December 29, 2021
There had been so much cinematic content available on various international streaming sites like Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, MUBI, iQiYi, Viu, plus local streaming sites, like KTX, Upsteam, Vivamax. This November 15, movie houses have resumed their operations with films like "Dune" and "A Quiet Place 2" as the first offerings. Finally, we can once again see Hollywood blockbusters the way they were meant to be seen.
I think I may have watched the most number of feature films this year 2021 more than any other year in the past. I have logged about 350 films on my Letterboxd account for 2021. This number includes world cinema classic films that I only had the chance to see this year, like "La Dolce Vita" (Fellini 1960), "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (Demy 1964), "Night of the Living Dead" (Romero, 1968) and "Evolution of a Filipino Family (Diaz, 2004), all thanks to Mubi.
Because of this, I thought it best to divide my yearend best-of-films list into three: English language and non-English foreign films in this post, and Filipino films in a separate post. Not included in this list are films which have not been streamed or screened in this country yet (without need for VPN). This includes Oscar-bait films, like "West Side Story," "Belfast," "Foreign Dispatch," "Licorice Plaza," and the final blockbuster of the year, "Spider-Man: No Way Home," the screening of which was notoriously delayed to January 8, 2022.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS
20. ANNETTE by Leos Carax (My Full Review)
19. THE HARDER THEY FALL by The Bullitts (My Full Review)
18. ENCANTO by Byron Howard and Jared Bush (My Full Review)
17. CODA by Sian Heder (My Full Review)
16. BEING THE RICARDOS by Aaron Sorkin (My Full Review)
15. ETERNALS by Chloe Zhao (My Full Review)
14. VIVO by Kirk DeMicco (My Full Review)
13. BLACK WIDOW by Cate Shortland (My Full Review)
12. THE SUICIDE SQUAD by James Gunn (My Full Review)
11. NOBODY by Ilya Naishuller (My Full Review)
Shang-chi (Simu Liu) made a living parking cars with his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) in San Francisco. One day, Shang-chi was confronted by bad guys on a bus, who wanted to get the pendant his late mother gave him. Suspecting his father was behind this ambush, this led Shang-chi to go to Macau to warn his sister Xialing (Meng'er Zhang), who was running a underground fight club there.
It was 1991. The royal family were gathered in Queen's Sandringham Estate in Norfolk to spend the Christmas holidays. Because her marriage to Charles had already been long strained at that point, Diana was not in a hurry to be with everybody else. Seeing herself as Anne Boleyn and bothered that her sons were going to be taught how to shoot down pheasants, how will this stressful weekend turn out for the distressed princess?
Rick Mitchell was worried that his eldest daughter Katie may not succeed in her plan to be a filmmaker -- an issue that caused an uneasy tension between the two. When Katie was accepted to her dream film school in California, Rick, hoping for some last-minute family bonding, decided to drive Katie all the way there in their beat up old car, with her mother Linda, younger brother Aaron and their pet pug Monchi tagging along on a wild road trip.
A young man named Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) owned a little bodega in the poor, Hispanic Washington Heights district of New York City, selling coffee, drinks and lottery tickets. But he thought he had not made much in his life so far, and longed to follow his dream to return back to his homeland, the Dominican Republic. The story of how Usnavi got his unique name will have a scene of its own, as he tells the story to a group of little kids.
James Bond (Daniel Craig) had parted in bad terms with Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) after an attempt was made on his life by Spectre agents while they were in Italy. Five years later, Bond, now retired from MI6 and working with the CIA, got involved with the case of a kidnapped scientist Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik), who had developed a deadly DNA-based nanobot-technology transdermal poison called Herakles.
5. THE POWER OF THE DOG by Jane Campion (My Full Review)
Set in Montana in 1925, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons) Burbank were a pair of wealthy brothers who ran a sprawling cattle ranch. The two brothers were polar opposites in demeanor. While Phil was arrogant, boisterous and insensitive, his brother George was cool, refined and composed. Phil did not care about his level of education or his wealth, preferring with work with cattle than with people of his social class.
4. DON'T LOOK UP by Adam McKay (My Full Review)
Michigan State University Astronomy grad student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discovered an new comet hurtling towards Earth. Her professor, Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo di Caprio), calculated that the mountain-sized comet will hit the Pacific Ocean about six months and cause a catastrophe that would destroy the entire planet. However, when they tried to inform US President Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep), they just got the runaround.
This new version of "Justice League" is no longer about the story or the acting (since most already watched the 2017 cut), but about the storytelling style. The longer setup of scenes in this cut of course led to a more logical progression of the various individual threads of each hero. Whedon limited the story when he decided to make Steppenwolf the only villain in his cut, but it turned out that Snyder had bigger plans for the DC Expanded Universe given all those exhilarating future films promised by that substantially abundant epilogue.
Jonathan Larson is turning 30 years old in a few days but he is still waiting tables at a diner. He had been writing his musical "Superbia" for eight years, and was about to present his songs in a workshop, but he still lacked a key song in the second act. His girlfriend Susan, a frustrated dancer, had serious intentions of accepting a teaching job outside the city. His best friend since childhood Michael had become a successful advertising executive.
In the year 10191, the Emperor had assigned Duke Leto of House Atreides of the planet Caladan to administer the desert planet of Arrakis, in place of the House Harkonnen. Arrakis was the only source of the spice melange. However lately, the native people of Arrakis, the blue-eyed Fremen, were beginning to assert their rights. His son Paul had been having visions of Arrakis, the bloody conflicts they will face, and the Freman girl he will meet.
Denis Villeneuve had imbued his vision of "Dune" with gorgeous-looking camera work and spectacular computer-generated effects. The pace of his storytelling was deliberately slow (as he is wont to do), but the momentum did not sag. The multi-dimensional story was surprisingly easy to follow and understand, despite the inherently complicated plot with multiple planets and peoples. The acting was generally subdued and solemn across the board.
NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILMS
10. THE SOUL by Cheng Wei-hao (My Full Review)
9. MY BLOOD AND BONES IN A FLOWING GALAXY by SABU (My Full Review)
8. RUROUNI KENSHIN: THE FINAL by Keishi Ohtomo (My Full Review)
8. RUROUNI KENSHIN: THE BEGINNING by Keishi Ohtomo (My Full Review)
7. SAMJIN COMPANY ENGLISH CLASS by Lee Jong-pil (My Full Review)
6. ENDLESS RAIN by Cho Jin-mo (My Full Review)
Nadya (Peri Baumeister) and her child Elias (Carl Anton Koch) are boarding a plane bound to New York City. Their airplane was held hostage by hijackers who wanted to demand a hefty ransom for their freedom. At one point during the flight, crazy hijacker Eightball (Alexander Scheerer) shot Nadya several times, and was presumed dead. When that act threw the plane into utter chaos, Nadya unleashed her true nature in order to save her son and herself.
One early morning before dawn, Jessica (Tilda Swinton) was awakened by one loud booming sound, which apparently only she could hear. She would hear this same sound over and over again at random times of the day, and in random places around the city. With the help of a young sound engineer (Juan Pablo Urrego) and an old fisherman (Elkin Diaz), she sought for the origin of this sound.
The three episodes of this film consisted of just conversations of depth and intensity between imperfect characters. All the dramatic situations were all unfamiliar and uncomfortable (especially Episode 2, about a young woman planning to seduce and scandalize a professor), but you can't afford to miss a single word in any of the dialogues. Fascinating character studies all, each episode was interesting and provocative.
Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) was invited to Hiroshima to direct a unique production of Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" with a very diverse cast. Aside from Japanese actors, there was a Chinese Yelena, a Filipino Serebryakov (Perry Dizon) and a mute Sonya (using Korean sign language). An impassive woman Misaki (Toko Miura) was assigned to chauffeur him to and from the house provided to him, which was an hour away from the theater.
It was Naples, Italy in the 1980s. Fabietto (Filippo Scotti) was a sensitive young man who lived at home with his parents Saverio (Toni Servillo) and Maria Schisa (Teresa Saponangelo) and his brother Marchino (Marlon Joubert). His extended family was very close as they spent time together gossiping at the beach or watching Diego Maradona play football with home team Napoli. A sudden tragedy forced Fabietto to seek focus in his life, planning to be a filmmaker.
This gorgeously-shot coming-of-age film written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino is said to be based on his own teenage years growing up in Naples. Sorrentino, who came into prominence in 2013, when he won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for "The Great Beauty," was an apprentice under local Napoli film director Antonio Capuano, the name of the brutally frank character (Ciro Capano) who will also initiate Fabietto into filmmaking.
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