A strange year — obviously. The vibes were an overall improvement on 2020, a.k.a. one of the worst years of my life. I enjoyed my job, I took more risks — I briefly starred in a play! — and, of course, I saw plenty of films.
I moved to East Finchley in January, which meant I had the Phoenix Cinema on my doorstep — one of the last true independent cinemas in London, and one of the best.
There was also the BFI, the London Film Festival, and brief sojourns to the French Film Festival and London Korean Film Festival. But as much as I enjoyed, say, the Robert Altman series at the former, most of my big discoveries were home viewings, copping Blu-rays from boutique distributor sales and enjoying the, uh, convenience of the Plex app. Anyway — let’s get into it.
THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR: FRANCE
I’d never seen a Bruno Dumont film before, so I don’t know if this is a horrible place to start. But I was bowled over by France. It’s such a rich and clever film about the politics of images. It begins as exaggerated satire on the manipulative nature of the media, then keeps piling on contradictory ideas, until we’re unsure whether the spectacle, the melodrama, the emotions we’re seeing of a news anchor spinning out of control are real or constructed — and to what degree there’s a meaningful difference between the two. Léa Seydoux is incredible — it’s a fearless, ferocious star performance.
THE WORST FILM OF THE YEAR: NO TIME TO DIE
Conversely, I’ve never felt worse for a movie star than Seydoux in this — an utterly thankless role that wastes her considerable talents. (She’s an assassin, but she’s also a mother!) And I don’t know if I’ve ever felt worse, period, than during hour two or three of this utter trainwreck of a blockbuster. I’ve avoided the Marvels this year, not to mention Space Jam and Cruella and everything starring (🤢) Ryan Reynolds, so perhaps I’ve been spared the very bottom of the barrel. But it’s hard to imagine a more tedious waste of a blockbuster budget, with incoherent action, dreadful villains, and several embarrassing attempts to sentimentalise a noxious, nationalistic character. It’s good that Daniel Craig was finally freed from his contract by a barrage of missiles — they should have gone one step further and nuked the entire franchise from orbit.
Best performance in an otherwise terrible film: Ana de Armas, No Time to Die
Worst performance in an otherwise serviceable film: John Magaro, The Many Saints of Newark
Bro what are you DOING.
Best Genre Film: Old
M. Night’s still got it! Easily the strangest tonal brew of the year, the veteran director — now thankfully freed from the shackles of his reputation as “The Next Spielberg” (and then, later, the “Worst Director of All Time”) — used a Twilight Zone premise to try out a cornucopia of bizarre, inventive camera movements and tricks. Aided by a game cast and a mischievous script, the result is an intense rollercoaster ride that works surprisingly well, especially during its gory set-pieces (the baby delivery! the tumour!) It’s even quite moving in spots. At least until it comes to a screeching halt in the last twenty minutes.
Worst third act: Old
Best third act: Malignant
I really didn’t see that one coming.
Best (male) performance of the year: Vincent Lindon in Titane
The premise of Titane is as old as time itself: woman meets car, woman has sex with car, woman murders anyone who comes within two feet of her, woman goes on the run, woman disguises herself as a man’s (Lindon) missing son, woman discovers she’s pregnant with car’s baby and must now hide it from man. And yet I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t strangely moved by Julia Ducournau’s pivot from violent crime flick to intimate, Dardennes-style relationship drama, and it’s because of Lindon. He plays the role of a grieving father completely straight, who knows that the stranger pretending to be his son isn’t really his son, but almost doesn’t care — anyone will do, so long as he can keep lying to himself.
Films I expected to hate but sort of enjoyed: The Suicide Squad, Zach Snyder’s Justice League
Biggest disappointments: West Side Story, The Matrix Resurrections, The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Power of the Dog, No Sudden Move, The French Dispatch
Best Blockbuster: Dune
I hate to speak ill of David Lynch — ostensibly my favourite director of all time — but I can think of no better example of a source material’s glow-up than this. It’s a surprise because I don’t really like Timothée Chalamet as a star (he’s perfect in Lady Bird, but that’s because he doesn’t demand our sympathy) or Denis Villeneuve as a director (Arrival has its moments; everything else is a self-important slog.) But somehow, everything synthesises beautifully — Chalamet’s innate princely privilege, Villeneuve’s brutalist architectural style, the uncompromising amount of palace intrigue, the perfect supporting cast. Only Zendaya’s modern sensibility doesn’t fit. And I’ll take Toto any day of the week over that loser Hans Zimmer. Otherwise — great!
Films I loved, but saw while hungover, and feel like I need to give a second chance: Benedetta (wildly entertaining on the surface that belies Verhoeven’s typical intelligence), Memoria (love that sound booth scene), In Front of Your Face (boring until the mid-film revelation — then I couldn’t stop crying)
Mid-tier anime: Belle, Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (better than 3.0, at least)
Greatest scene in any film, ever: Paul improvises the song “Get Back” in The Beatles: Get Back
Greatest crime committed against cinema: Peter Jackson removing the grain and smoothing out The Beatles in The Beatles: Get Back
Film that I adored in spite of its obvious flaws: The Beatles: Get Back
Director I Still Don’t Get: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
There’s a scene in Drive My Car where the director of a production of Uncle Vanya rehearses his actors by having them robotically read aloud the text. An actor goes for a flourish and he tells them off, the reason being that he wants the cast to understand the rhythm of the text before they consider their performance on top of it. It’s telling, I think, to Hamaguchi’s own process — everyone in his films is so deliberate as to seem utterly drained of emotion. Which would be fine if I thought he was doing something interesting with that affect, like Kubrick or Hal Hartley. But it always comes across to me as stilted, divorced from compelling human behaviour to a fault. Who knows, though — maybe I’ll like the next one.
The “Won’t Get Fooled Again” award for Most Pretentious Director: David Lowery
A devious man once tricked me into thinking he could, one day, make something resembling a real movie with The Old Man and the Gun. As if to pretend A Ghost Story never existed. Well, fear not — The Green Knight was the last straw. Like listening to a fourteen-year-old’s book report.
The “Ur Scaring the Hoes” award for Most Unnecessarily Loud Movie: Last Night in Soho
A FILM COMPOSED ALMOST ENTIRELY OF GLORIOUS MOMENTS: ANNETTE
“So May We Start”. Cunnilingus duet. The Ape of God. The cross-fades lifted straight from the silent era. An artificial storm. The camera constantly spinning around Simon Helberg’s deranged monologue. (While we’re at it: Simon Helberg, Best Supporting Actor.) Baby Annette being lowered into the Super Bowl by drones. “What the fuck is the little bitch doing?” The devastating “Sympathy for the Abyss”, and Adam Driver’s final “Stop watching me.” A film I have not stopped thinking about.
Low-key pleasures: C’mon C’mon, El Planeta, Wood and Water
Bitchiest supporting performance, in a fun way: Ben Affleck in The Last Duel
Bitchiest supporting performance, in a sad way: Jeremy Irvine in Benediction
On the film itself — I love Terence Davies, and this is wonderful and moving in his unique way for a while, especially during the loaded conversations between Jack Lowden, a gay poet, and Ben Daniels, his gay therapist. But the second act drags everything down into miserable relationship histrionics that didn’t seem at all interesting or productive. Lovely use of “Fantasia on a Theme”, though.
Best pig: Pig
Strangest case of the auteur theory: Pig
Pig first came to my attention when several high-profile critics gave it unusually enthusiastic reviews. I thought it looked like another Nicholas Cage revenge movie, a cheap John Wick knock-off that would play well at Sundance and nowhere else. But it’s an unusually thoughtful film with a clever script, gradually diffusing its tension for a climax that pivots on revealing the forgotten kindness of a stranger. The internal logic of its culinary underworld is well realised, and Cage is fantastic in it, his most dialled in, charismatic performance since Joe. Michael Sarnoski is basically a first-time director, and he’s far from a master — his shot choices are a bit uninspired, and some of the supporting performances wobble. It doesn’t matter. Cage and the structure hold everything together with ease.
A really good film I couldn’t fit into an easy category: Red Rocket
Sean Baker’s best, perhaps because it doesn’t demand any sympathy for the main character. I wrote about it here.
NEW DISCOVERIES, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER:
Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
Marlene Dietrich: iconic. See also: Morocco, Dishonoured, Shanghai Express, etc.
Carlos (Olivier Assayas, 2011)
Citizen Ruth (Alexander Payne, 1996)
God bless Laura Dern. God bless that ending.
The Company (Robert Altman, 2003)
Contact (Alan Clarke, 1985)
The BFI Alan Clarke box set was an incredible purchase. This is my abstract favourite of the bunch — probably the most perverse, least satisfying war film of all time — but Diane, Christine, Elephant, The Firm, all amazing.
Death and Transfiguration (Terence Davies, 1983)
Wilford Brimley’s death rattle…
Dragon Inn (King Hu, 1967)
Drive a Crooked Road (Richard Quine, 1954)
Mickey Rooney, great dramatic actor. Who knew.
The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (Lau Kar-leung, 1984)
Father of my Children (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2008)
Four Days in July (Mike Leigh, 1984)
Totally arresting, in spite (or perhaps because) of its complete absence of any kind of real drama.
Juggernaut (Richard Lester, 1974)
Wonderfully chaotic, also remarkably tense, like one of Hitchcock’s British thrillers that revels in nationally specific human detail. Richard Harris is an absolute charisma machine as a hard-drinking bomb defusal expert.
The Last Detail (Hal Ashby, 1973)
So perfect, so sad.
The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax, 1991)
Mobile Men (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2008)
Crazy, unforgettable, and only three minutes long. Viewable here.
The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, 1952)
Train movies >>>
One Week (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1920)
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991)
The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949)
James Mason the God.
Rita, Sue and Bob Too (Alan Clarke, 1987)
Romancing in Thin Air (Johnnie To, 2012)
The Magic of the Movies™.
Rosewood (John Singleton, 1997)
Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935)
The Son’s Room (Nanni Moretti, 2001)
Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)
The Train (John Frankenheimer, 1964)
TRAIN MOVIES >>>>>>>>
The Trial (Eric Notarnicola, 2017)
Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s On Cinema franchise saved my life in 2021, and this is its apex. The pitch-perfect pastiche of a real courtroom is one thing, but it’s the perfectly-timed reprises of the series’ past mythology that destroys me. “This is sarcasm of the highest order.”
Where Is My Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
White Dog (Samuel Fuller, 1982)
TV
Best TV show: Succession
Best performances on TV: the cast of Succession
Best image from a visual medium that does not typically prioritise images:
Favourite discoveries: Slings and Arrows (the “To be or not to be” scene in S1, the slapstick Macbeth finale in S2, then the devastatingly small King Lear performance in S3), The Knick (Steven Soderbergh, good director), The Westerner (“Brown” is a hoot), Mad Men (all of it but especially “The Suitcase”).
VIDEO GAMES
Best new video game: Metroid Dread
Worst “new” video game: Back 4 Blood
Favourite discoveries: Metal Gear Solid 2 (cinema), Metal Gear Solid 3 (CINEMA!), Metal Gear Solid 4 (cinema, obviously), Gone Home, The Next Penelope, Donkey Kong Country 3 (Dixie Kong for life), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tokyo Jungle (insane), Shadow of the Colossus (devastating), Quake, Until Dawn (where Larry Fessenden proves to be the only one who understands how to use Rami Malek), Paradise Killer.
Genuinely exciting technology that might be the future of visual entertainment: VR.
Specifically in regards to PS VR and Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, one of the best games I’ve played in years, and a genuinely alien experience — strange, vertigo-inducing, fun, unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. The future? Maybe. Probably not — the headsets are a bit unwieldy and expensive. But who knows. I’d love to see what a real filmmaker could do with it.
