I decided last year to skip a “Best Of” list because, well, I didn’t go to the movies that much. Yes, I watched new movies at home, but it didn’t feel right. I got out a bit more this year, so I will be putting together a list of what I believed to be the best and worst of 2021.

Granted, these are just my opinion, so feel free to disagree. And this time around, I got 15 for the best of list.

A note on my methods: I don’t list or rank anything ahead of time. I go through my site, look over what movies I reviewed, and then rank them. Sure, the grades I gave them at the time may indicate something else, but my final ranking often comes down to personal reflection. Did I recommend something to someone else? I rank it higher. Did something particularly bad seem worse upon reflection? It goes down. As it is, here’s my list below, a couple days early since I am unlikely to see anything else that’s new.

15. Copshop

No one is going to confuse Copshop for great cinema, but as a crackling good thriller where killers and con men match wits with a single cop inside a small town police station; it’s smart, cool, and an awful lot of fun, particularly when Toby Huss’s more eccentric killer shows up. Actor Gerard Butler isn’t known for being in the best of movies, but he does tend to make them worth watching. And when he does make a good one, it’s even better. This one is a good one.

14. The Mitchells vs the Machines

There were two animated comedies this year that poked fun at how people are so into social media and mistreating their machines. One was Ron’s Gone Wrong, a rather rote movie that didn’t really break any new ground. That was mostly because The Mitchells vs the Machines already did in a much more creative and chaotic manner.

13. In the Heights

I never was one for musicals, but I am starting to change my mind on that. Mostly it comes down to where I watch the movie. At home? I get distracted and miss stuff. In a theater? That’s a different story. I put my full attention on the screen and if the movie is good, I get a reward. This one, based on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s other stage hit, the one that predates Hamilton, was something I more or less knew I had to see on the big screen or I would have probably tuned it out, and I am really glad I made that decision.

12. A Quiet Place Part II

I can say without a doubt that this one is rated a bit higher than it probably should be, but it was my first trip back to the multiplex since early 2020, and as such, the general stress of being in a crowd somewhat got to me, increasing my general tension, and that’s actually pretty appropriate for a horror movie. Would I have rated it as high otherwise? Probably not, but my experience did enhance my viewing, so here we are.

11. The Suicide Squad

James Gunn’s taking on the DC superteam, made up of criminals forced to go on missions for time off their sentences, with an R-rating and Gunn’s getting permission to kill off whoever he wanted? It was never a question of if I was going to like this so much as how much I was going to like it. In the end, I liked it a lot.

10. The Green Knight

A slow, artsy, beautiful adaptation of the really old poem, only this one seems to be about how Gawain is rather terrible. Full of unexpected and often unexplained wonder, Gawain is a rotten little snot who is finding out how to be a knight by basically doing everything wrong. And yet, I still wanted Dev Patel’s Gawain to do better…

9. Pig

Anyone hoping for Nic Cage to go all John Wick over a truffle pig is going to be disappointed. That’s not what this movie is doing. It’s more about human mourning and how one man, a reclusive chef who was once the top of his field in Portland, needs to admit a few things out loud, a meditation on loneliness, and a story about mourning. And it’s beautiful.

8. Nobody

Did I know I needed a Bob Odenkirk-led action movie that doesn’t take itself entirely seriously? No, and “need” is probably too strong a word, but this was just a hell of a good time as Odenkirk goes the Taken/John Wick route, only taking itself much less seriously this time around.

7. King Richard

I am not a sports guy. I know nothing of professional tennis aside from the names of some of the bigger players in the field. And yet, I found this biopic for Richard Williams incredibly fascinating, my only concerns being I felt like I wanted to know more about this family than the movie had time to tell me. That’s a compliment coming from someone like me.

6. One Night in Miami

Jim Brown, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Sam Cooke spend an evening in a motel room and talk about their responsibilities towards the Civil Rights Movement. That’s all this movie is, and it’s still wonderful.

5. Dune

I didn’t like the novel this movie is based on. I do tend to love the works of Denis Villeneuve. What would be the result for his adaptation of the first half of a novel where, honestly, I don’t think all that much happens? Well, we got a moody story with a lot of fantastic images that made a compelling story out of something I wasn’t that interested in in the first place. That counts for quite a bit for me.

4. Belfast

Was I expecting a love letter to Belfast during the Troubles? No. No, I was not. But Kenneth Branagh managed to do it, showing the stresses his family was going through through the eyes of the young boy that is undoubtedly his stand-in. If you’re not tearing up at Judi Dench’s last few lines, you may not have a soul.

3. Judas and the Black Messiah

A story of guilt for one man as he was sent after another man that was trying to help the downtrodden, when both men were African American. There’s a power to this movie, showing how the white power structure apparently had a problem with a group that gave out free breakfasts to children. Powerful in so many ways.

2. West Side Story

One questionable casting decision aside, I was not expecting to love this new West Side Story as much as I did. If anything, Spielberg managed to improve on the old movie, giving more depth to the characters and suggesting the real enemy was gentrification all along, a development that actually makes the events of the story even more tragic than they already were.

1. Nine Days

A meditation at what it means to be alive, a beautiful movie that was the only one I really regretted skipping in the theater due to COVID concerns. This one was just right in my wheelhouse.

And the worst…

Yeah, not everything can be good. For the bottom of my list, these ten stood out as particularly bad.

10. Tom and Jerry

In the grand scheme of things, Tom and Jerry was mostly harmless, but this was never going to be a good movie. There’s not enough to Tom or Jerry to justify a feature length film, so dull human characters were always going to pick up the slack. But this is the least bad movie I am listing, so make of that what you will. The worst is yet to come.

9. Thunder Force

There are two types of Melissa McCarthy movies. There are good ones where she shows off what she can do and experiments a little. And then there are the ones her husband Ben Falcone either writes or directs. This is one of the latter. I almost forgot I saw it until I was going through my reviews for the year. It was truly horrid, but also forgettable.

8. Coming 2 America

A PG-13 sequel to an R-rated modern classic? So not a good idea.

7. Spiral: From the Book of Saw

I wasn’t really expecting much from this one, but putting Chris Rock in the lead role was really a terrible idea on top of what was probably going to always be at-best a mediocre movie.

6. The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard

Here’s where we start to get into the dregs. An unnecessary sequel to a moderately entertaining movie, this one not only wastes and embarrasses Sam Jackson, Ryan Reynolds, and Salma Hayek, but also adds Antonio Banderas, Morgan Freeman, and in a small role, Richard E. Grant. Don’t bother with this one, or any of the others from this point on.

5. Cherry

This one was a somewhat familiar story told by the Russo Brothers in the most bonkers way possible. All style, very little substance, and the style is obnoxious.

4. Space Jam: A New Legacy

There was no way this was going to be a good movie. Even the original was just an extended version of a Nike commercial. Still, the people involved seemed to try to do something here that a real movie would do…and it is still terrible.

3. The Woman in the Window

Given the level of talent involved both in front of and behind the camera, this really should have been good. Instead, it is awful on so many levels that it might take too long to list them all. I never thought I would dislike Amy Adams in something, but here we are…

2. Home Sweet Home Alone

Quick tip: if you are making a Home Alone movie, don’t make the burglars that the kid abuses at the end of the movie sympathetic. Especially don’t make them more sympathetic than the kid hitting them with booby traps.

1. Old

Every so often, M. Night Shyamalan puts out a good movie. The rest of the time, it’s just a train wreck that makes me wonder how he keeps getting funding. This movie is one of the latter, and probably one of the weakest movies of his that I’ve seen. I mean, maybe The Happening is worse, but I’d have to watch it to find out, and I really don’t want to do that.

Anyway, there ya go: my 2021 film experience in a nutshell. On to 2022, and hopefully more trips to the multiplex.