2021: THE BEST
1) The White Lotus (Mike White, director) Available on HBO MAX
2) Get Back (Peter Jackson) DISNEY+
3) Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson) In theaters
4) The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson) On Demand via numerous streaming platforms + DVD/Blu- Ray
5) The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion) NETFLIX
6) The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier) Coming soon to theaters/On Demand platforms
7) Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro) In theaters
8) Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi) Coming soon to theaters/On Demand platforms
9) Don't Look Up (Adam McKay) NETFLIX
10) Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude) On Demand via numerous streaming platforms
Yes, I know that my top two selections aren't strictly speaking "movies." But like all great works of art, "Lotus" is the product of one singular, overarching vision (in this case, Mike White's). The "Chuck & Buck," "Year of the Dog" and "Enlightened" auteur wrote/directed all six episodes of his phenomenal HBO "limited series."
And if Richard Lester's "A Hard Day's Night" is truly the "Citizen Kane" of rock movies--which I believe it
is--then "Get Back" is the "Kane" of rock documentaries. It's also the best thing Peter Jackson has done since his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy ended 18 years ago. And it's equally monumental.
Runner's-up (in alphabetical order):
About Endlessness; Annette; Beginning; Being the Ricardos; Belfast; Benedetta; Bergman Island; C'mon, C'mon; Coda; Cyrano; Flee; France; The Hand of God; A Hero; The Human Voice; In the Heights; King Richard; The Lost Daughter; Malmkrog; The Many Saints of Newark; Memoria; Nobody; No Sudden Move; Parallel Mothers; Petite Maman; Red Rocket; The Souvenir, Part II; The Sparks Brothers; Spencer; Summer of '85; Summer of Soul; Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue; The Tender Bar; The Tragedy of Macbeth; True Mothers; 12 Mighty Orphans; Two Lottery Tickets; The Underground Railroad (Barry Jenkins' Amazon Prime miniseries); Undine; The Velvet Underground; West Side Story; What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?; Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy; White as Snow.
2021: THE WORST
1) The Scary of Sixty-First*
2) Summertime
3) Home Sweet Home Alone
4) Habit
5) Demonic
6) Here Today
7) Joe Bell
8) Tick, Tock...Boom!
9) Cherry
10) Zeros and Ones
*Besides my #1 pick, the loathsome "Scary of Sixty-First," the absolute "worst" movies I saw all year were "Best Summer Ever," "Emily @ The Edge of Chaos," "Nemesis," "100 Days to Live," "Safer at Home," "The Blazing World," "I Blame Society" and "Christmas Freak." But picking on amateur-hour shoestring productions that somehow managed to find a theatrical--well, sort of--release seems pointless. Their deserved obscurity is punishment enough.
Instead, per usual, I selected movies made by people (including Abel Ferrara, Neill Blomkamp, the Russo Brothers and Billy Crystal) who should have really known better. In some cases, they're films that bamboozled some of my fellow critics.
Shockingly, even "Sixty-First" managed to find partisans. It actually won the "Best First Feature" award at this year's Berlin Film Festival.
And if I'm including a "runner's-up" list of the year's most execrable movies made by--or featuring--actors of distinction, I can't leave out "Bad Trip" (Tiffany Haddish, Lil Rel Howery), "Six Minutes to Midnight" (Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Eddie Izzard), "Gunpowder Milkshake" (Paul Giamatti, Lena Headey, Angela Bassett, Michelle Yeoh) "American Night" (Emile Hirsch, Paz Vega, Jonathan Rhys Meyers), "Small Engine Repair" (Jon Bernthal and Shea Whigham) and "Minamata" (Johnny Depp).
---Milan Paurich