By my count, I saw 24 movies in theatres between this year’s Oscars and the last. I wore a mask nearly every time — first cloth, then medical, then an N95. (I notably went without a mask after I walked into King Richard and saw I was the only person in the whole theatre. I got some Swedish Berries to mark the occasion.) I don’t find wearing a mask to be anything more than the most minor of inconveniences, though it seems many folks do, or they believe that movie theatres exist in an alternate reality in which COVID-19 doesn’t spread through the air.
Regardless, I’m grateful to have had the privileges of returning to the movies so regularly over the last year, even as it represents an unnecessary risk in the midst of this still-ongoing pandemic. Taking these movies in on the big screen, in an environment where the discipline of paying attention (and not, say, checking Twitter) is enforced by way of social norms, is something I really value. And there were -a lot- of very, very good movies released this year. While there were many difficult and terrible things about this past year, at least there was so much creative excellence to escape to. Plus, a trove of things to watch from home. What a privilege!
Below, some thoughts on the year of film that was ahead of Sunday’s Oscars.
Best narrative feature:
By my count, I saw five new movies this year which I’d consider to be masterpieces, or very close to it. Only one, Licorice Pizza, is up for Best Picture. Licorice Pizza is almost alarmingly tailor-made for me, combining my two top cinematic interests (Paul Thomas Anderson and coming of age/fumbling love). I’ve seen it three times now, and it’s only grown in my estimation with each viewing. This is an electric film overflowing with a boundless, implacable ambition. The film’s world grows and shrinks around Gary and Alana’s love, as their lines converge into a single point with a violent magnetism. And it’s got an all-time great ending, set to Taj Mahal’s “Tomorrow May Not Be Your Day.” That’s in addition to “Life on Mars?” and “Let Me Roll It” playing elsewhere. What a rush.
Disarming end-credit needle drops tie together three of the other excellent films of 2021: After Yang (“Glider” by Mitski), The Worst Person in the World (“The Waters of March” by Art Garfunkel) and Red Rocket (“Bye Bye Bye” by *NSYNC, played backwards). After Yang is my favourite of the bunch, a staggering sophomore feature from Kogonada which offers a crushing portrayal of visual memory, and the collection of discrete moments of joy, friendship and love which form the essence of a life. I found The Worst Person in the World deeply relatable, as a portrait of restlessness and the weight of possibilities. And Red Rocket was a brilliant, empathic character study of a man who may actually be the worst person in the world. The final standout movie of the year was The Last Duel, Ridley Scott’s hyper-violent historical drama, which contends for the bleakest movie I’ve ever seen.
I though it was strong year for film, but a fairly weak Best Picture class. CODA and Drive My Car are both truly great, but I found The Power of the Dog, Don’t Look Up and King Richard all pretty middling. And I actively disliked Belfast and Dune. Still have yet to see Nightmare Alley or West Side Story.
Also worth a brief mention: Luca, Petite Mamam and The Mitchells vs. The Machines were all great coming-of-age features. Spider-Man: No Way Home and No Time to Die were about as good as IP blockbusters get, and very, very fun theatrical experiences. And Dear Evan Hansen was spectacularly bad, the rare cinematic trainwreck that’s a pure joy to witness.
Best performance:
Alana Haim knocks it out of the park in Licorice Pizza. I love the early scene where her character shows up at the date with Gary, against her better judgement, and finds herself disarmed completely. Hers was the best performance I saw this year. I was also taken by Simon Rex and Suzanna Son in Red Rocket, Jodie Comer in The Last Duel, Emilia Jones and Troy Kotsur in CODA and Andrew Garfield in Tick, Tick, Boom. Would also be remiss not to mention The French Dispatch, which I found uneven but was propped up by the quality of its best performances, by Lea Seydoux, Benicio del Toro and Adrien Brody.
Best doc:
I didn’t watch a lot of documentary work this year. But I thought the true event of 2021 was The Beatles: Get Back, the mammoth Peter Jackson archival documentary. I was initially annoyed by the eight-hour runtime, but I would have happily taken twice that. It strikes me as a miracle that most of this footage exists at all. A lot was made of the moment where Paul McCartney seems to pull “Get Back” out of thin air, manifesting a perfect riff, a perfect vocal melody out of nothing in a way that looks like a magic trick. But there are similarly remarkable moments like that throughout, including the deep creative catalogue George Harrison comes into the studio with day after day — over the course of the three-week session, you watch him come in with “I Me Mine,” “Old Brown Shoe,” “Something,” “For You Blue” and “Isn’t it a Pity,” and there is such a glut of collective brilliance in the room that John Lennon dismisses some of them out of hand! I really think this is a defining document of artistic ingenuity.
I know the kind of effusive praise given above is one that would only be given by someone with a deep personal history with The Beatles. The film is almost inside-baseball, to the extent where you could describe anything related to the most influential and beloved totem of Western pop culture as such. But I know personally, having grown up surrounded by this music, with these songs inextricably tied to parts of my life and parts of myself, it was a profound experience to work through this series, including watching some parts a second time with my dad. Let it roll.