When people insist that this year is worse than last year, I assume they spend too much time online, and wonder why they don’t spend more of that time going to movies.
Remember going to the movies in 2020? No? Maybe you remember the funny video of Tom Cruise going to see “Tenet” during a lull in the first wave, wearing his mask, and saying “back to the movies!” Didn’t look fun, did it? That was 2020. This year was better.
I lived between two cities for most of the year, and luckily, one of them was Los Angeles. For the first time, I had easy access to the handful of theaters that get what I knew, growing up, as “art movies,” the ones I never recognized come Oscar night. This didn’t really change my viewing habits — I didn’t catch “Memoria” — but it made me more aware of what the film industry was making and selling. In Washington, the subway posters advertise Raytheon and places you should be visiting; in Los Angeles, the billboards tell you what’s coming on HBO Max next month, and why if you’re an Academy voter you should consider Billy Eichner for his performance in “American Crime Story: Impeachment.”
Yes, I prefer the second set of ads.
This year, I watched 81 new movies, according to Letterboxd. The site logged a number of movies released this year as movies from 2020, and it classified some TV miniseries as “movies,” so the trio of Disney MCU shows are right there on my list, broadcasting my shame.
These are the 15 best times I had at the movies. “Licorice Pizza” was flawless, “The Card Counter” was captivating despite some flaws, and the rest of these fell somewhere in between, but with very different vibes.
Was “Zak Snyder’s Justice League,” which lasts forever and includes that silly keep-away chase at the beginning, really better than Jane Campion’s western revenge story? By this standard, yes. I expect good movies from Campion, but I didn’t expect to be so fascinated by the choices Snyder made to design a bloated War of the Gods epic, or so baffled by the choices Joss Whedon made to ruin it. No movie was more fun to think about, but a few were more fun to watch.
I see just two micro-trends on this list. It was a good year for movies set in the middle ages, which drew on real stories that haven’t been over-pumped for IP, and took advantage of lax modern censorship. Neither “Benedetta” nor “The Last Duel” made much money, but both were riveting twists on the “period” movie. And it was a fantastic year for music documentaries, with incredibly talented directors exploring the world the boomers made — smooth jazz, Beatlemania, the Factory.
15. The Card Counter
14. Last Night in Soho
13. The Velvet Underground
12. The Last Duel
11. The Power of the Dog
10. Zak Snyder’s Justice League
9. Can’t Get You Out of My Head
8. Pig
7. Benedetta
6. Red Rocket
5. Get Back
4. Annette
3. Listening to Kenny G
2. Dune
1. Licorice Pizza
Best Move to Watch on a Plane: “Free Guy.” Better than you’d expect, and really vibes with recirculated air.
Best Hype Men: Mr. USA’s street team in “The Card Counter.” The hold ‘em player himself, established as the favorite to win the World Series of Poker, wears a star-spangled tank top and track pants. He is followed wherever he goes by two forgettable-looking guys in tie-died shirts, holding signs that read “Mr. USA” and occasionally saluting people.
Best Oscar Bait: Jessica Chastain in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” She goes full ham from the first second of the movie, totally disappears behind light make-up, gets her own “Rose’s Turn” musical sequences but inverts its meaning. No idea how this got ignored.
Worst Oscar Bait: “Spencer” and Kristen Stewart in “Spencer.” There’s just nothing left to say about the Windsors, and this is before we get 10 episodes of “The Crown” focusing on some of the same period covered here.
Worst Good Casting: Richard Madden as Ikarus in “Eternals.” The role, in a plot that rose above the movie’s many problems, called for a Superman-like character who you can’t imagine breaking bad. Madden looks just like Henry Cavill, but approaches this role with a dark blandness that gives the twist away. (So does writing that sentence, sort of, but don’t complain about “Eternals” spoilers in 2022.)
Runner-up: Vincent D’Onofrio as Jerry Falwell in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.” He doesn’t even attempt the accent — all good — but he’s so menacing that he slants the whole audience one way.
Angriest Guy: Mike Foreman, the Catholic Church sexual abuse victim who was forced to bring his abuser a cake, in “Procession.” Each of the six men Robert Greene gathered for the therapy film project processes trauma differently, and Foreman lives like he’s on fire, snarling and cursing about what was done to him. His film largely consists of him screaming at a priest, saying he’d “rather let a crack whore look after my children,” while adding that this is theoretical and he doesn’t have children.
Best Cronenberg Movie: Julia Ducournau’s “Titane.”
Runner-up: Brian Cronenberg’s “Possessor.”
Best Sex: “Benedetta.”
Worst Tradition: “Death to 2021,” the Charlie Brooker-less second edition of the Netflix series. The concept: Fake talking heads, actors playing stand-ins for archetypes from our cancerous media landscape, talk about the weird and bad things that happened in the year. The joke format is second-person, with the talking heads saying something that sounds perfectly normal to them, and obviously comical to us. That’s a boring format, and the jokes make it worse. Here is a “joke” from this hourlong presentation, the opening lines of a sort of female John Heilemann.
"There are two Americas. One America believes experts, officials, and journalists like me when we say Biden won. The other America thinks those selfsame experts, officials, and journalists like me are all part of a massive conspiracy. I ask you: Does it look like the CIA has me on speed dial? Surely they can do better than that.”
That is the entire block of dialogue; you’re supposed to find a joke in there. I despised this, feeling I was covered in stinking nets made of tweets.
Best Cult Mantra: “Hail Raatma!”
Original song: “So May We Start” by Sparks, not just a banger but the foundation of the best musical sequence of the year.
Runner-up: “Just Look Up,” the gloopy charity song performed by Adriana Grande in “Don’t Look Up.” Nicholas Britell’s parody of minor chord ballad-pop - he’s good at it!
"So May We Start" was indeed incredible. Still have it stuck in my head 6 months later, but I had to turn the movie off halfway through when he was sitting on the baby. It was midnight and I was alone and somewhat stoned, so that may have had something to do with it. Should I really give it another try?