all the movies I watched in 2021
As per tradition, I took note of all of the movies I watched this past year, loosely organized by category. No, I never got around to The Last Duel! Or Licorice Pizza! Don’t yell at me! I’ll see them next year.
This was a strong, interesting year for movies. Divisive, too! Which is fun. I would much rather feel insane loathing something a lot of people liked than have a lot of ho-hum average stuff that we all feel nothing about. We used to have, like, ten movies a year that were Belfast, and now we just have Belfast — which is fine! I had such a good time at the New York Film Fest that I got strep throat and had to miss a bunch of stuff I’ll get around to next year. I didn’t see any Marvel movies or movies for children, unless you count Cruella which is somehow both without being either. It was great to return to theaters, great to eat popcorn and get heartburn, great to listen to two different and wonderful Jonny Greenwood scores.
Last thing: right before the C’mon C’mon press screening began at New York Film Fest, a woman two rows behind me asked the man the row behind me (hoping these physics make sense to the reader) to please stop talking and he whipped around and said, “Why don’t you shut the fuck up?” I feel like I am the only person who witnessed this, though there was a ripple of discomfort for the first few minutes of the screening. If you were also at this screening and hopefully sitting near me, please verify that this actually happened and wasn’t me hallucinating what Twitter has been like for the past three months.
The Souvenir Part II
The movie of the year. Some here, but more to come.
Bergman Island
Gentle.
The Beatles: Get Back
The Power of the Dog
Whole thing hits different if you’re dating someone who is obsessed with raw denim.
Annette
I had forty minutes left in the movie when my boy roommate came home and saw approximately four seconds and asked, “Is this a horror movie?” and I was like, “no, no, it’s just, like… French…”
Petite Maman
Gentle!
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Gentle!!!
Memoria
Last month I experienced something called a “sky quake,” thinking briefly that I was going to be swallowed up by the Earth, which more or less cracked this already miraculous and otherworldly movie right open for me.
Red Rocket
Simon Rex should win an Oscar.
Flee
Pretty remarkable.
The Tsugua Diaries
The best COVID movie in a literal sense — and I really mean that in a kind way! It understands so thoroughly the way in which the pandemic has shifted away from caring and compassion for public health and instead a battle over, like, email etiquette. It’s also beautiful!
Il buco
Speechless! Comes out next year. Sorry to have festival privilege. They should show this in IMAX, or at least 4DX.
No Time to Die
Opera! If you think this is too grim I can’t help you. It’s so silly!
Judas and the Black Messiah
Glad Daniel Kaluuya has an Oscar!
Mank
I watched this while coming down from hallucinogenic mushrooms. It’s totally fine! I like when Amanda Seyfried is wearing a little outfit.
The World to Come
Good but not great, I was moved regardless. More here.
The Dig
Movie about the dig.
Let Him Go
Wish this was better/shorter/grosser/stranger. That Lesley Manville sure is eating though!
The Father
This will never happen to me or anyone I know.
Slow Machine
Funny!
The Worst Person in the World
Why doesn’t she have any friends? I’m just asking!!!
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Not unlike Matrix Resurrections, it gets by on having an impeccable first act that bought it a lot of good grace and patience throughout the rest.
The Tragedy of Macbeth
It’s Macbeth, all right.
Benedetta
[extremely “I went to grad school” voice] The book is better.
Chameleon Street
Sharp.
C’mon C’mon
Basically doesn’t work at all but Joaquin Phoenix is great and I cried. So like… maybe it works fine?
Titane
Sort of like a French Hank and Bobby Hill type of deal.
Parallel Mothers
What an ending! Great year in movies for endings.
Hester Street
Joan Micklin Silver has always had it!
Sans Soleil
This is the kind of stuff you watch when you get a boyfriend.
Futura
Eh, I should be inclined to enjoy this because it’s simple enough on its face: interesting up-and-coming Italian directors drive around Italy during COVID to interview teenagers about the state of the world. (Which, if I’m not mistaken, is also the story within a story in C’mon C’mon.) But teenagers are only interesting when prompted to be so. I can only stomach so many different guys who want to become footballers. The aimlessness and lack of geographical context makes this tough to parse as an outsider. Only once during its runtime do they get into geographic specificity in a way that actually makes a noticeable impact. The thing about relying on teens to “save us” that it lets the rest of us off the hook. Maybe this is the only film that’s like “actually… maybe… the teens don’t want to save us.” Which, good! I hope they all become footballers then. Sure looked good though!
Weekend of a Champion
If you want to make a movie about one of the most charming guys of all time — Jackie Stewart — it’s a great idea to constantly put him next to Roman Polanski.
Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants
Magic is real!!!!!!!
The Velvet Underground
I literally don’t understand contemporary music enough to give you a real opinion on this.
David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, The Year Earth Changed
Worked with the incisive Nathaniel Missildine.
Girlfriends
Worked with the sharp Brianna Zigler.
Evening Primrose
Worked with the thoughtful Robert Stinner. (This movie reminds me of Nocturama!)
THX 1138
Worked with the empathetic Sal Halliday.
Crossing Delancey (insane woman with perfect hair fucking the pickle man for pickles… what’s not to love), Heartburn, Klute (Donald Sutherland gently grabbing a peach for ripeness counts as tender here), Julieta, Nashville (TOMLIN), Bound (TILLY), The Clock, Clockwatchers (KUDROW), Margaret (so grateful I finally saw this; I hope I never have to watch it again), Working Girls, Caprice, Where Is My Friend’s House? (!), The Shop Around The Corner, The Princess Switch (okay, but the Hudgens have really nice chemistry with each other…)
The Strangers
Improv everywhere vibe.
The Wicker Man
Basically a musical.
Deep Red
I love when a classical pianist is in over his head.
Don’t Breathe
Yucky!
Silkwood
Counts as my brave era because being killed by the government is scary. Is this the place to mention that the Mark Harris’s Mike Nichols biography is good? It’s good.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
If I think about this whole thing too hard I will get nightmares!
Halloween
Black Christmas
Hottest girl in the movie. It’s not even a contest.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The night I watched this, our neighbors were having a party that went until four or five in the morning. Sometime in between those hours, some of their friends went downstairs to smoke cigarettes and, in their attempt to get back into the building, hit our buzzer several times over the course of half an hour. Gave me heart palpitations. Great movie! Hope I never see it again.
Dracula
Literally not enough Dracula?
The Brood
The Brood is kind of an ideal horror movie for me in that it’s not all that scary when I’m watching it, but scenes and images haunt me for a while after.
Under the Shadow
Good jump scares.
Carrie
I am in love with Amy Irving!!!
Strange Days
Made me feel sick to my stomach.
Conan the Barbarian
Didn’t actually require bravery so much as it was a two plus hour movie that I started watching at like 10:45pm.
A Quiet Place Part II
Cillian Murphy is sort of perfect in stuff like this, unfortunately.
Nights in Rodanthe
I fell asleep for ten minutes and when I woke up Richard Gere was dead (in the movie). (Sorry.)
Aladdin
Guy Ritchie version. Hard pass!
Last Christmas
Tests the limits of how often you want to hear a George Michael song.
Yentl, The Mirror Has Two Faces, The Prince of Tides
Barbra Streisand has only made movies about going to grad school.
Croupier
Carnal Knowledge
Maybe this is a better place to mention that the Mike Nichols biography is really good.
The Lair of the White Worm
This movie is amazing! Look at Hugh Grant!
JFK
Making up a little “fiction” about the “president” getting “assassinated” and all of your friends getting mad at you because sometimes something that “feels true” is more “true” than the “actual truth”… what’s more grad school than that? (The CIA definitely killed him, though.)
Mark of the Witch
It’s crazy I never woke up any dormant evil spirits in grad school and otherwise just became emotionally dependent on weed gummies.
Dog Day Afternoon, Pain & Gain, Hard Target, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Erin Brockovich (masterpiece), The Lady Eve (proves my point that guys don’t know what I look like when I buy a new jacket), F9, Those Who Wish Me Dead (more here), Midnight Run, The Untouchables, Serpico, Hard Eight, The Killing Floor, Zola, Smokey and the Bandit, No Sudden Move, Blue Collar, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro, Big Trouble in Little China, Blood Simple, Duplicity, Nightmare Alley (the original — it’s great!), The Matrix Revolutions
Badlands
Gassenhauer is so slay, wig, etc.
Days of Heaven
I watched this like six times this year.
The New World
Hottest Colin Farrell.
The Tree of Life
I let Tumblr gifsets convince me this was bad for years when in actuality it’s a movie about Brad Pitt shouting “Brahms!”
To The Wonder
Maybe I should move to Oklahoma…
Knight of Cups
Good, first of all, but even if it wasn’t, there are too many weird cameos for me to ever lose interest. One could call this Terrence Malick’s Don’t Look Up (but please never ever do this).
Last Year at Marianbad, Opening Night (this more or less already happened to me), Alien 3, Notes on a Scandal (features the single funniest text of all time), It Should Happen To You (no, it shouldn’t!), A New Leaf, Winter Light, Persona (I don’t want any Bergman movie to happen to me), State of Siege, Chess of the Wind, Cries and Whispers (this happened to me in August), Easy Rider, I.D., The Last Detail, Amour Fou (in many ways, poets have wanted me dead for years now), Little Murders (can’t think about this one too hard or I’ll pass out), The Virgin Suicides (I’ve had sex, so I think I’m good here), Stations of the Cross (same parenthetical as before applies)
Zack Snyder’s Justice League, In The Heights, The Green Knight (good), Old ( the other best COVID movie), Stillwater (neither good nor great… but definitely weird), The Card Counter, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Dune, The French Dispatch (just remembered that I met someone this fall who was like, “It’s not your full-time job, writing about movies?” and I was like, “no, no,” and they were like, “oh, phew” ??? — this has nothing to do with The French Dispatch, by the way), King Richard, Passing, Spencer, tick, tick… BOOM!, Belfast (Is Belfast good or is “Everlasting Love” just a great song? I honestly don’t know!), Cyrano (Joe Wright… back?)
I’m Not There
Same note as the above about the Velvet Underground doc. Maybe the best Blanchett ever though?
Irma Vep
Sorry sorry sorry sorry.
Rushmore
Happy for everyone else though.
Stoker
I thought I would love this?
Speed Racer
Too much chimpanzee but you can’t beat a Wachowski set piece. They should have put John Goodman in Cloud Atlas.
Duelle
Idk what’s going on in France at any given time.
Legend
Not the one with two Tom Hardys.
The Matrix Resurrections
Love that first act!
West Side Story
On one hand, Rebecca Bulnes; on the other hand, why does this look like it was shot through the Huji filter?
A Rainy Day in New York
Thought Jude could make a half-hearted attempt to save this, but no, it’s just awful.
Under the Silver Lake
Lol.
Gregory’s Girl
I just don’t like this kinda stuff, even if Forsyth’s instincts are all still good.
The Woman in the Window
I’ve spent six months trying to galaxy brain myself into believing it’s good, but I actually just talked myself into thinking it’s worse.
Inconceivable
Worse than Pig, I’ll give it that.
Cruella
My first movie back in theaters in a fourteen months, so it’ll hold a special place in my heart as the most dogshit movie I’ve seen all year. If I ever try to reclaim this as some kind of post-feminist whatever, I give you permission to come to my home and kill me.
Pig
What is anyone talking about with this movie?!?!?
Last Night in Soho
Lmao…
The Guitar Mongoloid, Involuntary
I was so excited that Criterion Channel added all these older Ruben Östlund flicks only to realize I don’t like either of these. My guy is better when everyone is having a bad esoteric time.
House of Gucci
Insane mess, deranged amount of licensed music, but what I decided to get hung up on is the scene in which Patrizia gets a few cups of uncovered gelato or ice cream out of the freezer. You should not keep any kind of cold dessert uncovered in a freezer — especially in a humid environment. The water particles will do terrible damage to the dessert and make it taste terrible. Any respectable person — Italian caricature or not! — knows this.
Between The Lines
Great little comedy about the decline of independent media. Good thing that isn’t happening!
Comfort and Joy
I had a real moment with Bill Forsyth’s movies at the end of 2020 into the start of this year. This one is really special, I think. Not quite as neat as Local Hero, but its messiness and strangeness feel so wholly real despite the movie basically being about warring ice cream trucks. On YT. :)
Waiting For Guffman
Bob Balaban… love this guy…
The Night of the Hunter
Greatest compliment I can pay a film is to say that I wanted to watch it again the second it ended.
Unfaithful
Movie about having a 27 year old boyfriend.
Thief
Movie about why I went to grad school.
Point Break
I watched this at 4am in the morning when I was up with a fever from my second COVID vaccine. A great way to watch this movie!
Ida
Almost said “ok me vibes!!” aloud right before a character kills themselves. Nvm!
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
For year people were like, “you will hate this movie.” Joke’s on them! Maybe not a better movie about living in the state of Ohio.
The Heartbreak Kid
I am so afraid every event in this movie will happen to me.
Body Double
I guess just the best scene in any movie of all time? Also the hottest Dennis Franz has ever been in a movie?
Revanche
So beautiful and tragic and lovely and moving!
The Matrix: Reloaded
I spent all of my original Matrix rewatch thinking, “it’s crazy they don’t have Gina Torres in something like this,” and then!
Titanic
What could you ever possibly say about Titanic in 2021.
that’s all. letterboxd here. everyone behave themselves & I’ll see you next year.
