And there is plenty to watch or catch up with during the festive season, as we open up again.

In Australia, the film and television industries have enjoyed support during the pandemic that live performance-based arts haven't had to quite the same extent, though screen production is down on 2019 levels, of course. In Hollywood, it's estimated to be at 50 or 60 per cent of productions before the pandemic.

Before the last lockdown, Free Guy had only just opened when news came through that a new wave had reached Canberra. It was good to see this movie back the week cinemas re-opened, because its season had been cut short, and it was a sweet, fun ride.

The fantastic choice we have now may not continue. Forecasters say that indie film production, for instance, may drop in the short term, because the financial backers will be more risk-averse now and prefer projects that have already been taken on a test drive. So, we can expect more sequels, prequels and anything in between. Things were already trending that way.

There have been some impressive independent films, however, made with a small budget and experimental elan, this year. Nine Days, The Killing of Two Lovers, About Endlessness, Another Round, Passing and The Souvenir. The last two were directed by women.

Some of the year's most striking ventures came from female filmmakers, with The Power of the Dog a bold return to form by Jane Campion. And Promising Young Woman, with a stunning performance by Carey Mulligan, was also one of the films of the year for those who were up for it.

The best of the year's terrific documentaries included The Rescue, Stray, Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace, Collective, The Truffle Hunters, My Name is Gulpilil and My Octopus Teacher.

Best movie experiences for me in 2021 comprise the usual deliriously eclectic mix, and several startling surprises.

The year's big surprise was Annette, a bizarre, beautiful gothic musical from Leos Carax, which one critic described as bonkers while giving it five stars. It can barely contain a stunning turn from Adam Driver. On the sunnier side of life, there was In the Heights, which was like one long street party held in the Washington Heights immigrant area in New York.

Three of the best comedies of the year came from France. Antoinette in the Cevennes, The Godmother and Perfumes, each with quintessential French humour. Not necessarily brilliant, but uplifting and laugh-out-loud.

Among the best of the excellent, more traditionally staged dramas were The Mauritanian, Minamata, and Cry Macho. The Father and Ridley Scott's The Last Duel were also excellent, both films that took some risks with structure and still came out on top.

At the local box office, the terrific Australian films High Ground, The Dry and Penguin Bloom were very deservedly doing great business early in the year. Little was heard of a small independent local film, Disclosure, that was also very good.

So, what's releasing soon? Being the Ricardos, West Side Story, C'mon C'mon, and Licorice Pizza for starters.

For now, there's plenty in store and on its way. High quality television series are making a mark, but films are back in cinemas or via streaming platforms, or both.

The pandemic has hurried things along, and there's more cross-over between films and TV than ever. It will take time before we see how, or if, this changes what we can expect at the movies.

This has been a year to come to grips with what is important in life and to prioritise those things in order to be kind to oneself. For me, I've realised I just cannot see every single film that is released.

In this past year alone, I've had to prioritise the Jen Shaw drama on Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and the real-life crime plot twist with Erica Girardi's husband on Real Housewives of Beverley Hills. I've had new Doctor Who and Lost in Space and new favourites like Only Murders in the Building, Schmigadoon, WandaVision, Hacks, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Squid Games.

The point is that when I come to the end of the year and I'm asked to write a "best" list, turns out I haven't actually seen that many films. So the much-lauded Jane Campion film The Power of the Dog won't appear on my list. I haven't had time.

For me, the film of the year, from the films I have seen, was Dennis Villeneuve's Dune. Across three hours that you barely noticed, Villeneuve engages in unsurpassed world-building, teasing out just the first half of the Frank Herbert novel. I loved his production team's crafty layering of fascist symbology and an aesthetic that references Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, Geiger designs and Lawrence of Arabia.

I'm an epic James Bond fan and so any year with a Bond film must include that film in any "top" list. With inventive American filmmaker Cary Joji Fukunaga at the helm, No Time To Die was a dark and assured piece of filmmaking, enjoyable from start to finish and rich with defining moments from the entirety of the Bond oeuvre.

The film also set up Cuban actress An de Armas, Daniel Craig's Knives Out co-star, as a new recurring character I'll be delighted to see again.

The most insightful film of the year was the documentary Val, produced by Top Gun star Val Kilmer himself, drawn from a lifetime of his own home movie footage. Kilmer - who produced, wrote and shot this film - had recently come out of treatment for throat cancer that sees him talk through a voice box. His adult son Jack provides the film's voiceover narrative.

My guilty pleasure film of the year was Nobody which tried to turn Better Call Saul's Bob Odenkirk into a John Wick-type vigilante, delivering a satisfying smorgasbord of schadenfreude and ultraviolence.

A film I didn't review particularly favourably has stayed with me. Doug Liman filmed Locked Down in a COVID-strangled London with Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor carrying off a two-person Ocean's Eleven.

It's worth tracking this film down to enjoy the staging, with the Harrods owners giving Liman carte blanche access to the high-end store during one of London's earlier lockdowns, deserted of customers and with its expensive designer stock off the floor and safely stowed away. Its backstage hallways and basement corridors make a fascinating backdrop.

Much to the horror of some of my colleagues, I don't subscribe to any streaming services. But there have still been quite a few in-cinema sessions and preview screeners and it's been an impressive year.

Promising Young Woman early in the year was a standout, a dark, sometimes grimly funny story of predatory men and destructive revenge that could have been a female Death Wish but was more complex than that: it didn't let anyone off easily.

The Power of the Dog was another of my favourites, a brooding, moody, subtly handled story with excellent performances all round, including from young Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee.

Rashomon seems to have been an inspiration for The Last Duel, a lavish historical drama with the same story told from three characters' perspectives.

While aspects of it might have seemed anachronistic, it worked well.

Among Australian movies, the historical drama High Ground and the crime story The Dry were highlights, and Nitram was an impressively low-key look at the lead-up to the Port Arthur massacre.

The documentary My Name is Gulpilil is especially poignant now given the great Indigenous actor's recent death.

Tick...Tick...Boom!, a quasi-biopic of Rent composer Jonathan Larson, featured a fine turn from Andrew Garfield in the lead.

The long-awaited No Time To Die, touted as Daniel Craig's final outing as James Bond, didn't quite live up to the hype - how could it? - but had some fine action sequences and a poignant conclusion.

Movies I'm looking forward to include a couple of remakes: Steven Spielberg's West Side Story and Guillermo del Toro's carny noir Nightmare Alley - both of which have a lot to live up to - and Paul Thomas Anderson's love story Licorice Pizza, to name a few.