Top Ten Films of 2021
Just in time for the Oscars, here’s a He Said/She Said review of what we have decided are the top ten films of the year. Fight us if you dare!
HE SAID:
10. The Power of the Dog
The favorite for virtually every major Oscar category, this year’s most honored film is really, in our opinion, not all that great. I mean, it’s not a bad movie—it’s good enough to break into our top ten—but Citizen Kane it ain’t. It has a protagonist you can feel no sympathy for whatsoever, and chronicles a bleak and empty existence. But admittedly, Benedict Cumberbatch does fine work in it, as he consistently does, and if he does end up winning the Best Actor honors it will not be undeserved (though I did think he was better in The Imitation Game). The twist at the end of the movie is worth watching it for, the cinematography is magnificent, and it would be nice to see a woman director honored with an Oscar too. So this is definitely one of the best movies of the year.
SHE SAID:
9. A Quiet Place II
Because I enjoy enjoyable things and because a movie can be great without being a great film if it’s good at what it’s good for, the fifth movie on my list of top five movies I saw in 2021 is A Quiet Place II, the sequel to my beloved A Quiet Place. After the father sacrifices himself to save his family from the strange alien monsters who find their prey on earth through their hyper-sensitive hearing, his wife and children, including a new baby born at the end of the last film, leave their destroyed home to find others they hope are out there. It’s a pilgrimage, which is a storyline I love, even I if don’t usually take a shine to dystopian stories like this one. The performances are pitch perfect, because this film, like CODA, is about love moving us to face our fears and find a better place where we can safely grow—and love each other some more. The aliens are ugly AF, but this movie is one I’ll probably watch 20 more times in the near future because everything else about it is beautiful—even the dress that becomes rags Emily Blunt’s character wears.
HE SAID:
8. Nightmare Alley
Guillermo del Toro’s neo-noir tour de force has the look and feel of those classic noir films of the late ’40s and early’ 50s, plus the plot of a Greek tragedy that Aristotle himself would have approved. The gritty story of a grifter who joins a traveling carnival as a bottom-of-the-rung laborer, learns how to do mentalist tricks, and finally attains fame and wealth as a psychic able to bilk the wealthiest New York socialites creates a protagonist heading for a fall. He does make some tragic miscalculations, partly brought about by a psychiatrist bent on showing him up. A brilliant ensemble cast featuring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, David Strathairn, Willem Dafoe, Rooney Mara et al. helps to make this film a must-see.
SHE SAID:
7. Belfast
Another handmade film, this one by Kenneth Branagh inspired by his childhood in Belfast before his parents moved to England about why they moved to England during The Troubles. Aside from this movie’s cast including one of my Official Little Sweeties, Ciarán Hinds, the whole cast is so engaging because I felt that I was really watching Branagh’s memories and feelings about his childhood, not a movie based on them. Sometimes I find black and white movies to be a bit distant, like a scrim is between me and the experience, but in this case, it worked so beautifully, as I felt it situated me more directly in the memories, more as if it were my own. It’s not a twee, cliché or tropey depiction of Northern Ireland at that time, and it also opens us up as viewers to the sense that nostalgia can include pain as well as loving safety.
HE SAID:
6. West Side Story
I admit that when I heard Steven Spielberg was remaking West Side Story, my first reaction was, “What? Why?” The 1961 film version had garnered ten Academy Awards and was one of the great movie musicals of all time. Remaking it was like remaking…well, Citizen Kane. And besides, these kind of remakes were always duds. Remember the altogether unnecessary remake of Psycho? But it turns out I was wrong, the opposite of right. This grittier version of the story may not completely erase the original, and a few of the numbers—notably, I thought, “Officer Krupke”—may fall short of the originals, but some others—“America,” “Cool,” and especially “Somewhere”—soar. Spielberg’s enhancement of the far more sympathetic character of Chino and his replacement of “Pop” with Rita Moreno (Oscar-winning Anita from the original film) are brilliant touches, and this version’s Anita, Ariana DeBose, is quite deserving of her own Oscar nomination.
SHE SAID:
5. Drive My Car
This is the kind of movie I love most every year, the quiet restrained movie that delivers such strong emotional reactions because they are depicted and portrayed so honestly, so cleanly, even when they focus on such messy, flawed people. This year’s iteration is not to be missed, as it follows the end of Yūsuke Kafuku’s marriage amidst infidelity and tragedy and several years later as he directs a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. The title comes from the routine he has set up for himself as an actor in the past: His wife makes a cassette tape of everyone else’s lines, and as he drives to rehearsal, he says his own lines. In the film, the festival sponsoring Uncle Vanya insists on hiring a driver for him due to a past accident. His wife’s lover is cast in the play so the two men subtly circle each other and spar as the woman hired as Kafuku’s driver provides a steady presence and sounding board. It’s a quiet film so I am reluctant to share much more except that you will be glad you watched this movie. Unless you are fluent in Japanese, you will have to watch closely to read the subtitles, and this will help you stay attuned to the soft emotional beats that are essential to experiencing this film to its fullest.
HE SAID:
4. King Richard
Everybody knows that sisters Venus and Serena Williams have been a dominating force in women’s tennis for a generation. This film helps us understand how the two black girls from Compton turned into the dynamic duo of what had traditionally—with the notable exceptions of Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson—been a white athletes’ sport. The answer, the film makes clear, is their monomaniacally obsessed father Richard Williams (Will Smith), who has a 78-page action plan to get his daughters from the run-down public tennis courts of Compton to the pristine courts on which the country’s best tennis coaches train their athletes. But the film is not a typical sports feel-good Cinderella story. It isn’t just about the athletes getting the chance and winning. The movie is Smith’s, and his performance is the best of his career: we see him pushing the girls to practice every day, no matter the weather. We see him cajoling tennis coaches like a fast-talking salesman to get them to consider his daughters. We see him giving everything he has to give his daughters a chance for success that they would never have received if he had simply trusted to their talent alone. These Cinderellas would never have had a chance to go to the ball if Richard hadn’t struggled to get it, and forced them to struggle as well. It’s been called the “feel good movie of the year,” but King Richard is more than that. It’s a vindication of hard work and persistence, and not just natural talent.
SHE SAID:
3. CODA
Another coming-of-age story, though this one is a different kind in which a girl comes into her pending adulthood by separating from her family in painful and necessary ways. Ruby is the only hearing member in her family of four, a fishing family in Massachusetts, and as a hearing member she has heightened responsibilities to make their business possible. An awkward high schooler, she finds her niche in choir where her director hears her talent and helps her develop it into an audition for Berklee School of Music in Boston. Of course, her own needs as a teen separating from her family and their particular reliance on her come to a head and each member of the family looks at their fears of their family without Ruby at the ready, conflict ensues, while love is evident in every frame. It reminds me of that line of Pablo Neruda’s, “If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.”
HE SAID:
2. The Tragedy of Macbeth
Joel Coen picked Shakespeare for his first solo venture, and not just a tragedy but the bleakest of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Coen’s film is reminiscent of Orson Welles’ version in its stark black-and-white cinematography, and the stage-like setting underscores the film’s bleakness, also ensuring that your mind isn’t going to be preoccupied with the beautiful Scottish scenery when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane. With Denzel Washington as Macbeth and Frances McDormand as his lady, Coen has given the leads to two of the greatest actors of their generation, and their maturity and restrained performances make this couple the most believable pair ever to play the roles on screen. Coen retains Shakespeare’s text (thank God), but visually and conceptually tweaks some things, turning the weird sisters into a single perhaps multiple-personalitied witch (Kathryn Hunter), and turns Ross (Alex Hassel) into a significant character by having him absorb other small parts and giving him a relationship with young Fleance. I would call this the best film adaptation of Macbeth, and that’s why I rank it so highly here.
SHE SAID:
1.Licorice Pizza
I just loved this movie, and I was eager to talk it over with my creative writing students at UCA as soon as I saw it. The movie is about Alana and Gary growing up in and falling in love in the San Fernando Valley of California in 1973. It’s a coming-of-age love story, and it is one of those movies that loves its characters enough to let them be messy and imperfect. What I love about Paul Thomas Anderson’s movie (he wrote and directed) is that it isn’t a forward-motion-only plot that we expect from movies—that we often require—it’s not a straight line because life isn’t. It’s more as if Anderson opened his arms and put them around a time in the life of these characters and let everything that he collected in his embrace live on in the film. These young people shine from within in this film that makes us all look back on ourselves at that age with a bit more affection and forgiveness.
As usual, She Said has the last word. But as honorable mentions, let me include Dune and Don’t Look Up. Now let the Oscar festivities begin!