Primal Stream: The Best Films of 2021

I love hierarchical foolishness. As far as making lists, I’ve been doing that for decades — since long before I was a published critic. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the only thing that tops ordinal list-making is thematic grouping in conjunction with traditional Casey Kasem-style countdown theory. So gear up, and be ready for the results of the Scene’s annual Jim Ridley Memorial Film Poll, which we’ll publish in a couple of weeks. There’s a lot of great art to see and experience. Also: My deadline required compiling this list of titles before Warner Bros. made The Matrix Resurrections available, so we’ll see how things shake out once that’s part of the equation. Anyone responsible for directing one of the films on this list deserves credit for doing so. Some entries, as you’ll see, contain multiple films (I will explain); some feature films that I have seen but will not be widely available until next year.

1. Beginning on Mubi and Blu-ray

Not a day goes by that this film doesn’t rear up in the back of my mind. Beginning is a work of pure transcendence that doesn’t play it safe at any moment. Director and co-writer Dea Kulumbegashvili made her feature debut with this instant classic, which is as wrenching and elegant a first effort as one could hope for from a film so deeply, deeply upsetting; I will watch anything Kulumbegashvili makes from this point forward.

2. Inside on Netflix

Inside is an overwhelming experience that lingers and mutates in the back of the brain as time passes. A combination state of the world and exorcism, this is somehow both Bo Burnham’s 1999 and his Rhythm Nation 1814. To call it the zenith of pandemic art seems like an arbitrary limitation — the fact that it’s canonically an Elm Street sequel helps expand its vast reach even further, beyond the realm of conventional reality.

3. Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker via video on demand and DVD; Playdurizm via video on demand and Blu-ray

The Wojnarowicz documentary is a crystallized shell of righteous queer rage that spares no one, even as it protects the delicate visions of a film like Playdurizm, a singular exorcism of Cronenbergian gay trauma that pulls no punches whatsoever and leaves the viewer struggling to wrestle its narrative into something able to be compartmentalized. The two complement one another beautifully, portraits of blood and bruises that the visual arts aim to encapsulate. Special points for Wojnarowicz’s meticulous takedown of how right-wing censorship regrouped and decided to let arts funding come under the control of the donor class.

4. Memoria, not available until 2022

How can something so soothing and subtle reach into your brain and shake you to your very DNA? A cosmic film in the sense of its mood and its message, Memoria is director Apichatpong Weerasethakul working on a whole other level than his previous work, incorporating those films and installations, building upon them, and achieving something magical and mysterious while at the same time changing the viewer into something new and different.

5. Benedetta via video on demand; Dear Evan Hansen via video on demand and Blu-ray

How far will gifted drama kids go when faced with a society that only loves you when you’re useful? When your words or voice or visions can calm the chaos and turn hurt into hope — why would you stop? Inspiration stokes many fires, all of them right behind you, nipping at your heels. Both of these films are remarkable cross-sections of society looking for something — anything — to believe in. This is absolutely the double feature of 2021. 

6. The Power of the Dog on Netflix

There are few things in the world better than a kinky Western.

7. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar on Hulu and Blu-ray

If it had featured nothing else but “Edgar’s Prayer” — a Ryan Tedder parody of immeasurably specific precision — Barb and Star would be one of the greatest films of the year. But there’s so very much more to this weird, wild ode to friendship, comfy clothes and the inherent power of women named Trish. Bring on the sequel.

8. Come True on Hulu and Blu-ray; Maanaadu not currently available

These two are as pleasurable as genre scripts got in 2021. Come True’s endeavor to map the structure of nightmares blazes whole new trails and plays deliriously fucked-up games with the subconscious, and Maanaadu completely deconstructs and then reenergizes time-loop cinema, innovating in ways that mainstream domestic cinema won’t even go near.

9. Parallel Mothers coming to theaters in January; The Scary of Sixty-First coming soon to theaters; Spencer via video on demand

Here we have a triptych of women’s lives under extreme circumstances; internal dramas exacerbated and constantly besieged by the malign grind of both history and patriarchal violence. Haunted lives, finding joy where possible because to do so is a subversive act. Drama at its highest, with impact immeasurable, and incredible feats of tonal balance.

10. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, not available until 2022

If ’60s Godard had made a COVID-era riff on Harper Valley PTA, but with hardcore sex and a sense of humor equally playful and scabrously furious.

Honorable mentions:

Annette, Candyman, Censor, Drive My Car, Dune, In and of Itself, In the Earth, In the Heights, Lux Aeterna, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To, The Night House, Plan B, El Planeta, Sator, Scenes From an Empty Church, Siberia, The Sparks Brothers, Titane, The Velvet Underground, The Vigil, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, Zola and the Lil Nas Xepisode of Maury.

Coming in 2022 and absolutely worth it:

After Blue (Paradis Sale); Black Medusa; Jane by Charlotte; Mom, I Befriended Ghosts; Saloum; She Watches From the Woods; We’re All Going to the World’s Fair; The Yellow Night; You Are Not My Mother

Outstanding performances:

Ben Affleck (The Last Duel/The Tender Bar); Nina Arianda (Being the Ricardos); Betsey Brown (The Scary of Sixty-First); Austin Chunn (Playdurizm); Jim Cummings (The Beta Test), Brenda Deiss (Red Rocket); Jamie Dornan (Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar); Mike Faist (West Side Story); Andrew Garfield (Spider-Man: No Way Home); Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza); Rebecca Hall (The Night House); Patti Harrison (Together Together); Ts Madison (Zola); Oliver Masucci (Enfant Terrible); Olga Merediz (In the Heights); Katia Pascariu (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn); Martha Plimpton (Mass); Charlotte Rampling (Benedetta/Dune); Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World); Kristen Stewart (Spencer); Ia Sukhitashvili (Beginning); Vanessa E. Williams (Candyman).

Outstanding restorations:

Arrebato; Le Cercle Rouge; Chess of the Wind; Eyes of Fire; Get Crazy; Goodbye Dragon Inn; Killer Party; Silent Madness 3D.

Films I really did not care for:

Death Rider in the House of Vampires; Lair; Malignant; Silent Night; Space Jam: A New Legacy; and that Matt Damon Crypto ad.

Outstanding physical-media products:

All the Haunts Be Ours (Severin Films); Celine and Julie Go Boating (The Criterion Collection); L.A. Plays Itself: The Films of Fred Halsted (Anus Films/Altered Innocence).