Ask HN: What's the Most Interesting Movie You Saw in 2021?
"Judas and the Black Messiah" was a wonderful, uncompromising view into the radical black politics of the 1960s. As I was watching it I couldn't help but compare it to the weak-sauce Sorkin film "The Trial of the Chicago 7" which Sorkin ends by having the government prosecution stand up and clap for the defendants (lol); compare this to the brutal assassination of Fred Hampton by the FBI and CPD. Also compelling was Martin Sheen's heel-turn as a particularly slimy J. Edgar Hoover, given how America knows him as Sorkin's inspirational speech-giving president from the West Wing.
I saw Tenet this year. Great movie, though very confusing in ways I can't say without spoiling it. I really enjoy Christopher Nolan's work and I think this may be one of his best (though it's hard to choose).
Colectiv and Gunda.
Before Colectiv I knew from first hand experience the shocking amount of corruption in Romanian healthcare, but this was another level. And the movie helped.
Gunda was the most beautiful and most shocking movie of the year. Far more powerful than Smith's "Meat is Murder". I had no idea.
All things considered: "Come True"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7026488/
Small budget, the man who wrote it, directed it and scored most of it... reminds me of John Carpenter.
Great acting as well... was very impressed.
dune by far.
Dune was cool, but it really sent me into a deep cycle of researching Jodorowsky's Dune and how much more visionary it was by comparison. 2021's Dune is beautifully shot and tells the story in a different, more personal tone (which I'm happy to accept for a story about familial conflict), but it never quite flaunts it's scope like the book does. The Dune experience should be expansive and mind-blowing, too big to fit on my paltry TV set, and Jodorowsky's psychedelic visuals really stuck with me. It seemed like the kind of movie that would have had a shot at really changing things up.
I was apprehensive before I watched, because I am familiar with Jodorowsky's work and a fan of the Lynch version, but I was pleasantly surprised. Excellent film!