Try Harder! (2021) | Directed by Debbie Lum

 4/5

Debbie Lum’s Try Harder! is a thoroughly compelling look at the struggles of high school students in a prestigious public high school as they attempt to apply for elite universities. The students that Lum chooses to follow make for great interview subjects and provide a range of the experiences and reactions to the familial and societal pressures and expectations. Even though the film has a light tone through much of its runtime, it never shies away from exploring the racism that’s baked into the college admissions process and the ways university recruiters rely on stereotypes of Asian American teenagers during the application process. There are genuinely moving and heartbreaking moments throughout, as well as moments of genuine triumph. And as competition for college placement continues to get even more intense across our country (exacerbated by the pandemic), the film is a good reminder that the system we have in place now puts an inordinate amount of pressure on students. This is a really strong, very enjoyable film that’s more timely and relevant than ever.

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The Neutral Ground (2021) | Directed by CJ Hunt

 4/5

CJ Hunt’s The Neutral Ground is a rare first-person documentaries that manages avoid the snarky condescension of the format, due largely to Hunt’s genuine warmth and curiosity toward his interview subjects he follows the attempt to remove Confederate monuments in New Orleans. The meat of the film provides a thorough overview of the debate over Confederate monuments, as well as an important corrective and accurate history over how they came to be. The tone throughout is playful and gentle without ever mocking or belittling monument supporters – yet all the while still challenging their egregious beliefs. As the film proceeds, it becomes more sincere and more genuinely moving as part of an attempt to honestly reckon with the history of slavery in this country and the desire to help people wake up from their own ignorance. It’s an emotionally powerful, incredibly sobering, and thoroughly entertaining film about a difficult subject that we need to be having as a country.

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Passing (2021) | Directed by Rebecca Hall

 5/5

Rebecca Hall’s Passing is an exceptional film, filled with incredible performances from the entire cast – especially Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. The black-and-white photography is luminous, and the use of light and shadow helps accentuate the different worlds our two protagonists move through and whether they are passing or not. The use of mirrors throughout opens up the spaces and reflects back the ways characters see themselves within a racist, oppressive society obsessed with surface appearance. And yet, the heavy reliance on point of view shots – often with limited vision, blurry, or obscured and altered – highlights how impossible it is to rely solely on our own perceptions and interpretations of a situation. This is a film that would all-too-easily become an easy sermon or message film, but Hall wisely allows the characters to remain complicated and nuanced, with class distinctions within the Black community and white benefactors adding additional layers of hierarchy to the relationships and obscuring motivations. Portions of the film are shot to look like a missing film from the late ‘20s or early ‘30s, a missing melodrama or proto-noir about the lives of Black women, and you can’t help but reflect on the stories and films from that period that we’re missing because of the voices silenced due to racism. This is a fantastic film, a nuanced and beautifully crafted work.

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The Green Knight (2021) | Directed by David Lowery

 4.5/5

David Lowery’s The Green Knight is a gorgeous, hypnotic film filled with striking cinematography, lush colors, and captivating visual compositions. The use of wide angle lenses throughout heightens the film’s dreamlike sensibility as it explores the paganism buried within much of European Christianity and deconstructs Western notions of chivalry, honor, and the ways these are often tied to class, gender, and privilege. All of the royal finery is grounded in muck and grime, but with an eye toward the mystical and the transcendent. The episodic structure pays homage to the source material and provides a space for many incredible performers to pass through the narrative, but it’s all anchored by Dev Patel’s turn as Gawain. His performance becomes one of learning to lose yourself to find yourself, of abandoning self-interest and self-preservation for the sake of others. It’s a moving, beautiful film that invites much reflection, pondering, and an eagerness to return to its mysteries.

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Titane (2021) | Directed by Julia Ducournau

 5/5

Julia Ducournau’s Titane is a remarkable film about human connection and the way reaching out to another person can reconnect us to our own humanity, helping us heal from trauma and loss. Of course, connection and healing don’t mean that the past is suddenly erased. Ducournau understands that consequences are still very real and uses body horror throughout the film to graphically illustrate the idea that the consequences of Alexia’s actions – the ways she has hurt and damaged and destroyed other lives – don’t magically disappear as she begins to heal and reconnect to others – as she reconnects to her own humanity. With all of the trauma and hurt and pain Ducournau’s characters have suffered, there are these constant attempts to transform the body – to make an aging body young and virile once more, for another to close herself off from feelings and become one with a machine – all physical responses deep trauma and loss. Ducournau is also interested in exploring ideas of looking and being seen – the leering men and potentially abusive father, then the very different gaze of the accepting father substitute – and the camera alters (its movement, its position, its perspective) according to who is looking and who is being seen. And to top it all off, there’s the grim humor throughout – our signal that we’re not meant to take the murder and mayhem onscreen literally (it’s all representative of the film’s deeper themes and concerns) and which helps us build our empathy toward Alexia, a protagonist who commits horrific acts of violence. Like Ducournau’s previous film, there are so many layers to keep exploring and uncovering – this is a rich film that will certainly reward many future viewings.

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A Cop Movie (2021) | Directed by Alonso Ruizpalacios

 5/5

Alonso Ruizpalacios’s A Cop Movie is an outstanding documentary utilizing multiple layers of artifice in order to uncover truths about the nature of policing in Mexico. As the film progresses, it keeps revealing itself to us, keeps complicating its initial setup, turning in on itself to become something altogether more nuanced and enthralling than you might expect. Taking the audio from two very strong interviews with police officers in Mexico City, actors recreate the sequences, lip-syncing over the audio until the scene is interrupted and we begin to follow the actors and observe their process preparing for these roles. Another shift occurs when we meet the interview subjects on camera for the first time and see them tell their story for themselves. Ruizpalacios constantly interrogates his own creative process, the ethics of making a film about the police in a country where corruption runs rampant. And yet he also explores how complicated this system is – the chain of corruption that extends all the way to the officers’ superiors and their equipment supervisors, as well as the poverty that drives individuals to join the police force in the first place. This is an exceptional work of non-fiction filmmaking, bending the form to craft a stunning masterpiece.

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The Sparks Brothers (2021) | Directed by Edgar Wright

 4.5/5

Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers is an outstanding music documentary that is an absolute joy to watch. It gives a comprehensive overview of the life and career of Sparks and wisely shares enough of their music throughout so that anyone who isn’t familiar with their oeuvre doesn’t feel ostracized or unwelcome. In fact, it’s an incredibly generous film for anyone new to their music, and Wright has gathered an incredible assortment of interviews from fans, other musicians, producers, and the Mael brothers themselves to help provide context for the songs and albums. The use of archival material and found footage is phenomenal, and Wright proves to have a deft hand at structuring the material with interviews and just enough stylistic flourishes to match Sparks’ own style and personaes. It’s a fantastic, engaging, and thoroughly entertaining musical documentary.

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All Light, Everywhere (2021) | Directed by Theo Anthony

 5/5

Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere is an exquisite documentary exploring the nature of modern surveillance, consistently raising questions about the ethics of its own creation. Throughout the film, as we examine the history of cameras and the recorded image, as well as the ways in which this is inextricably bound up in the history of warfare and policing and weaponry, Anthony reveals the many fraught decisions a documentary filmmaker faces in crafting a film of this nature. He constantly interrogates the notion of objectivity and shows just how difficult it can be to completely remove bias from our policing and surveillance systems, especially when we put all our faith in cameras, in recording devices, in tools designed to give us a dispassionate and unbiased record of “the truth.” But the film constantly shows us the gaps in a recording device’s ability to capture reality – whether due to the technical limitations of aerial surveillance or the designed limitations of police body cams. And by continually stepping back to show us how the documentary crew sets up a shot, edits a sequence, or removes the breath from a voiceover recording, we’re continually reminded that the images we’re left with in any frame can only tell one part of a larger story. This is a fantastic work of expressionistic non-fiction filmmaking – an exhilarating viewing experience.

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Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma (2021) | Directed by Topaz Jones, Simon Davis, Jason Sondock

 5/5

Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma, directed by Topaz Jones, Simon Davis, and Jason Sondock, is a fantastic short documentary comprised of 26 vignettes blending surrealism, archival footage, sketch comedy, direct observation, and interview to craft a stunning portrait of contemporary Black experience. The film’s interviews with activists are essential and provide the necessary grounding for a work that so intentionally toggles between absurdity and profundity, comedy and despair, terror and joy. There isn’t a wasted moment here – this is an exceptional work of creative non-fiction and packs more into its 34 minutes than many films are able to do with three times the length. It’s an incredible and invigorating film.

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Black Power: A British Story of Resistance (2021) | Directed by George Amponsah

 4.5/5

George Amponsah’s Black Power: A British Story of Resistance is another exceptionally strong documentary in this series of films outlining the struggles of Black British citizens and immigrants fighting for their rights. This installment outlines the history of and explores the groups within Britain’s Black Power movement, and looking at both the internal and external forces that eventually led to its collapse. While inspired by the United States’ Black Power movement – and even though it certainly had ties to many of the groups and leaders – the film carefully illustrates the major differences and ways that the Black British community took the Black Power philosophy and made it their own. The powerful interviews with leaders and participants in the movement detail Britain’s long history of racism and discrimination, as well as the ways in which the various groups within the Black Power movement would overlap and work together. Like all of the films in this series, the use of archival material and found footage is exceptional, as are the musical selections that underscore the narrative. And it’s especially powerful to have the film draw such a clear through line between the Black Power movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s and today’s struggle for racial justice.