Cinemas returned to activity at the end of May this year, after more than a year of being closed because of the Corona epidemic.

It was a year of musical cinema, or possibly that's what I took from it - the tunes, the rhythm and the drift. And the ability of the mix among cinema and music to bring out emotion as well as conscience and social consciousness.
It was a year of desert and arid cinema. And when the feature films disappointed - on the grounds that most of what was commercially distributed was intended for children - the documentary films demonstrated that they were still experiencing a superb renaissance, which is difficult to resist.

To no one's surprise, international cinema is centered around American and English-speaking cinema - and maybe that's the reason there are likewise three French directors, a Russian director and a Thai director who liked to make films in English.
Yet, it was a year where Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg and Danny Willenb and Laos Caracs came together without a moment's delay and at least four undertakings involving Lynn-Manuel Miranda and two Edgar Wright films.
It seems like it was not terrible.

PopcoTime 2021 Movies  :

14. "Locked Down," Doug Leiman

This film, which is like a time capsule of all the vocabulary and deeds of the world in the days of the Corona, manages to combine the zoom conversations, the challah, the urge to buy toilet paper, the desire to bake bread, and the transition to life in pajamas while giving his two characters beautiful monologues And witty about a relationship in times of crisis, which Knight seems to have written in a continuous writing frenzy, with no pauses and no rewriting. The icing on the cake of this film - which was graceful, rhythmic and sweet even without it - is the moment when this couple, in order to bring action into their lives, regain the spirit of youth and rebellion that the bourgeoisie stole from them and also break the quarantine rules and go out for air The Herods department store, which for the first time in its 171 years of existence allowed the film to be photographed inside.

13. "Do not look up," Adam McKay

Compared to the disaster films of the 1990s, "Do Not Look Up" is a little wiser, because it presents the disaster as an event that is not bound to happen if the oversight mechanisms were functioning. McKay - who worked in economics at The Money Machine and the White House at Vice President - has become an expert at describing the corruption of powerhouses that abandon their shift. And maybe that’s why, unlike the destructive fantasies of the 1990s, his film manages to be funnier, but also much scarier. (Available on Netflix)

12. "The Father," Florian Zeller

Although he comes from the theater, Zeller proves nicely that this situation is actually more suitable for cinema than for theater. What the theater does using impressive but attention-grabbing design pyrotechnics, to present Anthony's disorientation, cinema does with understatement and elegant minorities, which unfocused viewers may miss. But therein lies the greatness of the film - not in the script, for films about old age and dementia we have seen before, but in the way Zeller uses the editing and set design to put viewers into Anthony's mind. We experience the confusion with him. This is the secret of Kat's power: when one scene alternates with another we know intuitively, after years of conditioning and watching movies, that changing a scene is also a change in time. It's an editorial trick that Christopher Nolan brilliantly used in Memento, and Zeller takes it to The Father, in a more minor and quieter way, jumping in and out of the protagonist's mind, back and forth.

11. "Nobody," Ilya Neishuler

Neischuler is revealed here as a surprising and gifted action director, who is momentarily reminiscent of Rani Harlin's ruthlessness (whose film "Long Kiss for the Night" comes from a similar plot point of departure) combined with the amused lightness of John McTeernan - the first two directors of "Dead to Live". Neischuler looks like someone who is now invited to join their league, and restart the action films, which pretend to be mindless and unwise, but beneath the smoke and soot, hides not only impressive cinematic virtuosity but also a cheeky statement about the price men pay in cinema, with old, aggressive masculinity, Violence and bone-chilling, out of fashion.

10. "The Green Knight," David Laurie

The sense of mystery that accompanies watching the film only intensifies it. This movie says preachy. Its immense visual beauty, its excellent soundtrack, mystical atmosphere and unconventional structure ask us, the viewers who dare to embark on this journey and not get involved on the road, to explore, to find out, to crack.

9. "Bergman's Island," Mia Hansen Love

It is easy to be cynical about this film, which in its first half is mainly a (beautiful) tourist tour of the locations where Ingmar Bergman shot his films, in which he lived, created, wrote and alienated his families. But the second half, which features the work written by the director in her residency on the island, turns Bergman's Island into a puppet of a movie-within-a-movie-inspired-another-movie. Anyway, it was a great introductory year for Bergman, with this film and Hagai Levy's version of "Pictures from Marriage."

8. "Winning Family," Reinaldo Marcus Green

The biographical sports film directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green is one of the surprises of this season in cinema - a rhythmic, energetic and full of life film, which tells an optimistic, exciting, happy, cynical and inspiring story. If the film had been written in other languages, it would have been possible to dwell for a moment on the linguistic proximity between "believer", "covenant" and "faith", the concepts in which the film deals.

7. "Finch", Miguel Spuchnik

A post-apocalyptic journey film of a man, a robot and a dog. This is the true "power of the dog." "Max the Warrior on the Road" for the whole family, and a movie with wonderful effects. An impressive visual world and a flurry of heart and emotion, devoid of cynicism. (Available on Apple TV Plus)

6. The Rescue, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai and Sarhali

The result is a suspenseful and moving documentary with hair-raising twists in the plot almost every ten minutes. Ron Howard is set to direct a feature film about the story of the divers and we bet it will not be as suspenseful as this film. 

5. "The Power of the Dog," Jane Campion

In the first act of the film, Jane Campion and photographer Ari Wagner make an American western shot in New Zealand with a British actor, and use the iconography of the classic westerns - the spaces, the mountains, the herds, the men. This is their world. But in Campion's smart and sensitive world, no character is as she seems at first glance, they all have deep inner dimensions that will be revealed. (Available on Netflix)

4. Get Back, Peter Jackson; The Sparks Brothers, Edgar Wright; The Velvet Underground, Todd Haynes

What a tremendous year for musical documentaries, directed by directors who do not normally make documentaries (and related to 1969). How great has this been a year for this field? These three are not the last musical documentaries on the list. ("The Volvo Underground" is available on Apple TV Plus)

3. "Licorice Pizza," Paul Thomas Anderson

Paul Thomas Anderson is growing up: After being a young man he knew how to write so beautifully adults with the troubles and desires of adults, he now - at the age of 50 - does a wonderful job of describing adolescence, the awkward and extravagant transition from childhood to adulthood, all self-confidence and pretense . Long and wonderful shots in Los Angeles in 1973, in what looked like the third rib in the triangle of "Boogie Nights" and "There Were Times in Hollywood," on the Hollywood dream and broke. (The name of the film is taken from the name of a record store chain in Los Angeles in the seventies).

2. "The Suburbs Story," Steven Spielberg

It's a story about racism, discrimination, hate crimes and assimilation. It is also a story about young people without parents, who have to carve a place for themselves in the world, without guidance, without supervision, without a chance. And that already sounds like a Spielberg movie.

1. "Dune", Danny Willenb

Vilnav's visual vision, which began with The Encounter and evolved in Blade Runner 2049, merges here: he creates spaceships that look like rocks and pebbles, intrigue and battles between kingdoms and tribes as if it were a Japanese film by Kurosawa from the Shogunate dynasties, and an arid world creator who looks like a sandstorm. Perpetual.

Since "Prisoners" in 2013, every new Danny Willenev film has been on my list of films of the year, and in 2016 with "The Encounter" it was also in first place.