2021 in Film Part 1

 Its hard to believe that we are here again, the end of another movie year and one where the pandemic has again cast a long shadow over it though hopefully 2022 will be the year where that does not happen but I won’t hold my breath.

 

But what to make of 2021 as a movie year well in the beginning of the year it started to finally feel like a proper movie year again in that I was going to my usual roster of 4 to 7 movies a month and I thought to myself “I have a proper movie year again” and things had finally started to turn the corner.

 

But then the winter came and with it came another long lockdown and between August and November there was little to nothing and many of the big blockbusters like No Time to Die, Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Dune suffered one last undignified delay in Australia in terms of their release dates.

 

But this year did do one thing that I like to think is the theme of this year for me and that is it brought back what it really feels like to sit in a cinema and watch a new release movie, I have talked about the feeling of going to the cinema being this symbiotic combination of my Church and my Therapy and that has never felt more truer for me than this year especially in this last couple of months as the big films finally got local release dates.

 

But not everyone has felt the same way and as the year comes to an end it has become very very clear that there is only one group going back to the cinemas in big numbers and that is mainly younger men in their 20s to early 40s and that has become apparent in the top grossing films of the year like Spider-Man No Way Home, Venom, Fast and Furious 9 and Shang Chi easily being the top 4 films at the American Box Office while Spider-Man, No Time to Die and F9 have dominated worldwide.

 

And that is going to become I think a problem as we go into 2022 as one group dominating to such an extent is going to see other audiences like women, people of colour and older audiences who have by and large been more reluctant to return to cinemas not get as big a slice of the movie going pie and if I have one wish to make to the Eternal Dragon in terms of movie going it would be that 2022 sees these audiences begin to feel confident in returning to cinemas.

 

But audiences are one factor, another factor that has been on my mind as I reflect on 2021 in film is the role of the studios and this year saw a major shakeup in the Australian movie distribution market for after nearly 5 decades, Warner Brothers saw their films no longer being distributed by their traditional parent company Roadshow and instead make a new home at Universal already a mighty studio in its own right and that change of ownership I feel has been a mistake in hindsight as it has led to from what I have heard Uni charging a lot more money for the WB films as compared to Roadshow.

 

And the more I think on that the more it feels like a studio getting greedy at a time when their partners and allies in the cinema industry are dealing with shifting tides in terms of their audience attendance numbers and it makes me think “Come on guys this is not cool” now the other major studio distributors such as StudioCanal, Roadshow, Paramount, Disney and Columbia/Tristar might well be playing ball but its something that’s been on my mind as the year wraps up.

 

But that is Part 1 next time Part 2 where I reveal my Turkeys of the year and my favorite films of 2021.

Film Review - West Side Story (2021)

 West Side Story is a remake of the 1961 musical and this time Steven Spielberg is in the directors chair and this new version stars Ansel Elgort as Tony the former leader of the group called the Jets in 1950s New York who falls for a Puerto Rican girl named Maria (Rachel Zegler) which causes great tension between the Jets and a Puerto Rican group named the Sharks and when you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way from your first cigarette.

 

West Side Story is one of those movies that you just sit there watching in a cinema (and if you can do so I beg and urge you to watch this in a cinema on the big screen with a great sound system) and you think to yourself “There are movies and movie makers and then there is Mr Steven Spielberg” I mean this man is 75 years old and the direction in this movie feels as fresh and as vibrant and energetic as the direction of a man in the prime of his life, it is just amazing to watch a master of his craft like Spielberg just go to town.

 

I mean the staging of the musical numbers, the way that they and the film as a whole is edited by Michael Khan and Sarah Broshar, the cinematography by Januz Kaminski their just beautiful to watch unfold in front of you, the musical numbers burst with life and energy and have you captivated in your cinema seat and often I thought of another great movie musical 1978’s Grease in fact Mike Faist and his gang could’ve easily broken out into a rendition of Greased Lightning and I wouldn’t have complained not one iota.

 

Some of my favorite numbers were the first Jet song, America by Adriana DeBrose and the quartet version of Tonight and all of those numbers along with some of the wordless dance sequences were just amazing to watch and thankfully this movie is not edited to within an inch of the frame and you actually get to enjoy the dancing on screen and speaking of DeBrose and Faist they deserve serious awards recognition for their work they are that good in this movie and I sincerely hope I see more of them in the movies after this.

 

One last scene I want to highlight is the school dance scene where Tony first sees Maria and it is a great credit to Spielberg’s direction and framing and staging that it has that feeling of when you see that special someone or think of them and it feels like the whole room falls away and they captivate your thinking.

 

Now our two leads and here it’s a little bit of a mixed bag I’m sorry to say, Elgort is fine in this role and he proves himself well in the singing and dancing department but he looks a little too clean cut to be in this role and part of me kept wishing that someone like Tom Holland had played this role instead or more of a young John Travolta type someone that looks more like what the character of Tony is said to have done in his life.

 

Zegler meanwhile is a born star, she is very young but she holds her own very well and has a great singing voice and her chemistry with Elgort is pretty good and works just fine enough to carry that part of the film even if a lot of the time they feel overshadowed by Faist and DeBrose.

 

And so that was West Side Story which is a dynamic energetic musical by one of the great directors of all time and it has to be seen on the big screen but if your not comfortable in going back to theatres that’s okay I understand, 4 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Spiderman: No Way Home (2021)

 Spiderman No Way Home is the newest Marvel Studios film and the third solo Spiderman film in the MCU to star Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spiderman and this movie sees him deal with the fallout of the ending of the last film Far From Home where his identity was revealed to the entire world and its having a bad effect on those around him so he seeks the help of Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) to help undo it but in doing that Peter and Strange may have opened a door to the Multiverse which is something they know very very little about.

 

No Way Home is perfectly fine as a movie even though I had some initial mixed feelings about it when I walked out of my fairly packed cinema and I do think there is the bones of a really good movie here but those moments for me were mainly in the first half of the film where Peter has to deal with the real world consequences of being outed as Spiderman in front of the whole world and the at times futile fight to clear his name.

 

And Tom Holland not just in the whole film but particularly in these scenes really shows how great he is in this role and the more I think about the movie the more I wish it had stuck to this tone and followed this specific storyline all the way through.

 

For all of the Multiverse stuff is the first of 2 big problems I have with this movie, so much of these Multiverse moments just to me felt like fanservice and not done in a way that I found all that thrilling for all but a few moments, don’t get me wrong those moments do work for well a moment but outside of that sugar hit I just sat there at times thinking “Is That It?”

 

And another big problem I have is the humour in this movie, now I was not a fan of the last MCU film the Eternals but one thing I did praise it for doing was not feeling the need to shove a one liner or clever wisecrack down my throat every 2 to 5 minutes but here there are a lot of one liners and I just got so fucking sick of them.

 

As for the action sequences well their okay but I preferred the one on one fights as opposed to the climax, the best fight scene is the one with Peter and Doc Ock on the Bridge as has been teased in the previews for the film.

 

And that was Spider-Man No Way Home and there’s a good movie in here but it got too bogged down in the Multiverse for my liking but there is still some good fun to be had here, 3 out of 5.