So, My Favorite Documentaries and Animated Films of 2021.

I got a nice chuckle out of myself just now by going back and looking at my year-end list for 2020. I prefaced my favorite documentaries and animated movies list with the proud proclamation that I had seen about 70 new releases in the year. Now, looking back, I realize how small a drop in the pond that number truly is. This year, I say with less pride and more abandoned bewilderment, I've seen nearly 200 movies from 2021 - over 400 films total on the year. 2021 was an unabashed, mindboggling, and admittedly depressing marathon of film. I watched and watched and watched until I couldn't watch anymore. The end result of that marathon is a more comprehensive, albeit complicated, set of year-end lists: My favorites. Today, my favorite documentaries and animated films. In a week, my favorite feature films of the year. With so many to choose from and the spots for films constantly shifting in my head, this task is more daunting than ever. Luckily, I still have a few days to figure out my final placements for feature films. For now, we focus on my favorite true and/or animated movies from 2021. This list was not easy to make, and there's no guarantee I'll stand by the placements of every choice tomorrow; but, for now, these are my favorites. Enjoy.

My Favorite Animated Movies of 2021

I have no kids. I have no nieces, nephews, or niblings. There are no small children in my life whatsoever. I have essentially no reason to spend as many hours as I do watching animated movies. And yet... Well, you know me.

5. Raya and the Last Dragon

Last year I had two Pixar movies on my list. This year - slight spoiler for what's to come - I have none. Instead, those two Pixar movies have been replaced with Disney movies. But since Pixar is owned by Disney, it all goes back to them anyway, right? Does any of this matter? Are movies doomed? I digress. Anyway, Raya and the Last Dragon is fucking awesome. Super cool movie about having a hot dad and trying to restore Pangaea. (Who can't relate?) It's also the least egregious Awkwafina performance of the year, so it has that going for it, I guess. 

4. Encanto 

Much to the chagrin of high-school Todd, 24-year-old Todd was thoroughly unimpressed with the work of Lin-Manuel Miranda this year. In the Heights got overshadowed by a mountain of more impressive musicals, and tick, tick... BOOM!, Miranda's directorial debut, didn't work for me in the slightest. (I know I'm in the minority with that opinion.) Miranda's only saving grace, in my eyes, was his work on Encanto, a Disney musical about a Colombian family with super talents. I got to see an advanced screening of the film, and while skeptical of a third L.M.M. musical in six months, I found myself totally blown away by the colors, the music, and the commitment to being truly original. Encanto is going to be a family favorite (for black and brown kids, especially) for a long time, and rightfully so.

3. The Summit of the Gods

A late entry to this list, I hadn't even heard of the The Summit of the Gods until December. However, this French anime, based on a Japanese historical-drama manga series, is not to be slept on. The Netflix film tells the story of a photographer who goes on the hunt for a missing climber, a man who many believe to be dead but that our protagonist believes to be alive and in possession of new evidence surrounding the first ever summiting of Mount Everest. It is not your typical animated movie. Certainly not for children, The Summit of the Gods has one of the most harrowing and gut-wrenching scenes in any movie of the last twelve months. So good, you'll forget what you're seeing is actually just a cartoon.

Honorable Mentions

I know, I know. I skipped #2. Don't worry. We're gonna get to it later. But before we move from #3 to #1, I want to take a minute to shout-out some animated films that didn't make my top five favorites. The most glaring omission from my list, and a favorite of many, is Luca. The Italian sea-monster, "I wanna be a real boy" film by Pixar was short and sweet and entirely unproblematic. It's a very worthy addition to any "Top Animated Movies of 2021," it just didn't happen to make mine. 

I've never watched The Witcher series, and I still don't really even know what it's about, but I'll admit to enjoying The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. Just don't ask me what happens in it. Similarly, another unexplainable but much, much weirder movie is Cryptozoo. Dash Shaw's kaleidoscopic dream-eating monster movie is probably really excellent if you're stoned, but is still a pretty fun trip if you're not. And now, my favorite animated movie of 2021.

1. The Mitchells vs. The Machines

My partner Blair came into the bedroom during the last half hour of this movie. They had no prior knowledge of what was happening, who the characters were, or what the movie was even called. When the movie ended, they were crying alongside me. The Mitchells vs. The Machines (as well as my aforementioned skipped #2 pick) is one of those rare movies that pushes the boundaries of its art form, while simultaneously telling a compelling and heartfelt story. It's neither Disney animation, nor anime, but a Dada-inspired combination of them both that satirizes the Internet addiction of the Zoomer generation, while paying tribute to that very dependency. It pokes fun at the viewer and at its own makers. And in a year of meta-textual comedies about the control and conglomeration of technological corporations (e.g., Free Guy, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Bo Burnham: Inside, The Matrix Resurrections) it is this silly animated movie that stands above them all. It made this cynic feel a little less doomed, even while acknowledging that we're basically fucked.

My Favorite Documentaries of 2021

Last year I disparaged myself for the dearth of documentaries in my viewing calendar. I made it a point to fix that mistake this year, and, while there is always room for improvement, I'd say I did pretty damn good job of correcting that. I did so well, in fact, I almost considered breaking up my traditional animated movies/documentaries piece into two separate pieces to account for ten documentaries. There were dozens of true and worthwhile stories that got brought to the big screen this year. This is but a small sampling. I implore you to check these out and seek out other lists as well. Good documentaries are never hard to find.

5. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

So much has been said about Roadrunner, little of it good - all of it deserved. Let's start with the elephant in the room. Morgan Neville did some shady and clearly unethical shit in the making of this documentary, including the re-appropriation of previously released material, misleading (and outright lying to) interview subjects, and, most notably, using artificial intelligence to recreate Anthony Bourdain's voice and speak words he never said. In terms of documentary filmmaking, it is about as far from perfect as a film can get. In terms of storytelling and capturing an enigmatic but historically significant figure though, it is praise-worthy. Bourdain meant more to me than any writer of the last 150 years. He taught me the importance of storytelling, of opening one's eyes and ears to the people around them, of using one's own voice to capture those moments. Sure, this documentary isn't one of the five best from this year, but what Bourdain meant to me - and what this film captures - catapults it into my top five.

4. Summer of Soul (...Or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

I'll go ahead and get this out the way: this is probably the greatest concert film ever made. Leave it to Questlove, the acclaimed drummer, author, and now filmmaker, to create the pinnacle of Black joy on film - a reclamation of previously unseen footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival, a six-week music festival that happened only weeks before Woodstock. Despite being whitewashed from history, the Festival, known as Black Woodstock, remains one of the defining moments in Black culture, with performances by Stevie Wonder, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone, Moms Mabley, and B.B. King, among many others; an almost all-Black attendance; and security by the Black Panther Party instead of the NYPD (who refused to provide assistance, go figure). Summer of Soul brings the Harlem Cultural Festival back in bright color and lets a new generation enjoy the music and energy of 1969's other cultural revolution.

3. The Rescue

Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the couple behind 2018's electric documentary Free Solo, return to the big screen with The Rescue, yet another high-stress, high-relief tale of geographic peril. Instead of the open-air terror of free scaling El Capitan, their new film is a claustrophobic retelling of the Tham Luang cave rescue, in which a group of twelve children and their soccer coach were trapped in a Thai cave system for almost three weeks. The film mixes interviews, on the ground footage, and an extremely detailed recreation of the rescue into one of the most heart-pounding, tear-inducing movies of the year. Like the rescue itself, the eponymous documentary can only be described as a miracle. 

2. Bo Burnham: Inside

I've spent the better part of the last six months trying to discern what the fuck Bo Burnham: Inside actually is. How to define the indefinable? Is it a comedy special? A documentary? Carefully staged fiction? A movie? A TV special? A music video? A fucking knock-off Bon Iver album? The answer, as I've come to find out, is yes. It is all of those. It is a pandemic project, a piece unlike anything in the history of film, a musical comedy special that's equal parts documentary and fiction - and yeah, it played in movie theaters and got nominated for Grammys. Your guess as to what it should be categorized is as good as mine. Here's what I do know it is: a profoundly upsetting and funny satire of... well, everything. Bo Burnham, a comedian I've never much liked, nakedly sings to his generation of 30 and unders, gently (and at times aggressively) reminding us that we are fucked. It's non-unique but true nonetheless when I say this sent me spiraling into a mild existential crisis about the collective future of life on Earth. It stuck in my brain, an ear-worm of a "documentary," an important and inimitable relic of our first year in quarantine; a.k.a. the first year of the rest of our lives. 

Honorable Mentions

There were probably twenty movies that were at some point or another in my top five documentaries of the year list, and while I'd love to highlight all of them, I'm going to have to show a little bit of restraint. So, here are a few that didn't make the cut. There were a slew of amazing music documentaries: Tina, the definitive documentary about Tina Turner's life, The Velvet Underground, a hazy still image of the time and place in which The Velvet Underground grew into one of the most influential bands of all time, and The Sparks Brothers, a fun journey through fifty years of Sparks' music, covering the band from album to album, genre turn to genre turn. There were also a pair of quiet hypnotic black-and-white documentaries that may actually be better than most everything else of this list: Faya Dayi and Gunda. And for my film lovers out there, the three-plus-hour documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror chronicles the hundreds of movies that turned folk horror from a sub-genre into one of the most popular movie genres in the world. All of these are incredible documentaries, and they only skim the shortlist of the genre's many gems from the last twelve months.

1. Flee

Remember when I skipped #2 on my animated movie list? This is why. Flee is not only one of my two favorite animated movies of the year, it's my favorite documentary. The Sundance winning documentary animates the story of Amin Nawabi, a gay refugee, who fled from Afghanistan to start a new life in Denmark. It's a harrowing true story, one that can be told with unbridled realism because of the versatility of animation - a tool to anonymously recreate these traumatic life events. Amin's story has the twists that can go toe-to-toe with the year's best psychological thrillers and more emotional weight than almost anything I've seen in 2021. That this film, one I saw almost a year ago, has remained at the top of not just my list, but so many others' as well, is a testament to its storytelling and the raw strength of Amin Nawabi, himself. Flee is a masterpiece of documentary filmmaking and a groundbreaking realization for the power of animation. Its impact will ripple across both industries for decades to come. Of that, I have no doubt. If you haven't already, seek Flee out as quickly as possible. You'll be better for it.