Arthur Howitzer, Jr.: [reading aloud from a news story] "Pick-pockets, dead bodies, prisons, urinals." You don't want to add a flower shop or an art museum?
Herbsaint Sazerac: No, I don't.
Arthur Howitzer, Jr.: A pretty place of some kind?
Herbsaint Sazerac: I hate flowers.
Arthur Howitzer, Jr.: [reading aloud again from a news story] "Rats, vermin, gigolos, streetwalkers." You don't think it's almost too seedy this time?
Herbsaint Sazerac: No, I don't.
Arthur Howitzer, Jr.: For decent people?
Herbsaint Sazerac: It's supposed to be charming.
______________________________
We can say what we want about the year 2021. There would undoubtedly be a lot to say. If years had sequels, then--true to the notion that most sequels don't quite live up to the film that preceded them (rare and famous instances excluded, of course, like the often-mentioned exceptions, The Godfather Part II and The Empire Strikes Back)--2021 sucked as a sequel to the already historically dismal year 2020. I believe that's fair to say.
On most fronts--public, political, social, private--we couldn't seem to collectively or independently catch a break in 2021.
Just when things seemed to have gotten "better" as the year progressed, things soon took a nosedive again. We all know it. There isn't any sense in rehashing what we have all spent the past two years experiencing, again, collectively and independently, over and over.
In the world of film/movies/cinema, though, I have to say that I think this was an exceptionally good year. It was a challenging year for filmmakers and for their films, certainly--as artists making art, not to mention as workers in an industry. But we have discovered, through the fires of this ongoing pandemic, new ways of doing old things. In such a forge, the current struggles have seemed to strengthen some aspects of the film industry while simultaneously weakening others. We have accustomed ourselves, rather quickly--through necessity and because of a shared love of watching films--to a different, evolved way of "watching" movies. Cinemaplexes opened up again, with required social restrictions. Online streaming services flourished. Highly anticipated "big" movies--with big budgets, promising big-screen spectacle, or "smaller" new titles from big-name filmmakers--were given calendar-date releases, only to be stalled, or bumped back, or re-scheduled over, and over, and over, and over....
Again, I'm reporting on news that all of us already know.
And yet, all things considered--2021 being the terrible year that it was--we were treated to some really fine movies over the past year. One way or another, whether it was venturing out to the movie theaters again or staying home and catching up with films on streaming services like Netlix, Hulu, Prime, etc., I enjoyed a great year of movie-watching.
Below are two different lists comprising my choices for some of the best movies I saw over the past year. The first list of ten titles are all "new" films that were released, one way or another, in 2021. The second list of ten titles includes some more "new" 2021 films, as well as a few "older" films from recent years that, through streaming at home, I was only now seeing for the first time. Regardless, these are all great films in my opinion. There is no system of valuation here, no ranking order--descending or ascending--of "greatness" to my lists. I didn't do that. Such valuation seems pointless right now, in light of the year that was.
Both of the lists below, then, are ordered alphabetically.
FAVORITE MOVIES -- 2021 FILMS:
Annette (2021) -- dir. Leos Carax
It isn't often that I find myself saying these days, as a film's end-credits begin to roll, "Well, I've never seen anything quite like that before." But such was my response to French filmmaker Leos Carax's latest project. With the exception of its dazzling self-aware opening musical number, "So May We Start," right at the film's outset, I found myself (in the movie's first 30 minutes or so) seriously questioning if I had the fortitude to make it through its looming 140-minute runtime. But by the end of it all, Carax's strange, haunting rock-opera/dark parable of the vampiric entertainment industry had completely won me over. I immediately started urging anyone who would listen to me to give this offbeat, dark, strange, moving, lovely little film the chance it deserves.
Annette is in a category all its own this year.
Dune (2021) -- dir. Denis Villenueve
A lot can be said about a movie that makes you forget just how awful David Lynch's 1984 big-screen Dune debacle was. Anyone who's read Frank Herbert's dauntingly dense 1965 epic sci-fi novel knows how notoriously unfilmmable the book supposedly is. (To which Lynch's contribution nearly proved correct, I might add.) Fortunately for us, though, time has passed. Visual and sound effects have leaped light-years ahead in regards to what can believably be accomplished on a grand scale. And we have a filmmaker in Canada's Denis Villenueve who understands the intricacies of Herbert's original world-building and has the patience and the vision to successfully bring it to the screen.
A new sci-fi epic-in-the-making; I look forward to its "Part II."
You either love a Wes Anderson film, or you hate it. If you hate one of his movies--for whatever particular reason(s)--odds are high that you will more than likely hate all of them. Conversely, if you love one of his movies, the chances of you serving as an acolyte to the vaunted "Wes Anderson style" are exponentially (and probably annoyingly) increased.
I unreservedly and unabashedly fall in the acolyte camp. No apologies. No explanations. I just think his films are extraordinary explorations into the world of filmmaking (and art) itself, and into the nature of whimsy, and loneliness, and joy, and melancholy, and the people whom we love, and the people who don't love us back, and our need for acceptance, and our need for family--even if that family is made up, finally, of a "family" we make for ourselves.
The Green Knight (2021) -- dir. David Lowery
For years my high school English classes--seniors who are bored, and tired of school, and simply wanting a passing grade so they can graduate--have read the 14th-century chivalric romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Originally written (anonymously) in Middle English dialect nearly 700 years ago, its 101 stanzas still manage to work their magic. Nine times out of ten my classes will begin the reading with the typical grumbling, moaning, griping, and complaining. And nine times out of ten my classes will come to the end of the poem surprised at how much they enjoyed it.
David Lowery is a daring artist, and his take on this old poem is everything you would hope a film adaptation would be in 2021. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen--right up until the movie's last line of dialogue (maybe one of the great film-closers of all time).
I honestly think I had a smile pasted on my dopey face during the entire running time of this film. I couldn't help it. It is just pure delight. Funny, nostalgic (in the best sense), heartwarming (without being needlessly saccharine), and genuinely good-hearted. It is almost hard to believe that those adjectives are describing a P.T. Anderson film. Although he is easily on the shortlist of great contemporary American filmmakers, his movies are not usually described as "funny, nostalgic, heartwarming, and genuinely good-hearted" smile-busters. But this one seems to be that rare outlier.
Headed by first-timers Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Haim (one-third of the band, HAIM, with her sisters, who also make brief appearances in the film), this thing has charm, charisma, and chemistry to spare. I loved every minute of it.
Pig (2021) -- dir. Michael Sarnoski
Imagine this elevator pitch for a new movie idea: A "retired" Portland chef, Rob Feld, now living off-the-grid in the outlying woods, wakes to find his truffle-hunting pig stolen from him. He goes on a journey to find his beloved pig and discovers, in the process, the dark underground of the urban restaurant scene--a world of drug addicts, and shady fight clubs, and desperate, lonely misfits who don't understand Rob's simple life-code: "We don't get a lot of things to really care about."
Imagine a first-time director at the helm. Now imagine Nicolas Cage being cast in the lead role as Rob....
No, by all calculus, this thing should not have worked. But against all odds it does. Beautifully. This is a stunningly good movie.
The Power of the Dog (2021) -- dir. Jane Campion
Set in 1925 Montana, yet filmed in New Zealand by renowned New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion (her first feature since 2009's Bright Star) with a script she adapted from the 1967 western novel of the same name by closeted-gay author Thomas Savage about Old Testament-style brotherly resentment, grief, love, jealousy, anger, memory, fear, and sexuality.
Real Jane Campion sort of stuff, in other words.
Not your father's western, maybe. But this thing is going to have some staying power. While maybe not up to the level of Campion's masterpiece, 1993's The Piano, this is still a film that will be remembered over time, not only as one of her best (which is saying a lot) but also as simply a great movie. I think it is masterful.
Spencer (2021) -- dir. Pablo Larrain
What is a human life worth--in monetary value, I suppose (if that can even be definitively determined) but also in more metaphorical, emotional values? What is the cost of a human life? I don't know. But Larrain's movie made me ask such questions. And, granted, it also made me think of such current terms as "white privilege" and "first-world problems," etc. (Is it possible, after all, to feel sorry for a white, wealthy, privileged British princess suffering from depression, and bulimia, and existential despair? Fair questions, I guess. But the answer is simple: Yes.)
Kristen Stewart has come into her own as a fine young actress. And this is a stirring, strong, unforgettable performance as the late Princess Diana. Along with her recent films with French filmmaker, Olivier Assayas, this is some of Stewart's best work.
Summer of Soul (2021) -- dir. Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson
I had never heard of this six-week 1969 concert held in Harlem's Mount Morris Park, featuring some of the greatest black musical acts of the time. And chances are neither had you, I'm guessing.
And that, I suppose, is largely the point behind Questlove's absolutely mesmerizing work of archival documentary filmmaking. From original footage of the event, to interviews with older attendees looking back at the great concert and wondering why no one had ever documented it before, this movie soars.
"I thought I had dreamed it," one grown attendee says in the film.
This is a great musical documentary that deserves to be seen. And to be remembered.
West Side Story (2021) -- dir. Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg has nothing left to prove, really. He's done it. But he decided to prove himself again this past year, anyway, with his film remake of the great (and by "the" I mean maybe the), classic American musical.
Does it get any better than West Side Story as far as stage musicals? I don't know. I'm not an expert on the art. I just know what I like. With a classic score by the great Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by the equally great Stephen Sondheim, as well as original dance choreography by the great Jerome Robbins (updated in 2021 by Justin Peck), Spielberg's retelling of the classic stage-to-film musical not only updates Robert Wise's tired 1961 movie-version but also ups the ante. And it does so with great urgency and with great style. We needed a movie like this during a year like 2021.
2021 MOVIE-WATCHING -- HONORABLE MENTIONS:
About Endlessness (2019) -- dir. Roy Andersson
Never one to do anything in a small way, Middle-Earth visionary Peter Jackson is on a roll these days with back-to-back breathtaking documentaries, both pieced together with archival footage run through the best film technology of his New Zealand-based Weta Workshop. First there was Jackson's 2018 W.W. I documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old, blowing our minds with its stunning use of film-colorization done right. And now, this past year, we were treated to his nearly 8-hour behind-the-scenes glimpse at the inner-workings of the last days of The Beatles, holed up together (for the most part) in a London sound-studio, working feverishly for 21 days on the material that would make up the band's legendary final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be. The resulting film is unbelievably watchable.
Gunda (2020) -- dir. Viktor Kossakovsky
Filmed in glorious black-and-white by auteur Russian documentarian Viktor Kossakovsky on various farms and animal shelters in Norway, England, and Spain, and "starring" a sow and her scene-stealing piglets, and some cows, and some sheep, and a one-legged chicken, this is a film that follows the daily life of a simple mother and her children. Pieced together in deliberately slow, long takes (oh, the patience of the film crew here), the movie beautifully weaves a picture of pastoral life slowed down to a four-legged pace, a life lived on a farm by a pig and her litter of little piglets snuffling for a place at the dinner line, snorting behind her on the daily walks around the yard, tracing an existence of no small consequence lived from birth in the barn to...the film's jaw-dropping denoument of a mother's agonizing incomprehension turned to slow, painful realization of a pig's sad fate on a farm.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) -- dir. Charlie Kaufman
The Killing of Two Lovers (2020) -- dir. Robert Machoian
I caught up with this movie on Hulu this past year, and it blew me away. It shook me. The gut-wrenching honesty of its indie-style exploration into the pain, and the confusion, and the awkwardness, and the sadness, and the rage, and the heartbreak, and the helplessness of a young husband/father going through a separation/impending divorce from his wife/mother of his children is visceral. I felt it under my skin. And it made me shiver with memory. Writer/Producer/Director Robert Machoian is fantastic here, from the film's startling opening shot, to its use of non-diagetic sound--a thunderous, repetitive clicking (the cocking of a gun?)--that works to unnerve you, to unsettle you, and to keep you wondering, right up to the movie's last scene, just what is going to come of all this agony.
The Lost Daughter (2021) -- dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal
Seasoned actress and first-time writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal seems to have intuitively absorbed, over the course of her acting career, just what it takes to make a damn good movie. She has obviously watched, and listened, and paid attention. With her script adapted from the 2006 novel of the same name by Italian writer, Elena Ferrante, Gyllenhaal enlists the aid of some top-shelf acting talent here to tell this tightly-wound examination of a middle-aged woman on the verge of coming unraveled. Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Ed Harris, Dakota Johnson... It's a heady brew.
(Not that movie-awards season technically means anything--I get that. But still...it is recognition. And I hope Colman and Buckley, at least, are remembered and recognized for the great work they do in this film.)
No Time to Die (2021) -- dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga
All right.... Calm down. Calm down. I know. I know....
I feel fairly safe in assuming I am probably one of the few people anywhere mentioning this film on any sort of 2021-End-of-Year-Best-List. But....
I make no excuses: I enjoyed this movie. It made me smile. It was entertaining. While certainly not a "perfect" film, I liked the closure it brought to the arc of Daniel Craig's five-film run as 007.
(Side note: The film-stealing action sequence reuniting Craig with his 2019 Knives Out co-star, Ana de Armas, was worth the price of admission itself. It made me hungry for the rumored Knives Out sequel... We'll see.)
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) -- dir. Carlos Lopez Estrada and Don Hall
Another "guilty pleasure" from the past year, I suppose. (Although I have never been entirely clear why we are supposedly hardwired to intuitively feel guilt over something that brings us pleasure. Oh well...I'm not going to tackle that conundrum here.)
I saw this movie in the theater with my daughter. It was one of the first movies we saw together, venturing back with one another into the sparsely populated movie theaters--like dipping a toe into the uncertain COVID waters--and we enjoyed it thoroughly. So much so, we returned together to the theaters to enjoy it a second time....
I think it is a good "guilty pleasure." I remember the movie, largely, for those shared experiences, the two of us. It is a great memory.
The Sparks Brothers (2021) -- dir. Edgar Wright
It is entirely possible that I enjoyed this movie more than any other single film on my lists. Edgar Wright's documentary about the 50-year career from the pop-music act of brothers Ron and Russell Mael (the creative duo behind the band they call Sparks). Like most viewers--I'm assuming--I had never heard of the band Sparks. (I find that fact almost impossible to believe, considering I am a music buff, and the brothers' career has spanned a large part of what could only be called my "growing up" years. But I'd never heard of them until this film. Not even once.)
Which, much like Questlove's documentary, Summer of Soul (see above), Wright attempts to correct. And he does so. Wonderfully.
(Side note: Sparks wrote the music/story for the film, Annette.)
Thelma (2017) -- dir. Joachim Trier
Like Sweden's Roy Andersson, I stumbled upon the Danish-Norwegian filmmaker, Joachim Trier, during the past year. And I'm glad I did. His 2021 film, The Worst Person in the World, has earned a lot of high praise and acclaim, to date; and, to date, I have yet to see it.
In the meantime, though, I came across this earlier film from Trier on Hulu, and I felt--while watching it--as if the wind had been knocked out of me. What a great movie-watching experience. From its shattering opening scene (some of the most impressive first 5 minutes of any film I've ever seen, perhaps) to its provocative closing scene, I never quite knew where this film was leading me.
Thought-provoking, disturbing, visually exciting: I love this movie.
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