2021 in Review: These are Not the Best Films of 2021 (or are they?)

 

This is the final post in a series looking back at film and television in the past year. Previous entries in this series can be found here, here and here.

Before we get to this year's list, a couple of standard disclaimers:

Why is this list called "NOT the best films of 2021"?

Because, as my blog title proclaims, I am a PART-TIME cinephile. I am not a professional film critic, just a cinema-loving civilian, so to speak. I don't prioritize seeing every single movie out there to the exclusion of time spent with friends, family or other interests. If a particular film doesn't appeal to me at all, I feel no compulsion to follow critics' recommendations to see it. (And when I do, I frequently regret it. Last week, I watched the Palme D'or-winning Titane, a movie that takes the cinematic "body horror" genre to a whole new level of gory depravity. It can't even tell you how badly I want those two hours of my life back.)

Not that I didn't make a solid effort: I saw 104 of the films that were released last year, and that's a personal record of which I'm ridiculously proud. But it's still only about half of what a professional film critic would see in any given year, and I never got around to a number of the year's best reviewed titles. (These would include The Green Knight; Cry Macho; The Disciple; This is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection, Zola and Red Rocket.)  A few others (Drive My Car, Memoria, The Souvenir Part 2) had only brief, late-December runs at arthouse theaters in Chicago neighborhoods I no longer visit after dark. (Or during daylight hours, for that matter. Google "Chicago crime rates" to learn more.)

Which brings us to the second standard disclaimer on my year-end posts:

The eligibility requirement for consideration on my list is that the film must have entered general release in the Chicago area during the calendar year of 2021. (Film festival screenings alone don't count.) This means that some films generally considered to be from 2020 were considered for my 2021 list.  (among them Nomadland, The Father, Promising Young Woman, The United States vs. Billie Holliday) It also means that some 2021 films, which either opened here just this week or are yet to arrive (Parallel Mothers, Flee, Petite Maman, Cyrano, The Worst Person in the World) will be considered for my 2022 list.

And there is yet another disclaimer that I haven't applied before. It's been a very emotional year for me. I inherited my deep love of movies from my father who passed away in 2020, and I've felt his loss even more acutely this year, especially as I've watched so many movies he loved - or would have loved, if he'd lived to see them. As I'll explain in some of my capsule reviews, I've found it difficult to sit back and look at films with a cool, critical eye this year. I've chosen a fair number of my favorites based on my intense emotional reactions alone.

In spite of all that, however, I think you'll find that the list below doesn't look all that different from most professional critics' "Best of 2021" selections. So perhaps, despite my limitations and periodic laziness, these really are the best movies of the previous year.

I've included 'where to stream' information for all ten entries; "Available to rent on the usual platforms" is shorthand for 'Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Redbox and Vudu.'

In reverse order of preference:

Pig (directed by Michael Sarnoski)

I haven't seen a Nicholas Cage film in years (hyper-violent schlock doesn't much appeal to me). And when I heard that Cage was a playing a disheveled hermit whose life comes apart when his beloved pet pig is stolen, I can't say I was eager to end my long run of Cage abstinence.  But the respectful, even rapturous, reviews for Pig piqued my curiosity, and I have to say, those reviewers were correct. Cage's performance is superbly measured, suffused with melancholy and tightly controlled anger. Not just any actor  - let alone one whose character is unshaven, unwashed, dressed in rags and bleeding profusely from multiple face wounds -  can convincingly summon the quiet moral authority to shame and intimidate a celebrated chef in his own restaurant. Have I piqued your curiosity now?

Pig is available to stream on Hulu with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

The Last Duel (directed by Ridley Scott)

Ridley Scott made two movies this year; House of Gucci may have brought in more box office receipts, but this is the better film.  The setting is 14th century France.  Matt Damon and Adam Driver are knights (or squires? I'm still a little fuzzy on their titles.) Damon is a bit of a doofus whose loses the king's respect, but still manages to marry a beautiful woman with a sizable dowry (Jodie Comer). Driver, the far savvier member of the court, parties with the apparent Hugh Hefner of the 14th century French nobility (an unrecognizably blond Ben Affleck, providing comic relief), but yearns for Damon's wife. So while Damon is away, Driver stops by his estate and basically helps himself to Comer. Was she raped? We get three versions of the story - one each from Damon's, Driver's and Comer's point of view. This conceit works remarkably well, with subtle as well as obvious differences in nuance and inflection in each telling. Much as I hate to employ cliches, I truly was on the edge of my seat as that last duel was fought to determine Driver's guilt or innocence (because, especially in those days, a woman’s testimony counted for nothing.) Medieval history meets the Me Too movement, with a particularly fine script by Damon, Affleck and Nicole Holofcener. 

The Last Duel is available to stream on HBO platforms with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

Mass (directed by Fran Kranz)

Probably the hardest to watch of any film on this list, but the writing and acting are so exceptional that it's worth the effort. In a church basement, two couples meet to talk. One couple are the parents of a boy killed in a school shooting; the other are the parents of the shooter.  The conversation is tense, emotional - and ultimately breaks through to forgiveness and shared sorrow, well befitting its church setting even though God is never directly invoked.  The actors - Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs and Reed Birney - all do stunning, exceptional work. Mass will leave you emotionally shredded, but also awed by what it achieves.

Mass is available to rent on the usual platforms.

The Hand of God (directed by Paolo Sorrentino)

You can read my rapturous review from the Chicago International Film Festival here. I don't have much more to say, except to confirm my love for this film, even without the big screen experience. I've since re-watched in on Netflix and it held up beautifully. I particularly love Sorrentino's incarnation of his own family - their humor, their naughtiness and obvious love for one another other are a joy to witness.

The Hand of God  is available to stream only on Netflix with a subscription.

Annette (directed by Leos Carax)

No one has a lukewarm reaction to Annette. You either give yourself over fully to its surreal, grand operatic styling or you declare it irredeemably bonkers and turn it off in disgust. Obviously, I'm in the first camp, but even I can admit that it may be the year's weirdest movie. (Even considering that it lost the top prize at Cannes to the story of a young woman who has sex with a car and ends up pregnant. See my disdain for Titane expressed above.) Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard play, respectively, an iconoclastic stand-up comic and a opera singer who fall in love and have a baby (the titular Annette) who is played by an animated puppet. Simon Helberg (best known as Howard from The Big Bang Theory) has a very affecting supporting role as the orchestra conductor who yearns for Cottilard. If I didn't tip you off sufficiently with the above reference to grand opera, this is an entirely sung-through musical with a few infectious, memorable tunes, but mostly just dialogue sung as recitative. (The opening number, May We Now Start,  had damn well better get a Best Song Oscar nomination.)  Annette has a little to say about say about toxic masculinity, and a little more to say about parents who use their children to fulfill their own needs without ever seeing them for who they really are. But, mostly, it's just consumed with its own crazy/glorious vision.

Annette is available to stream only on Amazon Prime Video with a subscription.

West Side Story (directed by Steven Spielberg)

I have found it impossible to process my feelings about this film in any kind of intellectual terms. My reaction to West Side Story is purely emotional. This is the first of two films on this list which brought me to tears, repeatedly, without me being able to fully understand why I was crying. Sometimes I think it was just because I’d forgotten how beautiful that Leonard Bernstein score really was. But in other scenes, I felt my heart swelling with joy (most notably during the America number, which in this version spills out into the streets and ultimately gets the whole neighborhood dancing.) I know as a critic, I'm supposed to to put my emotions aside and look carefully and analytically at whether the revisions made by Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner actually make sense or enhance the original musical in any important way. I can’t do that with a cool eye, but my heart tells me they succeeded.

West Side Story is not yet available on streaming. A streaming release date has not yet been announced.

Licorice Pizza (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)

To quote my own thoughts from my previous post (re: the French film One Sings, the Other Doesn't): "Sometimes the best recommendation for a film is that its characters are just fun to hang out with." That's definitely the appeal of Licorice Pizza. Its cast is headed up by two fine young actors; both are charming and instantly likable, but neither is intimidatingly beautiful. They look and act like people you might actually know. Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Haim stumble through a year or so of adventures and misadventures around the fringes of the early 70s Hollywood scene.  There's not much plot to speak of, just an amiable rambling from experience to experience. There are fun cameos from Sean Penn and Christine Ebersole as barely fictionalized versions of William Holden and Lucille Ball respectively, plus a screamingly funny one from Bradley Cooper as hairdresser-turned-producer Jon Peters. Only in this case, Peters' identity is in no way camouflaged.  This week, Bradley Cooper told Stephen Colbert that Jon Peters made it possible for him to finance his version of A Star is Born by deferring his own fee. (Peters had been a producer on the Barbra Streisand version.) I wonder how he feels about seeing Cooper portray him as angry macho dickhead who seduces women by offering to make them peanut butter sandwiches.

Licorice Pizza is not yet available on streaming. A streaming release date has not yet been announced.

Nomadland (directed by Chloe Zhao)

This is a sad story. But when I remember the film, it's not the sadness I think about, but rather its beauty. The gorgeous musical score and the breathtaking cinematography that takes in so many natural wonders of the western United States. The sense of community that develops between the modern-day nomads who have lost their homes and live out of their vans and trucks, while eking out meager livings from temporary service jobs.  Many of the characters in the film are real-life nomads who are profiled in the non-fiction book on which it is based. I've not read the book myself, but people who have read it assure me that their actual lives are a good deal more dire and hardscrabble than the film version fully depicts. Still, I respect Chloe Zhao for finding something transcendent in the lives of people whose hardships we barely know. She turns the story into visual poetry, anchored by a reliably brilliant performance by Frances McDormand.

Nomadland is available to stream on Hulu with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

Belfast (directed by Kenneth Branagh)

Here is the second film on this list to have brought me to tears, repeatedly. Belfast is a lot of things, all at once, seamlessly interwoven with one another: a child's-eye version of life in a Belfast neighborhood at the start of The Troubles; a warm-hearted, autobiographical reminiscence of family life; and (least predictably) a window into a film director's earliest formative influences. (In Branagh's case, they range from John Ford westerns to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.) It's shot in impeccable black-and-white by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos and acted to perfection by a cast including Judi Dench, Ciaran Ciaran Hinds, Jamie Dornan and Outlander's Caitriona Balfe. It's sweet and sentimental, but never cloying. As with West Side Story, I find it nearly impossible to convey my appreciation of this beautiful film in intellectual terms alone; it, too, worked its magic directly on my heart.

Belfast is available to rent on the usual platforms. (However, as of 1/16, premium pricing is still in effect which means a two-day rental will run you $19.99.)

The Power of the Dog (directed by Jane Campion)

Until just a few days ago, The Power of the Dog was bouncing between second and third place on this list. Then I decided I to watch it a second time on Netflix. (I'd previously seen it on a big screen at the Chicago International film festival, as I wrote about here.) 

When I re-watch a movie - even one I really love - it's no big deal to me to hit "pause" now and then so I can go to the kitchen to make a cup of tea or fix a snack. I might even return a text or read a quick email every so often. It's not like I don't know what's gong to happen next.

But, even though I wanted to do some of those things during The Power of the Dog, I simply could not will myself to divert my attention for one millisecond.  I was too completely absorbed in every fine detail of the performances, the dialogue, the cinematography. Where my initial experience of the film was mainly about being blown away by Benedict Cumberbatch, this time I took special note of the fine, nuanced work of Kodi Smit-McPhee and Jesse Plemons. Because I already knew how the film would end, I was able to watch closely for the clues to that final, heart-stopping twist that were carefully sprinkled throughout its final chapter. It was the most rewarding second viewing of a film I can remember, and it pushed Jane Campion's magnificent psychological thriller/Western into the number one slot. Definitely the year's best film - and many 'real' critics agree!

The Power of the Dog is available to stream only on Netflix with a subscription.

A few more thoughts:

Honorable Mention: CODA, Dune, The Father, Lamb, Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, Promising Young Woman, Quo Vadis Aida?, Supernova, Undine

2021 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Titane, Spencer, The Card Counter*

(* The Card Counter was demoted from Honorable Mention last night after I watched director Paul Schrader's 1992 film Light Sleeper, which is pretty much the same movie, just set in the world of drug dealing instead of casino gambling. I had to deduct points for self-plagiarism.)