Films make a big comeback in 2021
2021 in American cinema was remarkable in how it seemed so… normal. Whatever the numbers say, my feeling was that the year started a little slowly, then found its footing around March, then kicked into something like a normal gear over the summer. As fall approached, and it seemed to me more theaters reopened, a slate of films pretty much like those in 2019 awaited. Winter seemed to bring somewhat larger than normal crop of smaller-budget films, and here we are, at the end of the year with a number of solid films released, awards season in full swing, and waiting for Oscar noms in just over a month.
So here are my top 10 films of 2021. See these 10 films in any order you want, preferably in the theater, but on your couch if you must. Here’s hoping for more of more of the same in 2022.
10. Nobody
Bob Odenkirk, in a glorious throwback to Bruce Willis, has jumped horses mid-career and turned in an immensely entertaining if, purely by-the-book One Man Army film about the perils of trying to bury the past in a secret safe room under an average suburban home. Directed by Illya Naishuller from a script by John Wick penner Derek Kolstad. With Connie Nielson and the all too infrequently working Chistopher Lloyd.
9. Don’t Look Up
Adam McKay’s days of Ricky Bobby yucks or Big Short complexity seem like something from deep space, which is where an asteroid that’s more than three Taladega Speedways large hurtles toward Earth, and its doomsday rendezvous with a world too lost in its own Red-Blue culture war to save itself. McKay must have needed to bust out after too many tedious Succession party scenes. If there is something darker than a black comedy, this is it. With a Towering Inferno sized ensemble, headed by Leonardo DiCaprio and the unfortunately miscast Jennifer Lawrence.
8. Being the Ricardos
Once you get past the distracting fascination with Nicole Kidman’s inflated face, you’ll realize you’re 25 minutes into a tightly scripted and expertly acted, but very traditional story written and directed by Aaron Sorkin about the power of love and trust to tame the Hollywood-Washington two-headed attack dog. Special kudos to Arrested Development alums Tony Hale and Alia Shawkat in strong supporting roles, and to J.K. Simmons, who’s just always solid.
7. Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
When it sticks to the music, and the musicians, and resists the urge to historisize, this account of a free New York concert in the summer of ‘68 shines from curator Questlove’s talent for picking prime moments of funk, R&B and gospel bands, and peeling away the layers of history to reveal performers delighted with a stage on which to perform, and united by a shared belief in the healing, or at least, calming power of good music. Oh, and the costumes will jump out of your TV and into your lap!
6. Licorice Pizza
Thank goodness Paul Thomas Anderson grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the ’70’s, or we would have absolutely no idea it ever existed! The script for this somewhat gauzy look at the odd pairing of 15-year-old Gary and his 10-years-older crush Alana should have been given to an earlier version of Adam McKay, who would have tightened up the scenes and certainly avoided the embarrassment of Bradley Cooper desperately chasing after lost Boogie Nights characters. However, the spectacle of Alana Haim navigating a gargantuan and out-of-gas moving truck down twisty canyon avenues – backwards – is definitely worth the price of admission.
5. The Power of the Dog
Anyone remember 2009’s Bright Star? I thought so. In the ELEVEN years between that film and Jane Campion’s newest, she’s clearly had a lot of time to think. And she clearly wants us to fall deep into thought upon viewing this chamber drama set in turn of the 20th century Montana. Benedict Cumberbatch, current front runner for the Daniel Day Lewis career arc award, plays a Yale educated rancher with a salty demeanor and some less-than-sweet secrets. Opposite him are an impressively understated Jesse Plemons, and a somewhat uneven Kirsten Dunst. This advice should apply to all these films, but definitely catch this one in a theater, and you should have no trouble, as I predict it will ride herd on a number of Oscar nominations.
4. Judas and the Black Messiah
The anger-fueled energy coursing through this film could power a future Fred Hampton museum for a week. The story of the brief life and despicable death of the Chicago Black Panther features incandesant performances by Jesse Plemons, Lakeith Stanfield, Dominique Fishback, and Daniel Kaluuya, who delivers perhaps the best single-scene performance of 2021. To call the film Shakespearean in its influences, is to miss the rare intersection of elements – acting, editing, writing, directing – that should place Judas at the top of the historical crime drama genre.
3. Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street
Origin story docs must always navigate the dangerous waters of history and nostalgia, yet still must answer the age-old question of “How did it happen?” Street Gang focuses on the beginnings of Sesame Street, with due focus on both the educational and the entertainment aspects, and manages to avoid too much nostalgia, and too much self-importance. Why so high on my list? Apart from being very well-crafted – especially considering the abundance or material to work with – it looks back to look forward by offering us hope that circumstances can coalesce to produce truly great works of culture that help us all become the better people we think we can be.
2. The Rescue
The 2018 rescue of a number of Thai soccer players from the Tham Luang cave complex seems ready-made for a cookie cutter documentary, given it has a happy ending and evokes our universal fear of confined underwater spaces. But director/producer couple Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who made the 2019 oscar-winning Free Solo, know to focus on the people, and also to expand the film’s scope to let us see inside the caves, feel the frustration of thwarted initial rescues, and fill out those involved with just enough character and dramatic elements to create a rich ensemble of players and a surprising amount of seemingly real drama. I’ll go out on a short limb and say it’ll probably win an Oscar in 2022 for Best Doc.
1. The French Dispatch
With a catalog of films like director Wes Anderson has, it must become increasingly difficult to come up with something new and impressive, which is partly why this film is so impressive! Andersonites like myself will always have their tiers, and insist on dragging loved ones through yearly trawling expeditions of old titles to revalidate that yes, Tennenbaums is his best, no, wait, maybe it’s Bottle Rocket… etc., etc. His latest, set in Ennui, France, and loosely based on an issue of the vaunted New Yorker, manages to corral all of the Andersonian elements that keep him among the top of American auteurs, without seeming to fall prey to the impulse to create something that falls to less than his incredible standards.
