Top ten of 2021

A list of ten films I really liked that released in Australia in 2021 in Cinemas and I got a chance to see. Noting there are a couple of films that may be worthy that I didn't see this year due to release dates, and some of the films I'm listing came out overseas in 2020, never the less they count as 2021 releases for my purposes. For what it's worth, I saw 235 films this year, 135 new ones, 100 old ones. I'd rate 199 of them as "good". You can read the full reviews of all of them on letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/simbot/films/reviews/

Another Round - An illustration of four men in midlife crisis attempting to deal with their lost youth through irresponsible behavior, with a great climactic final scene showing off Mads Mikklesen and his amazing legs.

Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra - a really great movie about a family, a culture and a movement - capturing modern dance and fame and its effect on three brothers. It's a really engrossing story with captivating dance footage and a real heart to it. 

Lapsis - A look at the modern gig-culture world through a sci-fi lens that has a specific unique look as it deals with the encroachment of big business on our lives and the increasing mechinisation of human beings.

Malignant - Probably the nuttiest left turn of a film this year, probably only the last third really belongs on this list but the last third was so much fun that it drags the film onto my list despite the somewhat laboured setup. It's one of those "you just have to see it to believe it" kinda films. 

Minari - A sweet family tale of finding a place in the world and holding onto it, as a Korean family moves to a small rural town and tries to establish their place, it's gentle, funny and a great outpouring of soul. 

Pig - Nicholas Cage only occasionally makes great movies - too often he's overacting in films that never really use his talents correctly. But in this case he's happened upon a solid script and has shaped his performance enough to give space to the rest of the performers around him - lifting Adam Arkin and Alex Wolff into strong performers rather than just sidelines to his main attraction. It's a great old-fashioned noir storyline in an unusual setting, and is incredibly pleasurable.

Riders of Justice - A really great look at the "old guy revenge" movie through giving space to the nerdy guys doing the research, thoroughly delightful. Although eventually Mads Mikklesen ends up busting up bad guys, it's not entirely a film in love with retribution so much as finding support structures around you.

Summer of Soul, or when the revolution could not be televised - A great doco about a period that's been visited a lot, from an angle that hasn't been seen much - the late sixties music scene through the eyes of African Americans, and the culture that surrounded them. 

Tick Tick ... Boom! - This is a particularly-me-kinda film - I'm aware the extreme earnestness of a 29 year old white guy declaring "I'm the future of American Theatre" is something that most people are going to find slap-worthy, but ... well, I was 23 and just leaving university when I first heard "Rent" and it kinda captured my heart before my brain had a chance to intervene. And this captured my heart too, particularly with Andrew Garfield's no-shame-whatsoever performance and the great capturing of the location and era. 

Titane - A wild pleasure, bringing us into a character who seems wildly unhinged and a situation that's somewhat absurd, and making us care about them and their choices - it's eventually almost a family bonding story through some very weird methods. 

Near Misses (just outside the top 10) - Luca, Supernova, The lost Daughter

Least Loved - A Call To Spy, Creation Stories; Every Breath You Take; Occupation: Rainfall

New To Me Favourites - Black Book, Black Narcissus, Chunking Express

New To Me Favourites (Insanely Fun but ridiculous edition) - Man's Best Friend. 

Swan Song

A nice small-scale story of the last era of gay men in a small country town, as an unashamedly flamboyant hairdresser sets out on one last mission. It's a bit rambling and sentimental but it's delightful

The Matrix Ressurections

A fun inventive sequel that acknowledges that it's going back to the well but finds rationalisation for why to do that, including playing with the questions of systems of control that the original trilogy did, and progressing the society within the piece to a more complexly intersectional one (the same way the star trek follow ups have, in fact!) Also nice to realise people over 50 can still be damn attractive! 

The Lost Daughter

 A strong film about a woman trying to keep her intellectual integrity after motherhood, almost the anti-Bluey in how nightmarish it makes the continual catering for a child's demands. Also features great daggy Ed Harris dancing (to a music cue semi ruined by featuring in a McDonald's commercial before the movie), and Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman doing a great job of matching accent and character despite never really looking much like one another

Don't Look Up

 The overstuffed with celebrities comedy often suffers from not being all that funny, often due to casting leads that aren't that funny. This has its moments but mostly falls flat, due to a combination of cynicism and rage never really feeling very grounded - Dicaprio is our apparent lead but he's never very endearing. There's a couple of decent moments including a signature weird Mark Rylance performance, Care Blanchett being a botoxed Dorothy Parker type and Challumet being quite endearingly weird, and the pay-off tag is delightful but ultimately the film wants to be directed by Armando Ianucci or Chris Morris

Spiderman: No Way Home

 A big scale epic combining 2 previous Tom Holland movies with elements of the previous cinematic attempts going back to 2002, with side elements of other bits of the MCU, in a slightly sprawling adventure that interrogates superhero morality, provides thrills and spills and spectacle and hits a couple of emotional elements plus has one joke that only I laughed out loud at but I feel good about myself for laughing at it.

Monsterfest 2021 recap

 For obvious pandemic-related reasons I've not been able to go to Fantastic fest for the last two years. So instead I've been substituting with MonsterFest - last year, I did a weekend in Sydney, this year I did the whole damn thing in Melbourne. It's sorta a bit Fantastic Fest's blokier brother - leaning very much on the horror/thriller side of things with a love of splatter, make-your-own-special-effects and backyard creation, but it comes with its own charms. In particular a lot of the films are small scale passion projects, often shot with friends and family, and rely on the virtues of script and performance over effects and flash to achieve their effects. Not all of them have spectacular scripts or performances, some just have eccentric ideas, but all of them have heart and soul to them. 

Weirdly enough for me the highlights were the retro screenings - the other 80's BMX movie, "Rad", which combined on-bicycle-ballet, an underdog-against-big-business storyline, Ray Walston channeling Mr Hand from Fast Times and a lot of pre-Whispering-Jack-John-Farnham for an enjoyable romp; 1970s "Flesh For Frankenstein", a nutty combination of monster creation, necrophilia, incest and special effects organs by the guy who created ET, and "Man's Best Friend", a 90s killer-dog movie that gives us an Ally Sheedy performance that feels carried over from Short Circuit and a lot of goofy surprises. 

Elsewhere, there were a lot of passion projects in there - some small scale and intelligent, like "Hellbinder" or "Apparitions", both simple horror stories told well (though both were somewhat subject to a little bit of logic that fell apart once you thought about the plot a little bit), some somewhat incomprehensible like Phil Tippet's long-brewing "Mad God".  In general it was good to see the heart and soul that went into these pieces, most of which are unlikely to go on to multi-millions and success but which are likely to be remembered with affection and love. 

Encanto

A strong cartoon about magic, family and growing responsibilities

The French Dispatch

 

It's a charming attempt to replicate mid 20th century literary culture and as such it isn't perhaps Anderson's most purely cinematic piece, but it does feel like being doused in erudition for two hours most exhileratingly

Pig

 A strong execution of a premise which could easily be shallow or silly. Cage plays emotionally deep and subtle and gets the best out of his scene partners, particularly Woolf and Arkin

Zola

 A dive into the overlap between modern internet culture and sex work and how the use of it damages two young women

Dune

 A sensible blockbusterisation of around 50% of the novel, with some stunning visuals, Jason Mamoa cleaning up his beard, lots of explosions and only occasional nods to the weirdness underlying the material. Looks gorgeous but feels like it's holding a lot back for part 2

Annette

 A big romantic opera about art, fame, jealousy and murder - a few too many of the songs tend towards repetitive recitative but between Caraxs inventive visuals and the performances of Driver, Cottilard and Helberg this still plays wonderfully and surprisingly