

Despite its brutal, desolate fantasy—or maybe, somehow, because of it—Green Knight maintain a steadfast humanism that reflects our own messy, irrational selves. To reflect on the impending death; Its inevitability can make most of our mundane concerns seem terribly petty. But, as Lowery noticed, there is something rather grand and noble in our smallness. Perhaps more importantly, should we let ourselves stop and embrace the manifold and wondrous wonder — all earthly magic — that we have encountered on our own journey toward the unknown is about to happen.