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It\u2019s IndieWire\u2019s now-familiar \u2013 and still very true \u2013 reframe: anyone who thinks this year (read: any year) has been bad for movies simply hasn\u2019t seen enough of them. While the 2021 landscape looked a fair bit different than that of 2020 \u2013 for one thing, in-person festival attendance and theater-going returned, if cautiously and with plenty of new protocols \u2013 the ability to see films beyond the big screen has only continued apace. And while many might bemoan the degradation of the \u201cmovie-going experience,\u201d no matter how you saw the best of this year\u2019s beefy batch, it was worth it.<\/p>\n
Look no further than our top two films, both new offerings from some of contemporary cinema\u2019s most enduring and exciting auteurs, for proof that the delivery service is hardly as important as the art being, well, delivered. Jane Campion\u2019s masterful, menacing \u201cThe Power of the Dog\u201d premiered at Venice, enjoyed a limited theatrical release, and is now (right this very minute!) available to stream on Netflix. Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s \u201cLicorice Pizza\u201d skipped a festival premiere, heading straight into limited release (with a fittingly unique strategy), before rolling out in other cities in the coming weeks. And yet both of these films are the best of the year. Go figure!<\/p>\n
In a year filled with new films from some of our favorite filmmakers, it\u2019s no surprise that this list of 25 titles includes work from familiar names beyond Campion and PTA, including Steven Spielberg, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Paul Schrader, Pedro Almodovar, Mia Hansen-L\u00f8ve, Sean Baker, Robert Greene, Joanna Hogg, Pablo Larrain, and Joachim Trier. But what might be even more edifying than the reminder of why these people are some of our favorites, it\u2019s the inclusion of a powerful pack of newbies, like Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Questlove, Rebecca Hall, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Shatara Michelle Ford. Many of these films are already available for viewing \u2013 both at home and in theaters, of course \u2013 and we can encourage anyone and everyone to check them out post-haste. You will not be disappointed.<\/p>\n
Ryan Lattanzio, Jude Dry, Tambay Obenson, Christian Blauvelt, and Kristen Lopez also contributed to this list.<\/p>\n
\u201cTest Pattern\u201d (dir. Shatara Michelle Ford)
\nFirst-time feature filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford squeezes a lot out of 82 minutes. In \u201cTest Pattern\u201d \u2014 already rightly nominated for a variety of Gothams, with more lauds to surely come \u2014 a perceptive and often quite painful examination of sexual assault, relationship dynamics, racial divides, and the corrosive power of violence, the writer and director mines a dizzying amount of topical issues, tying them all up as a compelling two-hander to boot. Despite the density of their subject, Ford avoids heavy-handed platitudes and dramatic tropes, instead relying on a strong script and a pair of sneakily powerful performances from stars Brittany S. Hall and Will Brill.<\/p>\n
Weaving back and forth in time, \u201cTest Pattern\u201d opens on the incident that will drive the bulk of the drama\u2019s action: a woozy Renesha (Hall), still somehow managing to sit upright on a bed, a glass of water threatening to tip out of her hand. She\u2019s not alone, and when Mike (Drew Fuller) comes into frame, Renesha\u2019s dulled senses might not instantly realize the threat, but Ford\u2019s invasive lensing of the interaction instantly puts the audience on alert. The discomfort of that scene will stay with both Renesha and the audience, as \u201cTest Pattern\u201d takes us through the events that led to the encounter, and everything that came after.<\/p>\n
There are many moments in \u201cTest Pattern\u201d that might inspire rage in its audience (\u201cPromising Young Woman\u201d and \u201cI May Destroy You,\u201d this is not, but these recent narratives about the fallout of sexual assault are worth exploring together), but none so affecting as the repeated lack of concern that follows a request for a rape kit. The person in need of it, who requires the minimum of care and compassion, rarely gets that. By its end, Ford has unfurled a story \u2014 and a burgeoning career \u2014 worth considering long after. \u2014KE<\/p>\n
\u201cBad Luck Banging or Loony Porn\u201d (dir. Radu Jude)
\n\u201cBad Luck Banging or Loony Porn\u201d begins as the story of a sex tape gone wrong, with circumstances unfolding on the restless streets of Bucharest as the frantic problems of a schoolteacher and the community divided against her take place against much larger concerns. Then, the movie zooms out to a cosmic degree, folding in a prolonged montage of terms for modern times that encapsulate virtually every phase of human history. Romanian director Radu Jude\u2019s astonishing satire (which won the Golden Bear at Berlinale) comes from a most unusual combination by jamming together two very different kind of movies that shouldn\u2019t work in harmony, but end up making perfect sense.<\/p>\n
The story is bookended by the plight of Emi (Katia Pascariu), a schoolteacher whose sex tape is leaked, leading parents in the community to arrange a tribunal about her future. Shot in the midst of the pandemic, these scenes of frantic masked characters bickering about family values take on a heightened absurdity all the way through the deranged finale, a final act of feminist empowerment too good to spoil here. Before that, Jude takes a break with an essay film featuring \u201ca short dictionary of anecdotes, signs, and wonders\u201d that encompasses fragments of Romania\u2019s Socialist history alongside poetry, architecture, and eroticism. It\u2019s a dizzying assemblage that puts the inanity of Emi\u2019s conundrum in a remarkable big-picture context. \u2014EK<\/p>\n
\u201cSpencer\u201d (dir. Pablo Larra\u00edn)
\n\u201cSpencer\u201d is Pablo Larra\u00edn\u2019s version of a Princess Diana biopic writ larger than large as a campy horror movie. Kristen Stewart plays the Royal as a kind of twitchy field mouse lost and suspended in the cold, a deer in the spotlight who trudges through the muck in heels and snips at herself with wire cutters purloined from the servants\u2019 quarters \u2014 when she\u2019s not vomiting up imaginary pearls into the toilet on Christmas Eve dinner. It\u2019s a remarkable performance in a strange movie that pulls off a galling feat: twisting a pivotal weekend in the life of one of the world\u2019s most revered public figures into a stylish psychological fantasy that almost completely ignores historical fact in service of digging a deeper tunnel into the woman\u2019s inner life. It goes further than \u201cThe Crown\u201d or any other serviceable biopic could. <\/p>\n
From the opening frames, as the clattering horns and strings of Jonny Greenwood\u2019s relentless score vault in, you know you\u2019re in for it. There\u2019s a Peter Greenaway level of obsessive reverence to sensuous and depraved period details: the plates of lobster floating by, the clamor of butlers and maids murmuring down below a lavish dinner party, the stilted and austere remove from cantankerous events, the ghost of Anne Boleyn gliding over it all. \u201cTell them I am not at all well,\u201d Stewart barks as she jettisons another Christmas Day dinner from hell to fetch the wire cutters and return to building a scarecrow shrine to her dead father in the middle of a barren field. This is a sick movie, and a brilliant one too. \u2014RL<\/p>\n
\u201cWest Side Story\u201d (dir. Steven Spielberg)
\nEven in our remake\/reboot\/requel-clogged world, it\u2019s still fun to bemoan the \u201cwhy\u201d of any and all big screen \u201creimaginings,\u201d even if they\u2019re brought to life by a scrappy up-and-comer like, oh, Steven Spielberg. Pushed back for more than a year due to various pandemic-related days, the last few months have only further primed audiences to wonder, \u201cWait, just why exactly did Spielberg feel compelled to remake not just any musical, but one of our most beloved to boot?\u201d There have been some early answers: Spielberg and his team strove to cast a variety of Latinx stars in the Shark parts (read: roles tailormade for Puerto Rican people), they wanted to lean into the sense of profound division between people in fraught times, and the arrangements of the musical numbers were shifted to better reflect the original musical stage production.<\/p>\n
And that all sounds well and good, interesting freshenings and touchups, but something like \u201cWest Side Story\u201d stands tall all on its own, does it really need those freshenings and touchups? Turns out, yes, as Spielberg\u2019s (somehow?) first musical is a vibrant, emotional, colorful, rich, wild, and incredibly satisfying addition to the \u201cWSS\u201d canon. While fans might initially balk at how faithful it seems to its predecessor, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner use those familiar beats to find new dimension, pleasure, and pain in this well-loved story. First-time star Rachel Zegler is a massive revelation, but it\u2019s straight-from-Broadway breakouts Mike Faist and Ariana deBose who make the whole thing feel nothing short than necessary and brand new. Original film star Rita Moreno appears in a retrofitted new role, and brings the house down with a new take on \u201cSomewhere.\u201d By the end, there\u2019s not a dry eye in the house (nor is there any confusion as to why Spielberg felt compelled to craft this big, bursting gift to the cinema). \u2014KE<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Souvenir Part II\u201d (dir. Joanna Hogg)
\nAn extraordinary work of meta-fiction which continues where the previous film left off, and subverts the fastidiousness of its construction to illuminate why Hogg felt the need to make it in the first place. As vulnerable as its predecessor and textured with the same velvet sense of becoming, \u201cPart II\u201d adds new layers of depth and distance to the looking glass of Hogg\u2019s self-reflection, as it follows Julie through the fraught process of making her graduation film\u2026 a short which just so happens to be the tragic story of a 25-year-old London girl\u2019s relationship with an older heroic addict.<\/p>\n
Not only is the set in Julie\u2019s film virtually identical to the apartment from \u201cThe Souvenir,\u201d it is the apartment from \u201cThe Souvenir,\u201d only this time the camera pulls back to reveal the airplane hanger that surrounds it. In essence, Hogg is making a movie about her younger self making a movie about her younger self\u2019s worst heartbreak, which is effectively a remake of the previous movie that Hogg made (the press notes adroitly refer to \u201cPart II\u201d as \u201ca deconstruction of a reconstruction\u201d). And while the view through that infinity mirror of romantic dramas isn\u2019t nearly as confusing as it might sound on paper, or at all, it also further complicates itself in dazzling fashion by the end, as slavish re-creation gives way to a richer synthesis of memory and imagination. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
\u201cThere Is No Evil\u201d (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof)
\n\u201cThere Is No Evil\u201d spends 30 minutes establishing its premise, and another two hours taking it in surprising new directions. Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof\u2019s brilliant anthology feature, which won the Golden Bear at the 2020 Berlinale before finally opening in North American this year, moves in so many unexpected directions that it remains impossible to pin down until the credits roll. The movie unfolds across four stories about military men tasked with executions as they grapple with their options, contend with the fallout, and witness the impact it has on the people closest to them.<\/p>\n
Rasoulof, who has been barred from leaving his country since 2017, has made an absorbing ride defined by the paradoxes of its people. Nobody in \u201cThere Is No Evil\u201d has it easy: There\u2019s no simple moral code when every possible option leads to a point of no return. \u2014EK<\/p>\n
\u201cZola\u201d (dir. Janicza Bravo)
\nOne of the year\u2019s most inventive and incisive films, \u201cZola\u201d jumpstarted the theatrical experience after its quarantine hiatus, offering a triumphant return for cinephiles with a rousing assault on those dormant senses. Bursting with vivid color shot by rising star Ari Wegner, rushing with a dynamic score by Mica Levi, and edited to perfection by Bravo\u2019s longtime collaborator Joi McMillon, \u201cZola\u201d was the energizing tonic filmgoers needed for our pandemic-induced lethargy. Director Janicza Bravo assembled this fire team, uniting the talent under her unique sensibility and amplifying their own brilliance through her distinct voice. With the help of \u201cSlave Play\u201d writer Jeremy O. Harris, who wrote the script with Bravo, as well as bold performances by Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, and Colman Domingo, \u201cZola\u201d became a kaleidoscopic fun house mirror held up to whiteness and toxic masculinity. <\/p>\n
The opening seconds of \u201cZola\u201d are emblematic of the sort of holistic filmmaking Bravo sets in motion: A harp cascades gently down and upscale, the camera slowly circles a sectional wall of green-lit mirrors, and two relaxed figures apply lipstick before popping their fingers out of their mouths in tandem. That pop, a universal soundtrack to femme routine, is elevated by Bravo\u2019s attention to funky details. It\u2019s funny, which she always is, but it\u2019s also divine \u2014 a moment of unspoken connection across the vanity. Whether through an inspired cut or well-placed sound effect, comedy is infused into every corner of the film, cropping up in unexpected and uncomfortable places. Bravo doesn\u2019t want her audience to laugh too hard, or for too long, without an awareness of something else in play. Based on the epic poem of a Twitter thread by A\u2019ziah \u201cZola\u201d King, the film is also careful not to denigrate the actual work of sex work. The inspired central montage feels neither salacious nor judgmental; broken down to their requisite parts, each client is simply another frame, another dollar. Making movies and making house calls are just two sides of the same coin. \u2014JD<\/p>\n
\u201cPig\u201d (dir. Michael Sarnoski)
\nThe most resonant films about loss represent a wide variety of genres and modes, and yet they\u2019re all bound together by the shared understanding of a simple truth: Acceptance may be the last stage of grief, but it\u2019s invariably the longest as well. The acceptance of death is neither a respite nor an exit ramp \u2014 it\u2019s a purgatory as infinite and layered as the inferno itself, a maze so vast that most people eventually stop looking for a way out and instead start looking for ways to forget that they can\u2019t escape. The story of a man so lost in the labyrinth that he thinks he\u2019s managed to escape it, Michael Sarnoski\u2019s remarkable \u201cPig\u201d is nothing if not one of those films.<\/p>\n
In a sharp pivot away from the maximalism of his usual performances, Nicolas Cage delivers a career-best turn as Robin Chef, a revered Portland chef until personal tragedy inspired him to trade clout for snout and spend the rest of his days as a reclusive truffle forager in the woods at the edge of the city, where he lives with his beloved pig. People who decide to \u201cWalden\u201d themselves away from modern society always appear as though they understand something that the rest of us don\u2019t, and Robin seems to have found a way to rescue meaning from the clutches of loss. Then some meth addicts steal Robin\u2019s pig, the man goes haywire, and it shifts into focus that he hasn\u2019t accepted his wife\u2019s death at all. On the contrary, we realize that Robin found life without her so hard to stomach that he just left it behind and refused to look back. It\u2019s not denial so much as a slightly more extreme version of the way that most people learn to cope long-term. But that\u2019s exactly why this surprisingly gentle and endearingly mythic tale makes for such an essential addition to the rich history of movies about grief: \u201cPig\u201d doesn\u2019t see acceptance as the end of one road, but rather the beginning of another \u2014 a road so long and winding that even its detours might lead you straight through hell and out the other side. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
Honeyed Grecian sunshine has nothing on the icy pragmatism of Leda Caruso, a steely careerist on a solo beach holiday in Maggie Gyllenhaal\u2019s impressive directorial debut. Based on the novella by the mysterious Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, whose true identity is one of the literary world\u2019s greatest mysteries, \u201cThe Lost Daughter\u201d is as elusive as its author. As an actress, Gyllenhaal\u2019s inspired casting choices were her first boon, and she doesn\u2019t hem her actors in with time constraints. Like the days on vacation, time washes away as Gyllenhaal peppers the film with lingering shots of weighted pensive moments. Oliva Colman is engrossing and ferocious as the complicated Leda \u2014 as her interest in Dakota Johnson\u2019s restless young mother simmers over into a scorched folly, Leda challenges even the most malleable allegiances. Though Gyllenhaal includes one too many flashback scenes, it\u2019s hard to take your eyes off of Jessie Buckley as young Leda, whose failed juggling of motherhood and ambition explains \u2014 but can\u2019t quite soften \u2014 the older woman\u2019s motives. The sacrifices of womanhood, embodied wrenchingly in three very different performances, can never be fully forgotten, even in the most beautiful landscape. \u2014JD<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Worst Person in the World\u201d (dir. Joachim Trier)
\nFor any millennial who ever pratfell in the face of their own indecision-making, \u201cThe Worst Person in the World\u201d holds up a grimacing double-sided mirror that flips between a hard-to-stomach, piercing reality check, and a warm, inviting embrace of relatability for the very same reason. Renate Reinsve gives a full-stop stunning breakout performance (that also won her the Best Actress prize at Cannes) as Julie, a tormented approaching-30-something who waffles between busted professional aspirations and ineffectual lovers, with ultimately no one to come home to at the end of the day but herself. <\/p>\n
Joachim Trier\u2019s formally daring latest is an ode to the romantic dramas of yesteryear, when big-hearted movies could encapsulate the crescendos of a love affair without a necessarily political agenda. But \u201cWorst Person\u201d ultimately does have smart things to say about how economic circumstances and being set up on the idea of \u201cfollowing your dreams\u201d (a pipe dream whose consequences we are all now imbibing) dictate the millennial plights of today. Trier ecstatically darts between rom-com, grief drama, and, at one point, tripped-out psychedelic horror movie, meaning his camera is possessed by the same easily distracted and restless spirit as Julie herself. <\/p>\n
While Reinsve is the obvious north star of this wonderful, touching, and wholly unpretentious feature, it must be said that Anders Danielsen Lie gives a heart-crushing performance whose inner core can\u2019t fully be explicated without experiencing the movie for yourself. (There\u2019s also a bitchin\u2019 soundtrack to boot, culminating in a closing-credits Art Garfunkel ditty that\u2019s still ringing in my head.) This is a movie people will return to again and again for comfort for the rest of their days \u2014 as itchy and discomfiting as its enveloping offerings can sometimes be. \u2014RL <\/p>\n
\u201cProcession\u201d (dir. Robert Greene)
\nThe self-reflexive cinema of Robert Greene has covered a wide variety of different subjects and styles over the last decade, but his most resonant films \u2014 from the s\u00e9ance-like portraiture of \u201cKate Plays Christine\u201d to the collective historical requiem of \u201cBisbee \u201917\u201d \u2014 are bound together by a shared understanding of the camera as a conduit to the past. \u201cBisbee,\u201d in which an entire Arizona mining town is provoked to re-stage the darkest chapter in its history, offers a particularly harrowing example of how Greene\u2019s lens often functions as a portal of sorts. It\u2019s as if his filmmaking process itself collapses space-time through the re-enactments that it compels, transposing now onto then in a way that leaves the two feeling as inextricable as fact and fiction. It meshes them together into a two-way street, or reveals all the ways in which they already are. In \u201cProcession,\u201d that street is revamped into an escape route.<\/p>\n
Here, Greene has made a(nother) sober, powerful, and even disarmingly playful film that hinges on performance as a kind of therapy. The difference is that the subjects of \u201cProcession\u201d \u2014 six middle-aged survivors of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests and clergy in the Midwestern United States \u2014 see the camera less as a way to commune with the past than a way to shake loose from the awful grip its held on them since they were children. Through the process of making short films out of their agony, these men are given the chance to dramatize (and even direct) their memories of abuse in a way that might allow them, independently and as a crew, to physically relocate where the trauma is stored in their brains.<\/p>\n
The end result is a searingly cathartic experience that feels like a fraught real-life companion to Hirokazu Kore-eda\u2019s \u201cAfter Life,\u201d in which the newly deceased re-enact a favorite memory from their time on Earth in order to live inside of it for all eternity. \u201cProcession\u201d is effectively the negative image of that process, as these men are choosing the most cursed memory from their childhood and re-enacting it in order to escape from it. As one of the survivors puts it, referencing another movie with which all of them are assuredly familiar: \u201c\u2018Spotlight\u2019 was about trying to get in from the outside. In our film, we\u2019re trying to get out.\u201d It\u2019s not for us to say whether they do here, or will some day in the future, but cinema is a collaborative medium, and watching these men crew for each other is more than just a counterbalance to the Church\u2019s unforgivable betrayal \u2014 it\u2019s a beautiful work of art unto itself. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
\u201cRed Rocket\u201d (dir. Sean Baker)
\nSince making his semi-mainstream breakout with 2015\u2019s \u201cTangerine,\u201d humanist filmmaker Sean Baker has focused solely on the lives of women and children. That he waited so long to make another film about a man is hardly surprising, though it does sting a little that it\u2019s one of his best. Starring the former adult film actor Simon Rex in a wildly charismatic debut, \u201cRed Rocket,\u201d like most of Baker\u2019s films, borrows ideas from Rex\u2019s life to weave a captivating and heartbreaking fiction. Broke and houseless, Mikey Saber returns to his hometown and knocks on his ex\u2019s door hoping for a little compassion, or at least a place to stay. He sweet talks his way onto the couch and eventually back into her bed, all the while weaving a trail of beguiling chaos in his wake.<\/p>\n
Through his seduction of local matriarchs who eye him wearily, courtship of an underage girl, and tragic friendship with a local kid who once idolized him, we slowly come to revile Mikey even as we can\u2019t help but feel for the guy. Buoyed by Rex\u2019s standout performance, as well as exciting turns by discoveries Bree Elrod, Brenda Deiss, and Judy Hill, \u201cRed Rocket\u201d doesn\u2019t even need to be Baker\u2019s finest to knock everyone else out of the water. But it just might be anyway. \u2014JD<\/p>\n
\u201cCODA\u201d (dir. Sian Heder)
\nWhat can be said about \u201cCODA\u201d that hasn\u2019t already been said by a dozen critics since the movie\u2019s debut on Apple TV+ earlier this year? The story of a teenager, Ruby (Emilia Jones), who is the lone hearing person in her deaf family continued to further the conversation on why Deaf and disabled stories need to be told. As a wheelchair user, I can\u2019t tell you the last time I felt I saw my family on-screen and what director Sian Heder did was open that door a little. The Rossis are, in many ways, the average American family. Because they are. They also happen to be predominately Deaf. By telling this story, filled with compassion and humor (spoiler, people with disabilities can be funny at times), did a lot to further the woefully under discussed topic of disability representation. There are so many elements of this movie I love. Troy Kotsur\u2019s embarrassing father, who talks about sex with a boy Ruby likes, yet is also her biggest supporter in learning why she loves music. Marlee Matlin, whose portrayal of Jackie brings up a lot of discussion on how disabled\/Deaf parents relate to their children. The aforementioned Jones and Daniel Durant, as two siblings \u2014 one hearing, the other not \u2014 who yearn for responsibility and independence but are perceived in totally different ways. This movie captured the little things that I\u2019ve yearned to see in disability narratives, and that I want to see more of. \u2014KL<\/p>\n
\u201cPassing\u201d (dir. Rebecca Hall)
\nBased on Harlem Renaissance author Nella Larsen\u2019s novel of the same name, Rebecca Hall\u2019s adaptation is mostly faithful to its source story about identity within a 1920s African-American bourgeoisie context. The film centers the experiences of two biracial women \u2014 Irene and Clare \u2014 as they navigate an America not far removed from the institute of slavery, with the privilege of being able to \u201cpass\u201d as white. As played by Tessa Thompson, Irene engages primarily with her identity as a Black woman, wrestling with her duality, while Ruth Negga as Clare chooses to live the privileged life of a White woman, occasionally engaging with her Black identity, typically when most convenient. A mutual obsession forms when the two old friends unexpectedly reunite.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a delicate friction that occupies much of \u201cPassing\u2019s\u201d runtime, and first-time director Hall understands that its key feature with respect to where Larsen\u2019s story stands in the American literary canon, is an exploration of timeless, provocative themes \u2014 the performative nature of racial, gender and sexual identities, and intersectionalities that constitute the American experience. Filmed in glorious black and white by Eduard Grau, the adaptation is carried by crisp, convincing performances from Thompson and Negga, who lead a strong cast that, thanks to Larsen\u2019s original story, as well as Hall\u2019s deft writing and directing choices, handles tricky elements with skill and grace. \u2014TO<\/p>\n
\u201cBergman Island\u201d (dir. Mia Hansen-L\u00f8ve)
\nA young Parisian filmmaker whose delicately personal work (\u201cEden,\u201d \u201cThings to Come,\u201d \u201cGoodbye, First Love,\u201d et al.) illuminates the unbearable lightness of being with the soft touch of a late summer breeze, Mia Hansen-L\u00f8ve may not be the first 21st-century auteur who comes to mind when people consider the portentous legacy of Ingmar Bergman, a man whose cinema stared into the void in the hopes of seeing its own reflection, and shouted down God\u2019s silence with such howling rage that even his comedies are probably still echoing in eternity. And yet, \u201cBergman Island\u201d \u2014 a triple-layered meta-romance about a filmmaker (Vicky Krieps) who flies to Sweden with her partner (Tim Roth) and pitches him a screenplay about her first love \u2014 is such a rare and remarkable movie for the very same reason that you wouldn\u2019t expect it to exist in the first place.<\/p>\n
Set on the remote skerry in the Baltic Sea that Bergman adopted as his home and began to terraform with his artistic persona after making \u201cThrough a Glass Darkly\u201d there in 1961, Hansen-L\u00f8ve\u2019s zephyr-calm story of loss, love, and artistic reclamation draws such an extreme contrast to the scorched Earth films that have become synonymous with F\u00e5r\u00f6 that even its nighttime scenes reveal the shadows that fiction has the power to cast across reality. No simple homage to Bergman, Hansen-L\u00f8ve\u2019s film is simply enraptured by the immaterial yet utterly transformative effect that Bergman\u2019s cinema has had on the quiet ocean rock where so much of it was made. Through the disconnect between the physical fact of F\u00e5r\u00f6\u2019s existence and the imagined fog that has settled over it in her mind\u2019s eye, she discovers a perfect nexus for the personal and creative universes that have long overlapped in her semi-autobiographical \u2014 or perhaps more than semi-autobiographical \u2014 fiction. The result is a heart-stoppingly poignant movie that beats from deep inside a body of work that has always been seasick with the bittersweet vertigo that comes from looking at the past through the smudged lens of memory and imagination. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
\u201cParallel Mothers\u201d (dir. Pedro Almod\u00f3var)
\nPedro Almod\u00f3var births his most politically charged film to date with \u201cParallel Mothers,\u201d an indictment of the horrors of the Francisco Franco regime wrought in personal terms as a switched-at-birth melodrama that sweeps you off your feet and into its lunacy. While you can see where the plot is headed from space, Pen\u00e9lope Cruz and newcomer Milena Smit render the familiar beats as unexpected \u2014 their dynamic ever shifting from the maternal to the erotic and back again. (This film is also a reminder of how skilled Almod\u00f3var is at shaping the interpersonal dynamics between women: See the underrated \u201cJulieta\u201d as an example.) <\/p>\n
Together, the two women represent opposite ends of the spectrum of motherhood, but their identities are never fixed in place: At once, Janis (Cruz) is resolute in childless middle-age, and then suddenly welcoming to the possibility of an unexpected child, while Ana (Smit) is a scared teenager staring down the precipice of parenthood. This wildly entertaining movie is drenched in plenty of Almod\u00f3var signatures: (yet again) a sumptuous score from Alberto Iglesias, (yet AGAIN) rich cinematography from Jos\u00e9 Luis Alcaine, and (YET AGAIN) a brief but potent Rossy de Palma as Janis\u2019 fiery agent. All of the elements coalesce into a swoon-worthy whole, with Almod\u00f3var mic-dropping with surely the most haunting final shot of his entire career to remind that the sins of the past are always inside the present, and that his filmmaking genius is far from done. \u2014RL <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Green Knight\u201d (dir. David Lowery)
\nA mystical and enthralling medieval coming-of-age story in which King Arthur\u2019s overeager adult nephew learns that the world is weirder and more complicated than he ever thought possible, \u201cThe Green Knight\u201d is an intimate epic told with the self-conviction that its hero struggles to find at every turn. Stoned out of its mind and shot with a genre-tweaking mastery that should make John Boorman proud, it\u2019s also the rare movie that knows exactly what it is, which is an even rarer movie that\u2019s perfectly comfortable not knowing exactly what it is.<\/p>\n
The surreal genius of David Lowery\u2019s \u201cfilmed adaptation of the chivalric romance by anonymous\u201d (to quote the on-screen text) is that it fully embraces the unresolved nature of its 14th century source material, contradictory interpretations of which have coexisted in relative harmony for more than half a millennium. Is it a paganistic tale about the fall of man, or is it a Christ-like quest about the hope for salvation? Does it bow to chivalry as a noble bulwark against man\u2019s true nature, or does it laugh at the idea that a knight\u2019s code would ever be a sound defense against his deeper urges? Is it a misogynistic poem about manipulative witches, or a proto-feminist ode to women\u2019s power over men?<\/p>\n
To all these questions and more, Lowery rousingly answers \u201cyes!\u201d And yet what makes \u201cThe Green Knight\u201d grow in your mind (like moss; like rot) for days after watching it is that Lowery never equivocates at any point along Sir Gawain\u2019s journey from the Round Table to the forest citadel where his fate awaits. Instead, he pulls tight on the tangled knots that have bound this saga to our collective imagination for so many centuries, and braids them all into a timeless fantasy about the struggle to make sense of an irreconcilable world. Hypnotic from its fiery start to its gut-punch of a finale and polished with a hint of heavy metal that makes the whole thing shimmer in the darkness like a black light poster in the basement of your friend\u2019s parents\u2019 house. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Card Counter\u201d (dir. Paul Schrader)
\nThis is a well-worn path for Paul Schrader: another film about a sensitive, guilt-tormented loner determined to expiate his sins through spiritual self-flagellation. But to paraphrase a quote often attributed to Chopin, if Schrader\u2019s kingdom is rather small, within it he is truly king. Oscar Isaac plays an Iraq War vet guilty of an unspeakable crime \u2014 the kind of crime so infamous you wonder how there could be any life for him after it at all. So he lays low as a two-bit blackjack hustler, taking care that his winnings at each casino remain in the three figures, and studiously avoiding comfort in his wanderings. An ascetic at Motel 6. When the son (Tye Sheridan) of an Army buddy tries to recruit him for a mission of actual bloody satisfaction, Isaac\u2019s gambler demurs, and takes the kid under wing as a kind of prot\u00e9g\u00e9 for a spell.<\/p>\n
Where the story goes from there is genuinely thrilling, proving that Schrader\u2019s souls seeking redemption can still power gratifyingly unexpected stories. \u201cThe Card Counter\u201d is one of the great \u201cWhat happens next?!\u201d yarns of 2021, and an enveloping mood piece conveyed with rigor. \u201cCasinos are very ugly places. There are no exceptions,\u201d Schrader told IndieWire\u2019s Eric Kohn. Finding a path to redemption through chintzy greed palaces may seem very Schrader, but it\u2019s a springboard for some unforgettable surprises too. Is forgiveness possible for the crimes Isaac\u2019s character has carried out? If so, then the capacity for salvation is truly profound, and \u201cThe Card Counter\u201d is one of the more Christ-like visions yet put on screen. \u2014CB <\/p>\n
\u201cMemoria\u201d (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
\n\u201cMemoria\u201d begins with the first jump scare in Apichatpong Weerasethakul\u2019s career, but the sudden impact isn\u2019t as relevant as the way it resonates in the silence that follows. Anyone familiar with the slow-burn lyricism at the center of the Thai director\u2019s work knows how he adheres to a dreamlike logic that takes its time to settle in. The Colombia-set \u201cMemoria,\u201d his first movie made outside his native country, does that as well as anything in \u201cUncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives\u201d or \u201cCemetery of Splendour.\u201d But this time around, there\u2019s a profound existential anxiety creeping in.<\/p>\n
With Tilda Swinton\u2019s puzzled gaze as its guide, \u201cMemoria\u201d amounts to a haunting, introspective look at one woman\u2019s attempts to uncover the roots of a mysterious sound that only she can hear. More than that, it\u2019s a masterful and engrossing response to the rush of modern times and the collective amnesia it creates \u2014 one that builds to a last-minute reveal for the ages. Anyone frustrated by its patience only serves to prove the point \u2014EK<\/p>\n
\u201cSummer of Soul\u201d (dir. Ahmir \u201cQuestlove\u201d Thompson)
\nA pulsating panorama of \u201cBlack, beautiful, proud\u201d people, \u201cSummer of Soul (Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),\u201d is a joyous and welcome addition to the documentary subgenre of rock festivals. But this one, which marks the directorial debut of The Roots drummer Ahmir \u201cQuestlove\u201d Thompson, comes with a most unfortunate history: Its film reels were buried in a basement for 50 years, largely unseen, until now.<\/p>\n
Seething through the entire documentary, against the backdrop of a racially turbulent 1960s, is an insistence on a new kind of racial pride and unity across the diaspora, which infuses \u201cSummer\u201d with an honesty and realism. It\u2019s explained that attendees distrusted the NYPD to the point of hiring the Black Panthers to safeguard the festival, anticipating Black Lives Matter events decades down the line.<\/p>\n
Questlove and editor Joshua L. Pearson lace together footage of stage performances with history lessons (Motown, gospel music, the evolution of Black style, the concept of a common struggle among Black people worldwide), tying it all together with endearing recollections of the single day in 1969 by those who were there. The result fans the flames of Black consciousness. It\u2019s a demonstrated feeling of pride that represents Black salvation, most movingly evident when Nina Simone, the \u201cHigh Priestess of Soul,\u201d takes the stage and performs \u201cTo Be Young, Gifted and Black\u201d \u2014 a love letter to the next generation and a kind of how-to manual. \u2014TO<\/p>\n
\u201cTitane\u201d (dir. Julia Ducournau)
\nFollowing the cannibalistic \u201cRaw\u201d with another ravenous film that pushes her fascination with the hunger and malleability of human flesh to even further extremes, Julia Ducournau has made good on the promise of her debut and then some. Whatever you\u2019re willing to take from it, there\u2019s no denying that \u201cTitane\u201d is the work of a demented visionary in full command of her wild mind; a shimmering aria of fire and metal that introduces itself as the psychopathic lovechild of David Cronenberg\u2019s \u201cCrash\u201d and Shinya Tsukamoto\u2019s \u201cTetsuo: The Iron Man\u201d before shapeshifting into a modern fable about how badly people just need someone to take care of them and vice-versa.<\/p>\n
During the first half of the film, it\u2019s hard to tell if you\u2019re watching the most fucked up movie ever made about the idea of found family, or the sweetest movie ever made about a serial killer who has sex with a car, poses as the adult version of a local boy who went missing a decade earlier, and then promptly moves in with the kid\u2019s still-grieving father. During the second half, it becomes obvious that it\u2019s both \u2014 that somehow it couldn\u2019t be one without the other. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
\u201cFlee\u201d (dir. Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
\nThere have been countless movies about the immigration crisis, but none of them have the sheer ingenuity of \u201cFlee.\u201d In Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen\u2019s poignant animated documentary, an Afghan refugee recounts his 20-year survival story, and the dazzling storytelling goes there with him. Yet the remarkable graphic stye works in tandem with a narrative that would stun in any format: As the man \u2014 identified only by a pseudonym, Amin Nawabi \u2014 gradually opens up about his experiences, \u201cFlee\u201d builds to a powerful secret buried in his past that reframes the global migrant crisis in intimate terms. From the moment Amin first appears, his bearded face rendered as a delicate 2D image, he\u2019s wrestling with how to tell his story. With time, \u201cFlee\u201d becomes his cinematic catharsis, as Amin recounts his journey in fits and starts, while the animation turns his memories into a bracing adventure that couldn\u2019t be timelier. A true category-busting filmmaking achievement (in the context of Oscars, its achievements stretch across Best Documentary, International, Animation\u2026and perhaps even Best Picture), \u201cFlee\u201d is a crowdpleaser that works on many satisfying levels at once. \u2014EK<\/p>\n
\u201cDrive My Car\u201d (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
\nWhen\u2019s the last time you saw a three-hour movie you wished could be longer? Drive My Car\u201d not only inspires that wish, it grants it: even though the credits roll around the 180-minute mark, the world of Ryusuke Hamaguchi\u2019s film, and its wayward characters, keeps unspooling in your head. That\u2019s fitting because \u201cDrive My Car\u201d is filled with characters who can\u2019t let things go in their own lives either: Hidetoshi Nishijima plays the acclaimed theater director Kafuku, who accepts a residency to direct a new, multilingual adaptation of \u201cUncle Vanya.\u201d Recently widowed, he\u2019s obsessed over why, before her death, his wife had an affair with a young matinee idol, whose intellectual capacity seemed, well, beneath her. Kafuku casts the scandal-ridden stud as the title character in his \u201cVanya,\u201d which seems an ill portent. Keeping the director grounded, though, is his 23-year-old driver Misaki (Toko Miura), whose employment is a liability precondition of Kafuku accepting the residency. She\u2019s stoic enough to suggest early on she\u2019s haunted by something.<\/p>\n
In \u201cDrive My Car,\u201d everyone else is too. And Hamaguchi\u2019s approach isn\u2019t so much to tell a story, but to let you find it in the midst of his trademark lengthy conversation scenes, in this case built around rehearsals of the play, long stints at the wheel, and energy-sapped bar visits. Based on a Haruki Murakami story, \u201cDrive My Car\u201d shows why more filmmakers should lean on the long-take \u2014 Hamaguchi lets his characters breathe, with enough quiet moments to allow you to fill in what isn\u2019t said, just the way you\u2019d put down a book to sit and think for a moment. As arresting a literary adaptation it is \u2014 and this is one of the young century\u2019s finest literary adaptations to date \u2014 it\u2019s the images that\u2019ll stick with you just as much: two hands thrust through a Saab\u2019s moon roof clutching cigarettes, two figures perched atop a cliff-like snowdrift, a young woman hanging back, rapt, as actors rehearse in a park. So many works of art emphasize our disconnection, but \u201cDrive My Car,\u201d its title a quiet invitation, suggests a path back to one another. \u2014CB <\/p>\n
\u201cLicorice Pizza\u201d (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
\nIn a world gone mad with bloated running times \u2014 utmost apologies to anyone who has been caught in pre-screening chatter with me over the past few weeks, during which I will inevitably yell, \u201cAll movies are 150 minutes or 85 minutes these days!,\u201d which is only broadly true, and even that might be a generous assessment \u2014 leave it to Paul Thomas Anderson to dole out the only film of 2021 that could easily, happily, and credibly double its running time. Bolstered by star-making turns from both Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, of course, and delightfully channeling both his dad and his very own vibe) and Alana Haim (of the Haim sisters, PTA\u2019s contemporary musical obsession), \u201cLicorice Pizza\u201d is a sterling reminder of the power of two often-underestimated subgenres, the hang-out movie and the coming-of-age tale.<\/p>\n
Broad strokes: set in the San Fernando Valley in the \u201870s (for those of you not necessarily hip to SoCal geography, the SFV is what people are talking about when they mention \u201cthe Valley\u201d), Hoffman is Gary Valentine (a fast-talking kid actor destined for success, even if it\u2019s not on the silver screen), who finds himself immediately taken by aloof photography assistant Alana Kane (Haim) on school picture day. Alana may be older than Gary \u2014 though both of them love to fudge their actual ages \u2014 but they instantly recognize a familiar soul in the other one. Soon, the unlikely pair are tooling around the Valley, cooking up big business plans, falling in with very weird people (including Bradley Cooper as super-producer Jon Peters, turning in another gonzo performance for the ages), and essentially deciding who they are going to be. And, of course, the central question: how does that involve the other one?<\/p>\n
Anderson\u2019s attention to period detail has always been profound, both lived-in and inherently cinematic, and he and his team conjure up a time and place that\u2019s recognizable and wondrous. Who knew a pinball arcade or Barbra Streisand\u2019s hideous bedroom could make for excellent set pieces? PTA, of course. Hoffman and Haim are the main attraction here, two shooting stars who conjure up extreme emotion, delightful humor, and maximum charm from the start (and, somehow, keep it up). It\u2019s a hang-out movie with one essential element: you actually want to hang out with these people. I never wanted it to end. \u2014KE<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Power of the Dog\u201d (dir. Jane Campion)
\nJane Campion has kept busy enough in the 12 years since her last feature-length film, but her ice-blooded \u201cThe Power of the Dog\u201d leaves the distinct impression that she spent every minute of that time sitting in a dark room and sharpening the same knife. In 2021, the \u201cIn the Cut\u201d auteur returned with a poison-tipped dagger of a Western drama wrapped in rawhide and old rope; a brilliant, murderous fable about masculine strength that\u2019s so diamond-toothed its victims are already half dead by the time they see the first drop of their own blood.<\/p>\n
The shiv-like stealthiness of Campion\u2019s approach may stem from the 1967 Thomas Savage novel on which \u201cThe Power of the Dog\u201d is based, but it perfectly suits a filmmaker who\u2019s long been fascinated by how weakness can be force\u2019s most effective sheath. From \u201cSweetie\u201d and \u201cAn Angel at My Table\u201d to \u201cBright Star\u201d and \u201cTop of the Lake,\u201d nearly all of Campion\u2019s work is pitched along the nebulous border that runs between desire and self-denial, genius and insanity. The Wellington-born filmmaker is drawn to characters \u2014 artists, but not always \u2014 who make beautiful homes for themselves in the middle, even if the rest of the world simply assumes they must be lost. To that end, perhaps the most basic (and least harrowing) of her latest film\u2019s razor-fanged pleasures is how \u201cThe Power of the Dog\u201d proves that no one is better at finding these people, or at recognizing how their supposed defects often provide the perfect disguise for their unique potential.<\/p>\n
Set on a Montana cattle ranch in 1925, Campion\u2019s sinewy adaptation depicts a four-sided death waltz between a tortured cowboy (Benedict Cumberbatch), his softhearted brother (Jesse Plemons), the widow he marries (Kirsten Dunst), and the delicate-seeming teenage son who comes with her (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The story that unfolds from that scenario is equal parts wish fulfillment and cautionary tale, and since it\u2019s told without a dominant point-of-view \u2014 in a way that feels almost anthropological \u2014 it\u2019s able to be each of those things for different characters at the same time.<\/p>\n
For all of the film\u2019s biblical grandeur, \u201cThe Power of the Dog\u201d never insists upon itself. There isn\u2019t a moment in the movie that lacks vision, but the whole thing exudes a tremblingly quiet strength. Just as Savage\u2019s plainspoken novel found the author flexing the invisible muscles he developed over a lifetime of fighting his own desire, Campion\u2019s equally poignant film leverages repressed passion into an unexpected show of strength. \u201cThe Power of the Dog\u201d sticks its teeth into you so fast and furtively that you may not feel the sting on your skin until after the credits roll, but the delayed bite of the film\u2019s ending doesn\u2019t stop it from leaving behind a well-earned scar. \u2014DE<\/p>\n
View this article at IndieWire<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 25 Best Movies of 2021: It\u2019s IndieWire\u2019s now-familiar \u2013 and still very true \u2013 reframe: anyone who thinks this year (read: any year) has been bad for movies simply hasn\u2019t seen enough of them. While the 2021 landscape looked a fair bit different than that of 2020 \u2013 for one thing, in-person festival attendance
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