10 of the Best Movies We Discovered for the First Time in 2021

Amid my desperate search for emotionally unchallenging films to watch during the pandemic, I spent a good chunk of this year drilling down on comedies from the ‘80s, the decade of my childhood, a decade of films characterized by big hair, bad sexual politics, and lots of white people belonging to country clubs—weird stuff to feel nostalgic for, maybe, but there’s no other reason to watch The Bonfire of the Vanities in 2021. I assumed Earth Girls Are Easy would be all of that, plus some aliens for added color. I’d long had it pegged as one of the bad movies Jim Carrey was in before he hit it big on In Living Color. Oops, it’s actually amazing?

Co-written by MTV VJ Julie Brown (not that one) and Terrence E. McNally (not that one), it’s a candy-colored pop musical that seems to take place both exactly in 1988 and at no time at all. Aliens played by Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, and Jeff Goldblum come to Earth to prepare it for invasion and wind up vibing too hard with humanity (including an effervescent Geena Davis, just a few years out from becoming a megastar in Thelma & Louise) to complete their mission, which is mostly a framework on which to hang one bizarre comedic set piece after another. It’s garish and wacky and arguably terrible, and I loved every second of it.—Joel Cunningham, deputy editor

Where to watch: Tubi, Redbox, Pluto TV, YouTube

Working through John Waters’ filmography has been something of a pandemic project of mine. I’m still not done—he’s got a lot of movies—but that’s OK, because we’ve still got a lot of pandemic ahead of us.

Most of Waters’ films I want to like more than I actually do, because even though I like to think of myself as open-minded and not a prude, I still really don’t enjoy watching someone have a threesome with a live chicken. But Cry-Baby, a 1950s set musical starring peak Johnny Depp as a sensitive high school bad boy who makes the girls swoon whenever he sheds a single tear, is pretty much the Waters sweet spot for me: a goofy, subversive amalgamation of Grease, Hairspray, and West Side Story that’s darkly funny and totally out there, but also you could probably watch it with your mom. —Joel

Where to watch: Peacock

Many movies suffer for a lack of resources, but Last Action Hero is a rare movie that suffers from too many resources. It’s the epitome of overblown, self-satisfied Hollywood spectacles—the kind of movie I spend my life avoiding—but when viewed this far from the cultural context of its release, Last Action Hero is a weird and interesting movie. It’s wildly uneven and has the obvious marks of too many cooks in its kitchen, but for all its faults, there are hints of a thoughtful, small film yearning to escape a huge, bombastic mess.—Stephen Johnson, staff writer

Where to watch: Fubo

I completely missed this gem when it first came out, because I was 8 years old and my mother does not care for Martin Short—and this movie is Martin Short at his Martin Shortest. Short plays 10-year-old boy named Clifford who—like most children in the 90s—is obsessed with dinosaurs. So obsessed, in fact, that he forces an airline pilot to make an emergency landing in Southern California so he can take a trip to Dinosaur World.

I cannot remember the last time a movie made me laugh this hard. Clifford is impulsive, selfish, conniving, and (at times) downright evil, and Short’s unparalleled control of his face makes him equally mesmerizing and repulsive in the role. Clifford speaks to the worst part of our inner child, the part that throws a tantrum when we don’t get our way. “That’s you,” my boyfriend said more than once during the movie, but Clifford isn’t just me. Clifford is all of us.—Claire Lower, senior food editor

Where to watch: Prime Video

When I first noticed HBO Max featured the entire collected works of Studio Ghibli, I made it my personal mission to watch the entire filmography. I’ve failed in that so far, but in my meager attempt I did manage to watch Princess Mononoke. And, boy, am I glad I did. Princess Mononoke is one of the most beautifully animated movies I’ve ever seen. The story is captivating, the world is fascinating, and it kept me engaged from start to finish. How anyone could watch this and not want to go on an exploration through Japan’s countryside is beyond me.—Jake Peterson, senior tech editor

Where to watch: Disney+, Hulu

For 22 years I assumed Blast From the Past was a dumb high-concept romantic comedy about a nice guy (Brendan Fraser) who was born and raised in a bomb shelter by parents (Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek) who were convinced that there was a nuclear war in 1962 and emerged in 1999 to discover the world had changed a lot since his folks went underground. And it kind of is, but it’s also a deeply weird movie that vaults way beyond its fish-out-of-water premise, layering in a bunch of zany touches, from the religious cult that arises in the wake of the family’s periodic trips to the surface, to the backgrounded subplot in which Spacek hides her character’s out of control drinking behind the mask of a perfect mid-century housewife. An ideal choice for anyone who has ever suffered through an endless quarantine and dreamed of a better life on the other side. —Joel

Where to watch: Digital rental

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith is not a great movie. But what’s great about it is that it’s an improvement over the first two installments of the series, which I groaningly watched with my Vader-obsessed first-grader this year.

After growing up with the original Star Wars movies (episodes 4-6), full of real people and plots that made sense, being asked to follow the mind-numbing mechanics of an interplanetary trade dispute and take the hordes of alien characters in episodes 1 and 2 seriously were…a setback. Revenge of the Sith more engagingly provides the final stages of Darth Vader’s origin story. We witness Anakin’s transformation to the Dark Side, which we learn stems not just from his annoying egomania, but from a desire to protect Padmé. I was pleasantly surprised to find out what, and more importantly, who sent Darth into that black suit of death. And watching slow, peaceful Yoda suddenly bust out some sweet battle moves like a little CGI Simone Biles gave us all a good laugh.—Sarah Showfety, staff writer

Where to watch: Disney+

My 11-year-old son (and my 40-year-old husband) are very much into all things Marvel at the moment. I, on the other hand, have had very little interest in superhero movies. That is, until I heard those two giggling with delight as they watched—and rewatched—one particular scene in Thor: Ragnarok. I am, of course, talking about the “Get Help” scene. I couldn’t help but watch it to see what was so damn funny, which then led me to watching the rest of the movie with them, which then led to me watching it again from the beginning, which then led to me watching the TV series, Loki. Considering I just happily went along with them to see Spider-Man: No Way Home last weekend, it appears my Marvel conversion is complete.—Meghan Walbert, managing editor

Where to watch: Disney+

All throughout Free Solo, I thought Alex Honnold was going to die. Even though I knew he was still alive, that knowledge couldn’t trump the terror I felt during every step of his ascent of Yosemite’s tallest peak, El Capitan, without fucking ropes. Watching his slim frame climb the side of a 3,200-foot rock face with nothing but his wits and a bag of chalk was like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. You just cannot believe such things are possible. The cinematography, Honnold’s preternatural immunity to fear, and the shots of his toy-like body dangling over a black chasm of near-certain death are—in a word—astonishing.—Sarah

Where to watch: Disney+

I never wanted to watch any of the live-action remakes of Disney cartoons, but one day my sons came into the living room intending to “roast Mulan.” I don’t even think they had seen the animated version, but they had heard that the live action was terrible and they wanted to put it on and laugh and yell at the screen. During the first scene, they were shouting things like “people can’t walk on rooftops like that!” and I realized: They made Mulan into one of those magical Kung Fu movies. My sons kept shouting out their disbelief, and I would counter with arguments like, “This is a valid type of movie!”

Now, was the plot any good? Did it do justice to the original animated film? I’m not sure, since I went and did a workout in the middle of it and only came back to catch the ending. But the costumes and scenery were beautiful, and I enjoyed the scenes I saw, even if my enjoyment was mostly out of spite.—Beth Skwarecki, senior health editor

Where to watch: Disney+