Michael Darvell Looks Back at the Year of 2021

The Year in Cinema
Written by Michael Darvell
 


With the relaxing of restrictions over Covid-19, 2021 was an improvement for moviegoers. It was a relief to go back to the cinema, if only to see the two major films held over for a year or more, namely No Time to Die, the latest Bond movie, and Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. The beginning of the year brought us The Mauritanian, with three Bafta nominations, and Nomadland with three Academy Awards. In films based on true events, Johnny Depp played a photographer in Minamata, while Matt Damon tried to get his daughter out of jail in Stillwater, and Will Smith bullied his tennis champion daughter Venus Williams in King Richard. In Dance of the 41 light was shed on a 19th-century Mexican sex scandal, and The Forgotten Battle gave a brave account of a lesser-known Dutch war. Victor Kossakovskiy's Gunda, about a family of pigs, was a sheer delight. However, the award for documentary of the year should go to David Wilkinson's Getting Away with Murder(s), an exhaustive study of Holocaust victims and the hunt for their perpetrators.

Outstanding performances included Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog, Dan Stevens, hilarious as a robot in I'm Your Man, and Timothy Spall as the easy rider on The Last Bus. On the distaff side, Olivia Colman shone in The Lost Daughter, Kristen Stewart was stunning as Diana in Spencer while Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan had a good thing going in Ammonite.

In different ways, adolescence was featured in Tom MacRae's screenplay for Everybody's Talking About Jamie, Paulo Sorrentino's The Hand of God and, to a certain extent, Last Night in Soho. There was charm in abundance in From the Vine and The French Dispatch. Finally, animation took on a new form in The Summit of the Gods, Patrick Imbert’s gripping study of the climbing of Everest.

 
Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

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