Superheroes, Goodbyes & More: 2021’s Top 10 Films

A Quiet Place II

A rare sequel that topped the original, and the original was excellent. All round, this is one of the more inventive horror movie franchises of the past decade or so. The original premise was strong, you have to remain dead silent for virtually your entire life or you’ll end up dead. It possesses that elusive quality that only high-quality horror movies have - it forces you to live vicariously through the characters, forces you to ask the question, ‘Would I survive in these circumstances?’ This sequel also does what good sequels do, provides extra backdrop for the events of the first movie while simultaneously pushing the narrative forward. It also manages to weave a tension-filled yarn without relying on the use of graphic blood, violence and gore to provide the thrills and shocks. It may not be in the realms of Empire Strikes Back, Terminator II or Aliens, but it’s still a damn fine sequel.

- Rod Whitfield

The Beatles: Get Back

Shot in January 1969 and compiled from over 60 hours of unseen footage (filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg) and more than 150 hours of unheard audio, all of which has been restored, The Beatles: Get Back is the story of the band as they plan their first live show in over two years and charts the writing and rehearsing of 14 new songs, originally intended for release on an accompanying live album. The film features – for the first time in its entirety – The Beatles' last live performance as a group, the famed rooftop concert on London’s Savile Row, as well as other songs and classic compositions featured on the band’s final two albums, Abbey Road and Let It Be.

Dune

The sense of anticipation with this one was intense. Not only is Frank Herbert’s sprawling 1965 epic novel arguably the greatest science fiction story ever told, not only has it been adapted for the big and small screen multiple times for very mixed results and reaction (this scribe happens to love Lynch’s take on it from the mid-'80s - it’s cheesy but it’s good cheese. Other people, however, have been far less kind towards it), plus a further high-profile attempt to celluloid it in the mid-'70s that had to be aborted, on top of all that its release was also delayed by a full year due to COVID shenanigans. Did it stand up under such weight of expectation? Absolutely, and then some. Part of its success comes from the fact that Lynch’s effort attempted to shoehorn the entire epic tale into a single movie of a little over two hours, whereas this one fits half the book into a 2.5-hour movie. Other factors are the fact that director Denis Villeneuve and score composer Hans Zimmer are both geniuses. It is perfectly cast, and the great story is treated with deep respect, albeit with a little Hollywood licence taken, as you would expect. Now, anticipation for part II is just as high…

- Rod Whitfield

In The Heights

Few movies in 2021 entered the year with a higher profile than Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda' Broadway smash. With Chu coming off the back of the wildly popular Crazy Rich Asians, and Miranda keen to be associated with anything other than Hamilton, awards pundits were predicting 2021 would be a year bookended by big-name blockbuster musicals. Not only musicals, but musicals about New York neighbourhoods trying to hold onto their sense of community in a metropolis that was literally being demolished by capitalistic success, the very force that drew the Caribbean communities to the city. Unlike Steven Speilberg’s West Side Story, In the Heights follows a bodega owner called Usnavi, who is torn between returning home to the Dominican Republic and feeding his boundless ambition into his adopted home of Washington Heights. Chu turns Usnavi's environment into a kaleidoscope of colourful dance sequences that explore social history, summer romances, family tensions and vibrantly wrought daydreams; a flurry of words and images deployed with a mastery of the genre. In the Heights is a pure burst of joy in a year when we needed one more than ever. 

- Andy Hazel

Last Night In Soho

When director Edgar Wright announced his next film would be a time travel thriller about the London fashion world of the 1960s, and that it would star Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy, two of the most exciting actresses around, expectations were understandably very high. That he also managed to secure the talents of Diana Rigg, in her last ever film performance, audiences arrived knowing this wasn’t going to be a mere exercise in style, but that Wright had something personal, and potent, in store. So when Last Night In Soho turned out to be a savage exploration of the misogyny and exploitation fuelling the much-romanticised Swinging Sixties, it was a welcome surprise. The thrills, throwaway jokes and smart deconstruction of English class and culture that we’ve associated with Wright since Spaced were accompanied here, by his biggest canvas and grandest ambition yet. Like The World’s End, Last Night In Soho has all the trappings of a film likely to age well, and one that offers more than the 116 minutes of entertainment audiences were expecting going in.

- Andy Hazel

Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson’s film spent most of 2021 with the working title of Soggy Bottom. When he landed on Licorice Pizza, it would be fair to say reactions remained at “what?”. Set in the perpetual summer of early 1970s Los Angeles, Anderson’s film languidly explores the lives of Alana Kane, played by Alana Haim, a savvy 25-year-old assistant to a casually misogynistic photographer, and Gary Valentine, played by Cooper Hoffman, a lovestruck child actor ten years her junior. Valentine tries hustle after hustle in his efforts to be an adult while Kane appreciates his adoration and the disruption to her mundane life, she never loses sight of her ambition to change the world. With a cast including Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Bradley Cooper and Benny Safdie, it’s fair to say that anyone who has appreciated any of Anderson’s films in the past will find something to love in Licorice Pizza.

- Andy Hazel

The Many Saints Of Newark

A lot of people probably had this on their end of year list before even seeing it, which is no surprise given that The Sopranos is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential television dramas of all time. The film is set in the explosive era of the Newark riots, when rival gangsters began to rise up, challenging the all-powerful DiMeo crime family’s hold over the city.

Michael Gandolfini stars as a young Tony Soprano, an iconic character originally played by his father, James Gandolfini, alongside a star-studded cast that also boasts Alessandro Nivola, Leslie Odom Jr, Jon Bernthal, Cory Stoll, Ray Liotta and more.

No Time To Die

Anyone wishing they could be in Europe in 2021 will appreciate at least the opening hour of the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die. Reeking of a pre-Covid Hollywood, a time when huge budgets were greenlit with the expectation that hundreds of millions of dollars could be raked in within an opening weekend, Daniel Craig’s final outing as 007 brought all the thrills that our lives were missing after so long in lockdown. Cutting between snowbound Norway, sunkissed Sicily, London, Jamaica and the Faroe Islands, No Time to Die won rave reviews on its release, keeping a franchise that has every reason to wear allegations that it has outstayed its welcome in the 2020s, not only alive, but delivering some of its finest scenes and greatest emotional depth yet.

- Andy Hazel

Shang-Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings

Filmed in part in Sydney, Shang-Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings stars Simu Liu as the film’s titular Marvel hero, who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organisation. The film also stars Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s friend Katy and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu and beloved Australian-Malaysian comedian Ronny Chieng. In a year that was overflowing with Marvel releases across the small and big screens, Shang-Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings stood out as refreshing and promises big things to come.

tick, tick… BOOM!

As if In the Heights, West Side Story, Dear Evan Hansen and Annette weren't enough, here comes another modern musical that asks its audience to believe that the world stops for a showtune. The difference with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first directorial effort, tick, tick…BOOM! is that it is about the making of a musical. Telling the story of Jonathan Larson, best known for giving the world the smash hit musical RENT, Miranda’s film follows the playwright's life during the early 1990s as he dwells in poverty, unable to stop writing songs about his daily life and spending years creating a musical called Superbia. Larson is played by Andrew Garfield, who is stunningly good in this role, working on a different level entirely from his work in The Social Network and Spiderman. Tick, tick…BOOM! is on Netflix and though the film deserves a big screen and big speakers, in 2021, we take what we can get, and in this case, it's a film that makes you feel very grateful indeed.

- Andy Hazel