My Favorites in Movies, Music and Books for 2021

At the end of each year I compile a list of favorites that helps me remember what I enjoyed and learned from the movies, music and books that I had time to engage with. These lists are far from representing the “best” of the previous year, but instead are a small sample of what I found to be exceptional viewing, listening or writing whose experiences lifted me emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Such an exercise also helps me remember what I’ve seen, listened to, and read, with the goal of coming back to these works of art in the future. In compiling these lists, I rely on a few personal criteria for each category.

For movies, I include films that I found exhilarating because they evoked a passionate response from the storytelling, the characters and events chronicled, and the risks taken in bringing these versions of stories to the screen. I made a deliberate effort to include a significant number of films that are outside the Hollywood studio system and that were made without the institutional support or resources of that system. However, a good number of films with big budgets, big stars and strong institutional backing also made my list. While mainstream Hollywood traffics in blockbusters peddled to the lowest common denominator of profits and mass advertising that helps drive mass consumption and mass visibility, there has long been a tension between the corporate domination of film production and the efforts of film artists to creatively develop their projects in a way that breaks down traditional boundaries that are privileged by studio executives.

Artists who have a history of box office success can, if they choose, use that success as “capital” to advance projects that otherwise would not get funded. Therefore the gap between big budget Hollywood and quality filmmaking is not so cavernous as to be insurmountable. That being said, whether mainstream or not, I chose movies that pushed beyond the boundaries of expectations and, in many cases, represent the cutting edge of artistic achievement, in my view–which of course is highly subjective and dependent on my experiences as a viewer when I watched the film. Was I passionately moved by the storytelling, the characters, the social landscape, and the creative insights provided by the movie?

One movie on my list, Don’t Look Up, which I ranked 10th, has been the subject of polarized debates among film critics and mass audiences who had (mostly) radically different reviews of the film. Critics found it to be too full of simple stereotypes, repetition, overly lengthy sequences that were poorly edited, and mostly a collection (at best) of Saturday Night Live-type sketches that worked better in isolation than as part of a cohesive and entertaining film. Obviously, I disagree with this criticism. I thought the film was well-written, well-acted, funny and powerful in its portrayal of how the actions of powerful corporations and politicians are destroying the planet and blocking attempts of people to learn the truth about how our very survival is being sacrificed by ruling elites. That the filmmakers spoke to the politics of climate denial made it even more powerful and timely.

That being said, I do not think that the critiques of the film by most film critics can be reduced to those critics being in denial about climate change, which was a charge often made by the film’s supporters. I felt the film could have been better directed, better edited and more cohesive, and therefore more potentially powerful in execution. The art of film criticism is not without merit, and film critics are not inherently “elitist.” At its best, film criticism can elevate great art by enhancing audience appreciation–the job of the film critic is not inherently “elitist,” nor should we automatically accept the opinion of film audiences over film critics. The social, political and economic context affects how films are made, marketed, perceived and understood, which complicates the task of the critic and the understanding of the audience.

However, I do think too many film critics are guilty of not viewing a film holistically, so that film “quality” is artificially separated from social, political, economic and historical context. Too many reviewers seemed blissfully unconcerned about where the filmmakers’ anger was coming from, namely from the urgency that humanity is facing global extinction, which was mostly not even discussed by critics in grappling with the “quality” of the film. Too often the urgency of the filmmakers was derided as too “angry,” “simplistic,” and “one-sided,” as if the issues posed by the film could have been better packaged with a more nuanced treatment of an extinction event. The vapidity of the critiques exist within a cultural ecosystem that insists on separating “artistic value” from “politics,” when in fact such a separation reflects a narrowness of critical interpretation.

Good film criticism can also be a work of art, adding layers to our understanding of what we have seen. That means the best critics understand that their reviews exist within a larger socioeconomic and political power structure, with consequences for what films typically get made and how they get promoted, consumed and examined. As the politics of climate change have become about existential survival, a film that is politically angry is exactly what we need for the extinction moment that we face. Critics, whatever their feelings about how well the film achieved its mission, were unwilling to discuss the political urgency of the mission, which proved more revealing about the narrowness of contemporary film criticism than the shortcomings of the film itself.

With that as a backdrop, here is my list of favorite movies of 2021:

1. Summer of Soul
2. Nomadland
3. The Card Counter
4. West Side Story
5. Bring Your Own Brigade
6. The White Lotus (series)
7. Power of the Dog
8. Identifying Features
9. Licorice Pizza
10. Don’t Look Up
11. Dear Comrades
12. Sun Children
13. Velvet Underground
14. All Light, Everywhere
15. Nightmare Alley

My next lists are more expansive, with 20 favorite albums and books. If anything, it was much easier for me to find great music and great books, fiction and nonfiction, in 2021 than great movies. The music list reflects my own biases toward jazz, soul, blues and alternative rock, and folk, which necessarily narrows my consideration for this top 20 list. That being said, the criteria for selection are similar to the criteria used for movies: did the music passionately engage my senses? How creative was the artistry, from the quality of the musicianship to the collaborative engagement within each song to the quality of the songwriting? I discovered quite a few albums this year that I repeatedly listen to, which is another criteria for making this list:

1. Arturo O’Farrill, Dreaming in Lions
2. Amythyst Kiah, Wary + Strange
3. Adia Victoria, Southern Gothic 4.
4. Cha Wa, My People
5. Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, I Told You So
6. Rising Appalachia, The Lost Mystique of Being in the Know
7. Courtney Barnett, Things Take Time, Take Time
8. Buffalo Nichols, Buffalo Nichols
9. Chris Brashear and Peter McLaughlin, Desert Heart, Mountain Soul
10. Cedric Burnside, I Be Trying
11. Nicole Glover, Strange Lands
12. Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, 662
13. Eric Bibb, Dear America
14. Jimbo Mathus, These 13
15. Benito Gonzalez, Sing to the World
16. Mingus at Carnegie Hall, Deluxe Edition Remastered
17. Gov’t Mule, Heavy Load Blues
18. UV-TV, Always Something
19. Nina Simone, The Montreaux Years (Live)
20. Tower of Power, 50 Years of Funk and Soul

The books that made my favorites list include an impressive and expansive analyses of the global rise of fascist political movements, the history of structural and institutional racism, the political economy of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the causes and implications of global inequality and climate change, among a range of other important topics and themes. I also included works of fiction that directly addressed some of these same themes:

1. Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, White Skin, Black Fuel: On the Danger of Fossil Fascism.
2. 1619 Project
3. Adam Tooze, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy
4. Imbolo Mbue, How Beautiful We Were (novel)
5. Harsha Walia, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
6. Dave Zirin, The Kaepernick Effect
7. Daniel A. Sjursen, A True History of the United States
8. Andrew Cockburn, Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine
9. Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 2nd Edition.
10. Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists.
11. Luke Epplin, Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the Workd Series that Changed Baseball.
12. Donald Sassoon, Morbid Symptoms: Anatomy of a World in Crisis.
13. Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, The Global Green New Deal
14. Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.
15. Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100
16. Russell Banks, Foregone (novel)
17. Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources.
18. Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz, 3rd Edition
19. Robert L. Allen and Chude Pamela Allen, Reluctant Reformers: Racism and Social Reform Movements in the United States, new edition.
20. Sarah Pinkser, We Are Satellites (novel)