From classic musicals to fantasy epics, binge these stunning films to revisit 2021’s best movies
Last year marked the beginning of a healing period for the film industry. Yet instead of it being a slow and confident journey back to normalcy, it was assuredly rapid and fleeting. Periods of outright closure were bolstered by barren release schedules. At the beginning of 2021, it felt COVID-19 was sounding the death knell on film-going experience. However, out of the blistering and vapid heat of summer came news of a glorious bounty of cinematic treasure. Fall marked the end of two years of postponements and delays, sparking a movie season that will be difficult to replicate as each week of the last three months of 2021 greeted this critic with an experience that probed the mind and thoroughly investigated the heart.
While the pandemic loomed heavy over our lives, the hearth of cinema provided a profound respite that made it possible to think of a near future where this current reality of lockdowns and distancing will be nothing more than a bad memory.
Yes, this list of great films contains a heavy number of end-of-year releases, but that only further emboldens them to usher you into 2022 as they provide moments that stay with you long after the credits roll, inducing a sense of wonderment and comfort that help to define what it means to be alive.
Here is the best that 2021 had to offer.
11. Dune (Denis Villeneuve, USA)
The quintessential fantasy epic of our times was also an exercise in delayed catharsis. Dune is an incomplete masterpiece that stings you with its lack of finality. In a cast full of greats, scope is the biggest star in Dune, resulting in arguably the greatest blending of a cinematic landscape and soundscape that has ever been put to screen, enveloping the audience in its all-encompassing splendor as it leaves you enraptured and unfulfilled in its concluding moments. It’s a film that will unfortunately be judged on the merits of its eventual continuation. As of now, we are left with a masterwork that needs time to be fully appreciated as a true great.
10. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan)
The wheel keeps spinning in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s transcendent film where missed connections, fateful chances, and regretful romances take centre stage and paint the world with profound melancholic brushstrokes. Constructed as an episodic triptych, each chapter details the titular wheel with extended scenes that allow both its characters and its themes to be delivered with emotional precision. Hamaguchi strives to make clear that one moment can be both emotionally splendid and utterly painful and that as life forges on, we remain ever trapped within the wheel. Yet, this reality is never made out to be dire. Instead, it’s rendered as a prosaic fantasy that transforms modernity into an enchanting and empowering place, where sooner or later fortune will favour you.
9. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, USA)
The Card Counter continues Paul Schrader’s winning streak of complex, cynical, and harrowing character studies that not only detail the inner machinations of the protagonist but also comment on the current state of American culture and politics. Schrader has been committed to exploring characters in this way since Taxi Driver (1976) where he tackled American alienation and the ubiquity of violence, post-Vietnam, through the perspective of a deranged and damaged cabbie. This time around, Schrader sets his sights on the legacy of America’s “war on terror” which he explores through William Tell, a professional gambler who travels across the country winning big by counting cards, a skill he picked up during a ten-year stint in prison for his part in the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. As audiences delve deep into Tell’s reflections and moral quandaries, they too will grapple with one fundamental question, how can one fully reckon with their past and atone for a sin that is truly unforgivable?
8. The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, USA)
Is this the most Wes Andersonian film of all time? Yes. Is that a bad thing? No. The French Dispatch embodies the filmmaker’s idiosyncrasies and quirks with a panache that is both technically marvelous and deeply heartfelt. Anderson is sometimes accused of trading narrative heft for quirky set pieces and characters, and while The French Dispatch is certainly ingrained with a singular eccentricity, it never forgets to imbue its story with human emotion and a passion for its subjects. Following a specific foreign bureau of the fictional Liberty Kansas Evening Sun, The French Dispatch creates four distinct stories that weave an intricate tapestry that is packed to the brim with details that are hard to appreciate in a single viewing. Anderson’s trademark wit and symmetrical shot compositions create an enchanting tribute to the zenith of magazine journalism, and it’ll make you fawn over a time you never knew you wanted to live in.
7. The Green Knight (David Lowry, USA)
“Now off with your head.” This classically harrowing closing line is transformed into something life-affirming by the visual and thematic splendor of The Green Knight. The famous 14th century medieval tale of honour, fame, and chivalry is rendered a more spiritual, ethereal, and eerie fable, where the typical swords and sorcery is no match for the complex battle of the mind. As Gawain continues his journey to seek out the titular knight, it becomes clear that the real obstacles are his own weaknesses, temptations, and doubts, as they manifest themselves into visual feasts that captivate our imaginations while they penetrate the soul of our hero. It’s rare that a film so confident graces our screens, translating even the most traditional of tales into an experience that is innately human and emblematic of our current struggles to be remembered well past the conclusion of our own quests.
6. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, USA)
2021 was the year of resurgence for the American musical. From the raucous neighbourhood of In the Heights, to the personal struggles of an artist in Tick Tick… Boom (2021), the cinematic musical was in full bloom this year. However, the one that will go down as a masterpiece will undoubtedly be Steven Spielberg’s enchanting and grandiose remake of West Side Story. While no one was clamoring for another cinematic rendition of this storied play, Spielberg pulled off something truly remarkable by revitalizing this story and injecting it with modern fervor, making this version of the classic play definitive. While the 1961 adaptation will undoubtedly retain its classic status, Spielberg’s artistry and construction of the various musical set pieces shines with the spectacle of technicolour as the sweeping pans, lavish wide shots, and majestic choreography will make you swoon every time Tony cries out for Maria. It’s a breathtaking cinematic experience that showcases the raw power of musicals. While the need for something refreshing and ground-breaking is important for the future of film, sometimes a masterful hand is needed to remind us of the classical form and its magical ability to elevate even the simplest of stories.
5. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
Paul Thomas Anderson has always had a fascination with Los Angeles in the 1970s. He broke out with a stylistically bold exploration of the city’s porn industry in Boogie Nights (1997) and then dove headfirst into a murky detective story in Inherent Vice (2014). But Licorice Pizza marks the first time where his storytelling ambition results in a laidback free flow of singular moments, in which he aims to draw us into the dreamy, hazy, and turbulent world where this film’s central romance resides. Gary and Alana’s dynamic is one that is simultaneously endearing and peculiar, with Alana ten years older than the driven and boastful Gary. Their dynamic interplay of pushes and pulls amid the 70s waterbed craze, gasoline crisis, and the “pinball ban” creates a palatable sense of time and place. The euphoric tides of their dreamlike romance enrapture the eyes and captivate the heart while coasting you along to the next moment. It’s the quintessential hangout movie of the year as we run with these characters towards a sense of purpose, comfort, and pleasure, even though the ultimate destination might not be clear.
4. The Power of The Dog (Jane Campion, New Zealand)
A revisionist western for the ages, The Power of The Dog upholds the traditional majesty of the American frontier while deconstructing the wild hearts that populated it. It’s an experience that explores the inner turmoil of all its characters with a poignant subtlety, building great momentum towards a conclusion with such cathartic force that it redefines everything that has come before it. Phil Burbank is brought to life with a career-defining performance by Benedict Cumberbatch, whose bitterness, jealousy, and penchant for emotional torture heighten the exquisitely-layered themes of desire, grief, and hatred that bubble to the surface. Jane Campion’s majestic direction transforms the raw beauty of New Zealand into hauntingly picturesque 1925 Montana where traditionally invisible emotions become wholly visible, laying bare an unparalleled entry point into the fractured souls of these characters.
3. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
Only the truth, no matter how painful it is, can allow life to blossom and move forward with the certainty that it will get better. With Parallel Mothers, Almodóvar’s reverence for all things maternal reaches a political boiling point. The story of two women whose lives are forever entwined the moment they give birth, simultaneously at the same hospital, serves as a melodramatic backdrop for a nuanced confrontation between Spain’s fascist past and the horrors of the Franco regime. After giving birth in 2016, Janis becomes a compulsive liar, manipulating her loved ones to shield them, and ultimately herself, from an unbearable truth. This echoes what Spain itself has been doing for the better part of 45 years as the “Pact of Forgetting” made it easier to move on and avoid a brutally honest confrontation with the regime’s violent past. The genius of Almodóvar lies in how he can craft an engrossing melodrama full of enthralling revelations and emotional catharsis while emboldening it with political and philosophical underpinnings. This is a film that not only evocatively addresses the very nature of historical truth but also the roles we play in facilitating lies that supposedly make it easier to exist.
2. The Worst Person in The World (Joachim Trier, Norway)
Joachim Trier’s jubilant, spellbinding, and enchanting The Worst Person in The World follows Julia, a woman who is caught in a quarter-life flux that is forcing her to choose between the ecstasy of dreams and the starkness of reality. A plot that has all the makings of a generic rom com is transformed into something luminescent as Trier renders the familiar trappings of love, heartbreak, and relationships obsolete by making a sharp, provocative, and poignant observation on the millennial ethos and this generation’s headfirst battle with time. Structured as a 12-chapter story with a prologue and epilogue, the film has a tight focus of a few years but is astonishingly all-encompassing in its emotional scope. Trier presents us with a portrait of a life that goes by too fast, leaving us wishing that time would stand still, much like it does for Julia in the greatest scene of the year.
1. Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan)
Hamaguchi’s second masterwork of the year has a hypnotic quality that makes three hours pass by seamlessly. A feeling of vulnerability persists as you ponder how easily you fell prey to its melodic pace. Drive My Car is a somber and beguiling meditation on sorrow and its ability to have us ruminating on the secrets of our loved ones in order to fully accept the roles we’re destined to play. By interweaving Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Hamaguchi depicts the refractional relationship between life and art, rendering a pervasive vision of life after grief. The film centres around a playwright who accepts a residency in Hiroshima after the death of his wife. While it sounds far from riveting, what makes Drive My Car the greatest film of the year is that it’s insistent on delivering emotional and psychological revelations rather than dramatic ones. It forces you to look inwards before being able to process the external, as a character notes “If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves.” The film makes us contemplate how we too would cope with the secrets lurking behind our loved ones’ eyes—would we dwell on the unknowns or make peace with the mystery?
A version of this article appeared in print in The Ontarion issue 192.2 on Jan. 27, 2022.
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