"So ya think '21 is gonna be a good year?"
- The Who
Here they are. My favorite things from 2021. The final weeks of December saw me going to the movies more frequently than any other time in the year. I had a list of movies I wanted to get to before the year ended. Only two were left by the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. The films of 2021 brought out one common theme: sex. A male porn star ran around the streets full frontal, a nun fucked another nun, a gorilla shot its load on Eric Andre, a knight shot his load on a belt. 2021 was so horny that a woman fucked a car.
The last three months of the year usually brings out the best movies in the theater. Halloween season stretches into Christmas season. And yet, I was as deep into releases from yesteryear than ever before. Looking at the year as a whole, it puts things into perspective. The number of discoveries I made far outweighed the number of new movies I saw. My pleasure centers were on full blast during a little over two dozen of these movies that were new to me.
So as it is, I'm dividing my favorite movies list into two. The first being movies released in 2021. The second being my non-2021 discoveries.
Licorice Pizza
A movie than pinballs two characters into life's many possibilities. One is racing into adulthood as fast as he can and stumbling along the way. It's at the point in your life where you think you can do anything to entering adulthood and finding out just how fucking scary life can be. It's a movie about someone who doesn't have their emotional shit together and ends up becoming infatuated with someone who continues setting their boundaries.
Titane
Raw was impressive but not nearly on the level of what she would do next. When a movie is able to exceed expectations, it can be a magical thing to behold. Fearless is a word that gets bandied about for way too many things. Yet there is no other word I can think of to describe Agatha Rouselle's performance. Movies like Titane are the reason why I still haven't given up on contemporary cinema.
You can keep all the Marvel, DC and other blockbuster movies that came out this year. This was the EVENT project for me this year. I'll be coming back to this again and again.
A warm blanket of a movie. Words words words. Blah blah blah.
Red Rocket
Simon Rex plays an endlessly charming guy you want to have a beer with. He's also an endlessly exploitative douchebag who ruins every person's life he manages to come into contact with. Shot in beautiful 16mm anomorphic.
Paul Verhoeven made this at the age of 82. It is every bit as trangressive and full of energy as a film made by a director at half of his age. It resurrects a genre that's lied dormant since the 70s- the nunsploitation film. Between this and Elle, Verhoeven has lost none of his edge since RoboCop and Total Recall.
The funniest movie of the year by far. Road trip movies always loosen things up and invite the laughs. It's the best of Eric Andre distilled into one movie. It wisely doesn't interrupt the pranks to tell the story but incorporates the story into the pranks themselves.
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Anytime the Coens make a film that skews toward horror is a good thing. Barton Fink had some elements. So did No Country. Here we find Joel on his own. And it manages to bring in something I haven't seen from the director: gothic horror. The Shakespeare adaptation has it built in. So whoever adapts it is going to take that on. But oh how sweet it is to see a Coen do it. Denzel gives the typical astonishing performance you would expect. Major props to Kathryn Hunter as the 3 witches!
A three hour exploration into one of my favorite subgenres of horror. Kier-la Janisse previously wrote a must read book House of Psychotic Women. A book about female neurosis in horror and exploitation film. Here's another deep dive where she is every bit as thorough.
The oners, holding on the wides, the use of sunlight and shadow. This is Spielberg thru and thru. The original was a movie my dad exposed me to at an early age. So these songs were well known to the point of memorization. What Tony Kushner's screenplay does so well is revitalize them for a new age. Some songs are recontextualized while others take place in slightly different settings.
For a remake, it does a number of things better than the original. For one, Mike Faist as Riff, Rachel Zeigler as Maria and Ariana DeBose as Maria. All three are some of my favorite performances of the year. What it doesn't do as well hinges on Ansel Elgort. Richard Beymer outdoes him in every way. Plus, Elgort is a generally weak actor. What could have been a straight A is now an A-.
HONORABLE MENTION
Shiva Baby, Zola, Bergman Island, Dune, New York Ninja, Malcolm and Marie, Don't Look Up, Censor, Pig, Old
Mary Jane's Not A Virgin Anymore (1996)
I Start Counting! (1970)
Truck Turner (1974)
Deep Cover (1992)
Diary of A Mad Housewife (1970)
Blue Collar (1978)
The Beaver Trilogy (2000)
Lost In America (1985)
Modern Romance (1981)
Little Murders (1971)
SexWorld (1977)
Bullet In the Head (1990)
Lonesome (1929)
Wild Beasts (1983)
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)
Evil Dead Trap (1988)
Xtro (1982)
The Untold Story (1993)
A Women's Torment (1977)
Beyond Dream's Door (1989)
The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Deathdream (1974)
The Black Cat (1989)
House On the Edge of the Park (1980)
Daughters of Darkness (1971)
Train to Busan (2016)
Horror Rises From the Tomb (1973)
Mad Love (1935)
Election (2005)
Streetwise (1984)
When A Stranger Calls Back (1993)
Thundercrack! (1975)
What Happened Was... (1994)
Trancers (1984)
Blast of Silence (1961)
Walking the Edge (1985)
Scarlet Street (1945)
TELEVISION
Imagine coming up with this concept. Mike Flanagan has crafted a few really good horror films: Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep, Oculus. But his biggest strength is longform storytelling. The Haunting of Hill House was one of my favorite shows of 2018 and this is hands down my favorite show of 2021. I don't know how he is going to top it. The best art often comes from the personal.
Speaking of, this struck a mood with me that had me balling my eyes out by the end of the show. I grew up in a religous household and have all but left behind my faith. People complain about the monologues in the show but they are key in developing the characters and story. The key one being about what happens after we die. It's become such a big show for me in that sense, to give a small review of it wouldn't do it justice. How does one write about something so emotionally overwhelming? Just go watch it.
In a time where Walking Dead is on its, what feels like, 25th season, here comes a show that revitalizes the zombie subgenre. Jon Hyams brings an intensity and relentlesness missing from so many modern zombie movies.
The levels of self awareness ranging from self aware to being completely shut out to self awareness these character have is fascinating to watch. This season shows Kendall Roy becoming more accepting of who he is and thusly drawing further into himself. Throughout the show we see these deeply broken people use any external means to paper over the holes in themselves.
The stretch from episode 5 to the finale is masterful.
MUSIC
Music was in the background for most of the year. There was one album that I had anticipated and had blown aways my expectations and that was Lingua Ignota's follow up to Caligula. Like Midnight Mass, here is another piece of art that tackles religion. The emotional catharsis of Caligula makes Sinner Get Ready a logical continuation of what Lingua Ignota is doing. A melange of classical, neofolk and experimental dance into a darkly beautiful exploration of religion in America.
BOOKS
Fiction
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
This is the tale of the Bundren's journey across their home state of Mississippi to bury wife and mother Addie where she grew up. Allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, Homer abound here. Faulkner tackles death the only way we can, through absurdity. There is some truly unforgettable imagery here, with one scene involving a horse and a barn on fire.
Out of everything I read this year, this is the one I am most excited to reread.
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy
The film was just 40% of the story. Here is the whole jigsaw puzzle. Every little piece. At around 50 pages I gave up on trying to marry scenes of the movie with the pages of the book. Characters who make it to the third act of the movie get dispatched early on in the book. Characters whose life got cut short early on in the movie were still getting a ton of character development. I was in the dark with Ed Exley, Jack Vincennes and Bud White trying to piece together the Night Owl Murders. And it was at that point, the Demon Dog James Ellroy had me in his vice-grip.
Upon finishing it, I was knocked out by just how different it was from the script. Yet the script manages to be its own thing. This is a book you can easily make 4 different high quality scripts from and still have left over material. It's the 3rd in his LA Quartet, so it makes sense to start with The Black Dahlia then move onto The Big Nowhere, a book I started out the year with. By doing this, the already epic scope becomes even grander. I can't wait to read the final bloody chapter, Black Jazz.
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
Meta narratives have existed long before Charlie Kaufman wrote himself into a script. Probably, Italo Calvino's most famous work, this novel is required reading for anyone who likes thinking outside the box.
Crash by J.G. Ballard
A symphone of sex, destruction and amorality. The twinning of sex acts with automotive horror is relentless and taken to outrageous extremes. Ballard wrote this shortly after the death of his wife.
If you think you don't need to read it because you've seen the Cronenberg film, think again.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
An espionage thriller from the perspective of a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother. A man who went to university in America but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause.
Besides being just extremely well written with engaging characters, it is genuinely funny in parts. The Vietnam War has been a tragedy that has caught my attention since high school. Here is a book that examines it's legacy in film and the wars we fight today.
Non Fiction
The Non Fiction I consumed this year took me in many directions. I looked back in time from a different perspective with Howard Zinn. The Sixth Extinction made me look at the terrifying future that lies ahead with crystal clarity. Hunter S. Thompson loaded a suitcase full of drugs and took me to Las Vegas in search of the American Dream. Sleazoid Express sat me right down in the grindhouses of 42nd Street. And David Sylvester opened up the life of my favorite painter, Francis Bacon, through dozens of candid interviews.
