I watched a great deal of movies this year, but hardly any of them came out in 2021. Hell, I didn’t even make a list last year because it would have only included Onward. Which is a good movie, actually, but we’ll get into that. Below is a short and sweet list of the 2020/2021 movies I’ve seen. I still have many to see - like Lamb and Dune and Matrix 4 and The Power of the Dog - but here are 13 for now, complete with one sentence reviews.
About Endlessness
Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson’s follow-up to his ‘Living Trilogy’ opus continues to feature tiny vignettes and snapshots, further proof that Andersson is the closest a director has come to releasing cinematic microfictions, like a book of flash fiction on screen.
Titane
What happens when you get in a car crash and the only way to live is to become part-car so you become part-car and then start making love inside of cars and with cars and maybe, just maybe, birthing one of your own.
Another Round
A group of bored friends try to maintain a steady level of intoxication while continuing to go about living their lives and it all goes sideways and maybe one of them dies but everything’s basically fine, just fine, because drinking is fun and this film recognizes that.
Nomadland
The road through No Man’s Land, America is full of struggling escapists looking for truths and connections and pay in a lonely desert of lonely souls and the main reason this was one of the saddest and bleakest viewing experiences for me is because it felt (and remains to feel) so real.
Soul
Leave it up to an animated film to remind you to chase your dreams and follow your heart because you will die soon and you will have to step down a long cosmic walkway into a white light and that will be that so get your shit done as soon as you can because that final white light does not look fun.
Vivarium
Buy a new house, they said, just have a look, they said, and now look at us, raising this demon baby in a maze of nightmarish suburbia, only to eventually, probably, most likely, be sucked under the rug and into the underbelly of this pitiful, miserable world.
Onward
This is the last film I saw in theaters before the pandemic and I haven’t seen a movie since and maybe Onward will be my final movie theater experience before the end of the world: a Pixar heartwarmer about grief and adventure and sidekicks and brotherly love and yeah, maybe that will be enough.
Pig
What I expected to be more of a John Wick-revenge bloodbath was instead an emotional look at grief and all of its quiet violences, with less wrath and more sadness, bottled up and served with a waiting list and a Michelin star.
No Time to Die
This final Daniel Craig Bond film was badass but it was about an hour too long and sure I liked the scene where they were harvesting the poison garden and the water bath of poison and all of the poison and I’m glad they gathered at the hideaway island and it was all such an epic closer but part of me wants to know (* SPOILER *) why did Bond have to go?
Annette
This was a wild carnival ride of a musical from the director of Holy Motors and because it was from the director of Holy Motors I had certain expectations and because it from the director of Holy Motors every scene and line was unexpected and because of all of this it is perhaps at the top of my list of 2021 movies that return to my subconscious.
The Green Knight
A hero’s journey in the form of a surreal fable of possibilities and choices and quest directions where dreams and deceptions and distractions and temptations all form into a bedtime story worth telling, worth chopping off the head, worth watching it roll on the floor.
Nobody
This was exactly the action-packed dad comedy bloodbath that I expected and I’m glad to have seen it with popcorn and beer and man points galore but now I desperately want a secret hideaway with a rich vinyl collection and a self-destruct button.
Bergman Island
Married filmmakers escape to Fårö Island (where Bergman once roamed) where the wife masterfully writes a movie within the movie and it comes together in the quietest of ways, perpetually heartbreaking the characters and teasing the audience, combatting the hopeful tone you see in every American romance movie, and because of that, I felt anointed.
