2021 Movies (Part 2)

I think an issue I'm having this year that's different from last year is a lot of confusion about when exactly movies were released. So many movies were expected to be released in 2020 but then held off until 2021. Some movies were released only in theaters, making them inaccessible to anyone being responsible about the pandemic, and some smaller movies seem to have been released at film festivals and nowhere else. As such, I'm probably going to be trying to finish this list for a while, and I really am not getting bogged down on release dates. Anything labeled with 2020 or 2021 is on here if I didn't talk about it last year.

I'm also making a change this year and titling this "2021 Movies (Part 2)," somewhat because time makes no sense over the last two years but also because my former titling system itself honestly makes no sense. These movies came out in 2021 even if they are getting reviewed in 2022.

Movies I Need to See (post will be updated as I do):
Cyrano: Probably going to watch this with Caroline whenever she's around. Possibly also West Side Story, which I am not motivated to watch on my own but will watch with someone else.
Dune: This is on Erik's movie list so I'll get to it eventually. I'm not super motivated to watch it when I know it's only the first half anyway.

Movies I Loved:

Nine Days: It took me a long time to watch this because I knew it was going to make me cry. And it did. The premise itself immediately made me think of Koreeda's After Life and, yeah, that. One of those movies that makes you cry because life is beautiful and complex.

Belfast: Kenneth Branagh finally made a movie I liked. The word I kept thinking while watching was "juxtaposition." Juxtaposition in the scenes, the shots, the music, the details. It was very thoughtful in its construction and engaging to watch.

The Lost Daughter: It seems a lot of audience viewers didn't like this film, and I don't get it. This felt like a very realistic portrayal of the occasional realities of parenting and how complex it is. I don't have children, and yet I found it deeply relatable. I really liked the subtle hand the film had.

Drive My Car: I find sometimes especially with really long and somewhat meditative films that I walk away with a positive response but nothing in particular to say. That's kind of how I feel about this movie. I think I'll have a lot of thoughts about it in like, three days, but for now I just know it was very good.

The Worst Person In The World: I'm putting this one right after Drive My Car because I feel like I had a similar feeling about it. It made me feel a lot, but I don't know what. I saw a review that said, "Nothing happens, but everything happens" and yeah, that's the film. Although I can say I found this movie kind of dreadfully relatable in some ways. To me it's a movie about trying to make the right moves in life and never quite being sure you're on the right path.

The Hand Of God: All the foreign films this year had this same feeling, I swear. I was immediately taken in by the cinematography, and subsequently unsurprised to see this was made by the director of The Great Beauty, but this movie was weaker than that one. The first half had some nice strangeness to it, but it felt meandering until the mid-movie plot twist. Then it came together for me a lot more as a very sad but pretty coming of age story.

Encanto: My favorite Disney Animation movie since Moana. The movie has a lot of things that were easy wins to me: magic powers, cultural stuff, amazing visuals, music that slaps. The theme of generational trauma was just beautifully done. I've watched it twice.

Tick, Tick . . . Boom: I was kind of blown away by this movie. Most movie musicals are okay to bad adaptations of the stage show but this was a superior adaptation of the stage show. It might be the only movie musical I would count better than the stage show. The show is fine but the way this movie used diegetic and nondiegetic songs, how it cut or reworked the songs from the show that weren't good, and how it showed the main theme was perfection.

The Tragedy Of Macbeth: My genuine thought when hearing about this movie was, "why" since we literally got a solid, newer Macbeth adaption six years ago, but I've got to give this movie props. The acting was memorably good, it was genuinely kind of scary, I loved the visuals (especially the liberal use of birds), and it really was an enjoyable take on a play I have seen many versions of.

The Humans: I found this movie captivating, but I don't know if I can explain why. It's a kind of claustrophobic family drama that was obviously a stage play. The crafting and tone was just so well handled that it really elevated it above other obviously-a-play-first movies.

Sweat: My life in no way resembles that of the main character of this film at all and yet, it was so damn relatable. Somehow it manages to be less of a commentary on social media influencers and more on just the universal feeling of loneliness and detachment people experience.

Quo Vadis, Aida?: Technically a 2020 film but not released in America until 2021 so it wasn't on last year's list. This movie kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time and then shouting at the screen when the final choice gets made. It's a heartbreaking action movie in the sense that the action is navigating bureaucracy to save your family.

Bo Burnham: Inside: This is more an art piece than a movie, but it is hands down one of the best things to come out this year. I've encouraged everyone to watch it. The social commentary is on point, the songs are addictive, and the directing is next level.

Come From Away: The stage show is amazing and this is just the filmed stage show so it's also amazing. The musical was robbed of Best Musical in 2017, and that's one of my strongest Tony opinions.

Poly Styrene: I'm A Cliche: Hot take: the only truly valid docs are about women in punk. I was completely rivetted by this documentary. That X Ray Spex album got me through quarantine, and I loved learning more about Poly Styrene's kind of sad life through her daughter and people who knew her.

Procession: Soul destroying but fascinating and cinematic documentary about trauma and coping.

Summer of Soul: I'm always a little skeptical of found footage documentaries because I sometimes wonder if they get praise just for unearthing something. This documentary really made the significance of the Harlem Music Festival clear on so many levels - politically, culturally, musically, etymologically - and it was engaging as hell.

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time: A great tribute to a great writer that really got into a lot of the complexity of him as a person and as a figure in literature.

76 Days: I think maybe this is more of an important documentary than a strictly good one, but it is still engaging as hell to watch.

Audible: A short documentary that packs a lot of story into its runtime. It's got really great technical aspects too it as well. I'm all for more cinematic docs.

Movies I Really Liked:

Passing: I was on the border of loved with this one. The style of the movie is impeccable and the story itself is really compelling with really well drawn and acted characters. I also really liked the ambiguous ending and thought it fit well with the themes.

The Green Knight: Aside from the director's appreciation for how beautiful Dev Patel is, I was impressed by how this tale was able to be massaged into an actual story with themes. There were a lot of moments that hit interestingly, the cinematography was beautiful, and I thought the ending was very clever and appropriate.

Dinner In America: This premiered in 2020, but I saw it this year so I'm putting it here. The first twenty minutes of this movie are honestly really hard to watch but after that it gets great. It's very punk, but also really cute? You grow to love it as you watch it.

Zola: This movie was so fun. Stressful but fun. You keep asking yourself what could go wrong next and then something does. This movie also had a lot of artistry in its cinematography and editing that made it nice to look at and paced well.

Shiva Baby: This movie is so stressful too but maybe not in a fun way. But that's what makes it great. It's watching as one young woman's entire world falls apart at a shiva where she doesn't even know who died. I also recall laughing a few times but not so much because something is funny but because it's a nervous response to another thing going bad.

Black Bear: This is one of those films that makes you feel things as a gateway to thinking about things. My interpretation is that it's about the lengths people will go to for the sake of art and the line between art and reality.

CODA: This movie is pretty fun while also being a serious look at family expectations in a unique situation. I see this movie described as a coming-of-age movie and it is, but it's the kind of story where you really feel the weight of responsibility that should not be put on a teenager. I also just really loved all the characters so much.

The Power Of The Dog: I have a tendency to enjoy Jane Campion's work but nothing can top The Piano. This movie ended up having amazing depth and was full of interesting themes in spite of feeling pretty spare. It unfolds well. I think I probably should love this one but I may have a specific bias against westerns.

Nightmare Alley: I always enjoy Del Toro films regardless of quality for their overall vibe. For him, this is pretty middle of the road which means I really liked it but I didn't love it. The message is simple but the psychology aspects of the film were really interesting and the moment I saw the ending coming I nodded at the pay off well done.

Titane: This movie was never what I expected it to be at any point. I had to look away a lot at the beginning but like Raw, the director's first film, I found a lot to like about it. This definitely feels more thematically complex, which is saying a lot considering 15 minutes in I said out loud, "She's going to have sex with that car, isn't she?"

Mass: I love Fran Kranz and his writing and directorial debut movie is so solid. I actually thought it might be a play because it's certainly written like it could be. Still, as a film it works great too. The complexity of the situation unfolding as it does is just heart breaking.

Spencer: Kristen Stewart really deserved that Oscar nomination. Wow. Filmwise, it's a lot quirkier than you would except from a historical drama, which I mostly enjoyed.

Malcolm & Marie: This is my candidate for underrated movie of the year. People seemed to really not like this film much and I disagree, perhaps because of my love of two characters in a room. I found the dissection of this relationship so interesting and well structed and the acting is on 10 the whole movie. 

Slalom: This movie was really solid and uncomfortable and showed a lot of potential from the director but also, the end felt a little unfinished? I saw what they were going for, but it didn't totally come through.

Red Rocket: While it's the weakest of the three Sean Baker movies I've seen, it was still a consistently interesting and beautifully shot film. I really appreciate just how real Sean Baker's characters are and how authentic his films are at showing a very specific demographic.

The Amusement Park: Released in both 1975 and 2019 but I only heard of it being accessible this year. This is a sadly still relevant metaphor for elder abuse. 

The Human Voice: Alomodovar and Tilda Swinton. Very visual. Interesting. Short.

Pig: This movie might be one of the strangest films I've ever seen, just because it feels like it's going to be about one thing but it's actually about something completely different. It's so weird, I had a hard time deciding what I even thought of it. Ultimately I settled on, it's really good.

Misha & The Wolves: Who doesn't love a good fraud movie? In the vein of The Imposter or The Woman Who Wasn't There, we've got someone lying but this movie also has some additional twists that make it more than either of those films.

Made You Look: Another fraud movie. I like how the movie really explored all the different angles of the story and how it was laid out so clearly. You walk away without clear answers, but I also found something interesting in this film about the broad concept of belief and how it manipulates.

Some Kind Of Heaven: This movie, along with Procession, was one of the most cinematic documentaries of the year and had a really interesting premise. It feels like this should be in the category above but clearly something didn't fully click for me. I'm not sure what. Maybe it was just that the community in question feels like my personal hell, but seeing all the different perspectives on this "perfect" community was thought provoking.

The Most Beautiful Boy In The World: As a fan of Midsommer, the story behind Bjorn Andresen is interesting to me and this movie was well directed and had a lot of depth to it. A really engaging personal story.

Flee: This was a good story and the use of animation was an interesting choice. Overall, it was really competent but kind of not memorable otherwise. Maybe I've seen too many stories like this.

Stray: It wasn't quite as good as its obvious counterpart Kedi, but it was still fun to follow around one of the stray dogs of Istanbul and get a whole different look at the city and poverty through the dog's eyes.

Final Account: This is a simple documentary in the tradition of interviews, but fascinating regardless. The film does a good job of showing how relevant this examination of collective guilt and compliance is in the modern day.

Assassins: I had vaguely heard about this incident, but I had no idea the complex story behind the murder of Kim Jong Un's brother. The documentary was structured in such a way that the plot is revealed kind of slowly which adds to the momentum, and it was nice to see all the different angles of this murder plot.

Skin: The History Of Nudity In The Movies: A pretty comprehensive look at film history. I kind of wish it talked a little more about the modern changes as opposed to just touching really briefly on them at the end.

Lead Me Home: A short doc about homelessness. I think I might replace Lost Angels with this one in my Marginalized Voices class since it's much more up to date.

Three Songs For Benazir: I wasn't sure how I felt about this short doc until the "four years later" moment. That was a real gut punch that really contextualized the whole film. Prior to that it's a sweet personal story, but it ends up a bit more by the end.

Movies I Liked:

Candyman: I watched this movie while high, and I was maybe doing a real disservice to it by doing so (unlike another movie in this category that I don't feel like I cheated). That's why it's first in this category. I never saw the original but this one felt like it had really decent social commentary and was pretty eerie overall. It's no Jordan Peele film, but it was definitely in the ballpark.

Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn: My feelings on this film are really mixed. I found part one really boring to the point where I looked up what I'm supposed to think of it and just found it poorly executed. Part two was unique but kind of unnecessary for the point. Maybe even a bit pretentious and overstuffed. The movie could have been just part three and the endings, which were pretty great. As a teacher, there was something very relatable about that interrogation and the director's points were clear enough in that scene without any of the other stuff.

King Richard: I watched this kind of on a whim since I'm not huge on either biopics or sports movies. Overall, it was engaging, which is impressive considering how long it was and a good story. 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye: This was another biopic whim. My review of it is pretty similar too. Engaging. Good story. Good lead.

Plan B: A good teen comedy. It's like the funny counterpart to Never Rarely Sometimes Always by way of Booksmart. Like Booksmart, I enjoyed it but I don't feel a strong drive to watch it again nor was it especially groundbreaking.

Last Night In Soho: The style of this movie is peak, but something didn't quite come together for me. I was really into it for a while but somehow the ending felt hollow? I'm not totally sure what didn't fully work because I liked so many things about it on paper.

The Last Duel: There were some things I really liked about this film (the Rashomon structured premise and how that was used to examine gendered perspectives) and some things I really hated about this film (the graphic rape wasn't necessary the first time; why did we see it twice?) so I settled on the "liked" category. One or two people with good strong influence on the production could have made this movie at least a "really liked." Also, thanks for making Adam Driver the star of my sexual nightmares again after quite a few years of me just being uncomplicatedly attracted to him. Ugh.

The Dig: A perfectly watchable British drama about archeology. The history nerd in me found it interesting and had one hand on Google to verify. It does try a little for some deeper significance about humanity being connected across time with dubious success but mostly it's just a decent but unmemorable film.

In The Heights: I have actually never seen the stage show, which is maybe why I didn't have a strong negative response to things being left out, but overall I feel like this film solidly falls into the category of "fine" film adaption. The best review I heard of this was, "It's nice to see a musical movie that isn't ashamed to be a musical" which is kind of true. It's very old Hollywood musical movie in that way.

Luca: I watched this movie while high which might be part of my issue, but overall I spent a lot of the movie frustrated by a lack of stakes and unclear motivations. The metaphor is the most obvious thing on the planet, but I do give the movie credit for being the gayest kid's movie ever. Wow, was this film queer. But considering that Pixar made Soul (existential but maybe a little unmemorable), Onward (personally delightful), and Coco (my favorite Pixar.) recently, this fell really flat to me.

Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal: This movie does a really good job of breaking down the scandal and how all the cheating worked. I think I maybe just really don't enjoy documentaries with "reenactment" scenes. It always feel kind of cheap to me when I want something more creative.

Pray Away: Important to document the topic for sure but this documentary really didn't stick in my mind at all. I just felt really bad for that transwoman who detransitioned, and that's the only thing I remember.

Movies That Were Okay:

Don't Look Up: This might be the most obvious satire I have ever seen. This director really peaked with The Big Short. I spent a lot of the film rolling my eyes.

Radium Girls: This movie was fine. Just fine. For such an interesting story and important historical moment, the film just doesn't do much (and is sometimes almost comically too on the nose). Reading the Wikipedia page on the Radium Girls honestly has the same effect as watching this film.

Dementer: Something about this movie really didn't come together for me. On paper it seemed like something I'd be into: a low budget horror film with a cult. And I was into it for the first hour but the conclusion didn't make sense to me, and I watched it twice. Compliments to the sound design though.

Moxie: I was hoping this would be good, what's not to like about riot girl feminism being revived by Gen Z, but something about this movie just didn't come together for me. I found it weirdly forgettable right after I finished it, and there were moments that felt unrealistic to me. I think in general teen movies that sacrifice realism for drama get knocked down a point or two for me.

Movies I Didn't Like:

Old: Surprisingly I didn't watch this at Bad Movie Night but actually with a friend in her neighbor's driveway. There were some definite laughs at the bad dialogue and weird moments but it wasn't quite funny enough to bring to BMN.

Cool Cat Fights Coronavirus: Even by Cool Cat standards this movie was lazy. Still, I hope Derek Savage keeps making them.