12 Movies that Made My Year
Tryin' out a new thing for my 2021 year-end list. Indulge me if you will…
Hey hey, hope everyone had a stellar holiday. Was hoping to get a year-end list out there before the year actually ended, but instead I took it extra easy and thoroughly enjoyed my down time. Meh, no regrets.
2021 was a bad year for the world but a great year for movies. I feel like I watched like a hundred good new movies and still missed a bunch ‘o big ones (C’mon C’mon, Red Rocket and West Side Story to name just a few). So in contemplating a year-end list, I decided I’d do something a little different than just regurgitate my top 10. The logic here is a bit nebulous but basically I selected 12 movies that either stood out to me as a unique experience when I saw them, stuck with me long afterword, or felt especially worth calling out at the end of the year. This is by no means an exhaustive list, you dig, so here’s my 2021 Movies Ranked list on Letterboxd and a screenshot of my top 15 for reference, feel free to @ me:
Without further adieu, here are some random highlights from my 2021 movie year, in order of release and/or viewing.
Attack of the Giant Blurry Finger
Started the year-in-new-releases off with a batshit fuckin’ banger. Shot on an iPhone for $0 during quarantine by couple Cody Clarke and Chloe Peltier, Attack of the Giant Blurry Finger is a sci-fi/horror NSFW parody that’s every bit as bonkers as it sounds and more brilliant than you’d think. As Zanandi Botes put it in her review, “[Attack of the Giant Blurry Finger] reflects many moments a lot of people experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns: From those lonely, horny days — especially for people who had to ride out the isolation periods alone — to our basic human desire to create something, anything, so we can feel like we exist.”
You can rent Attack of the Giant Blurry Finger on Amazon.
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Early on in 2021 when theaters were still (mostly) shut down and direct-to-VOD releases were still the only thing going, we got the silly, absurd SNL/Austin Powers-style romp we didn’t know we needed in Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar. I still can’t believe they made this, man. It seriously saved my mood for like a whole month I swear to god. A wild instant-cult classic you just have to see to believe.
You can stream Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar on Hulu.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League
[Biden voice] C’mon, you can’t tell me this ain’t an all-American superhero flick ‘o the highest order, Jack! Nah but listen: Spider-Man: No Way Home may go down as the big monoculture cinema success story of the year, but my heart remains with Justice League.
This reactionary sword-and-sandal superhero extravaganza doesn’t need me to defend it. I mean shit, the whole reason it exists is because a loud, behemoth fandom kept pushing for it. Yet I remain compelled to publicly recognize Zack Snyder as one of the few Hollywood directors out there to have successfully expanded on the crystalline-sheen CGI that George Lucas pioneered in the Star Wars prequels—executing a relentless, absurd vision that turns familiar caped crusaders into militant cartoon Roman Gods in a Harryhausen-esque WWE space opera. As my buddy Conor put it in his Letterboxd review, “I don’t necessarily want all superhero movies to look and feel like this but I do want them all to have the sort of singular vision that’s on display in spades here.”
You can stream Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head
Talk about setting a tone for the the year. Subtitled “An Emotional History of the Modern World,” Adam Curtis’s six-part BBC docuseries is as much a “movie” as anything else that came out this year — a sweeping, indelibly cinematic gonzo-cut-up portrait of the world as a fucked up series of power struggles, ending at our current, stagnant, seemingly futureless chapter of history. It’s an astounding achievement in the art of editing, and a devastating examination of our shared emotional history through the lives of individuals who unsuccessfully challenged imperial power.
And despite its harrowing journey through our collective demise over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, the central thesis of Can’t Get You Out of My Head can be summed up in the David Graeber quote that opens and closes the doc:
The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head keeps floating around YouTube in disparate corners, so just search for it and you should be able to find all six episodes out there somewhere.
Old
One of the big “movies are back, baby” moments for me earlier this year was seeing M. Night Shyamalan’s Old on the big screen (right when all the “beach that makes you old” memes were popping off, no less). I know Shyamalan’s whole vibe doesn’t really work for a lot of people the way it works for me (honestly thought his last film, the critically panned and very underseen Glass, was a genuinely great late-stage superhero flick) but I highly recommend taking a chance on this one if you haven’t already. Super original body horror with some pretty fun schlocky dystopian sci-fi elements, exceptionally moving character work and a lot of great camera tricks and editing. Wicked, smart, top-tier Spielbergian genre entertainment, really.
Old is currently available to rent at home.
Candyman
You may recall, back in August I was so struck by this movie that I did my first full review in the newsletter. I’ll let myself speak for… myself with a clip from that:
The structure that [Candyman] takes on to reach its conclusion may feel messy and even overstuffed to some, but I think that’s mostly a side-effect of being confronted with a new director’s voice inside a perpetually misunderstood genre. “It could be argued, as some critics have, that Candyman doesn’t last long enough to savor all the various ideas it explores,” writes Richard Newby for THR, “but I’d argue it’s what we leave the film with, the conversations and analysis we bite into, the after-taste that makes it an essential piece of horror…”
As I mentioned up top, the whole reason I wrote this thing was because I’ve been so goddamn preoccupied with the haunting impression Candyman left on me. [Director Nia] DaCosta has successfully hijacked my eyes so when I look around my apartment, the walls seem to take on the shape and pulse of the cold, foreboding interiors of her film. It’s been days now and I’m still combing my movie-lizard brain for the lingering fractals of Candyman tryna figure out why I’m still so spooked and exhilarated by it. That’s horror movies, man … or rather, that’s Candyman … Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candym…
Candyman is currently available to rent at home.
Copshop
Went to a matinee of this one totally blind back in September and had a bona fide fuckin’ blast. A comic pop-neo-Western copsploitation thriller, Copshop centers its action around small-town police precinct in Nevada, where a con man (Frank Grillo) and the hitman chasing him (Gerard Butler) are trapped in a pair of adjoining cells and a rookie cop (Alexis Louder) gets caught in the crossfire.
If that sounds like the type of popcorn flick you grew up watching with your dad or uncle on cable, you’re on the right track. Copshop is genuinely fun throwback joint with a refreshing lack of irony or “meta-ness,” helmed with serviceable style and palpable enthusiasm by seedy-action veteran Joe Carnahan (Narc, Smokin’ Aces, The Grey). It ain’t the smartest actioner out there, but it also just feels like a real movie, like it’s not trying to appeal to everyone all at once through a series of soulless algorithmic research decisions ya know? Check it out next time you’re in the mood for a bullet-heavy good time.
Copshop is currently available to rent at home.
The Last Duel
October was really the power month for movies last year. We got Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s massive (and now massively successful) classic sci-fi adaptation that for me hit like The Empire Strikes Back meets The Phantom Menace with a touch of Apocalypse Now and Heavy Metal, so basically the ideal space opera. We also got Halloween Kills (a bonkers high-camp slasher sequel and stellar fuckin’ entry in the Halloween franchise, still don’t get why some folks didn’t like it), No Time to Die (a gorgeous, bloated, but mostly successful end to the Daniel Craig era of James Bond), and Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho (not my absolute fave but very much appreciated for its originality).
Then there was Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, which I guess like nobody saw in theaters but me and my wife. Shame too, ‘cause it was one of those big-budget Hollywood period epics for adults that will likely never get made again on this scale, and everything about it fucking worked. The performances worked, the costumes worked, the sets worked, the #MeToo aspect worked, the Rashomon-style unveiling of three different perspectives of the same story worked, everything just worked. Ridley Scott is as famous for tackling these mammoth productions with unparalleled efficiency as he is for anything else at this point, and though I also dug his second big 2021 release, House of Gucci, The Last Duel is the opus to beat.
The Last Duel is currently available to rent at home.
The Beta Test
Jim Cummings (one of our greatest emerging indie filmmakers) and PJ McCabe co-wrote, directed, and starred in this darkly comic showbiz satire/thriller about a Hollywood agent who receives a mysterious invitation to an anonymous sexual encounter and spirals down a rabbit hole of deceit, greed, paranoia, and bloodlust in the sinister age of digital data manipulation. The Beta Test is perversely exhilarating and funny as hell, and idiosyncratic in its exposition of Hollywood’s dark heart and the anxieties that plague us under the unforgiving, all-seeing eye of the internet.
The Beta Test is currently available to rent at home.
Drowning in Potential
Shoulda known YouTube sensation Joel Haver would drop the best comedy of the year in the final quarter. This episodic joint about folks trying to actualize their dreams at the fringes of Hollywood plays like a satisfying compilation of Haver’s weekly comedy shorts with a touch of Robert Altman’s ensemble dramadies (Short Cuts, Nashville, etc.). It’s funny, moving, and perpetually engaging in all the right places. Once again, by sheer force of quality, creativity, and humanity, Haver proves you can bypass the entire film industry and not only make a “real” movie, but a truly great one.
Drowning in Potential is available in its entirety on YouTube. Just press play above and enjoy!
Benedetta
Few directors are talked about in my household with more reverence and revelry than Paul Verhoeven. His sci-fi action satires (Robocop, Total Recall, Starship Troopers) and erotic thrillers (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) are basically our Old and New Testament at this point, so it stands to reason we’d be first in line when Verhoeven’s new lesbian-nun movie hit U.S. theaters in December. Based on Judith B. Brown’s historical nonfiction Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, Benedetta is a lush, hilarious, and well-timed fable of Christian eroticism and religious hypocrisy under the violent ecstasy of plagues both physical and metaphysical.
“Usually, when somebody is described as an ‘equal opportunity offender,’ it’s a red flag that what they’re really into is upholding the status quo,” wrote Adam Nayman in his review for n+1 Magazine. “But Verhoeven’s willingness to court misandry and misogyny hand in hand adds up to a form—however unconventional—of humanism, one that doesn’t so much stake out political incorrectness as a selling point as problematize the idea of purity itself.”
To paraphrase the sexy Jesus of Benedetta’s wet dreams: wherever Verhoeven is, there can be no shame.
Benedetta is currently available to rent at home.
Riders of Justice
Caught this one at home the day after Christmas and I couldn’t have picked a higher (and more appropriately somber) note to end the year on. Riders of Justice is a Danish action dramedy starring Mads Mikkelsen as a gruff military man who returns home to take care of his teenage daughter after his wife dies in a train accident. A mathematics wiz who was also on the train discovers there was more to the accident than meets the eye, and with two eccentric colleagues in tow, helps Mads track down the criminals responsible. Real “friends you made along the way” type deal. It’s always great to watch an international film that couldn’t be made within the confines of the American entertainment market, especially when it tackles things like personal grief, irreconcilable loss, and communal healing in ways you haven’t quite seen before.
You can stream Riders of Justice on Hulu.
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