2021 has been one hell of a year and we’ve already talked about the best and worst films, but sometimes there are specific performances that really just demand to be praised that aren’t necessarily in the best or worst films. Some performances are so good that they demand praise even if the film they’re part of is awful, and some are just pure fun and deserve to be talked about because we should be able to admit to enjoying them.
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Cherry (2021) – Bowl of Pits
Released: 12th March
Seen: 9th June
I’ll admit, I’ve been pretty neglectful when it comes to my Apple Plus subscription. I’ve had the service now for a while, never paid for it because it came free with my phone, and yet I’ve watched a grand total of about 6 things on it. A few episodes of Defending Jacob (never finished the series, I assume Jacob got defended), The Out on Television docuseries, Disclosure, Greyhound, Wolfwalkers and Palmer.
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Chaos Walking (2021) – Chaos Crawling
Released: 4th March
Seen: 4th March
So Hollywood is kind of realising that relying on $100 million dollar films to turn an even bigger profit is an unsustainable business model right now. Thanks to the plague that everywhere but America is taking seriously right now, no one wants to go to cinemas at the moment which means that giant budget films are losing large amounts of money.
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The Devil All the Time (2020) – The Devil Went Down To Ohio
Released: 11th September
Seen: 18th September
In 2011, the novel The Devil All the Time was released and was instantly showered with awards and praise. Written by Donald Ray Pollock as a follow up to his book Knockemstiff, it was a big enough hit that, inevitably, the rights to the book were bought and a film adaptation was announced way back in 2018. Well, now we are here two years later and what did they make? They made… a film. A film with two great performances that is a film, it’s not much more than that.
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The Current War (2020) – Shockingly OK
Released: 19th March
Seen: 6th July
The last time I got to see a film in a cinema was the 21st of March when I went to see Onward. Even back then I kind of knew that I wouldn’t be walking into a cinema for a while but no way could I have known it would be a little over 3 months. In that time we’ve watched as film after film has been pushed back to be released either in the latter half of this year or sometime in 2021, if not just sent straight to digital streaming where they probably should’ve gone in the first place (Hello Artemis Fowl) and I was left to wonder just what would be the first film I saw when the cinemas would reopen. Well, they finally opened my local up again and to the shock of no one, the pickings are slim so I decided to dive into a big theme of this year in cinema… “Hey, what’re the Avengers cast doing to follow up Endgame?”. Well, technically this film was made BEFORE Endgame but still, I figured seeing Dr Strange, Spiderman, Beast and Zod running around in period outfits and arguing about electricity would be a fairly good time and I almost got what I expected, so that’s nice.
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Onward (2020) – Spellbinding
Released: 26th March
Seen: 21st March (Advance Screening Weekend)
Onward might go down as one of the unluckiest movies in recent Disney history since its release just happened to fall when the coronavirus pandemic basically shut down everything, including most theatres. Normally a Pixar film is basically guaranteed to make 100 million in the first week, get its budget covered in the second week and be on the way to one of the highest grossing films of the year. That’s now not happening, thanks to corona. If you want to be in genuine shock at just how suddenly this hit, go look at the box office of Onward. Onward is still technically the top grossing film in America and yet it’s barely cracking a thousand bucks a theatre. I bring this up because it explains why they made a pivot and released this one straight to VOD in the states and why it’ll be on Disney+ soon. So now the question becomes “Is this film worth a slightly higher than normal rental price to stream at home” and honestly? Yeah, because it’s a pretty great film.
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Spies In Disguise (2020) – Bond-Lite, For The Kiddies!
Released: 1st January
Seen: 28th January
In 2009, Lucas Martell released a short animated film called Pigeon: Impossible. The short was simple, a secret agent sits on a bench about to eat a bagel when a pigeon comes by to take it, there are some mishaps with a computer in a briefcase and a whole lot of slapstick comedy. It’s a pretty fun little short film that clearly caught the attention of some people at BlueSky Animation because that little short film directly inspired this little animated spy comedy and in doing so created a genuinely fun little film that just oozes with charm.
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Dolittle (2020) – The Animals Talk But Have Nothing To Say
Released: 16th January
Seen: 20th January
The Doctor Dolittle character first came to life in 1920 with the release of the book The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting. The book, and subsequent series of companion novels, told the story of Doctor John Dolittle who has learned to talk to animals and uses that knowledge to go on several great adventures. This idea was destined to become a movie so it comes as no surprise that in 1967 a musical was created. That musical cost 17 million and ended up making 9 million, it had the production from hell that included racism, Rex Harrison being a dick and ducks forgetting how to swim. Naturally, the property would end up abandoned until 1998 when a new Doctor Dolittle movie was made that starred Eddie Murphy. This new version was a success financially and got average reviews but it’s still fun… but it’s also, notably, one of the last good films Eddie Murphy made until his recent resurgence with Dolemite Is My Name. Basically what I’m saying is that the Doctor Dolittle franchise is a career killer and I now seriously worry about just what’s going to happen to Robert Downey Jr because the man just appeared in the worst version of the Dolittle story that’s been put on film.
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Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) – My Peter Tingle Is… Tingling?
Released: 1st July
Seen: 1st July
STOP READING THIS REVIEW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ENDGAME. Right now, if you haven’t seen it… well, tell me what it’s like under that rock of yours, and second go and see that movie so that you’re as caught up as you can get because we’re going to talk about major spoilers from that movie since they make up a large amount of the foundation for this one. Again, I’m going to make the assumption that from this point on you are officially caught up on the major events of Avengers: Endgame and that I can spoil that movie like it was milk left under hot lights in summer. OK, let’s do this.
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Spider-man: Homecoming
Seen 6th July
First we had Tobey Maguire donning the infamous red suit for three movies in the early 2000’s. When he became unavailable the franchise rebooted and the suit went over to Andrew Garfield for the 2012 reboot The Amazing Spider-Man. Then this time, I’m guessing because having a guy pushing 30 playing a high schooler is creepy, they grabbed Tom Holland to try on the tights. Can we keep him? I like this one.
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