5 Best Movies & Shows Released in 2021 On Criterionchannel

Staff & contributors
Find the best movies and show to watch from the year 2021. These handpicked recommendations are highly-rated by viewers and critics.

From Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi comes another film featuring long drives, thoughtful talks, and unexpected twists. An anthology of three short stories, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy ponders over ideas of love, fate, and the all-too-vexing question, “what if?” 

What if you didn’t run away from the one you love? What if you didn’t give in to lust that fateful day? What if, right then and there, you decide to finally forgive?

Big questions, but without sacrificing depth, Hamaguchi does the incredible task of making every single second feel light and meaningful. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy will leave you with mixed emotions: excited, startled, dejected, hopeful. But one thing you won’t feel is regret over watching this instant classic of a film.

Genre: Drama, Romance

Actor: Aoba Kawai, Aoba Kawai 河井清叶, Ayumu Nakajima, Fusako Urabe, Hitoshi Omika, Hyunri, Katsuki Mori, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Kotone Furukawa, Shouma Kai

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Rating: R-13

In Drive My Car, a widowed artist travels to Hiroshima for his latest production. There he meets a young woman enlisted to drive him around the area. They forge an unexpected bond and soon share pithy observations and long-buried secrets, which culminate in a touching scene of catharsis and forgiveness.

Not a lot is said in this three-hour film, but when words (and signals) are shared, they are always underlaid with simple but transcendent truths. Drive My Car is a gripping film that explores love and loss in its own quiet way, at once intense and intimate.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Ahn Hwi-tae, Ahn Hwitae, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Hiroko Matsuda, Jin Dae-yeon, Masaki Okada, Park Yu-rim, Perry Dizon, Reika Kirishima, Ryo Iwase, Satoko Abe, Shoichiro Tanigawa, Sonia Yuan, Toko Miura, Toshiaki Inomata

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Rating: Unrated

Though it’s without a plot, Faya Dayi nonetheless weaves a stunning, expansive narrative about khat and the people who farm it and chew its leaves for their hallucinogenic effect. The documentary seems to take place in the same hazy dreamlike stupor that khat-chewers chase: shot in luminous black and white, the film is set to a reflective rhythm that floats from folklore to contemporary stories of romantic heartbreak, migration, and oppression.

Largely featuring members of Ethiopia's Oromo community — a marginalized ethnic group — including the farmers and workers involved in khat production, Faya Dayi is a portrait of economic hardship, emotional pain, and transcendent escape that hits straight in the chest for all the rawness and yearning it depicts. (As disembodied voice-overs put it, “people chew to get away” to the khat-induced “empty and lonely hideout where no one can ever visit you, your own dark and lonely world.”) Full of textures and images that evoke all of the senses, this is virtually a 5D movie, a hypnotic out-of-body experience that floats an astonishing expanse of ideas into your head — no talky explanations needed.

Genre: Documentary

Actor: Biniam Yonas, Destu Ibrahim Mumade, Hashim Abdi, Mohammed Arif, Urji Abrahim Mumade

Director: Jessica Beshir

, 2021

It’s been years since Fahrije and the women of her village lost their husbands to the war. It’s one thing to move on after their passing, but quite another to never be sure about their whereabouts, dead or alive. Hive tells the story of how, in the wake of this inexplicable loss, the women of a Kosovo village reluctantly band together and make a new life for themselves and their families.

Thanks to its grit and restraint, Hive avoids the cheesy trappings of a melodrama. The dialogues are straightforward and the performances taut but affecting. Their battle with poverty and misogyny is sadly a familiar tale, but told through the lens of single mother/burgeoning entrepreneur Fahrije, it is rendered deeply personal and illuminating. 

 

Genre: Drama

Actor: Adem Karaga, Adriana Matoshi, Armend Smajli, Astrit Kabashi, Aurita Agushi, Bislim Muçaj, Blerta Ismaili, Çun Lajçi, Ilir Prapashtica, Kaona Sylejmani, Kumrije Hoxha, Labinot Lajçi, Yllka Gashi

Director: Blerta Basholli

There's a mysterious, urgent power to Ear for Eye that survives the project's movement from the stage to the screen. Against moody, bare backgrounds, debbie tucker green's script becomes both story and setting—with words upon words overlapping, being repeated, and being used against each other, expressing the anxiety of entire generations of Black people trying to figure out how to endure all their persecution. What unfortunately <i>doesn't</i> translate well to the screen is the film's editing and its inability to take full advantage of the medium of cinema. Despite the importance of the things being discussed, the end product is a movie that feels like it gets in its own way too much, but still delivers plenty to think about.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Arinzé Kene, Carmen Munroe, Claire Driver, Danielle Vitalis, Danny Sapani, David Gyasi, Demetri Goritsas, Ilirian Bushi, Jade Anouka, Jamal Ajala, Kayla Meikle, Lashana Lynch, Nadine Marshall, Rochelle Rose, Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo, Sharlene Whyte, Sule Rimi, Tosin Cole

Director: Debbie Tucker Green