It should be noted early that the amount of newer films and television watched during 2021 was greatly cut from earlier years, and some of this feels like the natural progression of an idea had as we crossed into the second year of the pandemic. Over the last few years I have become increasingly disillusioned by the importance of staying current regarding new stuff. Keeping abreast with new releases, new series drops on more streaming services than one has fingers, after a while it begins to feel like chasing ones own tail. And for what? For about a week of "cultural conversation" that is eventually beaten down to make room for the next time, designed for some kind of intense, but superficial, discussion and a way to keep one occupied for thirteen hours one weekend on Netflix. Films had the added issue of their cost, and I've observed that when I do not see a new release in theaters the odds of me seeing it in any kind of timely matter plummet. At home I look to eyeball something old, not some due diligence viewing that gives me hardly any pleasure.
At the beginning of 2021 I went into the year with my usual attempt at "watch less, reflect more", which ended up being a successful method for the first few months where I would sometimes watch one film in a day, sometimes none, to try and keep my capacity for recall greater. It also helped that it was early in the year, not the most saturated time for material, and also theaters had yet to open in my area. When they did reopen sometime in March I tried to remember the questions that guided my 2020: how much of what I saw was out of two decades of habit, and how much came from a genuine desire? I was surprised at the end of the year to find that I did actually cross (just barely) one hundred new films in the theaters, and I was even more surprised to see how few of them actually came out of some due diligence or misguided "well, I have to go see that. . . "In this way, I did not see as much of 2021s offerings, but I rarely felt like my time had been wasted.
And so here are the ten favorites that stood a bit above the rest followed by an alphabetical list of "runners-up". These runners-up can be found ranked and colorized in my "favorite films by year" section.
10. About Endlessness
Dir. Roy Andersson, Sweden
78 Minutes, Magnolia Pictures
Long-delayed as a pandemic casualty, Roy Andersson's collage of unrelated (but fully and entirely related), mostly single-take sketches (thirty-one of them in all!) cover an array of characters, historical moments, and daily minutiae. Andersson's usual carefully composed compositions, drained of color and full of detail, range from the dryly comic to the surprisingly violent to the simply observational, a film that rolls for under ninety minutes and seems to almost successful encapsulate all of human existence, both the tangible and the fanciful.
9. Compartment No. 6
Dir. Juho Kuosmanen, Finland
107 Minutes, Sony Pictures Classics
Leaving her seemingly disinterested and somewhat bougie girlfriend behind in Moscow, a young woman travels by train towards northern Russia and strikes up a friendship with a harsh Russian miner with whom she shares a compartment. Anchored by a pair of terrific performances by Seidi Haarla and Yuri Borisov, Kuosmanen's narrative has drawn comparisons to Linklater's Before trilogy (except without the pure toxicity of that coupling, but that's something else) but this connections feels like it does a disservice to its depiction of tender friendship and the fleeting overwhelming bond of the travel companion. As Haarla wanders through the wide open space of a house party in the opening scene (Roxy Music blaring during the opening titles, very cool), the mood is claustrophobic, her girlfriend compartmentalizing her relationship between her and her friends. As the two journey by train the compartment is full of life, the space both confined and liberating depending on the mood and the rhythm of the companion.
8. Pig
Dir. Michael Sarnoski, USA/UK
92 Minutes, Neon
"It's a good Cage movie!", I exclaimed recently, recommending Pig to a friend. I edited my original comment of "it's good Cage" because when does Nicolas Cage not bring a totally fearless confidence to even the most dismally directed works in which he appears? Pig begins with a simple premise that draws an obvious comparison to John Wick: Cage's beloved pig, indispensable to his work as a truffle hunter, is kidnapped and he must find the people who did it. But the film takes a turn (to say what an audience member said on my way out would spoil the whole thing), becoming something surprisingly tender about the memories we retain and the people (or animals) that we remember being around us during these key moments. Sarnoski is aware of our expectations of this premise, our expectations of seeing this particular leading man, and resists making us an audience for whatever movie that would end up being in our minds. Strong supporting work by Adam Arkin (always one of the most reliable of characters actors) gives the climax a lovely weight, and a middle of the film scene in a four star restaurant is just more evidence to show anyone when they disparage Cage as a performer.
7. The Worst Person in the World
Dir. Joachim Trier, Norway
127 Minutes, Neon
Joachim Trier's erratic, stream-of-conscious style that felt so showy back in his debut Reprise feels right at home in this episodic, novelistic piece of four years in the life of Julie (in twelve chapters!) Episodes range from the brief anecdote (Oral Sex in the Age of #MeToo!) to more detailed stories, and the film retains a rather playful style as Julie's decisions, ways of dealing with relationships, and youthful narcissism begin to affect those around her. Renate Reinsve (winner of Best Actress as Cannes) is as good as promised, the kind of performance that only works with a strong script and confident direction, and the films ultimate veering into the melancholic would not work without this particular build.
6. Wrath of Man
Dir. Guy Ritchie, UK/USA
119 Minutes, MGM
Guy Ritchie sets aside his cheeky snark and caustic wit for this dour, cynical, and completely grim revenge heist drama that has an intensity unexpected for this film maker at this point in his career. Like Pig, Wrath of Man starts with the mysterious as a man calling himself H (Jason Statham) begins working at a cash truck company. Who he is, what bought him there, and why he's being so damn secretive is gradually worked through (and here Ritchie might be the most himself with a series of parallel narratives and playful shifts in chronology) as the ensemble widens and the consequences messier. The film continued to subvert my expectations, adding a new slew of characters midway with their own motivations and desires and forcing the question of where our allegiances would be if these two portions of the narrative were swapped: if Statham, without all of our expectations and experiential weight attached to the actor, showed up midway and turned this other story on his head. And then the conclusion hits like a ton of bricks and you realize that nobody in this story can possibly have anything touching a conclusion not covered in blood, dirt, and regret.
5. The Killing of Two Lovers
Dir. Robert Machoian, USA
85 Minutes, Neon
Stressful and intense, Robert Machoian's solo debut The Killing of Two Lovers creates an unsettling aura early on and rarely drifts from it. Mixing Clayne Crawford's magnetically intense and unhinged lead performance, Machoian's economical shots and compositions, and the sparse, string heavy score, the film surprises in the simplicity of its narrative but complexity of its characters, with an atmosphere of strong violence even when it is a simple scene of two characters talking. A film that slipped through the cracks of a middle of the year in limited release but that is difficult to forget once seeing, and one of the strongest American debuts in recent memory.
4. The Power of the Dog
Dir. Jane Campion, UK/Canada/Australia
126 Minutes, Netflix
Jane Campion's excellent and absorbing dissection of toxic masculinity through the most toxically masculine genre (the western!) very slowly and rhythmically builds to its darkly surprising conclusion. Led by Benedict Cumberbatch in his best performance, Campion's script gives a great amount of subtle detail, motivation, and history to her other trio of terrific performers, and the films tight balance of this rather doomed quartet along this western landscape (with Jonny Greenwood's strings) create quite the hypnotic atmosphere.
3. Nightmare Alley
Dir. Guillermo Del Toro, USA/Mexico/Canada
150 Minutes, Searchlight Pictures
Following his Shape of Water Oscar win, Guillermo Del Toro gets the chance for a bit of a passion project: a big budget, studio driven adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham's excellent novel Nightmare Alley, not quite a remake of the noir from the 40s but a more faithful depiction of Gresham's pitch dark horror story of con artists and carnival spectacle. In adapting the novel, Del Toro retains its episodic structure (and the film is very cleanly cut into two very different halves) and occasional meandering narrative, but these end up being features rather than bugs as it allows one to drift into his beautifully detailed and very much lived-in production design, becoming an absorbing yarn that takes it time to get to its ultimate goal but holy smokes does that last few seconds clear out any of the hesitations one might have had getting to it. Perhaps having source material restrains del Toro a bit (in rewatching some of his earlier works in the last year his villains can really be quite too much), but Gresham's world is surrounded by no shortage of absolutely awful people. A horror film with nothing supernatural, where the monsters are just the purely animalistic tendencies of mankind. Saw this film twice and left both times with a giant grin on my face.
2. Nine Days
Dir. Edson Oda, USA
124 Minutes, Sony Pictures Classics
Leaving the theater after seeing Nine Days I felt like it would be an impossible film to top as my favorite for the year. Edson Oda's lovely and incredibly beautiful film of a group of souls being interviewed for a single opening on Earth gives a glimpse at a world where Winston Duke is not relegated to the doldrums of a Marvel franchise, giving a towering performance as Will, the closed off interviewer of whatever underworld he is involved in. Describing himself as a "cog", Will watches dozens of television sets all depicting the point of view of the souls he has deemed fit for an earthly existence. While the film might veer into the potentially episodic as each of the souls slowly gets written out of this world (and all worlds), Duke subtly makes sure to use each of these encounters and people into the proceeding conversations, leading to a final verbal ejaculation that is a moving culmination of a very carefully constructed performance.
1. The Velvet Underground.
Dir. Todd Haynes, USA
121 Minutes, Apple Films
Ah, boy. From the initial sound of overlapping drone tones reaching an almost unbearably loud crescendo (when I finally got the chance to see this film in theaters the man next to me covered his poor ears, not the last time either), Todd Haynes' portrait of The Velvet Underground (admittedly a favorite band of mine for well over a decade before this film was released) and the New York cultural scene of the 60s and 70s had me hooked in a hypnotic and often quite emotional trance for two hours. The band itself becomes used less as the primary focus and more of an entry way into this world of musical and artistic personalities, strung together through a series of beautifully shot talking head interviews and an abundance of photographs, home movies, paintings, concert footage, etc. etc., all of which are little pieces of art in their own right. As one of the interviewees discusses watching the band and always hearing something that cannot be easily accounted for, he dubs this the "group sound", and that seems to be the foundation of Haynes' thesis: it is impossible to point to a "leader" of any type of artistic boom or cultural renaissance, it is always going to be the result of some kind of overwhelming bond, in any definition of the word, between people (all the more why the film glosses over their third and fourth albums somewhat quickly following the departure of John Cale and Andy Warhol leading to the more "band-leader" role of Lou Reed). The film sounds tremendous, and the droning sounds of the Velvets played as loud as possible led to a surprisingly emotional experience. I've seen The Velvet Underground three times, and by the time we get to the end credit roll of Lou Reed and John Cale's beautiful rendition of "Heroin" (from Bataclan '72!) I was a wistful mess, sad to leave this world again but eager to find more and more of it to listen to (and revisit again and again). A highly inspiring and beautiful piece of work, perhaps not offering much new to the seasoned fan in terms of information but being a film worthy of and in complete understand of this bands rhythms, their colors, their tone, and what made their brief union so powerful.
Also very good:
A Hero (Asghar Farhadi, France/Iran)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, France/Belgium/Netherlands)
The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, USA)
C’Mon C’Mon (Mike Mills, USA)
Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond, UK)
Climate of the Hunter (Mickey Reece, USA)
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan)
The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy)
The Humans (Stephen Karam, USA)
In the Earth (Ben Wheatley, UK)
The Last Duel (Ridley Scott, UK/USA)
The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal, USA/Greece)
Mandibles (Quentin Dupieux, France/Belgium)
Mass (Fran Krantz, USA)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia/Thailand)
The Night House (David Bruckner, UK/USA)
Nobody (Ilya Naishuller, Japan/USA)
The Novice (Lauren Hadaway, USA)
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodovar, Spain)
Red Rocket (Sean Baker, USA)
Saint Maud (Rose Glass, UK)
Shiva Baby (Emma Seligman, USA)
Stillwater (Thomas McCarthy, USA)
Swan Song (Benjamin Cleary, USA)
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, Georgia)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan)
Favorite performances, writing, crafts, etc. etc.
Direction:
1) Jane Campion - "The Power of the Dog"
Guillermo Del Toro - "Nightmare Alley"
Todd Haynes - "The Velvet Underground"
Mike Mills - "C'Mon, C'mon"
Edson Oda - "Nine Days"
Lead Actor:
1) Winston Duke - "Nine Days"
Nicolas Cage - "Pig"
Clifton Collins Jr. - "Jockey"
Benedict Cumberbatch - "The Power of the Dog"
Simon Rex - "Red Rocket"
Lead Actress:
1) Olivia Colman - "The Lost Daughter"
Jodie Comer - "The Last Duel"
Maren Eggert - "I'm Your Man"
Seidi Haarla - "Compartment No. 6"
Renate Reinsve - "The Worst Person in the World"
Supporting Actor:
1) Benecio del Toro - "The French Dispatch"
Ben Affleck - "The Tender Bar"
Bradley Cooper - "Licorice Pizza"
Jason Isaac - "Mass"
Vincent Lindon - "Titane"
Supporting Actress:
1) Martha Plimpton - "Mass"
Zazie Beetz - "Nine Days"
Cate Blanchett - "Nightmare Alley"
Kathryn Hunter - "The Tragedy of Macbeth"
Molly Parker - "Jockey"
Animated Movie: "Luca"
Voice Performance: None to single out
International Film: "The Worst Person in the World"
Original Writing:
1) Edson Oda - "Nine Days"
Fran Kranz - "Mass"
Mike Mills - "C'mon C'mon"
Michael Sarnoski - "Pig"
Joachim Trier/Eskil Vogt - "The Worst Person in the World
Adapted Writing:
1) Jane Campion.- "The Power of the Dog"
Guillermo del Toro/Kim Morgan - "Nightmare Alley"
Andris Feldmanis/Juho Kuosmanen - "Compartment No. 6"
Stephen Karam - "The Humans"
Emma Seligman - "Shiva Baby"
Score:
1) Jonny Greenwood - "The Power of the Dog"
Warren Ellis/Nick Cave - "The Velvet Queen"
Þórarinn Guðnason - "Lamb"
Nathan Johnson - "Nightmare Alley"
Alex Weston - "The Novice"
Cinematography:
1) Ari Wegner - "The Power of the Dog"
Paul Thomas Anderson/Michael Bauman - "Licorice Pizza"
Eli Arenson - "Lamb"
Dan Laustsen - "Nightmare Alley"
Robert D. Yeoman - "The French Dispatch"
Editing:
1) Affonso Gonvalves/Adam Kurnitz - "The Velvet Underground"
Olivier Bugge Coutte - "The Worst Person in the World"
Lauren Hadaway/Nathan Nugent - "The Novice"
James Herbert - "Wrath of Man"
Claire Simpson - "The Last Duel"
And, lastly, my favorite television of the year (alphabetically):
A.P. Bio
The Great
How To with John Wilson
I Think You Should Leave
Landscapers
Midnight Mass
Mythic Quest
The Other Two.
Scenes from a Marriage
Yellowjackets