So were they the best 51 films of 2021?

 So, what did I think of The Guardian's Top 51 films of 2021?

Compared with 2020, I'd say the quality was spread more throughout the top 50.  The top ten were all unquestionably good when evaluated on some criteria, but often let themselves down on others or were somewhat too specific in their audience. In my extremely humble opinion of course.  All in all, 13 countries were represented across this list (compared with 16 last year) with the US and the UK unsurprisingly making up the majority of it.

Considering the list in full, lets have a top twelve

#50 - Promising Young Woman
#44 - Shiva Baby
#32 - I Care A Lot
#28 - Procession
#27 - tick, tick...BOOM!
#24 - Palm Springs
#20 - After Love
#19 - Limbo
#18 - Summer Of Soul
#11 - The Father
#4 - Drive My Car
#3 - Petite Maman

Yes, twelve is an odd number but I couldn't bring myself to drop any of them - the first three are far too low on the list (Promising Young Woman in particular is very impressive), Palm Springs is properly funny, Procession and Summer Of Soul are both very good documentaries, After Love and The Father feature some quite stupendous acting, tick, tick...BOOM! is a load of fun (and a punctuation nightmare), Limbo is somehow both charming and heartbreaking and the last two are just both proper grown up films (yes, they've got subtitles, but get over it).

OK - so now I'm going to make life difficult for myself and pick just one that you should watch if you haven't see it.  And I'm going to go for The Father - yes, it's a bit depressing but it's a clever idea, well executed and it features a tour de force acting performance from Tony.  It's not my favourite on the list (which would be one of Petite Maman, Drive My Car, Palm Springs or Promising Young Woman depending on my mood) but it is the one I think is most likely to be appreciated by most people.

So how about a bottom 5?

#45 - State Funeral
#42 - Martin Eden
#39 - New Order
#29 - The Nest
#2 - The Green Knight

Yes, this is a bit harsh on The Green Knight - but it gets included because it's ranked so highly in the list (and yes, I know that's not its fault).  State Funeral is a neat idea, but just far, far too long - the others are all unfortunately patently rubbish and I've no idea what anyone thought including them.

I also think Titane (#46) deserves a mention for just being really, really odd and Annette (#37) which would get described as really, really odd if Titane hadn't spectacularly raised the bar for such a description.

What was surprising this year was that there were 3 films that I couldn't find (#48, #21 and =#17) - one of which I couldn't even find somewhere where I could have paid to watch it, which is very unusual in this day and age.  The other two I could have paid to watch, but that just wasn't going to happen based on their descriptions, I'm afraid.

Like 2020, I'd seen only two of the films before - which is a terrible ratio and I'm just as ashamed as I was last year.  Although, this year, there were a lot more films that I had planned to see - and I might well have seen them if I'd not been so busy watching films from The Guardian's list for the previous year.  Bizarrely, in both years, I'd seen #2 on the list - and in neither case did I think it was the second best film of the year.

One other thing that I took away from the year - what was going on with the 4:3 aspect ratio obsession?  There were six films on the list which used it - do The Guardian think it's an indicator of quality?  I saw various reasons given for its use and I seem to recall that none of them rang true - in some cases it didn't affect my enjoyment, but in other cases I do seem to recall being somewhat frustrated.

What was the most read blog post of the list?  My theory is that people are much more likely to read a post about a film they know and either liked or disliked (to see if they agree with me) - and this theory was instantly disproved by the two most popular being Martin Eden (which absolutely no-one will have seen, which I wholeheartedly agree with) and Titane (which is actually worth watching just so you can go "WTF is this?").  The least read blog post was West Side Story - my theory here is that people who liked this suspected I'd be mean about it (I wasn't TOO mean) and everyone sensible had already decided they weren't going to watch it.

So what did The Guardian ignore that other lists or I enjoyed last year?

The Card Counter
This just got good write-ups!

Spencer
It's not supposed to be the best film ever but it has a great performance by Kristen Stewart.

Zola
This "based on a true Twitter thread" film sounds like a lot of fun (which is more than can be said for a lot of films that did make it to the list).

Pig
Nic Cage isn't really my sort of thing, but the critics love him (even though I suspect that kinda upsets him)

Spider Man : No Way Home
You don't expect to see this sort of film on this sort of list, but it certainly didn't lack ambition or enjoyment (although I think I preferred the previous SpiderMan entries). 

In The Heights
It feels like they could have found a place for this somewhere towards the bottom of the list - I've not seen it, but the family speak highly of it.

The Mitchells vs The Machine
It's not a "great" film, but it's a very enjoyable family film - which is far more important for a lot of people.

Shang Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings
I liked this a lot (but don't get me started on The Eternals).

The Truffle Hunters
This feels like a very "Guardian" film - which also got great write ups in lots of places.  Including in The Guardian.

The Sparks Brothers
This got great write-ups and you can never fault Edgar Wright for his sense of ambition.

Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar
Empire LOVES this film - so much so that I'm curious to check it out.

Sound Of Metal
This feels like a major omission - Rotten Tomatoes has this at 97% critic and 90% audience approval.  Which are serious numbers, so I will make an effort to watch this.

So - I've got nearly two months left before the best of 2022 list comes out.  What do i do now?  Well, I could just concentrate on the 2021 TV list (which I'm doing way better at than I was expecting) but obviously I need to try and make life difficult for myself so I looked at the best of 2020 list.  And there are some good films on there, so let's go for that - I reckon I can get it done in the next 5 years or so.  Maybe.

#1 - Not quite as clever as it thinks it is
#50 (2019) - What a peculiar idea
#50 (2022) - A lovely little film