So I’m finally getting around to appraise the films of 2021 – just under the wire, in fact, as the 95th Academy Awards ceremony is this coming Sunday (March 27).
It’s nothing new for it to take a few months into the new year to do this as many movies aren’t accessible until well into the awards season, and there’s a lot of films to catch up with. However, there are a lot fewer than in years past for obvious pandemic reasons. In the Before Times of 2019, there were 792 films released in the U.S. and Canada; in 2021, there were 403. I haven’t crunched the numbers to calculate how many movies of those that I’ve seen, but I think I’ve seen enough to say that it was a good, not great, year for film.
Like last year, I’m not posting a Top 10, but if I were, I would pick Paul Thomas Anderson’s LICORICE PIZZA as my #1 movie of the year. The film resonated with me as it matched my memories of being a kid with acting aspirations in the ‘70s, and delighted me with its radiant, real-feeling turns by its leads, Cooper Hoffman (son of Phillip Seymour Hoffman), and Alana Haim. A brash Bradley Cooper steals the show as producer Jon Peters (the inspiration for SHAMPOO!), which made much more of an impression on me than his performance in NIGHTMARE ALLEY.
Speaking of Guillermo del Toro’s NIGHTMARE ALLEY, that was one of a number of movies from the last year that I admired more than I enjoyed. Likewise, I found Jane Champion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG, a front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar, to be a fascinatingly weird western with a masterful performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, but I didn’t connect with it in any great, emotional way.
Same goes with DUNE. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the first half of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi bestseller is amazing looking, and powerful in its presentation, but I felt a bit distant to it when I wanted to be more inside the action.
That’s not to say that it isn’t a worthy epic as it boasts a strong ensemble headed by “it boy” Timothée Chalamet, eye-popping visuals, a primo Hans Zimmer score, and a solidly intriguing storyline, yet I was still left somewhat cold by it. DUNE received ten Academy Award nominations for good reason, but I’m just hoping that PART TWO, due for 2023, will resonate more greatly with me.
2021 films that did speak me include Joel Coen’s spare black and white Shakespeare adaptation, THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, which earned Denzel Washington a Best Actor nomination (he deserves it for his intense handling of the “Is this a dagger which I see before me” soliloquy alone); Joachim Trier’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, which should’ve gotten Renate Reinsve a nom; Kenneth Branagh’s BELFAST (read my review here); and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s elegantly poignant DRIVE MY CAR, which I bet will win the Best International Feature Oscar on Sunday night.
James Bond movies usually don’t make my year-end best lists, but Cary Joji Fukunaga’s magnificent NO TIME TO DIE certainly deserves such accolades. Daniel Craig’s swan song as 007 is one of the series’ best, and you can read my reasons why in my review from when the film hit theaters.
One category that flourished in 2021 is the musical documentary genre. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s SUMMER OF SOUL leads the pack of pop infotainment with its colossal concert footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. How an event that featured such iconic performers as Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Sly and the Family Stone (among other luminaries) could linger in obscurity for so long is baffling, but thanks to Questlove, we’ve got an essential, and joyous addition to the roster of classic concert festival docs that includes WOODSTOCK, MONTEREY POP, and SOUL POWER.
Second to that in the rock doc division is Edgar Wright’s THE SPARKS BROTHERS with its loving breakdown of the eccentric career of Ron and Russell Mael’s Los Angeles-based band, Sparks. It’s one of the most entertaining, and funny rockumentaries I’ve ever seen, and since I’m a big fan of the genre, I’ve seen a lot of them. Wright’s film really should’ve been nominated for Best Documentary - I’d say instead of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s FLEE. Not that FLEE is undeserving, it’s just that it’s also nominated for Best Animated and Best International Feature too, so it’s pretty well covered.
Also worth seeing is Todd Haynes’ THE VELVET UNDERGROUND (read my review), Dan Lindsay and T. J. Martin’s TINA, about legendary singer, Tina Turner; and Garret Price’s WOODSTOCK 99: PEACE, LOVE, AND RAGE, which scarily depicts what’s been considered the worst music festival ever.
Finally, the musical documentary event of 2021 was THE BEATLES: GET BACK, Peter Jackson’s eight-hour exploration of the fab four’s sessions for their next-to-last album, Let it Be. We witness John, Paul, George, and Ringo rehearsing, joking around, arguing, and working on new material, capturing the band’s creativity as never seen before. The Apple Corps rooftop concert by itself makes for one of the year’s best docs as it’s been shown at IMAX theaters as a standalone film. Read my review of GET BACK here.
So there’s my overview of cinematic highlights of 2021. Friday, I will post my Oscar predictions for this Sunday’s broadcast. Hope to see you here.
More later…
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