THE BEST FILMS OF 2021
“SUMMER OF SOUL” SHINES SOME MUCH-DESERVED LIGHT
No doubt, the film industry in 2021 would very much agree with Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
The worst part is obvious. The pandemic still haunts theatrical exhibition, with box office up over the disastrous 2020 but still lagging behind pre-COVID times. Theaters shuttered, including Houston’s beloved River Oaks Theatre, and the fortune of many films aimed at adults — such as “Stillwater” — were especially hard hit.
The best part is more subjective but still undeniable: the variety and quality of films is impressive. Not only did this year mark the return of such directors as Steven Spielberg, Jane Campion, Pedro Almodóvar and half of the Coen brothers but it also gave us six highprofile and very different musicals (“In the Heights,” “Annette,” “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Tick, Tick…BOOM!,” “West Side Story,” “Cyrano”) and five major releases shot partially or entirely in black and white (“Belfast,” “The French Dispatch,” “Passing,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” “C’mon, C’mon”).
That these movies are also the ones most impacted by the decimation of the adult theatrical audience means such a bumper crop of stylistic diversity may not happen again next year. Even three of the Marvel spectacles — “Black Widow,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “SpiderMan: No Way Home” — didn’t disappoint this year.
All that to say, it was tough to whittle my list down to the films that mattered most in 2021:
1. ‘Summer of Soul’: The Harlem Cultural Festival, a concert series that attracted 300,000 people, took place in 1969 during the same turbulent summer as Woodstock. But unlike that famous celebration of “peace, love and music,” the Harlem festival fell through the floorboards of history. That is until Ahmir Khalib Thompson, better known as Roots and Jimmy Fallon drummer Questlove, restored lost footage of the event and smartly put it into a cultural context. The resulting “Summer of Soul” is a fascinating time capsule of a culture in transition and a parade of fiery performances from Stevie Wonder, Sly & the Family Stone, Nina Simone, B.B. King, Ray Barretto and more. Hulu.
2. ‘Dune’: Until this year, the general consensus was that Frank Herbert’s massive, classic science fiction novel, “Dune,” was un
filmable, David Lynch’s 1984 version notwithstanding. Director Denis Villeneuve didn’t let that stop him, crafting a movie that’s generally faithful to the spirit of the book while plunging viewers into a sumptuously designed universe that manages to be simultaneously ancient and futuristic. “Dune” is world-building at its most exhilarating. HBO Max.
3. ‘Tick, Tick…BOOM!’: LinManuel Miranda may have had a box-office misfire with “In the Heights,” which he wrote but didn’t direct, but he can console himself with this sensational directorial debut. Starring Andrew Garfield as the late “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson, it’s a tribute to the man and the creative spirit. Netflix.
4. ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’: Joel Coen, of the Coen brothers, strikes out on his own in this starkly masterful and haunting blackand-white interpretation of Shakespeare starring Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand and Brendan Gleeson. Opens Dec. 31 at Alamo Drafthouse La Centerra, Katy. Begins streaming on Apple TV+ Jan. 14.
5. ‘Flee’: Blending animation and documentary in a blast of suspense, heartbreak and hope, Danish director Jona Poner Rasmussen has found an ingenious way make the hard-scrabble immigrant story of Amin Nawabi — a boy wrestling with his sexuality who flees both Afghanistan’s Taliban and post-Soviet Russia — come thrillingly alive. Opening in January.
6. ‘Passing’: Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga are both extraordinary in Rebecca Hall’s take on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel “Passing,” in which a light-skinned African American woman passes for white to ensure her upward mobility. Shot in luminous black and white, “Passing” is ultimately a gripping and painful story of society-inspired self-hatred. Netflix.
7. ‘Belfast’: While there are several films such as “‘71” and “Hunger” that deal more explicitly with the intricacies of “the Troubles” between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Kenneth Branagh’s sweetly semiautobiographical, kid’s-eye-view of growing up amid the conflict is still sublime. Prime Video, VUDU, GooglePlay.
8. ‘Zola’: A movie based not on a novel or even a comic book but a Twitter thread seems doomed to failure. Well, Janicsza Bravo’s savagely funny take on Aziah “Zola” King — whose real-life 2015 tweetstorm about her crosscountry misadventures with fellow stripper Stefani became a social media sensation — makes hash of that assertion. As played by Taylour Paige with a bold intensity, Zola remains steady throughout her descent into increasingly shaky circumstances. Hulu.
9. ‘The Worst Person in the World’: Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s character sketch of a romantically conflicted woman in contemporary Oslo hints that it is a conventional rom-com before moving into decidedly more complex, melancholic and rewarding terrain. Releasing in theaters in February.
10. ‘The Power of the Dog’: New Zealand director Jane Campion (“The Piano”) hadn’t made a feature film since 2009 but then returned with this severe and unsettling Western and meditation on manhood featuring a particularly chilling performance from Benedict Cumberbatch. Netflix.
11. ‘Drive My Car’: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s contemplative, three-hour Japanese drama is an engrossing character study of two lonely people — a theater director and the woman hired to chauffeur him — dealing with loss, grief and pain, all within the confines of a beautiful red Saab. Playing at Museum of Fine Arts, Houston on Jan. 2 and Jan. 8.
12. ‘Mogul Mowgli’: The first full-length narrative feature from Bassam Tariq, who grew up in Houston, is a cinematic firecracker starring an electric Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”) as an aging British-Pakistani rapper trying to navigate the choppy waters of his immigrant parents’ dreams, the culture clash of his hip-hop identity and a looming health crisis that could end it all. Streaming on Prime Video, VUDU, GooglePlay.
13. ‘CODA’: Named after the acronym for “child of deaf adults,” Sian Heder’s uplifting drama chronicles the life of a teenage girl who, as the only hearing person in her struggling family, seems trapped in her role as a liaison between them and the hearing world. But she wants a music career, and her road to getting there could have been mawkish and cliché but “CODA” instead is grounded and warm. A crowd pleaser in the best sense of the term. Apple TV+.
14. ‘Small Engine Repair’: John Pollono opens up his play for the big screen but maintains the intimate power of this tense tale of toxic masculinity and class conflict. The ensemble cast of Pollono, Jon Bernthal, Shea Whigham, Spencer House and Jordana Spiro fires on all cylinders. Prime Video, VUDU, GooglePlay.
15. ‘Escape From Mogadishu’: Like “Argo,” but with fewer Americans and more gunfire, Ryu Seung-wan’s taut South Korean action-thriller is based on actual events of evasion and escape. As Somalia slid into anarchy in the early ’90s, South Korean and North Korean diplomats realized they had only two options: get out or get killed. Prime Video, iTunes, Vudu and GooglePlay.
Runners-up: Aaron Sorkin’s unconventional biopic, “Being the Ricardos”; Dallas director David Lowery’s wildly imaginative “The Green Knight”; Matthew Heineman’s devastating doc about life in a New York hospital COVID unit, “The First Wave”; Destin Daniel Cretton’s inventive Chinese twist on the Marvel formula, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”; Leos Carax’s audacious “Annette”; Justin Chon’s heart-wrenching story of wrongful deportation, “Blue Bayou”; Benny Chan’s brutal action flick “Raging Fire”; Lauren Hadaway’s intense portrait of athletic obsession, “The Novice”; Steven Spielberg’s striking reimagining of “West Side Story”; Reinaldo Marcus Green’s diverting “King Richard”; Edgar Wright’s stylish “Last Night in Soho”; Sean Baker’s deliriously ribald and Texas City-shot “Red Rocket”; Ben Shorrock’s deliciously deadpan immigrant story “Limbo”; Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s powerful “A Hero”; Joe Wright’s fanciful, musical take on Cyrano de Bergerac, “Cyrano” (with music from The National); Guillermo del Toro’s retro-noir “Nightmare Alley”; Jeymes Samuel’s cool, gun-slinging Western “The Harder They Fall”; Harry Macqueen’s beautifully understated end-of-life road movie, “Supernova”; Wes Anderson’s whimsical “The French Dispatch”; Pedro Almodóvar’s involving drama of two women bonding over motherhood, “Parallel Mothers”; the Houston-shot dark comedy “Playing God”; Paul Schrader’s brooding “The Card Counter”; the charming animated Disney musical “Encanto”; and Anders Tomas Jensen’s clever Danish revenge thriller, “Riders of Justice.” Whew.