Favorite Films of 2021 — Part Three: The Top 30

March madness continues!

If you missed Parts One and Two, catch up! 

I've been asked by the critics at two different podcasts to name my favorite film of 2021, and it's been difficult to answer.

At Seeing & Believing with Kevin McLenithan and Sarah Welch-Larson, I narrowed it down to one... but then fell back into doubts and second-guessing soon after I named my choice. Listen here:

Then, on Veterans of Culture Wars with David Lester and Zach Malm, I gave a very different answer. You can listen to that conversation here:

Working on this list for publication here at Looking Closer, I wrestled with possible outcomes again. It may be that I will, in time, change my #1 pick. I've done that before. But for now, I've made a decision quite unlike any I've made in nearly thirty years of list-making. Let me know what you think, and feel free to share your own favorites.

For this first-draft of the list, I'm including 27 films. But that will change as I catch up with other great films of the year that I've missed. So, next time you come back, there might be 30 or more.

Here's are the annual fine-print disclaimers:

This list, like all of my film lists, is a work in progress.

Of course it is. The temptation to pronounce judgments on works of art is great — more than ever in this culture of “rating” things with “Like” or “Dislike,” “Fresh Tomato” or “Rotten Tomato.”

But great movies are like city parks: They are designed by human beings, but they contain all kinds of natural world sights and sounds that carry their own mysteries above and beyond the intent of the artist. They invite you to explore, and your first exploration is just the beginning. Your first experience has as much to do with your own choices and preferences as it has to do with the park's design. The circumstances of your experience play a role too: Weather, for instance, and who else happens to be there at the park on that specific day. Go back again on a different day, in a different mood, and your experience will be different.

Does that mean it’s a waste of time to bother with questions related to the quality of the park’s design and condition? Of course not. But it’s ridiculous to think we can pronounce a judgment on any work of art. Too much is conditional. Better to share impressions, keeping an open mind so we can be surprised and have that distinctively human experience of changing our minds.

I’ll probably expand this list over the next few months as I catch up with films that got away. For example, I haven't had an opportunity yet to see The Souvenir, Part II, but other critics who have found access to it have praised it as one of the year's greatest achievements. Others — Encanto, Procession, and even the popular Don't Look Up — are films I haven't watched yet for reasons related to timing, mood, or rental prices. I'll get to them soon. I'll go on revising the list as my appreciation of these films changes. I recently updated my lists from the 1970s!

I watched more than 180 movies in 2021, and have added many to that list in the first few months of 2022 — eagerly pouncing on new films, happily revisiting personal favorites, and making new discoveries from decades past.

This is a list of films that found wide release — and which I could access in Seattle — in 2021. It's a celebration of a year in which movies gave me hope, informed my conscience, and strengthened my faith. 

26.
Judas and the Black Messiah

directed by Shaka King | written by King and Will Berson

https://youtu.be/sSjtGqRXQ9Y

My review of Judas and the Black Messiah was published in February 2021. You can read it here.

Uh-oh...

25. – 24. (tie)
West Side Story

directed by Steven Spielberg | written for the screen by Tony Kushner
based on West Side Story by Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein,
Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents

and

In the Heights

 directed by Jon M. Chu | screenplay by Quiara Alegría Hudes |
based on In the Heights by Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lin-Manuel Miranda

Only one qualifies, by my standards, as great cinema — an extraordinary work of big-screen artistry. But the other, a solid work of crowd-pleasing entertainment and social commentary, made me care and made me want to turn around and take the ride again right away.

Put another way — one is a movie I want to study; the other is a movie an album of pop bangers that I could count on to break up the heavy clouds of a depressing year.

https://youtu.be/U0CL-ZSuCrQ

https://youtu.be/A5GJLwWiYSg

I published my full review of In the Heights here at Looking Closer way back in June of 2021. You can read that here.

My first impressions of West Side Story were previously published here in an installment of "The Weekender." You can read them here.

23.
Flee

 directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen | written by Jonas Poher and Rasmussen Amin

https://youtu.be/WzUVeuX1u04

As Amin Nawabi recalls and relates the harrowing secrets of his lifelong search for a home — fleeing Afghanistan as a child, enduring the terrors of human trafficking, and arriving rather accidentally in Denmark — we can hear him reluctantly reliving the trauma, but we also hear him speaking truths that he has kept bound up in fear and distrust. In doing so, we can hear him finding some measure of freedom. Listening and then transforming into animation what he has received, director Jonas Poher Rasmussen delivers a revelation that just might ignite empathy for refugees and outcasts in the hearts of audiences around the world.

This is the only animated film of 2021 I've seen so far that has really captured and held my attention beginning to end. It's clearly a labor of love. I'm impressed that all of its disparate elements—the interview, the animation, the historical footage—cohere so gracefully into what becomes a shining example of filmmaking as an act of compassion.

As my teaching schedule prevented me from writing a full review of this film, I refer you to the great Alissa Wilkinson at Vox.com for wisdom and details. Alissa writes,

[W]e interact with Amin’s life as if it’s in the grand storytelling tradition, a tale with meaning that stretches beyond the simple facts.

Amin fears being hurt, losing his family, being alone, and being rejected for being gay — and most of his fears come true. He longs for safety and for home, a place where nobody will come to take him away. And yet, when he finds it, he can’t quite believe it. By the time Rasmussen and Amin discuss his history, it’s almost 20 years in the past, but for Amin, it’s as if it happened yesterday. He’s become educated and successful, reconnected with most of his family, and found real love. But even after finding safety and relative stability, Amin’s previous experiences will never stop reaching their long fingers into his present.

There’s a deep meaning to Amin’s story beyond the specific facts of his life. All over the world, people are forced to flee their homes. If they’re very lucky, they might resettle in a place where they’ll be able to live some kind of better life. But that doesn’t mean the trauma subsides. By the end, it seems telling his story — saying it out loud in a safe space, at last — may have helped Amin heal a bit more. Perhaps sharing it with audiences opens the same space for others, too.

22.
Bergman Island

written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve

https://youtu.be/nrlVHVid-20

My notes on Bergman Island were published previously here at Looking Closer in an installment of "The Weekender." Read them here.

21.
Passing

written for the screen and directed by Rebecca Hall | Based on Passing by Nella Larsen

https://youtu.be/trwq3CNCMkU

I reviewed Passing here at Looking Closer back in November 2021. Read the review here.

20.
The Father

directed by Florian Zeller | screenplay by Zeller and Christopher Hampton |
based on Zeller's play Le Père

https://youtu.be/4TZb7YfK-JI

Don't be confused when they call the main character Anthony. It's distracting, yes — but that's who Anthony Hopkins is playing.

And don't worry if you feel like Anthony's increasing dementia is contagious and it's starting to affect you. The filmmakers aren't playing fair: They've cast, in the roles of two women who the old man keeps confusing for his daughter Anne, both of Britain's great Olivias. That's just Zeller and Company messing with us.

Now... if you could swear that you saw Rebecca Hall walk in and play a scene or two, confusing things further — that's just you, and maybe you are getting old. Or maybe you just haven't been to the movies for a long time and you aren't as sharp on names and faces as you used to be. I'm not saying this for any reason in particular.

...

And no, we're both wrong. Those fleeting opening credits didn't say "Edited by Yorgos Lanthimos," although the challenges that the film poses to the audience might make you wonder. It said "Edited by Yorgos Lamprinos." See what I mean? This movie seems made to mess with us.

...

Note: Somebody needs to bring Rufus Sewell back to the movies and give him something better to play than a heartless bastard. He's very good at it — and he's good at it here, as usual. Still.

...

Another note: This may not be the movie for you if your spouse's mother is in a memory care center and often doesn't know who she is anymore. But then again... it may be the movie for you because screenwriter Christopher Hampton (Carrington, Dangerous Liaisons) will assure you that these soul-crushing ordeals are actually quite common and that you are not alone in trying to figure out how to navigate such brutal, faith-shaking circumstances.

19.
Licorice Pizza

written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

https://youtu.be/ofnXPwUPENo

My relationship with every Paul Thomas Anderson film changes over time. I'm usually enchanted or awestruck from the start, and then my admiration deepens into rewarding endeavors of interpretation. But not always. I admire Boogie Nights and Inherent Vice, but I don't particularly enjoy them the way I do Phantom Thread or find anything personally resonant in them as I do with Magnolia.

My relationship with Licorice Pizza is off to a rocky start.

I admired a great deal about it as it played: production design, performances, surprises.

But, unlike Punch-drunk Love and Phantom Thread, the other two PTA romances, both of which I've fallen madly in love with, this movie — in its jarringly episodic nature, in its rough and grimy aesthetic, and in its web of alarming and exploitative relationships — I can't say I ever settled into enjoying this one. I wasn't enchanted; I was on edge and often aggravated. It has some fantastic sequences. It's glowing with passion, full of scenarios that could only have been inspired by personal experiences. And it's a circus of "Spot the allusion!' and "Note the influence!" (you'll probably think of Robert Altman films, Taxi Driver, Almost Famous, Rushmore, The Graduate, Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood, and PTA's own previous films). But I was so often annoyed by the characters that I found myself checking my watch at the 90-minute mark and a little itchy to get out of town.

Every relationship in this movie is fractured by an imbalance of power — Alana (Alaina Haim) is too old for Gary (Cooper Hoffman), Jerry Frick (John Michael Higgins) is disrespectful to his wives, Wachs (Bennie Safdie) has to confine his lover to save face with voters. And then there's the way a movie star (Sean Penn) can so easily exploit a lonely and uncertain young woman's longing for affirmation.

Everyone is faking expertise in something — Alana fakes her skills and spoken languages in talent interviews, Jerry Frick fakes speaking Japanese, Gary fakes knowing how to to drive, Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper) is just a complete and total fake, etc.

So I find it strange that any critic would single out a particular character or relationship dynamic as inappropriate or singularly cringey. Everything about this world is unfortunate and inappropriate and more than a little cringey. It's a hall of mirrors, this web of relationships; that appalling Frick and his Japanese wife (either one) are Gary and Alana... are Joel Wachs and Matthew. Fakery and abuse seems to be the standard in this context of 1973 showbiz. Everyone's being mistreated, and those doing the mistreating are obviously buffoons (at best) or monsters (at worst). Sex has become so toxic in this context that the story focuses instead on the idea that a love affair can flourish without it — and, in some cases, might only exist so long as they abstain.

Perhaps the title, beyond its direct inspiration (the record store glimpsed in Fast Times, is a reference to two things that shouldn't go together and yet it will work for one or two people out there. Have you ever had a relationship in which there is a certain and singular sexual tension, and you both know you're a little bit in love, but you also know that it can only exist in that state, and any "step" would cause a stumble and a fall? There's something like that happening here. Gary and Alana can't bear the thought of anyone else becoming the other's confidant and intimate, and they're jealous to see each other with anybody else, but they also know that they'd better remain more platonic than erotic together. I get that.

And in that context, if a 15-year-old boy and a 25-year-old young woman discover some kind of inexplicable connection or chemistry — it's not Harold & Maude, but it works for them (even if Gary's as surprised by it as Alana is unsettled by it) — maybe we should be more inclined to hope that they can develop some kind of helpful and meaningful relationship in the madness, rather than just have an attack of age-gap cooties. (Something tells me that those who object to the age difference here haven't complained about Emma Thompson's casting in Sense & Sensibility, in which the gap between Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet is far more substantial.) Gary's idealism and irrepressible industriousness are strangely appealing to the bored and insecure young Alana, and Alana's proximity and availability and loneliness make her an appealing prospect for Gary's eager attention-seeking.

And so, the enterprising boy and the affirmation-seeking girl need each other — that can't be too hard to understand. No, it's not a healthy relationship — they're dishonest with each other, disrespectful, selfish, unfaithful, and often downright mean. I'm not inspired by either of them. But maybe this isn't a story about inspirational figures or swoon-worthy love stories. Maybe it's about growing up in a chaotic and cruel world and lunging for whatever kind of relationship drug is going to bring out a better version of you and save you from the types of relationship drugs that are sure to wreck you. Maybe it's about how, when all avenues that the world offers us prove to be fraudulent and dehumanizing, we have to dream up a place of our own to figure things out. In that sense, there might be a little Moonrise Kingdom happening here, too.

Unlike Sam and Suzie in Moonrise Kingdom, Alana and Gary aren't a couple whose company I enjoy, and I won't be eager to revisit them. But they make me hope they can find a way through seasons of awkwardness, misfortune, hormonal chaos, and a sorry dearth of options. They need each other, and I'm glad they have each other. But I do hope they find better tomorrows. To borrow a line from Rowlf the Dog — "I hope that somethin' better comes along." For both of them.

18.
No Sudden Move

directed by Steven Soderbergh | written by Ed Solomon

https://youtu.be/7GRDLX3a-IE

17.
Derek DelGaudio's In & Of Itself

directed by Frank Oz | written by Derek DelGaudio

https://youtu.be/_62BeXxd_jo

A performance-art magic show made of humility, confession, wisdom, and love.

And it moves us because it reminds us of what is True. We are known. We always have been. We are loved. We always have been. And when the Truth of that is spoken in love, we are undone.

I went straight from watching this to reading Psalm 139.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

...

Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

16.
Quo Vadis, Aida?

written and directed by Jasmila Žbanić

I reviewed this film back in August 2021. Read the review here.

15.
Mass

written and directed by Fran Kanz

https://youtu.be/WgvsfKhGdgI

I reviewed Mass at Looking Closer in November. Read the review here.

14.
Identifying Features

directed by Fernanda Valadez | written by Valadez and Astrid Rondero

When Magdalena, a Mexican mother venturing into dangerous territory to find her missing son, comments to another boy that he resembles her son "from behind," the boy replies with words that resonate at the conclusion as we think back through the whole film: "We all look the same from behind."

It's an enigmatic moment that might comment on how the rest of the world seems unconcerned about the countless missing and dead in Mexico's drug wars. Or it might comment on how so many young Mexican boys and men come to the same dead end — vanishing into a darkness that it would arguably be unwise to investigate, a field of flames from which no one returns without scars.

This is a quiet, nerve-wracking journey reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy ventures into blood-soaked wildernesses, where what you imagine you might discover there will only teach you that your imagination is not large enough to fathom the wickedness wreaking havoc in the world. As one memorably un-subtitled scene impresses upon us, our vocabularies are not powerful enough to communicate the deeds that the devil is doing in the darkness.

As we follow Magdalena into a wilderness that resonates with the same sense of evil I remember from watching Eggers' The Witch, we know she may never return. We know that she is more than likely to find her boy's body mutilated or burned... or both. We can sense this isn't going to be a story about a miraculous rescue. But what is it about then?

It feels like a lament, one that cries Things are so much worse than we thought.

I can't say more without robbing you of the chance to discover some of the most haunting moments I've experienced at the movies in years. This isn't a film that is going to tell you that love conquers all. But it might test your faith and challenge you with a question: Is the love you believe in more powerful than what the devil is doing right now — in Mexico, at the hands of the drug war's soldiers; in Ukraine, at the hands of the Russians; and even in America, in the plans of those who do not really believe in "liberty and justice for all"?

If the prayers earnestly raised early in the film had been reprised during the end credits, I can tell you this: I would have prayed along with them.

13.
Annette

directed by Leos Carax | story and music written by Ron Mael and Russell Mael with Carax

https://youtu.be/l_EaNpL16SU

I watched Annette twice — enthralled, baffled, and frustrated. But I haven't stopped thinking about it. And my conversation about the film with film critic Evan Cogswell (who loves this film beginning to end) was rewarding. You can listen to that here.

12.
Spencer

directed by Pablo Larraín | written by Steven Knight

https://youtu.be/WllZh9aekDg

As much as this movie laments the constraints of tradition and the suffocating nature of being a living symbol, we aren't watching this if it isn't for the extravagance of the royal family's opulence — the clothes, the cars, the cuisine... right? So it's hard to deny that, by showing up, we're still enchanted by, and somewhat complicit in, the stubborn resilience of the Royal Fantasy — the same one that closes its jaws around Diana, chews her up, and then, when she fights, spits her back out with contempt. The director and the cinematographer are certainly spellbound — they're enamored of this architecture and finery. This movie is a luxury to look at. They know what they've got: a chance for one of the most interesting actresses in cinema to dance and snarl and sob her way through a costume party.

And yet, all hail Kristen Stewart, who gives her finest performance yet here. I was skeptical when Assayas crowned her the next Juliette Binoche, but this finds her fulfilling that promise: this really is Binoche-level stuff from her.

And the film's intriguing tone, which involves metaphors so heavy-handed that screenwriter Stephen Knight couldn't possibly expect us to take them seriously, feels less like a biopic and more like a campy psychological horror movie. From the opening scene, it's often quite funny. Sure, references to The Shining are as obvious here as Dune's distracting adulation of Apocalypse Now — but they're a good hint as to how we're supposed to take this whole thing. Subtlety would have seemed out of place. This is a movie about high emotion, a metaphor for finding yourself suffocating in a world of hypocrisy, an opera about trying to escape a trap without losing your one friend and your two children. And Stewart plays it perfectly.

The great Timothy Spall's energy here is fascinating. He could have been merely dour, a specter of foreboding assigned to prevent Diana from having any room to breathe, but he manages to give us glimpses of a complicated human being inside the carefully tailored costume and the scowl that looks like its been stretched to its limit by some internal drawstring. What a gift Spall is to cinema.

But I really want to talk about Sean Harris: Between his King Arthur in The Green Knight and his Chef to the Queen here, this dude is having himself a year.

And Johnny Greenwood ... well, is there anybody more reliable scoring movies right now?

11.
Azor

directed by Andreas Fontana | screenplay by Fontana and Mariano Llinás

https://youtu.be/_nkaWcqZO1I

"Imagine if Graham Greene rewrote Apocalypse Now...." - Nick James, Sight and Sound.

Exactly.

I'd have to look back a long way to find a film that gave me this particular buzz of "Wow — finally, a movie for adults who enjoy thinking." The tension in this film is exquisitely cultivated. It's particularly scary because it feels so true to life, refusing to ever provide expository dialogue or dumb things down to explain itself.

This movie made me feel ignorant in a way that I've come to find thrilling: It made me want to learn more about situations, politics, vocations, and paradigms I now little to nothing about, but that I know are more important and more influential than 99% of what makes headlines. I don't know much (okay, anything) about the power games at the highest echelons of the Swiss banking world, or how they influence ongoing colonialist oppression and corruption in regions I've never studied or visited. (I know, for example, embarrassingly little about the history — or the present, for that matter — of Buenos Aires.)

But this movie made me want to understand its social-political quandaries, even as it threw fuel on the fires of my existential dread about an encroaching age of unprecedented tribulation in a world terrorized by "beasts" (to borrow this film's term). Imagine Michael Mann directing his subtlest, quietest film about a criminal underworld, with a script by Cormac McCarthy, and you're in the ballpark. The films I thought about most were The Counselor and No Country for Old Men. This is probably the scariest movie of 2021, partly because I believe its warnings and revelations are True.

It's also one of those rare and powerful films that exemplifies the "less is more" principle, one that is almost always true in cinema.

And Fabrizio Rongione is fantastic.

10.
Drive My Car

directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi | screenplay by Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe |
based on "Drive My Car" by Haruki Murakami

https://youtu.be/bx1Q1MauBsU

Or, Vanya on So Many Hiroshima Streets.

A film far too talky, thematically layered, and complex for me to post immediate notes about it. It may be that its reach exceeds its grasp, but if so… still, what a reach! And it may be that the most affecting moments have more to do with Anton Chekhov than Hameguchi, but if so, they’re well played. It’s too early for me to say.

So I'll just say these three things:

1. I'll be watching for more leading performances by Hidetoshi Nishijima, who, it turns out, already has experience in that most difficult of niche genres: big-screen adaptations of Murakami. (He was the narrator for the great Tony Takitani.)

2. I kept finding myself thinking "This movie keeps forgetting about cinema and devolving into just cameras aimed at people talking or driving," and then, suddenly, there would be a shot so inspired that I'd feel like we were in the presence of a master.

3. Besides the other Vanya movie, the film I was reminded of most during this one was Columbus, and that's a good thing.

4. This film introduces us to a married couple who, as supporting characters, are so much more interesting to me than the two leads that it distracts me.

9.
Dune

directed by Denis Villeneuve | based on the novel by Frank Herbert
and adapted for the screen by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth

An epic as grand as Dune deserves an epic review. My review of Part One is exactly that. 

8.
The Power of the Dog

written and directed by Jane Campion | based on The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

https://youtu.be/LRDPo0CHrko

I am the only human being to have watched the first half of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs at home, interrupted it, rushed to the local cinemas to see Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, and then returned home to finish Isle of Dogs.

Both films have haunting whistled motifs!

Strong performances, particularly from Smit-McPhee and Cumberbatch (with a jarringly inconsequential supporting turn from Thomasin McKenzie, suggesting she had a larger role in the initial screenplay). Beautifully shot. With a stellar score from Johnny Greenwood — the second great score he's delivered in a month's time (Spencer).

This whole film felt like Campion revisiting The Piano, but the variations are interesting.

We're in a wilderness of a landscape, where forces of nature are always and obviously (as they often do in early Peter Weir films) overwhelming the people making trouble in the foreground.

We have a Mother (Dunst) and Child (Smit-McPhee) — Mother carrying some trauma that keeps her from expressing herself, Child playful and curious and fearful and fiercely bonded to the mother. Theyr'e caught between The Good Man (Plemons), who represents the highly mannered charades of the civilized, and The Wild Man (Cumberbatch) who seems half-absorbed by the natural world, wiser than the Good Man in some ways and cruel in others.

There is also a piano, gifted to the Woman as a sign of love and a symbol of sophistication, but ultimately a symbol of some unreachable transcendence, an ideal that the cruelty of the world makes unattainable.

In this variation of the story, while The Good Man seems loving and conscientious but also rather useless in the face of serious threats (like a misogynistic brute or alcoholism), the Wild Man has split in two, half of him a monster obsessed with control and with punishing others who are still striving for sophistication, the other half living in a hell of confusion, shame, masturbatory fantasy, and self-loathing. The Wild Man hates the piano just as he hates the wealthy city people (represented by the Governor and his wife); he likes disappointing them, disrupting their parties, mocking their facile "order" made of simplistic binaries, but he also grumbles and resents that they seem to have some measure of a peace he cannot have.

The film's exploration of sexuality is much more complex than I'd anticipated, suggesting that masculinity of the Toxic variety is like a tumor, a manifestation of a cancer made of fear and shame. The Wild Man's hatred (of others, of the self) stems from (pun intended) the fact that sexuality is frighteningly complicated and will not be tamed or organized. While the Child — in this case, a young male taunted by those trying to be "masculine" cowboys for being gay — seems to be withdrawing from the world of sex in despair, his Tormentor lives in a private hell of pornography and erotic nostalgia, imprisoned by memories of the older man who shaped him with both tenderness and abuse.

Ultimately, as is typical for a Campion film, the film ends up being a parable about how illusory our "civilizations" really are — systems that flatter our sense of control and confidence — while we are really far wilder, far more mysterious than we want to believe. But it's also about how that wildness, when suppressed, leads to distortions that are even more threatening than the insufficient architectures of order. The Wild Man is a human being, with real longings, powerful intelligence, and impressive skills born of experience — but he is also a menace, his secrets and lies inclining him toward the destruction of Love, or of whatever semblance of Love we can clumsily manage in this wasteland. We tend toward extremes that end up trying to kill each other, which seems inevitable since it is so very, very difficult to find a way of life in the land of Ambiguity in between.

[MAJOR SPOILERS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.]

But I'm still struggling to understand the significance of certain things — like what I'm to make of Rose's alcoholism, and if I'm to believe that it might have been overcome in the end; and whether I'm to interpret the conclusion as a triumph of good over evil, or a tragedy of one world striking a blow against the other. Whatever the case, the last moment plays in a way that makes me think I'm supposed to be glad about how things have turned out, but the film's deep dive into the tragedy of Phil's torment makes me resist any suggestion that this is a "happy ending." It looks more like a failure — human beings settling for order at the cost of the life of someone who saw through its hypocrisies.

7.
The Lost Daughter

written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal | based on The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

https://youtu.be/xNq9YOfL0Zs

See, when you cast two great actresses who are just similar enough to play the same character at two different ages, you don't need to do distracting makeup or subtle CGI enhancements. It doesn't matter. It works. I completely accepted Jessie Buckley as Leda at 20-something years younger than Olivia Colman's Leda. They found a seamlessness of performance and voice, but one that wasn't showy and distracting. That's why it worked. They trusted us to accept what we were given instead of breaking the spell with fakery. That's why it worked.

-

Wow, what a stressful film. Gyllenhaal knows just how to turn the screws. There are a couple edits here where a sound from the next scene — a door opening, or a sudden stumble — is heard a heartbeat early, during the last moment of the present scene, and because you aren't expecting it, you think for a split-second that it might be happening now, breaking into Leda's moments of unsuspecting quiet, and you nearly jump out of your skin, because everything has led you to fear a sudden intrusion or shocking violence. Thus, when some kind of chaos does come crashing into Leda's guarded solitude, it's even more upsetting than it would have been.

-

And for Leda, it's the disruption of the only self she's comfortable with, the person she knows she can be and wants to be — a contemplative, inspired intellectual respected for her insight — that she fears most. No wonder she's presented as a scholar of Auden's poem about "the dread of invasion." She lives in fear that, in a desperate attempt to save her true self from an all-consuming force that she is herself responsible (well, half-responsible) for bringing into the world, she only made things worse, and now might have fractured all versions of herself forever. I like how Sean Burns puts it: "[Gyllenhaal] makes visceral the fears and shame of mothers who feel themselves unfit, and the guilt that comes with wanting to keep a little piece of your life to yourself."

-

On a personal note: There may not be a type of character I find more intolerable than the one played here by Peter Sarsgaard — the predatory intellectual who knows just how to exploit an ambitious young person's need to feel admired, desired, and affirmed. I wanted to crawl out of my skin watching Sarsgaard's Professor Hardy here in his transparently opportunistic ploy to seduce Leda. I've seen such things happen, and that kind of self-serving exploitation upsets me more than almost any other kind of villainy. So, I guess that means he's perfectly cast?

-

Give Maggie Gyllenhaal whatever she needs to make more movies, please.

6.
The Worst Person in the World

directed by Joachim Trier | written by Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier

More than any other movie I can think of right off the top of my head, this is a movie that will quickly divide audiences into moviegoers who judge a complicated character and moviegoers who are curious about and capable of empathizing with a complicated character.

Julie is a character whose decisions hurt people all around her, behavior I was taught to condemn. But Trier's film draws us into such intimacy with Julie that eventually it becomes possible to see just how much the world she's in has been harming her, starving her, depriving her of being seen and known (especially by herself). The fact that she ends up harming most another complicated, imperfect human — who,I believe, loves her and knows her better than most — is a shame. But people who are neglected and disrespected and made to feel unvalued from childhood run on deeply fractured software, and loving them as they find their way through the wreckage of their hearts and minds is costly. I've seen it happen in so many relationships. I've been in those relationships. I've been impatient with and dismissive of people like Julie. And, frankly, I know that anyone who dares to love me is in for some rather disappointing revelations — so there are moments when I recognize my own most-alarming behaviors in Julie.

The trailer made me think that this was the kind of movie that makes me furious and I end up wishing I hadn't seen. There is nothing more aggravating for me than a story that takes infidelity lightly and that champions the libido as faultless, as the guiding moral compass, as an appetite that must always be prioritized. But that is not at all what this movie is. It's one of the most thoughtful movies about human nature — and one of the most thoughtful about a woman — that I've seen since the peak of Kieslowski.

Renate Reinsve is extraordinary and should be alongside Olivia Colman as the Oscar front-runner. But everybody who sees this is talking about her. We should also be talking about Anders Danielsen Lie, whose performance is every bit as three-dimensional; he really moved me. With this and Bergman Island, he had quite a 2021.

And, in a year of enigmatic closing moments, this rivals The Green Knight for the most provocative and surprising.

Minus a star for the magic-mushrooms sequence which, while audacious, was just way too stylistically jarring and — worse — too on-the-nose. It's basically one of those unfortunate "Dream Sequence as Psychological Diagnosis" sequences. I've never tripped on shrooms, but I doubt that the illusions one suffers are as painfully obvious in their symbolic significance as this one. (It reminds me of some of the inadvertently hilarious dream sequences of the past: Vertigo, for example, or even Babette's Feast.)

5.
Summer of Soul
(...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson

https://youtu.be/U1Eg-vtSABE

Critical (g)race theory.

If we are to love our neighbors, we must see our neighbors, attend to their laments and their longings and their joys. This music festival has been buried in the basements of American music history, and Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson has rescued it — like Indiana Jones bringing the Lost Ark back into the light — so that we can reckon with the truth of it. This documentary is a parade of essential performances by great American artists for the most relentlessly persecuted population in America. It is imperative that all Americans recognize how much of the DNA of great American art comes from the fundamental Gospel of Black American music. These lives mattered then, and they were neglected (at best), abused, and erased. These lives matter now.

Republicans and evangelicals across America, in a flagrant campaign to feed the flames of racism and hatred, are ignorantly re-defining the term "Critical Race Theory" to dismiss anything that enables us to attend to, respect, love, and make amends with those our nation has so relentlessly tortured. For me, there is no peace so long as I am not using my considerable privilege to try and rectify this injustice. Summer of Soul is as sacred as any church service: a record of a persecuted people, the children of God, gathering to love one another, release their righteous anger, express their faith and hope, and celebrate their birthright of beauty. Bearing witness of this, I am ashamed of American Christians who have contributed to their suffering, and I repent of any ways in which I have contributed to those injustices.

May Summer of Soul be a refining fire in the minds and hearts of all who see it.

4.
The French Dispatch

written and directed by Wes Anderson | story by Anderson, Roman Coppola,
Hugo Guinness, and Jason Schwartzman

I published Part One of a two-part review of this film back in November, and I still haven't published Part Two. Soon, perhaps? Anyway, you can read the first review here.

And now...

Will you accept this? Is it just a cop-out? Or this what I really mean?

3. - 2. - 1. (three-movie tie)
The Green Knight

written and directed by David Lowery

https://youtu.be/sS6ksY8xWCY

My full review of the film is still in the works.

But here are the first impressions I posted at Letterboxd:

My impressions and feelings about this one are likely to change as I read, reflect, and see it again, which I will sometime in the next week. It's refreshingly complicated. Here are some first impressions:

1.
The movie I thought about most in the hours after seeing this: The Lighthouse. I get that it finds its narrative template in The Last Temptation of Christ, but this feels more like Eggers' gothic nightmare in that it combines moralizing, near-horror violence, an archaic dialect, relentless intensity (it's almost camp), chapter breaks, divine judgement, and (with respect to General Ripper) "precious bodily fluids."

2.
I've seen two films in less than a week that reference Val Kilmer's Madmartigan from Willow. Not surprised to see Lowery admitting that Howard's film was an influence. I am surprised, though, to learn that he had The Dark Crystal on the brain, too. I wish more directors had The Dark Crystal on their minds.

3.
Patel is a compelling lead who looks like he could age into the big screen's greatest Quixote someday. But I'm more excited about the supporting cast. Barry Keoghan is one of the most interesting actors in movies today. He was the life of the party that was The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and he steals the show again here to such a degree that I spend the movie missing him once he's gone. Joel Edgerton is so reliably good. He makes every movie he's in better.

4. I might have to go all the way back to Michelle Pfeiffer in the mid-80s to think of an actress that cameras love as much as they love Alicia Vikander. I mean... it's just scary how good she is in this.

5.
Moviegoers around me were audibly frustrated with this film, and they started leaving about halfway through. One group left at about the halfway point, and then the couple sitting in front of me left with five or ten minutes left in the film! The guy sitting to my right snorted in disgust at the last cut to the end credits. What was frustrating them? I don't know but it was probably some combination of Lowery's decisions that I found compelling and exciting:

- his refusal to make this an inspiring hero story;
- his commitment to translating and preserving a kind of strangeness and inscrutability that feels familiar to me from my undergrad studies of Celtic mythology; this exploration of character, destiny, and fate seems so foreign that it may be inscrutable to contemporary American audiences (and that's fine; they would feel that way about reading The Mabinogion or the early Arthur tales too, right?);
- his refusal to serve up a single moment of "satisfying" violence;
- his insistence on denying any satisfaction to the one character who might be interested in anything like "true love" (this movie is going be a downer for most who see it on a date);
- his casting of the irrepressibly charming Dev Patel as a complicated, flawed character who makes only a couple of moves in the whole thing that are, arguably, admirable.

6.
I've heard that the film is so dark visually that it's often hard to know what's going on. Maybe that's poor projection? The whole thing looked beautiful to me, but then I like it when I'm leaning forward into gradations of shadow instead of wishing I'd brought sunglasses for the blazing intensity of so much contemporary digital projection.

7.
As interesting as the movie is, and although it's my favorite David Lowery film yet, The Green Knight has for me a quality about it akin to all of Lowery's previous films: It's unconventional enough to command my attention and admiration, and it inspires a lot of post-viewing conversation, but it never really suspends my disbelief — I'm always thinking about the director's decision-making instead of the film. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I suspect it has something to do with directorial control: Everything here seems so carefully calibrated, so designed, that it rarely achieves any sense of spontaneity or play. Only the supporting actors find ways to strike sparks of unpredictability and real danger: Keoghan, Vikander, and Edgerton spice up their characters with idiosyncrasy and wit.

8.
I'm relieved to find this version of the myth is a resounding critique of masculine vanity — and one that serves up that critique without ever seeming preachy about it.

9.
I'm glad I stayed through the credits. There's a memorably enigmatic bonus at the end.

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Favorite Films of 2021 — Part Two: Honorable Mentions

The March madness continues! Art is not a contest, no matter how heavily the Oscars are hyped. But movies do give us a chance to share what moves us, what challenges us, what enchants us. In doing so, we have an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and — more importantly — more about our neighbors and the measures of truth and beauty they have discovered. I am by no means claiming what the "best" movies of the year might be. Nobody is qualified to make such claims. But I am delighted to share what was most meaningful for me. And so, here is Part Two of my series on my favorite films of 2021.

If you missed Part One, it's here.

Honorable Mentions

(listed alphabetically; not ranked)

Four outstanding documentaries about artists:

The Lost Leonardo

https://youtu.be/j0lXLGgQjYY

Danish filmmaker Andreas Koefoed's The Lost Leonardo is a riveting account of how a painting that was delivered to a New York address in a cardboard box quickly became the most expensive art sale in history. A great gallery of interviews, some impressive editing, and relentlessly surprising twists—including the second-most famous Leonardo (DiCaprio)—make this a compelling reality-big-screen mystery. Somewhere, Da Vinci is busting his way out of his grave and zombie-stalking the soulless monsters who are poisoning the art world in the ways that this film exposes.

I have some mixed feelings about the film, nevertheless. Unlike My Kid Could Paint That and The Painter and the Thief — this documentary doesn't seem particularly interested in art beyond its ability to inspire people to spend money. And that's too bad because it seems to want us to lament how art is misunderstood, abused, and exploited. Even as it raises the voices of art critics who resent the spectacle of Christie's art auctions, it delivers the spectacle of those auctions with all the flourishes of a suspense thriller.

In giving very little attention to why Da Vinci's art is revered above all other artists' work, it seems to end up amplifying the power of the very billionaires it intends to critique. We end up shaken with both alarm and awe at the ability of the rich and powerful to destroy some of the world's greatest treasures, but meditating very little on what makes the art beautiful in the first place.

In spite of that, stick around for the film's infuriating conclusion. Bonus surprise: You'll discover where the Ark of the Covenant is probably kept. (Spielberg was trying to tell us this ... way back in 1981!)

The Sparks Brothers

https://youtu.be/EOUsIYESOpM

I'll propose a catchphrase: "(Old f)arts for art's sake."

Repetitive (like Sparks' music), wildly enthusiastic (like Sparks' music), visually inventive (like Sparks' music videos), and really, really long... this Edgar Wright documentary is basically a bunch of talking heads talking about a band that probably influenced Talking Heads.

Like so many viewers of my generation, I watched this in a state of near disbelief. I had a voracious appetite for music throughout the '80s and '90s. I wrote music reviews, devoured music magazines like Rolling Stone and Mojo, and stood in midnight lines outside Tower Records to be among the first to buy a new release. I don't remember ever hearing about Sparks. But, as it turns out, a lot of the music I loved was inspired by Sparks, and a lot of the artists I admired found success doing things that Sparks had innovated years earlier. The story narrated here does more than provide a long-overdue tribute to American rock music's best-kept secret; it stands as a celebration of boundless creativity, artistic integrity, and a dedication to vision over commerce.

Here's what I kept thinking throughout: Somewhere there's a fan of They Might Be Giants who has been planning a documentary that spans the three-decade history of that prolific, idiosyncratic, funny, doing-their-own-thing-no-matter-what band, and they're watching The Sparks Brothers for the first time and shouting, "Well, dammit, what am I supposed to do now?!"

Val

https://youtu.be/YqNnhgEyQCU

Kilmer has been one of my favorite screen actors since it all began with Top Secret!, which is still on my list of five favorite film comedies almost 40 years later.

I've always found him more interesting than so many of his peers — his willingness to commit so completely to Top Secret!'s hilarity undercut the sense of vanity that emanated from Cruise and so many of his peers in other projects. Where Cruise focused on convincing us that he was feeling things, I could always tell that Kilmer was thinking things. For me, he was the most memorable guy in Top Gun and Willow, and he made so much of very few scenes in Heat. After marveling at his transformation in The Doors, I was excited at the prospect of Kilmer as Batman... and quickly discerned that it wasn't his fault that he may as well have been a mannequin in that film; the director clearly had no interest in him as an actor, or in Bruce Wayne as a character, whatsoever. (In that sense, Keaton and Bale, and now Pattinson have been very, very fortunate.)

It's intriguing to see what this career looked like quite literally through the eyes of the actor in question, and it's surprising how much this becomes a story about a deeply wounded American family. There are quite a few moments that feel like score-settling, and there are appeals to friends and colleagues (like Robert Downey Jr., on the archival video record) to absolve the storyteller of his alleged sins. And Kilmer challenges my trust in his judgment at times: when he celebrates the profundity of his own Mark Twain passion project, and particularly when he airs his personal grievances with people who aren't there to represent themselves (most of all when it comes to what appears to have been a very messy divorce). Such moments might excite audiences with a sense of voyeuristic "intimacy," but we've got to keep in mind that fame is an Advantage Megaphone in such circumstances. (God spare us from any project like this made by Woody Allen.)

Still, there are plenty of demonstrations of humility and sobering self-awareness to keep things from veering completely off course.

So, brace yourself for some turbulence — it's worth it for a remarkable and sometimes moving tour of Kilmer's archive of home movies, behind-the-scenes mischief, collaborations with other giants, brushes with greatness, brushes with fools, and eventual epiphanies. Like most memoirs by Hollywood stars, it's a story of thrills, rewards, disappointments, and damage — a life of fame, fortune, failure, and loss.

It's going to be a rare occasion that we get a life story from these pre-Internet decades so heavily documented with actual footage. Few stars have demonstrated such a spirit of curiosity about the people and the world around them. But the ubiquity of such projects going forward may soon become insufferable, as those with the resources and the name recognition can take control of narrating their perception of the meaning of their own lives to us by pillaging their own life-long social media accounts. I hope some of those storytellers will take a note from Kilmer's willingness to laugh at himself and his determination to dismantle any myth-making in the service of truth.

The Velvet Underground

https://youtu.be/hWq7a8Tin8g

In 2020, I listened to an episode of the excellent music podcast Sound Opinions and heard critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis make a compelling argument that The Velvet Underground and Nico is the greatest rock album of all time. As I had never given the album any attention, I went out and bought a copy on vinyl.

I've been playing it ever since, realizing that this music is already a part of my DNA — I've heard and been enchanted by these songs as isolated events over several decades but I've just never realized they were all from the same album. This has jump-started my curiosity about a band I've always heard about but somehow never really given my full attention.

And lo — just in time, Todd Haynes delivers a deep-dive documentary full of revealing interviews, intriguing split-screen juxtapositions, and mind-boggling performances. While I wish the movie gave the music more room to breathe, I feel like this documentary gives me much more than the history lesson I've been looking for. It's also strangely inspiring in how it tracks Lou Reed's journey — a story that would typically end in tragedy but that somehow defied the odds and concluded in many years of wisdom and grace.

Five Slick and Stylish Films
About Characters Trapped in Nightmares:

Last Night in Soho

https://youtu.be/AcVnFrxjPjI

R.I.P., Diana Rigg.

Edgar Wright's second notable feature film on this list would make a helluva double feature with Zola: A young woman gets escorted (ahem) down a road of debauchery into a mob of johns eager to unbuckle their belts, and we can't help but take her side as she's driven to horror, disgust, and even violence.

But this version of the story is profoundly conflicted in that it wants to be high-spirited and fun while also horrifying us and ultimately Saying Something About Exploited Women and Horrible Men. I wasn't able to perform the imaginative gymnastics to resolve the dissonance of it all. And I'm not sure the film has anything particularly profound to say beyond this: If you pick at any era's glamour, you'll find exploitation and abuse underneath.

It's not the cast's fault that it doesn't entirely work: Thomasin McKenzie is strangely mesmerizing (although I don't know how many more movies I can suspend disbelief about her quirky, pinched, baby-bird voice) and she holds her own surprisingly well alongside the Disney-Eyed Force That Is Called Anya Taylor-Joy. (I mean, in everything she's done so far, Taylor-Joy scares me with her ferocious confidence.) Matt Smith is smartly cast as a smarmy ass. And Terrence Stamp... well, it's good to see him again, even if I think his character doesn't amount to much.

Beyond that, there are some casting choices that, once all of the secrets are revealed, seem... a bit of a stretch? But that would be spoiling things. I'll let that go for now.

There's a lot of visual cleverness, a lot of Wright's typically slick needle-dropping, and it's all quite engaging, even in its drawn-out and somewhat desperate final act. It's worth seeing if only for the joy of watching Edgar Wright make something he's clearly excited about. But this one's going to rank far beneath his classic Cornetto trilogy for me, just as Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim do. I guess Wright's best magic is in his collaborative chemistry with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of whom are missing here.

Little Fish

https://youtu.be/knPhaXYG4YA

I originally included Little Fish on my Favorites of 2020 list. That's because I misunderstood its release schedule. It didn't become widely accessible until this year, so I'm bumping it up to this list.

2020 must have been a stranger year for Chad Hartigan than it was for many of us, considering how long he'd been working on this pandemic-focused project when the actual pandemic hit. Weird to compose science fiction that starts actually happening around you before you’re finished.

And Olivia Cooke must be emotionally exhausted from investing so much in two 2020 productions in which she is traumatized by the prospect of beginning to lose someone she loves.

I admire this ambitious step forward for Chad Hartigan as a filmmaker, the chemistry of O’Donnell and Cooke, the seemingly prescient envisioning of how a pandemic would play out in America, and the focus on goodness and grace in the midst of unthinkable horrors. Where Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind feels like an epic treatment of similar themes — and a more subversive one — this works well as an intimate short story told by a storyteller who finds it easier to believe that people can, at times, surprise us with tenderness.

Here's the conversation I had with Hartigan about the film early in 2021:

By the way, if you haven't already, while you wait to see this you should revisit Hartigan's This is Martin Bonner and Morris From America, both of which are wonderful.

The Card Counter

https://youtu.be/7RvVT1cDiNc

I’m sure I’m in the minority here, but I prefer Paul Schrader in this leaner direct-storytelling mode, where he's focused on characters caught in moral quandaries and not distracted by the temptation to "quote" greater art films. 2017's First Reformed will last as one of his most acclaimed films, but it felt to me like sitting through a film course; every scene seemed cluttered with asterisks and hyperlinks that reminded us of what cinematic milestones he was quoting.

I find The Card Counter more immersive, the chemistry between Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish, as gamblers who join forces, riskier and more interesting than Hawke's and Seyfried's. And the haunting score by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Robert Levon Been (son of The Call’s Michael Been, who played the Apostle John in the Schrader-penned Last Temptation of Christ) weirdly spellbinding.

I do come away distracted, though, by two things:

1) There's a scene in which a mother and son (?) are sitting by a hotel swimming pool and chatting awkwardly as if they’ve just met. Their seemingly incidental presence* and strange prominence draws all of my attention while they're onscreen. I have to assume that's this is purposefully composed, but their screen presence is distracting for the wrong reasons.

And...

2) Should Tye “Yes, I’m Brother #3 in The Tree of Life" Sheridan play Eddie Vedder in a Pearl Jam movie? He looks just right!

*(I actually do think their presence is important as a hint about what might prompt Bill to think about Kirc and his mother. They look like young Kirc and his mother.)

The Tragedy of Macbeth

https://youtu.be/ptqe7s6pO7g

I published a full review of this just a couple of months ago. You can read that here.

Werewolves Within

https://youtu.be/X0WzPQNIBJ4

Werewolves Within is what you get if you blend the quirky darkness of Taika Waititi's What We Do In the Shadows (and hey, Guillermo is here!), the slick lickety-splitness and grisly genre violence of Edgar Wright's Cornetto trilogy, and the "locked room" mystery formula of whodunits like Knives Out.

It's funny, it's fast, it's well cast, and it keeps you guessing. (Well, it might keep you guessing. Within the first several minutes I had decided that the culprit had to be one of two particular characters — no spoiler here — and the storytellers take the route I would have taken if I'd written it.)

But the comedy plays at an extremely high pitch — imagine a room full of the most exaggerated Coen brothers characters all yelling at once — with quite a few shouting match scenes overrunning their welcome. So you may not have as much patience for it as I did.

The opening epigraph gets a big laugh, and that sets a high bar for what will come. And for about an hour, the movie delivers, energized mostly by the two leads who are winning company for the full hour-and-40-minutes. Sam Richardson is a likable ranger who becomes the default sheriff and detective, and he has great chemistry with Milana Vayntrub who plays the flirtatious MPMP (manic-pixie-mail-person) in the very small, extremely interconnected community.

In the second half of the film, the storytellers lose their balance and start staggering around, ratcheting up the tension with frequent bursts of violence and hysteria as if they're not quite sure how to get this plane through the turbulence. We lose our grip on anything that might have become a storyline to care about. The Trumpy-ness of a particularly brash pipeline developer and his clash with a grim-faced environmentalist leads to some "timely and relevant" preaching about community and listening to our neighbors. But the film seems to realize how frivolous that preaching sounds, and eventually shrugs and surrenders any attempt to land profound punches. (In that sense, we might appreciate even more, by comparison, how Knives Out actually lands some sick burns on America's system racism and white vanity.)

So again, your mileage may vary. This doesn't become the werewolf movie that the What We Do In the Shadows team has been promising us, but if you enjoy this kind of balancing act between horror and laughs — the best equivalent I can think of might be the Nick Frost series Truth Seekers — you'll have a good time seeing this on the big screen. I miss the days of big, subversive comedies loaded with strong comedy ensembles — like The 'Burbs or Beetlejuice, for example. Last year, Extra Ordinary scratched that itch. This movie's just scratchy enough.

Come back soon! The big countdown of almost 30 favorites is coming up next...

by Jeffrey Overstreet

Favorite Films of 2021 — Part One: It's Complicated

It's March 12, 2022. The Oscars will be handed out next weekend...

...and I still haven't posted my Favorite Films of 2021 list!

Oh, well — better late than never.

Why? Why bother?

I wouldn't dream of skipping a year: List-making is a personal liturgy — a way of making sense of the past year, a way of celebrating and expressing gratitude for the works of imagination that fueled my thinking and fed my heart. I've been "posting lists" since I was 13 years old, imitating the film critics that so fascinated me, and "publishing" them in homemade magazines that only I would ever see, journals that were my version of an adolescent's diary. (I even reviewed my own first novels there when I was a kid. Ridiculous, sure — but I didn't know that. I was already head-over-heels in love with the world of art-making and art criticism. I was as excited about the reviews as I was about the art.)

Yes, but why bother posting this in March, when the year ended so many weeks ago? Most people posted theirs in December, or even back in November!

I don't believe in posting anything about "the year in review" when the year is not yet finished. Thus, I end up standing alone, speaking to an almost empty auditorium, after moviegoers are weary of reading so many lists. So be it. I like to take my time, see as much as possible, and then allow for those works of art to settle in my mind so that I can reflect, revisit some of them a second time, and ruminate.

There have been years I've invested a hundred hours in list-making, and I don't have that luxury anymore. So, in the interest of saving time, I'm changing up the format. This weekend, I will publish three posts covering three categories of 2021 feature films:

• "It's Complicated": films that I found memorably engaging in some ways, but frustrating in others;
• "Honorable Mentions": films I found admirable in art and craft, meaningful, and appealing for a second and third viewing;
  and
• "Favorites": films I want in my permanent blu-ray collection; films I want to write about extensively and share with others in film clubs, classrooms, and conferences.

Time will not allow me to write an essay on each film. I'll link to any writing I've already done. In many cases, I'll share the first-impressions that I posted at Letterboxd, or that I published for the Looking Closer Specialists in our private Facebook group.

The "It's Complicated" Films of 2021

(listed arbitrarily; not ranked)

Titane and Cruella

Two films that delivered cinematic sensory overload,
made with excellence in many technical categories —
but both troubled my conscience .

Titane was the big Cannes Palme d'Or winner in July, and it opened to widespread acclaim. I went into French director Julia Ducournau with high hopes and came out feeling like I needed to scrub my imagination with Lysol. The narrative is the farthest thing from plausible — which would be fine if I felt like the absurdities and fantasies added up to more than the sum of the parts. But I have yet to read a review that persuades me that most of what I've seen is more than mere audacity.

So, why am I mentioning it?

The cinematography, the merging of images and music, the performances, the ambition — these things have stayed with me, and I won't soon forget them. Also, there's a central thread of the movie that suggests that sometimes, for the sake of love, we need to step outside of the calcified definitions and judgments that give our worlds order. Sometimes, the only way to show grace is to offer an embrace even when that means bearing the weight of a broken person's wounds and wrongs. As frustrated as I was with Titane the first time, I might be willing to give it another go someday.

I reviewed Titane here.

Here's what I posted for the Looking Closer Specialists right after I saw Cruella for the first time:

I'm fond of asking, after a movie finishing paying lip service to various virtues, what the movie really and truly loves. Does it moralize about the evils and violence of war, but then invest most of its time and energy in dazzling us with sensationalized war violence in ways that thrill and dazzle us? Or does it have a meaningful integrity, aligning what it tells and what it is?

Regarding Cruella, I'll say three things:

First of all... the performances and style here seem inspired as much by Batman Returns as by The Devil Wears Prada, and I enjoy those aspects of this film very much. It hits a difficult bull's eye: a Classic Tim Burton balance of dark, twisted, campy, and earnest.

So I don't regret sitting through it as I thought I would. How many times have makeup and costumes ended up framing unremarkable performances in films like this? How many times have I seen films try to do that Michelle-Pfeiffer-as-Catwoman thing and fail miserably, exalting her iconic performance further by comparison? Here we get some deliciously and memorably idiosyncratic turns from just about everyone involved. Stone and Thompson are not just phoning it in; they're reveling in this opportunity, making something savory or sweet out of every single scene and they're backed up by a surprising and impressive supporting cast. (Shout-outs to Joel Fry, Paul Walter Hauser, and John McRea who elevate their roles with wonderful performances as Jasper, Horace, and the Bowie-inspired glam-tailor Artie.)

Secondly... I understand the grievances others are voicing about how this character really cannot be the Cruella of One Hundred and One Dalmatians — this story does not provide a reasonable origin story for that character at all. And even if it did, we don't need to cultivate sympathy for every devil, or we run the risk of minimizing the consequences of a villain's cruelty.

But this film feels so far removed from the world of the animated classic that it just doesn't feel like a Disney film at all. And anyway, if you stay for the end credits, you'll get a bonus scene that, in my opinion, might provide an out... a possible excusal of this film from that responsibility. I could be wrong, but I think it suggests that maybe this movie's Cruella really isn't that Cruella... but that this person might have inspired a storyteller to base a character on some of her aspects and exploits.

Thirdly... I still can't give this more than 3 1/2 stars because it commits the most flagrant case I've seen in a while of one of the most common and grievous of storytelling sins in mainstream American cinema: It feigns dismay at the destructive behavior of its protagonist, and makes a show of disapproval of her criminal ploys, but then goes to great lengths to explain where those behaviors come from so we shift the blame to someone else. And as it does this, it vigorously sets up an even more reprehensible character for this monster to oppose... one who is revealed to be just evil enough to make us root for the Lesser of Two Evils and cheer Cruella on in her Wicked-But-Not-Quite-So-Wicked ways.The end result, I fear, is the cultivation of a certain disregard for the fact that a young woman has turned to the Dark Side because, well... wasn't she fun to watch? And wasn't her enemy just despicable?So — this movie serves up a lot more fun that I anticipated, but then, alas, it spoils my fun by investing all of that good work in service of a story that arguably does more harm than good — by affirming, in method rather than in message, harmful behaviors. This movie loves Cruella DeVille more than it loves Estella — the nervy thief who evolves (or devolves?) into her. And even though one of the movie's characters — Jasper, to be specific — has enough of a conscience to sense the problem with Estella's heightening psychosis, the movie ends up cheering for her, and the end credits confirm that the film stands as a celebration of her triumph, tactics and all.

---

Wrath of Man and The Last Duel

Both were very well acted and very well made.
Both were gripping from beginning to end —
one in a conventional Die Hard kind of way,
and one with its lavish historical-epic imagery
and its Rashomon-style clash of narratives.
And I am uncomfortable with what felt like excesses of violence,
particularly when I think leaving some of those things to the imagination
would have been more effective and more ethical.

I reviewed Wrath of Man here.

I did not review The Last Duel here, so here are the first impressions I posted at Letterboxd:

Here's my review in four Halloween costumes:

Me, in the full armor of a knight, helmet under my arm, sword in hand, sporting my worst Matt Damon mullet, and shouting indignantly:

This movie is a powerful and affecting depiction of how even the most privileged of women in medieval times was stuck between the Rock of violent and abusive misogynists and the Hard Place of gender roles that undercut her at every turn! It may have rough patches, but I swear to you, I will defend its honor! This is the kind of movie we need in a time when the Powers That Be refuse to believe women. I demand that you all feel Marguerite's pain! Fight me!

Me, in a dark cloak that billows across the screen like oil into the ocean, my hair dark and long like Adam Driver's, speaking emphatically but with restraint:

Jodie Comer is the reason to see this movie. She deserves better than to be matched with ... this version of Matt Damon, whose scarring makeup is doing most of the acting for him. She is devastatingly good. I am consumed by my love for her performance.

Me, in the brightly colored and spotless threads of a Count, smirking beneath a bad Ben Affleck blonde crop cut:

Come on. Matt Damon as Jean de Carrouge?! Are we really going to accept that accent? Or should I say... those accents? And we're supposed to believe he's French? More like... Jean de Carridiculous, amirite?

Also... what am I doing in this movie? Isn't it distracting that I took a little time between Big Tabloid Romances to star as a wealthy playboy? Hilarious!

I apologize in advance for this one:

Me, with my hair spectacularly coiled and braided, wearing a dress so low-cut that some will call me a harlot, my voice trembling as if I'm on the verge of sobs:

Honor requires that I speak before the court! I am telling you the truth! This movie makes mistakes, it is true! And yes, it is heavy-handed and seems to announce its own relevance! Still, while it pains me to say it, I must declare that it is Truthful and Meaningful! It is not great Ridley Scott, but it is good Ridley Scott! And I will stand by it even if other critics subject me to a flogging!

...

[On a far more serious note: I was not prepared for the excruciating rape scenes — yes, scenes, plural — in this film. I feel deeply conflicted about whether those scenes, staged so fiercely, were necessary. I have a hard time remembering when I last felt so violently ill in a movie theater. Let that be a caution.]

Shiva Baby and The Humans

Both draw us into cringe-inducing family dramas full of grudges,
lies, betrayals, rants, breakdowns, and angst.
Both feature outstanding ensembles of character actors.
Both feature screenplays that are relentlessly clever and hilarious.
And both seem so preoccupied with the ugliness of humankind
that I staggered out starving for a reminder that people are beautiful too.
Don't get me wrong — the focus on flaws and failures
is purposeful in both films. But I doubt I'll revisit either one anytime soon.

Here are the first impressions I posted at Letterboxd when I saw Shiva Baby:

Is it... instructive? I suppose, if you need a movie to show you that it's unwise to sell your body for some extra cash, have multiple sexual partners without them knowing, or lie to your family and friends about your education or your job.

It is cathartic? If you've ever lived in a community of religious hypocrites in which everyone expects everyone else to maintain some level of respect and ritual fervor while nobody really holds themselves to any kind of meaningful standard, perhaps you'll find some release in laughing at the exaggeration of it all.

But I couldn't stop thinking about how much more I would enjoy revisiting my favorite Social Anxiety at a Big Family Gathering movie: Jonathan Demme's wonderful Rachel Getting Married. Danielle's desperation and claustrophobia as her foolishness begins dismantling her from the inside out during a very crowded formal event is certainly discomforting, and, for me, only occasionally funny — but it leaves us wondering whether it's ever going to offer anything but discomfort. And its last-minute glimmer of something like hope is pretty feeble. So often, comedies like this have only enough imagination and ambition to grant their characters some kind of fleeting happiness in the end, and I'm always left asking, "Would it be too much to hope for a little wisdom? A little goodness?"

Daniel Deferrari, Dianne Agron, and Polly Draper are my MVPs here. As Danielle's sex-for-cash crush Max, the quick-thinking Deferrari is so perfectly arrogant, unprincipled, and stupid that he'll have everyone eager to punch him in the face within the opening minutes. Agron turns Max's quick-thinking wife Kim — a.k.a. "Entrepreneur Barbie" — into something far more complicated than just an intolerably pretty face. And Draper is unnervingly good at playing a certain kind of Mother Who Is Always Right But Who is Also Capable of Switching Gears — from judge-y to supportive, from exasperated to empathetic — at a moment's notice.

For me, a little Fred Malamed goes a long way. He's so good at what he does — but he does so much of it here as Danielle's gregarious father Joel. I'm glad I watched this on my laptop so I could take breaks whenever Joel turns up what he probably calls "The Charm."

And here's what I posted at Letterboxd when I saw The Humans:

"Don't you think it should cost less to be alive?"

...

"So... this is what lies beneath."

...

Great to see the feather that twitched in an extreme close-up at the beginning of Three Colors: Blue make another appearance 29 years later... and in a horror movie!

...

"Because everything anyone's got, no matter who you are, everything you have goes."

....

This movie is what you'd get if Barton Fink's peeling hotel-room wallpaper wrote a screenplay.

Together Together and CODA

Both of these films are about intimate family relationships that are fractured
by unusual obstacles and challenges. Both of them are about dreamers who
suffer substantial setbacks. Both are funny, both are likely to make you cry
(for good reasons). I enjoyed both very much, even though neither one
felt particularly cinematic. And both were just a bit too skewed
toward entertaining me and not brave enough to challenge me...
in territory that I think should be more challenging for its audience.

I reviewed Together Together here back in May.

Here's what I wrote at Letterboxd after I saw CODA:

You've got to appreciate its big heart and its detailed portrait of a deaf family devoted to their multi-generational work of Massachusetts fishing. It'll be tough for audiences to resist the character of Ruby (Emilia Jones), a kind but frustrated "coda" (child of a deaf adult) whose singing voice is her ticket to a life beyond the uniquely challenging sphere of deaf culture.

I won't minimize the importance of what writer and director Sian Heder aims to do here, inviting and challenging mainstream audiences to consider, respect, and find greater empathy for our deaf neighbors. This film finds some affecting ways to honor those among us who need a particular courage, a particular patience, and particular disciplines in order to "get by" (a phrase that gets a lot of screen time in the film) in a society designed without much consideration for them at all.

And — as I explain in my book Through a Screen Darkly — I have a very specific connection with films about those who are called to the work of translation. So, despite my intent to bring critical tools to the work of highlighting the film's strengths and weaknesses, I can't deny that I'm a sucker for a movie like this: the broad-stroke drama of a young person struggling to connect a people of one language to a people of another without losing herself in the process just grabs me by the heart and won't let go. It may have all of the storytelling sophistication of what we used to call "an after-school special" or a by-the-numbers YA novel, but this choked me up several times. I lost my voice over characters who do not raise theirs.

Marlee Matlin will be the most familiar face here for most moviegoers, but the most human and affecting performances here come from those who bring a little nuance and subtlety to scenes where such three-dimensionality is absent from the script — particularly Emilia Jones as Ruby and Troy Katsur as her father Frank. For the most part, though, the emotions are big and bold, the narrative beats far too familiar to feel true, and the drawn-out climax takes us up out of any connection to authenticity into the stuff of conventional crowdpleasers.

I couldn't help but think back to Wild Rose, another recent film about a young and talented singer whose life has steered her away from any kind of "big break." That was a film that follows a similar arc — tremendous talent, a world of obstacles and personal weaknesses, a few unlikely helpers who provide the necessary encouragement and resources, a few troubling moments in the spotlight, a climax carefully calibrated to make us cry and cheer. But it felt so much more true-to-life, and while Jones has a lovely voice, Jessie Buckley rocked the house every time she stepped to a microphone, so much so that the theatrical experience was well worth it.

What's more, while Wild Rose wasn't exactly a work of visual poetry, at least it seemed to have been imagined for a big screen, with great care given to the look and sound of it. Outside of its depiction of an authentic fishing community in Gloucester, there's not any visual imagination at work here.

So, if you're in the mood for easy and unchallenging entertainment, you'll find some lovely moments here. It's easy to see why this was a Sundance hit (even if it's hard to imagine why it sold for a record-setting $25 million). Perhaps it will become a meaningful provocation to care for those who found Sound of Metal too abrasive and challenging.

The list will continue very soon!

Come back for the Honorable Mentions and my Favorite Films of 2021!

by Jeffrey Overstreet