The Green Knight; A24 Based on: Simon Armitage, tr

This year—the second year of the pandemic—was officially the year of languishing. And what, exactly, do we do whilst we languish? We watch things. But at least some of them are literary—this year, we were wooed by surrealist adaptations of 14th-century romances, sensual westerns based on nearly forgotten novels, Fran Lebowitz, and of course, You. Here are the Lit Hub staff’s favorite literary (and, er, literary-adjacent) tv shows and movies of 2021. We aim to separate ourselves from our couches in 2022, but honestly, no promises.

The Green Knight; A24
Based on: Simon Armitage, tr., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

I admit, I was deeply suspicious about this adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the 14th-century chivalric romance by the anonymous author known as the Pearl Poet. After all, it’s not the most obviously translatable text, and there would have been a lot of ways to screw it up. Fortunately, David Lowery falls prey to almost none of them, and managed to surprise and delight me (with no little credit due to cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo). It’s a challenging film that often feels more like a tone poem than an epic adventure, but it’s consistently thrilling all the same—if you haven’t seen it yet, you could do a lot worse on one of these cold winter’s nights.  –Emily Temple, Managing Editor