BEST FILMS OF 2021, pt. 2
20. C’mon C’mon, dir. Mike Mills
A free-form rumination on the nature of relationships between children and adults that uniquely understands their capacity to be richly complex, intellectually stimulating, and emotionally challenging. Doesn’t talk down to kids, but rather meets them as equals.
19. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Hamaguchi flexes his sardonic wit and the manifold of tricks in his cinematic toolkit, offering a prickly triptych of delightfully twisty vignettes that are as titillating as they are poignant.
18. Passing, dir. Rebecca Hall
An exquisitely composed, taut adaptation that packs nuance and intent into every frame while leaving plenty of room for ambiguity. Breathes.
17. Titane, dir. Julia Ducournau
So the film about the serial killer who gets impregnated by a car, then goes on the run by impersonating a long-missing boy to his grieving father is actually about, as trite as it sounds, the transformative power of unconditional love? Okay, work.
16. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, dir. Radu Jude
Delightful as a farcical take down of the reactionary moralism that’s on the rise not just in Romania but everywhere, but is most remarkable as the first cinematic portrayal of the COVID-19 pandemic to capture how worldwide, our cultures have by and large failed to meet the challenge with compassion and selflessness, asking what’s the real moral failing, here? A sex tape?
15. State Funeral, dir. Sergei Loznitsa
An impeccably constructed collage of archival material that artfully observes the profound depth of the cult of personality in Stalin-era Russia, subtly underlining the dissonance between the adoring outpouring of national grief and the deadly realities of Stalin’s reign.
14. Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, dir. Tom Hurwitz & Rosalynde LeBlanc
Expertly conveys the myriad of reasons why Bill T. Jones’s indispensable D-Man in the Waters is so compelling, framing dance as an urgently political act with a unique capacity to convey fundamental truths. Deeply moving.
13. The Lost Daughter, dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal
A deeply felt, remarkably empathetic rumination on motherhood, which it casts as a kind of waking nightmare. Gyllenhaal expertly conjures an ever-present unease in this gorgeously garish, prickly debut.
12. Compartment No. 6, dir. Juho Kuosmanen
Fully embraces the tried and true narrative tropes of the romantic comedy with a disarming sincerity, somehow managing to make boilerplate plot points feel affecting and earned. Creates a dazzling juxtaposition between the hallmarks of the genre it chooses to embody and those it forcefully rejects by grafting those narrative conventions onto a garishly beautiful, impressionistic travelogue through the forbidding arctic tundra.
11. Petite Maman, dir. Céline Sciamma
Truly magical. Sciamma’s metaphysical rumination on motherhood and grief collapses time to imagine an inviolable spiritual connection between daughters and mothers and grandmothers and so on that transcends the laws of nature.
