__Happy New Year's Eve. We've come to the end of 2021, so you know what that means.🙂 It's time for me to look back on the year and pick out my ten favourite movies.
__So how was the year overall? Well, I got my vaccine and, among the year's movies, saw at least one that I rated five stars; that alone makes it a huge improvement on 2020!😀 Unfortunately, the virus shows no sign of slowing down, so not only will many people's stories be a lot sadder, but it'll probably be a long time before our everyday life returns to what it was two years ago, if at all. For better or worse, this year did at least take a few steps in that direction. Most relevant here is the reopening of cinemas on a more permanent basis – though still under heavy restrictions, obviously.
__If this is your first time reading one of my year-end lists (or if you just need a reminder), let me briefly go over the criteria I set for what qualifies as a 2021 movie. It simply has to have been released for public consumption within the year, be it in cinemas or on a streaming platform. Movies that haven't been seen outside of film festivals don't count, and neither do movies that were released in another country in an earlier year. This year was especially problematic in that regard, because the release schedule towards the end of 2020 was very messy indeed! Several awards contenders weren't released publicly until the early months of the following year, including Nomadland, which may have won Best Picture for 2020, but its earliest non-festival release date makes it a 2021 movie in my book.
__Now, before we get into the list itself, this would normally be the point where I pick out the year's most disappointing movie. But it was unusually hard to pick a winner this year because, while there were quite a few movies that fell short of my expectations, there were none that fell so miserably short that they stood out as an especially crushing letdown.
