Annual: Top Films of 2021
The director of Anchorman annoyed a bunch of people off with a pseudo comedy starring Leo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence about global warming disguised as an apocalyptic disaster movie, and Wes Anderson came back with a lukewarm anthology film that ended up still being a delight. The Suicide Squad proved to be one of the most entertaining and rewarding comic book movies of the entire DC catalog, and Get Back proved that most people will watch The Beatles sit around smoking cigarettes and cracking jokes for eight hours, simply because they're The Beatles.
A24 Films came through, swinging for the fences with movies about titties and Twitter like Zola, as well as foreign lamb-man hybrid films like Lamb, but they also got one of the Coen brothers to do an arthouse, black & white version of Macbeth which is pretty dope. Daniel Craig finally got to bow out as 007 and Lego Movie veterans proved with The Mitchells vs. The Machines that animated films can have a second life somewhere beyond Disney and Pixar (though we're apparently not supposed to talk about whoever Bruno is).
2021 wrapped nicely with heavy hitters such as the sci-fi epic Dune (well half of it anyway), while Jane Campion's all-but Oscar-winning Western The Power of the Dog nearly put folks to sleep. Films like CODA and King Richard captivated the masses with sentimentality everywhere, while films like The Green Knight and Titane fell by the wayside for folks who don't like their movies to get weird AF. Andrew Garfield showed up a couple times this year (and proved he can sing!), while Simon Rex gave a warm welcome return to the cinema after his hiatus post Scary Movie 4.
The year shed some light at the end of society's socially distant tunnel. Spielberg put on an unnecessary yet beautiful clone of West Side Story, but with actual authentic Latino singers instead of dubbed white actors in brown face. Kenneth Branagh delivered his own personal Roma, and Guillermo Del Toro wrote his love letter to film noir circus freaks. House of Gucci was a real thing and so was Lady Gaga's Russian-Italian accent, although Jared Leto heavily caked in thick makeup doing his best impression of Super Mario might have truly been fake news.
The pandemic is proving once and for all that our moviegoing society is quickly collapsing under a streaming tsunami of an insufferably overwhelming amount of content at such a rapid pace that it's nearly impossible for most common folk to watch or even hear about some of the following films. Lo and behold, for better or worse, movies are back, babies.
*AWARDS WILL BE IN RED*
HONORABLE MENTION:
- 25) Judas and the Black Messiah
- 24) The Beta Test
- 23) The Humans
- 22) The Beatles: Get Back
- 21) Flee
- 20) Candyman
- 19) The Last Duel
- 18) The Suicide Squad
- 17) tick, tick... BOOM!
- 16) Zola
A Wes Anderson anthology film shot with black-and-white segments featuring his largest ensemble yet, the quirky love letter to zany puff-piece newspaper articles is almost assuredly one of the acclaimed director’s bottom tier works, and yet The French Dispatch is still one of the most ambitiously told, meticulously crafted and quietly hilarious films of 2021 – but this is also expected from the Oscar nominated master of hipster filmmaking.
Split into three different stories as constructed by newspaper editor and Anderson veteran Bill Murray, Dispatch shines a spotlight across a range of comedic talents from Benicio Del Toro as a prison-bound artist to Timothee Chalamet as a cigarette-bound revolutionist to Jeffrey Wright as a dinner-bound guest caught up in a missing-persons case. Only just scratching the surface of deeply human tales about art, politics, crime, chess, and food, all of course bound together by love, Anderson’s anthology weaves quirky comedy sprinkled throughout his extraordinary characters – the only true flaw being the construct of the anthology formula itself.
While one of the more bold tactics in his storytelling, Anderson’s use of dividing the Dispatch’s newspaper memoirs into three separate segments is at once the film’s most unique strength but also its most noticeable weakness. While the first story – Del Toro as the prison-bound artist – is almost indefatigably the strongest of the three, the desire for the sketch to last longer and give the atmosphere more breathing room is nearly irresistible. Just when we begin to grow attached to the characters, the mini-story comes to an end, and this happens for all three segments of the film.
Ultimately the narrative structure doesn’t harm the film overall because at the end of the day this is Anderson doing what he does best. With an ever growing cast of hipsters, the film features all of Anderson’s A-list celebrity friends exchanging witty banter at lightning-quick pace while veteran composer Alexander Desplat scores a soothingly bubbly soundtrack behind them. The humor is sharp as expected and the characters are incredibly carved out with a tremendous amount of heart. At this glimpse of the indie filmmaker’s career (Dispatch being the director’s tenth feature), it’s impossible to not at least admire the absolute craft this man puts into his work every single time.
*Best foreign film to address the existential crisis of staying trapped in wrong relationships (but it's okay because it's also kind of a comedy):
14) The Worst Person in the World
By transforming a bubbly Norwegian fable of falling in love into a complex depiction of estranged relationships, writer-director Joachim Trier has delivered one of the most painfully honest portraits of romance ever put to film. Cleverly written into twelve definitive chapters accounting the current life of ambitious free spirit Julie (Renate Reinsve), The Worst Person in the World slowly deceives the audience as its leading lady is on the brink of getting older and facing the inevitable crossroads as to who she will ultimately settle down with.
In juggling two different potential bachelors, Julie faces existential crisis in regards to following her heart, but where such a premise could fall cliché, director Trier throws the disheveled character through an emotional ringer by means of dreamy meet-cutes where all of time is literally frozen, followed by frightening encounters with panic-induced drug trips. Acting as a romantic comedy slowly turned into a dark portrait of post-honeymoon relationships, the film is a pure reflection of both the beautiful and horrific realities born from the imperative life decisions we face. Like a foreign-film take on Robert Frost’s "The Road Less Traveled," Worst Person boils down to the primary choices that define us.
*Best power play of a notable director headlining a famous actor in an A24 Film adapted from a super famous play, and also shot in black & white to masquerade the fact that we did not need another version of Macbeth:
13) The Tragedy of Macbeth
As visually striking as it is verbally complex, this arthouse adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic – a haunting product of one of two Coen Brothers teaming up with A24 Films – is an absolute banger and one of the most notorious on-screen Shakespeare adaptations of the twenty-first century. While dense in its thematic darkness and befuddling in its thick language, Tragedy is at the very least one of the year’s most breathtaking films to look at.
By focusing on two aged versions of the characters –Denzel Washington commanding the titular Macbeth, anchored by Coen veteran Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth – the film proposes a bold perspective of the famous stage production by showcasing a power couple, overcome by the battle scars of war, who wish to overthrow the kingdom before they grow old. While the lead performances are questionable – Denzel being fairly astonishing and Frances just playing herself – the dark horse of the film belongs to Kathryn Hunter taking on the role of the three witches, and her theater-based portrayal is electrifying every moment she’s on screen.
Despite Shakespeare’s themes having potential for mass audiences, this Macbeth is not for the faint of heart or language. Aside from the droll politicking and somewhat brutal violence, in one of the boldest moves of adapting the famous story, Joel Coen keeps the dialogue as genuinely Shakespearean as it jumps off the pages, piercing every word like pure poetry until the chaotic violence swallows the story whole. Shot in a boxed in 4:3 aspect ratio, and presented in breathtaking hazy black & white, the film is an absolutely visual feast, if nothing else. Granted, with a Coen brother leading the valiant brigade of bomb-ass actors at the helm, Shakespeare’s grim, cautionary tale lives on for a new generation, while anchoring its brooding themes that have kept the story’s beating heart alive for the last four centuries. For that alone, the film is something of an instant classic that would make ol’ Willie Shakes proud.
*Most Hebrew cinematic accomplishment since Fiddler on the Roof:
12) Shiva Baby
If My Big Fat Greek Wedding were stripped of its bubbly romantic elements, and all of its characters were Jewish instead of Greek, and then if all those characters were stuck in a claustrophobic setting in a funeral home, then the end result would probably look something like Shiva Baby. A 78-minute anxiety attack of a movie, acting as both wickedly comedic satire of Hebrew culture as well as dark commentary on unlikely affairs, writer-director Emma Seligman’s personal picture about an extraordinarily uncomfortable wake is one of the most unsettling, razor sharp comedies of 2021.
From the snappy dialogue of characters making obligated small talk down to the terribly awkward close-ups, Shiva Baby follows the cynical, stressed out Danielle in a leading performance from newcomer Rachel Sennott who carries this horrible experience almost entirely by herself. Making her way through a crowd of Jewish friends and family, Danielle painfully smiles her way through an affair with a married man who happens to be attending the very shiva that she is sitting. The end result makes for a desperately awkward experience attempting to escape for the film’s breezy runtime. Isolated in such an uncomfortable atmosphere, Shiva Baby’s wicked dark humor zings by, leaving this as one of the smallest but most notably comical – if not the most overtly Jewish – films of 2021.
*Second most bizarre AF film of 2021:
11) Lamb
A slogging Icelandic foreign film surrounding a distraught couple that finds a half lamb, half human hybrid, Lamb is just about the most warm, welcoming picture for moviegoers everywhere. Moving at such a sluggish pace that audiences could practically watch flowers grow in real time amidst the gorgeous backdrop of cinematic Iceland, Lamb is pure folk horror that’s about as slow as it is strange, which will be a sure fire hit with the fast-paced mainstream audiences.
Applying its heavy themes of Man vs. Nature to the concrete silence which swallows much of the film’s brooding tension, the latest achievement from A24 Films is about as inviting as the disturbing lamb-man creature. Despite these fuzzy follies, Lamb has a pretty wild, jaw-dropping ending that was lifted directly from the nightmares of the film’s director, Valdimar Johannsson. Granted, the gratifying ending will make the audience work overtime in order to reach it, and if that’s not enough of a sell, then at least the film’s tiny protagonist – little Ada – is the most goddamn adorable and precious monstrosity of any mutated creature-hybrid in perhaps of all cinema.
TOP 10 (RANKED):
*Best 3-hour Japanese film that has absolutely nothing to do with the Beatles song implied in the title:
10) Drive My Car
A beautifully broken, sad, sensual, and sweet film, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-nominated flick is a three-hour love letter to themes of heartbreak, betrayal, loss and regret, masqueraded as a sometimes cheeky and intimate homage to acting and theater. By following stage director Yusuke Kafuku and his screenwriting wife Oto, Drive My Car begins as a commentary on the complexities of marriage, but over the course of its drawn out runtime, the film unravels as an emotionally devastating display of overcoming grief that has all but been lost to time.
Naturally a three-hour Japanese drama is a tough sell, but Hamaguchi wrings his emotions dry, notably through the leading character of Yusuke – commanded through a quietly intimate performance from Hidetoshi Nishijima – as he bonds with his female chauffer, the young Misaki Watari. Often taking place in Yusuke’s red 1987 Saab 900 Turbo, Drive My Car treats the vehicle like a character itself, creating a conversation piece as characters cruise down open roads, quietly dialoguing about their scarred pasts. By the end of the elongated runtime, the film stretches its leads down the winding highways of trauma, creating one of the more silent but genuinely heartfelt endings of any film of 2021.
*Best case for Planned Parenthood (2021 Edition):
9) The Lost Daughter
Almost certainly the best adapted screenplay of 2021, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter may look like a typical movie about a middle-aged woman who can’t find solace in her beach-going vacation, but beneath the surface is a mesmerizing psychological tale about motherhood that reflects on the horrors of the past influencing the trauma of the present – while still appearing to be a typical movie about a woman who can’t find solace in her beach-going vacation.
Nearly anchored by Olivia Coleman’s fragile but stern leading performance, Lost Daughter finds Leda laying upon the crashing shores of Greece – a sandy resort in a dreamlike daze, setting an oddly chilling mood for what otherwise feels like a tropically hypnotic environment. Leda, like the rest of the world, is attempting to bask in a world of relaxation on her solo vacation, before being rudely interrupted by fellow vacationers, who turn out to be some of the most disrespectful civilians in all of Greece. Upon befriending Nina (Dakota Johnson), one of the lesser-rude members of the group, Leda finds herself involved in finding one of Nina’s daughter’s missing dolls. A seemingly irrelevant plot point for sure leads to a bizarrely haunting series of events in which Leda recalls a dark and tragic past.
Gyllenhaal, in her directorial debut, hurls Leda in the eye of the film’s storm, creating all sorts of psychological chaos while tricking the audience into thinking they’re watching a happy-go-lucky story filled with jovial dancing, riveting dinner conversations with strangers, and horribly unsettling moviegoing experiences. Coleman embodies Leda of the present with deep, quiet fragility, while Jessie Buckley plays a more lively yet frightening version of the character in the past, and while the flashbacks only seem to add unnecessarily complex layers to the Leda character, the film ultimately culminates with an oddly personal yet emotionally explosive final act as the woman who seemingly just wants to get away to rest ends up on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
The Lost Daughter makes for unsettling commentary on motherhood while asking the bigger questions in regards to facing the road ahead as we face midlife crisis and beyond. With characters ranging various ages, Gyllenhaal’s film dares to target multiple stages of life, proposing the purpose of it all; be it the value of a little girl’s doll or the repetition of peeling an orange. It all may culminate with beach-filled images that look like vacation and not much else, but The Lost Daughter creeps up with heavier themes that linger long after the trip is over.
*Most frighteningly accurate representation of #QuarantineLife:
8) Bo Burnham: Inside
In just one completely self-produced Netflix special – filmed remotely and entirely from inside his own home, singer-comedian Bo Burnham has captured the absolutely existential nihilism and suicidal tendencies that so many people have developed — some without even realizing it — while stuck in their homes during lockdown of the 2020 pandemic.
Of course not a “film” in the traditional sense, Inside is the most accurately reflective response to quarantine life that nearly the entire world experienced in 2020, and it’s reflected through song and jokes that sometimes feature a vulgar sock puppet. Singing in his underwear and shamelessly parading his homeless-like appearance, Burnham swings for the fences by trying to comedically sing us to death, while struggling to not kill himself in the process. What seems like quirky, self aware satire of our inner world absorbing the pop culture effect of the outer world slowly transforms into the very image of deranged isolation. By masquerading loneliness with catchy musical numbers — ranging from “A White Woman’s Instagram” to multiple “Jeffrey Bezos” bits — Burnham eventually becomes the very representation of cheerful nihilism.
Highlighting dark and personal commentary with relatable thoughts of anxiety and suicide, Bo constantly jumps back and forth into his colorful song-and-dance routine as if to distract everyone — including himself — from the currently crumbling society around us, amidst being completely and utterly alone. Like a living meme of the cartoon dog smiling in his burning home, Bo is telling the world “this is fine,” even though everything is clearly far from it.
In a repetitive bizarro-nightmare of being stuck in our homes, we’ve been stripped of our moral fiber and clinging to content to escape our dreaded realities, almost naturally so, which leaves Burnham’s loud and chaotic — yet hilariously upsetting — portrait of pandemic life the very type of content that we didn’t even realize we needed. Like he states in one of his opening licks, he’s healing the world — with comedy.
* Most cinema looking cinema in all of cinema - Part One (2021 edition):
7) Dune
Easily the most ambitious film of 2021, Dune (or Dune: Part One) is director Denis Villeneuve’s dream come true, and if nothing else, the most visually stunning film of the year by miles. As both a descriptive love letter to the famous sci-fi novel, as well as a testament to big-budget Blockbuster filmmaking amidst the aftermath of a global pandemic, Dune is undoubtedly a cinematic achievement on just about every level.
From the conception of Frank Herbert’s 1965 fantasy book series, Dune has earned an enormous reputation in science fiction – namely in building a wildly creative mythology with its own outer space worlds, characters, and f**king huge-ass sandworms in order to set the stage for iconic, big screen sci-fi soaps such as Star Wars – so naturally adapting the story to screen for a third time (the first being David Lynch’s outdated 1984 version, the second being a very mixed miniseries) would be a daunting task to say the least. Considering Dune is one of the director’s favorite novels, and developing the story to film has always been a passion project for Villeneuve, there’s no better time for Dune than now.
The film is absolutely breathtaking to look at, and it’s backed by one of Hans Zimmer’s most creative scores yet (the man INVENTED instruments for this one). Featuring an all-star ensemble cast, despite Zendya being limited to like seven minutes of screen time (her footage is essentially a music video in the sand), there is not enough anyone can say to praise Dune’s overwhelming achievements, save for one major criticism: The pacing.
Without deep diving, Dune’s plot genuinely jumps all over the place, and does so at such a rapid rate that it becomes difficult to become truly invested in all the characters. While it doesn’t bog down the film as a whole, Dune’s swift pacing provides very little breathing room for its unique and grandiose storytelling, so it’s a shame when it feels like so many big actors get the shaft when they end up getting killed off. To be fair, this could just be a testament to Herbert’s novel needing to chug along when it’s not taking its sweet time to explain why spice buried beneath a desert planet is so damn important, but hey, at least those sandworms are dope AF. Despite the rushed feeling (in what’s already almost a three-hour movie), there’s truly nothing bad to be said about Dune since it’s just stunning to watch. All things considered, at least we’re officially getting a Part Two that will hopefully tie up the loose ends and give Zendya the screen time she deserves (I mean good LORD, anyone who’s watched Euphoria knows that this gal deserves better).
*Best movie to feature a heartwarming relationship between man and pig since Babe:
6) Pig
Considering Nick Cage’s ambitious career choices over the last decade at least, it was no surprise that when the trailer dropped for the indie film Pig – the revenge story of a bum-looking truffle hunter in search for his stolen foraging pig – the end result appeared to be a John Wick style action flick in which Cage would crack skulls in order to retrieve his prized porker. Lo and behold, Pig ends up being something entirely different and was oddly one of the more sentimental and flat-out touching pictures of 2021.
Dressed to the nine as a purely homeless mountain man, Cage embodies the role of Rob – a lonely dude living in the woods with his pig. Once the pig goes missing, it would be difficult to believe that there was a serious drama buried beneath this premise, but once Rob ends up in his hometown, and must face his fragile past – one in which he was once a renowned chef – the film shows its heart amidst the love for gourmet cooking. In a surprising turn of events, Pig ends up sharing a sentimentality more in common with Pixar’s Ratatouille than a more expectedly absurd Cage vehicle in vain of something like Drive Angry. Whether or not that’s what the Cage heads were expecting, Pig reveals itself as a love letter to food, pets, and humanity in a quiet but legitimate knockout performance from Nicolas Cage, reminding us all that when the dude tries and he’s given a quality script, the man can leave an audience absolutely moonstruck.
*Most bizarre AF film of 2021:
5) Titane
French director Julia Ducournau has set one clear goal with her films – to leave audiences as uncomfortable as humanly possible, and with Titane, the foreign filmmaker just might have outdone herself. Coming off the heels of Raw – a film about a vegetarian girl who goes off to college and (how do we put this) develops a taste for meat – the French director has decided to take a stab at a… new, and very bizarre kind of story.
Focused on a young woman on the run, in a knockout leading performance from Agathe Rousselle, Titane revolves around a plot in which the young Alexia has a (how do we put this) very passionate love for cars, and then harbors a very terrible secret. Part of the fun, if one can describe it as such, of Titane is the absolute element of the strange. The strange and the weird parts of the film’s engine are the very fabrications as to what keeps the story so compelling under the hood. Basking itself in the body horror genre, as Titane revs along – basking in both the violent and the fantastical – the most odd takeaway from what might be the most out-of-left-field plot development of any film of 2021, is that the film ends up being extraordinarily human. Ducournau ends up focusing on two core characters at the center of the wackiness and somehow delivers one of the most emotionally compelling films of 2021. And for something to be as strange and disturbing as Titane, that’s perhaps the most unexpected surprise of the year.
*Best case for Simon Rex as a dramatic actor, while also most likely to get N'SYNC stuck in your head:
4) Red Rocket
If Red Rocket – the latest entry from indie darling filmmaker Sean Baker – is any indication of anything beyond the triumphant return of Simon Rex, it’s that the film’s director appears to be building a cinematic universe hellbent on exploring humanity among the sleaziest stereotypes across the United States.
If Tangerine – the 2015 film about a transgender sex worker in Hollywood – could be considered the first film in a trashy trilogy with enormous heart, then The Florida Project – the 2017 Oscar nominee surrounding kids living in a rundown hotel strip just outside Disney’s Magic Kingdom – would most likely be the spiritual sequel. This would naturally leave Red Rocket – the exploration of adult film actor Mikey Saber returning to his home in Texas – as the trilogy closer. All three of these films share a connective tissue in the form of their frighteningly relatable characters living among a filthy and gritty world of modern America, and Mikey Saber just might be the most terrifying of them all.
Resting almost entirely on the back of comedy actor Simon Rex (Scary Movie 3), Baker’s latest film ushers the audience in on the very train that Mikey rides back to his hometown of Texas City in the opening scene. As N'SYNC’s pop hit "Bye Bye Bye" blares in the background of the intro, Mikey steps off the Amtrak and walks back to the urban home of his ex-wife begging her to take him back, setting the desperate stage for our pathetic protagonist. Like a toxic tornado, Mikey proceeds to run down the blocks of his old stomping grounds, from childhood friends living behind chain-link fences to donut shops employed by barely legal teenage girls – and Rex carries the film with such enigmatic charm and yet so much despicable chaos, that the performance echoes Adam Sandler’s performance in Uncut Gems.
Like the rest of Baker’s filmography, Rocket is swallowed by a desolate, worn-out atmosphere filled with tender drug dealers and heartwarming prostitutes – broken characters that appear sketchy but exude the persona of a warm-hearted family member. Keeping in spirit with the Baker Cinematic Universe, Red Rocket is a hot and nasty film, both in boiling temperatures and in sleazy nature.
With Mikey masking a smug aura in order to come out on top of every problem he faces, while Baker hangs the 2016 election over the film’s backdrop, the film feels timely in its tension-fueled atmosphere of a bullshit artist at work. As both commentary on the frenzied climate of America, as well as a legitimate showcase for Simon Rex as a dramatic actor, Red Rocket is one of the most perverse, self-indulgent and uncomfortably hilarious films of 2021, and we are all the better for it. As he travels across the U.S. Sean Baker proves he can wring the humanity dry of nearly any putrid scenario, and for that, we thank you.
*Best PTA movie that looks most like Dazed and Confused:
3) Licorice Pizza
After establishing a filmmaking career built of cinematic puff-pieces that explore ambitious, complex themes – be it through dark commentary of greed in early 1900s America via There Will Be Blood, or religious exploitation of Man vs. Man via The Master – renowned writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has finally settled down with a film about nothing. It’s no Seinfeld, but Licorice Pizza is so quite literally about nothing, that PTA ended up leaving the film’s nonsensical title as one of the last inclusions of the film. Starring Cooper Hoffman, son of the late PTA veteran Philip Seymour Hoffman, Pizza explores the ambitious teenager Gary who strikes up a romance with Alana, played by newcomer Alana Haim, and both kids steal hearts as they steal the movie in a heartwarmingly vibrant and budding romance of 1973 California.
Akin to Dazed and Confused, Pizza is far less concerned with plot threads as it is in personality of its two leads exploring their youth and the bizarre antics that come with growing up. Gary and Alana spend the film running through the streets on hot, summer days – falling in love, getting arrested, and creating mischief while scheming customers into buying waterbeds (ya know, normal, youthful Summer activities). Behind the cameras, Paul Thomas Anderson seems to be reveling in what might be the most hypnotic film of his career, pulling punches from all kinds of screwball directions while throwing in the occasional acclaimed movie star simply because he can – Sean Penn briefly shows up as a film producer who drunkenly drives a motorcycle through flames, while Bradley Cooper plays a frighteningly aggressive coked out actor who vandalizes vehicles during a gasoline shortage.
Throughout the film PTA is constantly sprinkling dangerous characters throughout random events – be it to explore social commentary, the political climate, or the seedy underbelly of 1970s Hollywood – while doing so through the eyes of the innocent Gary and Alana, two kids in velvet shirts and plaid skirts who are on the brink of brushing up against a bigger and bleaker world ahead of them. Yet unlike There Will Be Blood, Licorice Pizza – like its characters – is constantly running away from the darkness, existing freely in a simpler time where the casual exploration of youth means simply existing and falling in love among an iconic 70s pop-rock soundtrack… That is, if one can escape the magnificently cannibalistic performance of Bradley Cooper.
*Most compelling film in which an angry man teaches a quiet boy how to tie a rope made from a cow's ass:
2) The Power of the Dog
A slow-burn Western that’s about as interesting as Benedict Cumberbatch instructing a teenage boy how to tie a rope made from a cow’s hide, The Power of the Dog is not only one of the most droll, quiet and painstakingly boring films of 2021, it’s also one of the most visually stunning, grimly chilling, and flat-out ambitious.
Taking place in 1925 Montana, Dog rides out of the stables with a slow pace that almost never once picks up – setting not just the melancholic mood of Jane Campion’s adaptation of the 1967 novel, but staging an unbearably raw tension. Cumberbatch plays ranch owner Phil with the smug, arrogant aura of a bitter cowboy with a buried past. By belittling his brother George (Jesse Plemons), and driving George’s wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst) to alcoholism, Phil is a monstrous human being, exuding the image of a macho gunslinger to his fellow saloon mates.
Campion paints Phil as the ideal image of toxic masculinity, if such an image were to exist in an early 1900s Western. As the film slogs along, we see the unveiling of Phil’s vulnerability – the grumpy gunslinger bathing in a lake while donning the scarf of his elderly mentor, Bronco Henry, while Rose’s awkward teenage son Peter gazes curiously from a distance. Power of the Dog is filled with strange and ambiguous sequences such as these to contrast the dark palette of Phil’s mysterious bitterness against the meek vibrancy of Peter, but this is also Campion’s way of exploring the complex nature of the wickedness of mankind, be it internal or external.
What begins as a bold homage to the glory days of the American cowboy morphs into a sinister fable of fractured identity through Phil and Peter’s complicated relationship. Phil becomes a mentor to Peter through means of teaching him to behave like a traditional Western hero; dressing like a cowboy, riding a horse, tying a lasso; etc. All the while Peter, pristinely dressed in clean white shoes, quietly studies science while crafting flowers made from paper. Campion eventually crosses the paths of these characters through means of catching rabbits and having vague conversation about mountains. It all may feel strange and irrelevant, but by the film’s dark finale, Campion’s got the audience right where she wants them.
At the end of the day this is Benedict’s film from beginning to finish and Campion paints the man in a hideous light. To give fair credit, the film also marks one of the most emotionally devastating performances of Kirsten Dunst’s career, and Johnny Greenwood’s hypnotic string score is perhaps the flat out best piece of film music in 2021. Dog exudes a brilliance in its subtlety in exploring themes of masculinity and homosexuality, and although it’s no Brokeback Mountain, the film leaves a powerful ending that’s bound to at least leave moviegoers feeling curious.
*Best medieval arthouse Christmas movie to feature fantasy elements and a highly questionable girdle:
1) The Green Knight
Based on the renowned 14th century Arthurian poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (AKA the book that many children had to read in English class) the latest medieval A24 flick is an absolute banger. Writer-director David Lowery (A Ghost Story) immaculately applies his micro budget ($15 mill) to a small tale about axe-wielding knights in such glorious fashion that the final product carries the visual and thematic weight of a Ridley Scott level epic that’s roughly seven times more expensive. In other words, The Green Knight is basically the indie version of The Last Duel, and it’s arguably the second most dope-ass medieval film ever made (A Knight’s Tale being the first, of course).
Save for some surreal visual choices that are trippy AF (including talking foxes, eating mushrooms and seeing giants), the fantasy epic pretty much goes down exactly as it does in the book, with one major character exception. In the poem, Sir Gawain embarks on a mythical quest to face off against the mysterious Green Knight, challenged with multiple tasks along the way in order to prove himself worthy of being a hero to serve in his uncle King Arthur’s court. In the film, all of these said events still happen, except where Gawain in the book is something of noble squire, Gawain in the movie is a huge dick. Granted it’s literally been seven centuries since the book came out, so the protagonist being an absolute menace is warranted – not just because it keeps the dude more grounded in reality but it allows his quest to feel more earned by the film’s ambiguous ending. Besides, Gawain is played by a very mangy but top-tier Dev Patel, and he nails the role. What’s not to get all hot and bothered about?
Look, The Green Knight is the bees knees and there’s no getting around it. David Lowery produces a vibrant and visual spectacle that is utterly breathtaking to watch, albeit at a very strange and extremely deliberate pace. After all, this is coming from the guy who made a movie where Casey Affleck is dressed as a bedsheet-ghost and watches Rooney Mara eat a pie for nine minutes straight. It’s certainly not going to be everyone’s goblet of wine, but for anyone who’s ready for some weird-ass medieval shit, TGN absolutely slaps.
And that's a wrap, folks. Thanks for tuning in and as always, let's not wait for the next family reunion to get together.
2022 WISHLIST:
- The Batman
- After Yang
- The Northman
- X
- Everything, Everywhere All at Once
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Nope
- Men
- You Won't Be Alone
- Women Talking
- Don't Worry Darling
- Babylon
- The Killers of the Flower Moon
