Best Films I First Saw in 2021

I remember a film critic, possibly Roger Ebert (Google is not helping) say that it might be better to say what the best films we first saw in a given year were rather than the films made that year. I saw few films made in 2021, but I still saw a lot of films. I’m not including television episodes (I did see excellent episodes of Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time, and Bewitched, however), but am including short subjects, documentaries, recorded plays, and TV specials. It took me forever to rank these, which just seemed overly nitpicky beyond the three categories. The plan was to post in early January, but after I failed at working them into a ranking, I pushed it back to Oscar night.

With a rating of 10/10 (masterpiece):

The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson, 1973) 
Mr. Freedom (William Klein, 1968)
Baron Prášil/The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman, 1962)
Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948)
Rachel Luann Strayer’s Drowning Ophelia (Grant Williams, James Leagre, 2021) [play viewed live over Zoom and recorded–not a reading]
기생충/Kisaengch’ung/Gisaengchung/Helminth/Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)
Émotion (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1966) [short]
Maleficent (Robert Stromberg, 2014)
Solace (Afonso Poyart, 2015)
The Hole (Joe Dante, 2009)
Federico Fellini – un autoritratto ritrovato/Federico Fellini’s Autobiography: Clips from His Life (Paquito del Bosco, 2000) [documentary]

With a rating of 9/10 (excellent):

Peace on Earth (Hugh Harman, 1939)  [animated short]
Riti, magie nere e sgreta orge nel trecenta…/Rites, Black Magic and Rough Orgies in the Fourteenth Century…/Black Magic Rites/The Reincarnation of Isabel (Ralph Brown [Renato Polselli], 1973)
Edward II (Derek Jarman, 1991)
if…. (Lindsay Anderson, 1968)
True Stories: A Film About a Bunch of People in Virgil Texas. (David Byrne, 1986)
Welt am Draht/World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973)
One Foot in the Past hosted by Tony Benn (2Enertain, 2008) 9 [short]
La Strada [The Road] (Federico Fellini, 1954)
Night of the Living Deb (Kyle Rankin, 2015)
オペレッタ狸御殿/Operetta tanuki goten/Operetta Tanuki Palace/Princess Raccoon (Seijun Suzuki, 2005)
Dave Made a Maze (Bill Watterson, 2017)
Red Riding Hood (Catherine Hardwicke, 2011)
Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)
Liliom (Fritz Lang, 1934) 
Supernatural (Victor Halperin, 1933)
Через тернии к звёздам/Cherez ternii k zvyozdam/To the Stars by Hard Ways/Humanoid Woman (Richard Viktorov, 1980)
情癲大聖/Qíng diān dàshèng/The Great Sage of Love/A Chinese Tall Story (Jeff Lau, 2005) 
Planet of the Humans (Jeff Gibbs, 2020) [documentary]
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder, 2016)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Marc Webb, 2014)
Gycklarnas afton/The Evening of the Jesters/Sawdust and Tinsel (Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Королевство кривых зеркал/Korolevstvo krivykh zerkal/The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors (Aleksandr Rou, 1963)
La Lune à un Mètre/A Trip to the Moon/The Astronomer’s Dream/The Man in the Moon (Georges Méliès, 1898)
La frusta e il corpo/Le Corps et le fouet/The Whip and the Body/What (John M. Old [Mario Bava], 1963)
Takeover (Pamela Yates, Peter Kinoy, 1991) [documentary]
Britannia Hospital (Lindsay Anderson, 1982)
Sometimes a Great Notion (Paul Newman, 1971)
Dark Waters (André De Toth, 1944)
X: First Class/X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011)
Tangled (Nathan Greno, Byron Howard, 2010)
Filmový dobrodruh Karel Zeman/Film Adventurer Karel Zeman (Tomáš Hodan, 2015) [documentary]
Starcrossed: The Musical (Emily DeSena, 2021) 9 [45-minute Zoom condensation]
From Erased to Self-Empowered: Celebrating BIPOC Composers & Librettists (Kelly Kuo, 2021) [concert]
Night of the Living Deb Bloopers and Improv and Weirdness and Car Troubles and Non-Zombiefied People Walking All Over the Damn Place (edited by David Meiklejohn, 2015) 9 [short]
Wotan Assembly (Dan Hall, 2008) [short]

With a rating of 8/10 (“la tradition de la qualité”):

Tableau Vivant of the Delirium Constructions (Sarah Small, 2011)
Kaleidoscope (Len Lye, 1935) 8 [animated short; new score by Remo De Vico (2021)]
Doctor Atomic (Peter Sellars, 2007) [filmed stage production]
Show Boat (James Whale, 1936)
Carousel (Henry King, 1956)
Give Us the Moon (Val Guest, 1944)
Premature Burial (Roger Corman, 1962)
Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist (Saul J. Turell, 1979) [documentary short]
Mayor (David Osit, 2020) [documentary]
The Beast Must Die (Paul Annett, 1974)
ཕོར་པ།/Phörpa/The Cup (Khyentse Norbu, 1999)
OzLand (Michael Williams, 2014)
Olaf’s Frozen Adventure (Steve Wermers, Kevin Deters, 2017)  [animated short]
The Lottery (Daniel Sackheim, 1996)
I coltelli del vendicatore/The Knives of the Avenger (John Hold [Mario Bava, Leopoldo Savona], 1966)
Boom (Joseph Losey, 1968)
Fassbinder’s World on a Wire: Looking Ahead to Today (Juliane Lorenz, 2010) [documentary] 
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)
Bell Book and Candle (Richard Quine, 1958)
Making Woodshock: A Mental Landscape (Trailer Park Content, 2017) [documentary short]
Wakefield Express: The Portrait of a Newspaper (Lindsay Anderson, 1952) [documentary short]
Is That All There Is? (Lindsay Anderson, 1993) [documentary]
The Young Racers (Roger Corman, 1963)
Passion & Poetry: Sam’s Trucker Movie (Mike Siegel, 2013) [documentary]
Inside The Cup (Isaiah Seret, 2007) [documentary short]
Dragonslayer (Matthew Robbins, 1981)
The Power (Byron Haskin, 1968)
Annie Live! (Lear Debessonet, Alex Rudzinski, 2021) 
Lindsay Anderson: Lucky Man? (Becky Brazil, 2014) [documentary short]
HollywoodBaum (Nate Barlow, 2008) [documentary short]
O Lucky Malcolm! (Jan Harlan, 2006) [76 minute version on O Lucky Man! DVD]
A Christmas Carol (Edwin L. Marin, 1938)
The Revenge of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1958)
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (Ken Annakin, 1952)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (Joachim Rønning, 2019)
Frankenstein (J. Searle Dawley, 1910)
The Haunted Curiosity Shop (Walter R. Booth, 1901) [short]
Le Raid Paris à Monte Carlo en Deux Heures/An Adventurous Automobile Trip (Georges Méliès, 1905) [short]
Zulu (Cy Endfield, 1964)
Woodshock (Kate Mulleavy, Laura Mulleavy, 2017)
Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993)
La Maison Ensorcelée/The Haunted House (Segundo de Chomón, 1908) [short]
Convoy (Sam Peckinpah, 1978)
Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey (Arthur Rankin, Jr.; Jules Bass, 1977)
A Miser Brothers’ Christmas (Dave Barton Thomas, 2008)
Scooby-Doo! Spooky Games (Curt Geda, 2012) [animated short]
Santa Claus Conquers the Devil (Daniel Griffith, 2011) [documentary]
This Is the Making of Dave Makes a Maze–What’s It Called? (John Charles Meyer, 2017) [documentary short]
Wicked in Concert (Baayork Lee, 2021) [concert film]
Night of the Living Deb: Behind the Scenes (David Meiklejohn, 2016) [documentary short]
Children of the Atom: Filming X-Men: First Class (2011) [documentary short]
Turns on the Carousel (Keith A. Cox, 2005) [documentary short]
Visions and Voices: The Making of Solace (2015)
Tout en haut du monde: Le Making Of/The Making of Long Way North (Robin Pfrimmer, 2015) [documentary short]Solace (2015) [short documentary]