One thing about our annual top 10 lists that we have to deal with every year is that eligibility gets a little more complicated each week as we move through the media we cover. Despite the Grammys bizarre rules, picking albums is easy: did it come out between January 1 and December 31? Then it counts, even if the album had a single or two from the year before. TV shows get a little more complicated, since some shows have seasons that start in the fall of one year and the spring on another, for example. And then movies are the most difficult, because a lot of indie movies have multiple release dates: do we go by festival debut? Limited release in LA and New York? Wide release? If they’re foreign films, do we go off their home country’s release or when they came out here?
For the most part, we’ve just done whatever the big critics did, which, living in Seattle, often meant making a lot of trips to the art house theaters in December and January to catch up with the indie darlings critics saw in the bigger cities, at festivals, or on screeners. But that was not the case in 2020! The theaters stayed closed after March 2020 and didn’t become a part of my life again until F9 saved cinema in June of 2021. For the first time ever, it just was not possible to see a lot of the most beloved movies – including major Oscar pictures – until their digital release in 2021. So (and I warned John and Colin I’d be doing this) I’m making a one-time exception to my own list eligibility rules and expanding the field to any movie that was released for the first time IN A WAY I COULD SEE IT in 2021. Does this have anything to do with the fact that I’m still skittish about going back to theaters and haven’t seen a lot of beloved 2021 movies? MAYBE.
