A Seattle moviegoing lifestyle magazine
In her first feature as director, Carole screenwriter Phyliss Nagy, steps behind the camera and casts Elizabeth Banks in a melodrama about a Chicago housewife whose frustrated pursuit of a life-saving abortion leads her into the heart of a clandestine collective of women connecting those in need with vital services. Set in 1968, its occasionally valedictory tone also serves as an uncomfortable warning as near-daily headlines threaten for history to repeat itself.
Without a doubt, there is nothing at this year’s festival that will ever quite be like A Love Song. The serene beauty of the film’s vision rips the breath away, showing the detail in everything from the dazzling landscapes to the etchings in the faces of the kind people that inhabit them. It is a story about love, loneliness, and what life is like when you find yourself on your own.
There comes a time in every young actor’s life when he must graduate from playing the type of roles that made him famous and start directing other actors in the type of roles that made him famous. Here, in the Sundance premiere of his directorial debut, Jesse Eisenberg casts Finn Wolfhard in a Very Jesse Eisenberg Role — a precocious teen who attempts to mask soul-crushing insecurity under a thick coat of boastful bravado — as Ziggy Katz, a semi-successful TikTok Teen whose alternative-influenced emo folk music has earned him 20,000 followers on a verified top-performing account, but isn’t “political enough” to win the affections of a deeply-engaged, highly-informed girl at school who’s barely aware of his existence.
And so it is, in the midst of our own slow-burning pandemic, that Joel Coen has chosen a film adaptation of The Scottish Play for his first stint as a solo-credited director. In a way it is unsurprising that after decades of making films with his brother that found the Shakespearean drama among the base instincts, small-minded greed, and ordinary human foibles he would turn to the Bard’s most compact tragedy. But it is somewhat amazing how straightforward and seriously he plays the political thriller about an ambitious warrior with an even more ambitious wife who conspire to take the throne through bloody regicide.
Love is seen in every frame and sequence that is in conversation with itself, deploying and then subverting tropes with reckless abandon in the brilliant way that only a Scream film could.
By my count, I saw 236 2021 releases in 2021 (an all-time record by far for me!), and could easily present a Top 50 here of films I’m really passionate and excited about. And yet, even so: I’m woefully behind! The year is over and I can’t drag out publishing this any longer, so here stands my work in progress: 10 of my favorite films (that I’ve seen so far) from 2021!
If there is a unifying trait to my favorite films of the year, it’s that I either saw them in a theater, or that they offered the kind of visual storytelling that richly merited viewing them on a theater screen. Wonderful as streaming is, there’s a seismic visceral impact to meeting a movie on its own terms, in a darkened theater. And the ten films that most rocked my world in 2021 richly deserved presentation in that forum.
A measured feature debut from director Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter provides an incisive look at motherhood seen through the expressive eyes of Oliva Colman.
Wow what a garbage year 2021 has been, and I didn’t think 2020’s sequel could be even worse, but here we are. However, thanks to the film gods, we didn’t have to go through it without some quality entertainment laid at our feet. Below is my top ten… ok top twelve movies for the year. One of the toughest parts of this list was which should be ranked where, so lets say they’re mostly tied with a couple stand-outs at the top.
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.
