Well, it's that time again (or slightly past it); time to assemble my five favourite films of the year just gone and explain exactly what about them got me all hot and bothered.
But you know what? Looking back through all the 2021 releases I've seen, it doesn't feel overly representative to talk about just the five best films. What about everything else? The dross, the surprise hits, the flawed yet strangely fascinating?
So this year, I'm shaking things up a bit. I'm introducing the Ciné Rambles End of Year Film Awards!
Or CREYFAs for short. And yes, until someone comes up with something better, that is the acronym I'm sticking with.
Considering the amount of time I’ve spent documenting the Oscars on this blog and calling out which of their picks are and aren’t worth honouring, it only feels right for me to cut the middleman entirely and just create my own awards ceremony, with blackjack and hookers and some actual sincerity for once.
But unlike the Oscars, here both the best and worst films of the year are equally eligible to pick up an imaginary statuette, and even some films I haven't seen will get a chance! Oh wait. Scratch that, guess it's exactly like the Oscars, then.
We’ll be starting with six categories this time round but depending what films I've got to work with each year, the number of awards and even the awards themselves might fluctuate in future ceremonies. Cynics might say an award isn't really worth much if the awarding body makes the awards up each year to match the films they most want to talk about, but to them I'd say: too right! How very astute of you. Now sit down, shut up, and stop taking the fun out of this.
The 'Apocalypse? Wow!' Award: Biggest Surprise of the Year
And yes, that is the extent of the quality of this year's jokes. I suggest you buckle up, sonny. First up, the biggest surprise of the year, awarded to the film that most exceeded my original expectations for it.
This year, that award goes to The Father, which I may have given an undue slating in my Oscars post, based almost entirely off looking at the poster and IMDb blurb, a rather tried-and-true method over here at Ciné Rambles. Originally this looked to me like a film of already-acclaimed actors Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman chewing scenery in an otherwise-unremarkable-looking stage-to-film adaptation skirting dangerously close to Oscar bait. However, upon finally getting to see it (months after it stopped being Oscar-relevant, naturally), I was pleasantly surprised to find a genuinely engaging, enjoyable and even emotional film that didn't feel nearly as baity as it originally threatened to be.
I still stand by most of what I said previously in terms of it being an acting film: a lot of Anthony Hopkins just showcasing himself for most of the runtime, but you know what, when you have an actor as talented and engaging as Hopkins, maybe that's not such a bad thing. And you know what, I'll even go so far as to say his performance merited the nomination. The win? Debatable.
It's also worth noting the rest of the cast, including Olivia Coleman, Mark Gatiss, and Imogen Poots, were all very good: it would be unfair to call this solely a Hopkins vehicle.
The Father is also very nicely directed by Florian Zeller, who directed the original stage play, so it's clear he knows exactly what he's doing with this story. Hopkins may be a great actor, but the performance we get from him here is definitely a joint effort, and the results are incredibly satisfying. One of the standouts for me is the scene where Hopkins introduces himself to his new carer, Poots, which features one of the most effective deployments of the F-bomb I’ve ever seen on film, enough to cause the audience in m y screening to visibly flinch en masse, conjuring a stronger reaction than I’ve seen from actual horror films.
The other standout is the ending, which despite being somewhat inevitable, was still genuinely sad and heart-breaking, and gave me the emotional punch it really needed to in order to earn its place here. While this may still seem like bait on paper, the insincerity I'd expect from that isn't really here, but instead the beating heart of something genuine and human.
The 'Citizen Kane Criterion' Award: Biggest Disappointment of the Year
So this is the inverse of the above: the film I had the highest hopes for relative to how much I ended up enjoying it, and this year’s winner is Nobody.
This Bob Odenkirk-led action film promised to be the next John Wick, with producer David Leitch in tow to back up its claim, but unlike that series where the titular character is the world’s best assassin, Nobody was pitched (at least to me) as John Wick if he were just a regular everyday suburban deadbeat dad who’s been pushed to the edge by his miserable life and finally snapped. Cool, love it. Great idea. There’s real potential in taking that raw one-man-army action and transplanting it into the story of an everyman who must learn to become a badass assassin rather than just being one from the get-go. It'll make for a tenser, down-to-earth scenario, which will in turn make the action all the more engaging and exciting.
There’s just one teeny tiny little catch: it’s all a bunch of LIEEESSSSSS!
Not only is Nobody not at all like how it was pitched to me, which in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, but it doesn’t really do anything else of equivalent quality or interest, and so what’s left is a an inferior, less interesting John Wick clone.
It starts off as described, sure, with Bob Odenkirk doing a fine job playing a middle-aged dad to a couple of kids who don’t really respect him and a wife who has no time for him, stuck in his routine at a dull job and always wishing he could stand up for himself but never having the balls to actually do it.
However, and Spoilers Ahead I suppose, it is then revealed Bob has a shady past working for the government where he was, guess what, the greatest assassin who’s ever lived. You know, exactly like John Wick. So, there goes the USP, straight through the window, pulling my interest in the film out with it like a magician’s handkerchief, not for a second realising how interesting that would have been to explore.
See, it’s not Nobody as in he’s a nobody, it’s Nobody as in he’s Nobody; he doesn’t exist on official records and if he told you who he was, he’d have to kill you. What a clever fucking twist. Bet you’ve never seen a highly skilled secret agent killing loads of people before; much more interesting than a grounded, down-to-earth every-man, right?
And now, out of nowhere, he's got a basement full of guns and traps and gold bullion, because now we’re not even pretending this isn’t discount John Wick, and off he goes to take down the Russian mafia because why not, essentially. Odenkirk of course knows how to effortlessly outsmart and outshoot all the goons sent after him, and he assembles a group of old partners to rig up his office building for a final disappointing shoot-out, and that’s your lot. And in comparison to the famed bus sequence earlier in the film where, little did I know, the quality and brutality of the action would peak, this climax definitely feels like a damp squib, both in threat and spectacle.
With the starting point of a nobody and an end goal of a one-man army, there were probably several ways this arc could have been done and Nobody has managed to choose the least interesting one. Even having no arc at all and just beginning and ending as the same badass, ala Commando, would have been at least more satisfying and allowed both me and the film to just focus purely on the slightly shit action sequences. But no, Nobody tries to have it both ways, with Odenkirk already knowing how to be an action badass from minute one, but just deciding arbitrarily not to be one until the plot deems it necessary, boiling down his arc from being about his transformation and the emotions and circumstances that drive it, to instead being about his decision to use skills he has anyway.
And his refusal to use said skills is the only reason the inciting incident happens in the first place, so why not just have him be defenceless for realsies in the beginning and make the plot more straight forward, about ten times more convincing and a hundred times less boring?
End of Spoilers
It's not a woefully bad film: there’s still some decent action and choreography in there, and Odenkirk’s performance is brilliant. It’s just that complete failure of character development that gets me, and when I realised the direction the film was heading in, my interest completely deflated. I know a lot of other people really enjoyed this, so maybe there’s some key aspect I’ve missed, but I’m in no hurry to go back and check.
The 'Kylie' Award: The Film I Can't Get Out of my Head
This one’s a bit harder to concretely define, because this isn’t so much about the quality of the film as it is about how much I’ve thought about it since watching it. Which can get confusing because, of course, the best films of the year are generally pretty memorable, but that's not quite the same as a film that you find yourself constantly name dropping in conversation without realising, or one you keep returning to during idle research, or one that ends up right at the top of your Bluray wishlist.
None of which necessarily make it the best film of the year, and in this case, it's not even cracked my top ten (rewatch pending), but sometimes, you've just got to honour those quirky outliers.
And no, I definitely didn’t spearhead this entire format change just to mention this one film.
That would be ridiculous.
So Annette is a rock opera written by Sparks and directed by Leos Carax (of Holy Motors fame) and while it isn't quite one of my top picks of the year, it's got to be one of the most intriguing I've seen.
Of course, part of that is down to it being a musical, which offers it a unique advantage in lodging itself in one’s brain over other films, but it also helps that said music is written by Ron and Russell Mael, who are insanely talented and clearly instrumental (ha) to the success of the concept. The soundtrack has been on hard rotation since I saw Annette back in November, and I believe it's only a matter of time before this album joins the ranks of the other great rock operas like The Wall and Quadrophenia.
Annette follows the relationship between famous opera singer Ann Defrasnoux (Marion Cotillard) and satirical comedian Henry McHenry (Adam Driver), and the birth of their child, Annette, who develops miraculous singing abilities. As Henry’s career falls apart, the relationship in turn breaks down, and both partners find themselves exploiting Annette’s gift to fulfil their own goals: reviving McHenry’s career and exacting Ann’s revenge on Henry.
Beneath the surface layer of a quirky, if dark, musical about a singing baby dwells a story of fame, addiction, and the corruption of familial relationships under the scrutinous eye of fans and gossip magazines. And like all great musicals, not only is the soundtrack enjoyable to listen to in isolation, but with every repeated listen more little details and motifs are revealed that glue the whole thing together into a satisfying, cohesive musical work.
It’s maybe a little on the flabby side at two and a half hours, but other than that, I can’t really remember any specific criticisms I had for Annette. As previously mentioned, it didn’t place in my top five of the year, and until I started writing this, it only just cleared the top fifteen. 2021 has had its fair share of entertaining films, and while my ranking broadly represents my opinion on Annette within the first twenty-four hours after seeing it, the film seems to be a bit of a grower, fermenting and maturing as it sloshes about your mind in the months after seeing it. It’s also possible that I love the soundtrack more than I loved the film as a whole, which is what happened with Rocky Horror Picture Show, and while I’ve seen the film only once, I’ve long lost count of how many times I’ve listened to the soundtrack albums, so a rewatch is definitely in order.
Meanwhile, soundtrack or not, for all its charm and wry idiosyncrasies, there’s really no other film this year that’s stuck out quite so much in my mind as Annette. Except, maybe…
The ‘Mean Girls’ Award: Best Film Over All
It’s Dune; and I’m sure this comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who’s listened to this year’s Oscars podcast where I’m pretty sure I outright stated Dune was my favourite of the year. Woops. But in my defence, I think this was still a pretty easy prediction for anyone who knows me and my love of sci-fi.
The novel is a monolith of science fiction/fantasy literature that’s inspired almost every story that’s succeeded it in the genre, and after decades of failed attempts and claims of being ‘unfilmable’, Denis Villeneuve, director of Blade Runner 2049, has finally brought a definitive adaptation to the big screen. It’s been one of the most highly anticipated films of recent years, at least for me, and while David Lynch’s previous attempt had been a bit of a cult disaster, there was an underlying optimism in the lead up to Dune that things were going to work out this time. And wouldn’t you know, they actually did.
One of the most significant differences between Villeneuve and Lynch’s approaches is the decision to split this adaptation into a two-parter, with the action ending roughly two-thirds of the way through the rather chunky tome. That does leave Dune with the inevitable but nonetheless unfortunate problem carrying a lot of the story’s world-building, set-up and jargon-busting while not really having a proper conclusion of its own.
Detractors of the film tend to cite one or both of these reasons for why it doesn’t work for them, but honestly considering the wealth of lore that needs to be established, I think Dune strikes a fine balance between checking off its expositional responsibilities and keeping things moving. As a near-enough Dune virgin going in, I didn’t face any real problems understanding what was going on, which others familiar with the book had warned me of, and yet the film never felt like it was lecturing or dumping information on me.
Instead, Dune refreshingly puts a lot of trust in its audience’s intelligence, only sneaking in as much exposition as it can reasonably get away with within the verisimilitude of the scenes, while leaving the rest for the audience to put together through contextual clues and intuition.
But why are we talking about exposition in a film as visually exciting as this? Villeneuve and his team have rendered visual a living, breathing sci-fi universe worthy of the novel’s legacy. Each planet has a distinct texture and atmosphere, and every building, vehicle and item has an authentic, lived-in feel that adds to the setting’s believability and immersion. Dune is sonically fantastic too, with Hans Zimmer’s score drumming up a primal tension in the films’ many action scenes, shifting to nomadic mystery as Paul explores his new home of Arrakis.
Really, the lack of an ending is Dune’s only major flaw, with its last scene in particular being by far its weakest. Between a clumsy wasted reveal and a final line from Chani that’s barely a step above saying ‘to be continued’, the final minute or so reeks of studio meddling, and I look forward to the day the Dune director’s cut staples the entire second film on top of this scene to create one big five-hour epic.
Despite its length, Dune felt perfectly paced to me, and if Part Two were to maintain this same quality, I would have happily sat through both parts back-to-back, which for someone like me who balks at 180+ minute runtimes is high praise. For now though, I’m just relieved that Part Two got greenlit in the first place, and I look forward to it taking home this award in 2023…and hopefully not dining on these words.
The ‘Mean Girls 2’ Award: Worst Film Over All
The worst thing about the winner of this award is that it’s not even bad enough to really get mad about. Oh, it’s bad. Believe me, it’s atrocious, but it’s a film so vapid and devoid of insight or intent that it barely even left an impact. It’s not insidious or malicious, it’s just a pit that money and time fell into, and thanks to two very awful friends of mine, ninety minutes of my time has fallen in too.
He’s All That is a pointless, gender swapped remake of the 90s comedy She’s All That, wherein an ““influencer”” has her internet cred ruined, and decides the best way to rectify this is to take the token quiet kid at her school and manipulate him into becoming a ““popular”” kid (read: attempt to rewrite his personality to fit the mould of what she and her influencer friends arbitrarily decide make someone popular rather than allowing him to be himself and get on with his life unmolested).
You can tell it’s a remake of a 90s film cause the sexual politics have been copied over wholesale, resulting in a film that not only feels behind the times, but derivative of every other film from that era that’s done the ‘highschool makeover’ plot and since been condemned to the annals of time. And for a film whose central plot element is the transformation of the main guy from minds-his-own-business shut-in to generic compliant ‘popular’ kid, they can’t even keep his character consistent, often leaping from one of his personalities back to the other within the same scene, sometimes mere lines apart, killing any believability of the one story tentpole that’s supposed to be keeping this whole circus from collapsing.
The main character is an unlikeable vapid shell, her love interest’s arc is laughably inconsistent, the plot itself is devoid of stakes and carries an arguably harmful message about manipulation and popularity, and if you think there’s going to be anything interesting happening on the technical side of things, then you really have not grasped what kind of film this is. But I think this sums everything up best:
This film boasts Kourtney Kardashian as one of its stars, playing the protagonist’s agent (why the fuck does an influencer have an agent?) and the way these scenes are written suggest she was intended to be there in person. Instead, Kourtney interacts with the protagonist exclusively via the telephone, occasionally cut with shots of her blandly reciting her lines while sitting on a bench in what is almost certainly just her garden, with a look on her face like she’s counting down to the exact second that her agreed time is up so she can kick the crew out and get on with her breakfast. There’s something so deliciously pathetic about a film like this that not only can’t get hold of one of the more popular Kardashians, the patron saints of vacuous undeserved internet fame that this film is so clearly fawning over, but the one they do settle for is so devoid of shits to give about the production that she doesn’t even try to hide her contempt for it as she gives the bare minimum possible performance.
But again, no anger. No rage or rant, just a complete void of a film that will sink beneath the waves of time and vanish from our collective consciousness. No tears, no trace, just the infinitely stretching abyss ahead of it.
The ‘Jonesy’ Award: The One that Got Away
And to close us out, this is the award for the most significant release of the year that I missed, just so no-one can accuse me of forgetting it. There’s plenty of high-profile titles I didn’t see this year: some got wide streaming releases that I was never arsed to get around to, and others I absolutely would have seen had I been given half a chance without having to trek to a tiny arthouse cinema in central London. But for this year's winner, much like the prime suspect in a murder case, I had both opportunity and motive.
It’s Another Round, a film that was not only critically acclaimed, but also loved by my peers, appealed to me personally, and even had a theatrical run in a cinema relatively close by that I like and have been to on several occasions. So, what happened?
Well, it’s still a bit of a drive, and for a release as relatively high-profile and broad-appealing as Another Round, I was holding out for a release at a cinema I could walk to, a release that never came, and while I was semi-expecting Amazon or Netflix to pick it up towards the beginning of quarter four, alas, it never happened, and I was left empty-handed. So here’s your trophy, Another Round: it’s shaped suspiciously like a hand-written apology to Mads Mikkelsen explaining why I chose the re-release of End of Evangelion over him.
And that's that: the end of the first annual CREYFAs. Wasn’t that fun? As far as ceremonies go, it certainly feels slicker than the Oscars, and you didn’t even have to wait a month to find out the results! You got to wait seven instead!
While I'm pretty happy with my selections, the format inevitably dictates I can't mention every film here that deserved a shout out, both the good and the bad, so if you're wondering about any specific titles or you're just generally curious, you can see my full 2021 ranking over on Letterboxd, as well as previous years’ rankings and my viewing stats if you’re really nosey.
And if there’s anything you think I’m missing, keep in mind the CREYFAs are adopting the old top 5 eligibility rule: feature films that went on general UK release (or closest thing to) in the year of 2021. So, while I finally managed to make it to London Film Festival last year, the one film I saw there wasn’t eligible for this list since it didn’t go on mainstream release until March of this year.
I’m sure I’ll write at least one more thing before the end of the year, so stay tuned for that, otherwise I’ll see you back here for CREYFA 2022. And maybe this time I’ll get it out while people still care about 2022…
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