THE FILM year 2021 was if anything more confused than 2020. The previous year we went into lockdown; last year we emerged from lockdown only to go back partially due to Delta, emerge partially, go back partially in response to Omicron — a confused chaotic state. The best films, I think, didn’t reflect that confusion so much as expressed themselves despite, raising their collective yet distinct voices above the turmoil. Hence:
15. Revolution Knows No Gender (Joselito Altarejos, 2020, available on KTX.PH) — I admired the laser focus of Mr. Altarejos’ previous Jino to Mari, about a pair of sex workers lured then forced into performing a live show together. This film felt both more scattershot and more ambitious, the story of a gay filmmaker and his troubled relationships morphing into said filmmaker’s political awakening — the latter half being less strident and more powerful than the former.
14. House of Gucci (Ridley Scott, 2021, showing in Philippine cinemas Jan. 19) — Scott takes a peek behind the facade of high fashion’s most prestigious brand and is rewarded with a vision of hedonistic luxury, corporate skullduggery, family backstabbing, and — yes — murder. Refreshingly unwholesome entertainment.
13. Fan Girl (Antoinette Jadaone, 2020, on Netflix) — Ms. Jadaone’s update of Lino Brocka’s classic Bona, about a fangirl obsessed with a handsome actor, raises the dramatic stakes — the small-time actor is in this film a bona fide movie star, an alpha male as unstable and toxic and corrupt as the fascist currently residing in Malacañang.
12. Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0: Thrice Upon a Time (Hideaki Anno, 2021, on Amazon) — Mr. Anno, after a TV series, a two-part expanded finale, and a three-part reboot of the series, finally reveals his ultimate design: that these revisions, expansions, remakes are really his way of resolving Shinji Ikari’s anguished father complex, allowing the awkward boy to finally grow up. Ambitious fare for what, after all is said and done, is supposed to be a mere mecha animé.
11. Zola (Janicza Bravo, 2020, US commercial run 2021, on Hulu or Amazon Prime) — Hilariously profane, perhaps the greatest film ever made from a Tweetstorm.
10. The French Dispatch, (Wes Anderson, 2021, on Apple TV or Amazon Prime) — Mr. Anderson’s valentine to The New Yorker is written, shot, and directed to look and feel like an elaborate pop-up version of the magazine.
9. Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021, on Amazon Prime and Vudu) — Black man with a hook for a hand preys mainly on the colonizing white upper class. Urban gentrification was never this seductively stylish. Or bloody. Or disturbingly funny.
8. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021, may stream on either HBO Max or Disney Plus) — Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Bernstein’s classic musical about racism in New York’s West Side, finally realized by a filmmaker.
7. Annette (Leos Carax, on Amazon Prime) — Again musical theater only crazier (lyrics and melodies by Sparks), about a standup comedian, a soprano, and their marionette child.
6. In the Earth (Ben Wheatley, 2021, Amazon Prime and Hulu) — A scientist and his guide looking for a lost fellow scientist encounter a crazed camper, a hallucinogenic spore-filled fog, and a sinister standing stone. Ben Wheatley being unearthly funny and terrifying.
5. Titane (Julia DuCornau, 2021, Amazon Prime and Google Play) — Serial-killer female gets pregnant by lowrider Cadillac and seeks refuge with an aging drug-addicted firefighter. Bizarre enough but even more bizarre is the delicately poignant bond that develops between man and adopted daughter.
4. Nightmare Alley (Guillermo del Toro, 2021, in theaters, soon to be streaming) — Mr. Del Toro describing not the horror of monsters or demons but the shape of a man’s life, and its eventual inevitable downward spiral.
3. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021, on Netflix) — Ms. Campion’s maddeningly compelling slowburn story of psychological abuse and elliptical payback, set in the turn-of-the-century west.
2. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021, Amazon Prime, YouTube) — Mr. Schrader’s latest version of his God’s Lonely Man, a constant consistent character throughout his films — this time a Guantanamo soldier haunted by his memories of torturing prisoners, now living the monastic life of a professional cardplayer. An austere little gem.
1. History of Ha (Lav Diaz, 2021, further screenings to be announced) — Basically a four-hour film about a ventriloquist and his dummy. Mr. Diaz traces the Filipino’s fascination with fascists to the sudden death of President Ramon Magsaysay in 1957, and offers as a possible response to this powerful emerging myth the story of bodabil performer Hernando Alameda and his companion, Ha.
SEEN IN 2021:
8. Favorite sequel — The Matrix Resurrections. Lana Wachowski going at it solo goes back to the well one more time and (like Zuckerberg) turns the Matrix meta. This time it’s more sneakily entertaining, with the film poking fun at the entire franchise, though I miss the beautifully coherent action filmmaking the sisters developed for Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending. Junky fun.
7. Favorite mainstream — Chloe Zhao’s The Eternals. Worst film she’s made so far and the best MCU movie I’ve seen to date. What more to say?
6. Public Service Announcement on Netflix — Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up. No, it’s not Dr. Strangelove but it is perhaps the end of the world comedy we deserved: crude (to make sure the right-wing nutcases know who’s being targeted), lewd (mildly, to make the medicine go down), and not a little sentimental (to, hell I don’t know, make the whole exercise that much more challenging).
5. Also on Netflix — Isabel Sandoval’s Lingua Franca. Beautifully understated story of an undocumented trans woman’s struggle to stay alive in Trump’s America.
4. On Criterion — Mitchell Leisen films. His Midnight can touch the comic highs of Renoir, his No Man of Her Own plumbs the depths of Cornell Woolrich, his Kitty (as David Melville somewhat extravagantly puts it) can compare to Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. May be an auteur, may be an artist.
3. ABS CBN restoration — Pio de Castro’s Soltero. An unlikely but ultimately necessary treatment on loneliness in Philippine society, with an unforgettable performance by the late Jay Ilagan.
2. On Facebook — Celso Ad Castillo’s Virgin People. A cross between The Book of Genesis and the Playboy Channel, lyrical filmmaking in the service of ambitious softcore.
1. On Mike De Leon’s Citizen Jake Vimeo site — Susana de Guzman’s Lupang Pangako (Promised Land). Incomplete but delicious: spoiled socialite (Mila del Sol), forced to marry to collect her fortune, picks a man with a heart condition (Leopoldo Salcedo); when he lingers past his expected sell-by date, he badgers her with politically radical ideas on how to spend her barely earned money.
