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.

21 of 25 photo by Altitude Film Entertainment

96 Rocks

(#3) Nominated for seven BAFTA awards (among other honors), Sarah Gavron's coming of age drama centers on a homeless teenage girl (widely praised newcomer Bukky Bakray) who must care for her younger brother after the pair are abandoned by their mother. After debuting at TIFF in 2019, the film played in theaters in the UK in 2020 and finally made its debut in the States on Netflix in February 2021.

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“What a wonderful, heart-breaking, life-affirming gem of a movie this is.” —Mark Kermode, The Observer

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