Every year there are great films, yes, but it felt like 2021 was a particularly good year for movies. Certainly better than 2020, but what wasn’t better than 2020? These movies below are my favorites, but they were also the ones that provoked responses from me, whether it be enjoyment, anger, befuddlement or some combination of those (and others). There are a few movies I couldn’t make it to before the end of the year, a snowstorm in Seattle right after Christmas did my filmgoing plans no good, but I am confident this is a good representation of the strength of filmmaking in 2021.
Pig (Michael Sarnoski)
Nicholas Cage just wants his pig back, dammit. Living in the woods as a recluse after a successful culinary career, Cage’s Rob is a man who returns to the thriving Portland culinary scene (and the past he left behind) to try to recover his prized truffle pig that was violently stolen. I found the movie surprisingly tender and heartfelt with the bond between Rob and his truffle-hunting companion. It was such a movie that upended all of my expectations.
(Pig is currently streaming on Hulu)
Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson)
Roots drummer Questlove makes his directorial debut as what could be one of cinema’s all-time great concert-documentaries (2021 also also gave us the very worst). Uncovering footage from the 6-week Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969 and interviewing attendees, it’s a joyous film with incredible music (Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, the Fifth Dimension, B.B. King, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples).
(Summer of Soul is currently streaming on Hulu.)
Wife of a Spy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
This is such a tightly-wound thriller that it reminds me so much of the precision Hitchcock used throughout his tales of intrigue. The film is set in 1940’s Japan, just as Japan is entering World War II, with a woman, Satuko (Yu Aoi, marvelous), who begins to suspect that there’s more to her husband’s career as a garment merchant. The story of marriage and espionage is such an expertly-made thriller that it’s difficult not to be absorbed in the story. The pacing is superb, the acting is phenomenal, and I need to conserve my superlatives if I’m going to get through seven more (also-excellent) films.
(Wife of a Spy is currently streaming on MUBI and available for rent on various VOD platforms.)
Annette (Leos Carax)
2021 was such a year that this offbeat musical where its stars (Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard) have a daughter that’s a puppet was on the second weirdest movie to make my top ten movies list (scroll down to number three). But Driver is magnetic, proving his star power can elevate the weirdest of movies. Cotillard is always a pleasure to watch on screen and the musical numbers are often funny as the propel this story forward. The Sparks Brothers wrote this movie and Leos Carax performed something of a miracle turning this movie into something so wonderful and watchable.
(Annette is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
Paul Verhoeven’s latest film is horny, blasphemous, confounding, often hilarious, and never boring. I’m probably going to hell just for watching it. I’m not entirely sure which moments are meant to be satirical and which are to be profound, and that’s by design. It purports to tell the story of Benedetta Carlini, a real life, seventeenth century nun who believes she’s destined to marry Jesus, but also has sexual feelings towards another nun. Verhoeven may be working through his faith and his fetishes at the same time, I don’t know and I don’t particularly care, the end result is a great movie.
(Benedetta is available to rent on various VOD platforms.)
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodovar)
Pedro Almodovar’s entire film oeuvre is Spain’s greatest cultural export (the paintings of Francisco Goya remain a distant second). His newest film, Parallel Mothers, continues with his usual excellence. It’s a moving film about two women, one younger, the other closer to middle-age, that find themselves in the same hospital room as their both about to give birth. Their lives intersect first due to coincidence then tragedy. It’s a moving and heartfelt movie from my favorite international filmmaker. Let’s not forget that Penelope Cruz is outstanding as a single mother trying to help her family find answers from their past while other variables complicate her future.
(Parallel Mothers opens at SIFF Cinema on Friday, January 21.)
East of the Mountains (S.J. Chiro)
My favorite locally-made film stars Tom Skerritt as a widower who finds he has little to live for after his wife passed away about a year prior and he travels to Eastern Washington to tie up some loose ends with his family before joining her in the afterlife. I pretty much cried throughout this touching, bittersweet movie. If I were put in charge of doling out Little Gold Men, Tom Skerritt would already have his Oscar for the best performance of 2021.
(East of the Mountains is available to rent on various VOD platforms.)
Titane (Julia Ducournau)
For every bit that West Side Story was joyous and life-fulfilling, this discomfiting French horror thriller is the exact opposite. It’s brutal and uncomfortable. Someone actually passed out at the screening I went to. But it’s also thoroughly engrossing in its weirdness. Agathe Rousselle is so mesmerizing as Alexia that I’ll remember her performance for years to come. Plus, every top ten list needs at least one film about someone getting impregnated by a motor vehicle but there were no movies from the Transformers series in 2021 and I haven’t seen Drive My Car yet.
(Titane is available to rent on various VOD platforms)
West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
Spielberg’s remake of one of Hollywood’s greatest musicals is nearly equal to the sixty year old predecessor. Each music number is a showstopper and the acting is superb. The colors are vivid and exciting. There are few lulls in a movie that’s fun and enduring and an instant classic. West Side Story is the best celebration of film I’ve seen this year.
(West Side Story is currently in wide release in theaters.)
The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
The best movie I saw in 2021 is Paul Schrader’s mediation on the psychological scars left by those caught up in Abu Ghraib, one of the most unnecessary scandals the US has ever found itself in. Oscar Isaac served his time for the humiliation and torture he was responsible for, though his superiors escaped culpability and lived comfortable lives. He made his living as a low-level gambler until he met the son of one of his peers from the Iraqi prison and a woman who connects gamblers with financiers (Tiffany Haddish in her very best performance, by far). It’s a potent movie that rarely missteps and makes an important point that is often forgotten: that Donald Trump’s evil and cruelty are no reasons to forget George W. Bush’s evil and cruelty.
(The Card Counter is available for rent or purchase on various VOD platforms.)
Catch up with the Sunbreak’s Year-end lists: Josh | Chase | Chris