My top 10 films of 2021

Another year of movie-watching completed! In 2021 I watched 262 films, which is an average of five per week. Watched end-to-end, if I had started rewatching all of them at midnight on New Year's, I wouldn't be finished until the morning of 20 January. 

It's still a difficult time for the film business, so the year included a smaller than normal proportion of brand-new films released in 2021: only 25 out of 262 (9.5%). In 2019 and 2018 it was around 14.5%. I've continued my preferred pattern of mainly watching films I've not seen before. In 2021 82.8% of the films I watched I was seeing for the first time

Film logging site Letterboxd produces handy annual summaries of viewers' most popular directors and stars for each year. Here's mine - directors first:

It's been a fun year viewing Belgian-born French director Agnes Varda's work for the first time, relishing her sense of humour. Seeing the latter half of Chaplin's work from The Circus (1928) to his final film A King in New York (1957) was also a real treat. And it's been charming to take in Eric Rohmer's gently amusing tales of Parisians falling in and out of love and, because many of them are from the 80s, getting up to an awful lot of windsurfing.

In terms of the stars, it was great to see more of Buster Keaton's films in 2021, from his 1920s peak (Our Hospitality and Go West, the latter including Buster herding a hundred longhorn cattle through downtown Los Angeles), through to his late-career appearance in Chaplin's Limelight in 1952. The surprise was Stanley Holloway, who popped up in numerous British films including the legendary Brief Encounter, and played Audrey Hepburn's dustman dad in My Fair Lady, including delivering the show-stopping Get Me To The Church On Time.

Now let's move on to the actual top 10 for 2021, which includes not one but two films by Edgar Wright:

1. Get Back (dir. Peter Jackson, UK/NZ)

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I know it's debatable to include Get Back in a list of movies, given it appeared on a streaming service and didn't get a cinematic release as was originally mooted (at least in NZ). But despite its TV miniseries length of just shy of eight hours, Get Back is still very much a cinematic experience, and of course it relies on the same source material as Michael Lindsay-Hogg's 1970 feature Let It Be. The pole position of this new super-edit is justifiable because it achieved cinematic goals of telling a grand story visually, sonically and narratively, while at the same time contributing to a major re-writing of conventional wisdom about the Beatles' chaotic and divisive 1969. For decades the compelling narrative of Beatles scholarship, informed as it was by Lindsay-Hogg's focus on fractiousness and discord, has been that the January 1969 recording sessions at Twickenham and Apple were bitter, and that Yoko Ono's presence was a major stumbling block to the band's creative process. Peter Jackson's edit dispels both those myths. The sessions are affected by disagreements and George Harrison's walk(ab)out, but the long edit illustrates that these were temporary blips in a hugely creative and mostly constructive and friendly working environment. Seeing Paul McCartney conjuring the enormous A-side single Get Back from nothing is amazing to behold. And the bonhomie in the studio extends to Ono's omnipresence: she is always at John Lennon's side, but makes no substantive attempt to influence the music, other than participating in a free-form freakout in cahoots with Paul. (Endearingly, 6-year-old Heather McCartney emulates Ono's wailing in the film, basically to equal musical effect). As music documentaries go, Jackson's Get Back is a compelling and vital contribution, and being able to see the creative process in high definition is a huge gift to music lovers worldwide.

2. Dune (dir. Denis Villeneuve, US)

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Denis Villeneuve is a master of intelligent sci-fi, and as such is exactly the right helmsman to recreate Frank Herbert's 1965 space opera novel and dispel the troubled legacy of David Lynch's 1984 screen adaptation, which bombed in cinemas. Whereas Lynch's Dune floundered tonally and suffered from incoherent studio re-editing, Villeneuve builds a compelling and accessible tale of dynastic rivalry in a strange land. The film bears all the hallmarks of the director's inventiveness, both visually and particularly sonically. Its cast are well-chosen and in particular Timothee Chalamet is restrained and effective in the lead role of Paul Atreides. While Villeneuve's effort might not have the baroque oddness of the legendarily unrealised version by Mexican gonzo surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky (as documented in the brilliant Jodorowsky's Dune), it offers polished and engaging film-making and genuine anticipation for the second half of the story in a year or two. Also, it's such a treat to see a film in which a young man spends so much quality time with his mum.

3. Hit the Road (dir. Panah Panahi, Iran)

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A charmingly bittersweet Iranian family roadtrip whose consistently expert cast, including the services of a remarkably irrepressible yet naturalistic little boy, excel with both the wry, low-level bickering of a long cooped-up car journey, and pathos once it becomes clear to the viewer what the journey is actually for. Think a Middle Eastern Little Miss Sunshine, with an even greater dramatic heft alongside the genuine delights of familial quibbles and niggles. Even the family dog looks like it's having a wonderful time. The film is also replete with a Kiarostami-like reverence for the beautiful Iranian countryside, and a painterly command of framing and composition.


4. Minari (dir. Lee Isaac Chung, US)

A refreshingly well-constructed family drama depicting the migrant experience, following in a semi-autobiographical narrative the new life the South Korean Yee family builds in rural Arkansas in the 1980s. Marital tensions are exacerbated by the rudimentary living conditions the Yees must endure, and the arrival of a very Korean grandma in particular puts out young David, who has to share his bedroom with her. The performances of young David (Alan Kim) and Grandma Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) stand out as highly convincing and endearing - and Youn Yuh-jung famously won the Best Supporting Actress award in April 2021 for her portrayal. There are rich veins of comedy in the relationship between petulant grandson and earthy Grandma that will appeal to any audience. And it's pleasing to see that despite expectations, the Yee family appear to be welcomed in this most isolated of communities.

5. Last Night in Soho (dir. Edgar Wright, UK)

Wright's homage to the garish, saturated colour palette of 1970s Italian giallo horror, particularly Dario Argento's Suspiria, the 1960s belle epoque of Last Night in Soho is driven by another star turn from Thomasin McKenzie as a callow West Country youth journeying to the big city to find her dreams. In this, McKenzie is every bit the equal of red-hot co-star Anya Taylor-Joy. It's a prime example of how psychological horror lives or dies on how believable the characters' fear and disorientation is portrayed by the actors. The film is, as always with a Wright production, full of deftly-chosen music cues befitting the director's reputation as the Tarantino-dethroning king of the movie mixtapes.

6. Petite Maman (dir. Céline Sciamma, France)

A splendid execution of a disarmingly simple premise, Petite Maman's success hinges on its wonderfully natural and unaffected performances of the young leads Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz. A Hollywood remake would be sure to pile on the pathos and swaddle the narrative in emoting, whereas director Céline Sciamma opts for a matter-of-fact protagonist who accepts her fantastical situation without a moment's hesitation. The film wisely refrains from attempting to tie the story up with a pretty bow by explaining everything, and instead savours the joyful bond of youthful friendship, with audiences being perfectly able to identify poignant moments without hand-holding. A genuine treat for audiences of all ages.

7. The Sparks Brothers (dir. Edgar Wright, US/UK)

The excitement of director / fanboy Edgar Wright is palpable, and it's a delight to discover that Sparks, this most enduring of eclectic musical treats, are the most lovely, level-headed and well-adjusted pop pioneers imaginable. Shot through with charmingly wry humour and umpteen luminaries singing their praises, this is a winning documentary effort. My only slight critique is the bladder-testing 140-minute runtime - and given that the last half hour is mainly multiple variations on the theme of 'these guys are amazing and they're always reinventing themselves, even when it's self-destructive', it could easily have been edited to under the two-hour mark and reached an even wider, if still suitably weird, audience.

8. Judas & the Black Messiah (dir. Shaka King, US)

Both a powerful and adroitly-acted polemic and a useful if brutal reality check to the atypical subject matter of BlacKkKlansman. Also another nail in the coffin of the already rock-bottom reputation of the Chicago Police Department as depicted in cinema. Both actors that were nominated for Best Supporting Actor offer great performances, but without taking anything away from Lakeith Stanfield's excellent Bill O'Neal, really this should've been Daniel Kaluuya's nomination for Best Actor, for his stunning turn as revolutionary leader Fred Hampton. Dominique Fishback also deserves plaudits for her commendably multi-dimensional role as Deborah, Hampton's girlfriend. Mark Isham's score of plangent, unsettling jazz noise is used sparingly but to high effect, heightening the growing sense of unease as blackmail and backlash spirals out of control.


9. The French Dispatch (dir. Wes Anderson, US)

I'll definitely have to see The French Dispatch in the cinema again, because my long-awaited screening was spoiled by the couple behind whispering loudly through the entire picture. Or at least until I snapped and urged them to be quiet, at which point they elected to prioritise talking over cinema, and departed. From then on the picture was much easier to enjoy, and Anderson was wise to hold back Jeffrey Wright's segment til last, because his - chanelling James Baldwin - is the finest performance of the film. As for the other segments, I can't judge fairly due to the audience interruptions, but suffice to say, they feature all known living actors and perhaps a few dead ones too. It's also entertaining to have seen two films in the space of a week (including Villeneuve's Dune) that poke fun at Timothee Chalamet's musculature.


10. The Power of the Dog (dir. Jane Campion, US/NZ)

Deftly adapted by Jane Campion from a 1967 novel, I'm not certain The Power of the Dog deserves all the volumes of praise it's garnering from the Hollywood press, but it offers a satisfying anti-Western narrative that's most interested in examining how masculinity is defined on the fringes of society. The film benefits from a strong core cast, and in particular the real-life couple of Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, whose performances offer understated gravitas in what in other hands might have been melodramatic material. Benedict Cumberbatch is of course eminently watchable in his sociopathic role as the domineering elder Burbank brother, and Kodi Smit-McPhee had better watch out that he doesn't get typecast as a scene-stealing supporting actor in modern Westerns. Another undeniable star is Australian cinematographer Ari Wegner, whose work on the vastly different film Zola also impressed, and who makes the most of the dramatic rural New Zealand locations where the film was shot. 

See also:

Blog: My top 10 films of 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010