3 Brothers' Essential Films of 2021

Each year, as the calendar turns over, we put out a list of our Essential Films of the previous year. This whole exercise is meant to offer readers a convenient list of all the movies they should catch up on from the previous year. If we deem a film as “essential,” we believe it is worth watching and somewhere on the spectrum from good to great.

However, since we’ve been posting these lists for a while now (since 2013), we thought it worth reminding readers of our criteria for what makes a film essential. To warrant inclusion on this list, a film must have been seen by at least one of the Brothers and be considered good to great. As well, the movie must have warranted a uniformly positive evaluation from all the Brothers who have seen it—if one Brother loved the film and another hated it, it wouldn’t make our Essential Films list, since this is a joint venture. Furthermore, you won’t find films with lukewarm or mixed takes on here, even if those films have dominated the online discourse. That’s why you won’t find No Time to Die on here, or a few other films we discussed on the podcast. And it should go without saying that we haven’t included any films we haven’t seen on here. The Brothers who have seen the film are listed in parenthesis at the end of each listing. 

So without further qualification, here are the 3 Brothers’ Essential Films of 2021.

The Prestige Pic

Belfast

dir. Kenneth Branagh

What It’s About: An Irish Protestant family in Belfast in 1969 contends with the Troubles and domestic pressures to leave Northern Ireland beyond.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that “this nostalgic view of the past allows enough room for heartbreak and complexity and the little truths of adulthood to break through the technicolor movie scenes or warm chats with Granny and Pop.” (Anton and Aren)

The French Dispatch

dir. Wes Anderson

What It’s About: An anthology film that dramatizes three stories (about an imprisoned painter, a student revolt, and a chef for the police, respectively) from a fictional American newspaper in a French city.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but the Brothers did discuss it on Episode 12 of 3 Brothers Filmcast, where they described it as another intricate work of visual style and reflective artistry from Wes Anderson. (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

Judas and the Black Messiah

dir. Shaka King

What It’s About: An undercover FBI informant (LaKeith Stanfield) infiltrates the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers and betrays its chairman, Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya).

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that it’s “A good story well told.” (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

Licorice Pizza

dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

What It’s About: Charts the friendship between a teen actor (Cooper Hoffman) and a young woman (Alana Haim) in the San Fernando Valley in 1973.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Anders wrote that it is a film “made with a deep affection for its time and characters” and features some wonderful performances. (Anders and Aren)

The Power of the Dog

dir. Jane Campion

What It’s About: A widow (Kirsten Dunst) marries a wealthy rancher (Jesse Plemons) in Montana in 1925, which makes her effeminate son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) the target of the rancher’s domineering older brother (Benedict Cumberbatch).

Why It’s Good: Roundtable forthcoming, but the Brothers thought it was a provocative examination of Western tropes, with excellent performances. (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

Spencer

dir. Pablo Larraín

What It’s About: The film follows Princess Diana’s (Kristen Stewart) three days at Sandringham House over Christmas in 1991 and her eventual decision to divorce Prince Charles.

Why It’s Good: “Spencer uses the enormous weight of Diana’s popularity and tragic death to conjure an overwhelming atmosphere of dread—to make us feel what she feels, experience the suffocating atmosphere of life among the royals the way she does.” (Aren)

The Tragedy of Macbeth

dir. Joel Coen

What It’s About: An adaptation of William Shakespeare’s famous play about a Scottish lord (Denzel Washington) and his wife (Frances McDormand) who kill the king of Scotland and usurp his throne.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that it’s “A stark, visually stunning, often affecting adaptation.” (Aren)

West Side Story

dir. Steven Spielberg

What It’s About: A remake of the beloved musical about a white boy (Ansel Elgort) and Puerto Rican girl (Rachel Zegler) who fall in love in the slums of New York City in 1957.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Anders reminded us to “never doubt the Maestro.” (Anders and Aren)

The Multiplex

Cry Macho

dir. Clint Eastwood

What It’s About: An old farm hand and rodeo star (Clint Eastwood) is dispatched to Mexico to find the son of his employer and bring him back to the States.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that it’s “an easygoing, often affecting, occasionally poignant hangout film.” (Aren)

Dune

dir. Denis Villeneuve

What It’s About: In the far future, an aristocratic family takes over control of the desert planet, Arrakis, which puts the son, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), on his path to becoming a mystical saviour with the ability to see into the future.

Why It’s Good: “I’m blown away by much of what I saw on screen. I’m thrilled by some of the visual and audio realizations of the book, and by the film’s scope and grandeur.” (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

The Green Knight

dir. David Lowery

What It’s About: Gawain (Dev Patel), nephew to King Arthur (Sean Harris), takes up a quest to find the Green Chapel and fulfill his oath to the magical Green Knight.

Why It’s Good: “The Green Knight is a bold act of revisionism that manages to reconfigure the thematic focus of a key work of medieval art without losing the disarming strangeness of the material.” (Anders and Aren)

The Last Duel

dir. Ridley Scott

What It’s About: A tale of the intertwining relationships between two knights (Matt Damon and Adam Driver) and one of the knight’s wives (Jodi Comer), told three different times from the point of view of each character.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that the film is “Ridley Scott in peak form, wedding period detail and riveting action with a nuanced look at how women's stories are overwritten by the men around them.” (Aren)

Luca

dir. Enrico Casarosa

What It’s About: Two sea monsters who transform into humans when out of the water spend a summer in a small seaside town on the Amalfi Coast in the 1950s.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but the Brothers agreed that this relatively modest film is one of the better outings from Pixar in recent years. (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

The Matrix Resurrections

dir. Lana Wachowski

What It’s About: Neo (Keanu Reeves) is reborn in a new version of the Matrix, where he has to once again reawaken to his role as the One and work to free his one true love, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss).

Why It’s Good: “It’s a corny, romantic, weird, and mostly interesting work from an idiosyncratic director.” (Anders and Aren)

The Mitchells vs The Machines

dir. Mike Rianda

What It’s About: A dysfunctional family contends with a robot apocalypse when an app developer accidentally creates sentient machines.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that it has “Expressive animation style, sympathetic characters, and some genuinely good jokes.” (Aren)

Zack Snyder’s Justice League

dir. Zack Snyder

What It’s About: Earth’s mightiest warriors, Batman (Ben Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), the Flash (Ezra Miller), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), and Cyborg (Ray Fisher), team up to fight an alien invasion of the planet Earth.

Why It’s Good: “Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the best superhero team epic—and the last one I’ll need to see, at least for a good while.” (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

The Arthouse

Annette

dir. Leos Carax

What It’s About: A self-destructive comedian (Adam Driver) marries an opera singer (Marion Cotillard) in this self-reflexive romantic opera.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Anders raved that the film is “Wagnerian” in its scope and ambitions of intensity and that “Driver’s performance is a total masterwork.” (Anders and Aren)

The Card Counter

dir. Paul Schrader

What It’s About: A professional gambler (Oscar Isaac) has to contend with the sins of his past when he takes an aimless young man (Tye Sheridan) under his wing.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but the Brothers discussed it on Episode 10 of 3 Brothers Filmcast and called it an astounding exploration of guilt and the possibility of redemption. (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

Drive My Car

dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi

What It’s About: While putting on a performance of Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, a theatre director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) processes the recent loss of his wife and forms an unexpected friendship with his driver (Toko Miura).

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that it “offers an earnest and disarmingly straightforward examination of the power of art and how it can influence people's lives in unexpected ways.” (Aren)

Pig

dir. Michael Sarnoski

What It’s About: A former celebrated chef (Nicolas Cage) heads into Portland’s underworld to recover his beloved truffle pig.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that it’s “An examination of what constitutes a meaningful life and a presentation of how food binds us together.” (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

Saint Maud

dir. Rose Glass

What It’s About: A young nurse (Morfryd Clarke) in a seaside town in Wales believes she receives direct instructions from God to care for a terminally-ill dancer (Jennifer Ehle) and save her soul.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but on Letterboxd, Aren wrote that it’s “Tense, atmospheric, often scary, and with a hell of a lead performance.” (Aren)

The Hot Doc

The Beatles: Get Back

dir. Peter Jackson

What It’s About: An eight-hour documentary about the making of the Beatles’ album and concert doc, Let It Be.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but the Brothers discussed it on Episode 13 of 3 Brothers Filmcast and called it a marvelous hangout flick with impeccable vibes. (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World

dir. Adam Curtis

What It’s About: A six-part documentary that examines several radical individuals of the 20th century and how systems of power ultimately corrupted their forms of radicalism.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but the Brothers discussed it on Episode 3 of 3 Brothers Filmcast and called it a complex and fascinating exploration of the unreality of our world. (Anders, Anton, and Aren)

Come Back Anytime

dir. John Daschbach

What It’s About: A portrait of the community supported by the Tokyo ramen bar, Bizentei, run by chef Masamoto Ueda.

Why It’s Good: “Come Back Anytime is about how food is a repeating invitation to share life and its pleasures and sorrows.” (Aren)

A Glitch in the Matrix

dir. Rodney Ascher

What It’s About: An examination of the simulation hypothesis, which posits that all of humanity is living in a complex computer simulation.

Why It’s Good: “The film becomes a persuasive argument for the philosophical power of cinema and how stories shape our spiritual understanding of our everyday experiences.” (Anders and Aren)

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass 

dir. Oliver Stone

What It’s About: Based on the work of Jim DiEugenio, this documentary reexamines the JFK Assassination in light of new documents that have emerged since Stone made JFK, his acclaimed 1990 dramatization of Jim Garrison’s investigation into the assassination.

Why It’s Good: No official review, but Anders found it worthwhile and fascinating and, on Letterboxd, said that it  “should be enough to raise at least a few eyebrows for people who aren't totally JFK-pilled like I am.” (Anders)

Untold: Crime & Penalties

dir. Maclain and Chapman Way

What It’s About: The story of the Danbury Trashers, a minor league hockey team run by a gangster and his 17-year-old son, which became a media sensation in the early 2000s.

Why It’s Good: “Untold: Crime & Penalties is a tale of such absurdity and outlandishness in the world of sports, of course it has to be true.” (Aren)

Related Posts