Category: 2020s

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Parallel Mothers (2021)

While in the hospital giving birth to her daughter, single photographer Penélope Cruz meets pregnant teenager Milena Smit. The two women’s lives continue to entwine in accidental and purposeful ways. While it’s not my favorite Almodóvar work, the blending of Spain’s national traumas under Franco with the localized experiences of the mothers works well. Cruz once again gives her best work under his direction.

Oscar Nomination: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role; Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)

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The Worst Person in the World (2021)

Renate Reinsve is a directionless 20-something whose experiences in various jobs and relationships are chronicled over the course of fourteen chapters. While the film had a few poignant moments, overall, I didn’t relate to the main character, especially as the film progressed, nor the decisions she made in her aimlessness. In fact, all of the characters that receive any narrative in the film come off as potentially interesting at first only to reveal them as dull and dislikable. Regardless, I found the chapter divisions interesting in that they jumped in and out of the main character’s life, though they like everything else in the film got less engaging as the film continued. Reinsve’s performance is strong; it just seems that the narrative didn’t really know what to do with her.

Oscar Nominations: Best Original Screenplay; Best International Feature Film

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Flee (2021)

For the first time in 20 years, Afghan immigrant Amin Nawabi shared the truth of his experience immigrating to Denmark by way of Russia with his friend, director Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Mainly told in a classic animated style interspersed occasionally with archival footage, Amin’s entire family experienced horrors together and individually in leaving their homeland, horrors that continue to resonate in Nawabi’s current life and relationship with his boyfriend. It’s an important, powerful tale, presented in a very personal way, that at least for me felt a bit removed in its narrative and visual style.

Oscar Nominations: Best Documentary Feature; Best Animated Feature Film; Best International Feature Film

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Belfast (2021)

The coming of age tale of nine year old Jude Hill, including an absentee father working in London and an attraction to a Catholic classmate, is disrupted when the Troubles comes to his neighborhood. His entire family must decide which path they will follow from that point on. The whole film feels like a personal memoir for writer-director Kenneth Branagh, very similar to Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma all the way to the black and white cinematography. It’s an oddly short film for the subject manner and I wish there was more time spent on characterization, particularly of grandparents Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench who are both delightful and wise in their roles. The film is often shot from a lowered perspective, giving a great feeling as if it is truly from a child’s perspective.  Best Picture Nomination

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West Side Story (2021)

When this remake of West Side Story was announced, I wondered what purpose it could possibly serve. The 1961 version has received high acclaim since it was made and seems better situated to exemplify the preceding decade. After watching this film, my misgivings weren’t allayed. In this take on Romeo and Juliet, Rachel Zegler, whose brother David Alvarez is a leader among the Sharks, spontaneously falls in love with Ansel Elgort, a former member of rival gang the Jets. While the film doesn’t establish their ages, the actors look as if there is about a fifteen year difference. It also doesn’t help that Elgort is rather weak in the role, particularly when he’s singing with the much talented Zegler. Overall there are some bad (constantly overpowering the view of the actors with light sources), neutral (changing the tomboy character to a trans man and the Jewish doc to Rita Moreno), and some great changes (little bits of added backstory and casting Latinx actors who intersperse more Spanish into their dialogue) but as a whole don’t give enough difference in vision to explain why anyone wanted to make this version happen.   Best Picture Nomination  Musical  Crime

Oscar Win: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year; Best Achievement in Production Design; Best Sound; Best Achievement in Costume Design; Best Achievement in Cinematography; Best Achievement in Directing

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The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

In this third sequel to The Matrix, Keanu Reeves has been returned to the Matrix as the creator of a video game called The Matrix and struggling to reconcile his current ‘reality’ with his dreams. I’m not sure the series needed another film, but in actuality it probably didn’t need the other sequels as well. I was pleasantly surprised that it functions as well as the previous two in maintaining the tone while also bringing in new characters and ideas. I’m sure there are bits that went over my head that could be clearer on rewatches, especially if paired with a marathon of the rest of the series. I liked the new editions here and the meta references, but did miss Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving. Their rebooted versions are perfectly fine, but I’m not sure the film was better for changing it up.   SciFi

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Spencer (2021)

During the 1991 Christmas holiday, Kristen Stewart’s embattled Princess Diana arrives at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate to be subjected to holiday festivities with the royal family. I sincerely want to like Stewart as an actress. I think she makes some interesting choices in her roles, but every single time her quirks come out (her constant head tilt, hunched shoulders, and way of spitting out her lines) that all I see is her instead of the character she’s playing. In stills of this film, she looks so much like Diana that I thought it wouldn’t be the case here, but once she started moving that changed. I eventually just started thinking of it as Princess Diana’s inner angst represented by Kristen Stewart, similar to Keegan Michael Key’s Luther for Barack Obama, and I was able to appreciate the film much more for it. Though I’ll never be able to really understand the difficulties in such a life for someone who was groomed for it, the film does capture her struggles even if sometimes through an indelicate hand.

Oscar Nomination: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

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National Champions (2021)

During the week of the national championship, Heisman winner Stephan James announces he is enacting a player strike against the NCAA. I have complicated, but mostly disinterested, feelings regarding compensation for student athletes and this film didn’t do anything to get me on their side. While there are some good ideas thrown out, like taking care of athletes who experience career ending injuries, it comes across that James might not be acting of his own volition but instead is just a pawn in a pissing contest between his coach J.K. Simmons and labor dispute education professor (Do universities really have such classes and is it smart to send a motivated football player to it?) Timothy Olyphant who is shtupping Simmons’s trophy wife, Kristen Chenowith. It’s details like that that overwhelm the movie. There are multiple bedroom scenes between Olyphant and Chenowith which do little to further the plot until it allows for dumb reveals toward the end. Even when relevant details like the disproportionate salaries of various NCAA officials are brought up, nothing is done to explain where the rest of the extraordinary football earnings go. There are so many similar subplots thrown out as if the writers were trying to just see what would stick, but offered no follow through.   Sports

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A Journal for Jordan (2021)

Despite her best intentions, journalist Chanté Adams falls in love with and begins a family with soldier Michael B. Jordan. Before he is deployed to Iraq, she implores him to write in a journal for their son to share whatever wisdom he feels he has to give. I had mostly watched this because I like the Black-centric stories director Denzel Washington chooses to deliver. Unfortunately the final product here fails. The only times this one pulls away from Lifetime film territory is when Jordan is on screen and that is only because of his natural charm. The characters across the board are extremely one-dimensional. The child actor and Adams’s friend group particularly are particularly cringey in their renditions. The story flip flops through time without any focus, eventually falling on a weird wishy-washy pro-military stance that the rest of the film seemed to be avoiding.

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Strings (1991)/Your Face (1987)/Yes-People (2020)

In Strings, a woman gets ready for her bath while her downstairs neighbor prepares for the arrival of his string quartet. The animation style isn’t really my type of thing as the lines and colors are quite muddied and undefined. The story is cute enough with forced interaction between the two principles coming in the form of a leaky bathtub.

Bill Plympton’s style is really not my thing. I remember similar shorts, maybe even cuts from this one, as interstitials on MTV back in the day. Your Face is comprised of a man singing Your Face is Like a Song while his face morphs and folds in upon itself in different forms. Despite being quite ugly, the morphing is done seamlessly through the song.

The cast of of Yes People is a group of people who live in the same apartment building. The dialogue consists almost entirely of various iterations of the word ‘yes’. The plot, as well as the animation, is exceptionally simple but still rather cute.

Oscar Nominations: Best Short Film, Animated (all three)

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