10 more excellent films I’ve watched in 2021
There’s a long human tradition stretching back, it seems, to even before Jesus and his boys, that dictates (very dictatorially) that we must all, on numerous fairly fundamental levels, think the same thing. According to my hurriedly scrawled notes, this push for shared belief began overtly with religious doctrine – with lots of “think this, believe that, don’t do this etc, I’m God” – but as reported not so long ago in newspapers everywhere, church doors have been seriously underworked in recent years with less people than ever congregating on Sundays, and God-fearing at a record low. And why would you be fearful of God anyway when there’s so much else you can fear?
The omnipresent faux-autonomy of the internet – let’s start (and end) with that. That’s basically GOD isn’t it? But the Old Testament one, with a far more potent rage than the all-seeing, invisible New Testament autocrat who hasn’t properly revealed himself (stop it!) to anyone since Abraham. But the strangest thing when it comes to the idea of what we think or what we believe isn’t the detail of the content necessarily, but how it’s peddled. It’s the polarising notions we still create in what purports to be a post-religious world that push you to be IN or OUT, LEFT or RIGHT, UP or DOWN. It’s a demand for total conviction that flies in the face of us being complex and fallible, and also intelligent. The holy trinity of human traits that can’t be denied (can they?).
Our intelligence gives us the bandwidth (yes, hello 2021!) to learn and expand, our complexity and fallibility allows us to change our minds. That’s why literally on an hourly basis – if fully conscious, and even if not – we secretly rack up new opinions about things or people or sex or chocolate or politics or drugs or music or friendships or buildings or food, or why we might rethink our entire lives in one afternoon then scrap it all the next day. That’s who we are, that’s all of us, whether we admit it or not. We’re in a constant state of flux, repeatedly figuring and re-figuring things out and nothing we say can ever be really truly absolutely concrete. And yet, there seems to be a stream of new ideology to buy into wholesale appearing in your timeline every day. It’s fucking madness. It’s Jesus yelling at sinners through a megaphone, and sometimes you feel like he’s pointing at you specifically. And perhaps he is.
What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that you’re here to read about some movies I like, but don’t take my word for it – this isn’t gospel, and I might change my mind a thousand times anyway. You might agree with me, you might not, you might be vegan, you might like meat, I’m not here to judge you for daring to have your own opinions, in fact I don’t even care particularly. After all, why should I care about what you think when my own thoughts are constantly blurring in a fog cloud of new information? But if you’re interested, I present this to you under the pretence of humility (so hard to tell though, isn’t it?), it’s a small list of films I’ve watched over the last couple of months, handily scored on my Covid Rating, which deems 1 to be dreadful, and 19 to be godly. But only in my eyes. It could easily be the other way around.
A few goodies just missed the cut by a whisker, including Under the Skin (creepy Johansson weirdness), Splash (sexy mermaids), Reds (Diane Keaton on blistering form), Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (lovely Eric Rohmer), Strangers on a Train (solid Hitchcock), Eating Raoul (trashy 1980s horror comedy), Sherlock Jr (Buster Keaton classic), and Sound of Metal (poignant hear-loss drama).
The Swimmer (1968) – Burt Lancaster decides to “swim home” through his neighbours’ pools, and what follows is a series of vignettes that paint a picture of a man who has lost it all including his marbles. A genuinely oddity and one that stayed with me, even despite the strange central premise that you can just trunk-up and wander into people’s gardens for a dip.
Covid Rating: 16
Body Double (1984) – I love Brian De Palma films, that’s something I’ve learned this year. No one is better at going highbrow and lowbrow at the same time, veering from arty to trashy – not even the other arch borrower of our time, Quentin Tarantino (who supposedly lifted the title for Reservoir Dogs from this). Big shout outs too to Dressed to Kill and Sisters (which is fuuuckin NUTS), but Body Double, in many ways a grindhouse mashup of Vertigo and Rear Window, is damn near cinematic perfection.
Covid Rating: 16
Le Cercle Rouge (1970) – I’ve watched marginally better thrillers than Le Cercle Rouge (French, I think, for the red circle) this year, but you don’t need me to tell you The Third Man is gripping or that Notorious is one of Hitchcock’s best and more than worth your time. Millions got there first, as they probably did here too. Difference being, this is FRENCH, so they were probably evangelising about it to French folks (les hommes et les femmes). It’s nail-bitingly suspenseful, but the real feather in its baguette is that it looks magnifique. Excellent (what I like to call) cinematography.
Covid Rating: 15
La La Land (2016) – for some reason I’d resisted the glitzy allure of La La Land for ages, mainly because I’m allergic to musicals and swishy dresses. But more fool me, because it’s bloody wonderful and somehow achieves the Holy Grail of being an uplifting breakup movie. Even the bit where thingy describes jazz to wotsit – which drove people MAD at the time – didn’t make me splutter my cappuccino everywhere. Should have got that Oscar after all.
Covid Rating: 17
Lost in America (1985) – I did an Albert Brooks double bill – this, GREAT, and Real Life, AWFUL. This one’s a bit like if Woody Allen had written Mosquito Coast, as a middle-class couple attempts to flee the rat race only to find that the grass isn’t greener on the other side, in fact it’s covered in cat shit.
Covid Rating: 16
Red Desert (1964) – one of those languid Michelangelo Antonioni movies everyone warns you about, beaten down landscapes weathered by attrition, or large industrial buildings somehow imposingly beautiful, all a looming backdrop to hot women with complex minds having affairs by accident. This one doesn’t disappoint. In fact it does the very opposite – it appoints. Antonioni’s The Passenger with Jack Nicholson, on the other hand, is less good.
Covid Rating: 17
Day for Night (1973) – my favourite Truffaut film, a point I’ll be repeatedly reasserting at dinner parties as we ooze out of lockdown. Before this it was his Antoine Doinel 400 Blows oeuvre, but this movie about making movies is the best movie about making movies I can remember. And I can remember The Player. And Singin’ in The Rain. And Sunset Boulevard. Okay it’s not better than Sunset Boulevard.
Covid Rating: 17
Palm Springs (2020) – I watched this not long after re-watching Groundhog Day and, cover your ears everyone, I PREFER IT. It goes to darker places, when it’s being funny it’s funnier, when it’s being clever it’s cleverer. It’s even got a better Andy in it.
Covid Rating: 16
Killer of Sheep (1978) – no arcs, no character development, no real story to speak of, just scenes of black family life in 1970s LA. Even the film’s title is an act of neorealism, because while it smacks of horror it’s just a factual note about the protagonist’s job in a slaughterhouse. Considered one of the great unwatched American films.
Covid Rating: 14
Django (1966) – there’s not a great amount of jeopardy to speak of when your main character is a sharp shooter who repeatedly guns down 23 guys in 0.7 seconds – but viewed as a superhero film (of sorts) this is heads and shoulders above any of the computer-generated Marvel marvels. Excellent theme tune too.
Covid Rating: 15