PJ Knapke’s Top 10 Films of 2021

Another year has passed us all by, far too quickly for my tastes. In my preamble to my list chronicling the top films of last year, I noted how the year marked a “new reality of everything being bad all the time in every way.” Unfortunately for all of us, not only does this remain true, but everything around us continues to get worse. A shame. 

Thankfully, however, we have the power of cinema to hold us over until it all comes crashing down. And, on the bright side, this past year has actually been an exceptional year in the medium, and a marked improvement on the dip in overall quality we saw in 2020 (for obvious reasons). The 110 new releases from 2021 that I had the pleasure of watching this past year were full of highs and lows like any other year, yet the cream of the crop has undoubtedly risen above and beyond, providing me with some truly profound and deeply impactful experiences that I won’t soon forget. My full list of rankings can be found here. 

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Jonathan Shu’s Top 10 Films of 2021

I’m still trying to get past the bad habit of writing off a film before I even watch it, so I don’t know if I can say if 2021 was a good or bad year for film. But what I do know is that it was a year filled with anticipation, many of which paid off for me and some of which made me realize I’d liked the wait better. Thank you delayed releases! I also escaped the bubble of streaming from my bed this year, and watched more movies in more different theatres than I have before, which was a fantastic experience. I can’t say if it 2021 was a good year or a bad year for film, but I can say that I enjoyed my time there. So, out of all the ones I got around to, here are my top ten of 2021. Continue reading “Jonathan Shu’s Top 10 Films of 2021” →

Stephanie Chuang’s Top Ten Films of 2021

2021 was a year that began in strict lockdown and ended in cautious reopening. Films that were meant to be released in 2020 and subsequently delayed reluctantly opened this year to much less pomp and circumstance once it became clear that we were in the pandemic for the long haul. For me, this year saw my return to school, and also my return to theaters. I was delighted to be able to see films with my friends on the big screen again, many of which I had been looking forward to for over a year. After the disappointment that was 2020, it’s undeniable that 2021 was an improvement both in film and overall.

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Spencer Malmberg’s Top 10 Films of 2021

2021 was honestly not my favorite year for movies, and we are going into a highly disappointing Oscar season by the unredeemable amount of nominations for Don’t Look Up. I did like a lot of movies this year though; I also watched way more movies from 2021 then any year I have before. At the time of writing this I have marked down 82 movies from 2021 on my Letterboxd, which is a crazy amount of times I sat in a theater. There wasn’t a lot of box office success, and definitely an even higher impact on Oscar pick season in the late fall and winter movie runs, but it was fun to watch a lot of very different stories and look at the different techniques in which filmmakers go about their movies.

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Rohan Patel’s Top 10 Films of 2021

A year of recovery? As I close the chapter of 2021, I look back to about this time last year with some pessimism. As the news of a vaccine broke, surely, I hoped, the theatrical experience I loved would return with a glorious triumph. But with vaccination skepticism and new variants came yet another glimpse at the possible future of cinema. One where, as of this writing, 6/10 projected best picture nominees had a wide release via a streaming platform. In a year stacked with old 2020 and scheduled 2021 releases, what happened that caused major films from major filmmakers with major actors, like The Last Duel and West Side Story, to bomb at the box office? It may be that the traditional 40-65-year-old demographics that go to the movies felt unsafe in a dark, enclosed space during a raging pandemic. It may be that people are generally willing to wait longer for cheaper prices of VOD. It may just be people don’t hold movies at the center of their pop-culture diet anymore.

Yet…

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