So here we are again, to write our lists and check them twice and lets
not waste anymore time writing intros its time first to cook the Turkeys of the
year and number 5 oh dear how the mighty fell and fell hard.
Eternals: Now this movie on paper sounded pretty good, a rising star director
in Chloe Zhao, the MCU looking to expand its cosmic horizons post Thanos and
the Infinity Stones/Saga and a talented cast of actors.
And all of that resulted in the one film that bored me senseless out of all
the movies released this year, Zhao seemed to have no idea how to wrangle
either her large ensemble cast of actors or the grand ambitious story she was
wanting to tell and while she thankfully dialled down the humour what she gave
us instead was ponderous and up itself.
How up itself was it, very up itself for as great as this cast is their
stuck reciting this dialogue as if it’s the grand text that will deliver
salvation to humanity and CINEMA! To any and all of the Marvel critics who
decry that these movies aren’t really movies in the traditional sense but
nothing more than junk, a glorified theme park ride or television series which
personally I think is crap.
As was this movie as not only were the actors wasted with that awful dialogue
the storytelling as a whole made very little sense in that I just sat there
thinking “Wait, What, What the Fuck” too many times to enhance my enjoyment of
the film instead it just detracted from it more and more as the film went on,
the Celestials a major part of the Marvel Comics universe were wasted here
reduced to just a handful of scenes and a terrible montage monologue and the
heroes themselves a lynchpin of the success of this very franchise were boring.
And that is the worst thing about this entire film above those other
flaws, I didn’t care about these characters, these heroes, their action scenes
or their internal struggles as immortal beings living thousands of years of
life as human history unfolds around them perhaps Ms Zhao should’ve handled a
Marvel film with one lead hero instead of 10 or a DC film instead of doing this
as it was an absolute bore to sit through and I have no desire to ever see
these characters again.
4. Halloween Kills: Now 2018’s reboot of John Carpenter’s classic 1978
horror film Halloween was pretty good, it did away with the continuity of the
sequels that came after that original film and started on its own course giving
us the return of Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode and introducing her daughter
and granddaughter plus the return of Michael Myers the Shape himself.
Well forget seeing the Strode women in this movie all they serve to do
is be glorified cameos and have little to no impact on the story of this movie
instead this movie is about Kyle Reese-sorry-Anthony Michael Hall’s character
who was said to have survived the events of the original film but he just talks
more and more like Kyle Reese from the first Terminator film as he seeks to
whip up a Mob and chant “Evil Dies Tonight” over and over and over again.
And as a result of this split focus of lead characters the movie as a
whole suffers as it has too little focus on who you’ve come to actually watch
lead this fucking thing and instead your stuck with the Kyle Reese knockoff
going on and on and on about “Evil Dies Tonight” and how that Michael Myers is
out there,
He can’t be bargained with,
He can’t be reasoned with,
He doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear,
And he absolutely will not stop,
EVER!
Until you are dead…
As for the horror moments well all they are is just that, empty horror kills
that land with a complete thud that are not scary or done with any kind of
energetic direction or editing and when the opening of the latest James Bond
film has better Horror moments in its opening than a Horror film like this one
you know something has gone terribly terribly wrong.
3. Monster Hunter: Now I didn’t really ask for much movie wise this
year, I was mainly interested in walking into my Holy Church of the Cinema and
escaping into some fun escapist Action/Adventure/Science Fiction films where I
could forget all about that damn Covid and the havoc its wrought around the globe.
Well to quote Paul Anka from the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror special
regarding the giant Advertising billboards Just Don’t Look, Just Don’t Look as this
movie is horrible to sit through even with the low expectations I had for it.
Firstly its editing is horrible there are so many whip pans and quick
cuts that it makes your head bloody spin and it makes the action scenes hard to
watch and to develop any interest in them, it also doesn’t help that the
performances in this film are so fucking boring with Milla Jovovich continuing
to squander what goodwill she has from the Fifth Element nearly 25 years ago.
And also the monster battles in this movie are so dull, there’s no life
or sense of wonder or even any sense of “Wow this pretty cool” like say in
Pacific Rim by Guillermo Del Toro instead just dull noise in a dull as all hell
movie.
But now we come to the bottom 2 Turkeys of 2021 and these 2 deserve special
roasting in the oven to go with the Roast Potatoes, Carrots, Peas and Corn.
2. The Little Things: Now this movie has 3 Academy Award winning actors to
play with, serial killers and the hunt for them can be very compelling and who
doesn’t love Denzel Washington I mean seriously.
Well sadly even his endless bounty of charm and charisma couldn’t save
this Turkey from being terrible and its not from a lack of trying and once
again our old friend lack of focus is back with Denzel’s detective character having
to compete with another detective character played by Rami Malek and he just
cannot compete with Denzel (very few can in his defense.)
For every time he’s on screen I just sat there wanting Denzel to come
back and for him to piss off and be written out of this film and another problem
this movie has is the lack of any suspense, gruesome kills or a compelling
mystery and after great mystery films like Knives Out and the Dry recently this
is not good enough.
And then there’s Jared Leto yes when he’s not playing Joe Dolce-sorry-one
of the Gucci family in House of Gucci he’s back to doing that same soft spoken
voice he’s done so many times to try and instill terror and it just sounds
laughable though not like he’s Bird strangling Joker laugh from Zack Snyder’s
Justice League but instead the “This is stupid” kind of laughing and someone should
also tell him to get a bloody haircut as well.
But now we come to the Number 1 Turkey of 2021 and it is:
The Many Saints of Newark: Now part of me was looking forward to this,
it had Michael Gandolfini channelling his late father James in his iconic role
of Tony Soprano from the hit TV series the Sopranos and the trailer used that
great song Woke Up this Morning all it had to do is be about him and we were
cooking with gas.
Well again its that theme again of a lack of focus on where a film
should be and once again its here in this movie as it feels like its about the
US of the late 60s and early 70s and all these different Mob characters and
their all so fucking boring and they take up so much of the screen time and by
the time the film actually bothers to get around to young Tony its too late
this thing is Dead on Arrival as it hasn’t done enough to get me invested in
the storytelling of this film.
And as much as I liked that great moment of hearing the song in the
cinema again its too little too late for this was a boring Mob movie and it gave
me little interest to watch the Sopranos TV series in full, good grief.
A lesson for everyone in 2022: Know what movie you want to make, know
who your lead character is going to be and have a clear laser eyed focus on
those 2 things and you’ll be fine okay, we good.
Very well then, here endeth the lesson.
But now we’ve roasted the Turkeys its now time to serve them up with all
the other Roast goodies and talk about my favourite films of 2021 and crafting
this list was a tough one for me as I felt like more and more I had a strong
top 4 that I was happy with rather than a top 5 list that I thought was pretty
good but not as good as a strong top 4 list plus it felt like I had 2 films I
loved in the first half of the year and 2 I loved in the back half so here are
easily my 4 favorite films of 2021:
4. Promising Young Woman: I had heard a lot about this movie before I
got to see it and I was keen to see it but I had also heard that the ending was
very divisive and it had a lot of hype.
But I loved watching it so much so that when I walked out of it I
thought to myself that if Columbia/Tristar ever took another crack at the Girl
with the Dragon Tattoo series and do the later 2 books as films then Emerald
Fennell who won an Academy Award for this script was the perfect person to
handle it as this had that same feel for me as David Fincher’s 2011 Dragon
Tattoo film.
A rape/revenge thriller that was so beautifully anchored by Carey
Mulligan who deserved her own Academy Award for this role as she has rarely
been better than she is here, right from the first scene you fully understand who
her character is and why she is doing what she’s doing and I was compelled the
entire time.
Also this movie had some great unsettling moments that really riveted me
in my cinema seat.
3. A Quiet Place Part 2: This was one of the movies I was looking forward
to seeing in 2020 before it was delayed due to the then emerging Covid pandemic
(its delay was so close to release one of my cinemas already had it in their
system ready to play the week of its release before they got the call to say it
had been delayed.)
And this was worth the wait as this is for me one of the sequels that is
as good as the first film, yes it splits up the core cast like all good sequels
do but they had their own journeys that were full of tension and suspense and
genuine peril in terms of whether they will actually succeed in turning the
tide against the sound hunting creatures that have terrified their world for
what feels like a long time.
And speaking of which this movie opens with a brilliant short called Day
1 which not only shows the first day of the creatures attacking but made me
think of Day 1 of Covid in terms of how this shitshow we’ve found ourselves in
and this was a great experience late at night on the big screen in a dark cinema.
2. Dune: I was so excited for this movie as I have been craving a good
Sci-Fi epic in the cinema again and watching the Apple TV series of Foundation
only added to that craving, add to that a challenging book to put on film being
done by a director in Denis Villeneuve who looked to be more than up for the
job.
And boy did he deliver as he crafted something really special here
firstly from a pure filmmaking craftsmanship level this was epic, the size of
this film, the scope of it, the way colours and sets are used to bring you into
this world and the way that it brings life to what could’ve been a very dull desert
set was magical.
But Denis also wisely splits his adaptation of this book into 2 parts
and while there were too many teases of Part 2 to tip this into top spot on
this list not once did the storytelling feel messy or hard to follow or have me
feel lost admist all the scheming and plotting of this story something that the
1984 film by David Lynch failed miserably to do and when it was all over I have
never found myself craving the next film in a series like I have Part 2 of this
movie since X-Men Days of Future Past so brilliantly teased Apocalypse at the
very end of that film and if the teases in this movie are a sign, it could be
something incredibly grand and special.
But now my number 1 favourite film of 2021 and it is:
Last Night in Soho: Now I love Edgar Wright he is my favourite filmmaker
working today and anytime he puts out a new film I have to rush out to see it the
moment its out but as much as I love him I didn’t love his non Cornetto films
Scott Pilgrim and Baby Driver and going into this I thought it would be similar
in terms of how I felt about this movie.
But nope that drought has broken for me as I loved this movie pretty
much from the first scene of Thomasin McKenzie dancing to A World Without Love
and watching her here just felt like the first sigh of relief of this film as
Simon Pegg who was the lead actor and co-writer of the Cornetto trilogy had
left a mighty large hole in his absence and Ansel Elgort in Baby Driver and
Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim couldn’t come within cooee of filling it.
But McKenzie doesn’t just fill it she dances into it with ease as you
love her the moment you see her dancing in her room in the opening of the film
and it just feels like she gets better and better with each film I’ve seen her
in and this has a great cast like the late great Diana Rigg, Matt Smith,
Terence Stamp (General Zod) and Anya-Taylor Joy all of whom are also great and
seem to understand how to adapt to Wright’s quick and energetic directing style
that separates those who adapt and those who don’t.
But the other person who really made this movie for me outside of Wright
and the cast is Krysty Wilson-Cairns who also co-wrote 1917 with Sam Mendes and
her and Wright make a good writing team and they craft a good ghost story tale that
really felt like to me it was harking back to the themes and ideas of the Cornetto
series.
It has that proper horror vibe like the third act of Shaun of the Dead
did and the mystery element of Hot Fuzz that you think goes one way but goes
another but the movie this feels the most like out of any of Wright’s previous
films is the Worlds End from 2013 and like that film this really delves into
the dangers of nostalgically looking back at a previous point in time either in
your life or at a broader time and place in history and both are not the most beloved
of Wright’s filmography but I love both of them a lot.
And so that was my lists of 2021 let us hope 2022 has no more lockdowns,
no more border closures and no more release date delays, its not much to ask
for is it.
Is it?
