The Best Pictures of 2021

As this is written, the 2022 Academy Awards presentation - honoring the best movies of 2021 - is fast approaching (on Sunday March 27 to be exact, starting at 5 pm Pacific or 8 pm Eastern). So, this reckoning is coming on the late side, but for good reason: I wanted to see as many of the nominated films as I could* before weighing in. I’m also an inveterate procrastinator.  [* The only major nominee I've not seen,with apologies to its fans) is Licorice Diner.]

Still, I am frequently asked my opinion on the best films of the past year and to be honest, during awards season I have to ask myself the same question. So, at long last I have my list, which I’ll share with you momentarily.   It’s hard enough to narrow the dozens of films I’ve seen over the past year down to a ten best list. Last year, you may recall, I was only able to whittle the possibilities down to thirteen or fourteen “Best Films of 2020”, along with another fourteen I called “Honorable Mentions”.   In both cases, I listed the pictures by title in alphabetical order, rather than attempting to rank them from 1 to 14.

This time around, I have succeeded in limiting myself to ten “best” movies. I’ve even divided this list into two groups: the five best and then the next five best. Following that, I’ve compiled two further lists of 2021 releases that I admire: the first of these is analogous to last year’s honorable mention category, which is, simply put, additional films I liked a lot, in this case eight of them. Some of these might well have ended up in my ten best list had I compiled it a week or two earlier or a week or two hence. Making a list of favorites is, after all, a subjective exercise. The other category of pictures I really liked I’ve called “Un Certain Regard” – cribbing the title from the Cannes Film Festival, which annually awards a prize in addition to their main competition awards for new movies that are particularly novel, innovative and or audacious. I’ve listed two films in this category, both of which are not exactly mainstream, yet among my absolute favorite movie experiences of the year. 

Finally, I have added a new section to list a few highly touted pictures that I think are way overrated and or disappointing.  There are seven movies in this new category. With two exceptions, they weren’t terrible movies, just far less than expected and not at all worthy of the high praise heaped on them by mainstream critics – and for at least three of them - by the Academy.

To be clear, my purpose here is not to handicap the Academy Awards show nor to otherwise predict who the Oscar winners will be.  I have no insight into the politics of Oscar choices nor the internal biases or predilections of Oscar voters other than what I read in the papers – and I rarely read the stories about who is or isn’t likely to win what. What I’m really trying to do is take advantage of the year-in-review aspect of the awards season and give you the benefit of my thinking about which of last year’s spate of films stand out as the best and why. If I can encourage you to see some movies you haven’t considered or haven’t gotten around to seeing; or simply to think a little differently about those you have already seen, that would be great. 

I am providing short commentaries on each of the top ten movies, and links to my fuller comments of those that I’ve previously reviewed. If you just want the lists without commentary, just scroll down the page for that information.

So here goes:

Len’s Five Best Films of 2021 [in alphabetical order]:

A Hero – written & directed by Asghar Farhadi

Belfast – written and directed by Kenneth Branagh

Cmon C’mon – written and directed by Mike Mills

Drive My Car – directed and co-written by Ryusake Hamaguchi

West Side Story – directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Tony Kushner based on the play by Arthur Laurents

In my October 2021 review of A Hero, I called it “an intelligent, captivating and intriguing film”  by a “master filmmaker”. Farhadi has already won two Oscars – one for A Separation in 2012 and the other for The Salesman in 2017 and is indeed a master. He ought to be in the running for a third for A Hero, but he got snubbed in the “Best International Feature” category in favor of Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, a warm-hearted little film about a young man’s transformative experience teaching in a remote Himalayan village - lovely, but far from extraordinary.  A Hero, by contrast, is remarkable: a deep dive into a common human experience: the seduction of the convenient little white lie and its repercussions; delving as well into issues of trust, reputation, the social media mob and cancel culture.  Read my in-depth review HERE.

Belfast is a semi-autobiographical film by the gifted actor and director Kenneth Branagh based on his childhood in Northern Ireland’s capital. Filmed in black and white and set in 1969 during the early days of the Troubles, the story centers on nine-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill) and his family, contrasting his childish innocence and more or less idyllic home life with the increasing sectarian violence in their mixed neighborhood – an ever-present threat to everyone there. Most of the action takes place in Buddy’s home or in his school classroom and on the street in the one block that was Buddy’s world. It’s a beautifully realized world, painted with great attention to detail and nuance; enlivened by a strong ensemble cast doing remarkably good work: Caitriona Balfe as Buddy’s Ma, Jamie Dornan as his Pa, and Oscar nominees Judi Dench as Granny and Ciaran Hinds as Pop, his grandfather. This is a poignant, deeply involving work of art. 

Mike Mills’ new film C’mon C’mon is his first feature film since 20th Century Women in 2016. It stars Joaquin Phoenix in one of his warmest roles to date, and a far, far cry from his last one as Arthur Fleck in Joker (2019).  Phoenix plays Johnny, a radio journalist who is travelling the country interviewing school kids about their opinions about grown-ups, life in general and the future – filmed with real kids and their very real viewpoints. This is interesting in itself, and reverberates wonderfully into the main narrative.  When Johnny’s sister Viv (an excellent Gaby Hoffman) asks him asks him to care for her son (Johnny’s nephew) Jesse while she tends to a somewhat extended out-of-town family emergency, Johnny is thrust into a very different relationship with a kid:  24/7 real life responsibility. Jesse is precocious, adorable, and complicated. He is played to perfection by newcomer Woody Norman – age 10 at the time of filming – who appears to share these attributes with his character. The pairing of Johnny and Jesse is a life-changing experience for both.  In the wrong hands this could have been a schmaltzy mess. Instead, it is a creative and endearing triumph.

Drive My Car is one of the strongest contenders for the Best Picture Oscar, and one of the strangest for a number of reasons: It’s a foreign language [Japanese] picture, with subtitles – a rarity for the very USA-oriented Motion Picture Academy; it’s long at just about three hours – an epic length for an Oscar nominee that is not an epic in any other sense of the word; and it is a slow paced, meditative film about topics rarely honored in Hollywood: grief, loss, friendship, and the creative process. It’s also about sex and jealousy but, like a lot of French new wave films of the early 1960s there is more talk and contemplation than skin and violence around these topics. Despite its length, Drive My Car is never meandering or dull; it’s emotionally and intellectually engaging throughout, driven by great writing and uniformly excellent performances, particularly the two leads – Hidetoshi Nishijima as an actor and renowned avant-garde stage director, putting together a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya with a multinational, multilingual cast in Hiroshima, while mourning the death of his wife two years earlier; and Toko Miura as the taciturn young woman professional driver, assigned to drive him to and from the theater, and wherever else he might need to go. Despite the significant age difference between the two, you might expect a developing relationship in the offing, simply because of the pairing of this man and woman - and eventually you’d be right. Except it’s not a romance, but a soulful bond born out of shared feelings of loss, betrayal and loneliness.  Think Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray, thirty years her senior, in Lost in Translation (2003); not the string of Audrey Hepburn screen romances with much older actors (such as Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, and Cart Grant) that now seem so unseemly. This is a film that keeps on giving, resonating more and more deeply over time.  

The big question most folks have about West Side Story before seeing it is why? Why remake a great, classic film, in this case perhaps the greatest movie musical of all time? The 1961 production won ten Oscars including Best Picture of the Year. The new film even has the same songs (music by Bernstein lyrics by Sondheim).  As I noted in my December review, the original movie differed from its source, a smash Broadway stage musical, in some important respects, not all of them for the better. Many of the lead actors in the film had their singing voices dubbed for the classic songs. Also, the earlier film’s use of non-Latin actors playing the Puerto Rican Sharks and their lovers and community members sticks out nowadays in ways that were less noticeable or repugnant to mid-20th century audiences.   Most importantly, though, between director Stephen Spielberg, screenwriter Tony Kushner, and director of photography Jamusz Kaminski, the new movie seems, to me at least, more alive, fresher, and despite the age of the source material, more contemporary that it’s sixty-year-old predecessor! As I explain in my in-depth review, this new production is simply better. It really soars. Read that review HERE. 

The Next Five Best Films of 2021 [in alphabetical order]:

Flee – directed & co-written by Jonas Pohar Rasmussen, co-written by Amin Nawabu

Nightmare Alley - directed & co-written by Guillermo del Toro, co-written by Kim Morgan

Parallel Mothers – written & directed by Pedro Almodóvar

Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time – written & directed by Lili Harvát

Summer of Soul (When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) – directed by Questlove [Amir      Johnson]

Flee is an amazing hybrid of a movie - the only film ever to have been simultaneously nominated for an Oscar in the categories of Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature. It probably should also have been in the list of Best Picture of the Year nominees.  It’s that good.  But wait … an animated documentary? Yep. It’s the remarkable true story of a how a boy named Amin, who at age nine became a refugee from war-torn Kabul, along with his mother and older siblings (his father having been arrested and presumably killed). Their harrowing journey eventually lands them in Moscow, in a crappy apartment where - after an abortive attempt to steal away, they stagnate for months and years, with no official status and no prospects. At 15, Amin makes his way, alone, to Denmark, lying (claiming he is an orphan) to avoid deportation.  There, he eventually thrives, attending high school, then university. Along the way, he comes to realize that he is gay. Years later, he is approached by a high school friend who has become a documentary filmmaker (Rasmussen), and he agrees to tell his story – with the proviso that his true identity not be exposed – to protect his citizenship status, his family and his male fiancée to whom he has never told the whole story before. How to turn a series of interviews about events twenty years in the past into a compelling movie and protect the subject’s anonymity? Animation turned out to be the creative answer.  Still, the narrative voice belongs to the real Amin and the story is more than amazing. Alternating between the treacherous journeys of a refugee kid and the concerns of a still frightened but successful adult, trying to reconcile his past with his present and hoped-for future, the movie is riveting, affecting and inspiring - in a word: brilliant.  

Nightmare Alley is a remake of the 1947 noir classic of the same name. That one starred Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell and Coleen Gray. The new picture stars Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, and Cate Blanchette, also featuring Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen and Ron Perlman. In short, a pretty strong cast. Perhaps most importantly, it is directed by the great Guillermo del Toro [Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017)]. Del Toro was made for the world of shadowy, seamy 1940s-style noir – obvious from the opening scenes (set in the forties), as Stan (Cooper) burns down his house somewhere in middle America, becomes a drifter and hooks up with in a two-bit travelling carnival on a dark and stormy night, just as it is packing up to move on to the next godforsaken town. Once there, he picks up on the arts of carnie swindle and sets his sights on bigger game. Everything about Nightmare Alley is delightfully sordid and disreputable.  And it moves along seamlessly with solid direction, convincing mise en scene, terrific acting, and a terrific story. It is that modern rarity: a great genre picture.    

Parallel Mothers is the latest in a string of terrific films by Pedro Almodóvar. This one stars his frequent collaborator Penelope Cruz, and it’s a showcase for her considerable talents. She is nominated for an academy award as Best Actress and, to my way of thinking, her only real competitor, based on quality and artistry of performance, is Jessica Chastain for her work in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Cruz plays a professional photographer who becomes pregnant and decides to have her child, even though she has broken off her brief relationship with the baby’s father. Shortly before giving birth, she meets a much younger woman (Milena Smit) – an unwed teenager equally pregnant - in the labor and delivery ward, and the two bond over their shared experience of new motherhood, both giving birth to daughters at about the same time. Their lives intertwine until fate interposes thorny, heart-rending complications. The movie becomes an emotionally agonizing, psychological thriller in that distinctly Almodóvar style.  But it is much more than that – too much for a capsule summary. In my January review, I noted that Parallel Mothers is “a beautiful, absorbing, provocative film, with an intriguing, twisty story, truly remarkable acting (including one of Penelope Cruz’s most memorable performances,) and lovely cinematography”.  Check out my full review HERE.  

Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is an award-winning Hungarian film that might best be described as a romance wrapped in a mystery or vice versa. This was Hungary’s 2021 Oscar submission for best International film, although due to covid, it had little to no theatrical release here in the US or in Europe. Here’s the narrative setup: Marta (Natasa Stork) a Hungarian neurosurgeon, for many years now a big-deal specialist in America, returns to Budapest to connect up with János (Victor Bodo), a Hungarian man she met and fell in love with at a medical convention in New Jersey. This was no ordinary crush or sexual escapade but, at least in her mind, a deep soul-meshing once-in-a-lifetime perfect match. When he departed, the two made an impulsive Before Sunrise style agreement to meet exactly a month later at the foot of Liberty Bridge in Budapest. She has come, but János is nowhere in sight. She tracks him down and confronts him on the street outside his medical office. He is startled and seems not to recognize her. More than that, he says she surely must be mistaken as he has never met her before. After the brush off, Marta is understandably confused and starts questioning her own sanity. Nevertheless, she is not ready to give up and determines to stick around and try to unravel the mystery.  For Marta as well as us, the situation is fascinating and confounding (although, for her, not in that order). It’s a movie Hitchcock would have been proud to make, very involving, with many twists and turns, terrific acting, a beautifully constructed narrative, and a great sense of uncertainty.

Summer of Soul is a film about a place, a time, and a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience.  Here’s how I started my July 2021 review: “Maybe you’ve already heard or read some of the many accolades being heaped on Summer of Soul by movie critics, music commentators and just about anyone else who has seen it. They are all true. What we have here is a documentary of a 1969 music festival in Harlem featuring some of the best known and most talented artists of the day. This is an instant classic, folks. It is a picture that I enthusiastically recommend to anyone who came of age (give or take) in the 1960s; to anyone that has an interest in modern American cultural history, Black history and/or Harlem; and of course to anyone who enjoys what goes under the broad rubric of Black music: sixties Motown and soul music, gospel and spirituals, jazz, blues, funk, Afro-Cuban, fusion . . . an entertaining experience that is at once toe-tappingly exciting, spiritually hopeful, and quite moving. At the same time, the movie is fascinating from a cultural and social-history perspective, with a tone that ranges from celebratory to nostalgic and even a bit regretful - in that so many hopes and aspirations that were in the air back in the day have yet to be realized fifty years on.”  I concluded that Summer of Soul is much more than a great concert film. It’s “a time capsule of a mood, style, and political feeling at a very happy moment in a very tumultuous time. It may thrill you and it may move you. If you can see it on the big screen or a home screen with excellent sound all the better; but see it!”  Read the complete review HERE. 

Other 2021 Movies I Really Liked [in alphabetical order]:

Coda

The Hand of God

King Richard

No Sudden Move

The Rescue    [link to my October 2021 review]

The Tender Bar

tick, tick … Boom

The Worst Person In the World

Un Certain Regard:

Nine Days     [link to my August 2021 review]

Derek DelGaudio’s In and of Itself     [link to my June 2021 review]

Most Overrated or Disappointing Movies of the Year:

The French Dispatch – Wes Anderson is in a rut, using his patented arch - but no longer creative or amusing - style to tell three mostly dull stories. 

The Humans - what was an absolutely brilliant stage play has been transferred to the screen by its author into a dull, depressing, disaster. 

Passing – A decent, if flawed, movie about two Black ladies  in early 20th century NY, using their relatively light complexion to pass as white. On this list due to the unwarranted over-exuberant  praise the film received on its release. 

The Power of the Dog – An interesting neo Western by Jane Campion, that has been hailed, for reasons I cannot fathom, as a truly great movie. It’s not.

Spencer – A dull and boring film about a bad weekend for the late Princess Diana, who was anything but dull. Featuring an uninteresting, one note performance by the normally excellent Kristin Stewart.  Blame director Pablo Larrain.

The Tragedy of Macbeth – Beautiful set design and cinematography can’t redeem tedious and characterless performances by actors capable of much better. Read my review The Tragedy of the Tragedy of Macbeth for more. 

The Velvet Underground – Critics love director Todd Haynes [Far From Heaven (2002), Carol (2015), and many loved his new documentary about the seminal NY rock band that launched the career of Lou Reed. I found it okay, but nothing special – even if you like some of their songs. 

Also, for another look back at 2021, please check out my friend and fellow film-lover Larry Lee’s annual retrospective essay My Year in Movies 2021.