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13 Shows and Movies We Loved in 2021

by Bitch HQ
Published on December 30, 2021 at 10:00am
A digital collage over a green background of two weary figures in green tracksuits, Tina Turner smiling at the camera, and a young mother carrying her daughter on her shoulders.

Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun and HoYeon Jung as Kang Sae-byeok in Squid Game, Tina Turner in Tina, Margaret Qualley as Alex and Rylea Nevaeh Whittet as Maddy in Maid. (Photo credits: Youngkyu Park/Netflix; Dave Hogan/Courtesy of Getty/HBO; Ricardo Hubbs/Netflix)

Looking back on a year of screen sensations, we compiled some of the shows and movies that our Bitch writers loved watching this year, from the unexpected buzz around Squid Game’s horrifying meditation on the problem of debt in South Korea to the catharsis of Mayday’s feminist revenge.
 
Read about the shows and movies we hated watching this year here.
House of Gucci
{ United Artists Releasing, Universal Pictures }
Release Date: November 24, 2021
Femme Fatale: The Allure of the “House of Gucci” Antiheroine

“This story is not about the downfall of magnificent men, it’s about the tragedy of a woman who flew too close to the sun.”
-Vanessa Willoughby

(Photo credit: Fabio Lovino / MGM)

Wynonna Earp
{ IDW Entertainment, Dynamic Television, Cineflix Rights }
Release Date: April 8, 2021
Wynonna Earp Reimagines the Old, Male West
“I’d been raised on Westerns, but Wynonna Earp was different: Instead of celebrating hypermasculine cowboys who terrorize Indigenous people and abuse women, Emily Andras’s genre dramedy made a complicated woman the ‘chosen one,’ the unlikely hero tasked with saving her town from the evil that’s descended upon it.” -Evette Dionne

(Photo credit: Michelle Faye / Wynonna Earp Productions, Inc. / SYFY)
Spencer
{ Neon, Topic Studios, STXfilms }
Release Date: November 5, 2021
“Spencer” Amplifies the Horror of the Royal Family

“By exhuming Dynasty Di from her saintly casket, Larraín and Stewart have done the world a great favor, and have given us at last a Diana every bit as batshit as any of the inbred remnants of House Saxe-Coburg-Gotha––but a little easier to root for.” -Grace Lavery

(Photo: Courtesy of NEON)

Mayday
{ Magnolia Pictures }
Release Date: October 1, 2021
“Mayday” Is a Brutal, Irresistible Feminist Revenge Fantasy

“Mayday gives audiences the actual violent revenge they expected from a film like Promising Young Woman.“ -Ren Jender

(Photo credit: Tjaša Kalkan / Magnolia Pictures)

Squid Game
{ Netflix }
Release Date: September 17, 2021
“Squid Game” Exposes the False Rhetoric of “Choice” and “Resilience”
“Squid Game represents the razor-thin edge of the “choices” that marginalized communities are forced to navigate in a world that isn’t built for them to succeed (and in many ways is relentlessly hostile toward them).” -Jennifer Chang

(Photo credit: Youngkyu Park/Netflix)
Minari
{ A24 }
Release Date: February 12, 2021
In Its Joy, “Minari” Expands the Boundaries of the American Dream
“Minari captures the full spectrum of a family’s experience as they attempt to lay down roots—both literally and figuratively. Minari’s sensitivity comes as a relief to viewers, myself included, who were braced for the familiar beats of immigrant trauma: abject racism, domestic violence, patriarchy.” -Hannah Bae

(Photo credit: David Bornfriend/A24)
Maid
{ Netflix }
Release Date: October 1, 2021
“Maid” Puts an Unflinching Lens on Women in Poverty

“At its core, Maid is about how cycles of abuse keep people—especially women—in poverty as society protects abusers, making it even more difficult for survivors to heal and flourish.” -Alaina Leary

(Photo credit: Ricardo Hubbs / Netflix)

Framing Britney Spears
{ FX / Hulu, Red Arrow Studios International }
Release Date: February 5, 2021
“Framing Britney Spears” Is a Portrait of a Pop Star on Fire

“Framing Britney Spears is a clear indictment of society’s stigmatization of mental illness.” -Vanessa Willoughby

(Photo credit: Hulu)

Sort Of
{ CBC Television }
Release Date: November 9, 2021
“Sort Of” Is a Refreshingly Complex Take on Nonbinary Life
“On the surface, Sort Of could be read as any one of a number of urban millennial dramas that have been released in recent years, but it is actually a literal queering of this particular trope that delves more deeply into the lives of millennials and the communities they build for themselves.” -s.e. smith

(Photo credit: HBO)

From Our Sponsors

Tina
{ HBO, Altitude Film Distribution }
Release Date: March 27, 2021
HBO’s “Tina” Is a Fitting Final Bow for an Iconic Survivor
“While Tina isn’t a revelation or a surprise, it’s absolutely a closure—the resolution to a decades-long paradox in which a survivor shared her story in order to get free of it and instead became pinned under the weight of the parts she most wanted to shake loose.” -Andi Zeisler

(Photo credit: Dave Hogan/Courtesy of Getty/HBO)
I Care a Lot
{ Netflix }
Release Date: February 19, 2021
“I Care a Lot” is Visceral Catharsis for Women’s Rage

“A cinematic primal scream, there’s a visceral catharsis in watching even the most unreal version come to life. There’s therapy to be found in these films, where the lesson is not so much that ‘fear gets you beat,’ as Marla warns, but that it feels good to be a bitch and take what you want sometimes. After all, men have been doing it for centuries.” -Sadaf Ahsan

(Photo credit: Seacia Pavao/Netflix)

Search Party
{ WarnerMedia Direct }
Release Date: January 14, 2021
Season 4 of “Search Party” Is the Perfect Pandemic Watch

“Search Party is the funniest show that you’re probably not watching.” -Marina Watanabe and Andi Zeisler

(Photo credit: Jax Media/HBO Max)

Nomadland
{ Searchlight Pictures }
Release Date: February 19, 2021
“Nomadland” Is the Movie “Hillbilly Elegy” Wants to Be

“The nomads of Nomadland aren’t parroting what they think van-dwelling life looks like; they’re coming from the world of nomad-living rather than simply peering into it. I have no hesitation in saying that Nomadland is one of the very best films of the year: McDormand is a powerhouse and is effortlessly settled in her character’s skin.” -Alison Lanier

(Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures)

Read this Next: Cop Out

Doug Judy, left, and Andy Samberg wear matching tiger track suits and sit on the hood of a car that has a bird decal on the hood
by s.e. smith
September 29, 2021
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” was, at heart, copaganda—a show that, in the midst of a growing real-life reckoning, made viewers feel good—or, if not good, better—about American policing.

 

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