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Year in Tiers 2021 - Hershey Bar

The Middle Tier finds the inoffensive, middle of the road films that can best be described as average or slightly above. Fine. Like a Hershey Bar. There have been so many improvements on the candy bar at this point that a simple chocolate bar pales in comparison. It's still chocolate, it's just not anything to get all that excited about. It'll float around in the candy jar until all the better options are taken.

#59. The Tragedy of Macbeth

Maybe it's just the apple+ logo that proceeds the film or the startlingly empty production design, but I just couldn't escape the feeling that I was watching a bunch of bored millionaires needlessly play theater here. As excellent as Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington are, the whole thing feels like a silicon valley tech company renting out Bruce Springsteen to perform at their Holiday Party. The first film Joel Coen has directed without his brother Ethan is sorely missing the stylistic visual fingerprints of their earlier work and even worse, lacks the unique sense of humor the duo bring to nearly everything they touch. It's a bleak and uncharacteristically bland adaptation. I can see why Ethan sat this one out.


#58. Army of the Dead

I love that Netflix is slowly turning into the safe-haven for dejected filmmakers seeking refuge from the meddling studio system. But as much as I hate to admit it, more often than not, you can see why these directors need reeling in a bit. Army of the Dead arrives at a whopping 2 and a half hours with a greenlit anime series already in the works, a spin-off prequel, and not one but TWO sequels announced in the near future. And it's all built around the bare bones premise of zombies in Las Vegas. Zack Snyder is a hell of a director but he still has a ways to go in terms of writing - especially when you compare this to his earlier breakout zombie feature Dawn of the Dead (written by Guardians of the Galaxy's James Gunn). Snyder's still knows how to piece together a great opening credits sequence though.


View Our List of the Top 10 Zombie Films of All Time


#57. America: The Motion Picture

With Sealab 2021 creator Matt Thompson in the director's chair, I stuck with this longer than most probably would have. But honestly, it wasn't terrible. It just likely would have been better suited as a series, cut up into adult swim sized portions so that the stupidity doesn't beat you into the ground for 100 straight minutes. And it's not really smart enough to be considered satire, but more a College Humor over the top collection of frat jokes. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't giggle a few times. And hey, they even snuck Jason Mantzoukas in there! And I didn't hate him! Whatya know!


#56. Cruella

At face value, a Cruella Devil origin story where Cruella's mother is murdered by Dalmatians and Emma Stone is brought in to play the infamous Disney villain as an 80's punk fashionista in a hybrid of The Devil Wears Prada and Joker - sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. But due to the stylistic flair of director Craig Gillespie, Cruella is a car crash you can't help but watch until it's fiery conclusion. And with the incredibly low bar set for Disney live-action remakes, Cruella feels like an unexpected triumph even if it remains altogether unnecessary.


#55. Reno 911: The Hunt for QAnon

In all honestly I don't remember a whole lot about the original Reno-911 but I was pretty excited to see the group reunite for a new movie. And while this is nothing revolutionary, it provides some classically dumb fun - even if not every bit is a home run. Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney are phenomenal so it was great to see them flourish with these characters one last time in a construct that doesn't require laughing at the ineptitude of police officers as the primary theme. Because, y'know. Cops suck.


View Our List of the Top 10 Movies Based On TV Shows


#54. West Side Story

I had no prior knowledge of West Side Story going into this Steven Spielberg remake so I can't deny, I was pretty disappointed when I realized it was a Romeo & Juliet "modernization" musical. I'm not the biggest fan of musicals but particularly musicals where the songs don't really work outside the context of the story. "Beauty School Drop Out" slaps. No song in West Side Story does. But the picture itself looks incredible and the performances are absolutely top notch. It's a phenomenal production of some incredibly mediocre source material. Like if Kanye West spent 300 million dollars to produce a gospel choir rendition of the hokey pokey. Huge breakout performances from Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose though.


#53. Reminiscence

If this feels like a deluded branch off of the Christopher Nolan tree of filmmaking, it's because it kind of is. His brother Jonathan's wife wrote and directed this tech noire mystery that lands somewhere between Strange Days, Cyberpunk 2077, and Swordfish. Maybe the latter is just the unfortunate casting of Hugh Jackman in another sci-fi film trying to knock off a revolutionary filmmaker. But regardless, the movie isn't terrible (hell, I liked it better than Tenet) it just really lacks in the action department. All that exposition needs a better pay off.


View Our Ranking of Christopher Nolan's filmography here

#52. Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar

As proudly stupid as it is, Barb and Star feels like such a fearlessly goofy throwback to character comedies of the 90's that it's hard not to find yourself chuckling at least a handful of times. It's like something Molly Shannon or Cheri Oteri would have made as they left Saturday Night Live. Comedies have become fairly buttoned down and straight forward lately, so even though Barb and Star has it's fair share of jokes that don't quite stick the landing, the massively silly swings the film takes are something to be admired. 90 minutes of feel good, dumb fun.


#51. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Goddamn, we're deep-faking dead actors into modern day sequels, how is the CGI in a Marvel blockbuster this bad? Even after all of the endless exposition this movie throws at you (which is a fuck ton, by the way) the final dramatic father/son confrontation is interrupted by a horde of hideously flesh colored CGI squid-bats. The fuck is that? And I really expected the action sequences to be better here, not just rehashing set pieces from Rush Hour 2. Ben Kingsley and Awkwafina due their best to keep this thing afloat though and offer much better comic relief than The Eternals could muster up.


#50. Monster

Renowned music video director Anthony Mandler may be a little heavy handed directing his feature debut but the flourishes of innovation far outweighed the unrefined and borderline ostentatious delivery. The breakout performance from Kelvin Harrison Jr. certainly helps the proceedings as well. While not entirely groundbreaking, it's still certainly engaging for a social justice courtroom drama - as commonplace as they may currently be.


#49. South of Heaven

Who knew Jason Sudeikis, the terminally sarcastic SNL comedian, would have such a career resurgence built around how he can play being sincere and genuine? South of Heaven boasts an incredible cast but the plot takes some unexpected and outright unnecessary turns. Too many twists, honestly. Which ultimately derails the great setup and character development that unfolds in the film's first half, as the story devolves into a corny series of ludicrous events. But again, great performances from Sudeikis and especially Evangeline Lilly make this worth checking out.


#48. The Matrix Resurrections

There's such an exaggerated meta wink at the audience about "using old code to make something new" that the first 20 minutes of The Matrix Resurrections almost feels like it was tacked on as an apology. And while The Wachowski's already delivered big budget action spectacle sequels in Reloaded and Revolutions, I will say that Resurrections comes closest to the cerebral rollercoaster the original film provided. This time instead of philosophical, it's an emotional awakening. But the action sequences are brutally clunky. It's a very mixed bag and incredibly ambitious, but it could have been a lot worse.


#47. Army of Thieves

After Army of the Dead hit like a wet turd, I really didn't anticipate myself even bothering with this spin-off prequel but as I found myself stuck on an airplane with limited options, I gave it a shot. And surprisingly, I found myself enjoying this quirky heist film with an incredibly crafted group chemistry much more than Zack Snyder's zombie extravaganza. In fact, one of the film's few detractors was that it even had to be tied to the Army of the Dead universe at all, with out of place zombie dreams and newsflashes sprinkled throughout. Otherwise, Matthias Schweighofer really outdid himself here, both in the lead role and as the film's director.


#46. The Tender Bar

Delivering a pretty standard lower class underdog story of a poor kid trying to get into a prestigious college, director George Clooney actually turns in his most promising film in over a decade. Sadly though, a quick scroll through his IMDB will show you that that's not a very high bar to hurdle. But this simple, yet effective coming of age story about a kid reaching out for approval and finally learning the only acceptance he really needs is his own, serves as decent afternoon watch.


#45. Last Night in Soho

Edgar Wright is a spectacular director but the longer his career goes on, the more I question his writing. I really wanted to love this film but once you get past the 1960's nostalgia and trippy mirror sight gags, there's not a lot of substance here. There are threads that flirt with exploring the psychology of escapism and a potential "me too" casting couch revenge tale but none of that really ever goes anywhere. It's all style and no substance and without Wright's signature sense of humor, this plays out more like an ultra-stylized retro music video than the work of an alleged auteur filmmaker.


#44. Candyman

I thought a Candyman reboot had enormous potential, especially with someone like Jordan Peele writing the update. And up until the last 20 minutes or so, I was all in on Nia DaCosta's re-quel. The direction was phenomenal, the insight on gentrification and commerce driving art was all incredibly well done. And that score by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, goddamn! But the ending was just so heavy handed that I couldn't shake the sour taste left in my mouth even though I enjoyed 85% of the experience. It came off so forced (as a lot of the ret-conning of Candyman's origin did), when it should have kept some of it's themes in the background as subtext instead of beating you over the head with them.



#43. The Green Knight

There's so much about The Green Knight that I like. David Lowery is a spectacular director, the cinematography is breathtaking, the performances from Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander and Joel Edgerton are all top notch - but the story is just so goddamn slow. It's a technically sound film, with everything executed to perfection. But the foundation of the movie is just really bland and really, really, REALLY slow.


#42. Free Guy

Even though the dialogue is chocked full of exhaustive wannabe catch phrases and cutesy pop culture references, there's still a lot of fun to be had with this gen z Truman Show / Ready Player One hybrid. Ryan Reynolds sells the film incredibly well and it's great to see the star of Green Lantern and R.I.P.D. now thriving as a reliable leading man. But this movie is definitely way too long and as many shots as the plot likes to take at unoriginal concepts, it outsources a lot of it's key moments to existing properties. But if a harmless action comedy like this can inspire studios to take more risks on unproven and original IPs, I'm all for it.


#41. King Richard

Even though the film itself plays kind of like an infomercial paid for by the Williams' sisters themselves (who do actually serve as executive producers) after chasing Oscar gold for some 15+ years, Will Smith may finally have his most sincere shot at securing Best Actor since he starred in The Pursuit of Happyness. And while it doesn't necessarily shed much light on King Richard himself (and even less on his prodigious daughters), the film does do a fascinating job at encapsulating the world of youth sports and the sacrifices that coincide within it.


#40. Holler

A grim portrait of the poverty stricken midwest and the numerous hurdles growing up with a limited future looks like - Holler isn't the most riveting movie going experience out there but it's certainly enlightening. Young Jessica Barden delivers a breakout performance and first time director Nicole Riegel does an absolutely incredible job portraying how bleak winters in the midwest can be. Trust me, I'm in one right now. This film is a painfully realistic depiction of how grim life in the rust belt is.


#39. Respect

Watching Jennifer Hudson thrive in her performance as Aretha Franklin is something to behold but unfortunately the script here feels much more like a string of re-enactments than a narrative biography. Specifically the drawn out production of her biggest song, "Respect". And the career turn of Marlon Wayans, the dramatic actor, definitely hinders this a bit as well. But Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson do just enough to make this a slightly above average bio-pic.



#38. Benedetta

The director of Basic Instinct and Showgirls certainly has a reputation as a provocateur, but this film about lesbian nuns bringing about the apocalypse with their forbidden love is on a whole nother level. Virginie Efira is a powerhouse as the lead and delivers an incredible performance through some remarkably trying scenes. Bold, bizarre, and unrelenting; Paul Verhoeven has crafted quite the religious satire here, even if it may occasionally veer on the side of being too extreme to actually get it's point across.


#37. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

I was a little hesitant to dive into the first James Wan-free entry of the central Conjuring universe but the new formula here really helped to refresh the potency of the series. Rather than just another rehash of investigating a haunted house (ala Conjuring 2) The Devil Made Me Do It dives into the true story of a man using demonic possession as his legal defense in a murder trial. It was a much more captivating story for me, even if the scares weren't as plentiful as the previous installments. Save for that intense waterbed sequence of course and the real life recordings played just before the film's credits.


View our list of the Top 10 Threequels of All Time


#36. Spider-Man: No Way Home

I don't want to dump all over everyone's sweetheart of the year here but there's something ironic about Doctor Strange trying to whip up a spell to retcon the entire Spider-Man timeline while Tom Holland just makes it worse every time he interjects. The entire film is about second chances and while I enjoyed most of where the story went, the mental health superhero angle was a bit much. Rehabilitating super villains spouting let's "cure some ass"? Really? And all of this was just to course correct Tom Holland's incarnation of the character before he ends up ostracized from the Marvel family like Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield? I mean, it was definitely the best of the MCU Spider-Man films but the inclusion of past Spider-Man lore just made me long for the substance in Raimi's trilogy even more...


#35. John and the Hole

This really felt like a student film. Like a visual thesis, painting a vivid portrayal of modern adolescence without fully translating into a successful dual narrative. But the quirky humor, breakout performance from Charlie Shotwell, phenomenal score from Caterina Barbieri and biting social commentary on what it is to be young in the disconnected digital age are well worth a watch and leave you with plenty to think about afterwards, even if it's not all that engaging of a traditional linear story.


#34. The Card Counter

Paul Schrader's follow up to First Reformed depicts yet another morally tortured individual but this time around, one that chooses forgiveness over retribution. Solace over justice. At least until the last 15 minutes, when the film settles on a disappointingly obvious ending that contradicts Oscar Isaac's every action leading up to the finale. But before that, I really liked this movie. The uniquely nightmarish Iraq war flashbacks with 360 degree cameras were mesmerizing. Oscar Isaac, Tye Sheridan, Willem Dafoe - all top notch. Tiffany Haddish, not so much. But that ending...



View the Rest of the 2021 Year in Tiers Here:



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