Best Movies I Watched in 2021
- Bo Burnham: Inside (2021)
Synopsis: Bo Burnham makes his first comedy special in 5 years—alone, in his guest house.
Part collection of mostly musical bits, part (seeming) documentary on the creation of the special itself, part inverse The Wall(?), funny, poignant, uncomfortably dark, uncomfortably relatable/not relatable for specific reasons that probably aren’t applicable to everyone, and somehow in the middle of all of that there’s a running gag of him appearing in few and fewer clothes that is simultaneously a metaphor for his increasing vulnerability.
This was very good and I don’t think I’m gonna be able to watch it again for a long time.
- Dune (2021)
Synopsis: You know, sandworms and stuff.
When it was announced that Denis Villeneuve would be making a Dune adaptation, I knew that while it would likely fail in many of the same ways previous film and tv adaptations had failed, it would definitely look and sound amazing. As such, this was a movie I knew I needed to see in a theater.
Then the pandemic happened, and for almost two years it was unclear whether Dune would actually get a theatrical release, or whether I would feel comfortable going to see it if it did.
But it did and I did and let me tell you, I was right. Yes, they cut out a lot of the more interesting and thematically relevant scenes in favor of the actions scenes, yes they change or leave out some details in a way I disagree with, yes every bit of dialogue that’s a word-perfect quote from the book sounds like the actors were just reading aloud and had never even seen those words before, yes the movie leaves a lot of things unexplained, yes several major characters are only named once or even not at all—
But the vibes, man. The vibes are on point. Everything looks amazing, from the shields to the ships (including details like how there are no computers even though they never explain that there are no computers) to the cities to the desert to the Baron (whoever designed the Baron’s costume in that first scene is a goddamn genius) to the sandworms (oh man, that one shot where the sandworm surfaces briefly but we don’t see it, just the huge wave of sand, so good) to the sheer scale of everything to whatever was going on on Selusa Secundus (as far as I can remember that was not in the books, so that’s just a choice they made and you know what, good choice). And then the music, tense and mysterious and, ok I mean it’s basically what if you took the Gladiator soundtrack and combined it with the Inception soundtrack, but look if you know you want Hans Zimmer and you know how to use Hans Zimmer then there’s no one better to get than Hans Zimmer, and this movie has single-handedly redeemed the “Braaam.”
So yeah, as a Dune adaptation it was middleing, as a movie it was (I’m guessing) probably pretty confusing and narratively unsatisfying (fortunately it seems to be doing well enough that there will probably be a sequel to wrap things up), but relative to what is possible for a big-budget live-action Dune movie, this was pretty much as good as it gets (what would’ve been better would be same production values and still somehow theatrical release but an 8-hour miniseries; but that’s not gonna happen).
See it in a theater if you can (and feel comfortable doing so). Don’t go expecting the book. Go for the vibes. The vibes, man. The vibes.
p.s. I now understand why there are people who think Blade Runner 2049 is a good movie. If I’d seen it in a theater I might have thought so too. ‘Cause it’s not like this movie has a great script either.
- Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Synopsis: A young boy (Roman Griffin Davis) living in Germany towards the end of WWII discovers a secret that leads him to question his devotion to the Nazi cause and his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi). Also he has a real friend named Yorki (Archie Yates) who is the best.
There’s a lot going on here, and a lot of it works. What keeps it all from coming together, I think, is the disconnect between the larger, metaphorical thrust of the film, and the more intimate, character-driven plot. Ultimately it’s the latter which carries the film (Griffin Davis and Thomasin McKenzie deliver great performances), but that does have the effect of watering down the broader commentary the film is making.
This is the kind of movie that is deliberately trying to make you uncomfortable, and anyone whose reaction is just “Hah, Nazis!” or “Ugh, Nazis” is not, in my opinion, meeting the film on its level.
But we can all agree that Yorki is the best.
- The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Synopsis: Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) is a video game developer best known for the Matrix franchise. 20 years after the last Matrix game he’s been forced to make another. Also his psychoanalyst (Neil Patrick Harris) keeps prescribing him these blue pills…
Honestly, I don’t understand the people saying this was a terrible movie, or a cynical cash grab, or Space Jam 2 but Matrix or whatever. Is it a nostalgia trip? Sure, but it’s aware of that, and not the fake Disney type of self-awareness. It sort of feels like the film saying, “Hey, I don’t know if I should be here either, but here we are, and I’ve got a story to tell, so let’s see how that goes.”
[EDIT: When I originally wrote this I wasn’t aware of the full context of the film, namely that the studio was going to make it whether a Wachowski was involved or not. Obviously that’s, you know, in the movie, so I pretty much inferred that, but I didn’t realize it was actually publicly and explicitly part of the metanarrative of the film. So I guess I should acknowledge that at some level this was, in fact, a cynical cash grab. But I think the fact that it manages not to feel like one is a point in its favor, and I think a movie commenting so clearly on the circumstances of its own creation to an audience who might (if they’re not me) be actually fully aware of those circumstances is interesting.]
And I think it went pretty well. I’ve never been a huge fan of Keanu Reeves’s acting, but I think he’s actually pretty good here. I don’t know if he’s acting better or if he just has more to work with—the Neo in this film is much more human than in previous films, and there’s more room for nuance and subtlety in the performance (his age is a big part of that as well, I think). Carrie-Anne Moss is…the same—I’ve honestly never been sure how I feel about her performance. Like, she’s good, but kinda only has one mode. Again, this might be a limitation imposed by the writing/directing, and it’s definitely less noticeable, at least in her first scene. And Jada Pinkett Smith rounds out the returning main cast and does a remarkably good job of fleshing out a character that I remember less as a person and more as collection of pixels with guns in Enter the Matrix (the best Matrix video game adaptation, don’t even try to defend Path of Neo to me).
And the new actors stepping into old roles, namely Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Morpheus and Jonathan Groff as Agent Smith, do a good job of maintaining something of the original without letting that limit their own choices. Abdul-Mateen has Fishburne’s same effortless cool but channels it differently, and Groff replaces Weaving’s imperiousness with tech-bro slick, while keeping the underlying menace (I especially appreciated how “Mr. Anderson” becomes “Tom”—same intention, just different diction). Oh, and I guess Priyanka Chopra Jonas as Sati falls into this category too, but I refuse to remember anything from the third Matrix movie and you can’t make me and also that character was a child so it doesn’t really count.
As for the new characters, Jessica Henwick’s Bugs (…as in Bunny) is sort of a combo Neo/Morpheus/Trinity/That one girl with the White Rabbit tattoo, mainly so that she can serve as our sub-sub-protagonist who…doesn’t really get an arc or anything so calling her any kind of protagonist is maybe an overstatement. She’s not bad. Fine even. Decent performance, and certainly has personality, but like I said, the character doesn’t really go anywhere. The rest of the characters are necessarily relegated to supporting roles with very little to set them apart from the Tanks, Switches, Apocs, and Mouses of yesteryear (although there is one key difference…), but because they fit into those roles so well they don’t feel extraneous, even if they kind of are.
Oh, and Neil Patrick Harris as The Analyst does exactly what you cast Neil Patrick Harris to do. Think Dr. Horrible without the humanity.
This is already way longer than I intended it to be so I won’t go too deep into the plot, other than to say that it is sort of to the original Matrix what Force Awakens is to New Hope—except it isn’t solely a retread (though there definitely is some of that, and not just in the parts that are literally a retread), and is absolutely unconcerned with trying to win over anyone who hasn’t seen the original films, and without getting into a broader debate about franchise films, I’ll say that in this case I found it refreshing.
All in all, I went into the film with fairly low expectations and it exceeded them. It told a satisfying story that kept me engaged from beginning to end. And, more than once, it made me smile, and these days, that’s not nothing.
p.s. if you’re watching at home I recommend turning subtitles on. Henwick tends to speak extremely quickly at low volume and with very little annunciation, and there’s another character in one scene with a very thick French accent who is almost entirely indecipherable.
p.p.s. The only time I really cringed was when Bugs says “What’s up doc?” and it’s not a joke? And even writing that I still can’t believe that’s a real line that exists in this movie. Everything else, the cafe called Simulatte, the cat called Deja-Vu, Neo saying “I still know Kung-Fu,” that I was fine with.
Actually though if you have a problem with Simulatte then you missed the point.
p.p.p.s. I actually like the (admittedly blatant) symbolism of Harris wearing blue, but it felt a little redundant for that to be introduced only to be immediately followed by literal blue pills.
p.p.p.p.s. Tiffany and her husband Chad. Just, so perfect.
p.p.p.p.p.s. Also, in a movie featuring blue pills in which an aging male character is unable to perform a physical feat he use to be able to do with ease, the complete lack of dick jokes is a goddamn miracle. If “what’s up doc?” was what we got instead then I’ll take it.
p.p.p.p.p.p.s. The whole machines living alongside humans in a seemingly equitable relationship thing—pretty cool. Probably could’ve been its own movie. Or maybe a series of shorts? Animated shorts? And you could call it, I don’t know, The Animated Matrix? Or something like that? (I will never stop shilling for The Animatrix, but also for real more of Io as like a spinoff TV show or something could actually be really cool.)
Certain of Eventual Failure 