Top 10 Films of 2021...According to Tom Knoblauch

2021 may not have been the year we initially thought it was going to be, but these films can easily be considered highlights from the past year.

2021 may not have been the year we initially thought it was going to be, but these films can easily be considered highlights from the past year.

10. Don’t Look Up

Yeah, yeah. I know. The internet tells me that my options for Don’t Look Up are either that it is the best film of all time or the worst film of all time. Because I’m a boring NPR guy, I think the truth is somewhere in the middle? It’s an hour too long and the humor is wildly uneven, but Don’t Look Up does something worthwhile in a way that may be simplistic and blunt: it gives a new shared vocabulary of metaphors to talk to each other about the shit-show of a world we’re living in. That’s what it’s about, as far as I can tell, if we can go beyond the climate allegory, when Leonardo DiCaprio’s Network-like rant lays out the deeper societal issue beneath climate inaction, pandemic inaction, etc.: “If we can’t all agree at the bare minimum that a giant comet the size of Mt. Everest hurtling its way toward planet Earth is not a good thing, then what happened to us? I mean, my God, how do we even talk to each other? What have we done to ourselves? How do we fix it?” Much like Howard Beale, Adam McKay is mad as hell and right about how dire everything is even if there’s no obvious solution (certainly a Netflix movie isn’t going to save the world) as he’s screaming into the void while inviting you to join him. Don’t Look Up got a lot of people to scream into the void this year and maybe even a few of them to hear each other. That’s not nothing.

9. The Card Counter

Paul Schrader’s latest bares some similarity to the impotent rage of Don’t Look Up, though it chooses not to combine it with a Duck Soup-like tone. Although, quick aside, can you imagine a slapstick Paul Schrader movie? Who do we have to call to get that going? Instead, The Card Counter continues the general tone and style of First Reformed with a focus on a haunted nation that knows it doesn’t deserve redemption—but seeks it anyway. Oscar Isaac fits perfectly into the pantheon of great, brooding Schrader leading men with light in him, but who can’t escape allure of the dark. He’s fresh out of military prison for his role (duty?) in performing enhanced interrogation techniques at Abu Ghraib and wandering aimlessly until he sees a young kindred spirit and seeks to achieve a kind of surrogate peace through him. It turns out to be a common theme across much of the major films this year—how do the guilty seek peace? It’s an especially timely movie, coming out weeks after the US pulled its troops out of Afghanistan. The nation, though, unlike the protagonist here, didn’t struggle with questions of atonement or regret. We don’t really do that anymore.

8. The Green Knight

You’re thinking “Finally, a fun one with talking foxes and weird sex scenes.” And you’re basically right! This is a pretty fun and sometimes funny movie about a declining empire where the old men in power (Arthur and his knights) are frail, drunk, and uninterested in the world around them while the young men seeking power will forgo pretty much anything (ethical or practical) to get their approval. As with Don’t Look Up and The Card Counter, The Green Knight is about the hollow core at the center of a community’s mores. It draws from the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and utilizes it in a way that feels vital to today. The Green Knight is about the imagined life of honor, of aspiring to be revered like the drunk old men who can barely (or maybe now just won’t) lift a sword. It’s entertaining to watch David Lowery’s protagonist, an exceptional Dev Patel, perform an imitation of a sort of imagined set of rules, norms, and values that maybe existed somewhere in the past. Is he more corruptible than any of the knights before him? Is he just like them? Is the concept of a knight and his honor a fantasy much like the various creatures that populate this film? I don’t know the mythology well enough to have answers for much of how the film is engaging with the original work or subverting it, but there’s plenty to chew on here that doesn’t feel old at all.

7. Nightmare Alley

Okay, we’re back in the void again with this one, though what I find so alluring about Nightmare Alley is that it’s about the kind of bullshit artists who run the world and the precise moment when they go from [surprisingly] easily peddling their scam, to believing it. It’s the story of many of the movers and shakers in the world—afflicting those with political and cultural power alike. Guillermo del Toro, adapting the William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name with Kim Morgan, decides to go into fantasy territory when by engineering the entire plot as a prologue to the eventual downfall and brutal comeuppance of this exhaustingly familiar archetype. The whole thing seems to be an attempt at finding that kind of catharsis we can’t find when we look around us—where the grifters take the grift as far as possible and then fall far further than where they started—which can seem more unrealistic in 2022 than the magical creatures of Pan’s Labyrinth. More than that, it’s building toward one of the more interesting fantasy concepts of del Toro’s career: a moment of sober (though not particularly sober) recognition of what it means to be this kind of monster by the monster himself. If only.

6. Drive My Car

You’ll find that the rest of this list gets progressively lighter. Does that mean these are really the best ones or are they easier for me to handle? Easy isn’t always bad, I tell my pretentious self and sometimes can buy into. Easy, however, maybe isn’t the best word to describe this three hour long meditation on guilt, longing, and abdication. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, adapting the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami (and sometimes stealing elements from others), captured the tone of his source material while, much like Lee Chang-dong achieved with the Murakami-adapted masterpiece Burning, pulling more depth than the initial story’s ideas and themes offered and building a quiet, moving epic. It’s difficult to capture how life, in all its overwhelming and exhausting ways, pushes us to find comfort in whatever escape gives us momentary peace—whether that’s returning again and again to pieces of art or driving cars. Drive My Car ultimately portrays two lost people acknowledging each other and what they’ve learned about enduring life and then getting back on the road, maybe going forward. Maybe not.

5. C’mon C’mon

Mike Mills makes sweet, human films that are funny, well shot, and quietly devastating. C’mon C’mon is no exception. Joaquin Phoenix is at the top of his game here, pulling a wide range of emotions and energies into the lead role as a public radio host interviewing children around the country about their anxieties and hopes for the future before eventually also becoming a full-time babysitter for his precocious nephew. I’ve generally got no patience for the precocious child genre, but this one really worked for me—maybe because Phoenix spends most of the movie frustrated by the child in question. There’s something funny (though maybe too inside-radio) about an actor with the intensity of Joaquin Phoenix playing an Ira Glass-like character. The friendly, meek exterior of this familiar type comes to life in exciting ways when it starts to break and the Phoenix we know, from works like The Master or Joker, emerges in subtle ways. Mills mixes his screenplay with real interviews where kids try to process everything about their lives so far; it’s incredibly affecting (even if it’s somewhat derivative of a great episode from season one of Joe Pera Talks with You). Mills is patient, building to an appropriately small crescendo that has a big impact. Everything, especially thinking about the future is tough right now—maybe it always has been—but what can you do about it? The film’s answer is its title, at once intuitive and elusive. You just have to c’mon.

4. The Worst Person in the World

Split into 12 chapters (with an introduction and epilogue), it was perhaps inevitable that The Worst Person in the World would have some segments which are better than others, but, man, when this thing is on, it’s on. There is at least a half hour of truly breathtaking filmmaking in here—the kind of technical wizardry that makes the complicated look easy and obvious. The pace here is so breezy in general that, even when the tone grows increasingly heavy, it’s the kind of movie that it’s hard not to get swept away by. Comparisons to movies like Frances Ha and similar films about women facing a crisis of adulthoodare fair, but Joachim Trier employs a visual ambition and, in some chapters, visual metaphors that borrow more from magical realism than mumblecore in a way that is all its own by the time it reaches its emotional conclusion. This is a small movie that feels big at all times, which is one of the hardest magic tricks to pull off. Try not to fall in love with it.

3. Licorice Pizza

I appreciate that Paul Thomas Anderson, who Marc Maron often describes as a “dark wizard,” worked through a lot of his negative energy in the 2000s and early 2010s and has emerged in his most recent few movies as a more self-aware, gracious guy having fun. He made it through the void and found the light again—which in some ways is what his recent work is all about. Across Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread, and now Licorice Pizza, characters flirt with the important things: society, politics, art, status, etc. but in the end find more satisfying meaning through companionship. It’s a simple arc—and each film utilizing it more so than the last. Or at least it’s only as complicated as you want to make it. I generally like his dark movies, too, but there’s something refreshing about a serious filmmaker who doesn’t feel the need to make incredibly serious, important films all of the time. Licorice Pizza feels personal, passionate, and alive in all the ways you’d hope for (other than a few odd narrative choices that can be distracting). It’s messy, morally dubious, and one that requires some reflection to appreciate its aims. Certainly it’s a movie that should prompt discussion over its stance on some of its characterizations and exactly what to take away from its ending—though this isn’t necessarily new for a Paul Thomas Anderson film. Still too obsessive to be Altman but too in love with imperfection to be Kubrick, Licorice Pizza is a sweet, imperfect addition to a filmography increasingly disinterested in enigmatic hoops because all you need is love, man.

2. Shiva Baby

There are few things I love more than the simple tension of people stuck in a room together as all of their baggage spills out. Shiva Baby is a masterclass in how to squeeze as much tension, humor, and drama as possible out of 77 minutes and primarily a single location presented in real time. What Emily Seligman accomplishes here, that many people struggle with, is how to make something with a play-like premise feel inherently cinematic instead of stuffy or forced. Shiva Baby reminded of the tagline for The Royal Tenenbaums: “Family isn’t a word. It’s a sentence.” Rachel Sennott is perfect as someone too young to have real independence and too lost to be confident at an overwhelming shiva for someone she doesn’t know, where she is surrounded by extended family demanding answers about her future before things get even worse when she encounters both her ex-girlfriend and her current-sugar daddy (with his wife and child). What follows is a comedy of anxiety, claustrophobia, and sexual tension that fires on all cylinders with its close camerawork, horror-like score, and hilarious performances across the board. It’s a fantastic debut from Seligman, whose career I can’t wait to follow in the years to come.

1. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar

There was a point in my life where I thought a lot about the distinction between my favorite movies and the best movies. I still understand why people see the need to do this kind of delineation, but ultimately in a decade there will be beloved movies that will I return to again and again and well made movies that I will sort of remember. I’ve watched Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar twice this year so far, and I anticipate watching it a hell of a lot more in the future. It’s not the smartest or the most ambitious movie of 2021. It’s unabashedly—proudly—stupid in every way. But it’s a blast. Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo reunite in their first co-written script since Bridesmaids, also playing the titular roles as middle aged women with minimal ambition and simple lives in Soft Rock, Nebraska. Their decision to throw caution to the wind and take a trip to the luxurious Vista Del Mar coincides with a surprisingly high concept and silly revenge plot by a Dr. Evil-like villain (also played by Wiig), a scandalous love square between Wiig, Wiig, Mumolo, and 50 Shades of Grey’s Jamie Dornan, and the best musical number of the year (sorry Spielberg). There’s a shortage of truly absurd comedy that swings for the fences without feeling the need to become satire or drama or ironically cool. Barb and Star, much like its beloved culottes,is not cool at all, which, at least in the hellscape that was 2021, is plenty cool enough for me.