The 50 best films of 2021 – in reverse order

How many films reopened the cinemas this year? A Quiet Place Part II (whose poster peeled poignantly from buses throughout Lockdown 1.0) brought the first waves back in early June. Black Widow reasserted the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s dominance of theatrical exhibition. Dune was somewhere in that conversation. But it was the venerable James Bond franchise – 60 years old next autumn – that did most for the new normality. No Time to Die looks certain to be the highest-grossing English-language film both worldwide and in the combined UK and Irish “territories” for 2021.

In one regard at least, the new normal looked pretty much like the version we abandoned in early 2020. Sequels, superheroes and related franchises set the tills ringing. As has been the case for some years, there is next to no overlap between the box-office charts and the Irish Times’ films of the year. That A Quiet Place sequel is just about the only film to make an appearance in both (though late entrant West Side Story might do the business). No, it was not “ever thus”. In some distant heaven, Apocalypse Now, The Godfather and The Silence of the Lambs won favour with critics and accountants. Those films would now be seen as arthouse fare or the preserve of high-end television.

Meanwhile, adventurous independent film-makers produce work as challenging and varied as ever. The Cannes and Venice film festivals returned to altered orthodoxy – the latter socially distanced, the former tested up the kazoo – and gave the world such extraordinary films as Spencer, Annette, Drive My Car, The Card Counter and deranged Palme d'Or winner Titane. There is so much to enjoy and so much to fight over in that eccentric, uncompromising list. All opened in living, breathing cinemas. But our number one went to Azor, a bizarre, yet disciplined, Argentinean conspiracy movie from debut director Andreas Fontana. It is currently available to watch for a reasonable subscription on the Mubi service. Not every shift in the cinematic climate is to be deplored. Enjoy.

50. SOUND OF METAL (Darius Marder)
Oscar-winning study of drummer struggling with hearing loss. Riz Ahmed stunning in the title role. Make him the next James Bond please.

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49. FINAL ACCOUNT (Luke Holland)
Holland talks to the last surviving participants in the Third Reich. Obfuscations and evasions abound.

48. JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (Shaka King)
Daniel Kaluuya ambled to his first Academy Award for his turn as Fred Hampton in a historical drama that buzzed with radical energy.

47. THE 8th (Aideen Kane, Lucy Kennedy, Maeve O'Boyle)
You thought you'd heard enough about the campaign to repeal the eight amendment to the Constitution, but this moving, pacey documentary proved otherwise.

46. ANNE AT 13,000ft (Kazik Radwanski)
Fascinating, hugely original Canadian drama about a daycare worker whose life takes an unusual turn after she skydives for the first time.

45. ON THE ROCKS (Sofia Coppola)
Yes, Coppola is going over some old ground with a comedy that slings Bill Murray about the city with a younger woman (it's New York, and Rashida Jones is his harried daughter). But the schtick is still charming.

44. JUMBO (Zoé Wittock)
How weird do you expect a Franco-Belgian film about a woman who falls in love with a carnival ride to be? The result is, in fact, rather more charming than the synopsis promises (or threatens).

43. THE LAST DUEL (Ridley Scott)
Never mind the Gucci. Scott's best film in years was a class of medieval Rashomon filmed largely in Ireland. Jodie Comer excels. Matt Damon charms the corner shops of Dalkey.

42. STRAY (Elizabeth Lo)
Remember that lovely film about the cats of Istanbul a few years ago? Lo now gives the city's stray dogs some space with this irresistible documentary.

41. APPLES (Christos Nikou)
The New Greek Weird hasn't gone away. Nikou's spooky, nightmarish film imagines a world in which amnesia has become an epidemic. Partly satirical. Partly surreal. Unsettling throughout.

40. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (Todd Haynes)
If you were being awkward, you might point out that this looks exactly as you'd expect a Todd Haynes doc on The Velvet Underground to look. Then again, what sensible person would not enjoy such a thing?

39. PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (Emerald Fennell)
Oddly, when Fennell's rape-revenge tragedy finally arrived on screens, there was more criticism from the left than from the MRA right. It remains a striking, compulsive tale.

38. THE HALT (Lav Diaz)
Diaz's latest "cataclysm of the Filipino soul" took some time to make its way here from the 2019 Cannes film festival. But it proved worth the wait. At just 276 minutes, relatively brief by the master's standards.

37. SWEETHEART (Marley Morrison)
Enchanting, off-centre British comedy about a gay teen coping indifferently with a family holiday in a rubbish caravan park. Nell Barlow breaks through in the lead role.

36. A QUIET PLACE PART II (John Krasinski)
The film that reopened cinemas? Well, one of several contenders (see above). Krasinski's follow-up to the 2018 horror was everything a sequel should be. We yearn for the trilogy's completion.

35. UNDINE (Christian Petzold)
Petzold's films always require rumination after first viewing. His latest – a romantic fantasy steeped in Berlin psychogeography – is even more oblique than its predecessors.

34. PASSING (Rebecca Hall)
Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga play elegantly off one another in a focused, monochrome adaptation of Nella Larson's novel concerning personal compromises in Harlem during the prohibition era.

33. THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH (Joel Coen)
Early expressionist cinema and the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico echo through Coen's icy take on an indestructible play. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are the first couple.

32. LAMB (Valdimar Jóhannsson)
Something between a horror film and a folk drama, Jóhannsson's Icelandic film makes excellent use of Noomi Rapace as a woman dealing with odd occurrences on a sheep farm. Feels dragged up from the deepest soil.

31. PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME (Lili Horvát)
Intellectually robust drama concerning a neurosurgeon who, after returning to Budapest, finds that reality has twisted in upon itself. Serious-minded, but also playful.

30. SUMMER OF SOUL (Questlove)
Remarkable document of a 1969 music festival in Harlem that, if the resulting films are any measure, blew nearby Woodstock out of its dreary water. Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone and The Staple Singers are among those bellowing.

29. LIMBO (Ben Sharrock)
Deadpan comedy concerning a group of asylum seekers stuck amid oddballs on a remote Scottish island. We think of Bill Forsyth. We think of Shane Meadows. Sharrock lives up to those comparisons.

28. STATE FUNERAL (Sergei Loznitsa)
Loznitsa follows up the surreal A Gentle Creature and the searing Donbass with a disciplined documentary, compiled from archive footage, examining the day Stalin died.

27. WEST SIDE STORY (Steven Spielberg)
Spielberg brings a Latino cast to the party for a thoughtful, electric take on the classic musical that nods slyly towards coming gentrification and police bigotry. Rita Moreno makes a touching return.

26. PALM SPRINGS (Max Barbakow)
Andy Samberg lives the same day over and over again. Yes, you have seen that plot before. But the filmmakers find new angles on the concept in an engaging romantic comedy.

25. DEERSKIN (Quentin Dupieux)
Dupieux locates a unique tone for his unusual comedy – juiced up with bits of horror – about a strange wanderer who is just a little too fond of his eponymous jacket.

24. I BLAME SOCIETY (Gillian Wallace Horvat)
Hilarious, micro-budgeted movie industry satire that took more original turns than the superficially similar Promising Young Woman. Best last line of the year.

23. TO THE MOON (Tadhg O'Sullivan)
The director of The Great Wall confirms his status as one of Ireland's best with this cunning documentary – combining archive footage with new material – on the Earth's familiar satellite.

22. DINNER IN AMERICA (Adam Rehmeier)
Singular comedy concerning a pompous punk singer who hooks up with a fan from an everyday background. Kyle Gallner stands out as the awkward lead.

21. ZOLA (Janicza Bravo)
It had to happen. A film based on a Twitter thread. Bravo's profane odyssey turned out to be a bit of a marvel. Taylour Paige and Riley Keough are the pals ripping up Vegas.

20. THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF EURIDICE GUZMAN (Karim Aïnouz)
Two sisters resist the aggressive patriarchy in Rio de Janeiro of the 1950s. There are grim emotions here, but the ultimate message concerns the resilience of women.

19. THE HUMANS (Stephen Karam)
Beanie Feldstein and Richard Jenkins are among the ensemble in a well-worked adaptation of the director's own play concerning a volatile Thanksgiving Day.

18. PETITE MAMAN (Céline Sciamma)
Sciamma confirms her status as one of the era's best with a delicate, gently fantastic drama concerning a young girl who finds an unlikely friend after her grandmother's death.

17. ARRACHT (Tomás Ó Súilleabháin)
Singular Irish-language drama concerning a young man's engagement with friend and foe during the height of the Famine. Dónall Ó Héalaí again stands out in the lead role.

16. BLACK BEAR (Lawrence Michael Levine)
Levine's unusual comedy (or is it?) sends Aubrey Plaza, a screenwriter, into meta-confusion when visiting friends at a remote property by a lake. Funny ha-ha and funny strange.

15. PIG (Michael Sarnoski)
Nic Cage's quasi-renaissance continues with this intense film about a truffle forager on the search for his recently kidnapped (hognapped?) pig. Mad and rugged, but also moving.

14. SHIVA BABY (Emma Seligman)
Hugely entertaining, often tense comedy about a young gay woman enduring a family shiva as best she can. A masterclass in Jewish comic screenwriting.

13. GUNDA (Viktor Kossakovsky)
Lovingly rendered, quietly angry film about a few months in the life of a charming Norwegian pig and her busy, squealing piglets.

12. FIRST COW (Kelly Reichardt)
Reichardt's gentle neo-western took forever to get distribution in these territories (thanks, Mubi), but when it arrived it proved among the most seductive films of the year.

11. DRIVE MY CAR (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Hamaguchi won fans at Cannes with this precise, carefully composed adaptation of a Haruki Murakami story concerning an acclaimed actor's accommodations with his late wife. The extensive running time flies by.

10. DEAR COMRADES! (Andrei Konchalovsky)
Konchalovsky's long, varied career reached another glorious chapter with this monochrome study of the shooting of demonstrating Soviet workers in Novocherkassk during the Khrushchev era.

9. THE NEST (Sean Durkin)
Jude Law and Carrie Coon move to the country for this freaky, inventive home invasion film in which the family turn on each other in unexpected ways.

8. ANOTHER ROUND (Thomas Vinterberg)
Four high school teachers decide to consume alcohol every day for the laugh. Mads Mikkelsen makes for an appealing dancing drunk.

7. TITANE (Julie Ducournau)
In the director's transgressive follow-up to Raw, the heroine breaks her own nose, lactates motor oil, and passes herself off as a missing boy – before touchingly settling into a makeshift family.

6. ANNETTE (Leos Carax)
Adam Driver has never been better than as a stand-up comedian who falls in love with Marion Cotillard's opera singer and has the puppet daughter of the title in this Sparks-scored musical.

5. SPENCER (Pablo Larraíne)
Kristen Stewart plays Princess Diana towards the end of her marriage during a suffocating three-day Christmas weekend at the royal family's country mansion.

4. THE POWER OF THE DOG (Jane Campion)
A new wife (Kirsten Dunst) comes between two brothers – the meek, kindly George (Jesse Plemons) and the domineering, sexually repressed Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) – living together on a ranch in Montana during the 1920s.

3. MARTIN EDEN (Pietro Marcello)
Jack London's semi-autobiographical hero Martin – essayed by the magnetic Luca Marinelli – is an adventurous, handsome bruiser until he rescues a young nobleman, falls in love, and commits to a life of class treachery and bad faith.

2. THE CARD COUNTER (Paul Schrader)
Oscar Isaac, seldom better, plays an American war criminal turned poker champion, in a spiritual crisis.

1. AZOR (Andreas Fontana)
A taut thriller fashioned in the shape of Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Azor follows a private Swiss banker and his wife from Geneva to Argentina in 1980, ostensibly to solve a mysterious disappearance.