In no particular order, here is my favorite music of 2021. 21 albums (well, one's an EP and one's a mixtape) and 13 film scores (Only Lovers Left Alive is a 2013 film, but the score was just released in 2021). The 4th album down is Ryley Walker's Course in Fable. The rest should be identifiable.
Albums
Scores
Covid has changed our lives in so many negative ways over the past two years. One of the most difficult for a cineaste such as myself has been having to find new ways to see all the movies throughout the year. Not really much of a problem in the grand scheme of things. In fact, it seemed such a trivial problem last year that as I struggled to catch up with the movies of 2020 to make my year end list of favorite movies, I eventually gave up. I had successfully seen almost all of the Oscar nominees by the time those awards finally rolled out at the end of April. At that point, the endeavor felt fruitless. This year we’ll see the Oscars a month earlier–around the same time of year they used to reveal them when I was a kid.
And so, 2020 became the first time in 20 years that I did not reveal my favorite films of a given year publically. I’ve been doing this since 2000, starting with the films of 1999–considered by many to be the best year in movies ever. Arguments about the quality of films being released these days aside–there are plenty of good movies out there–just because I didn’t put out a list last year, doesn’t mean I didn’t have one in my head. Just in case you were wondering, my favorite film last year was Judas and the Black Messiah. Of course, that brings another quandary to the task of compiling favorite movie lists broken down into release years these days. Several films in 2020’s awards circuit never saw release to the public until 2021. This begs the question, what gets considered and what doesn’t? I try to keep it to what is eligible for any given year’s awards. Therefore several films that were released early in 2021 are not going to be found on this list, most notably the aforementioned Judas, The Father and Minari, which were heavily featured in last year’s awards despite their 2021 release dates.
This year–as with most years–there are still a great deal of movies I didn’t get around to watching that will be heavily featured in this year’s awards. Most notable among those would be Liquorice Pizza (one that most assuredly would make this list), The Card Counter, Belfast, and The Tragedy of Macbeth. I will likely see these and other Oscar nominees before the late March date of the Oscar ceremony. For now, however, the movies listed below are my favorite movies of 2021.
Jordan Peele continues his appropriation of the horror genre to tell scary stories of black life in America. Using a source franchise that was already bent toward a black urban setting with a story that originally took place in Chicago’s notorious Cabrini Green neighborhood, Jordan and his co-writers tell a story of gentrification in which his heroes are just as culpable as the white land developers who bought up the land around the crime ridden area to transform it into the illusion of safety it represents today.
Director Nia DaCosta’s stylish handling of the material keeps the audience unsettled from the start with a visually disturbing opening credits sequence that contains no violence. She also recalls the events of the original film with expanded backstory using another unsettling technique involving shadow puppetry. She takes queues from Peele’s directing success by keeping the more traditional horror elements subtle and less sensationalized–a scene in a high school bathroom stands out with the amount of visceral horror it delivers without ever showing much violence to the audience.
Pablo Larraín’s Spencer imagines the biopic as horror movie. Considering its subject, that seems fitting enough. Larraín’s previous biopic, Jackie, was an impressionistic examination of Jackie Kennedy’s “Camelot” in the days following her husband’s assassination. Similarly, Spencer looks at a Royal Christmas following the revelation that Prince Charles has started a relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. Focusing on Princess Diana’s rebelion of attempted independence, Spencer shows the horrors of realizing that there is no independence to be had in a situation that is controlled by thousands of years of tradition.
Spencer is not a document of how the events depicted played out in the press. It is a much more personal examination of Diana’s struggle to define who she is in the midst of a family that has no interest in letting her be an individual in any manner. With a haunting score by Jonny Greenwood, Diana sees the ghost of Anne Boleyn and even questions her own sanity in a remarkable performance by Kristen Stewart. Only her children anchor her to any reality that can be interpreted as normal, amplifying her tragedy by playing on the knowledge of what we know is to come for Diana and her children after that.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights is such a celebration of joy that it’s nearly impossible to dislike it. Oh there are some people who can disparage that notion just for the sake of it, and yet it seems if those who wanted to dislike it were truly pushed up against it, it would envelop them and they would be forced to succumb to its positivity. Or perhaps that’s just what it did to me. Whatever the truth of that matter, I cannot deny that this movie made me feel better than any other this year.
In this homage to the New York City neighborhood of Washington Heights, director Jon M. Chu doesn’t shy away from its musical flights of fancy, creating a world in which gravity doesn’t always exist and a summer pool party becomes a modern version of a Busby Berkeley musical number. With wonderful performances by its surprisingly fresh-faced cast, it’s easy to see that Miranda’s inspiration meant a great deal to him and had a profound impact on his formation as an artist. Between this, Hamilton, and his Disney music contributions, it’s safe to say that Miranda promises to bring joy into the lives of his audiences for many projects to come.
Upon my initial screening of this movie, I–like many–wasn’t as taken by it as the critical lauding suggested I might be. It seemed like a good character study of a man those around him find impossible through his bullying and forceful nature. However, upon reflection the movie began to grow on me as Cumberbatch’s and Plemons’s nuanced performances of two opposite brothers came clearer into focus for me. It’s easy to think they don’t have any connection or understanding of each other, when I suspect the opposite is the truth they don’t speak of.
Kirsten Dunst is the woman who gets caught up in the middle of their mostly passive rivalry, into which she also brings an awkward teenaged son, played deceptively by Kodi Smit-McPhee. You may not see the turn of events coming in this movie–which distracts where it can–but even if you do, its performances and study of human behavior offer incredibly satisfying insights and revelations. Give it the time it deserves to have its impact.
There are actors, and there is Nicolas Cage. Cage is like that sibling or cousin that everyone seems to have where when someone mentions his name, your first thought is, “Now, what’s he’s done?” There are a lot of wiffs with Cage’s big swings, but sometimes there’s one that flies out of the park. Pig is a performance that soars so far out of the park, I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about it.
One reason that may be is because it’s a little difficult to talk about Pig without ruining it. That’s not because you don’t want to ruin the big twist, although you certainly could say there are many twists in this fairly unusual story. It’s more like you don’t want to spoil an amazing soufflé by trying to describe it with insufficient words. I can say that Cage plays a truffle hunter whose pig is stolen. The amount of dialog he speaks would make many of Clint Eastwood’s less talkative characters look chatty. His search for his pig opens a great many wounds for the stoic man, and not all of them are his. Alex Wolff also puts in a poignant performance as Cage’s buyer.
In 2018, a team of juvenile soccer players went into a cave with their coach in Northern Thailand and became trapped when early monsoon flood waters cut them off from the exit of the cave. The Rescue documents the rescue efforts spearheaded by amature cave divers because professional cave divers don’t really exist, With an amazing amount of on site footage, the filmmakers document the efforts from the point of no plans to a last ditch effort that had a high chance of resulting in death for one or all of the juveniles.
I remember this story quite vividly from when it was distributed through news stories throughout television sets in the morning and evening news slots. What this documentary reveals beyond the bravery of the men involved with the rescue efforts is the rather limited capacity with which televised news can disseminate information to the public. There was so much about this story that I had no idea about. But even more than the detailed information conveyed by this documentary, the filmmakers succeed just as effectively in matching the events with emotional impact. Hollywood is currently working on a dramatized version of this story. It’s hard to imagine it will match the impact of this doc.
Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley could be taught in storytelling classes and film classes as a perfection of the form. In fact, this movie is so perfectly executed, its twist ending might not come as a surprise to many since it’s really the only ending that could give satisfaction to all that came before it. It’s no surprise that del Toro is a master of style and mood, but rarely does he work with such traditional elements as those encompassed by a classic film noir grift. To see a master work in such a common form is to witness artistry at its finest.
Bradley Cooper makes for a perfect protagonist in a story such as this with his looks that make it believable–to the audience and the characters within the story–as someone who has things work out in his favor a little too easily. He also embodies a darkness at his core that helps drive his story forward in a way that you know it can’t hold together. The setting of a freak circus in the late 30s is a perfect playground for del Toro to draw the audience into the grift. It also allows him to draw some parallels with today and the shadow of WWII setting out of focus in the background.. Within the scope of focus, he never missteps even after leaving the confines of the carny life, emphasizing that the world of the rich is inhabited by much freakier characters.
A boy hiding a not so imaginary dragon friend, a woman unknowingly living with her deceased husband, and a knight embarking on an unwinnable quest. These are the subjects that fuel the imagination of filmmaker David Lowery. The latter of those three stories is his latest film, The Green Knight, a retelling of the Arthurian tale of the headstrong Sir Gawain and his challenge against the titular Green Knight. It is a tale of ghosts and thieves and strange offerings. It is like no other film I’ve seen before. It is a fantasy film that is deeper than most, one about the human soul more so that it is about conflict and resolution.
Dev Patel plays Gawain as a knight perhaps not so noble as we see them in legend, and yet he is more noble than the rest of the round table to accept the Green Knight’s challenge. The journey he takes is one of personal discovery. This–next to Nicolas Cage’s journey in Pig–may be the most personal story of all the films I’ve seen this year. That personal journey gives the film a claustrophobic feel, this sense that the viewer would wish to shield himself from the possible threats held within this fantasy world in which Gawain finds himself. There are giants that thankfully don’t get any closer to the action. The movie is about the value with which we live our lives. That is what ultimately determines the value of our lives.
It is a rare thing to be able to improve upon a cinematic classic. When Spielberg announced that he would be remaking the 1962 Academy Award Best Picture winner, I thought to myself, “Dude, what are you doing?” It was no secret that Spielberg had always wanted to direct a musical. Maybe don’t set yourself up for failure in doing it. Boy, was I wrong. Spielberg has been my favorite living director for my entire life. I should’ve had more faith.
My faltering faith aside, Spielberg has made a second masterpiece out of a masterpiece by infusing it not only with his signature spectacular visuals and lighting, but with a new found thematic of racially bent gentrification and reconciliation. He does this by subtly changing settings and dialog but staying within the Shakespearean framework and retaining all of the stunning music of Bernstein and Sondheim. Like Robert Wise’s original vision, color plays a vital role in Spielberg’s new vision, with costumes delineating sides, declaring moods and most importantly shifts in loyalty. This is the monumental filmmaking a director like Spielberg was made for. It is dramatic and bold, like the characters and emotions it embodies. This is movie magic.
It took me quite a while to decide what “my favorite movie of the year” was this year. There was no question that this was my favorite documentary, but as an overall film it’s more about the music than it is about the story it tells. It was when I actually said that out loud that I decided. Music is my other major passion in life and the music here is amazing. Much of this footage is rare in its depiction of some artists in a live format. Nina Simone is a force of nature. There’s early Stevie Wonder footage. It’s one of the few places to see The Staple Singers and many of the other gospel acts featured here live. It is a remarkable music document.
In realizing that I also realized that there most certainly is a story being told here, and director Questlove tells it well and never lets that telling eclipse the music itself. It is a story that needs to be told because it is a story about a story not being told. For 52 years, the only music story of 1969 was Woodstock. I’d never even heard of the Harlem Cultural Festival until this movie came around. It was filmed for television, but never aired. A half century later, people are finally starting to hear the black voices that were talking at that time. It was also a time of strife for this country and the black voice that wasn’t heard then still needs to be heard. All of that is in here with some amazing music heralding it. No soundtrack album was released for this movie upon its release last summer. An album was finally released a couple of weeks ago, and it sounds amazing, better than the movie. Questlove understands what he is shining the spotlight on, and he meticulously works to assure that its focus is sharp and not wasted. This is a document of something just as monumental as Woodstock and its voice is finally being heard on equal ground with that landmark music documentary.
I also very much enjoyed Barb & Star Go To Vista del Mar, Being the Ricardos, Don’t Look Up, Encanto, Fin, Free Guy, The French Dispatch, Halloween Kills, King Richard, The Last Duel, The Matrix Resurrections, The Mitchells vs the Machines, No Time To Die, A Quiet Place, part II, Raya and the Last Dragon, Respect, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Suicide Squad, Tina, Val, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage.
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