Favorites of 2021

I still have a lot of movie watching to do (can we just save year-end lists until the Oscars everyone?), but still saw some good ones in 2021. My favorite moments from these pretty much align with what what were my favorite flicks seen in the year (some new releases, others new to me, or rewatches):

• GOING TO THE FRIGGIN MOVIE THEATER AGAIN (and being the only one there to see Nobody).
• When glow stick-decorated Venom gave us a 21st century “Why Can’t we Be Friends?” speech in a nightclub in Venom: Let there be Carnage.
• Florence Pugh’s hypnotic Russian accent in Black Widow.
• Brooding close-ups of Timothee Chalamet in Dune.
• The “Sunday” sequence in Tick, Tick… Boom!.
• Buck Leonard singing “Take Me out to the Ballgame” in the 7th inning of Ken Burns’ Baseball.
• Heath Ledger doing a jig at the end of The Brothers Grimm.
• Getting down with the Chancellor in The Dark Crystal movie and TV show (sad pathetic villains really resonate with me these days).
• The eerie resonance of the apocalypse in A Quiet Place 2.
• Seeing the guy from Silicon Valley turn into a zombie in Zombieland: Doubletap.
• Revisiting Home Alone 2 again over the holidays.
• Henry Fonda working the courthouse in Young Mr. Lincoln.
• Seeing Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) reemerge as Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959).
• “It’s all about…the wanting,” as says Ray Liotta in The Many Saints of Newark.
• Pig and the exquisite anguish of Nicolas Cage (and how everyone is back on the bandwagon. Me? I never left).
• Zac Snyder’s Justice League gongoloid.
• My favorite monsters: the giant starfish in The Suicide Squad, the Dune sandworms, Agent Smith.
• My favorite performances: Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, and Robin de Jesus in Tick, Tick…Boom!; Liotta, Allesandro Nivola, Michael Gandolfini in The Many Saints of Newark; Chalamet, Oscar Isaac, Rebecca Ferguson, and Zendaya in Dune; Simu Liu, Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, and Awkwafina in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings; Tom Hanks and the robot in Finch; Pugh and David Harbour in Black Widow; Anya-Taylor Joy in Emma and The Queen’s Gambit; Fonda in Young Mr. Lincoln; Vincent Price in House on Haunted Hill; Keanu Reeves in The Matrix; Cage in Pig.
• Watching The Snowman and A Child’s Christmas in Wales in person with my family again
• “You’re not so terrific (and that’s okay)” from I Like Killing Flies
• And all of Dirty Work (RIP N.M. and B.S.)

A few other faves from 2021

• TV: Squid Game, Ted Lasso (season 2), Loki, The Queen’s Gambit; rewatching the first seasons of The Sopranos, Lost, Game of Thrones, Lost, and Westworld.
• Comics: Jimmy Corrigan: the Smartest Kid on Earth (Chris Ware), Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads, Superman Smashes the Klan by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru, Resident Alien volume 1 by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse, and Peanuts by Charles Schulz.
• Books: Poe for your Problems (Catherine Baab-Maguira), The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Alan Jacobs), Arbitrary Stupid Goal (Tamara Shopsin), Collected Poems and A Little Book on the Human Shadow (Robert Bly), Drive: the Story of my Life (Larry Bird, with Bob Ryan), The Witcher: Sword of Destiny (Andrzej Sapkowski), The Sword in the Stone (T.H. White), and Aisling (Peter Tremayne)
• Music: Trey Anastasio Band concerts in Charlottesville and D.C., Phish’s “Sci-fi Soldier” Halloween show (from afar), Umphrey’s McGee at the National, Hollow Earth Radio’s outdoor show in Seattle, a punk show at the Grand Central Saloon in Seattle, a random parking lot show at the Cobra Cabana, mornings and evenings with KUSC, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Miles Davis, Vince Guaraldi, and a live score on the Wurlitzer organ of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) at the epically historic Byrd Theater in Richmond.