The Best Movies of 2021 (So Far)

Written by Raju Sharma

The summer movie season that was supposed to take place last year is upon us now, thanks to a host of newly released Hollywood efforts–A Quiet Place Part II, In the Heights, F9–that were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Better still, the fact that the domestic box-office has already come back to robust life suggests that the theatrical industry may yet survive, which is obviously great news for movie fans. For months, they've been clamoring to return to multiplexes and art houses to experience blockbuster and independent cinema in the manner it was meant to be seen: on the big screen.

That said, the continuing rise–and dominance–of streaming services has greatly expanded the availability of a globally diverse collection of films that otherwise might have been difficult for most to see. Since so many annual gems hail from overseas, that distribution model has been a boon for serious cinephiles. That’s once again true this month, when two of the year’s finest works–German auteur Christian Petzold’s Undine, a modern take on the water nymph legend; and Indian director Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple, an immersive snapshot of an aspiring musical artist–arrive from foreign shores. Couple that situation with the fact that Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple and other tech giants have brought big-ticket crowd-pleasers home via VOD (including, most recently, Cruella and The Tomorrow War), and no matter which way you look at it, the multifaceted future of moviegoing looks quiet bright. After five months, these are the best of 2021 to date.

                   Honeydew

Don’t eat anything of unknown origins – a warning that goes unheeded by oft-bickering Riley (Malin Barr) and Sam (Sawyer Spielberg, son of Steven) in Honeydew. On a New England camping trip, the couple have a run-in with an unfriendly landowner who evicts them from their sleeping spot, forcing them to embark on a nocturnal trek through the woods that leads to the home of Karen (Barbara Kingsley). Though Riley and Sam are vegans, they’re compelled to chow down on some of Karen’s home-cooked beef and bread, the latter of which is especially dicey given that this region is notorious for having lost crops and cattle to a poisonous spore. That’s just the beginning of the ordeal writer/director Devereux Milburn has in store for his protagonists, who are joined at their dinner by a dazed-looking man with a bandaged head, and who soon discover that Karen has devious plans for them – some of it having to do with her daughter. Crafted with jarring edits and split screens for maximum disorientation, the ensuing mayhem is stunning, scary and considerably gross, and heralds the arrival of a uniquely out-there horror voice.

Cliff Walkers

Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) brings glamorous style to familiar spy-movie clichés with Cliff Walkers: a knotty 1930s-set espionage saga in which four Chinese communist agents sneak into Japan-occupied Manchuria to smuggle out the sole survivor of a torture camp. This quartet splits up into couples to achieve their covert aim, only to be immediately and constantly beset by encounters with comrades who may be double (or triple?) agents. Be it early shots from the perspective of its parachuting-through-trees protagonists, or a snowy attempt to infiltrate a metropolitan gala, Zhang blends Hitchcockian suspense with Dr. Zhivago beauty, all while simultaneously shouting out to (among others) Charlie Chaplin and Sergio Leone. Virtually every convention in the Spy Fiction 101 book makes an appearance at some point, but the thrill is in the director’s orchestration of numerous set pieces that are all the more suspenseful for being somewhat inscrutable–a situation caused by plotting that keeps identities, and relationships, fuzzy and in flux. It may be dedicated to the Communist Revolution, but its real heart belongs to classic Hollywood

                         The Vigil

Things go horribly wrong in The Vigil for Yakov (Dave Davis), a young man who—having left his ultra-orthodox Jewish community for a secular Brooklyn life—accepts a job sitting vigil for a recently deceased Holocaust survivor. That task not only returns him to the neighborhood (and faith) he rejected, but puts him in the crosshairs of an evil demonic force that, it turns out, plagued both the dead man over whom he watches, and his wife (Lynn Cohen), who behaves creepily around David in her darkly lit Borough Park home. Keith Thomas’ feature debut has a great sense of its insular milieu as well as the trauma and stress of escaping an extremist religious environment, and the writer/director drums up suspense from set pieces that exploit silence to eerie effect. Davis’ harried countenance is the glue holding this assured thriller together, lending it an empathetic anguish that helps cast its action as a portrait of confronting the (personal and historical) past as a means of transcending, and escaping, it.