I watched 121 films in 2021! Year on year i’ve gotten into film in a big way, and where previously entire years would consist of just a handful of trips to the cinema for the latest superhero releases, i’m now trying to branch out, watching older things, more diverse offerings, and going out of my comfort zone. This is still a work in progress! Every film I watched in 2021 and full statistics are here, but nonetheless I thought I would do a personal, more reflective wrap up as well.
Diversity
One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2021 was to watch more cultural, ethnic, and gender diverse films. This started off with good intentions, but i’ll be honest, i’m not entirely sure I succeeded here. Early into the year I watched the entirety of Steve McQueen’s excellent Small Axe anthology series, I watched more “chick flicks” than usual, and several film picks were just random whims, but I still don’t think I gave this resolution as much of a push as I had intended. A problem that arose early on from my film habits were the same actors reappearing, so, in the case of Marvel Cinematic Universe rewatches, heroes and villains reoccur, while watching Wes Anderson films throughout the year, as a director he also has a repeat band of actors that he works with. Both, exmples above, being predominantly white. So while this is definitely part of a wider Hollywood problem -i’m reading Helen O Hara’s excellent Women vs Hollywood atm- it is still a bit of a rut I need to get out of myself as well.
Most watched
This year, my most watched director was Wes Anderson (with 6 films), and Willem Dafoe (with 9 films) as my most watched actor. The former was catching up on a film works backlog, while the latter was more accidental: of the nine films, three were Spider-Man titles, and four were from works by Wes Anderson. An easy self-fulfilling victory. Bill Murray and Owen Wilson were second tied for actors, with eight films each. Mostly the same problem problem again. Elsewhere for directors, four films were by Steve McQueen, and three by M Night Shyamalan, but ultimately out of the 13 directors -with more than one film watched- the majority were white and male. There’s room for improvement here- in 2022 I want a radically different line-up here, with lots more female directors if possible.
Films of the Year
I made a list of my favourite films of 2021 (that I saw), but ultimately the year comes down to two faves in particular.
After watching a lot of his past works, The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson goes completely in on the director’s “house style”, with narrative whimsy at 100% the whole time. But more than that, the film has an excellent, often mind baffling technical craft to it, with a space and set design completely unparalleled to anything I’ve ever seen before. It is three separate story vignette’s that come together, and ultimately it’s a bold exploration of storytelling through different mediums and techniques in each of those stories. Lots of fun! Two people left the cinema halfway through the film, perhaps because of that whimsy, but I loved it,
My other big fave was Dune, by Denis Villeneuve. I am, ashamedly, not familiar with the Frank Herbert novel source material, but seeing this on screen -twice- was an event. As a film it is unapologetically epic with a swagger throughout it’s proceedings, with huge spacecrafts descending on planets into even bigger, vaster, deserts. I love that it never diluted what it was trying to do. There are no quips, no dumbing down, no simplification, everything here is so solid and uncompromised it it’s vision from it’s narrative, to it’s visual design, to the incredible soundtrack by Hans Zimmer, a man finally firing on all cylinders once more. As a film it lives and breathes, and pulsates, and moves, and the night ater seeing it I was having incredibly mad dreams about what I had watched. The film was a complete surprise for me.
Going forward, i’ve already mentioned above I want to try a lot harder to watch a more diverse selection of films from a more varied list of creators. As far as 2022 film goals go, that’s probably it. Additionally, I want to promote that resolution more, so discussing things here, and reviewing more. Keeping my goal in check and alive, instead of buried! I’m more interested in watching films because of word-of-mouth recommendations as well, instead of watching things because I “should” or simply because of hype. Less superheroes. So, reflective updates on this blog will hopefully be more frequent, but week to week, again, everything will be getting tracked on my Letterboxd profile. You can keep tabs on me there to make sure i’m staying on track!