Top Films 2021

 

Drama

Best overall: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom  Entertaining story of 1920’s jazz band recording session. Denzel directs Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in his last movie (Netflix)

Close second: Bruised  Halle Berry directs herself as loser MMA fighter making a comeback. Impressive action (Netflix)

Best historic: Fire Over England  1939 restored classic courtesy of BFI. Fascinating backgrounds with excellent use of trompe d’oeil (Prime)

Close second: Coven of Sisters  Young women accused of witchcraft literally run rings round Spanish inquisition. Nobody expects that! (Netflix)

Best imagined historic: Ammonite  Fanciful but believable tale centred on Mary Anning (Prime)

Best Christian: An Interview with God  Journo in crisis gets to interview the almighty. Witty and ecumenical (Prime)

Best British: Surge  Ben Wishaw in overdrive racing round Tottenham (Netflix)

Most jingoistic: Iron & Blood  Extremely jingoistic Russian film. Those Cossacks are bonkers! (DVD)

Action

Best Statham: Wrath of Man  The Statham in top action mode. Best line: “You can do what the fuck you like.” (Prime)

Funniest: Red Notice  The Rock and co perform ridiculous feats in globe-trotting mayhem (Netflix)

Christmas

Best: The Green Knight  Very trippy telling of the Sir Gawain story (Prime)

Most slushy: Silver Skates  Posh woman falls for pickpocket in a frozen St. Petersburg (Netflix)

Comedy

Best Overall: Death to 2020  Very funny spoof/mockumentary. Accurate characterisations especially the Karen and republican aide (Netflix)

Best low budget: All at Sea  Old man in retirement home plans to illegally bury his friend at sea (Netflix)

Thrillers

Best overall: Remember  Christopher Plummer fantastic as geriatric Nazi hunter. Suspect the makers of the series Hunters nicked the idea from this movie (Prime)

Weirdest: The Ninth Configuration  1980 ‘cult classic’ based on a book from 1968 (original title a spoiler). Great cast and funny in places. A very odd do (Prime)

Best true spy: A Call to Spy  Eclectic female spies in occupied France include an Indian princess and a woman with a wooden leg (Netflix)

Close second: The Catcher is a Spy  Polyglot baseball player goes after Heisenberg. Good but fizzles out at the end (Prime)

Best psycho: Inheritance  Woman discovers someone hidden in a bunker, lets him out. Predictable but convincing and rare unfunny turn by Simon Pegg (Netflix)

Most twisty end: The Unforgivable  Sandra Bullock comes out of prison, tries to rebuild her life and connect to her baby sister. A Red Production based on their TV series Unforgiven with Sally Wainwright as Exec Producer; they’ve gone up in the world! (Netflix)

Best Political: And Tomorrow the Entire World  Posh German student joins Anti-Fa. Increasing levels of violence ensue. Good use of ambient sound (Netflix)

Westerns

Best overall: The Power of the Dog  Ben Cumberbatch comes a cropper when he befriends gawky step-nephew (Netflix)

Best modern: Concrete Cowboy  Brilliant story based on actual urban cowboys in Philadelphia. I had no idea this was a thing (Netflix)

Best for fun: The Harder They Fall  Real historical characters collide in imagined scenario. Great actors, great sets, great soundtrack although The Harder They Come strangely absent (Netflix)

Best horror: Dead Birds  Confederates rob a bank, hole up, strange monsters appear. Interestingly weird and well shot (Prime)

Music

Best music drama: The Sound of Metal  (spoiler) Heavy metal drummer goes deaf, goes to live in a community, gets implants, gets chucked out, goes back to girlfriend, realises she’s better without him, leaves, takes implants out, the end (Prime)

Best musical bio: Bohemian Rhapsody  Rami Malek very convincing as Freddie Mercury, loads of songs, sad bits and funny bits. Best line ‘piss-flap’ (Prime)

Close second: Judy  Renee Zellweger rather good as Judy Garland during her last days in London (BBC2)

Bio

Best overall: Charlie Says  Excellent telling of Charles Manson from point of view of 3 brainwashed acolytes on death row. Really good turn by an unrecognisable Matt Smith (Prime)

Best British: The Keeper  True tale of Bert Trautmann, ex-Nazi interred after the war, became Man City goalie, broke neck in FA cup final, carried on playing. Couldn’t believe I’d never heard of him before (BBC4)

Best action: Papillon  Great if long remake of the escape from Devil’s Island with the wonderfully versatile Rami Malik (Prime)

Most educational: The King’s Choice  The story of why we get a Christmas Tree from Norway (Prime)

Most frightening: A Dark reflection  Based on the exposé of engine air poisoning airline passengers. Alarmingly still not fixed, apparently only 787’s have a filtration system (Prime)

Best Civil rights: The Blakkklansman  A Spike Lee joint. Black undercover cop infiltrates the KKK. Good apart from the depressing preachy footage at the end. Why does he always have to do that? (Channel 4)

Close second: The Best of Enemies  Interesting story of charette in deep south; the developing friendship between a black activist and president of the KKK chapter who later toured to tell their story (Netflix)

Most worthy: The Mauritanian  Jody Foster as lawyer working on behalf of suspected 9/11 terrorist in Guantanamo (Prime)

Best imaginary: One Night in Miami  Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Jim Browne and Mohammed Ali argue in motel room after Sonny Lister fight (Prime)

Most post-modern: Synecdoche New York  Odd story of Caden Cotard creating a microcosm of real life in a warehouse with blurred boundaries (DVD from freebie box)

Best crime bio: Holy Rollers  Orthodox Jewish kid Jesse Eisenberg smuggles ‘special medicine for rich people’ (Prime)

Most awful accents: Peterloo  Shown on the anniversary of the massacre. Too long and talk about laying it on thick. We guffawed at the accents throughout. A good job we weren’t at the pictures (Film 4).

Best Doc: Basically, Johnny Moped  Entertaining and amusing tale of early days of punk rock (Netflix)

Daftest Alternative Bio: Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler  Weird conspiracy bollocks wherein an aging Hitler lives in Argentina (Prime)

Sci-fi, Fantasy and Myth

Best overall: In The Shadow of the Moon  Cop tries to stop woman coming from future during certain moon phases to kill people. Unexpected ending (Netflix)

Best satirical: Don’t Look Up  Meteor about to hit earth, politicians and Elon Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg character conspire to profit. Blended our comment on capitalists monetising climate action with conspiracy theories, of which we’ve had many the last 2 years. Funny and clever (Netflix)

Most over-hyped: Ad Astra  So-so introspective space opera with a broody Brad and some pretty bits (Prime)

Most original idea: Alastair 1918  WW1 soldier from Shibden comes through wormhole to land in LA (Prime)

Best aliens: The Tomorrow War  Chris Pratt meets up with daughter of future to save world from fab man-eating aliens (Prime)

Best arthouse: Ink  Arty, stylish, and interestingly imaginative (Prime)

Best pandemic: Songbird  In the near future of 2023, variant Covid-23 emerges and the world enters a 4^th year of lockdown. At least Michael Bay wasn’t whingeing about not being able to make blockbusters and getting with the zeitgeist! (Prime)

Most surreal: Jesus Shows You The Way to the Highway  Based on a Philip K Dick story, featuring AR, loony Ethiopian beliefs and magic sweets. Completely bonkers and a hoot from start to finish (Prime)

Most fun: Bloodshot  Ex -soldier Vin Diesel gets killed, re-animated and augmented with nano bots by evil genius. Good CGI (Netflix)

Daftest Sequel: Iron sky 2  Ridiculous fan-funded effort. Journey to centre of the earth, Hitler on a dinosaur and a Laibach soundtrack. What’s not to love! (Prime)

Worst sequel: Skylin3s  Mildly entertaining but terrible script. Out-takes the best bit (Netflix)

Best classic: Things to Come  Coloured-in version of the 1930’s HG Wells classic. Going from endless war, through plague to a future dominated by machines. Very weird in retrospect (Prime)

Best re-watch: Bladerunner 2049  A stunning movie with awesome sound (DVD)

Close second: Doomsday  They were wrong about how people would act during Brexit, a pandemic and lockdowns but the fictional plague is far more interesting than the real one (DVD)

Best Comic character: Joker  Stand-alone tale of the Batman villain.  Joaquin Phoenix brilliant (Prime)

Most bonkers: Aquaman  Jason Momoa as half-blood king of Atlanta. Enjoyable escapism (Prime)

Most imaginative: Armageddon Gospels  Old gods wash up on shore of southern England to try and resurrect paganism (Prime)

Best Nordic: Valhalla: The Legend of Thor  Engaging Danish telling of Thor and Loke going to earth and taking 2 kids back to Valhalla(Prime)

Horror

Best low budget: Ripper Untold  Engaging take on Jack the Ripper story with interesting twist (Prime)

Best exorcism: The Seventh Day  Young priest tries to expel demons from young boy (Netflix)

Funniest: Bingo Hell  Gran seeks revenge on evil bingo hall killer in fifth instalment of the Blumhouse anthology (Prime)

Best NZ: Shadow in the Cloud  Young woman smuggles baby onto WW2 fighter plane (Prime)

Daftest disaster: The Meg  Basically Jaws with bigger fish. Not The Statham’s best effort (Channel 5)

Best demons: Bram Stoker’s Shadow Builder  Everyday tale of world-destroying demons. Absolute hoot (Prime)

Best vampires: Night Teeth  Everyday tale of vampires in LA - a daft place to live with all that sunlight (Netflix)

Best Zombies: Army of the Dead  Enjoyable romp with Dave Bautista, Tig Natura and associates fighting their way in and out of a damned Las Vegas. Possibly made last year when the place was deserted (Netflix)

Best sequel: Zombieland Double Tap  Fun follow-up with meta ref to Bill Murray (Netflix)

Best cameos: The Dead Don’t Die  Funny bits and good turns from Tilda Swinton and Iggy Pop but patchy with a fizzly end (Netflix)

Crime

Best whodunit: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab  Classic mystery, set in a very English-looking Melbourne. Ads not too annoying (IMDB via Prime)

Best British: Once Upon A Time in London  Second viewing of this everyday tale of cheeky chappies from the East End of London. Still good (Prime)

Most violent: Sweet Girl  Man vows revenge on pharma boss for withdrawing cancer drug his wife was taking. Violent rampage ensues (Netflix)

Most tenuous prequel: Army of Robbers  Prequel to Army of the Dead. Only glimpses of zombies (Netflix)

Most frightening: I Care A Lot  Rosamund Pike’s heartless ‘carer’ strips elderly of their assets, comes up against gangster Peter Dinklage. Lots of twists but suddenly moral end (Netflix)

Funniest: Killing Gunther  Incompetent assassins collaborate to kill Arnie who unusually speaks German. Guessing from the quasi-cameo, he did it for nothing (Prime)

Close second: Queenpins   Middle class women in coupon scam (Prime)

Best Indian: The White Tiger  Boy becomes driver for rich family. Good songs but no dancing! (Netflix)

Best heist: The Vault  Egghead college-boy Freddie Highmore helps gang break into vault under Banco España. Made we want to watch Money Heist again (Prime)

Most un-PC: The Mule  Clint Eastwood as geriatric drugs runner. Typically dry humour with no filter (Prime)

Most twisty: The Informer  Joel Kinnaman goes back to prison in double-dealing plot involving a Polish drug gang, the NYPD and FBI (Prime)

Best assassin: Kate  Assassin gets poisoned, seeks vengeance with no messing about (Netflix)

Close second:  The Rhythm Section  Jude Law trains Blake Lively to be crap assassin (Netflix)

Most confusing: Capone  Odd tale of last year of the gangster’s life. Tom Hardy great as always (Netflix)

War

Best overall: Persian Lessons  Belgian Jew convinces Nazi he’s Persian and teaches him ‘Farsi’. Clever, funny and with Jonas Nay of ‘Deutschland’ fame; not sure why The Guardian didn’t like it (Prime)

Best Costume: Master and Commander  Realistic and moving.  Best line: “the lesser of two weevils’ (DVD)

Best WW1: The War Below  True tale of miners recruited to put explosives in tunnel under the Germans. Very educational (Netflix)

Best Russian: Convoy 48–The War Train   True story of young women building railway and operating trains to Leningrad and beyond. Subtitles a bit funny especially constant use of ‘fiddle sticks’, presumably to denote swear words (Prime)

Best Korean: Battleship Island  Nasty Japs use Koreans as slave labour on coalmine island which can now be visited for a fun holiday, thanks to UNESCO! (Prime)

Best Bogart: Sahara  Humphrey and crew in small tank outsmart Nazis in desert (DVD)

Best low budget: We Go In At Dawn  Daring rescue in occupied France during runup to D-day (Prime)

Maddest: My Way  Mad but true What a guy!(DVD)

Grimmest: Escape from Sobribor  True tale of escape from notorious and depraved Nazi death camp, led by heroic Russian; as if there’s any other kind!(Prime)

Best for kids: War of the Buttons  Kids from rival villages in the Loire go to war, band together to protect a Jewish girl (prime)

Most perplexing: The Forgotten Battle  Dutch film set just before allies arrived.  Made out Nazis were human too – as if!(Netflix)