Well, it’s that time of the again. I’ve been doing this now for …. 5 YEARS?!  Jeez… better not stop now. I’m shaking things up a bit this year because instead of diligently numbering my Top 15 I’ve only given designated numbers to my five absolute favorite films of the year. I’ve been ranking my favorite films of the year since I was in high school and when all is said & done only a specific few of my absolute favorites can be recalled off the top of my head without a list handy. For example: My favorite films of 2013 are FRANCES HA, THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, THE WIND RISES and INSIDE LLEYWN DAVIS in that order. So I figured to keep things simple this year, instead of trying to arbitrarily figure out which film belongs in Spot 11 I would just alphabetize them in reverse which I think works perfectly fine. Or maybe it doesn’t. This is 2021 energy, baby! Everything is chaos! Before the main list are some Honorable Mentions:

Honorable Mention #1 –  NYC EPICENTERS 9/11➔2021½

Spike Lee’s four part HBO documentary isn’t perfect – it gets a little lost when it focuses on the January 6th Capitol Riot which did not occur in NYC and thankfully the over half hour of material dedicated to 9/11 Truthers and their lies has been removed – but when the doc is on topic and Lee personally connects with the subject matter it is flawless! The strongest chapters are Parts 1 & 3 which deal with the two major crises of the initial Covid-19 breakout in NYC and 9/11 as they happened are both some of the finest work of Lee’s incredible career.  The seven and a half hour documentary is constantly introducing new topics and new voices from start to finish and is continually engaging in new and exciting. I hope to see Lee continue his strong relationship with HBO going and makes more stellar documentary series.

Honorable Mention #2 –  SCISSOR SEVEN – Season 3.

The best Netflix Original Anime is made in China and it’s about a dumb hairdresser who might also be the world’s greatest assassin. SCISSOR SEVEN is absolute chaos and you never really know where things will be going next. One episode can be the silliest and most juvenile thing imaginable and then suddenly there’s a stupendously animated fight to the death between two opponents…. that ends when one dude jabs their finger into the other dudes belly button. And that’s a calm episode. This show also features two chickens as major characters, one who is a gruff fighter and the other who can magically transforms into a hulking Adonis! There’s even a fighter whose power comes from his impenetrable virginity! It’s great stuff. The third season (of maybe a total of seven?) is an interesting expansion of the universe that features some of the shows goofiest episodes to date AND has the coolest singular battle scene so far! SCISSOR SEVEN is an exciting show I recommend!

Honorable Mention #3 –  CENTAURWORLD – Complete Series

This 18 episode Netflix Original series is easily the biggest surprise of 2021 for me. As is the norm now in our Content Days, I got a Youtube recommendation of the trailer for for a new Netflix Original that was dropping in like… three days ago. I watched the trailer and it was for an animated musical comedy about obnoxious half horse & half human …. things. While I though the animation looked impressive I felt the show itself looked uninspired. So far so Netflix. I went on with my life. A few weeks later a critic I respected tweeted something like “Netflix’s show about singing Centaurs is surprisingly good” and I was confused. They couldn’t be talking about THAT show. So, as a 36 year old man does, one night I started CENTAURWORLD on Netflix and within 5 minutes I was intrigued. The music was good. The animation was even better than expected, the jokes were sharper and more adult than first thought AND there was a real hint of darkness under that rainbow sparkly visage. I did the thing and binged the whole first season in one night and when things ended with a terrifying Eldritch monstrosity unleashed upon the world I was hooked. When the second season dropped in December and was revealed to be the finale I was even more excited. I like my stories to end and CENTAURWORLD has quite an ending! It isn’t perfect – the first couple episodes of the second season drag and there’s a fake out death in the finale I was not a fan of – but I love that this story is complete and wrapped up with a well written beginning, middle and end. It’s honestly pretty wild that my favorite Netflix release of 2021 is an animated musical about a war between goofy Centaur-things and an Eldritch monster of all things BUT that’s exactly what Netflix promised they were going to be – A Home for original ideas –  before the Content Wars started and dumbed everything down. CENTAURWORLD feels like a return to that where anything was a go as long as it was truly original!

THE TOP 15 FILMS OF 2021!

Note: This list is only films I saw in the calendar year 2021. There are many films released this year that I haven’t yet seen and so they weren’t in contention for this list.  Some of the 2021 films I haven’t seen include but are not limited to : THE POWER OF THE DOG, LICORICE PIZZA, RED ROCKET, SPIDER-MAN 9: IT’S ALL NOSTALGIA, DRIVE MY CAR, PARALLEL MOTHERS and much much more. Most likely if you feel a great movie isn’t on this list it likely is cause I just haven’t seen it yet. Or it’s a Marvel movie and that just ain’t my bag, baby.

SPENCER. (Pablo Larraín.)

Larraín’s spiritual follow up to 2016’s JACKIE improves on an already stellar concept by being centering on a less dramatic but equally engaging chapter of a famous woman’s life. This time around it’s not the immediate aftermath of a President’s death but three days over Christmas that is his focus. I don’t know how Larraín did it but this movie is even more stressful and claustrophobic than the prior entry.  Princess Diana, perfectly resurrected by Kristen Stewart in what is probably the best work of her career, spends Christmas 1991 locked in a prison of tradition at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate. Every minute of the three-day holiday is mapped out, planned and strictly regimented and Diana is forced to fulfill her part, stripped of her identity. Constantly under watch from the Major (Timothy Spall – excellent), Diana is on the defensive with no respite and we watch that stress build and build and build until the final act of the film where a breakthrough happens and we end on a beautiful, yet bittersweet knowing where history goes, ending. It’s an empathetic drama that somehow reminds you of Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING. It’s also a stellar Christmas movie.

RIDERS OF JUSTICE. (Anders Thomas Jensen.)

Men would rather commit mass murder than go to therapy: The Movie. Sold to audiences as a cliche Liam Neeson like revenge thriller, this dark comedy is really an ingenious refusal of that cliche narrative and instead makes an emotional plea for why men need therapy in their lives! All four of the male protagonists that make up the unlikely team hoping to exact “revenge” on the gang, The Riders of Justice, are in some way broken and in need of community and help. None are more damaged than Markus, brilliantly played by Mads Mikkelsen, who goes through life constantly ready to commit violence. In any other film Markus would be the badass killer who shoots and badasses his way to victory, but in RIDERS OF JUSTICE we are shown time and time again that this level of violence does more hurt to those around him than anticipated or wanted. It’s a complex yet simple film that stuck with me long after seeing it. One of the best of the year and while the whole cast is phenomenal, Mikkelsen is beyond captivating in one of the best roles of his rich career.

OLD. (M. Night Shyamalan.)

M. Night Shyamalan has had one hell of a fascinating career, hasn’t he?  In my teen years he was one of my favorite filmmakers, but from 2008 to 2013 he really lost me – that run of THE HAPPENING, THE LAST AIRBENDER & AFTER EARTH is dire stuff – only to then fully win me back when he started self financing his own smaller new work and took on an angrier overall tone.  All this has been leading up to OLD which is the best work Shyamalan has done in ages! His 2021 film is lean, mean and clean! I’m a sucker for stories where people get locked up in an enclosed environment and are then viciously killed off one by one and boy, does this deliver on that front. Making Time the villain is ingenious because it allows Shyamalan to get really creative in the kill department and I really hope he continues down this incredibly mean streak in his future films. Just be angry M. Night! That’s my favorite M. Night!  Also, Shyamalan continues to be one of the few filmmakers who has an identifiable look to his films, the shots matter, and this is gloriously shot on 35mm and each frame is pretty creative and engaging. There are some egregious line readings here & there and the final 10 minute epilogue at the end is a bit unnecessary if you ask me, but for 90 minutes this is one of most enjoyable experiences at the movies in 2021!

THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS. (Lana Wachowski.)

“We don’t need a Matrix 4.” That’s the literal starting point of the fourth entry in The Matrix film series. THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, while messy, brought the story to a close and if the film industry was more courageous it would forever be left alone to be THE ending. But, if there’s still potential money to be made then a franchise never truly dies. Warner Brothers did indeed have plans to move ahead with a Matrix 4 without the Wachowski’s and Lana, writing and directing solo for the first time, was so not okay with that that she took the job. She took on the Matrix 4 gig and instead of delivering the Matrix 4 that mainstream audiences wanted – do the exact same thing as the 1999 classic but have more fan-service and only play the hits – and instead made the Matrix 4 SHE wanted. It’s an open wound of a film that is sincere to a fault and in love with the world building of the original trilogy while also disgusted with the current state of the film industry.  I love it! I am crazy about, more so than ever before, that the focus of this saga is the love between Neo & Trinity and not the epic sci-fi narrative surrounding them. Without question, THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS is the most personal $200m budgeted movie ever made!  It has definite flaws – Film Twitter has a silly theory that the action scenes aren’t good because Lana Wachowski is making a commentary on how modern day action scenes just aren’t good (which is true) when I think the reality is she’s not the same filmmaker that she was back when the trilogy was made and she isn’t interested in repeating the same things – but I’ll take the eccentricities that go with a filmmaker’s vision any day of the week over the process cookie-cutter crap that are  the only thing successful at the box office in these fucked up Covid days. Lana Wachowski was given the money to make a cookie cutter blockbuster and she instead made a serious romance about two people in their late 50s falling in love with each other all over again. That’s magical! This film is magical!

HOUSE OF GUCCI. (Ridley Scott.)

The second of Ridley Scott’s 2021 movies isn’t quite up to the majestic level of the first but overall I had a great damn time with this both times I saw it in theaters! Scott is a master craftsman and in this film he makes the pretty audacious choice of allowing his cast to go as all-capitals BIG or small as they see fit and this often leads to imbalances where one actor is performing for the seats in the back of the theater while their scene partner is at a quieter and more real level. It’s a definite choice and doesn’t always work but when it does it’s a thing of magic. My favorite scene in the film is one of those moments where the choice soars when serious actor Jeremy Irons viciously tells his hammy clown of a nephew, played by the hammy Jared Leto, that he’s a loud and mediocre hack. I laughed and loved this acting choice and overall think it was a strong choice on the films behalf. Otherwise, this is classic Ridley where the filmmaking is on point thought out. Most importantly, the real joy of the film is Lady Gaga going 210% in her role as Patricia Gucci and she’s a sight to behold. Gaga, the ultimate showman, constantly holds onto our attention which is quite an astonishing feat when you realize she shares her scenes with Adam the Machine Driver and Al Fucking Pacino! She’s the best special effect in the film and her performance smoothes over all the flaws in the rest of the filmmaking exercise. It’s overall a mid-tier Ridley Scott film that isn’t anywhere near the masterwork level of his great films – how could it? – but is still one of my absolute fave movies of the year.

THE GREEN KNIGHT. (David Lowery.)

Have you seen David Lowery’s THE GREEN KNIGHT? Oh, you have?  Then you get it. I don’t need to say anything more on the subject. Oh, you haven’t seen David Lowery’s THE GREEN KNIGHT?  Well, you need to correct that mistake immediately and see David Lowery’s THE GREEN KNIGHT. ‘Nuff said.

DUNE: PART ONE. (Denis Villeneuve.)

DUNE is one of the three novels I read when I was a teenager that I’ve long dreamed of adapting to film. Alas no one is giving me $150m to make my dreams a reality.  But they are doing that for Denis Villeneuve. Even though I’m a Villeneuve fan I have to admit there was a lot riding on this working. Seriously, if he messed up here I probably would have soured on him BUT with the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the previous two adaptations – David Lynch’s1984 film and the wonky Sci-Fi miniseries from 2000 – a very healthy production budget and the full support of Warner Brothers – sidenote, despite all the ass-kissing people give Disney, WB is probably the only major studio left that fully trusts their filmmakers visions when it comes to major productions – to adapt half of Frank Herbert’s outstanding novel, Villeneuve knocked out a stellar adaptation! In fact, it’s likely the most authentic adaptation of a classic novel since Peter Jackson’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and Villeneuve goes even one better by remaining 100% true to Herbert’s strange, serious and sensual tone. This strange sci-fi universe and it’s epic story isn’t softened with comic relief characters dropping snarky one liners and the more complex world building elements aren’t simplified to didactic binaries. Most of Herbert’s intricate and complex universe is kept truthful and this is very close to a perfect adaptation of the first half of Herbert’s best book. It’s not perfect – the Fremen are almost entirely miscast, the ending is still abrupt – but it’s pretty damn close and far better than a giant blockbuster should be in this era of simple stories about super-cops fighting other super-cops. I’m very excited to see what Villeneuve does in DUNE: PART TWO and if this does become a franchise that adapts the future novels in Herbert’s saga I am beyond excited to see how WB will handle the most insane entry, the fourth novel GOD EMPEROR OF DUNE, and turn it into a major blockbuster feature! This could be a franchise that delivers us gold for countless years to come! And hey, it’s a movie that works so well I’ve even made peace with the fact that Villeneuve, the greedy dude, has signed on to direct the second of my three dream novel adaptations and will handle bringing Arthur C. Clark’s RENDEZVOUS WITH RAMA to the big screen.  But, man oh man, if he signs on to do THE LONG WALK I’m gonna need some therapy.

C’MON C’MON. (Mike Mills.)

I don’t think I will ever be a father. Who knows, maybe life will prove me wrong but at this point in time – single in my mid 30s working in an uncertain field and not seeing any romantic prospects on the horizon – I’m not seeing fatherhood in my future. But, I am an uncle and I am an indecent no-budget filmmaker so the surprise of Mike Mills new movie being about a single, no-budget filmmaking uncle who has to take care of his nephew and struggling with that responsibility really struck a cord with me emotionally. This minor epic of personal filmmaking hit me right “in the feels” as they say. I personally wouldn’t know what to do if I had to take care of my niece at this age and I would be a complete wreck if thrust into that situation, but I would take it on because I love her and only want what’s best for her. C’MON C’MON is allowed me to live through that hectic experience vicariously for over 109 minutes of total terror, panic and joy! Joaquin Phoenix is phenomenal and Woody Norman is a total discovery as his nephew who is able to be precocious, adorable, loving and frustrating without ever feeling artificial in that child actorly way.  This is a real wonder of a film and I loved it!

THE CARD COUNTER. (Paul Schrader.)

Somehow the great old filmmakers continue finding new ways to astonish us in their later years. As the film industry limits what type of stories filmmakers are “allowed” to tell the artist who have been playing the game since the 1970s have found new ways to keep telling the stories that matter to them. Sometimes this is working with thrifty streamers, other times it’s sneaking their real stories into franchise brands and more often than not it’s going the micro budget route. Deep into his 70s, Paul Schrader has gone the micro budget route after a few years of struggling to find balance in the forever changing film industry and is perhaps having the richest period of his fifty + year long career at this moment and it’s a sight to behold! After wowing with FIRST REFORMED (my favorite film of 2018 and probably Schrader’s greatest directorial project) he has kept that mojo going and has carried everything over to this film. This is somehow both lighter – the central romance is astonishingly sweet! – and, at times, is even darker film than his previous masterpiece. Austere and free of most filmmaking flourishes – this isn’t a pretty movie, the mid-America casinos in this aren’t the sleek and sexy casinos often seen in Hollywood movies like the OCEANS trilogy or even this films own Executive Producer, Martin Scorsese, masterwork of a film, CASINO, these are ugly, brown and sickly places – Schrader digs deep into what is dark commentary on America, grief and redemption. It’s an angry film and Oscar Isaac, all movie star looks and his magic charisma being used to make a broken and rarely verbal the broken seem appealing, is a perfect conduit for the story and gives his best performance since Llewyn Davis. Glad he’s finally free of those Galaxy Battle films. After FIRST REFORMED blew me away I was perfectly content with the idea of that film being Schrader’s final film – a thought  Schrader himself floated around a lot as well – but after seeing THE CARD COUNTER and experiencing the rich compelling vein of art in himself he’s uncovered in his 70s, I hope Paul Schrader is able to keep his spirit up and make many more films in the years to come.

ANNETTE. (Leos Carax.)

2021 had a fuck ton of musicals. I can only imagine this is entirely because filmmakers were moved by the once-in-a-lifetime experience that was 2019 CATS. It changed people’s lives! It changed all our lives! CATS premiered the very same day the first official documented Covid patients were announced in Wuhan! Coincidence?  I think not. And of all the many eclectic 2021 musicals, ANNETTE is the most like that CATastrophe in that you’ve never seen anything else like. But, unlike that CATaster this a real film made with a real filmmaker who knew what they were doing and were in complete control of their vision. Leos Caras collaboration with the band SPARKS on their film passion project is a work of utter delight and wonder because it’s so goddamn insane and doesn’t give a single fuck about the average viewer. The music is not what most audiences are attuned to, the narrative is very dark, it never invites the non-believer to join in on the fun and, most importantly, for the entire film to work the audience has to embrace a major technical choice that I will not spoil here for those who haven’t seen the film (it’s glorious, weird and all makes sense by the final scene).  But, my God, if you do allow yourself to give in and go along with Adam Driver as he plays the most irredeemable asshole imaginable – he’s the King of Assholes in 2021 – it’s a journey unlike any you’ve seen before! I fucking love this movie!

TOP 5!

05. NO TIME TO DIE. (Cary Joji Fukunaga.)

Most blockbusters today are merely passable entertainment. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has perfected the passable blockbuster as an art form and four times a year drops a 130 minute samey-looking CGI thing of passable fluff that is ultimately “fine” and ends with a heavily-focused group teaser for the next entry. That entry will also be … fine. Sometimes though a blockbuster comes out and it is much better than passable. Even better than good. It’s just great! That’s NO TIME TO DIE, the 25th entry in the still vibrant James Bond franchise. NTTD brings Daniel Craig’s 5-film arch as Bond to a definite close and while I certainly expected to enjoy the movie – I like most of the Craig films very much – I didn’t expect to be blown away and find myself crying at a fucking James Bond picture! But, I did and I think experiencing this for the first time on an IMAX screen at the Air & Space Museum was my favorite cinematic experience of the past two years! Just a delightfully absurd – and oh so colorful! This movie has a constantly shifting color palette! – and heartfelt finale to Craig’s go at Bond. This film, dealt a real bad card having to pick things up from the mess of SPECTRE – Bond and Blofeld are brothers like Austin Power and Dr. Evil? Okay – somehow righted the ship and even makes that messy film seem better in retrospect. I don’t think NTTD is the best entry in the James Bond saga but as it stands right now it sure is MY favorite Bond film! And did I mention how great the very video game like third act is?

04. WEST SIDE STORY 2021. (Steven Spielberg.)

Steven Spielberg is the best living filmmaker! Maybe some directors are better at digging deeper into the psyche of their characters and others are better at shaking us to our core with unexpected tonal shifts, but none are better at the entire facet of making cinema than the legend himself. With WEST SIDE STORY Spielberg gets to fulfill a long held dream and direct a full on song & dance musical and holy moly does he deliver! No other 2021 movie comes close in pure cinematic showmanship as to what Spielberg pulls off here. The camera moves! The dance choreography! The music! The performances! Janusz Kaminski’s lighting! Everyone is operating at peak levels of their skills as artists and filmmakers! This looks better than movies look! This sounds better than films sound! As a viewer you get to spend 150 minutes in the hands of an artist who lives for film! The cast is phenomenal with Mike Faist, David Alvarez and especially Ariana DeBose making full on declarations of their worth as future superstars! I want to see the three of them in all the movies! THIS IS CINEMA, man. What else is there to say? When we look back at Spielberg’s career and have future conversations about his greatest achievements, box office numbers be damned, I think we’re going to often see this masterpiece included in the discussion.

03. PIG. (Michael Sarnoski.)

Nicolas Cage gets a lot of flack for the work he’s done of late, but honesty his hit to miss ratio has been pretty strong lately. If it takes him doing four disposable shoot-em-up VOD thrillers to make one MANDY or COLOR OUT OF SPACE, then that’s a fair trade. PIG is so phenomenal it makes all the years of nonsense worth it. After years of “being gone”, Cage returns with the singular strongest performance of his career and thus adds a new masterpiece to his strong decades long body of work. Similar to RIDERS OF JUSTICE, this film intentionally sells itself on the idea of it being a more garish and cliche thriller romp than it actually is. In fact, when I first saw this title on his IMDB page and read the one-line synopsis – “A truffle hunter searches for his stolen truffle pig” – I, like most, figured this must be a silly parody of Liam Neeson TAKEN like action pictures. How could Nicolas Cage searching for his truffle pig be anything more than a silly VOD pic where he bears people up, makes ‘oink oink’ noises and you watch it once, laugh a few times, get bored 30 minutes in when the novelty wears off, struggle to finish and then never bother with again? I’m so glad to be wrong sometimes.  PIG is perfect. Glacially paced and anemic towards giving itself over to any cliche genre tropes. This is a 90 minute wound of a film about an artist so damaged from a great loss that he retreated from everything in life – his career, his art, his name – and now has to venture out of his safe space to recover one of the few things he truly cares about in this world.  There is a lot of meta aspects to Nicolas Cage in this part – blockbuster and Oscar winning movie star who retreated from big projects to do cheapie VOD thrillers – but all that is secondary when compared to how compelling, rich and empathetic he is in this part. This is no “Rage Cage” performance here and I feel the part works so well; because it’s just a great role on the page and never feels like it was tailored specifically for Cage in the first place. It’s the greatest singular male performance of 2021 and if the Oscars actually meant something – they don’t – he would win ALL the top awards. The sit down with Chef Finway in the middle of PIG may very well be the best scene of Cage’s entire career and at no point does his voice raise much higher than a whisper! It’s an all-timer performance! I am also very excited to see what writer/director Michael Sarnoski does next – this is his DEBUT FILM! – and I’ll be there to see whatever it is opening day!

02. THE LAST DUEL. (Ridley Scott.)

My favorite Hollywood release of 2021 is sadly also the type of movie that is being killed off by audience disinterest and exasperated by Covid. This is an adult drama where adults act like real adults, where serious subjects are talked about with respect and it is understood there are sadly no easy solutions to societal issues and no one is secretly a super-powered vigilante who fights crime. The themes, message and feeling of this film can’t be summed up in viral friendly memes. THE LAST DUEL is a masterpiece! It easily stands alongside Ridley Scott’s greatest works and this will be another one of his films that years from now people will ask “How was this not a hit in theaters?”  Conceptually, the four-act structure of the film is ingenious and allows the three lead actors an excellent opportunity to diversify their performance. For example, Matt Damon – who co-wrote the fantastic script with Ben Affleck & Nicole Holofcener – is allowed to perform three very diverse versions of the same character. First, we’re introduced to his Jean de Carrouges as a noble and honest knight for the king – a classic Ridley Scott hero essentially – but in the second act, where we’re shown the same sequence of events from Adam Driver’s POV, Damon plays it up as a petulant moron and then in the third act, THE TRUTH, we see him as a vain and petty monster who cares not for anyone.  Matt Damon is given the chance to play hero, fool and villain all in one film. As great as Damon, Driver and Affleck – as a Prince who loves to “take his fucking pants off” – get to be, the film belongs to Jodie Comer who delivers the performance of the year. The film takes a huge risk in playing the long game with her character because we don’t get to see the depth and personality of Marguerite until over an hour and a half in. From the men’s perspective, Marguerite is just a pretty face who adores them and has no internal life, she’s a doting wife or an object of lust, so when we get to see the reality of her situation it’s invigorating and harrowing all at once. She commands the entire final hour of the film and even during the final duel – Act 4 – we’re engaged with what will happen to her than we are the two idiots fighting on the battlefield. THE LAST DUEL is a far more engaging and shocking film than even I, a huge Ridley Scott nut, had anticipated and it has been one of my favorite surprises of the year! By the way, that titular duel is just the best!

01. EVANGELION: 3.0+1.0 – THRICE UPON A TIME. (Hideaki Anno.)

No matter what happened this was always going to end with this film at my #1. Neon Genesis Evangelion saved my life when I first saw it in 2006 – https://paul-hugins.com/2019/06/26/neon-genesis-evangelion-the-broken-beauty-of-shinji-ikari/ – and shortly after I discovered the series Studio Khara was formed by the original series write/director Hideaki Anno and development of the four part REBUILD OF EVANGELION series was announced. I couldn’t believe it! Originally intended to be finished within a few short years ultimately one thing lead to another – SHIN GODZILLA, so worth it – and in the year 2021, a full 14 years after the first film in the new version was released in theaters, the finale of the Rebuilds AND Evangelion as a whole was finally shared with the world. And, no question about it, this is the TRUE ENDING to Evangelion. Unlike the previous two endings THRICE UPON A TIME was able to play both into fan desires – beat for beat this movie has some of the best action sequences of the year and every character, even the most tertiary of ones, is given their moment to shine – and also still be a strongly individualistic work of an artist. It’s magic. There is melding of spectacle with rich internal character here that is matched by only a few films and nothing in years has come close to achieving this! Anno has given his whole self over to this franchise and everything – themes, messages, character, spectacle, emotion –  comes together in this final send-off for his greatest work! And such a personal ending it is! It’s a finale so perfect, so complete, so right for everything else that has come before it – the TV series, the original film ending, the manga, and the three previous Rebuild films –  that even I, a dedicated fan of the franchise who considers it to be the greatest work of pop culture by far, truly hope there is no more Evangelion. No sequel. No prequel. No spinoff.  Let the universe end with that perfect final shot of the real world. I’ll be doing more writing on 3.0+1.0 and the Rebuilds at some point in 2022 so I won’t say more now except that EVANGELION: 3.0+1.0 – THRICE UPON A TIME is hands down my favorite film of 2021 and it was able to live up to a lifetimes worth of anticipation and surpassed it! A masterpiece! And that’s 2021.