“Plan B”
Because of COVID, actor-turned-filmmaker Natalie Morales had the distinction of screening what amounts to two separate directorial debuts in 2021. The first film, “Language Lessons,” did the festival rounds and is one of the many low-budget features filmed during lockdown. But before that, Morales had already filmed “Plan B,” her road trip comedy that hit Hulu and should have been her true debut as a filmmaker. And much like “Booksmart” a couple of years ago, “Plan B” is a female-led teen comedy that has something to say but isn’t above the gross-out gags and raunch that are part and parcel with the genre. The film about two teen girls in South Dakota (played by breakout stars Victoria Moroles and Kuhoo Verma) tackles the all-too-real and sad reality that faces women trying to make informed decisions about their bodies. However, “Plan B” never forgets the comedy, first and foremost, and can educate the audience about its politics while also making jokes about pierced dicks and wild teen parties. While “Language Lessons” might seem forgettable in the long run, after the pandemic has faded into history, “Plan B” will be remembered as the feature that announced the arrival of Natalie Morales as a true filmmaking force. -CB
“Quo Vadis, Aida?”
Jasmila Žbanić’s Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film reshapes war crimes from the P.O.V. of someone caught in the middle, a translator for the United Nations who can see the train coming but can’t get the people she loves off the tracks. Rarely has a drama more deftly captured what inaction in parts of the world on the part of powerful countries and militaries leads to in the end. Her film tells the true story of what happened in the city of Srebrenica in July 1995 through the eyes of Aida Selmanagić (Jasna Đuričić, giving unquestionably one of the best performances of 2021). As an opposing army took over the city, the UN and NATO basically waited for instructions, knowing full well that their safe zone would crumble and that it would be refugees who paid the greatest cost. It’s a devastating drama that Carlos Aguilar called “a masterful high wire act of tension and devastating humanism.” – BT
“Pink Skies Ahead”
While some have over-criticized Kelly Oxford’s “Pink Skies Ahead” for a perceived lack of originality – as if a coming-of-age movie somehow has to reinvent the wheel of narrative storytelling – there hasn’t been a youth comedy this heartbreaking and hilarious in some time. The film amusingly begins, almost in media res, with a humorously abrasive scene that sees the movie’s too-smart-for-her-own-good teen protagonist, Winona (Jessica Barden), trying and failing to drive a car. A lot of Winona’s life involves trying and failing things: it extends to driving, communication with her emotionally distant parents (Marcia Gay Harden and Michael McKean, respectively), trying and failing to talk to boys (Lewis Pullman, as always, is a major standout), and really just trying and failing to be “normal.” Our own Robert Daniels called Oxford’s film “charming and irresistible” and wrote that, when it finds its groove, the film is “beautiful in its honest brutality.” – NL
“Saint Maud”
At its most effective, Rose Glass’s intensely unsettling “Saint Maud” validated this Jewish writer’s trepidation about those who take the Christian faith to its extreme outer limits. Stylistically, the film owes a greater debt to expressionistic retro shockers like George Romero’s “Season Of The Witch” and the skin-crawling “Let’s Scare Jessica To Death” than some of the more recent entries in the A24-adjacent elevated horror subgenre. “Saint Maud” is, in its own sickening way, a gorgeous thing to behold: a hellacious swan-dive into pure darkness that goes there in ways that most contemporary horror flicks don’t even attempt; The Playlist’s Jason Bailey went so far as to reward the film with an A, stating that the film heralds the “arrival of a remarkable new talent.” Star Morfydd Clark is a true discovery, her expressions blank and foreboding in equal measure, and by way of her ferocious and committed performance, “Saint Maud’s” mania becomes ours as well.– NL
“Shiva Baby”
Who knew that “Shiva Baby,” the most aggressively uncomfortable look at a Jewish malaise since “Uncut Gems,” would turn out to be one of 2021’s surprise crossover hits? Frankly, it’s not difficult to see why that’s the case: Emma Seligman’s fearlessly confident takedown of overbearing parents, transactional sex, and one-sided friendships isn’t just a brilliantly constructed indie comedy; it’s also one of the funniest movies of the year – the kind where you laugh so loud, and so often, that you actually end up missing jokes. “Shiva Baby” makes for a memorably prickly and unexpectedly sweet bit of comic schadenfreude, one that builds up a devious momentum through a barrage of humorous microaggressions and petty slights; Playlist critic Kristy Puchko was a fan, giving Seligman’s film an A and writing, “The specifics are Jewish, but the pitch-perfect humiliation humor is universal.” It’s a great movie about characters that couldn’t outrun their Judaism if they wanted to. – NL