The Top 100 films of 2021

Ending at the beginning and the beginning of the end

The King’s Man is an abhorrently unlikable misfire, and I truly hope I do not have to see its like again anytime soon.

On a series built upon a foundation of waking up from a false reality, learning to embrace inner truths, and crafting chosen families free from societal paradigms, The Matrix Resurrections deconstructs its mythos even as it celebrates the ideas it has always held nearest to its heart.

There’s nothing provocative about The Tender Bar. Even the bits that fell flat didn’t do so in a way that were so egregious I could get angry about them. I just wish that Clooney and Monahan had brought more to the production than just a general easygoing vibe that refuses to challenge and goes out of its way to not offend.

The toil and trouble of mounting something this surrealistically ambitious pays off, and as the fire burns and the cauldron bubbles, the charm of Coen’s adaptation is firm and good. Heck, I’d go so far as to call The Tragedy of Macbeth downright spectacular.

Guillermo del Toro’s ambitious adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel Nightmare Alley might be the most visually stunning motion picture I’ve seen this year. If only I felt the same about the film’s emotional components.

The last third of Spider-Man: No Way Home is excellent. There is some wonderful closure for a few characters who never got any in their previous appearances, while this version of Peter Parker gets some agency largely disconnected from the rest of Earth’s mightiest heroes.

Kidman is extraordinary.