No Sudden Move (2021) - Movie Review

And now, for the other Steven Soderbergh feature from this year, and indeed my last proper review of 2021. After how far outside the margins he went with Let Them All Talk, I’ll admit to being somewhat relieved that we’re back in more familiar territory this time around. A crime drama set in mid-‘50s Detroit, it starts out as a small-scale hostage thriller, but ends up ballooning out into a much deeper conspiracy involving industrial espionage and (as is usually the case with Soderbergh) a look at capitalism’s lack of ethics.

Let Them All Talk (2021) - Movie Review

While there are certainly filmmakers out there that I personally like more, I have difficulty thinking of a filmmaker who outright fascinates me as much as Steven Soderbergh. His prolific and endlessly flexible body of work, his revolutionary approach to the art form and the industry that dominates it, his consistent championing of low-budget independent filmmaking; I have all kinds of respect for the man as an artist. So I figured it would be fitting to close out my reviews for 2021 with a double-feature of the man’s most recent films, starting with this little curio of a feature.

West Side Story (2021) - Movie Review

The 1961 film adaptation of West Side Story is widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time, let alone musical films. And while I definitely get everything that makes it so memorable (the choreography, the music, the reworking of classic Shakespeare), I wouldn’t say it’s among my favourite musical films out there. Sure, that could just be because I’m so accustomed to how much it’s influenced pop culture since its release that I’m not able to appreciate it as much on its own terms, but in my own defense, both the film and the original stage musical feel like dry runs for things that the creatives involved would end up perfecting later on.

As a grand big-screen musical directed by Robert Wise, it’s good… but it’s no Sound Of Music. As a musical with lyrics from theatre extraordinaire Stephen Sondheim (who tragically passed away earlier this year), it’s good… but it’s no Sweeney Todd or Into The Woods.

So, yeah, I’m already a little bit lukewarm on the original production as is… but I’ll be honest, I can at least understand why someone would try and remake the film today. As much as I can sympathise with how the Hays code really did a number on a lot of productions at the time through executive meddling and general BS to do with non-white romantic leads, having a film all about conflict between different racial cultures, while half of the cast is in full brownface, makes it difficult for that intent to ring through.

As such, remaking it at a time when… well, I won’t say that colorism is no longer a thing within the industry (and not just in Hollywood either), but at least when filmmakers are under less pressure to pull heavy makeup tactics, could help revive it for a new generation. Hell, even though Steven Spielberg somehow hasn’t made a musical before this, he’s done pretty much everything else under the sun, so he’s as good a choice as any to give it a crack. And it’s an attempt that seems to have worked out for the better, as it manages to keep everything that makes the original musical what it is, but with just enough modernisation to help translate it into a post-millennium film market.

Summer Of Soul (...Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021) - Movie Review

More people should know Questlove by name. As the co-bandleader of The Roots alongside Black Thought, who have spent several years as the house band for The Tonight Show, he’s arguably more visible now than he and his crew have ever been before. But beyond their reliability as a musical act, these guys deserve all the credit in the world for being the greatest hip-hop band (not group, band) of all time. And Questlove is a big part of that, as not only did his production work help define the group’s jam-jazz aesthetic, but his drum work makes for some of the hardest shit ever put on wax, even considering how percussion-focused a lot of hip-hop is. And with his feature-length debut here as director, he is also shining a light on a unfairly underrated aspect of Black music and culture, with a retrospective of 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival.

Shiva Baby (2021) - Movie Review

This film hurts to watch. Not in the sense that it’s bad (far from it, as I’ll get into), but because it is an incredibly visceral representation of an equally visceral reaction to stressful social situations. Or, for quite a lot of people out there (myself included), social situations in general. It’s one of the shorter films I’ve looked at this year (about 78 minutes including credits), and its premise is a seemingly simply one. It involves college student Danielle (Rachel Sennott) attending shiva, along with her extensive extended family, and just happening to bump into Max (Danny Deferrari)… who is also her sugar daddy. Cue the panic.

The Worst Person In The World (2021) - Movie Review

This is going to be a tricky film to write about. Partly because this is a Norwegian film, a part of world cinema culture that I know even less about than what I usually cover on here (I covered the literal first Norwegian film I ever saw right here only a few years ago), but mainly because trying to encompass everything this film is going for in my usual style is a tall order. This film is a lot, and where that would normally a warning for others, I mean that in the sense that it deals in ‘a lot’. But if I had to strain and give an early summary of my thoughts on the film in a single sentence, the best I can come up with is “two hours of the most unvarnished depiction of the Millennial experience I’ve ever seen”.

Don't Look Up (2021) - Movie Review

I wanted to like this. I want to like just about everything I watch, but especially this. After Adam McKay found an interesting new direction with ensemble-cast satire based on real-world events with The Big Short, and then slipped in my favour after Vice, I wanted to see him come back on top. This kind of production, a close-to-the-bone allegory for the modern discourse involving man-made climate change and what it’s doing to the planet, is something that could use a bit of levity to clear things up. A splash of comedy to help drive home how important the issue is, and how important it is for us to take it seriously. But that’s not what we get. In fact, for as iffy as I was about Vice, I am all kinds of done with this fucking thing.