I can’t help but think that my movie list this year is a little boring.

With the exceptions of the films in the three and ten slots, you’ve probably been reading a lot about the movies on my list this year in other people’s year end round-ups. I like the idea that my lists contain at least a few things you’re not going to see on more prestigious outlets’ lists or a well-respected critic’s wrap-up. But alas, this is not that year, and most of my picks are safe ones.

So what does that say? If we want to be negative, we can say that means it was a weak year for movies, or that I’m boring. (The latter of which is definitely true.) But who said consensus was a bad thing? Sure, it makes for more boring content and I get insecure about my ability to have unique opinions. However, that’s a dumb thing to feel insecure about, and there’s something comforting in the notion that we can all agree on something. Anything. At all. I love every movie on this list, and I’m glad other people feel the same way.

Also, I watched fewer movies this year than any year in recent history. Part of it was that I spent a significant amount of time at home back on the east coast where all the available TVs are (by my standards) shit, and I’ve lost the desire to watch movies on my laptop. But part of it is… I don’t know. But I’m glad to say that the movies on this list got me back in a movie watching mood, and I feel a desire to go find stuff again and be adventurous. That and finally making a Letterboxd helped.

All that said, let’s get a technical thing out of the way.

Nomadland, Minari, and Judas and the Black Messiah were all made available to audiences in 2021. In my mind, that makes them 2021 movies, despite critics seeing them in 2020. To me, a release date is when something is made available to the wider public, not when it debuts at a festival or a private screening.

All three of these movies are certainly list worthy, particularly Nomadland and Minari. However, I decided not to include any of them because even though they were released this year, they feel of last year. Sure, that’s when critics and people who talk about movies on the internet were talking about them. But in a larger sense, the pandemic has rendered release dates (and time in general) meaningless, and I just associate them with 2020 more than I do 2021. Maybe I pay attention to year end list and Oscar shit too much. I don’t know. But the moment I’m done writing this paragraph, I’m going to go back to thinking they were 2020 movies.

So really, it’s the same point as ever. Lists are best when they’re just dumb fun and let’s not take any of this too seriously.

HEAVY SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Runner-Up: The Souvenir: Part II

Confession: I did not like The Souvenir nearly to the extent that a lot of people did.

There were moments and aspects of it that are hard to dismiss, and moreover, there is something about the atmosphere it creates. The dreary grey of the UK in the ‘80s and falling in love with a (seemingly) charming man. But I also found myself at a distance. Something about its sensibility didn’t really connect with me, and whatever subjective brain thing that’s supposed to happen when you love a movie just didn’t happen for reasons I probably can’t adequately explain.

Then it came time for Julie to make her film in Part II.

I’ve made several little shorts in my life, but the closest I ever came to Julie’s experience was my senior year of college when I made my thesis film. (Well, thesis adjacent. I didn’t technically have to make anything, but I wanted to! Art!) The process was, in a nutshell, chaos. I wrote the script the summer before my senior year started, and I had to do a ton of research while interning at a development company. Production provided endless challenges leading to a reduced shooting time and many many late nights. Rounding up actors, hoping they say “yes,” ordering food, beefing with school administrators, production, editing, meetings, blah blah blah, and all this while still being a college student with homework and papers to write.

There’s a moment where Julie starts to cry because everyone is yelling at her over her leadership of the project, and in that moment, this… I guess you have to call it a franchise, hit me like a freight train.

And it wasn’t just Part II sending me into stressful flashbacks of the actual making of my college film, but it was also how it reminded me of where my film came from. On a fundamental level, Part II might be the best portrayal of mining your life for art that I’ve ever seen. My college film was inspired by watching my friend constantly having to fight with the school’s student loan department. Julie’s film is inspired by a relationship she had with a heroin addict that we see play out in the first movie. The obvious difference, besides the subject matter, is that her story is a little more direct. I personally did not struggle with loans or the people responsible for giving them out, whereas Julie dated a heroin addict who ended up dying from an overdose after they broke up. However, despite my clear lack of perspective, it still felt personal to me. And, like in Part II, there was never a moment where I said, “Of course! I need to make a film about my friend!” It just did it because I felt compelled to do so, and as a result, the stress was worth it.

Really, the only reason Part II isn’t on the main body of the list is that it got bumped off by two late entries. In fact, Part II shares that distinction with A Hero. I struggled with which one of those should be here, but whereas A Hero is just another example of Asghar Farhadi being a genius (which we already knew), Part II made me doubt myself on my feelings about Part 1. Maybe I’ll like it more now.

10. Last Night In Soho

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog railing against nostalgia, and I’ll probably continue to do so as long as I keep paying for this domain. I could give you the usual uninspired rant about the saturation of IP and all that, the same one you’ve heard time and time again, and one you yourself have probably given at some point. But these days, it’s really more the toxic cultures surrounding such IP that gets to me. Star Wars fans and The Last Airbender fans and most video game fans. Living in their world is unrelenting torture.

Yet, maybe I haven’t focused enough attention on the people responsible for building the Church of Nostalgia in the first place. And I’m not just talking about Disney and the other studios who’ve created a business model that centers on the constant churning of IP, though they deserve it the most. I’m also talking about filmmakers like Tarantino, someone whose whole oeuvre is predicated on paying homage to the movies he grew up watching. Just because they’re not based on IP doesn’t mean he isn’t feeding into a worldview where art constantly has to harken back to the past. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Tarantino. But the barrier between the big IP version of nostalgia and the film fanboy version, I feel, is thinner than a lot of us probably want to admit.

And because it’s Tarantino, you can’t really talk about his contribution to nostalgia addiction without talking about his acolytes, including another beloved filmmaker of mine, Edgar Wright. Not only can you find constant references to older films and styles of filmmaking in his works, as well as a reverence for nerd culture in general, but it isn’t hard to go on the internet and find lists he’s made and interviews he’s given and all sorts of content in which he talks about older movies he loves. He is certainly an advocate for film. But you can’t run from the fact that he may be guilty of contributing to the problem.

That’s why it’s so important to me that Edgar Wright of all people made Last Night in Soho. A movie that acknowledges that yes, 1960s Soho was iconic and glamorous and produced incredible art, but the women were treated as less than human and the men were rapists. Maybe, just maybe, this period, and the people who occupied it, aren’t worthy of our admiration.

I realize that I should be talking up the merits of this movie, and indeed, there’s much to praise. But in 2019, Tarantino put out Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a movie where the fantasy of what Hollywood could be in the ‘70s literally murders the Manson family. (A movie that made my top ten that year, by the way. A decision I stand by.) Did the Hollywood men of the ‘70s deserve the win? Probably not. But then again, I’ll take them over the Manson family. Not that human misery needs to be further quantified.

In 2021, Paul Thomas Anderson put out Licorice Pizza, his own slightly less rosy, but still pretty rosy, look at ‘70s Los Angeles. It acknowledges the pitfalls of the time, but still loves its subject a little too much, to the extent that it even falls into some of those pitfalls itself. Or to put it a little more bluntly, it’s baffling to me that the backlash to the Asian wives stuff hasn’t torn film world apart.

Tarantino and Anderson grew up in and around 1970s Los Angeles, and their reverence for it shows. But so does their blind spots. Granted, Edgar Wright is a little more detached from late ‘60s Soho than Anderson and Tarantino are to LA. But the point still remains that he took a look at his country’s past, at a time that he should be worshipping by most of film fandom’s standards, and he didn’t let his reverence win.

It’s a bleak outlook to have, but one that gives me hope that there is. in fact, some semblance of self-awareness in the filmmaking community. That we can get better. I asked why there hasn’t been backlash to the Asian wife stuff in Licorice Pizza, but we all already know the answer. It’s because many in the film community, despite having values that align with my own, will contort themselves into knots defending every decision PTA makes. I won’t though, and despite however you may feel about a nerdy PTA vs. Edgar Wright debate, I doubt you’ll ever see a joke like that in an Edgar Wright movie. Frankly, I find that comforting.

Also, just to be clear, I also love PTA. Still though.

9. The Lost Daughter

At some point during quarantine, I read Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and I fell head over heels in love with it.

It’s a book about a WASP woman who inherited a ton of money from her dead parents years ago, and rather than deal with her issues, be it her increasing dissatisfaction with her life trajectory or the people in her life or the state of the world around her, she decides to con her idiot therapist into giving her dangerously powerful medication so she can sleep for a year. Though there are arguments to be made that My Year of Rest and Relaxation might be the definitive text about modern rich white women, I think there’s something relatable to the premise no matter who you are. After all, who wouldn’t want to have slept through 2020?

Not only did I fall in love with the book, but I basically fell in love with the entire genre of… what do we even call this genre? The “Defeated Woman Deciding Not To Care Anymore” genre? I guess? Whatever we end up calling it, 2021 was the year I went all in on it. Case in point: The Lost Daughter. (Also, this is not the last time this genre is represented on this list.)

The Lost Daughter, to put it simply, is a movie about a woman who suffers tremendous amounts of guilt over the fact that she hated being a mother, despite how much she loves her two daughters.

Of course, the notion that a woman doesn’t want to be a mother is shocking! Shocking I say! But sarcasm aside, no movie, with the exception of The Babadook, has made parenthood look so unappealing. We see glimpses of her past as a young mother, and it’s not pretty. Her two daughters are constantly screaming. Constantly causing chaos and never giving lead character Leda any time to breathe. Boundaries are routinely ignored, and it never stops. So she runs away for three years. Everything turned out fine in the end, but there’s always doubts. What damage has she caused herself? What damage has she caused her children? Clearly, she was unhappy. But did she make the right choice?

Leda seems to have found some sort of peace. In the present, she’s on a vacation in a Greek island, and on the surface, she seems to have some degree of confidence and a worldview. The obnoxious Italian American family asks her to move so they can have her umbrella. She says no. The kids at a local theater won’t shut up. She threatens to cut their dicks off. She’s a fun character, a good conversationalist, and she’s somewhat of a joy to hang out with.

Then she sees the struggle in another young mother’s face. Another daughter, constantly screaming. Constantly crying. The source of the young daughter’s misery is something Leda herself did, and once she connects that dot, it all starts comes crumbling down. All those quirks we thought were endearing and funny early on? Maybe they weren’t.

It’s a movie about why being a mother sucks. What’s not to love?

8. The Power of the Dog

I have never seen a Jane Campion movie before. Every minute of The Power of the Dog has put into sharp relief how badly I have fucked up.

7. Drive My Car

I read Uncle Vanya senior year of college. Or really, it would be more accurate to say that my eyes glazed over the words in a copy of Uncle Vanya while my brain failed to retain any of what was happening on the page. This was in the middle of making that short film I talked about during The Souvenir: Part II, and at that point, my brain had been reduced to battered sleep deprived mush. That isn’t to say that I retained none of it. I got the gist. A family unravels while handling an estate and so on and so forth. But I didn’t feel it, or really understand why anyone would.

There are, of course, parallels to be made between Uncle Vanya and Drive My Car. The latter, after all, is about an international multilingual production of the former, and the natural impulse is to try to link the two. A relevant theme here and a similar story beat there. But as I watched Drive My Car (at 4:30 PM in the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles on Dec. 6, 2021) I didn’t think about Uncle Vanya all that much. I thought about the circumstances I read it under.

I don’t remember the exact name of the class. The History of Modern Theatre or something like that. I signed up because it was something script adjacent and I was fond of the professor who taught it. We read Chekhov, Brecht, Ibsen, and (shutters) Strindberg, plus all the stuff you’re generally supposed to read when you sign up for a class called The History of Modern Theatre. (Or whatever it actually was.) This class is why I read Uncle Vanya, and it was a class mostly made up of theatre kids.

Too much energy, especially for the morning. Sensitive. Talkative. It should go without saying that I’m not talking about all the kids in my class, and just about everyone in that class, as far as I could tell, was a kind and likable person. But there was just enough capital “T” Theatre in the room that I couldn’t help but wonder what it’s like for kids like this to read something like Chekhov or Ibsen. Do they think about performing it? And if so, how do you take the volatile energy of a theatre kid and temper it down to put on some of the most sorrowful works ever written? I see one kind of energy and I see another, and nary, in my mind, shall the two meet.

Drive My Car, on the other hand, makes the connection between one kind of energy to the other seem fairly obvious. You’re attracted to the arts and acting on the stage because there’s a raw nerve somewhere, and even in the most subdued plays, that emotionality can be channeled somewhere.

The theatre aspects of Drive My Car are only a tiny aspect of it, and to be perfectly honest, they’re not the parts that actually resonated with me. But this is a movie about connection, and the unexpected places you can find it. About communication and dialogue, and “where it goes,” figuratively speaking. How a seemingly jock-ish actor can relate to the part of an old man. How a disillusioned director can connect with his driver. How we talk to one another.

Then again, you already knew that because either you’ve seen Drive My Car or you saw this on every other list. Pretend I connected the dot between consensus and connection. It’s late and I’m tired.

6. Spencer

Spencer: The second Defeated Woman Deciding Not To Care Anymore movie on this list. Indeed, I have described this movie to multiple people as “What if Ottessa Moshfegh wrote a movie about Princess Diana?” I don’t know how true that actually is, but if you understand the vibe I was going for, it makes a certain amount of sense.

Now, there are lots of people and groups I get an unnatural and probably unhealthy amount of joy from shitting on. Politicians. Toxic fandoms. Certain people in the filmmaking community. The list goes on. After Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s split with the royal family, and everything we’ve learned about the royals in the ensuing fallout, I think I can safely add the English royal family to that list, as well as the culture around it. And you can also throw in the British press as well.

Now, I never approved of the existence of the royal family. Monarchy, bad. Everything that monarchy represents, bad. Everything that monarchy is from, bad. But it was always just a thing to tolerate. But then Markle entered the picture, and the royals showed their whole ass just about immediately. 2017 seems like ancient history now, but I remember an incident in which Princess Michael of Kent wore a racist brooch to an event Markle was attending and I thought to myself, “This is what these people have always been, huh?” Flash-forward to 2022. Recent history has only revealed more horrors.

This is why I was so delighted to see Spencer, a movie that agrees with me.

It’s a movie that realizes the horrors of the royals. One where Diana acknowledges that she’s the difficult woman in a family famous for handling such people with detestable violence and ruin. It’s a movie that makes the day-to-day life of a royal look like hell. True, you’re rich and protected beyond your wildest dreams. But every day follows a routine, every decision feels like it’s being made for you (because it most likely is), and everything you do is scrutinized and fussed over. Paranoia abounds, and even if somehow you didn’t know that Diana would die prematurely, this movie does such a good job making her death feel like an inevitability that you don’t really need to. It’s a movie that takes every and any angle or perspective in which the royals themselves or living like a royal can look terrible and makes it look as terrible as possible.

And yet, there’s a part of me that can’t help but find Spencer funny. Much of the story consists of everyone in the castle being frustrated over her behavior. Every time she refuses to come down for dinner or go to a reception or an event or wants to do something strange, it means a lot of grumpy British faces, pointed stares, and consequences. The filmmaking makes the frustration coming from everyone in the house so tangible that you can’t help but wonder if the best thing for her and her children is to just play along, if only for a few hours. It would ease a lot of tension and make things run smoother. But then again, she’s right to hate the family who treats her like filth, particularly her husband, and it’s easy to be on her side in just about everything that happens. All she has to do is go downstairs and she can’t even do that. It pisses everyone off. It’s great.

When the Markle stuff was happening, I couldn’t help but hope that it would lead to a ton of anti-royal media. That maybe we’d get more works about how detestable these people are, as well as what they represent. Spencer is a sad movie. But when I saw it, I couldn’t help but smile. I got my wish.

5. The Worst Person in the World

I turned 30 this year.

I’ve been waiting to have some sort of crisis about it. That some part of my brain will come alive and remind me that all my cells are dying and I better start actually accomplishing things, or at least I better stop eating like I’m a teenager or whatever. But it hasn’t happened. As a matter of fact, it’s been rather pleasant. There’s so much shit that I don’t have to pretend that I care about anymore, and now that the fear of turning 30 is gone, I no longer have to be afraid of it. If that makes any sense.

I bring it up because if I had to write an obnoxious college paper (or equally obnoxious blog post!) on what The Worst Person in the World is “about,” I would tell you that it’s a movie about turning 30. Or to be more specific, it’s about living an existence that allows you to do whatever you want because, to put it simply, you still can, despite the fact that you’re getting “older.”

Julie is young, single, doesn’t have any kids, and has always valued her freedom. The movie begins with a montage of Julie switching her focus in college from medicine to psychiatry to photography. To someone who values having a dedicated life trajectory and a goal, this may seem like insanity. But the stakes for Julie are low. She can follow her passions because she can, and what makes Julie “the worst person in the world” is that this philosophy also applies to her romantic partners.

Her main relationship throughout the movie is with Aksel, a famous comic book artist who’s fifteen years older than her. Aksel is accomplished and knows what he wants, and he’s no longer at a point in his life where he can take things as they come and make impulsive decisions like Julie can. (Or at least that’s how he sees it.) Julie eventually falls out of love with Aksel, and she leaves him for another man, Eivind. This was a dedicated multi-year relationship, and what was supposed to be the beginning of the endgame for Aksel. But the world is still at Julie’s feet. For Aksel, not so much.

All of this may seem bleak, and in many ways, it is, particularly in the back half of the movie where things get way more existential. However, the reason this movie is on the list is because of how propulsive and alive it feels. Julie’s need to be able to do whatever she wants may cause some sadness and may seem irresponsible to those who live their lives more squarely. But it’s also her need for freedom that makes the movie feel alive. Adventure is always at hand. Love is always around the corner. There’s experiences to be had.

Fairly early on in the movie, Julie prematurely leaves a reception thrown in Aksel’s honor. On her way home, she walks by a party, and she impulsively decides to crash it. There’s conversation and music and dancing, and the whole thing feels incredibly romantic. This is where she meets Eivind. In another film or in the hands of another director, this whole sequence may feel cheap or forced. But in this movie, with Joachim Trier at the helm, it reminded me of the first time I saw Before Sunrise, or something of that ilk. A little movie that just feels so alive, and it’s just a joy to watch.

To be honest, there’s gripes I have with the last third. Some of my gripes are valid, but to be honest, I couldn’t help but be resentful that the energy of the first half of the movie is intentionally snuffed out to make a (valid) emotional point. It’s an energy that reminded me of how I felt in my late teens and early 20s falling in love with independent movies, particularly the romantic hangout ones. It made me realize that maybe, just maybe, that feeling can be replicated in my early 30s but with a new sensibility. It probably can’t be. But at the very least, The Worst Person in the World made me want to go watch a billion movies and find out.

4. Dune

I have never read Dune. As a matter of fact, I have not read any of the (reportedly) great works of epic science fiction, nor have I really engaged with a lot of the foundational sci-fi authors. No Herbert, no Heinlein, no Clarke or Dick or Bradbury or any of those books I really should’ve read by now. (I do have some Asimov and a few others though, so I’m not completely useless.)

I was, however, a Hitchhiker’s kid.

Specifically, I had all five books not only in a single (and, as I understand, hard to find) anthology collection, but I also had the audiobooks of all five read by Douglas Adams himself. I was introduced to them via my father, and as a kid, I thought they were the funniest books ever. At the time, I didn’t really understand why I thought they were funny or what the jokes were. Of course, there’s the surface level humor of “Haha, the alien is torturing them with bad poetry” and other exceedingly British scenes like that. But I didn’t understand how much of it was designed to mock the conventions of sci-fi in the first place.

Dune is a story that shares a lineage with a long line of Chosen One narratives, and the fundamental joke of the Hitchhiker’s series is that nothing you do matters and you’re not important. In hindsight, it was my introduction to dark comedy, and it shaped a lot of my sense of humor and who I am today. If I did read Dune, or if I tried to do so now, I don’t really know if it would resonate.

Still, despite having no reverence for the books, I wanted to be consumed by Dune the movie. (For the record, I did see the Lynch version, but it was so long ago that I barely remember anything about it, so I just say I never saw it.) I knew it was a grand science fiction story, and Denis Villeneuve talked a whole gang of shit about how you shouldn’t watch it on a streaming service. I wanted to see if he was right. (Not that I had any reason to doubt him, what with Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.) So I did an obscene amount of research into where I should see it, scouring Reddit and other sites trying to find out which IMAX screen in Los Angeles is the biggest. The answer to that question turned out to be rather complicated and not interesting, but suffice to say that I saw it at the Chinese Theatre. I sat in the middle of an upper row, I had an unobstructed view of the screen, and the speakers were so loud that my pants vibrated. It was glorious.

It’s easy to rag on directors who are almost militant in their desire to get people to see their movies in theaters. Personally, I think the theater experiences these directors seem to have in mind when they rail against streaming are bizarrely utopian and rare. I also couldn’t help but find these hissy fits to be in rather poor taste given that most indie directors have no say in how their movies are released. And maybe don’t insist on making people go see a movie in a theater during a dangerous pandemic. (Fucking Nolan.) However, I also think they’re right. Some movies convey their message and their meaning with their scope, particularly when it comes to grand epics. 2001 was one of my least favorite Kubrick films as a high schooler. Years later, I saw it in a theater and had my mind blown out my asshole. I had a similar experience with Dune.

Again, I did not have that childhood epic science fiction experience, or at least not in literary form. But with Villeneuve’s Dune, I felt like I got my first taste. I might need to pick up that book.

3. Test Pattern

Renesha and Evan might be my favorite movie couple I’ve seen in quite some time.

It begins with a meet cute, but it’s probably the most realistic depiction of a meet cute I’ve ever seen in a movie. It’s awkward, but not forced. Cute, but not cloying. There’s a number exchange, but Evan fucks up and waits too long to call. At first. We can debate whether or not movie meet cutes really happen, but if they did, it would probably look like this.

Evan is a tattoo artist and Renesha works a corporate job. Were Test Pattern a romantic comedy, this may have caused some friction between the two. The rebel artist vs. the content office worker. But the two have respect one another, and despite what either of them chooses to do, they just want what’s best for each other. They communicate well, they’re happy around each other, and although you can see the potential holes in their relationship, all of them seem surmountable for the two.

Renesha and Evan have a real sense of chemistry, that elusive element any movie about romance is required to have. Because of this chemistry, Test Pattern is one of the most maddening movies you’ll ever see.

Renesha goes out with her friend Amber and they meet two other guys at the bar. Amber and the two men pressure her into taking edibles and drinking, and later, Renesha wakes up in a hotel room with one of them. The guy drops her off at Amber’s, where Evan is waiting, and so begins their doomed quest to get a rape kit administered. They go to hospitals that lack nurses qualified to perform the procedure, they run into insurance hick-ups and incompetency, as well as administrative red tape and bureaucratic cesspools. Whether it’s the medical infrastructure or state run systems, if there’s an apparatus that can fail Renesha and Evan, it fails them. Test Pattern takes place in Texas, so some may be quick to roll their eyes at yet more Texan injustice. But this is also America. You can imagine this nightmare taking place anywhere.

Throughout their ordeal, neither can say what they want to. Renesha gets resentful at Evan’s insistence on getting the kit, understandably just wanting to get the whole ordeal behind her and move on. Evan understands the pain he’s causing Renesha, but knows it’s the right thing to do, and insists upon it anyway. Renesha’s mad at him for making her think about what’s happened to her. Evan’s mad at her for going out with Amber, although he knows he’s not right to feel that way and knows better than to say so. Rarely are any of these points made out loud, but Will Brill and Brittany S. Hall’s performances, as well as Shatara Michelle Ford’s writing and directing, convey so much that they don’t need to be.

Test Pattern is a truly heartbreaking experience, and it will infuriate you to no end. But it’s an experience worth having. At the very least, Shatara Michelle Ford will be on your radar from here on in. She’s certainly on mine.

2. The Green Knight

I first read Sir Gawain and The Green Knight in my 9th grade English class. (I don’t remember what translation or print.) There may have been a universe in which I enjoyed the story, but it wasn’t this one, and it wasn’t the book or the story’s fault. It was that for this book and this book only, everyone had to write a thought or a reaction every five lines. This took what could’ve been a very quick read and stretched it out into what felt like a billion years, particularly in distracted-teen-boy time, and is probably the worst possible way to teach that book.

I then proceeded to not think about Sir Gawain and The Green Knight until I read David Lowery’s script, just called The Green Knight, a few years ago. Two thoughts ran through my mind as I read it.

The first thought was that because of the exceedingly dumb way I had to read the original story, I couldn’t appreciate how much it could resonate. I walked away from the script thinking it was a meditation on the millennial experience. It is, after all, a story about a young man who takes on a challenge he thinks he’s equipped to handle, and then realizes that he never stood a chance and actively chooses death. However, there’s no reason to believe that isn’t an experience every generation can relate to in one way or another. You’re expected to live in a world where King Arthur literally exists. What’s the point in even trying to pretend like you can stack up?

The other thought was a much simpler one, “There’s no fucking way this is ever getting made.” Or if it were to get made, it would be wimped down, as any studio would be foolish to take it on in its current form. Not only would it be massively expensive, but it’s so strange in its execution and tone that it’s easy to imagine it pissing a lot of people off. Cinemascores is not an institution anyone should pay any attention to, but I was curious as to what The Green Knight was going to get. It ended up receiving a C+. Honestly, I thought it was going to be a whole lot lower.

Yet, somehow, it came out, and I eagerly saw it in a theater. I had seen the trailers, and they sure did look and feel like that script. Maybe, just maybe, they didn’t water it down. I left thrilled that the experience of reading that script remained 100% intact, even though I can’t speak to whether or not it kept every detail. It feels like it did though, and it’s so rare to get exactly what you wanted.

Thank god for A24, I guess.

1. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

The first movie I saw back in theaters was In the Heights. Not a perfect movie by any means, and truth be told, I had this fantasy that my first movie back would be F9. But the family wanted In the Heights, and I had such a good time being back in a theater that I didn’t really care that I didn’t particularly like it.

My second movie back was Summer of Soul, and I am now in the process of actively lying to myself in order to trick my brain into thinking that Summer of Soul was first. Or at least lying to other people who ask. If you run into me in the street, Summer of Soul was the first movie I saw in a theater after quarantine. Also, at some point, I saw In the Heights.

Summer of Soul is my favorite movie of 2021, and I knew that well before it was over. It wasn’t even really that much of a surprise to me either, as this documentary is most of my interests in one movie. Were Summer of Soul about rappers, this might’ve been my favorite movie of all time. But Nina Simone is my favorite singer of all time, so I’ll take it. Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, and Sly are no slouches either, to say the absolute least.

I could go on about this movie forever, but the thing about Summer of Soul is that it’s the best possible advocate for not just itself, but the artists it features. It is, explicitly, a celebration of these artists, as well as a pretty decent explainer as to why each of them is great. Thus writing about it in the context of a top ten list feels redundant.

Or to put it another way, you don’t need me to tell you that Nina Simone is one of the greatest singers of all time or that this concert deserved to be bigger than Woodstock. All you have to do is go watch the movie. Now.

Honorable Mentions

Bo Burnham: Inside
Boiling Point
C’mon C’mon
Encanto
Flee
F9: The Fast Saga
Godzilla vs. Kong
A Hero
Jagged
The Last Duel
The Matrix Resurrections
The Mitchells vs the Machines
No Sudden Move
Parallel Mothers
Pig
Procession
Shiva Baby
Titane
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Untold: Crime & Penalties
Untold: Deal with the Devil
Untold: Malice at the Palace
West Side Story
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage

Will Watch Some Day

Azor
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Bergman Island
The Card Counter
Mass
Memoria
Nightmare Alley
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
I’m sure there’s more.