Halfway Mark - Team Experience "Top Three" Random Joyfulness
Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 4:44PM 
Nathaniel here. Since I already shared my favourites of 2021 thus far in terms of films and performances, I asked the team about theirs halfway through the year. Since not everyone has had the opportunity to get fully back into the swing of moviegoing they were given free reign to share any kind of "top three" they wanted to. I felt such joy reading what made them the happiest, entertainment-wise, this year thus far. Maybe you will to. The various "top threes" after the jump...
Ben Miller's Top 3 Surprises of 2021- SHIVA BABY
Who knew a film about a bisexual Jewish girl would appeal to me, the exact opposite of that? I loved every minute of Emma Seligman's debut, especially Polly Draper as the world's most neurotic mom. - THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
Everyone's exuberant dismissal of the film lowered my expectations enough where I fully enjoyed it. All the actors seems to be in a different movie, but Jullianne Moore unsurprisingly gets it. - 2020 OSCAR WINNERS
As much as the ceremony was a disaster, the Academy really knocked the winners out of the park. They spread the wealth and awarded maybe the best quartet of winners in years
Lynn Lee's Three Favourite Scenes of 2021
- NOMADLAND – “See you down the road”
I didn't see it until this year, so I say it counts! A rare moment, near the end of the film, in which the normally reserved Fran (Frances McDormand) speaks openly about her loss of her husband, prompting a wonderfully empathetic response from nomad guru Bob Wells. It’s a perfect distillation of Nomadland’s quiet, bittersweet power, encapsulated in Wells’ mantra about there being no final goodbyes in the life they’ve chosen – just “I’ll see you down the road.” His delivery of that line still brings tears to my eyes. - IN THE HEIGHTS – “When the Sun Goes Down”
This is what you can do with a movie musical that you can’t do on stage. No CGI, no cuts, just good old-fashioned movie magic: a camera tilt, a folding wall, artful choreography and set design, and full commitment from Lesley Grace and Corey Hawkins as the couple whose love defies gravity. It’s pure cinematic delight, underscored by the sight gag of the adolescent kid who witnesses them dancing across his window and, like us, can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. - SUMMER OF SOUL – “Precious Lord”
In a lineup of musical legends, the highlight of Questlove’s doc about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, aka “Black Woodstock,” is the tag-team performance of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” – a song Martin Luther King, Jr. requested just before his assassination the year before – by then up-and-coming Mavis Staples and gospel queen Mahalia Jackson. Staples begins gloriously, but once Jackson opens her mouth, the effect is jaw-dropping: you feel her channeling the collective grief and anger over MLK’s death and transmuting it into joy. And when the two ladies join voices to take the crowd to church, it’s all over but the hallelujahs.
Lynn is a government lawyer who spends most of her time outside work obsessing over arts and pop culture of all kinds. Her first love, though, will always be movies. She doesn't do social media. [All of Lynn's articles]
Glenn Dunks Top Three "Five-Star" Entertainments
Beyond Raoul Peck’s Exterminate All the Brutes, which I reviewed earlier in the year, there have only been three 2021 titles to date that have given me the five-star warm and fuzzies. That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a lot to really like, though: Stephen Johnson’s High Ground, Questlove’s Summer of Soul, season 3 of FX’s Pose and queer history miniseries Pride. But these three? These have been everything.
- BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR
Medicinally spiked mania in the form of this hyper-colored comedy from Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. I hope to one day watch this with a crowd of equally stoned goofballs. - PRETEND IT'S A CITY
Martin Scorsese follows Fran Lebowitz around (pre-pandemic) New York City and lets her be her acidic, witty best. I could’ve watched a dozen more episodes of this. - BO BURNHAM'S INSIDE
‘Welcome to the internet…’, and what a swing for the fences this was. And so accidentally well-timed as my home city went back into a COVID lockdown as it popped up on Netflix. You could fill an entire Best Original Song category (Oscar and Emmy) with entries from Burnham’s quarantine project. I haven’t been able to stop listening for weeks now.
Glenn is an Australia-based award-winning film writer seeking out documentaries, obscure Australian cinema and queer art films. You can follow him on Twitter or Instagram. [All of Glenn's articles]
Cláudio Alves's Three Most Memorable Images of 2021
- The Galician coast dipped in blood, scarlet filters, and ruby light painting the landscape into oblivion. Yet, amid its monochrome, white-ish figures emerge. Are they ghosts? Witches? Monsters? Lois Patiño's RED MOON TIDE remains one of the most haunting flicks of 2021. Ever since watching it, I keep thinking back to its visuals. They torment me in dreams, nightmares.
- Youthful love, its sunny hedonism, and whole-bodied abandonment crash into grief. Ozon's SUMMER OF 85 features many an arresting image, all captured in celluloid glory by cinematographer Hichame Alaouié. However, it's the sight of a teenager desperately dancing on a grave that has stayed with me. The sight synthesizes euphoria mixed with mourning, the ghost of erotic desire and guilt holding hands.
- Few things have brought me more joy in this cinematic year than Nao Serati's costumes for THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT'S A RESURRECTION. Watching dearly departed actress Mary Twala stand in the Lesotho landscape, either garbed in deep mourning or jewel-toned costume, is akin to a miracle. Pierre De Villiers' lensing makes her shine like a flame of human resilience.
Cláudio is a Portuguese film writer and costume designer for several small productions. You can follow him on
Twitter , Letterboxd, and Instagram. [All of Claudio's articles]
Juan Carlos's Three First-Watches: World Cinema Edition
As I prepare for the sixth season of my podcast The One-Inch Barrier (streaming on all platforms!) where we will discuss the Oscar for Foreign Language Film and world cinema during the 1960s, I look back at the two seasons we have covered this year so far (1970s and 1980s). Here are my top three discoveries:
- SEVEN BEAUTIES (1976)
For its unbelievably high stakes reexamination of the horrors of war pulled off with utmost panache and grit. - WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN (1988)
For throwing everything out the window (literally) for a riotous take on womanhood, Almodóvar-style. - DAY FOR NIGHT (1973)
For reminding me of the controlled chaos that is the making of the film in all of its heightened relationships and rifts
Carlos is a Filipino film graduate. He commits most of his time to his podcast The One-Inch Barrier. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram. [All of Carlos's articles]
Christopher James Top Three Cries
How many of you are easy criers? I am one for sure. There have been many things to cry about over the past year during the pandemic. For the first half of 2021, thankfully there have been more happy tears than sad tears. Here are my top three movie-related cries of the year.
- GOING BACK TO THE THEATER
For those LA readers, know it was important to go to the Landmark for my first movie theater experience. It was where I saw first run Oscar films as a college student and spent most weekend mornings of my adult life. Thankfully, the Landmark was still full of chatty septuagenarians buying the movie pour of Chardonnay. Together Together was wonderful and Ed Helms and Patti Harrison were both great. Yet still, nothing was more emotional than being back with my best friend in my favorite theater after a long 14 month absence. - “PACIENCIA Y FE” - In the Heights
In reality, most of In the Heights produced all sorts of tears - tears of joy (the high energy of the opening), tears of awe (the production number of “96,000”). However, Olga Merediz’s big number, “Paciencia y Fe,” really turned up the water works. Her tour de force look at her family’s immigration to America gave a more fully formed look at the changing neighborhood of Washington Heights. The number is a fully formed three-act story all distilled into five minutes. - A CAR DRIVES UP TO A BBQ - F9
I have cried at most of the Fast and Furious movies. The latest (and goofiest) chapter was no exception. Paul Walker’s death still hangs over the franchise not as a figure of death, but as a warm friend looking down from beyond. In the final moment of the film, the crew acknowledges an empty chair at the table, referring to Walker’s Brian. Just then, a car drives up to the barbecue, reminding us that in the world of The Fast and the Furious, Brian O’Conner is alive and happy. It’s beautiful and I’m a sap.
Christopher James works by day as a Digital Marketing Specialist. By night, he's a freelance entertainment writer. You can follow him on Twitter, SoundCloud, and Instagram. [All of Chris's articles]
Mark Brinkerhoff's Three Favourite Criterion Collection Releases
- THE FURIES (1950)
Barbara Stanwyck is a (inter)national treasure. Monumental versatility aside though—she can do anything—the genre I perhaps love her most in is westerns. And this Anthony Mann-directed frontier melodrama may be her finest hour this side of Double Indemnity or The Lady Eve. - ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY (1970)
For theater nerds (guilty), D.A. Pennebaker’s seminal documentary of the behind-the-scenes sturm und drang of one of legendary lyricist Stephen Sondheim's all-time greatest—and most autobiographical—musicals is a must. See/own it for the taut sequence of an at-wits-end Elaine Stritch alone! - PARIAH (2011)
Released at the tail-end of Pride month, Dee Rees’ breakthrough is one of the best, most powerful films (LGBTQ+ or otherwise) of the decade, thanks in large part to an astounding central performance by Adepero Oduye, whom Meryl Streep quite rightly name-checked during her iconic (at least to me) 2012 Golden Globes acceptance speech in 2012.
What brought you the most joy, halfway through the year?
Team Experience, Year in Review
Reader Comments (16)
Halfway through the year and no other film comes close to the compelling narrative, the visual artistry, and the astonishing performances of the seven hours of Mare of Easttown.
Seconding Mark's love for the Company Cast Recoding doc (I'll always be saddened that it's really the only one that got made. Would've been some real cool/interesting shit there..). It was on YouTube in....questionable quality for a while, but mostly seems to exist in clips. But the good news is that, if you don't have the funds to get the Criterion, the scene Mark's talking about's on there and it's every bit awesome as you'd think!
Mark Brinkerhoff- Pariah is a wonderful film and I'm so glad I discovered it. It lead me to Dee Rees and I have loved everything of hers I have seen.
No CGI? Really? My big qualm with that scene from IN THE HEIGHTS is that there *is* CGI! They could have so easily done it with just practical effects, but they didn't. It's not the worst, because the weightless quality conferred by the digital assist goes along with the number, but it was more than a little distracting.
I've been saying this forever to all my friends. The Furies is absolutely spectacular and Stanwyck's performance may be her best, even when you count Double Indemnity and The Lady Eve.
I just couldn't believe how much rage and desire she manage to pack in a performance. The movie is quite unique, too. It looks like a western, but it's the most violent father-daughter melodrama ever.
Bonus points: extremely complicated sexual dynamics. In every other movie Stanwyck's character would be queer, but here she's fiercely straight, and that oversexualization surely threatens her father in a way that their repressed sexual tension becomes a bloody competition.
There's a Greek tragedy going on behind this pulp surface, but anyone who has seen Mann's PERFECT The Man From Laramie can expect this influence.
Between The Furies, The Man From Laramie and, OMG, the sensational film noir Raw Deal, I think Anthony Mann is a hidden secret.
I have a new most memorable image and it's accompanying Cláudio's paragraph. <3 <3
@James, I loved, LOVED, loved! Mare of Easttown. It surpassed my expectations in nearly every way (similar to how the first season of True Detective did back in 2014).
@Chris, wonder how the original cast/playwrights/producers of Company felt about the doc? Maybe it didn't go over so well on first release, which I guess could've cooled the enthusiasm or interest any other Broadway production may have had about their own making-of? Just a theory.
@Tom, should've prefaced this list with "three favorite *new* Criterion Collection releases" since there are so many choice ones, thankfully now including Pariah. (Did you see Dee Rees' latest with Anne Hathaway, by the way?)
@Cal, excellent analysis. Stanwyck always delivers, but you're right about Anthony Mann, too. He died too young, and would be worthy of a bundled Criterion restrospective of his own.
@Marko- from what I've read, they DID plan on making more, but one of the major producers moved to LA and the rest just..never continued. As for the cast and creative team, I think they're fine with it! I mean, they didn't try to stop its being made, so.
Ah, interesting. Well at least we have the one! (I especially enjoy seeing the likes of Barbara Barrie, Dean Jones, Elaine Strich, and Stephen Sondheim at their peak, as well as reminiscing about weird factoids, such as the fact that Beth Holland [Amy, later Vera on Alice] and Charles Kimbrough [Harry, later Jim Dial on Murphy Brown] met during this and eventually married decades later!)
Only one cinematic pleasure to report, off the top of my head: returning to the cinema twice in one weekend last month and seeing all kinds of trailers (which I normally hate) and two very different films: Cruella (B-) and In the Heights (B+).
(And it must be said. Glenn Dunks keeps getting handsomer and handsomer. ::swoon::)
I don't know what's 2020 or 2021 anymore but I would pick Rosamund's haircut in I Care a Lot and Olga Merediz¡s Paciencia y fe.
Also saw and loved Ozon's Été '85. Much better than Call Me by Your Name.
and It's a Sin.
I love Glenn's pic and picks
There is plenty of other CGI in "In The Heights" - the crowd scenes in the back are fake, digitally duplicated hundred times over.
These are all wonderful!!! Thank you for sharing!!
Loved reading all of these and seeing those documentaries including SUMMER OF SOUL and ORIGINAL CAST RECORDING.
"Paciencia Y Fe" wrecked me. Entirely. Entirely.