Worst of 2021 - End of Year Report

Swine after pearls, here are the 10 films that either disappointed, annoyed or mortified me in 2021. In descending order, have a gander at some of this shite.

[Check out the full reviews by clicking on the title]

10. Clue (1985)

Found this on a streamer and kind of wish I hadn't. The cast has a lot going for it - Tim Curry, Michael McKean, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd - but none of them can rise above the forced energy and boring story. Films based on board games, eh? A product of its time.

9. The Toll (2021)

This was a huge disappointment. An interesting cast, including Michael Smiley, Iwan Rheon, Annes Elwy (best in show) and Paul Kaye, couldn't save the material. It was trying to be many things all at once, but sadly none of the angles worked. The novice writer and director will hopefully learn from this ambitious mess.

8. Death Note (2017)

This Netflix adaptation of the Japanese manga, then anime, then three (!) live action Japanese films, was entirely unnecessary. Really, how much of one slightly naff idea do we need? I guess it was made for the subtitle-averse crowd, but honestly, fuck them anyway. Sometimes I look back and wonder why I even chose certain films. This was one of those moments.

7. Candyman (2021)

We selected this as a prize for winning a film quiz at the Perth Girls' School Cinema. Mistake. Incoherent, dull, NOT scary (aside from some squirmy body horror bits) and just cack-handed. Some of the messaging was admirable but it didn't really have any focus and the director, Nia Da Costa, let it be overrun by functional murdering and a confusingly rushed ending. No, the Candyman can't.

6. The Goya Murders (2019)

This fell apart pretty quickly. A Spanish police thriller (?) about a dude who kills his victims and arranges the crime scenes to look like Goya prints, it plays out like overboiled spuds. There are two police officers who have their own problems - templated, colour-by-numbers shit - a perplexing motivation for the perp (I don't even remember it, to be fair), and a climax that was presumably meant to shock but, in fact, seems overly brutal. A script full of bollocks, nothing makes sense. Dire.

5. Spawn (1997)

An obscure director, mostly known for visual effects, has turned out a real stinker with this film (ironically, with terrible effects). Part of a glut of minor comic book adaptations in the 90s (The Rocketeer, The Shadow, Tank Girl, etc.), this was one of, if not alone as, the worst of the lot. Martin Sheen and Nicol Williamson (famous Shakespearian stage thesp) chew off as much meat as they can locate, and possibly my least favourite 'actor', John Leguizamo does his thing - irritate. Awful tripe.

4. Legend (1985)

Chimpanzee that! A Ridley Scott film in the best AND worst list of 2021. Imagine for a moment, going from your debut, The Duellists, to Alien, to Blade Runner and then....to this. Forgettable guff about an evil wizard (I think) who wants to do something or other but Tom Cruise is in the way and ummmm, well, it's hard to recall. This might have been cutting edge in the mid-80s, but it certainly hasn't aged well. Oh, and oddly, it's the second film in this list with Tim Curry in it. He had a busy 1985.

3. Annette (2021)

What a pile of pretentious crap. It seems to have its fair share of supporters, mainly in the critic circles, but I haven't seen a film for ages that spilt the critics and the punters like this did. So, it's a musical drama (almost totally 'sung-through') with a great central pairing in Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver. The issues aren't with them, but with the 'too cool by far' script by the Mael brothers (of the band, Sparks). It's repetitive and dull, and they try very hard to be tossers. They succeed. In fact, they give tossers a bad name.

2. The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965)

I actually gave this so-called film a nest icon instead of a star rating because I don't really classify it as a film as such. But that's getting into the whole 'what is art?' area, so I'll just say this is a real Barry Crocker. The guy behind it all, Bert Williams (he directed, wrote, starred, produced, etc.), plays some kind of agent dispatched to the swamps to find someone and things go pear-shaped. All well and good plot-wise, the problem is Williams clearly had no budget and, it would appear, no talent either. The whole experiment is one of the worst things ever put on celluloid, student films included.

1. French Exit (2020)

But worse than a film that isn't really even a film, comes this horrid turkey. Around 5 minutes in, I knew I was going to hate this. Rich, entitled, snobby Americans talking like nobody outside of 'literature' - what a recipe! Story - Michelle Pfeiffer and her son, Lucas Hedges, lose all their money and decide to move to Paris. People appear out of paper-thin logic to muddle the narrative. Then there's a talking cat that's supposed to be whimsical, I guess. Ah, fuck this, I'm getting angry writing about it....

Comments

Nosferatu

The best looking film of the year, this has a gorgeous array of visuals that elicited a number of quiet 'wows' and intakes of breath from yours truly. Big praise to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, production designer Craig Lathrop, art director Robert Cowper, set decorator Beatrice Brentnerova, and of course, director Robert Eggers for getting this crew together - he seems to use a lot of the same folk for his films, and fair enough, when this is the final product. Eggers has adapted the script from Henrik Galeen's original for F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, itself none too subtly ripped off from Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula . This is Eggers' fourth feature after The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman and while I haven't yet seen the first two, I didn't care much for The Northman , typically wondrous images aside. He flirts with the pomposity that affected his previous film but here it matches the gothic tones and source text, that is until Aaron Tayl...

The Quiet Girl

This is a great film, especially in the way that it manages to create something interesting out of a reasonably mundane synopsis. A young girl is sent away to a relative's house for the summer where she is treated better than at home. Sounds like it could have a bit of Rohmer-style youthful awakenings? Or maybe some gritty Loach-ian societal comment? Even perhaps a revenge tinged 'fear the youth' theme? Well, it's none of the above, and more power to its style. The Quiet Girl herself (Cáit) is a newcomer, Catherine Clinch, and she was apparently found via an Irish language school call out. She's incredible - meek, direct, no airs nor graces whatsoever, with a clear-eyed awkwardness. She's almost like a little female Bowie in The Quiet Girl Who Fell to Earth (no, not a film but I thought I'd italicise anyway). There are orbiting performances that complement her perfectly. Carrie Crowley and Andrew Bennet play Eibhlín and Seán Cinnsealach, the couple who tak...

The Good Boy

This English/Polish co-production is not to be confused with Good Boy , a dog-based horror film, even though in most regions the definite article is removed - it seems only Australia and the UK have it as The Good Boy . To muddy the waters more, in some areas, including the US, Brazil and the Netherlands, it's called Heel , something you might say to a dog. Anyway, I'll call it THE Good Boy because that's how it's being sold here. It's directed by a Polish guy called Jan Komasa, who's done some features in Poland, and written by first time writer Bartek Bartosik, alongside slightly more established Naqqash Khalid. They've concocted a genre pic that flirts with horror, winks at black comedy and straight up propositions psychological dependency drama. At the beginning of the film, young scally Tommy (Anson Boon) is a hateable twat, acting 'the big I am' on a night out, drug-fucked and aggro with everyone, until he sets off on his own for more action. ...

Supergirl

This new superhero flick from the DCU is an incel's nightmare. Following on from James Gunn's Superman of last year, Craig Gillespie takes the director's reins for this spin-off, Supergirl . Quick deviation - partway through, there's a clever aside about how Kara gets the 'girl' label, while her cousin Kal-El can use 'man'. Starting as it means to go on. Before we actually see the lead, we open with the motivating event of a family slaughter by the face-studded Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenaerts), sending young Ruthye (Eve Ridley) off on a revenge quest, which eventually drags in Kara Kor-El (Milly Alcock). Kara is on a week-long birthday bender, making sure to stay in red sun systems so that her powers don't work and the booze does. This is significant for the showstopping transformation yet to come on an interplanetary bus. Look, the film itself is fine, nothing new in the storyline structure (Andrew from The Curb notes that 'the ...

The Captive

Screening at the Spanish and Latin American Film Festival , Alejandro Amenabar's first film since 2019 is a mildly controversial take on the 5-year captivity of legendary Spanish author, Miguel de Cervantes. We begin the film as Cervantes is led into a dusty courtyard in Algiers, along with many other kidnappees. Before he can be sold as a slave, or sliced up for insubordination, he presents a letter from the Spanish court, signalling that perhaps it's better he be kept as a hostage for ransom. The film takes a bit of time to get rolling from here but when it does it settles into a clever mix of melodrama and weighty ideas. Cervantes, with his weak left arm acting like an acting crutch, slowly becomes the cheerleader of the prisoners, writing his stories in the air, only stopping when he temporarily runs light on material. The story takes a hurdle when the Bey, a high-ranking provincial governor (Alessandro Borghi) overhears the stories told in the courtyard and summons Cerv...

The Last Resort

This preview for the Nordic Film Festival is a proper drama for grown-ups, directed and co-written by Maria Sødahl, that poses some curly questions. It's about a middle class Danish couple on holiday with their young daughters in the Canary Islands. Interestingly, the Danish title is Paradis , which carries a bit more irony than its English title. Mikkel (Esben Smed) and Louise (Danica Curcic) are a typically 'normal' couple from northern Europe, enjoying their island holiday when they run down a bloke while driving at night. He turns out to be Ahmed (Aziz Çapkurt), a refugee from Afghanistan, and his leg is pretty munted. Trying to do the right thing, they take him to hospital and leave him with some cash, and crucially, their resort room and phone numbers. This minor act of kindness, and no little guilt, sets in motion a slow building series of events that fucks with the couple's holiday, and relationship in a wider sense. The resurfacing of Ahmed is clearly signpost...

The Christophers

The title of the film refers to a series of paintings started by Julian Sklar in the 90s but left unfinished for reasons made clear later. Sklar, as played by Ian McKellen, is eccentric and irascible, and seems to be a blend of famous British painters, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. As Sklar is getting on in years, his grown children hatch a plan to have the paintings 'completed' for sale, with, or preferably without, their father's knowledge. For this undertaking they must enlist renowned art restorer (and dab hand forger), Lori Butler, an old acquaintance from art college. The premise is fine, but unfortunately, as created by Steven Soderbergh (director) and Ed Solomon (writer), it doesn't have any legs. Paradoxically, the best bits are probably also part of the reason it falters. McKellen is superb as the lovelorn painter, artistically blocked and emotionally bitter. His pithy, acerbic dialogue is great and he gives the performance full welly, but the actual storyli...

Best Films of 2011 to 2020 - End of Decade Report

I realised a few weeks ago that I've been doing the Film Shapes blog since 2011. This got me thinking that it might be a doddle to put together an aggregation of the top tens of each year, a kind of 'best of the decade' list. Not such an easy task. I've had to stretch a mooted ten out to twenty and the order has been troubling me for some days. As it turns out, all these films were actually made between 2011 and 2020, otherwise titles like Inception may have snuck in. Anyway, I'll leave you with this for now and bugger the consequences. 20. Slow West (2015) An odd, melodic Western, directed by John Maclean (of The Beta Band), this has young Scot, Kodi Smitt-McPhee crossing the perilous US west, helped or hindered along the way by their excellencies Michael Fassbender and Ben Mendelsohn. As the title suggests, it's slow-paced but that's what sets it apart from other films of its ilk. Come to think of it, this is a pretty lonely ilk. 19. Bohemian Rhap sody ...

Head-On

I saw this confronting 2004 drama at the German Film Festival as part of a retrospective of Fatih Akin films. Unfortunately, there was only one screening in Perth, there might be extra shows in other cities. Akin's a great stylist, authentic and functional, and his films are informed by his cultural standing as a German-Turkish writer/director. In this film, a rough looking bloke called Cahit (Birol Ünel) smashes his car - head-on - into a wall after a heavy night on the turps. While getting treatment, he meets Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), a young woman who recognises his shared dual nationality status. She's looking for a 'Turkish' guy to marry, so her parents will get off her back. Initially sceptical and aggressively dismissive, Cahit realises Sibel is dangerously desperate, so he agrees to the sham marriage. There's an early bump in the road when Cahit kicks Sibel out on their wedding night for asking about his dead wife. Soon enough though, things settle into a room...

Nope

Jordan Peele really doesn't flinch from a stoush. His first film, Get Out , took an excoriating swipe at racism and white privilege in the US. His second film, Us , delved into class divides and human rights. His latest film, Nope , takes aim at man's subjugation of nature, primarily for profit. The marketing of this film suggests a creepy, sci-fi alien invasion film, and while this is all accurate, there's more going on here too. Daniel Kaluuya, returning for a second Peele film (after Get Out ), plays OJ Haywood, a trainer of horses that appear in films or TV. His father, Otis senior (Keith David), is killed early doors in a freak accident....or is it? Well, no obviously, it isn't, but life moves on for 6 months before more manure flies. OJ is joined by his sister, Emerald (Keke Palmer), as the Haywood Hollywood Horses business, bereft of the old man's guidance and experience perhaps, begins to flounder. OJ has been selling some of the horses to Steven Yuen's ...

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