‘Lost Daughter,’ ‘Worst Person’ find way to top
The film writers’ picks for best movies of 2021 are in.
LINDSEY BAHR
1. ‘The Lost Daughter’: There’s an element of danger, real and theoretical, permeating every moment of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s electric adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel. Despite the idyllic Greek seaside setting and the intoxicating premise of a solo vacation, the unease hovers oppressively as we follow the brilliant, passionate, selfish, cruel and inscrutable Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman) through some unorthodox choices, past and present.
2. ‘Licorice Pizza’: It’s a rare film that makes you nostalgic for a time and place you never knew, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s breezy, sunny “Licorice Pizza” does just that for the San Fernando Valley of Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) and Alana Kane’s (Alana Haim) youths. This is a playful and joyous ode to the big personalities, embellished stories, endless possibilities and endearing Hollywoodadjacency of a place that barely exists anymore.
3. ‘Dune’: A bigger-than-IMAX vision that is as smart as it is spectacular, Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” is far and away the best blockbuster of the past few years, something that’s clear-eyed, thrilling and visually unique.
4. ‘The Souvenir Part II’: Art house films don’t typically get sequels, so it’s a bit of a miracle that this even exists. But perhaps more extraordinary is what a great film it is as director Joanna Hogg and her star/stand-in Honor Swinton Byrne unpack Julie’s tragic first love and her evolution as an artist.
5. ‘Drive My Car’: There is a tranquility to the Japanese drama “Drive My Car,” which filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi adapted from a Haruki Murakami short story about a widowed actor who develops a connection with his chauffeur, while putting together a multilingual production of Uncle Vanya.
6. ‘Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar’: The absurd joys of the film just need to be experienced, preferably in pastel culottes with curlers in your hair and a blended tropical drink in hand. It was a big swing that could have been a disaster. Instead, we got a new comedy classic.
7. ‘Luca’: It’s a joy to be transported into the Cinque Terra-inspired town of Portorosso to watch a few adolescent sea monsters dream of Vespas and a better future. It also has a tremendous score and a lively soundtrack.
8. ‘The Power of the Dog’: A story about loneliness in the barren Montana frontier of 1925, Jane Campion’s stunning and sure-footed film is as rich and layered as a novel, playing out as a mystery, a Western, and a meditation on masculinity, femininity, class, love and hate. Benedict Cumberbatch’s brilliant, unbathed, casually cruel rancher Phil Burbank is a villain for the ages.
9. ‘The Hand of God’: Paolo Sorrentino’s autobiographical film “The Hand of God” may deal with tragedy and fate and “coming-of-age,” but it is hardly a maudlin or overly sentimental affair. This is a shimmering, ecstatic love letter to family that uses all of the colors in the box.
10. ‘El Planeta’: This ferociously pointed satire is about two women with severely limited funds attempting to live out a glamorous farce in post-crisis Spain by scamming and shoplifting their way through high-end establishments.
JAKE COYLE
1. ‘The Worst Person in the World’: Joachim Trier’s richly compassionate character study, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival and properly opens in February, stars Renate Reinsve as an uncertain Oslo 30-something finding her way.
2. ‘The Beatles: Get Back’: Peter Jackson’s eight-hour Beatles hang-out is an overwhelming cultural artifact not just because of how it reframes so much about what we know about Paul, John, George and Ringo, but for how it captures artistic creation and collaboration in real time.
3. ‘Licorice Pizza’: Paul Thomas Anderson’s shaggy-dog story of selfdiscovery in ’70s San Fernando Valley feels to me like a loose, easy-breathing culmination for Anderson. “Licorice Pizza,” crammed with the comic chronicles of adolescence and young adulthood, is the most lived-in movie of the year.
4. ‘The Souvenir Part II’:
Joanna Hogg’s sequel to her deeply autobiographical drama is simply one of the most sublime portraits of an artist as a young filmmaker there is. If Anderson resurrects ’70s California in “Licorice Pizza,” Hogg’s film is just as detailed in its ’80s London.
5. ‘The Truffle Hunters’: Michael
Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s exquisitely charming documentary is about old Italian men who scavenge truffles with faithful canine companions. Their tradition, though, is imperiled by the greed of those who would thwart or even kill the dogs so they can better compete for the high-priced delicacy. The filmmakers unearth an enchanting, vanishing world.
6. ‘Drive My Car’: Dogs are a clue to happiness, too, in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s emotional epic, a staggering work of quiet, profound intimacy. A lot of movies are described as “a ride,” but Hamaguchi’s melancholy masterwork earns that label in its own uniquely winding way.
7. ‘The Mitchells vs. the Machines’: A classic family road trip movie, with a robot apocalypse thrown in, along with a pug easily mistaken for a loaf of bread. An antic delight.
8. ‘Petite Maman’: In just 72 minutes, Celine Sciamma composes a spare but enormously rich fairy tale about an 8-year-old girl who, in a time of grief, meets another girl mysteriously similar to her in the woods.
9. ‘The Humans’: A family gathers in a rundown Chinatown apartment for Thanksgiving as darkness falls in Stephen Karam’s chilling adaptation of his own Tony-winning play. Like the apartment, they all have their own painted-over failings and faults, and the conversation throbs with existentialist reverberations.
10. ‘The Hand of God’: Paolo Sorrentino’s film, about a childhood in Naples that stretches from the divine to the profane, from bliss to tragedy, is best when he’s gazing not at himself as a young man but outward, at his seaside city and the family around him.