So, A "Working" Critic's Favorite Films of 2021.

"Cinema doesn't need to have a message. It needs to have a heart." 
-John David Washington, Malcolm & Marie

A lot of years in therapy helped me unlock a certain truth about myself - I seek out things that will elicit the biggest possible emotions from me. This is why I did drugs, this is why I drank, why I stayed in toxic relationships, why I've moved from region to region, country to country. I'm looking to feel as much as possible. Sadness, love, humor, fright, happiness, the particular feeling is practically inconsequential. I'll feel all of those in my lifetime - it's a matter of feeling them to their highest degree. My quest for maximum feeling has left me, now at the age of 24, in a stable and happy relationship, five years sober, living in a country away from the rest of my family. It has also, in turn, left me stranded, floating in an endless sea of media. Movies: my antidote, the healthiest way to scratch the itch of Big Feelings. So, I watch, I rate, I categorize, I write, I collect, and most importantly, I feel.

What I've compiled below is a list of my ten favorite films of 2021. While they may not be the ten "best" movies of the year, each one, in its own way, led me to feel in massive, consequential ways. They stuck with me, the earworms of cinema, daring me to forget about them. It is safe to say, I haven't. Of the approximately 180 movies from 2021 that I watched, these are the ten that have stayed with me most, the ten that eclipsed all others, the ten that reminded what it is to feel greatly. Enjoy.

10. West Side Story

"There's a place for us, a time and place for us."

I'll admit to being a tad overcritical of the new West Side Story before it came out. "Why do we really need, in 2021, another race war Romeo and Juliet?" I recall myself exclaiming on more than one occasion. I'm still unsure as to why we got another West Side Story, a Spielbergian reimaging of the 1950s stage play and the most critically acclaimed musical of all time; but, I'm sure glad we did. It's almost like I should never have doubted one of the greatest directors of all time. Steven Spielberg, now in his sixth decade of filmmaking, was able to take a relatively unknown cast and a world renowned musical and create something new with it. The dances are fresh, the supporting cast is incredible, and the songs remain stone cold classics. In yet another year of reboots and rip-offs, West Side Story remains one of the only to feel truly original in its retelling. Spielberg kept a grin on my face, like only he can, until he tore it away with force and emotion, leaving me sobbing and thankful to have been so wrong about the remade musical. 

9. Pig

"We don't get a lot of things to really care about."

Almost six months ago I wrote a short and sweet review of this film. I struggled, in that review, to talk about what makes Pig such an emotionally burdensome and cathartic experience, because to tip the film's hand is to spoil that very feeling. Even now, with months of reflection behind me, I still find it difficult to talk about Pig. While most Nic Cage films can be easily described as "you gotta see it, to believe it," that tagline applies to few more appropriately than it does Pig. So, once again, I'll spare you with the cryptic words and roundabout passages implying the importance of the film, and instead, I'll beg of you to seek Pig out on its own terms - as a great film shrouded in mystery. Go in knowing little. You'll leave feeling more.

8. Mass

"You say you wanna heal. We all do. Is this how?"

I've never seen a film like Mass, and that may be because there's never quite been a film like Mass. Fran Kranz's directorial debut - Fran Kranz, who you may know better as the stoner in The Cabin in the Woods - shucks the comedy he is known for portraying and instead dives head first into dramatic realism. Mass is a conversation that takes place in real-time between two fictional sets of parents: one parented the victim of a school shooting, the other duo parented the shooter. The four-person show (Jason Issacs, Martha Plimpton, Reed Birney, and Ann Dowd) is an astonishingly personal and gut-wrenching exercise in working through grief and guilt. I can't say I'd recommend it if you're looking for something "fun" to watch, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it as required viewing. There have been few fictional features to hit me with such a profound sense of documentary, and none that have broken me down emotionally the way Mass did. While being as stylistically different from anything Fran Kranz has ever worked on, once again he has proven himself to be a man of the people - giving us exactly what we didn't know we needed. 

7. Drive My Car

"We must keep on living."

Let's get this out of the way early: Drive My Car is almost definitely the best movie of 2021. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's three hour adaptation of the Haruki Murakami short story floats like smoke in the air, playfully incorporeal, but emotionally affective nonetheless. The film follows a theatre director as he wrestles with the loss of his partner and pulling off a multilingual adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. All the while, he isn't allowed (for complicated reasons) to partake in his one therapeutic release: driving his car. It's a film about bonding, about trauma, about letting go and moving on, about never really knowing what it is you're letting go of or where you're moving on to. Drive My Car sneaks up on you. It hit me about an hour in, during an audition scene, and I just started crying in the theater. At other times (probably more appropriate times) I noticed others around me crying, as well. Like all of Murakami's work, not everything about Drive My Car is universal. It's far too off-kilter, too unique, too bizarre to perfectly mirror any one person's actual life. But, as is his way, Murakami (and by extension, Hamaguchi) infuses every moment of the story with delicate sentimentality, allowing any scene to touch someone rather deeply. This makes Drive My Car one of the most innovative and rewarding films of the year, one that can constantly be revisited, with new feelings bubbling up in different scenes every time. That Hamaguchi was able to successfully and beautifully adapt the emotional kaleidoscope of Murakami's work is no small feat, and it is one deserving of the title "Best Picture of 2021."

6. CODA

"You're all I need to get by."

Not even much to say here other than I cried. Like, I cried so much. I just did not stop crying. Do I have to say more? 

Wait, I do? Fuck. Okay. CODA, which stands for Child of Deaf Adults, is a family dramedy not unlike so many others you've seen in the past. It follows a teenage girl, Ruby Rossi, on the brink of leaving for college. She navigates school, her first sexual experiences, balancing a job with extracurricular activities. It has all the hallmarks of a normal high-school movie, except Ruby is the only hearing person in her family, making her their de facto translator. And while that's what makes the movie unique, it isn't what makes it special. CODA gets away with all the tropey bullshit (and there's a lot of it) because it carries with it so much heart and love. You'd think the Rossi family was a real-life family, not a fantastic grouping of deaf and/or signing actors. In fact, if you're anything like me, you'd hope they were a real family, so you could have a shot at joining their ranks and living amongst their humor and talent and grace. CODA may not be the most original film ever made, but it's damn near perfect at being what it needs to be: a feel-good, tear-inducing dramedy that will forever be a favorite.

5. The Father

"I feel as if I'm losing all my leaves."

Here's a film first seen in January of 2020, when it premiered at Sundance. That was weeks before Covid hit North America, months before Joe Biden won the presidency, and now, almost two years ago. Of course, most of the world had to wait until early 2021 to see Florian Zeller's masterwork, when it finally left the festival circuit and found its way to regular folks' big (and small) screens. While warmly received amongst pandemic audiences, The Father hasn't made a lot of year end lists. It fell into a weird limbo, caught between a calendar year and an award calendar. Anthony Hopkins has already won the Academy Award for his portrayal of an old man with debilitating dementia at last April's Oscar ceremony; likewise, Zeller's already received his Oscar for his mind-melding adapted screenplay. The Father was recognized in early 2021, and then, ironically, forgotten by the end of it. Not by me. I found this two person show (Olivia Colman in an excellent performance as Hopkins' daughter) to be one of the most effective uses of storytelling all year. You don't just see dementia, you're thrust into its world, gripped by the experience of it. While I rated every other movie on this list higher than I initially did with The Father, few have stuck with me more. Maybe that's because I recently lost a grandfather, or because I'm currently losing another to Parkinson's, but there's something about The Father that makes it a timeless, emotional stamp on my psyche. I just can't seem to forget it. 

4. Petite Maman

"I came from the path behind you."

Like my words on Pig, I'll keep what I say about Petite Maman short - though not for the same mysterious reasons. There's not much I'd like to say about Céline Sciamma's follow-up to the 2019 masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, because there's not much film to evaluate. This little film about two girls who meet in the woods between their houses - and between different moments in time - runs only 72 minutes long (including the credits). And yet, what Sciamma and the twin child actresses are able to do in that time unlocked a hidden-away chamber of my heart reserved for my adoration of a child's innocence. Some filmmakers spend their whole lives attempting to elicit that emotional awakening. This dollop of brilliance was able to do it in a little more than an hour. 

3. C'mon C'mon

"Whatever you plan on happening never happens. Stuff you would never think of happens. So you just have to, you have to c'mon."

Speaking of kids: no film had me crying in a movie theater last year quite like C'mon C'mon did. This black-and-white Mike Mills project stars Joaquin Phoenix as a podcast-producing uncle, who takes his young nephew (a radiant Woody Norman) under his wing while his sister sorts through issues with her husband. What ensues is a deeply reflective portrait of childhood, adulthood, and all that we lose in the transition between them. Like so many other children, I couldn't wait to grow up. Now, like nearly every adult I've met, I look back wishing I had let myself be a child when I was one. One of those great human paradoxes. What C'mon C'mon reminds us is that childhood may be a time of innocence, where every idea is ripe and the world is full of endless possibilities, but it's also a time that we only vaguely remember. It is up to the adults around us, not only to shape the world we're coming up in, but to document and record and remember our very own lives for us. When they pass, they pass with memories of our childhood we will never retain. And when we pass into adulthood, it becomes our responsibility to look back and lend that hand for the generation behind us. We'll never be those kids again, but C'mon C'mon brought me to a place of remembering what it's like to be one - and what I must do to preserve the childhoods of those after me. It's a palpably heartfelt film, and one of the most important works of the year. Look out for the little guys around your ankles. They're the next you.

2. Judas and the Black Messiah

"I'm gonna die for the people 'cause I live for the people. I live for the people 'cause I love the people!"

Yet another film that fell into the gap between award calendar and actual calendar, Judas and the Black Messiah feels like it came out eons ago. But alas, it was just one of the first great movies of 2021. I've written rather extensively about how revolutionary this biopic of Fred Hampton and William O'Neal is - two men's stories being used as a trojan horse for larger social issues, cemented by two powerhouse performances from Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield. I then wrote (and even podcasted) further about why Kaluuya was deserving of an Oscar for his performance. (He won it, by the way.) So, if you haven't already gathered that you should see Judas and the Black Messiah, because it's one of the very finest movies of the year, then you're just choosing to ignore my message. Which is a real shame, because this film stands as a testament to the power of solid filmmaking, great acting, and choosing the right ways to tell a complicated story. And it will keep standing because as long as the issues that Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party were fighting to resolve continue across the globe, this biopic will live on. I'd like it to be a relic of the past, but unfortunately Judas and the Black Messiah remains as relevant today as the days in which it's set. 

Honorable Mentions

The first and most important honorable mention is my partner Blair. If it weren't for Blair I wouldn't have the opportunity to watch hundreds of films a year. The over 740 hours of film I consumed last year are in no small way a product of the life that Blair affords me. Likewise, this list is a dedication to that very luxury. Thank you, Blair.

The second honorable mention is, once again, Blair, for if it weren't for their better judgement this would be a top twenty-five list (or maybe even top fifty if I were feeling particularly crazy?). So, in honor of Blair's patience and guidance, here are the next fifteen honorable mentions, my 11th through 25th favorite films of 2021: The Tragedy of MacBeth by Joel Coen; Malcolm & Marie because I require a favorite black-and-white Netflix film; Licorice Pizza for Bradley Cooper; Red Rocket for Simon Rex; Spencer for Kristen Stewart; Nine Days because it made me question my own mortality; The Power of the Dog because I think it's very important to let the old masters keep cooking; The Green Knight because I think it's very important to let the new masters have a turn in the kitchen too; The Suicide Squad because I'm a sucker for dumb fun; Shiva Baby for being the most anxiety-ridden movie of the year; Plan B for being the funniest movie of the year; Titane for being the weirdest movie of the year; Benedetta because lesbians can be weird, but Christianity will always be weirder; The Matrix Resurrections because Keanu can do no wrong; and last but not least, The Card Counter because if I didn't mention it Paul Schrader would eviscerate me on Facebook. 

Got all those? Aren't you glad I didn't write blurbs about each of them? Thank Blair for that. In fact, thank Blair for this list, anyway.

1. The Worst Person in the World

"It's the promise of life, it's the joy in your heart."

When I first saw this film at the Vancouver International Film Festival, I cried silently into my mask. Seeing my life - my indecision, my deepest fears, my happiest moments, my loves found, then lost - play out on the silver screen before me in the form of Renate Reinsve's legendary performance as Julie and Joachim Trier's stylish Oslo, absolutely ensnared me and shook me to my core. The second time I saw this film was in the arms of my partner, at home on the couch. Again, I cried. This time I wasn't alone though. Blair and I sobbed, as my mother looked on comically at our young hearts being torn to shreds by this romantic dramedy about a very ordinary woman struggling through a very ordinary young life. But The Worst Person in the World is far from ordinary. It's touching, it's raw, it's raucous, it's gentle, it's funny, it's depressing, it's hopeful, it's perfect. Even now, as I write this, I cry again at the remembrance of what this film means to me. It's my favorite film of 2021. It is, in fact, one of my favorite films of all time, already.