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.

17 of 25 photo by Neon

91 Flee

Metacritic's Best Animated Film of 2021.

(#7) Denmark's official Oscar entry this year could be on the verge of making history as the only film to be nominated in the international feature, animated feature, and documentary feature categories simultaneously—an unusual trio of classifications that few films have ever shared (let alone been nominated for). In fact, some industry experts even give Flee a slight chance at a best picture nomination as well—something no documentary has ever accomplished.

In Flee, a gay Afghan refugee named "Amin Nawabi" (it's not his real name) shares his story of persecution, confinement, escape, and freedom with his friend, filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen, on the condition that he remain anonymous. Rasmussen uses animation to achieve that anonymity, resulting in a one-of-a-kind film that has been receiving a steady stream of accolades since debuting in early 2021 at Sundance, where it collected the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary award.

“The year’s most indelibly inventive animated adventure mixes graphic design with documentary realism and puts hallucinatory brilliance at the service of understanding the continuing psychic damage of war. You’ll never forget it.” —Peter Travers, ABC News

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