my 2021 in film
No, I did not watch Free Guy
Hello! We’re back. I haven’t done this in a while (by “this” I am referring to writing about film at length). A the start of this year I began work in earnest on a novel. Midway through I commenced an honours year. A few months ago I started work at a second job. As one might expect, these have destroyed my ability to do short-form writing consistently and so “Josh, film critic” is on indefinite hiatus.
But I told myself I wanted to write a wrap-up of all the films I watch each year—if for no other reason than it is a low stakes exercise that allows me to do a bit of reflecting but also cut loose—and I’m holding myself accountable to that (and, indeed, will continue to do so until I either grow bored or die). If you’re new to this: hi, please don’t take this too seriously because I certainly am not. If you’re a returning reader: welcome back.
A few ground rules:
- As usual this is broken up into the following sections:
- Non-2021 highlights.
- New releases.
- My top 10 from this year. - This is meant to be lighthearted. Celebrities (James Corden, especially) please don’t sue—I am not being “for real.”
- I’m going off Australian release dates.
Let’s dive in!
The Prom
James Corden’s portrayal of a gay man is somehow more homophobic than the straight man on the seventh floor of my building who called me a f*ggot unprompted twice this year.
Pieces of a Woman
I haven’t listened to Adele’s 30 but I get the feelings it’s kinda like this?
Spies in Disguise
Sound of Metal
If you want to feel awful watch as a double feature with Whiplash.
After We Collided
Do you think Sufjan Stevens knows one of his songs is in this?
Dark Star
Not my tempo.
Assault on Precinct 13
Underrated among John Carpenter’s scores.
Halloween
[Phoebe Bridgers voice] baby, its Halloween.
The Fog
Evil fog :(
Escape from New York
Mad Max aesthetic, B-Movie plot, but runs on cartoon logic. Snake Pliskin isn’t just one of the great action heroes, he is THE great action hero.
The Thing
Watching this post-covid made me feel both seen and insane. I too trust no one anymore.
Starman
Maybe the horniest movie ever made.
Big Trouble in Little China
Again, not my tempo.
Prince of Darkness
More horror movies should focus on a group of grad students doing extra curricular work for bonus credit. Features some of the most unsettling imagery of Carpenter’s filmography.
They Live
REALLY not my tempo.
A New Leaf
Funny in a belly cackle kinda way but also funny in a throaty chortle kinda way but also funny in a single intelligent chuckle kinda way but also funny in a nervous laugh kinda way.
The Heartbreak Kid
Midway through the Greater Sydney Lockdown I got into replying to my friend’s memes with “ohohohohohoho” instead of “haha.” This has big “ohohohohohoho” energy.
Mikey & Nicky
Ishtar
It is my unfortunate duty to report that Warren Betty had mad chemistry with the camel.
Marie Antoinette
Sofia Coppola’s third best movie is still better than most directors first best movie. If you don’t understand why there are converse in that one shot I simply cannot help you.
Somewhere
Must a movie have plot? Is it not enough for Elle Fanning to make Eggs Benedict?
The Bling Ring
Terrible pacing, every outfit looks gross, the script is Unhinged, and there’s not one good performance. It is objectively Sofia’s worst movie but maybe also—secretly—her best. I’m glad I saved it for last.
Let it Snow
Has half a dozen different romantic pairings and they all suck. Congrats to Joan Cusack for cashing that Netflix cheque.
Tokyo Godfathers
Absolute crowd-pleaser. All the greatest hits: found family, comedy, baby crime, Christmas movie, and a final chase sequence that made me feel like I was astral projecting.
Home Alone
Catherine O’Hara runs rings around everyone else.
In Bruges
I need at least 2500 words to properly describe everything I like about this one. Easily, easily, easily my overall favourite first time watch year.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Why is there a key party joke in this movie?
Mary Poppins
Dick Van Dyke's “english accent” took actual years off my life. This movie rocks.
Barbie: The Princess & The Popster
Gay.
A Star Is Born (1954)
Judy Garland not getting Best Actress from this remains, probably, the biggest Oscar snub of all time.
Thoroughly Modern Millie
Xanadu
Every movie should be about trying to open a disco-roller-skate-nightclub because greek muse Olivia Newton-John is hot and asked you to very nicely, actually.
Pennies from Heaven
In many ways Parasite with singing.
The Muppets Movie
‘Rainbow Connection’ has to be in the running for best song ever written, right?
Muppets Treasure Island
Tim Curry dressed as a pirate… if you know, you know.
Muppets Take Manhattan
Psychological terrorism. There’s a scene where the muppets stand in front of a vendor selling puppets? What am I supposed to make of that!
The Muppets
Sweet Charity
Bob Fosse sicko mode.
School of Rock
Would’ve been obsessed with this as a kid.
West Side Story (1961)
Maybe the gayest movie ever made. Not just because it’s super colourful but because it thinks “gang warfare” is a bunch of dudes in tight shirts and jeans passive aggressively dancing at each other and—when things escalate—pouring paint over each other’s heads and going “oopsy-woopsie tee-hee.”
Promising Young Woman
Well made, taught, thrilling. Incredible, incredible, incredible, casting. And yet… the more it sat with me the more hollow it felt. Like someone adapted a Reductress dot com headline about Hollywood trying to make a progressive film? Hits all the right beats but it’s just frosting.
Judas and The Black Messiah
Nomadland
Minari
The Father
Make Olivia Coleman and Anthony Hopkins the villains of Paddington 3.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Better than the Joss Weadon cut in the same way that eating two day old Maccas fries is better than eating a brick.
Black Widow
Never have I seen a movie be so glib about abuse and the traffic of women. Someone save Florence Pugh from the MCU.
The Suicide Squad
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
No reason for this to not be 90-minutes long and yet…
Eternals
On a whole I really enjoyed this one. Beautiful visuals (CGI excepted), full of earnest emotions, a refreshing lack of MCU snark. But I refuse to humour anyone who claims this franchise is “actually so intelligent” and “totally not infantilising” when Kumail Nanjiani’s character’s power is literally making little finger guns and going “pew pew.”
Space Jam: A New Legacy
Bugs Bunny dies like Jesus in this one.
Mortal Kombat
Fatality.
Cruella
Watching Cruella is like eating an entire bag of Sour Warheads at once: very fun and insanely bad for you. Absolutely I had a blast, but that does not make this any less creatively bankrupt. Of all studios, Disney is the one that cannot even remotely sell their content as “punk.” Maybe could’ve been saved if they had actually let Emma Stone kill dogs but as it stands its just an overlong, occasionally laugh-out-loud bad mess that is honestly abrasive in its use of needle-drops. Emma Thompson is the only redeeming element and I say that while acknowledging the fact that she eats a salad out an anachronistic modern takeaway container in one scene and this is framed as a “girl boss thing to do.”
Godzilla v Kong
They didn’t kiss?
The Stranger by the Shore
Plotted like an eight chapter alternate universe gay fanfiction for, I don’t know, Voltron? There was a scene where there’s two of them but only one bed! But only if you squint. This was bad—real bad—but I had a great time… I don’t recommend it!
Malcolm & Marie
The Kissing Booth 3
This has the same ending as Broadcast News?
He’s All That
“Hey, hey… you’d look better without all this” [rubs off lip gloss] [tucks hair behind ear] [unthreads eyebrows] [pull out your teeth] [removes your internal organs and mummifies your body].
The Woman in the Window
Feels like an SNL parody of itself.
Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway
James Corden. My nemesis, my foe, my villain, my enemy: when the quiet night peace is fractured as a thousand voices cry out at once, when the streets run red, know that is upon your shoulders—and yours alone—that the blame rests, good day.
Raya and the Last Dragon
What if world building but too much?
Chaos Walking
What if internal monologue but too much?
Gunpowder Milkshake
What if Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss but too much?
A Quiet Place Part II
What if, uh, shushing but too much?
Last Night in Soho
What if nostalgia but too much?
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard
What if The Hitman’s Bodyguard (2017) but too much?
Wrath of Man
What if Guy Ritchie but too much?
All Hands on Deck
What if French people but too much?
PG: Psycho Goreman
What if Saturday morning cartoon but too much?
Titane
What if queer coding but too much?
Moxie
What if well-meaning but tone deaf second-wave feminism but too much?
The Tomorrow War
Any amount of Chris Pratt is too much.
Fear Street: 1994
A soundtrack brought to by Spotify’s “All Out 90s” playlist.
Fear Street: 1978
It’s been a huge win of a year for Sadie Sink. Between this and music video for ‘All Too Well’ (Taylor’s Version) (Ten minute version)—vastly inferior to the original five-minute cut of the song, in my opinion—she more or less ruled popular culture
Fear Street: 1666
Best of the three by a long shot. Nickelodeon Kids version of The Crucible.
Spencer
By “performance” I am obviously referring to Timothy Spall.
I Care A Lot
Rosamund Pike could sell ice to an eskimo.
The Twentieth Century
I read a review which called this “Hamilton of Canadian politics” which is insane to me to because this is to Hamilton what Neon Genesis Evangelion is to the Bible?
Passing
Ruth Negga is such a good actress that she can make me buy the final plot twist of this film but even then only barely.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Combines the pathos of a good Jessica Chastain performance with the script quality of a Drag Race acting challenge.
Zola
I am begging A24 to do a film adaptation of the events that led to DashCon.
Being the Ricardos
Nicole Kidman curb stomps; Aaron Sorkin still can’t direct (and this script wasn’t too crash hot either).
In the Heights
Not enough grandeur to feel sweeping; not enough nuance to land as a social commentary. Brief moments of brilliance, but mostly a showcase of what musicals lack these days. Matters not helped by Lin Manuel Miranda cameos, which play like jump scares.
Cinderella
Send Camila Cabello to prison.
Tick, Tick… BOOM
Good in that it acknowledges how sociopathic theatre kids can be; bad in that it wants me to sympathise with that behaviour. Solid musical numbers. Great Bradley Whitford performance. Hated the way this looked.
Vivo
Even if I liked this (which I didn’t) this was responsible for one of the worst Tik Tok sounds this year so, ya’know, a curse upon it’s household.
West Side Story (2021)
Musicals that knows how to block, shoot, and edit a dance sequence shouldn’t be this rare.
Benedetta
Dune
This is a super specific but the bit where Rebecca Ferguson has to swoop in and murder three dudes in cold blood because Timothée Chalamet fucked up and then turns around and, without blinking, reprimands him like a disappointed mum? That’s my favourite bit of acting from this year.
Labyrinth of Cinema
No one made shitty green-screens look incredible quite like Nobuhiko Obayashi, RIP legend.
The Green Knight
Bad Trip
Dumb gotcha comedy that accidentally reveals how, in a crisis, people are fundamentally generous and neighbourly to strangers.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
The Boss Baby: Family Business
In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules there is a scene where Rodrick cries when Patty Farrell sings “Memory” from Cats the musical at the school talent show. Permit, if you will, a metaphor: I am Rodrick, this movie is Patty Farrell, the baby ninjas are “Memory.”
The Girl and the Spider
A very European film: every character smokes a lot of cigarettes and behaves like a sociopath.
Queen of Glory
Loved this.
The Witches of the Orient
Put this on mostly because I’m a big fan of Haikyuu!! and was like “I should learn more about volleyball” but, honestly, this was strange and fascinating! Doesn’t totally work but it’s a great stylistic experiment.
New Order
Felt like this one time in a first-year politics class where we were talking about how one would effectively mobilise a socialist revolution and someone said something to the effect of “Nazi’s were the only socialists to effectively revolutionise” and everyone just sat in silence for a bit afterwards.
Hopper/Welles
Guys being dudes.
Little Tornadoes
Goes for moody and just lands on boring, and I say this as someone who responds to mood. My housemates were trying out the sniper-only mode on Fortnite while I was watching this and overall that was more interesting that this.
The Hill Where The Lionesses Roar
I don’t remember watching this.
Shithouse
I miss rom-coms.
CODA
Totally predictable coming-of-age movie. Should feel wrote but it had me in a chokehold in the whole time. My feel-good recommendation of the year.
The Last Duel
I don’t know if I “get” Matt Damon… what’s going on with that guy?
Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop
Actually plays how a fourteen years old thinks a film adaptation of John Green novel plays, if that makes sense?
The Mitchell’s vs The Machines
The first film I’ve seen a film engage with meme culture without feeling desperately out of date. Like actual memes it throws everything at the wall comedically and stylistically and only 70% really sticks. It’s nice every now and then to be reminded just how limitless the narrative possibilities of animation are.
Dead Pigs
Cathy Yan en route to become one of my favourite filmmakers at this rate.
Those Who Wish Me Dead
A six out of ten but the best six out of ten money can buy.
Lucky Chan-sil
Farewell Amor
Kind.
The Card Counter
Reading between the lines here, it’s so clear that Paul Schrader thinks he keeps getting kicked out of online poker groups because he has Big Opinions about the military-torture-industrial-complex when, no, it’s because he keeps making boomer comments about the female players.
Shiva Baby
A huge win for Dianna Agron fans (DM to discuss Glee seasons 1–3).
No Time To Die
I could not explain the plot of this movie to you even if you paid me a million dollars. Something to do with nanobots? Rami Malek was (unsurprisingly) bad, doing too much—or maybe not enough. Everyone had more chemistry with Bond than the “love of his life”, but that’s just because Léa Seydoux is fundamentally miscast as a romantic interest. She’s great at playing psycho, let her be psycho! So many missed opportunities: why not more Lashana Lynch? why not more Jeffery Wright? and—most importantly—why not more Ana De Armas? I miss Eva Green. Reprehensibly bad screenplay: 90% exposition, 10% overwrought and predictable “twists.” Giving Craig-era Bond a multi-film arc has been a horrendous move and this film suffers for it, more than any of the films that came before it—yes, even Spectre. And yet… it’s good. Sorry, but it’s good! Had a great time. Would recommend. Action blockbusters are operas with guns; No Time To Die understand that and then some.
Malmkrog
Filmmaking as podcast. Nightmare blunt rotation. How it feels to chew Five Gum. Can I stop joking and express what I like about this? Not without making it sound like a terrible experience. This is a perfect depiction of how it feels to write an honours thesis—it’s awful! On purpose! “Fun” film!
Luca
Comfort film of the year (the rumours are true, I did watch this eight times in seven months). Very unambitious, especially compared to most other Pixar films but thats what I like about it. Essentially a fairy tale about growing up and finding the contours your identity; can be read as a queer allegory if you so choose (although I am constantly mad at Disney, I generally choose to do so). The small details are where this really comes to life.
Let Them All Talk
The rare instance where improv is a force for good. Not the funniest movie of the year by any stretch but, considering it’s essentially a loosey-goosey two hour meditation on the first draft of everything of everything being shit starring Meryl Streep in full chaos mode, for me personally it was the funniest. To call this “jazz filmmaking ” is a tad reductive and yet… its jazz filmmaking!
Old
One of the most gonzo films I’ve seen in the last few years. The visual language here is incredible; some of the directing choices had me bouncing off the walls. I get why some people didn’t respond to this—the dialogue is not natural at all, but it’s also clearly not trying to be, so shut up?—but if you’re willing to Go With It you open yourself up to a delicious film.
Annette
I probably need to read eight to twelve fairly comprehensive books on opera to begin really understanding everything thats going on here—for now lets just say that, as one might expect of a gothic arthouse-musical about Adam Driver giving birth to and exploiting his daughter who is a literal doll, its sublime.
The French Dispatch
Every time I’ve tried to explain my grand unified theory of why I like this and think it’s good the person I’ve been talking interrupts me and says something to the effect of, “Bold of you to assume I care.”
The Power of the Dog
Great slow burn. I was fully over Benedict Cumberbatch but this bought me back around. People have said this is about “toxic masculinity” and, look, it’s not not about that but to use the term feels like a bit of a disservice because this goes well beyond its internet buzzword connotations. The best films find ways of expressing specific emotions that we do not yet possess the language to properly describe, and this does and then some.
Licorice Pizza
Just good vibes, man.
Drive My Car
All that time I spent being Cringe™ reading Murakami paid off because I feel like I can see what we will all come to realise in time: that this is one of the most finely crafted works of literary adaptation that’s been made in a very long time. An author who struggles to draw his characters empathetically in conversation with a director who’s trademark is empathy.
The Matrix Resurrections & Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon A Time
Is it cheating to put two films in the numbers one spot? Probably. But this is my list so I’ll do what I want. Goes without saying that I was predisposed to love these: I adore everything the Wachowski’s make and Evangelion has been a part of my life so long that to remove it would be as if to remove a limb. Both films are audacious to a fault; most big budget films have no audacity at all these days (and it is for this reason that I suspect it will be a long time before I place a blockbuster in a top ten again). In a year—hell, a decade—that has been poisoned with needless reboots, remakes, and sequels here come two films that are kinda reboots, kinda remakes, and kinda sequels actively breaking their narrative circuity to create something new. In a word: antidotes.
See y’all next year! If you want more film opinions in the meantime, check out my letterboxd.
