2021’s Ten Best Films: 10 & 9

 

2021’s Ten Best Films

Yes, my list is late. So late that it isn't published elsewhere! 😃

Because of this, I'm going to do something different. A slow countdown and side notes to catch you all up on the life of me. Sorry. You're welcome. 

So...the pandemic of 2020 rolled into 2021 and 2022 like a shitty houseguest who continues to linger and criticize your eating habits. My high anxiety made the virus bring out the worst in me, especially while living in the Midwest where the low-level of mask wearing & local anti-mask protests never ceased to shock. Whenever someone at the grocery store would sneeze, maskless I felt like they were saying: "it's okay if old people die" or "essential workers aren't people." I cry a lot while buying vegetables. 

10. The Pink Cloud (dir. Iuli Gerbase)

Conceived on the eve of the Covid-19 pandemic, the too soon-iness of the film might have made it slip a little from sight as audiences process their collective trauma. A man and woman who only sort of know one another end up isolated together in a city in Brazil, sheltering in place as a mysterious, fatal cloud descends upon the globe. The story expertly leaps through time, presenting moments and milestones while leaving out whole years to perfectly capture the infinite bleed of bubbled time and space. It also shows movements that felt all too familiar: the hours lost in an alternate virtual reality, the no-contact delivery system that gives people their needs, the juggling of self and others while confined indoors. The colors are soothing, the pink cloud lurking: tense, artful, psychological horror. 

9. Zola (dir. Janicza Bravo)

Janicza Bravo continues to reflect the creepy, darkly comedic, artifice-riddled real world with an exaggerated smirk. The fact that this film is based off of a viral tweet (one that added its own flourishes to its narrative) provides another layer to this already twisted filmic universe. Bravo and playwright/screenwriter Jeremy O. Harris transform the quasi-true Twitter tale about a night of stripping gone wrong into a buoyantly gritty, genre defiant immersion, lacing it with some drops of societal commentary and a fair share of (very unappealing male) nudity. Bravo’s scenes are crafted to perfection— weaving together the luminosity and grain of 16mm, forming complex characters whose accessories speak volumes, making soundscapes of the familiar but pushing them into the fantastical, editing perfectly to the punchline. Bravo eases a watcher into her luscious, poisoned singular vision.