Best Sci-Fi, Horror, Action and International Movies of 2021


If you think most of the top 10 end-of-year movies list could use a little more dystopia, fight scenes or grisly moments, our genre experts have you covered. All year round they offer streaming recommendations on an eclectic mix of action movies, horror movies, sci-fi shows and international selections. Now, they’ve scoured the 2021 movies to find a handful of highlights, all of which may be released now.

Many of my favorite horror movies this year had one-word titles – “Living room,” “Decay” “Toy” “Car camera” – that matches how effectively they scare me in 90 minutes or less. I also love James Wan’s maximalist. “Bad-tempered” A bloody soap opera with an exploitation-friendly cop comedy and fashion sense. I have never seen such a movie. More, please.

But for the kind of horror I couldn’t shake, nothing was more brutal than that. “Homecoming in the Dark” James Ashcroft’s feature film debut. (Now on Netflix.) A married couple (Erik Thomson and Miriama McDowell) take a road trip through the New Zealand countryside with their young son (Billy and Frankie Paratene). After stopping for a picnic, two bad-looking guys suddenly appear (Daniel Gillies and Matthias Luafutu).

From there, after a scene of brutal violence, Ashcroft grips on tight and, with the precision of a mad surgeon, takes you on a punishing journey of icy twists that conjure up the random cold atrocities of the world. Michael Haneke. With the help of John Gibson’s spiky music and Matt Henley’s stoic cinematography, the film turns into a daring tale of revenge that reaches the horror trio: shocking, brutal, and emotionally gripping. — ERIK PIEPENBURG

The best movies stay not only in the mind but also in the body, as if the memories were etched into the muscles. Months after seeing Tsai Ming-liang’s movie “Days” for the first time”(Stream on Mubi), I still twitch with indirect pain when I recall one of his scenes: actor Lee Kang-sheng, after moxibustion, takes to a bright, bustling city street, his neck wrapped in a splint, his face grimacing with pain. For most of “Days,” Tsai observes Lee’s handsome muse, who, while seeking relief from real-life ailments, has amassed a Dorian Gray-esque portrait by the director’s 11 films over the past two decades.

This arc of decay intersects with renewal: Tsai also films newcomer Anong Houngheuangsy, a migrant worker in her 20s in Thailand, as she cooks, cleans, and spends time in a messy apartment. Lee’s aging body struggles against time alone; The younger, stray one of Anong is alone in space. Playing semi-fictional versions of themselves, when these duo are finally reunited in the anonymous yet sensitive sexual frisson scene that Tsai captures up close and fully, the film shudders with what feels like cinema’s truest vocation: to bring us to it. We come into such strong, burning contact with someone else’s experience that it can become our experience. — DEVIKA INTRODUCTION

As a genre that makes a comment about the present in its questioning after all, science fiction has been predictably brutal lately: I’ve watched many stories about isolation on a connected world, strange epidemics, or a dying Earth becoming uninhabitable (self-inflicted wounds). . common, but sometimes the sun goes crazy or something else – the result is the same). “Space Sweepers” takes place in a future where our planet is irreparable, but this Korean movie, premiered on Netflixis more of a crazy action saga than a feel-good thought experiment. It’s clever and captures one of the rare sweet spots for fun, which is why it’s the sci-fi movie I’ve recommended to my friends the most this year. One of Jo Sung-hee’s movie cheerful enthusiasm and full throttle pace This makes most similar American movies feel like bulky Jurassic creatures. But he’s also cunningly sharp, pitting a team of galactic janitors against a megalomaniacal CEO – our planet may be running out of time, but the class struggle continues.

South Korea has revived the zombie genre in movies (the “Train to Busan” series) and television (“Kingdom”) zombie genre, and I only hope this movie offers a similar reboot of the space opera. — ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

Two action films about middle-aged fathers struggling with their physical fitness as guardians of their families caught my attention. “Riders of Justice” (directed by Anders Thomas Jensen)Stream on Hulu), for example, Mads Mikkelsen stands out as Markus, a patient but broken widow. He works with a group of number enthusiasts to devise an algorithm they claim can turn seemingly trivial coincidences into predictable patterns to predict tragic events before they happen. To take revenge on the men who killed his wife in a terrorist attack, Markus seeks to reverse his algorithms to reconstruct the events that led to his wife’s death.

Similarly, relying on a patient hero to throw punitive punches is director Ilya Naishuller’s “Nobody” (can be rented or purchased on multiple platforms). In the film, Bob Odenkirk stars as Hutch, an assassin inspired by retired John Wick, who has just taken action to take revenge against the bandits who robbed his family’s home at gunpoint.

Both of these movies not only feature well-choreographed fight scenes, but also transcend the common silly macho stance of stereotypical action heroes: How old is too old to protect your family? The vulnerable interrogation given more depth in Mikkelsen and Odenkirk’s visceral performances makes “Riders of Justice” and “Nobody” emotional cuts above any other action movie I’ve watched in 2021. – ROBERT DANIELS



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