Top Ten Films of 2021
This writer refuses to kowtow to the lockstep of film critics who seem to look at other’s lists before making their own. In no particular order, although numbered one through ten, these are films that may not get all the attention they completely deserve…unless more viewers will investigate what they (and the critics) have overlooked.
DON’T LOOK UP
Adam McKay’s satire has found the perfect analogy for Trumpism’s denial of vote counting and vaccine science: a giant comet hurtling toward Earth and scientists Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence can’t get anyone to give a flying, well, you know. Whether its glib President Meryl Streep or Mark Rylance as a bizarre space tech billionaire not to be trusted, you can rely on laughs and plenty of outrage regarding our absurdly dangerous era.
JFK REVISITED: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
Thirty years after his feature JFK, Oliver Stone has used recent revelations from a government still hiding documents on the murder of President John Kennedy in 1963. Beyond the lies and coverups by the Warren Commission and Dallas police, and scientific proof that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have committed the act, we now have impenetrable proof of the CIA’s involvement and the fact that Oswald likely foiled an earlier plot against JFK in Chicago. Essential viewing on the coup that changed US history.
RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT
Moreno has won every major award for her acting work. But beyond her West Side Story, facts like attempting suicide due to a tempestuous relationship with Marlon Brando or the sexual abuse she had to endure, as well as her commitment to women’s rights, make Mariem Peréz Riera’s doc all more emotional and uplifting.
KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME
Robert Weide, drawing on his decades-long relationship with literary icon Vonnegut, codirects this highly personal portrait with Don Argott (The Art of the Steal). The long anticipated world premiere has both Vonnegut’s quirky humor and tragic past on display, admirably getting inside his psyche and showing why generations of readers have loved both his startling imagination and prose accessibility.
tick, tick…BOOM
Andrew Garfield deserves a bucket of awards as Rent composer Jonathan Larson, trying to balance working in a diner and an earlier musical theatre project with the scourge of AIDS around him. Garfield’s singing and acting dazzle, helped along by director Lin-Manuel Miranda, a guy who knows a little something about great musical theatre, as the creator of Hamilton.
TRY HARDER!
At Lowell High School, top-ranked in San Francisco, gifted students face the inability to get into preferred universities because of quotas and prohibitive expenses. Debbie Lum mines much documentary humor and energy from her subjects, their various ethnic backgrounds and how they face the pressures of an uncertain future.
SUMMER OF SOUL (OR WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s doc on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival is not just a long-buried, important musical document of those times. It is thrillingly edited and features transcendent performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, the 5th Dimension, Gladys Knight, the Staple Singers and the Queen of Gospel, Mahalia Jackson. A testament to the eclectic crowd in what is now Marcus Garvey Park is the surging of listeners toward the stage to witness Sly and the Family Stone.
LANGUAGE LESSONS
A lesson in brilliantly conceived, low-budget feature filmmaking. Natalie Morales stars and directs, as a Spanish teacher who finds that social distancing via Zoom with Mark Duplass, who is trying to deal with the sudden death of his boyfriend, reveals more than either person expected. The subtle, carefully crafted dialogue gets under the skin, resulting in a marvelous crescendo of hope and love.
WHO WE ARE: A CHRONICLE OF RACISM IN AMERICA
Winner of the SXSW Audience Award, Who We Are is guided by former ACLU attorney Jeffery Robinson, whose interviews, travels and personal stories delineate the US history of anti-Black racism. Filmmaking sisters Emily and Sarah Kunstler manage to both educate and emotionally impact the viewer, abetted by the marvel that is Robinson.
MAYOR PETE
What is even more amazing than Jesse Moss’s access to Pete Buttigieg during his presidential campaign is how empathetic and honest Mayor Pete became with cameras in his face, challenged by husband Chasten and an electorate unaccustomed to a candidate this unconventionally brilliant. This is a film that tells us how we can gradually change a political landscape that seems to be deteriorating without pause.
ALSO SEE:
The French, My Salinger Year, Sisters with Transistors, Citizen Ashe
