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.

8 of 25 photo by Sony Pictures Classics

88 The Father

(#16) The recipient of six Academy Award nominations including best picture—yes, those awards came last year thanks to a pandemic-extended 2020 eligibility period that included films released in February 2021—The Father is the debut film from award-winning playwright Florian Zeller. Anthony Hopkins stars as the titular 80-year-old father who is slipping into dementia while his daughter (Olivia Colman) does her best to care for him despite his protests. The tearjerker received stellar reviews beginning with its Sundance debut in early 2020, with critics singling out Hopkins for delivering one of the best performances of his career. Academy voters agreed, giving him the Oscar (the second of his career) and awarding another to Zeller and his co-screenwriter, Christopher Hampton for their screenplay, adapted from Zeller's own 2012 play.

Watch it on Starz or rent or buy it from Amazon

“At once stupendously effective and profoundly upsetting, The Father might be the first movie about dementia to give me actual chills.” —Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times

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