December 31, 2021–When I put together my top 10 lists, I swear I don’t consciously look for commonalities among my choices. Upon looking at my titles for 2021, which shall forever be known as the second year of the COVID global pandemic, I notice they all revolve around relationships – interpersonal, unusual, even supernatural, but relationships all the same. Further, I wonder if COVID and its effects on a mass scale aren’t some subconscious influence – underlining more than ever the importance of moving relationships, whatever their nature.
I’m not gonna beat around the bush. The past two years have been extremely difficult for those of us who rely on cinema for the full-immersive experience of moviegoing. Oh, sure, thanks to a global pandemic and the rise of streaming and the economic considerations of studios striving to survive and their symbiotic relationship with theaters having to evolve like never before, movies have become more readily available than ever – often skipping theaters entirely, enduring a shortened theatrical release window, or finding some kinda hybrid day-and-date way of coming into the world.
Add to that a truncated 2020 movie release calendar extending the awards season into the first quarter of 2021, and…well you get the picture. The point, at the end of the day (or year) is that these were the best films I SAW in 2021, and I hope you find some worthwhile watches amongst the wreckage of COVID Year II…Enjoy!
I’m not gonna beat around the bush. The past two years have been extremely difficult for those of us who rely on cinema for the full-immersive experience of moviegoing. Oh, sure, thanks to a global pandemic and the rise of streaming and the economic considerations of studios striving to survive and their symbiotic relationship with theaters having to evolve like never before, movies have become more readily available than ever – often skipping theaters entirely, enduring a shortened theatrical release window, or finding some kinda hybrid day-and-date way of coming into the world.
Add to that a truncated 2020 movie release calendar extending the awards season into the first quarter of 2021, and…well you get the picture. The point, at the end of the day (or year) is that these were the best films I SAW in 2021, and I hope you find some worthwhile watches amongst the wreckage of COVID Year II…Enjoy!
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The Top 10: |
Note: Some of the films from this original list's posting have been moved to their rightful place in the Best Films of 2020 and things edited accordingly...
1. The Sparks Brothers / Annette (tie) |
You’re never gonna meet a bigger Sparks fan than Edgar Wright. He has, nevertheless, made another fanatic outta this reviewer. Ron and Russell Mael are probably not wildly familiar to even the most ardent music fan, but they are unofficially dubbed “your favorite band’s favorite band” for a reason. Wright, a British superfan who normally treads genre parody ground (Shaun of the Dead: horror; Hot Fuzz: cop movies; The World’s End: sci-fi) and who also this year released a deadly serious horror/time-warp mashup with Last Night in Soho, delivers here an epic-length (145 minute), overly detailed and thorough love-letter to a band he’s long been fascinated by, examining the Brothers Mael, a Southern California-born Brit-pop-loving duo who began in the late 1960s in college and have been going for decades, and who are at work on their 25th album and on the set of their first screen musical Annette near the film’s end, from the perspective of their brilliantly sophisticated and clever lyrics, their catchy riffs, their career ups and downs (which fall into fairly typical biopic rhythms), and testimonials from celebrity admirers (Weird Al, Patton Oswalt, Duran Duran, Go-Gos frontwoman/former girlfriend and one-time collaborator Jane Wiedlin, Mike Myers, Beck, etc.). Long sporting a “Hitler mustache,” mercurial background presence and gaunt frame, songwriter Ron became somewhat infamous for his physical appearance, at the same time striking audiences with his unusual but brilliant lyricism (from their breakthrough “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” to their brilliant 80s run of “Music That You Can Dance To” and “Tips for Teens” and even their more recent techno-pop output like “Balls”, “Dick Around” and “The Rhythm Thief”). Frontman Russell, the “handsome one,” is more like the Mick Jagger of the duo, with his wild physical energy and dance moves, and in their 70s European breakout heyday, long flowing hair. Their (largely undervalued/overlooked) influence has been felt all over more famous bands. So: why did this documentary mix of black-and-white, animation, archival footage, interviews, concert tour footage and general lack of controversy fascinate and move me so much? I feel as though it boils down more or less to the magical connection and balance between Ron’s peculiar sensibilities and expression of alienation as pop music (I am a particular fan of “I Wish I Looked a Little Better”, which provides for one of the better TV appearances and “Cool Places,” which is possibly their biggest music video) standing in the shadows but driving everything, while brother Russell is front and center as the outpouring of Ron’s feelings juxtaposed with energetic expression. Yet it isn’t even that simple. One of the band’s qualities, as anyone will tell you, is their inability to be pigeon-holed, moving from 70s glam and arena rock/pop to late 70s/early 80s synth dance music, to 90s/early 2000s techno, to whatever they’re doing now, as fancy dictates. Sometimes they hit the zeitgeist before it becomes one, sometimes they’re commercially way off. The film is, ultimately, a testament to brother love, creative and artistic integrity and perseverance, and a gift-wrapped portal through which to discover a new musical obsession. It works.
The Sparks fanaticism continues with French virtuoso and Cannes Best Director-winner Leos Carax’s first big film since 2012’s Holy Motors, another surreal deep dive into the Mael brothers’ psyche. In Carax’s English language debut, a full-bore melodramatic modern musical with a screenplay and soundtrack by Sparks. Adam Driver is Henry, Marion Cotillard is Ann, and fair LA is where they lay their scene. Beginning in ultra meta-fashion with Carax himself in a recording studio as Sparks begins the (undeniably most catchy) song “So May We Start,” spilling out onto the street as the entire cast (including Driver, Cotillard and company getting into character) – in one, winding long take – makes their way through the nighttime California streets, the film is sprawling, unapologetic, old-fashioned, in-your-face, and something more – something, indeed, rather indefinable – a bit like Sparks. Henry McHenry is a struggling stand-up comedian who performs an act simply titled “The Ape of God,” an onslaught of misanthropic provocations designed seemingly to elicit ire as often as laughter and guffaws, lying somewhere on the comedic spectrum between Andy Kaufman and Lenny Bruce (one particular meltdown on-stage is fittingly signified by a song called “You Used to Laugh”). What Ann sees in Henry is one of the many questions at the heart of the Maels’ fable (this despite their sad, passionate lovemaking while singing “We Love Each Other So Much”), drawing intentional comparisons to A Star is Born with its juxtaposed rise and fall narrative arc as Ann’s career as a tragic opera star takes off and Henry’s sado-masochistic relationship to his audience and co-workers (a trio of green sequined backup singers) crumbles before his very eyes (his #MeToo/Time’s Up-primed darkness and violence is further alluded to in the combination news report/operatic nightmare that is “Six Women Have Come Forward”). But that’s really just the prelude: Ann gives birth to the titular child, one who resembles her in both look and in her beautiful, melancholic singing voice and – oh yeah… is depicted sans strings as a puppet/wooden doll. Further, Simon Helberg pops up as “the Accompanist/Conductor”, a longtime admirer smitten with Ann. At a 140 minute running time to rival Edgar Wright’s comprehensive documentary, it’s all a bit much and yet, somehow, never enough. Critics and fans alike have been trying to pigeon-hole Sparks for decades – a struggle Wright puts on display throughout his epic documentary – and so it would be tempting to attempt to psychoanalyze just where in the holy hell this story came from. I like to think of it, personally, as where the Brothers Mael might be if they didn’t have each other – giving in to darkness and complete audience apathy. Regardless, one can’t help but have “sympathy for the abyss.” |
2. Licorice Pizza / Titane (tie) |
Two of the most improbable connections (one paranormal, the other merely unlikely) taking shape in two of the most original and uniquely breathtaking cinematic experiments of the year: first up, a beautifully rendered memory piece from our finest living director. Circa 1973, San Fernando Valley: Paul Thomas Anderson, the writer-director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia and Inherent Vice, among many other masterworks, gives us two powerful debut performances as seeming polar opposites race toward and away from each other as fate and would-be romance dictates. Astonishing first-time actress Alana Haim (of her sisterly family-named indie rock trio) is Alana Kane, natch, a drifting twenty-something whose life is forever altered when she is assisting a high school photographer on picture day and meets none other than 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, a frequent Anderson collaborator), a fast-talking hustler who is a mildly successful child actor, has his own PR firm he runs with his mother, and who is always on the lookout for the next big venture – whether it be selling water beds during a craze while contending with an oil crisis or taking advantage of the legalization of pinball arcades. From the moment he meets the woman of his dreams, Gary is always on the make, trying to convince her they’re made for each other. He has persistent competition, including a fellow (slightly older) child co-star (Skyler Gisondo), an alcoholic William Holden type actor (Sean Penn), Barbara Streisand’s sex-crazed boyfriend Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) or even closeted Mayoral candidate Joel Wachs (Benny Safdie, of the Safdie Brothers – yes, co-director of Uncut Gems). Shooting on 35mm film (and blowing up to 70mm for select screenings, including the first time I had the privilege of viewing it), Anderson’s camera winds, weaves and warps its way through his homeland and a time period (set to an impeccably curated soundtrack) when he was maybe 3 years old and nails every single detail and nuance. With his funniest screenplay in years, he also creates his sweetest, most purely enjoyable film maybe ever. It’s a gift.
Another stunning and astonishingly self-assured female lead performance perforates the very heart of the latest Cannes premiering shocker, France’s Official Oscar nomination entry for International Film, from writer-director Julia Ducorneau (Raw), going out on a limb with a very big swing and delivering on an out-there premise like you’ve never seen before in remarkably uncompromising fashion. When a little girl gets into a car accident after distracting her father’s driving, she has a metal plate put in her skull, but immediately after being released goes and kisses and hugs the hood of a car. The connection is formed. Agathe Rousselle (if you’ll pardon the expression) lets it all hang out as the adult version of this child, giant spiral scar emblazoned on her scalp, now a kind of exotic dancer who specializes in car shows. One night, something brings on her violent streak and … well, let’s say some unexpected twists occur time and again (Vincent Lindon lends the film its big bruised heart in the second half) in Ducorneau’s alternately repulsive and hypnotically fascinating ode to human connection and previous “body horror” films, exploring the almost erotic tethering between man and machine, ala’ John Carpenter’s Christine and David Cronenberg’s Crash. Make no mistake though, this Palme d’Or-bestowed stunner (via Spike Lee’s Cannes jury) is something all Ducorneau’s own. |
3. Belfast |
Confections are sometimes just what the Cinematic Doctor ordered and the past couple years have rarely seen such a lineup of sweet and affecting memory pieces as the aforementioned Licorice Pizza as well as the forthcoming titles. Firstly: Has there ever been a more inconsistent mainstream filmmaker than Kenneth Branagh? Ever since exploding on the scene with his lauded Henry V (1989), the actor/writer/director has been wildly hit and miss in his Orson Welles-ian trajectory, oscillating between Shakespeare adaptations both big (his 25-year-old 70mm 4-hour cut of Hamlet) and small alike (Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labor’s Lost, As You Like It); as well as a couple different angles on the Bard (his lion-in-winter portrait All Is True and his behind-the-scenes theatrical comedy A Midwinter’s Tale); over the top stylized melodrama (Dead Again); two humongous, bombastic ensemble Agatha Christie adaptations (Murder on the Orient Express and the COVID- delayed Death on the Nile; receiving a Christmas morning visual allusion); one Disney+ streamer of ill repute (Artemis Fowl) and one live action remake of a Mouse House classic (Cinderella); an underrated stylish remake of a twist-laden stage play turned film (Sleuth); a Tom Clancy actioner (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit); and even a Marvel movie (Thor; also receiving a visual shout-out here). For his latest, Branagh spent his lockdown going back to his roots, as it were, and shows he’s lost none of his artful tendencies with his most intimate film since 1992’s Peter’s Friends, a breezy yet powerful recollection of a childhood in the titular city, circa 1969, upended by the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the troubles besetting a young man’s Protestant family, pressured to take a side in the religious conflict, and facing exodus to England. Jamie Dornan (shedding completely his charmless 50 Shades persona in favor of working class warmth and humanity), Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe (exuding worry and hard-edged sweetness), Judi Dench (wry and lovely), and Ciaran Hinds (a real charmer of a grandfather) round out the adults in the young man’s life, and newcomer Jude Hill (an 11-year-old wonder) is Buddy, the pint-sized frame through which we often see this first-crush-afflicted, confusing and overwhelming world – frequently funny, impeccably composed and gorgeously rendered in creamy, grey-tinged monochrome with occasional bursts of stunning color. The short but fleeting 98 minute running time is paced within an inch of its life. Finally, with the music of Van Morrison (lots of his vintage classics and one welcome Oscar-short-listed newbie) expertly peppered throughout, the Oscar-winning song from High Noon never having sounded better, and one memorable sing-along to Love Affair’s “Everlasting Love” (featuring Dornan’s singing skills for the second time this year after Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar), Branagh’s deep dive into a loving, profoundly felt, fiercely humanistic take on would-be childhood trauma is fully measured yet somehow effortless and natural. This film’s also a pure gift.
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4. C'mon C'mon |
Writer-director Mike Mills (20th Century Women; Beginners) looks to his own experience yet again for this sleeper, which sneaks up and floors you. Joaquin Phoenix is Johnny, a schlubby documentary filmmaker traveling the countryside to talk to young people about their hopes and fears for the future when his obligation to help his sister (Gaby Hoffmann) blows up his whole world. When his sister is forced to go take care of her manic-depressive ex-husband (Scott McNairy, appearing in flashes and nailing it as a man on the edge of an abyss), she drops her 10 year-old son Jesse (Woody Norman) in his lap. Jesse isn’t exactly in the best of places himself emotionally speaking, tending to pretend to be an orphan in his own mother’s house, for example. Further, Johnny has never been great at expressing his own emotions. In Mills’ hands, Phoenix has rarely been so sympathetic or empathetic, and the film – shot beautifully by Robbie Ryan in inky black-and-white – is quietly stunning.
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5. CODA |
The most purely emotional movie of the year took me completely by surprise: the tale of a high school senior (Emilia Jones) with a gift for singing who also happens to be the only hearing child in a family of deaf people (including matriarch Marlee Matlin and father Troy Kotsur), whose family fishing business is threatened by forces both outside and within. As interpreter and crew, Ruby is relied upon, but a funny and inspirational (if flamboyant) music teacher (Eugenio Derbez) and a crush on a classmate (Sing Street’s Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) help her forge her own path. An extremely moving and thoughtful rendering of the divisions and connections between the hearing world and the deaf, Sian Heder’s debut is an emotional powerhouse.
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6. The French Dispatch |
“Let us take a sight-seeing tour” through Ennui-sur-Blase, the latest, most humorously-named and visually rich corner of Wes Anderson’s uniquely Euro-American world, a dizzying yet dazzling blend of cinematic invention and influences (here cribbing everything from Fellini and Godard to The Magnificent Ambersons), hipster-tailored deadpan humor, pretentious pop-culture and literary references, and even the odd bit of physical comedy, all tempered with some sense of melancholy and even tragic pathos. Here, paying tribute to and kidding his beloved New Yorker magazine, he presents the film as a final cinematic rendering of a fictionalized surrogate centered in the intricate French village while bringing its news of the world to Liberty, Kansas, former home of the expat editor-in-chief (Bill Murray), given his obituary here, who commands a ragtag group of American journalists of varying talents – the tremendously buck-toothed alcoholic arts correspondent (Tilda Swinton); the political journalist with a penchant for getting sexually involved in her stories (Frances McDormand again); a gay, black James Baldwin stand-in (Jeffrey Wright), whose assignment in culinary reporting gives way to a kidnapping story he gets way in over his head on. The stories they report on include an imprisoned artist (Benicio Del Toro) haggling with a pushy fellow prisoner turned art promoter (Adrien Brody) over some unusual portraits of his nude female guard and lover (Lea Seydoux); a young would-be revolutionary (Timothee Chalamet) attempting to straddle the lines between his ideals, young love, and being seduced by the older journalist assigned to cover his exploits; and a police chef (Stephen Park) who must attempt to become an unlikely hero when his boss (Mathieu Amalric) falls to the mercy of a kidnapper (Edward Norton) and his cohorts (Saorsie Ronan) on behalf of an imprisoned criminal accountant (Willem Dafoe), all of which was related by Wright to a circa 1970s talk show host (Liev Schreiber). Add to this narrator Anjelica Huston; Owen Wilson as a hilariously accident-prone bicycling travel correspondent (just wait till you see what he can do with the drunken antics of church boys!); Elisabeth Moss as a deadpan grammar Nazi; Jason Schwartzman as a fussy yet minimalist cartoonist, among others, and you have a recipe for one of Anderson’s most Andersonian efforts and his best film since 2004’s The Life Aquatic – which, in its startlingly touching final moments, reminds one of both Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion (2006; another elegy and tribute to a final performance of sorts, in more ways than one) and Anderson’s own The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), with death bringing together a kind of surrogate family whose differences equal their strengths.
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7. No Sudden Move |
Detroit, 1954: A trio of mysteriously-contracted criminals in white masks and vintage fedoras venture into a nice, quiet suburban home in broad daylight. Their mission? To keep the wife and kids trained at gunpoint while the patriarch (a never better David Harbour, all nervous, twitchy energy and sweating through his Man in the Gray Flannel Suit veneer) is escorted to his place of business to retrieve some sensitive information from his boss’s safe. Sounds simple? Not in the hands of ever independent filmmaker turned fleet-footed visual dynamo Steven Soderbergh, who knows from elaborate plots (the Ocean’s trilogy, Unsane, Out of Sight, The Limey, Haywire) and writer Ed Solomon (Men in Black), who utilizes the automobile company race upon its rise to interrogate power structures in America. Recruited by a literal heavy-duty underling for local organized crime (Brendan Fraser, giving his best work maybe to date), the trio (including a mini-Traffic reunion of Don Cheadle and Benicio Del Toro, alongside Succession’s Kieran Culkin) is both morally and intellectually adrift, trying to plot yet improvising like so much jazz ensemble, with often stunningly violent results. An impressive ensemble cast enriches the proceedings, including Uncut Gems’ Julia Fox, Amy Seimetz, Ray Liotta, Noah Jupe, Bill Duke, and a signature surprise (albeit uncredited) star cameo late in the game to bring things into stark focus and relief. Not unlike The Usual Suspects (which also featured a memorable Del Toro), Soderbergh’s film becomes twisted and knottedly complex, not without a scintilla of sharp black humor, albeit without the questionable framing device and unreliable narrator. Not unlike Shiva Baby, there is irony that this most gorgeous of Soderbergh shot-and-edited period pieces should premiere streaming on HBOMax (in a year when most of their films would be day-and-date with theatrical premieres no less) no doubt thanks once again to a merciless pandemic. Pity. However you watch it, you can’t look away.
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8. The Power of the Dog |
Jane Campion is just one of a handful of filmmakers to go out on a limb this year, and while a Western (adapted from a novel by Thomas Savage) is not the first thing you’d expect her to make for her return to feature filmmaking after the better part of a decade in TV (two seasons of Top of the Lake), this Netflix-streamer made resolutely for the big screen nevertheless finds her right in her wheelhouse, coming off as just as emotionally stunning as her typical fare (An Angel at My Table, The Piano, The Portrait of a Lady). A chilling Benedict Cumberbatch is all dirt and country-drawl as Phil, a sadistic bully in 1925 Montana, one half of a fraternal ranch-operation (Jesse Plemmons is his brother and partner, whom he refers to degradingly as “fatso”). When Plemmons kindly marries a widow who runs the restaurant nearby (Kirsten Dunst), he must endure the growing resentments and general bad behavior of his boorish brother, including mean-spirited (vaguely) homophobic jibes at the widow’s teenage son, an aspiring doctor (Kodi Smit-McPhee, quietly affecting in a key role). The dynamic which develops between Phil and the boy is almost as startling as where it ends up. As violence and anger roil beneath the surface of the characters and Campion’s beautiful film, we dread an ending we can’t possibly see coming, knowing this will not end well.
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9. Shiva Baby |
It is an irony of timing that I hope isn’t lost on writer-director Emma Seligman, adapting her 2018 short film to (barely) feature-length in 2020, that this most claustrophobic and anxiety-ridden (and inducing) wisp of a cinematic panic attack should come to screens (albeit, mostly via the safety of streaming) in the midst of a global social-distance-emphatic pandemic. The tale of an adrift young Jewish woman (Rachel Sennott, in a deft balancing act of a lead performance) navigating the metaphorical minefield that is a familial get-together in close quarters while the paths of her clueless parents (a hilarious Polly Draper and Fred Melamed), philandering sugar daddy and a closeted relationship with a childhood friend turned college lesbian lover (Booksmart’s Molly Gordon) all threaten to collide. You won’t be able to breathe with anticipation and laughter as perils lurk around every corner of this memorial service turned COVID-era nightmare in comedic trappings.
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10. The Tragedy of Macbeth |
On paper, one could scarcely imagine a less Coen-esque joint than adapting the Bard’s most cursed play (seriously, you aren’t even supposed to say the damn name). However, the more one thinks about it, this stark black-and-white, good old-fashioned Academy ratio (1.33:1) take on “the Scottish play” makes for the darkest and oldest of takes on what essentially became film noir. Denzel Washington upends casting expectations and eschews them as the titular King (Brendan Gleeson) assassin, a child-less schemer whose conspiring with a trio of witches (all Kathryn Hunter, a stage veteran here given to astonishing physical transformations) helps him see the twilight of his life as an ideal launch for a ruthless, bloody rise to power with his “blood simple” wife and queen to be (Frances McDormand, wife of writer-director Joel Coen, natch) by his side. Bruno Delbonnel’s inky monochromatic cinematography, Carter Burwell’s lurid but just this side of traditional score, and a stunning ground-pounding production and sound design all conspire with the cast and director to deliver a Macbeth for the ages.
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Special Jury Prize |
This belated addition was seen after the above list’s initial publication and was just as powerful as any of the first-run titles… |
Runners-up |
Here is a tie for 11th place, if you will, the next best films I saw in 2021… |