Maciej at the Movies: A March Movie Return, and a Summer of Soul

Maciej Kasperowicz is a good friend and one of the more trusted movie voices in my life. Today he shares his recap of 2021 especially for us, the DBB throng.

It was a Saturday, a few weeks into March 2021, that marked two weeks since my second Pfizer dose.

I planned my whole day around going to the movies.

Film Forum was playing a double feature of Pedro Almodovar’s new short paired with one of his classics, so I went there for those, got some delicious fish and chips for lunch, and then walked up to the Quad to see Shiva Baby.

I went to the movies 55 times in 2021, and part of that was making up for lost COVID time, but I also think that, because of the uncertainty of 2020, a ton of good shit came out last year. There were movies that I adored, that I told my friends that they absolutely HAD to go see or rent, that I couldn’t squeeze into my top 40 for the year.

For you, though, and for DaBearsBlog, I’ve whittled the list down a 40. Make some popcorn and enjoy.

31-40

Psycho Goreman, HYDRA, The Night House, The Novice, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Test Pattern, Never Gonna Snow Again, Malignant, The Power, Plan B

21-30

Drive My Car, Matrix: Resurrections, The Green Knight, Annette, The Queen of Black Magic, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Judas and the Black Messiah, Identifying Features, In the Heights, Prisoners of the Ghostland

20. Memoria

This movie’s oddly hard to actually see right now, but I’m optimistic that you’ll get the chance at some point, and when you do, you’ll get one of the best Tilda Swinton performances in years, and the coolest sound design of any movie that came out last year.

19. West Side Story

It can often be counterproductive to remake a movie and spell out its subtext in capital letters (I hated this year’s very ABOUT TRAUMA Halloween Kills), but Tony Kushner’s sharp focus on the racial, economic, and real estate dynamics in one very specific neighborhood of late 50s NYC only enriches the text. Visually, Spielberg is just showing off here, and it’s so fun to watch. I’d love it even more if I didn’t think it didn’t have a black hole of charisma in the middle of it in the form of Ansel Elgort.

[Editor’s Note: If Maciej and I ever start a Siskel and Ebert type program, we could do three episodes on Elgort’s performance in WSS.]

18. Pig

Seems out like it’s gonna be John Wick but about a kidnapped pig and, structurally, it kind of is? But it replaces Gun Fu with real talk about fine dining, tender cookery, and baguette sourcing. It’s the most unexpectedly sweet movie of the year.

Best Picture

Whoo boy.

Minari is pretty handily my favorite of these. Granted, I’m a sucker for immigrant family stuff, but it’s as good an old-fashioned family drama as I can recall. It’s almost like a great novel in all the ways that the five main characters are allowed to disappoint, surprise, forgive, and love each other. The movie never seems long, but when I think about how much real emotion and character development is packed into the fact that it’s under 2 hours long seems astounding. I can’t bring myself to think that something this good might win the year after Parasite, but there’s a world where the Amazon stuff gets enough of the progressive wing of the Academy off of Nomadland, it turns out that many people don’t actually like Chicago 7, and this both exciting and traditional movie has enough 2nd and 3rd place votes to actually win.

I am actually picking the favorite, Nomadland, to win, though, and I’ll be relatively happy when it does. Between Nomadland and Promising Young Woman, this has been a great year for totally fair and well-written criticism of movies I still rather like. If you haven’t been keeping up, Nomadland has a scene towards the beginning filmed at an Amazon facility, and mentions that evil megacorporation a few times off-hand, all without really taking any sort of stand on them (it has been pointed out that the book the movie is based on is less afraid to have people voice criticism).

I think that’s a fair reading, though I read Fern’s off-hand remark about how well Amazon pays more as a sad reflection on the available options than any sort of endorsement. Setting all that aside, Nomadland is absolutely gorgeous-looking. And, especially when it takes time to focus on the characters Fern meets along the way, I think it does a beautiful job portraying the search for some kind of freedom and control in a harsh society while allowing for glimpses of beauty and joy. Chloe Zhao rules.

If you’re the type of reader that enjoys a thorough evisceration, I’d recommend Ayesha Siddiqi’s shredding of Promising Young Woman, much like Nomadland, a movie I quite like while totally sympathizing with many criticisms of it. Indeed, it’s very much not the satisfying rape-revenge movie that its trailer promises (and that many people do still seem to be treating it as). If anything, it’s a deeply sad movie about repeated attempts to grab onto some kind of power or happiness that offers very little solace. I think the acting by Mulligan and a cavalcade of well-cast nice guys really carries it to something unique and good (though I don’t think the ending works).

While I totally see how Promising Young Woman isn’t for everyone, Judas and the Black Messiah seems an easy recommendation no matter what your tastes are. It both works great as a Departed/Infernal Affairs style undercover cop thriller and as a quick primer about the politics of the Black Panthers and the racism of the FBI. One caveat, specifically applicable to readers of this blog, is that you’ll have to tune out how much Cleveland, where the movie was shot, really doesn’t look like Chicago all that much.

I’m not quite as in love with Sound of Metal, but it’s also a really easy movie to like, with the approachable structure of an easily frustrated main character trying to overcome adversity, largely for love (of both music and a woman). The movie really strikes a chord (thanks Sandy Kenyon, I assume) when it questions what “adversity” really means in this case and again, as expected) in its sound design.

The Father, I wouldn’t recommend to everyone, as I know several people for whom movies about dementia and Alzheimer’s are a no go, but damn, it’s actually really good. Neither a Still Alice-style straightforward weepie nor a straight play adaptation, The Father plays some Lynch-y character tricks, and it really feels like it’s playing them on us and on Anthony Hopkins’ aging Anthony at the same time. The rest of the cast is superb, the production design is excellent, I was shocked at how much I liked it (though, again, I’m not quite sure it sticks the landing).