Auteurist Trap: 2021 - 40 Favorites

What constitutes a “2021 film” for the purposes of this list is entirely flexible and subjective. Some played theatrically, some went straight to streaming, at least one went straight to Blu-Ray. Some of these have been playing festivals for years, or held back because of the pandemic, so sites like IMDB or Letterboxd might have a few listed as 2020, 2019 or even 2018, releases. Is Peter Jackson’s Get Back a film or a TV miniseries? I decided on the latter, but really only to make room. Then there are festival titles that open theatrically next year, like We're All Going To The World's Fair and The Worst Person In The World, the latter of which is apparently going to Sundance in 2022.

It seems every year the titles begin to blur together for me after a while. Does your Swan Song star Mahershala Ali or Udo Kier? Has an In The Earth/In The Heights double bill been programmed? Have you seen The White Tiger, The Paper Tigers and Paper Spiders? Whether it’s A Cop Movie or Copshop, Free Guy or Freeland, The Dig or The Dry or The Deeper You Dig, Old or Old Henry, I mostly kept it straight. And I can easily distinguish last year’s I’m Your Woman from this year’s I’m Your Man, but I slipped up and saw the wrong Coda. This year gave us The Truffle Hunters, Gunda (about a pig), and Pig (which has a pig who hunts truffles). I’m not sure what it means, but at some point we may need to collectively agree to stop titling new movies Limbo.

I very nearly did a Top 50 this year, if only to tell people about sleepers like Wild Indian, Sweet Thing, Holler, Who Is Bill Rebane?, The Beta Test, Language Lessons, Sisters With Transistors, Coming Home In The Dark, Slalom, Jumbo, Knocking, Hotel Poseidon, Stop And Go, Jane By Charlotte, and Events Transpiring Before, During, and After a High School Basketball Game, all of which could just as easily been on my list as what I did include. The Power Of The Dog, Red Rocket, Titane, The Last Duel, Zola, Benedetta, Vortex and C’mon C’mon are all films I enjoyed and expect to revisit.

I ran out of time before I could catch up with Paris Calligrammes, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Pink Skies Ahead, The Hand Of God, A Hero, King Richard, Ascension, Faya Dayi, Flee, Uppercase Print, Little Girl, All Hands On Deck, F9: The Fast Saga, Nomad, Tove, In The Earth, The Medium, Spencer, Copshop, The Night House, Clifford the Big Red Dog, The Truffle Hunters, Best Sellers, Respect, John And The Hole,The Dry, Black Widow, The Deeper You Dig, Moffie, The Power, My Zoe, Come True, Gaia, Shadow Of A Cloud, Happily, Mainstream, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Five Rules Of Success, The Paper Tigers, Eternals, About Endlessness, Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, I Care A Lot, No Time To Die, Honeydew, Sound Of Violence, LoveHard, Nayatuttu, Intrusion, 7 Prisoners, The Dig, Bad Trip, The Killing Of Kennth Chamberlain, Nuclear Family, Old, Little Fish, The Unholy, Jungle Cruise, The Guilty, No Sudden Move, The White Tiger, Oxygen, I’m Your Man, Lamb, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Marksman, Red Moon Tide, The Matrix Resurrections, Karnan, Old Henry, There Is No Evil, Cruella, The World To Come, or Acasa, My Home, among many, many others. It happens every year.