2021 Best Picture nominees, ranked
It’s been a strange year for the Oscars, and the delay of many marquee would-be contenders has left the Best Picture field full of smaller, lesser-seen films. This shift has not, however, lowered the quality of the films in contention. There are some genuinely great movies nominated this year, and the overall slate is one of the most interesting mixes in recent memory. Here is my ranking of the Best Picture nominees, from worst to best.
8. The Father
The Father takes place almost entirely inside the same apartment. The film attempts to find intrigue within that confined structure by having the uniform location serve as a foil to the increasingly confused state of the aging man played by Anthony Hopkins. Family members and caretakers come and go, time passes, but the location never changes, and Hopkins’ character loses his grip on what’s real and what’s not.
It’s a valiant effort by director Florian Zeller to adapt his stage play to the screen, but it makes for an ultimately dull, redundant cinematic experience. Hopkins is quite good, but the performance is wasted in a stale film. There’s no push-and-pull to the veracity of his loose grip on reality—centering everything from his perspective makes the film a bummer without any insight or ambiguity. If you’ve seen 10 minutes of The Father, you’ve seen the whole thing. More roles for Imogen Poots, please!
7. Promising Young Woman
The film I dislike most on this list. There are glaring issues with both basic plot mechanics and the voyeuristic, flippant approach Promising Young Woman takes to trauma. The more I think about the film, the less I think it has anything interesting to say.
But it jumps The Father on this list because, despite my unease with where the film lands, it does reach higher highs. Emerald Fennell is a talented filmmaker, even if Promising Young Woman may not be the best project to showcase it.
6. Judas and the Black Messiah
There’s a tremendous mismatch between subject matter and style in Judas and the Black Messiah: for a movie about the revolultion-minded Black Panther Party it’s a bland affair, stripped of any meaningful politics in favor of paint-by-numbers biopic tropes. (Read the brilliant writing of Angelica Jade Bastién for a more thorough investigation of this shortcoming.)
I also found myself wishing there were more of a relationship between Daniel Kaluuya’s Fred Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield’s Bill O’Neal throughout the film. The betrayal would have felt more meaningful if their characters ever, you know, talked to each other. But Stanfield delivers another knockout performance. From Sorry to Bother You to Knives Out to Judas, he can shape-shift into any role. If he’s in a movie, I’m paying attention.
5. The Trial of the Chicago 7
From Twitter-heads to Adam McKay, it’s interesting to see the journey that The Trial of the Chicago 7 has taken toward becoming this awards season’s biggest punching bag. To be sure, it has confused, conservative politics for a film that celebrates political dissent, making it an easy target from any side of the aisle.
Still, Chicago 7 is an often stirring showcase of Aaron Sorkin’s writing prowess. Some scenes miss, but some are among the most entertaining you’ll see all year. And it features a slew of great performances, highlighted by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Eddie Redmayne. The ending is schlocky awards season bait, but there’s enough there throughout the film to keep things interesting.
4. Minari
Minari is a lovely family drama which follows a Korean family trying to make a living in rural Arkansas. Rife with terrific performances Steven Yeun, Alan Kim, and Yuh-jung Youn, the film presents a lot to chew on, from the art of living as a family to the grueling indifference of American capitalism. I liked Minari well enough on the first watch, but it’s the sort of film I think I might see more depth in upon a revisit.
3. Mank
Mank is not the typical movie-about-movies that Hollywood tends to reward over and over again at the Oscars. It denounces Hollywood’s belief in its own greatness, painting a portrait of an invective industry out of which nothing good could truly be produced.
The droves of critics calling Mank boring are failing to get past Fincher’s typical fussiness. The film operates has both a dynamic history and a larger critique of the futilities of pushing back against a corporate system. It’s a gorgeously composed tragedy, and features a stellar performance from Amanda Seyfried. I’ll admit that you may need to have some interest in Old Hollywood to engage in the first place. But give Mank your patience and you’ll be rewarded with a story that never quite goes where you expect.
2. Nomadland
Nomadland is the sort of movie you just have to give yourself over to, to let the glory of what it’s accomplishing wash over the screen. Chloé Zhao’s film is resistant to standard plot point demarcations, instead creating a poetic journey that feels like the fitful stops and starts of life. In lesser hands, Nomadland would have been in your face about its moral opposition to the economic conditions for working people. It still is. But that’s all context for a lyrical story about life, community, and figuring out how to get by.
1. Sound of Metal
“You don’t have to fix anything here,” Joe (Paul Raci) tells Ruben (Riz Ahmed) as he tries to fix a broken roof. Ruben is at a commune of deaf people, learning to cope with the fact that he is losing his hearing. Joe’s sentiment goes beyond the roof: the gracious mentor, and Sound of Metal itself, are imparting the wisdom that we don’t need to define our shortcomings as deficiencies. We should be as we are.
Few films I’ve seen possess the serenity of Sound of Metal. The anger and anxiety Ruben feels is offset by the love and acceptance of Joe and the deaf community, and that tension defines the moving emotional climaxes of the film. Raci, Ahmed, and Olivia Cooke carry the film to those climaxes with three of the best performances of the year.
2020 was a strange year: the world was engulfed in chaos, yet we had to spend much more time alone. The world was loud, but our lives were quiet. So it’s fitting that the best movie of the year was the one that encouraged us to find peace in the moments of stillness, to value the fleeting glory of the people that are there for us in ways big and small. Sound of Metal is a treasure, and I’m happy its Oscar nomination has helped it reach a much wider audience.