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?
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