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Yup, we are already halfway through the year 2021.

It feels neither here nor there to be honest, with all the “unprecedented” events just smooshing into one big minute.

It is only when we take stock that we realise how far we’ve come.

We had a look at Amazon’s best books of the year recently, and now it is time to explore what this year has brought to us in the world of cinema.

Heads have spun all over the globe as we adjust to the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions lifting and being put back in place time and time again.

The film industry has had a fair share of this pandemic whiplashing, too, with release date shuffling and theatres closing.

Despite all that, movies were made, and Mashable has a list of the best films of 2021 so far, from “comedies to powerhouse dramas to epic-scale blockbusters”.

We’ll start off with the ones that can provide some comic relief:

Bad Trip 

It was reported that this movie is the funniest of the year and also one of the most inventive:

Brought to you by three of the dudes behind The Eric Andre Show, this mostly improvised romantic comedy stars Eric Andre as Chris, a hopeless romantic seeking a second chance with his high school crush. Lil Rel Howery co-leads as Bud, Chris’ best, er, bud (ha!) who agrees to a moonshot road trip in hopes of finding his friend’s lost love. Tiffany Haddish steals the show as Bad Trip’s main antagonist, Bud’s sister Trina who is newly escaped from prison and wildly unpredictable.

This will definitely be a controversial choice because I’ve also seen Bad Trip receive horrid reviews, although many of those did concede that you might also have a few laugh-out-loud moments.

Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar 

Apparently, Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar is so weird that only five minutes in and the first “WTF?” is induced:

There are life-saving culottes, and elaborate lies about turtles, and a mythological sea sprite named Trish, and a villain commanding an army of mosquitos, and a musical number that has Jamie Dornan climbing up a palm tree like a cat up a palm tree who’s decided to go up a palm tree, and…look, you’ve just got to watch it to get it.

Limbo

At the centre of this film is a Syrian refugee named Omar (Amir El-Masry) who’s in limbo while waiting for his request for asylum to be granted.

Limbo goes from being hilarious in parts, to heartbreaking in others, but it is always humane:

There’s a deadpan edge to Omar’s struggles to adjust to this strange and distant land, but director Ben Sharrock is aiming for something deeper than fish-out-of-water comedy — the humor underlines Omar’s sense of disorientation and alienation, and beneath that surface-level absurdity is a poignant look at the deepest pains and frustrations endured by Omar and the other refugees around him.

Godzilla vs. Kong 

The next chapter in the cinematic Monsterverse is an intense brawl between two of the greatest icons in motion picture history, Godzilla vs. Kong:

Children have been raised with less love than the animators put into every single moment of their titanic brawls, which span the surface and interior of the globe and culminate in the complete destruction of a world city — as well as one of the greatest third-act plot twists seen in a movie where a big nuclear lizard fights an ape.

A nuclear lizard fighting an ape somehow seems fitting for 2021.

To finish, something a little more serious.

Judas and the Black Messiah  

This movie is about the betrayal and assassination of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Black Panther Party, and reminds us that “you can murder a revolutionary, but you can’t murder a revolution”:

Judas and the Black Messiah burns with all the passion and fury and sorrow its real-life story deserves — but unlike so many historical dramas that seem to regard their events from a lofty remove, it never loses sight of the humanity of its central players.

Anchored by powerhouse performances from Daniel Kaluuya (who won an Oscar) and LaKeith Stanfield, the story of Fred Hampton’s life and death takes on the urgency of the present and the tremulous hope for a better future.

Perhaps you’ve already seen most of those.

You can find further inspiration with the rest of the list here.

[source:mashable]