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#422 December 21, 2021

Matt writes: The writers at RogerEbert.com have submitted their picks for the best films of 2021. Our combined list features the films that turned up the most on our lists, and they were all topped by Jane Campion's acclaimed drama on Netflix, "The Power of the Dog."

Far Flungers

They should have sent a poet

Absolute silence while the Warner logo, the name of the production company and the title of the movie are displayed on the screen. Suddenly, we see ourselves orbiting the Earth while a cacophony of radio and television transmissions confuses us by their sheer volume and sound pollution they cause. Then, slowly, we begin a journey throughout the universe that will last for the next few minutes, taking us far from our old and familiar planet while we experience a kind of time traveling as sounds of our atmosphere become older and older - until, eventually, we are involved by an oppressive silence and we realize that we traveled further than our oldest sound emission. And when we begin to realize the dimension of our surroundings - that goes much beyond our capacity for abstraction -, we are back to the starting point, returning to Earth through the portal represented by the blue and young eyes of Ellie Arroway, our leading character.

May contain spoilers