The 50 Best Movies of 2021

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – January 5, 2022

Here is Metacritic's final list of the 50 best-reviewed movies of 2021, ranked by Metascore. This list only includes films receiving at least 7 reviews from professional critics.

All films released between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021 in at least one U.S. theater or directly to streaming or VOD/digital services were eligible for inclusion. Short films and reissues are excluded, and so are any eight-hour Beatles movies that were screened as a TV miniseries. Titles are ranked by Metascore (a weighted average of scores from top professional critics) prior to rounding based on scores as of January 3, 2022.

Additional content by Keith Kimbell.

12 of 25 photo by A24 / Directors' Fortnight

89 The Souvenir: Part II

(#12) The Souvenir, Joanna Hogg’s 2019 semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale of first love and a filmmaker finding her voice, was intended to cover just half the story, making it one of the few arthouse films to get a sequel. And this concluding chapter, released in the fall after a Cannes debut, has wowed critics much like its predecessor did. The sequel follows Honor Swinton Byrne’s Julie as she tries to process her love for Tom Burke’s Anthony by making her graduation film.

“A masterwork of self-introspection through the canvas of cinema, The Souvenir: Part II is a meta epic of delicate proportions that constantly folds into itself and reveals the murky waters that border fiction and the reality that inspires it, sometimes, like in this case, more directly than others.” —Carlos Aguilar, The Playlist

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