Image via 20th Century Studios
Published Jun 24, 2026, 12:14 AM EDT
Writing from the Chicagoland area in Illinois, Robert is an avid movie watcher and will take just about any excuse to find time to go to his local movie theaters. Robert graduated from Bradley University with degrees in Journalism and Game Design with a minor in Film Studies. Robert tries his best to keep up with all the latest movie releases, from those released in theaters to those released on streaming. While he doesn't always keep up with the latest TV shows, he makes it a goal to watch nearly every major new release possible. He has been honing his craft and following any and all movie news all his life, leading up to now, where he has a vast knowledge of film and film history. He also logs every movie that he watches on his Letterboxd page, and has hosted a weekly online movie night with his closest friends for over 6 years.
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It's already a point of interest to look back on an individual year's film offerings in a modern context to see which films have maintained their qualities or grown more well-crafted in the years since, yet even by most standards, 2021 was an unusual year for cinema history. The world was still massively recovering from the pandemic, which was largely felt in the slow release of major studio films as well as in releasing films in theaters and for premium digital rental or on streaming at the same time.
However, even if the actual release structure of the films was strange, the inherent quality was certainly there for the year's best films. The year saw the release of iconic blockbusters, memorable indie films, and everything in between that helped bring a sense of normalcy back to filmmaking after the even more chaotic year of 2020. This makes returning to the 2021 films 5 years later that much more interesting, as the very best have maintained their qualities beyond the wild times of pandemic-era thinking.
10 'The Tragedy of Macbeth'
Image via Apple TV+The Tragedy of Macbeth is one of the most striking and clear-cut collaborations of sheer talent from just about everyone involved in terms of bringing to life this Shakespearean classic to the modern age. Through the directorial vision of Joel Coen, exceptional performances from Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, and amazing cinematography from Bruno Delbonnel, the film truly comes to life as a work of art. What's rather sad is that the film's legacy and staying power have felt limited in the years since its release, as it was originally made for Apple TV+.
However, the quality is certainly there to revel in and be inspired by, with beautiful black-and-white visuals complementing the powerful performances and classic storytelling at its center. Joel Coen still hasn't had another feature-length directorial work since the release of this film. Yet, he's already proven his directorial strengths this decade with this masterclass of Shakespearean brilliance.
9 'Judas and the Black Messiah'
Image via Warner Bros.Judas and the Black Messiah operates in a wholly individual spot as far as award-contending dramas, making use of the extension given to 2020s slate of films during the pandemic to release and compete alongside 2020 films like Nomadland and Mank despite releasing in February 2021. This makes the film often forgotten in the pantheon of 2021 as a year in film history, which is a shame considering just how striking and emotionally powerful this story of real-life revolution and heartbreak truly is.
The film truly comes into its own thanks to a masterful central performance from Daniel Kaluuya as the late Fred Hampton, building up his truly electrifying presence as a public speaker and a true visionary that people would latch onto and see hope for the future in. It makes the impending fall and betrayal of the story all the more painful, knowing that such strong will and battle for rights will be snuffed out by higher powers before it even has a chance to flourish and make a change.
8 'The Green Knight'
Image via A24There have been a multitude of fantasy films that have either directly adapted or found great inspiration from the Arthurian tales of the past, yet The Green Knight stands out as one of the most beautiful and original takes on this all-time classic material. David Lowery's distinct vision of pain, perseverance, and growth told through the story of Sir Gawain arguably makes it one of the all-time greatest adaptations of Arthurian tales to film to date.
It's a ruthlessly intense fantasy film that is quick to delve into the sheer darkness and psychological gravitas of Gawain's journey, made all the more impactful by a striking lead performance by Dev Patel. The film truly goes all out in terms of bringing to life a sprawling, multi-layered adventure not just for Gawain to experience, but for the audience to witness and share every step of the way. Time has only been kind to this fantasy masterclass, as more and more people have grown to appreciate its brilliance.
7 'Pig'
Image via NeonTo an unfamiliar person, the plot and synopsis of Pig make it seem like little more than an overly nonsensical action thriller that feels ripped out of Nicolas Cage's previous era, à la Bangkok Dangerous or Face/Off. However, Pig couldn't be more different tonally than a goofy action movie, as this story of a lonesome man traveling into the city to retrieve his lost pig is one of the most emotionally touching and beautiful experiences that 2021 cinema has to offer.
There is a real sense of earnestness and raw vulnerability to the execution of Pig that makes it stand out that much more as an emotionally moving piece of art. Cage easily gives what is his best performance not just of the 2020s so far, but what was his best performance in decades through this film, with such deep range and emotional depth to his character amplifying an already powerful script into icon status.
6 'Dune'
Image via Warner Bros.It simply wouldn't be right to not include at least one of the prominent blockbusters that released in 2021, seeing as they helped revitalize enthusiasm for blockbuster filmmaking after a year of abandonment during the pandemic. While films like Spider-Man: No Way Home and No Time to Die might have made more money, there's no question that Dune is the absolute highlight of blockbuster filmmaking for the year in terms of quality as well as cultural impact and legacy.
This extravagant high-budget space opera achieves the previously thought to be impossible in doing great justice and significance to one of the all-time greatest sci-fi novels ever written. Denis Villeneuve's meticulous filmmaking style exudes prowess and craft in every moment of the film, creating a true sci-fi epic experience that makes the most of the budget and delivers on spectacle in spades. While some have written off the original film following the improvements made to the sequel, there is still an undeniable magic that makes the first part of Dune such an icon.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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5 'Titane'
Image via NEONThe only Palme d'Or winner of this decade to not be nominated for an Academy Award, Titane is a strange, ruthlessly bleak and abstract piece of body horror that, between the ruthless carnage and uncomfortable concepts, tells a surprisingly beautiful story of found family and unconditional love. It's an incredibly difficult balancing act that is pulled off without a hitch, as the moments of horror and shock hit that much harder when the in-between is this story of tense secrecy that leads to familial love despite it all.
Simply describing the insanity of the story doesn't do the film justice, as it bounces between sickening and chaotic concepts that all build on top of one another until they spiral uncontrollably into complete chaos. However, the bedrock cushioning of love that these characters have built for one another makes the release of tension somewhat beautiful, fully living up to the brilliance and strengths of the body horror genre.
4 'West Side Story'
Image via 20th Century StudiosThe lead-up to the release of Steven Spielberg's modern-day remake of the Best Picture-winning musical classic West Side Story certainly had hype, but many were skeptical of the film's ability to live up to the stature of the original, especially when Spielberg's last film was the dismal Ready Player One. However, not only did Spielberg far exceed the expectations for this remake, but he proves to be so great at directing musicals that it feels like he's been doing it his entire career instead of this being his only musical to date.
The film has a perfect balance of tones and styles, knowing when to be high-energy and full of life during the upbeat songs and knowing when to slow down and let the emotions of the song and performances whisk away the audience during moments of bliss and heartbreak. West Side Story, even despite a nonexistent box-office run where it got wiped off the map by Spider-Man, has a sustained and effective legacy thanks to its overwhelming strengths, being an important mark on Spielberg's modern career outings.
3 'Licorice Pizza'
Image via Universal PicturesWhile Paul Thomas Anderson's legacy of 2020s filmmaking will undoubtedly be defined by his monumental achievements in One Battle After Another, that doesn't take away from the sweet melancholy charm that he exudes in his prior film, Licorice Pizza. This charming story of young love is chock-full of a lot of the distinct human elements and offbeat comedy that made films like Punch-Drunk Love and Magnolia such major hits in Anderson's catalog.
The film makes perfect use of its central breakout performance from Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, tapping into an infectious mixture of whimsy and innocence towards the world that makes their complicated story of love that much more compelling, even with all its flaws. It's hard to truly get a sense as to how the film's legacy will grow, considering every other Anderson film is a near-masterpiece, yet the greatness inherent to Licorice Pizza still shouldn't be ignored or looked past.
2 'Mass'
Image via Bleecker Street Media / courtesy Everett CollectionWhile Mass may have been massively overlooked by the various awards bodies when it came to the 2021 awards season, it nevertheless stands as one of the most emotionally heartwrenching masterpiece dramas of the 2020s so far. This underrated gem follows a duo of parents who are connected by their late sons having lost their lives in a school shooting, with one being the shooter and one being a victim. After having had to live with the pain and anger for so long, they take the opportunity to meet for a painful and raw conversation in the basement of a church.
Mass brilliantly cuts right to the heart of the indescribable pain that comes from losing a child, with each character in the film having their own approach to grief and remembrance for what has occurred. The way that the film balances these different perspectives and keeps an exceptionally realistic vision throughout makes it an absolute tour de force in terms of performance art and emotional complexity.
1 'The Worst Person in the World'
Image via SF StudiosEspecially in an era directly following Parasite's massive Academy Awards sweep, the unilateral trend that has defined 2020s film culture over previous decades is a much greater acceptance towards international film and experimental voices as a whole. The Worst Person in the World proves to be one of the best examples of such a compelling foreign language work, with the abstract Norwegian rom-com being a near-perfect exploration of the difficulties and uneasiness of young adulthood.
It would be one thing if the film simply delivered on great performances and complex, layered characters to create and emotionally rich experience, which the film certainly achieves, yet it's all in the abstract execution that makes the film such a joy to experience again and again. From its exceptionally paced chapter structure to a wide array of compelling cinematography and abstract sequences, the film is far from a traditional romance story in its visual style, a perfect fit considering that its characters prove to be far from typical rom-com archetypes.
The Worst Person in the World
Release Date October 13, 2021
Runtime 127 minutes
Director Joachim Trier
Writers Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt
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Anders Danielson Lie
Julie
English (US) ·