In terms of choosing the best or most award-worthy films and performances of 2021, most film aficionados (including professional film critics) are fairly conventional thinkers -- easily seduced and led along, committed to familiar and unexceptional viewpoints, etc. Then there are the free thinkers who occasionally (but not always) assess films from a perspective of an earth-orbiting spacecraft or one circling around the moon. And that's fine. The third category could be described as beyond earth's gravitational pull but still tethered to the critic's understanding of cinematic value, based on a lifetime of neurotic filmgoing.