2021 EOTY Entertainment Lists • Page 4

I know, I'm just discussing my thoughts on it.

 

The Worst Person in the World is so good. Of course I saw it after I already posted my list

 

I liked the explanation; it encourages more discourse.

 

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a fascinating experiment; what if every part of an anthology film was good? I don't know if this has ever been done before.

 

Scary Tales (1993)

 

Wild Tales

 

2021 was like modern cinema itself; we thought the bad guy was going to be defeated with vaccines and social distancing, but here we are at the end of the year with the exact same problems. It makes you rethink your approach to believability in cinema; if the world would just give up even the most mild coronavirus prevention measures, is it really such a surprise that the victims would not check to make sure the killer is dead?


However, before the top ten is revealed, a bottom ten is in order. One cannot appreciate the highs without suffering through the lows; one cannot eat in a fancy restaurant every night or win in every contest. While five usually encapsulates the disastrous of the year, this year ten were needed. This list is incomplete for multiple reasons; firstly, there was no need to sit through CRUELLA or THE KING'S MAN because there are things that are best moved on from at a certain point. If the list came out in a month, more likely there would be other films to highlight. All these lists are incomplete by definition, so here are the ten most painful experiences.






10. LAST NIGHT IN SOHO
DIRECTED BY: EDGAR WRIGHT

When are we going to reunite Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg? Wright is clearly a talented and hard-working filmmaker, but no one is telling him that he is going too far or focusing too hard on following his homages. With the Cornetto trilogy they achieved a perfect balance between a winking knowledge of the genre's absurdity while simultaneously making a film that works perfectly in sync with whatever they want, from zombies to police procedurals. This cannot hold.




9. BEING THE RICARDOS
DIRECTED BY: AARON SORKIN

How do you screw this up so easily? I LOVE LUCY is one of the most revered shows in history, and you have the ability to make it look modern to seduce contemporary audiences. The checks and the awards should just flow, but instead it gets bogged down in multiple timelines (the episode being shot, a contemporary documentary, Lucy's past) which robs us of what we actually want to see, which is the main cast interpreting those classic roles and characters. Whether or not Lucy is a communist is the least interesting possible angle.





8. LAMB
DIRECTED BY: VALDIMAR JOHANNSSON

Find your dumbest, least-read friend. Ask him to describe art cinema. This is what he will describe. Aimless, glacial to a point of parody, and a left-field ending that wants to provoke your attention.




7. SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY
DIRECTED BY: MALCOLM D. LEE

While the original was not quite the classic that a certain generation would leave to believe, it at least had some decent hand-drawn animation and the presence of Bill Murray and Newman. Under the incapable hands of Lee, director of SCARY MOVIE 5, we are just hitting the logical endpoint of capitalism. What good is having a film library if you don't use it?





6. SPENCER
DIRECTED BY: PABLO LARRAIN

There are so many sad examples of acclaimed foreign directors coming to the money and resources of English-language films, only to lose their style in translation. At least Larrain was never very good to begin with. Why are we treating a bunch of rich nobles as the leads in a mystery film? If the lavish lifestyle that the royals live through is secretly painful, a lot of people would gladly trade places.





5. DON'T LOOK UP
DIRECTED BY: ADAM MCKAY

Every teenage atheist learns that you can have all the facts and arguments but lose the audience because of your obnoxiousness and attitude. Al Gore and Hillary Clinton learned this when they let their own hubris get in the way of taking their opponents seriously. McKay, however, has not learned his lesson. It will age like milk, with such of-the-moment references that it feels more like a personal list of grievances than anything resembling proper satire. Hopefully the subsequent online meltdown will stop McKay from making another one of these disasters, but there is always a corner to tell you that you are right and they have your back.




4. THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK
DIRECTED BY: ALAN TAYLOR

THE WIRE had its bad last season and DEADWOOD was canceled before its time. THE SIMPSONS is a shell of its former self and SEINFELD limped to the end without Larry David. However, THE SOPRANOS always stood out as quality from start to finish. There were some questionable episodes, but it has become the American standard. This coda will not be included; it is on the scale of bad dinner theater, with some performances that would be borderline racist if they weren't played by and written by Italian-Americans. It would be bad enough on its own if it didn't add such a nonsensical twist that tries to recontextualize two characters in the show until you realize it does not even mean anything.





3. FREE GUY
DIRECTED BY: SHAWN LEVY

A complete embarrassment for everyone, but especially for you, the person who paid to be reminded of those things you like.





2. DEAR EVAN HANSEN
DIRECTED BY: STEPHEN CHBOSKY

For those of you who do not live in the Tri-State area, how long has this been going on? From HAMILTON to CATS to DEAR EVAN HANSEN we have been given the impression that Broadway might be the sight of the most amoral works around. Why is this role being played by an old man, who sings about loving a young girl? Why are we supposed to sympathize with this creepy interloper? Why did we deserve this?




1. MUSIC
DIRECTED BY: SIA

How is this for long-term pain: AMERICAN BEAUTY, arguably the most immoral film ever made, becomes a huge success and awards winner, which gives Alan Ball the clout to create the show SIX FEET UNDER, which figured out that audiences can be emotionally manipulated just by killing people off, and then that show's last episode closes with a song by Sia, which helps her become popular in America because so many people think the most literal ending possible is the best one, and with this newfound fame Sia will eventually feel comfortable enough to create a film that treats its autistic lead, played by an actor with none of these ailments, like some sort of idiot savant that can teach us, the sleeping commuters and pencil-pushers, about life itself. A low point for everyone involved.

 

I read the description for that Sia movie and it didn’t sound real.

 

1. Pig
2. Willy's wonderland

 

free guy should have been 1

 

My top ten favourites from this year -



Top ten films from before 2021 that were first-time watches -

 

Comics

• The Many Deaths of Laila Starr (Ram V, Filipe Andrade)
• Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters (Chris & Laura Samnee)
• New Mutants (Vita Ayala, Rod Reis, Alex Lins)
• Silk (Maurene Goo, Takeshi Miyazawa)
• Even Though We're Adults (Takako Shimura)
• Good Boy! Magazine (Michael Sweater, Benji Nate, etc.)
• X-Men Legends #3-4 (Louise & Walt Simonson)
• Demon Days (Peach Momoko)
• Eternals (Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribić)
• The Nice House on the Lake (James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno)
• Sensor (Junji Ito)
• Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow (Chip Zdarsky, Pasqual Ferry)
• Monsters (Barry Windsor-Smith)
• Heroes Reborn: Night-Gwen #1 (Vita Ayala, Farid Karami)
• Radiant Black (Kyle Higgins, Marcelo Costa, etc.)
• X-Men: The Trial of Magneto (Leah Williams, Lucas Werneck)
• Mao (Rumiko Takahashi)
• Static: Season One (Vita Ayala, Nikolas Draper-Ivey, ChrisCross)
• Newburn (Chip Zdarsky, Jacob Philips)
• Cable: Reloaded #1 (Al Ewing, Bob Quinn)

Film

• Dune (Denis Villeneuve)
• Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Raya and the Last Dragon (Don Hall, Carlos López Estrada)
• Nomadland (Chloé Zhao)
• Passing (Rebecca Hall)
• The Green Knight (David Lowery)
• Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Andy Serkis)
• The Matrix: Resurrections (Lana Wachowski)
• Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal The Movie Parts 1 & 2 (Chiaki Kon)
• Last Night in Soho (Edgar Wright)
• Malignant (James Wan)

Podcasts

• CEREBRO (Connor Goldsmith & friends)
• Mangasplaining (Deb Aoki, David Brothers, Christopher Butcher, Chip Zdarsky)

Books

• True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee (Abraham Riesman)
• We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Mariame Kaba)

YouTube

• Patrick (H) Willems
• RedLetterMedia

 

Every year, there is a scramble to see everything before the end of the year. Unless you live in New York or Los Angeles, you simply are unable to see the independent and foreign films that are given limited releases. This year, THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, THE SOUVENIR PART II, MEMORIA, and THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD highlight the biggest omissions. However, there is still plenty to celebrate this year.





10. THE WOMAN WHO RAN
DIRECTED BY: HONG SANG-SOO

When we leave people, we expect them to become frozen in time, ready for us to resume the relationship in weeks, months, or years, regardless of the ways we might ourselves be transforming. Of course, life never works that way; the happiest couple you knew has gotten divorced, or the person who could not hold down a job is now a major piece of their company. We see how this is not a race at all, with its sidebar distractions, unexpected circumstances, and crushing failures along the way. What we can be to others, though, is a beacon of support, even if we are not equipped to fully help them.





9. GET BACK
DIRECTED BY: PETER JACKSON
It is almost like cheating, isn't it? Not only is the footage of the greatest and most important rock group of all time, but someone already filmed it for you! It is more than just a resuscitation, though; Jackson has been known for his bloated epics for twenty years, but here it works to great effect, breaking down these titans of music, showing the boredom and silly arguing, only for them to pull it altogether in the end, pumping out a classic record in just a few weeks.






8. DAYS
DIRECTED BY: TSAI MING-LIANG

Everybody needs somebody to lean on.





7. BERGMAN ISLAND
DIRECTED BY: MIA HANSEN-LOVE

We have had celebrated artists since the dawn of civilization, but we still do not know how to regard them as people. The most fanatic among us break into their homes and dig through their garbage, but even those of us who are otherwise seemingly rational will have our attention drawn if someone says that Steven Spielberg visited your local Chinese restaurant. After all, if they are so great, there must be some symbiotic relationship between the works they produce and the ways in which they live their lives. This is wrong, obviously; every day people eat at that restaurant and go back to charging people for groceries or repairing tires. By focusing on what someone else was doing, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to do our own mythmaking, such that one day someone is buying their shirts at the same store we were when making a classic film.




6. WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY
DIRECTED BY: RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI

Like Neapolitan ice cream, an essential rule of anthology films is that they have to be so uneven in quality as to taint the good one, which should have been a feature-length film. What Hamaguchi presupposes is, what if we made a film with no strawberry ice cream?





5. UNDINE
DIRECTED BY: CHRISTIAN PETZOLD

Germany has long been an underperformer on the world cinematic stage. They were among the most influential in the world during the silent era and the Weimar Republic, with THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, NOSFERATU, and METROPOLIS standing out as some of the best representations of ways that silent directors used stunning imagery to tell their stories in the absence of one of our senses. However, cinema is an artform beholden to history, and the Nazi regime followed by decades of the Cold War split often left them lacking compared to heavyweights like France and Italy. However, Christian Petzold, along with Maren Ade, have shown a new light, with Petzold finding increasingly clever and unique ways to use genre and the conceits of high-concept storytelling to achieve real representations of loss and regret. One can only shudder at how an American remake would work.





4. LICORICE PIZZA
DIRECTED BY: PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

When you look back at those formative years, from high school into your mid-twenties, there are so many characters that come and go. The ones that remain in the memory are the ones that, despite social posturing and selfishness, actually made a connection with you on a profound and human level. It probably is not the dozen friends in the Instagram bathroom pictures or the ones you did beer pong with, but the ones who saw you when the mask came off but still returned your call the next day.




3. THE POWER OF THE DOG
DIRECTED BY: JANE CAMPION

If someone just happens to have what you are looking for at a moment of crisis, ask why.





2. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
DIRECTED BY: BARRY JENKINS

Whenever a new film about slavery or the Holocaust is announced, a great feeling of nervousness floods the consciousness. Will there be any real meaning to this film that intends to drag some of our deepest pains and embarrassments to the surface, or will they just be commercial and/or awards season products to line the coffers? Jenkins finds meaning in his material, juxtaposing light fantasy elements with unflinching portrayals of the length and scope of the brutality and its senselessness. With the ample length provided, Jenkins can weave in and out of characters and time to make a larger statement about the foundational economy of the United States.




1. DRIVE MY CAR
DIRECTED BY: RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI

A story that seems to go everywhere until it gets to the place you feel it was always meant to go, it is about the compounding of grief and how hard it can be for people to understand those decisions you make under duress. It is also the most empathetic film in years, refusing to judge people just trying to find someone to spend their days with.

Next year we have many interesting films to look forward to, such as:
SCREAM 5
UNCHARTED
ANOTHER TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
ANOTHER BATMAN MOVIE
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2
JURASSIC PARK 6
20 SUPERHERO MOVIES
AN ELVIS BIOPIC DIRECTED BY BAZ LUHRMANN
BUZZ LIGHTYEAR BIOPIC
MORE MINIONS

It will be as fun as usual.

 

did you check out todd haynes’ velvet underground doc?

 

Yes.

 

Thanks Tetra, really appreciate the work you put into watching all these and writing it up!

 

The only film out of the fifty I saw last year that I hated was Chaos Walking and only eight of those fifty I rated three stars or less, so all in all it was a great year for me with several films likely to be future favourites.

 

I actively stay away from movies I know will be bad, because why would anyone purposely put themselves through that and intentionally waste their own time/money/both, so I tend to not hate many movies I see.

I guess the worst movie I saw this year was Venom 2. And even that was at least an improvement over the first one.

 

By the way, I know we talked about “Memoria” and lack of access to it. It’s included in the Neon Box given to critics, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it leaks, if it hasn’t already.

 

The first episode of Underground Railroad didn’t sit very well with me, but by the end of the series it was solidified as one of my favorite pieces of film in the last year. I still have a ton left to see but I have a hard time imagining it falling outside of my top ten.

That first episode also has one of the most disturbing and haunting scenes I think I’ve ever seen.

 

Ugh that reminds me I still need to watch Underground Railroad. I love Barry's work and I keep putting it off since I have less patience for tv than movies

 

Where do we draw the line between TV and Film? I remember Twin Peaks: the Return being on more movie lists than TV lists when it came out

 

Twin Peaks is definitely TV. I had the new season as a film because it was one contained story, one director, etc.

 

The lines continue to blur, but at this point I generally consider limited series and episodes of anthology shows in pretty much the same category as movies.

 

you saw the eternals