We're getting close to theaters reopening in earnest and movies flooding back into cinemas. But before we get there, 2021 has had no shortage of terrific movies. Part of that stems from the Academy extending their deadline to the end of February, but another part is just good fortune. A year where we've been gifted the lunacy of Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar or the epic superhero blockbuster Zack Snyder's Justice League is a year where we're already swinging for the fences.
Below you'll find a running list of the best movies of the year so far, assembled by the Collider staff. We've tried to keep the dividing line between films released in 2020 and 2021 even if the 2020 release was extremely limited (hence why you won't find Nomadland below, which landed on our Best of 2020 lists). Keep this page bookmarked as we update it throughout the year with movies we think are worth your time.
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
A celebration of womanhood, friendship, and Jamie Dornan's pirouetting skills unlike anything seen before by mankind, Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar delivered pure goofy sun-soaked delight to our grey quarantine Februarys. It's not the easiest movie to to describe in a line or two, but things begin with two nice BFFs from the Midwest (Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo) taking themselves on a little vacation to the titular Florida beach town, a trip which happens to coincide with the evil Sharon Gordon Fisherman's (also Wiig) desire to destroy said town with the help of her lovesick goon Edgar (Dornan). Packed with nonstop gags, lush original musical numbers, and a film-stealing performance from Dornan (one that hopefully leads to him getting a lot more comedy work), Barb and Star will teach you about life, about love, and about the comfort and practicality of culottes. Movies like this, so devoted to just making the viewer feel good and loved, genuinely make the world a better place. - Liz Shannon Miller
Judas and the Black Messiah
Shaka King’s work on Judas and the Black Messiah is beyond confident. He’s made a propulsive, relentless, harrowing, gripping film, one that’s so watchable even as it plunges further into the state-sanctioned tragedy we know ends Fred Hampton’s life. And yet it’s not a miserablist affair; Daniel Kaluuya’s multiple-award-winning take on Hampton makes sure you walk away feeling inspired and fired up, even as the terrifying, insidious claws of the manipulated LaKeith Stanfield and the manipulator Jesse Plemons scratch until blood is drawn. In Judas and the Black Messiah, a rich film full of rich performances and impeccable choices, King has announced himself as our next Martin Scorsese. - Gregory Lawrence
The Mauritanian
The Mauritanian would make a great (but grim) double-feature with The Report. Both films chronicle the abuses taken by the U.S. government during the war on terror, but The Mauritanian wisely uses the point of view from a man on the receiving end of those abuses, Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahar Rahim), who was accused of being a recruiter for the 9/11 hijackers. Held in Guantanamo Bay without charge or trial, he manages to get the help of lawyers Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) and Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley), but they face the steadfast military prosecutor Lt. Colonel Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Rahim gives one of the best performances of the year as Slahi, and he draws us into this Kafkaesque nightmare of trying to prove his innocence when the government wishes to hold him indefinitely before holding him responsible because we need to hold someone responsible, and it doesn’t really matter who as long as it’s some Muslim guy from a place we know nothing about. And yet director Kevin Macdonald wisely keeps his film from being a polemic by always putting the characters first and letting that carry the drama. – Matt Goldberg
I Care a Lot
Like the best piece of sour candy, I Care a Lot tastes sweet the more it burns. This is a film full of foul people doing foul things for foul intentions, playing a little like if the Coen Brothers adapted “late stage capitalism.” Rosamund Pike gives a career-best performance as a craven manipulator and fraudster who assigns herself as the caretaker to numerous elderly clients for the purposes of taking their assets for herself. And as writer/director J Blakeson folds the film further and further into the depths of criminal depravity, you can feel the wonderful ensemble — Eiza González, Dianne Wiest, Chris Messina, and especially Peter Dinklage — have more and more fun grappling with this deliciously dark Warhead. - Gregory Lawrence
Zack Snyder's Justice League
I can’t believe this film actually exists, and I can’t believe I actually like it. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a work of pop opera, a massive flex, an immersive and atmospheric dissemination of “vibes.” It’s an uncut experience of Zack Snyder’s strengths, both literally (it’s four friggin’ hours long!) and figuratively (so much slow-mo, brutalist architecture, and desaturated colors). It’s the kind of film you can pop on in the background and let wash over you as the mood strikes you, or actively pore over every single frame and find something new every time. And yes, it is radically different and superior to the hacked-and-slashed 2017 Justice League, tying up all of Snyder’s previously dubious DCEU intentions with purpose and emotional clarity. What a ride! - Gregory Lawrence
Raya and the Last Dragon
I am endlessly impressed at the fleetness and efficiency packed into the storytelling of Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. The film sets up and lives in several worlds full of distinct mythologies and motivations, gives each main character a clear and identifiable arc, and pulls off some beautifully animated action sequences to boot. On top of all this, Kelly Marie Tran and Awkwafina give astounding voice performances, working so well with each other as a duo, helping the characters’ interior lives and desires sing broadly even as the film moves swiftly. An extraordinary achievement that works so well by making it look easy. - Gregory Lawrence
The Courier
Find the nearest dad and take them to see The Courier (provided you’ve both been vaccinated and it is safe to do so). Dominic Cooke’s Cold War thriller is based on the true story of British salesman Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his unlikely friendship with secret agent Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) to smuggle documents out of the USSR to prevent the threat of nuclear war. It’s an amazing story about how a mild-mannered and unremarkable man did something extraordinary at great personal risk and cost.
Cooke’s film has extreme dad movie energy as it hits the right beats (Historical drama! The Cold War! Spies!), but audiences beyond dads should find it just as entertaining as Cumberbatch gives a terrific performance as a man out of his depth but desperately trying to do the right thing both for his mission, the world, and for Oleg, his friend. Cooke knows how to keep the tension brimming in his movie without ever losing the heart of it. – Matt Goldberg
Nobody
Here is an absolute cruise missile of an action picture. Nobody is a peerlessly crafted movie, one that takes a familiar premise — Bob Odenkirk is a retired assassin brought back to action after things become personal — and presents the most pristine, crystallized, pure version possible. Director Ilya Naishuller takes every possible opportunity to craft a purposeful set piece out of any situation, starting from the ruthlessly edited (thanks William Yeh and Evan Schiff!) depictions of suburban banality and culminating, of course, in the thrillingly visceral action sequences. Watching Odenkirk pummel the shit out of goons in clear, fluid, surprisingly long takes is, simply, cinema. And when two other actors whose names I dare not spoil for you join him in the mayhem, it’s cinema with a broken hole in the screen, because you will have become so excited that you punch a hole in the screen. Nobody is more than somebody. - Gregory Lawrence
Flora & Ulysses
I’m not sure exactly when I started crying while watching Flora & Ulysses in Disney+, but once the tears started coming, they never stopped coming. Based on the acclaimed children’s novel by Kate DiCamillo, Flora & Ulysses is a family-friendly superhero dramedy starring Matilda Lawler as Flora, a cynical young girl whose writer parents (Ben Schwartz writes comics, Alyson Hannigan writes romance novels) are drifting apart. Ulysses is, naturally, a super-squirrel who literally flies into this broken family unit’s lives to shake things up and restore the transformative power of hope. In silly-but-sharp set pieces that play with action and superhero tropes perfectly (I particularly love Danny Pudi’s animal control antagonist who’s convinced he’s in a macho flick) and quite devastating examinations of the bluest shades of the human experience, Flora & Ulysses cuts through the clutter of direct-to-D+ fare with an uncommonly precocious focus and breadth. - Gregory Lawrence
Saint Maud
Saint Maud is one of the more heartbreaking movies that got scuttled by the pandemic. The feature film debut from Rose Glass was teed up to be the next big A24 horror release after building a steady stream of festival buzz since its 2019 TIFF debut. Then COVID happened, the original April 2020 release date got washed off the board, and ultimately, the film quietly made its way into theaters in January. Which is all to say, if you missed Saint Maud along the way, you’re going to want to fix that. I caught the film back at Fantastic Fest and was totally floored by it.
Morfydd Clark stars as Maud, a devout hospice nurse determined to save the soul of her terminal cancer patient (Jennifer Ehle) before she dies – just one problem, her patient has no interest in god, but she does have a whole lot of interest in unraveling what makes a young woman like Maud so pious and prying. That dynamic makes for a ferocious battle of the wits, and Glass grounds it in an exploration of how trauma can fuel evangelicalism and how evangelicalism can fuel frightening interpretations of god’s will. The performances are stunning (Ehle is particularly nimble and enchanting; seductive one second, scathing the next) and Glass layers on the dread with tremendous technique, fusing psychological, physical, and spiritual horrors into one wholly unsettling nightmare. - Haleigh Foutch
Shiva Baby
A sexy, stressful comedy of social errors, Shiva Baby follows Danielle (Rachel Sennott) to a funeral service that’s jam-packed with family, old family friends, and thus, straight-up anxiety fuel. Sennott is spectacular as a frazzled twenty-something navigating a sea of gossip, unwelcome remarks on her looks, and probing questions into her personal life - and that’s before she runs into her sugar daddy (and his wife, for that extra yikes factor)… oh, and her ex (Molly Gordon, who consistently makes every movie better). Shiva Baby layers in more ticking time bombs than a Mission: Impossible movie, and in her feature debut, writer-director Emma Seligman announces her distinct, singular voice with a film that’s somewhere between comedy, romance, and what I can only describe as an emotional horror-thriller. Shiva Baby is one of my favorite films that we programmed at the inaugural Reel Love Film Festival this year, and we’ve still got a long way to go, but there’s a good chance it will hold up as one of my favorites of the year when all is said and done. - Haleigh Foutch
Bad Trip
I genuinely can’t remember the last time a movie made me laugh as hard as Bad Trip, and it might just be the hardest I’ve laughed at any streaming movie, ever. Most of my best comedy movie memories are communal experiences, fueled by that infectious laugher that takes over a crowded theater like shared temporary madness. Bad Trip gave me that euphoric, non-stop hilarity at home. Directed by Kitao Sakurai and with Jackass and Bad Grampa’s Jeff Tremaine producing, the scripted prank comedy stars Eric André and Lil Rel Howery as a pair of best friends who head on a cross-country road trip, unleashing their antics on unsuspecting real-world folks along the way.
There are a lot of prize gags and André is reliably fearless in pulling them off (as is scene-stealer Tiffany Hadish, whose staged prison break makes for some of the film’s most unforgettable moments - we see you and we love you, Vest Man), but the real joy in Bad Trip is that it puts the focus primarily on positive interactions - the people who go out of their way lend a helping hand, no matter how mangled or absurd of a hand reaches back. I’d put a hefty wager on the assumption that the filmmakers had plenty of negative material to work with in the edit (and there are a couple of hostile moments in the film), but the choice to put the priority on delightful people makes the film all the more of a delight itself. - Haleigh Foutch