[Note: There were two films I intended to see this season and did not – Drive My Car and Memoria. The former just didn’t happen yet but will prior to the Academy Awards. The latter, I missed my chance.]

For me, this was a year defined by a single piece of cinema: Stephen Spielberg’s West Side Story. The gulf between this musical masterpiece and my second favorite film of the year was cavernous, as it was not only the best picture of the year, but the finest movie musical produced since Norman Jewison’s Fiddler on the Roof (1971). And it firmly resides with Jaws and Schindler’s List at the very top of Spielberg’s brilliant canon.

But West Side Story was not the only great entry in this truly great year of cinema. (As Maciej acutely pointed out yesterday, this was likely the product of many production houses choosing to skip the Covid-addled 2020 and pile their quality into 2021.) Quite often compiling a top ten list is a difficult endeavor for me. I’m hard on movies, and seemingly more so as I get older. I also don’t get giddy at the mere sight of subtitles – a defining feature of many top film critics in this country. (No, I’m not grouping myself among them, though I’m far more qualified to write about movies than football.) But this year I had difficult decisions to make at the bottom of my list.

But first, the bad…

• The Many Saints of Newark has no reason to exist. And it felt like everyone involved was aware of that fact.
• Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is the sort of silly, sophomoric garbage the New York Times salivates over because it has those aforementioned subtitles. If this film were in English, it would have swept the Razzies.
• Both Annette and The Sparks Brothers documentary proved that my life pre-2021, when I didn’t know who Sparks were, was just fine.
• Someone should find the grade school student who penned the script for The Card Counter because I’m pretty sure they also wrote The Tender Bar, and we need to stop the spread. (I’m confident the source material Paul Schrader used for Counter was just a glossary of gambling terms he found at a yard sale.)
• House of Gucci could be excused as kitschy fun except that it’s neither kitschy, nor fun, and it’s eleven hours long.
• Don’t Look Up begs one question: how did the man responsible for Anchorman and Step Brothers, two of the funniest films ever made, make one of the most humorless comedies ever filmed? And Adam McKay’s behavior on Twitter in defense of the film has made me resent the experience even more.
• Oh, and you may have forgotten Dear Evan Hansen happened, but I surely have not. It is a terrible musical, and it made for an unsurprisingly terrible movie musical.

But there was plenty to recommend in the films not included in my top ten.

• Tilda Swinton was magnificent in the Pedro Almodovar short The Human Voice. (Almodovar’s Parallel Mothers was less rewarding.)
• It was a year of sparkling debut features from female filmmakers, including Rebecca Hall’s Passing and Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby. (The most significant entry into this category will be discussed later.)
• Roger Ebert always liked to praise films that were unlike anything he’d seen before, and French Exit was one of those films for me. (Michelle Pfeiffer’s performance was the forgotten gem of the year.)
• I truly wish the filmmakers had made a film worthy of Clifton Collins Jr.’s performance in Jockey.
• The post-Holocaust documentary Final Account serves as a haunting reminder that while those who perpetrated those atrocities may be leaving this earth, their ideologies are not.
• Was there a more attractive couple in movie history than Catriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan in Kenneth Branagh’s otherwise overrated Belfast?
• I saw a critic describe Titane as “hallucinatory chaos” and I can’t do better than that.
• I will never understand Paul Thomas Anderson’s insistence on making every film three hours, but Licorice Pizza had some of the most memorable set pieces of the year. (That truck sequence!) Alana Haim was the year’s most surprising acting debut.
• The touching final 10 minutes of Flee made the experience well worth it but some better animation could have landed this documentary among the best films of the year.
• Worst Person in the World isn’t the masterpiece critics led me to believe but it’s as impeccably acted as any film this year. (I urge to you to see Being the Ricardos and this film and then argue that Nicole Kidman’s performance is better than that of Renate Reinsve. Then again, don’t, because that would involve sitting through Being the Ricardos.)

And the ten best films of 2021 were…

(10) Pig

A famed chef, now in self-exile, has his truffle pig stolen, and sets off on a quest to retrieve it.

That’s it. That’s the story.

And to reveal anything else about this quiet, determined and ultimately warm film, or Nicolas Cage’s masterful performance at its center, would spoil your experience.

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Maciej Kasperowicz is a good friend and one of the more trusted movie voices in my life. Today he shares his recap of 2021 especially for us, the DBB throng.

It was a Saturday, a few weeks into March 2021, that marked two weeks since my second Pfizer dose.

I planned my whole day around going to the movies.

Film Forum was playing a double feature of Pedro Almodovar’s new short paired with one of his classics, so I went there for those, got some delicious fish and chips for lunch, and then walked up to the Quad to see Shiva Baby.

I went to the movies 55 times in 2021, and part of that was making up for lost COVID time, but I also think that, because of the uncertainty of 2020, a ton of good shit came out last year. There were movies that I adored, that I told my friends that they absolutely HAD to go see or rent, that I couldn’t squeeze into my top 40 for the year.

For you, though, and for DaBearsBlog, I’ve whittled the list down a 40. Make some popcorn and enjoy.

31-40

Psycho Goreman, HYDRA, The Night House, The Novice, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Test Pattern, Never Gonna Snow Again, Malignant, The Power, Plan B

21-30

Drive My Car, Matrix: Resurrections, The Green Knight, Annette, The Queen of Black Magic, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Judas and the Black Messiah, Identifying Features, In the Heights, Prisoners of the Ghostland

20. Memoria

This movie’s oddly hard to actually see right now, but I’m optimistic that you’ll get the chance at some point, and when you do, you’ll get one of the best Tilda Swinton performances in years, and the coolest sound design of any movie that came out last year.

19. West Side Story

It can often be counterproductive to remake a movie and spell out its subtext in capital letters (I hated this year’s very ABOUT TRAUMA Halloween Kills), but Tony Kushner’s sharp focus on the racial, economic, and real estate dynamics in one very specific neighborhood of late 50s NYC only enriches the text. Visually, Spielberg is just showing off here, and it’s so fun to watch. I’d love it even more if I didn’t think it didn’t have a black hole of charisma in the middle of it in the form of Ansel Elgort.

[Editor’s Note: If Maciej and I ever start a Siskel and Ebert type program, we could do three episodes on Elgort’s performance in WSS.]

18. Pig

Seems out like it’s gonna be John Wick but about a kidnapped pig and, structurally, it kind of is? But it replaces Gun Fu with real talk about fine dining, tender cookery, and baguette sourcing. It’s the most unexpectedly sweet movie of the year.

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Tight Ends Coach Jim Dray

Defensive Coordinator Alan Williams

Special Teams Coordinator Richard Hightower

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When Jim Harbaugh arrived in Minneapolis, he found something he was not looking for: a job interview.

He expected a coronation.

But the truth of the NFL is there are very few kingdoms remaining. Bill Belichick’s got one in New England. Andy Reid does too in Kansas City. And one could argue there are burgeoning kingdoms developing in the lands of McVay and Shanahan, but both have extensive, invaluable personnel departments and, truthfully, you can’t be a king until you’ve worn the crown on the NFL’s final Sunday.

Harbaugh began his recent dalliance with the NFL by floating the rumor he wanted Las Vegas. But as is always the case with Vegas, it’s way better in theory. Vegas had two potential plans for their leadership void: a pairing of Ed Dodds and Harbaugh, and a pairing of Dave Ziegler and Josh McDaniels. Knowing the financial demands of Harbaugh – reported (by DBB) to be north of $100 million – Vegas chose to avoid the quicksand of another “Gruden situation” and went with the latter. (McDaniels’ hiring of Patrick Graham to run his defense has made Vegas one of the early winners of the off-season.)

Then came the Bears.

Both Bill Polian and Ted Phillips were intrigued by the prospect of Harbaugh coaching the Chicago Bears, but the whole of the hiring committee, specifically George McCaskey, were wary of lowering the drawbridge and giving him a kingdom. This organization is about to undergo significant transition in the coming years, with Phillips retiring in 2023 and the team making plans for a new stadium in Arlington Heights. The last thing ownership wants is more transition when it comes to football operations. And with Harbaugh, an historic flibbertigibbet, every off-season would bring questions of his potential departure. (One 4-win season for Michigan would lead to Stephen Ross mailing his checkbook to Lake Forrest.)

There was call between the parties. It was brief.

Then came Minnesota.

Harbaugh explained the situation to Mitch Albom in the Detroit Free Press:

“There was a tugging at me that I was once that close to a Super Bowl and I didn’t get it. Some NFL jobs came open. I was contacted by the (Minnesota) Vikings.

“For better or for worse, it was something I wanted to explore. I went in thinking, ‘I’m gonna have 100 percent conviction on this, and if they (Minnesota) have 100 percent conviction on this, then it’s something I’m gonna do.”

Harbaugh arrived, thinking he was interviewing them. He expected the red carpet and an offer on the table. But the Vikings were not as committed to Harbaugh as he thought. And by the end of the day, Harbaugh was recommitted to Michigan for what sounds like eternity and the organization made public their intention to hire Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell as their next head coach.

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Undrafted, was he.

Signed by the Chicago Bears. 

Now he runs their show.

Rented a sailboat,

with Katie, off Navy Pier.

“Will you marry me?”

If you play for Poles,

you pick up your quarterback.

Or go somewhere else.

Germanic spirit.

From Indianapolis.

He is Eberflus.

Put on your track shoes,

because you will be running.

And he’ll measure it.

He is Ryan’s choice

to stand in front of the room,

a leader of men.

The Press Conference.

It was what Justin Fields said. And what Justin Fields didn’t say.

What he said:

“I think last year was kinda weird, just me not starting the season being the starting quarterback. It was kind of a weird leadership role. I think me and Andy would kind of switch off. But now that I am starting off the season as a starting quarterback, I think I’ll be more comfortable playing that leader role. There’s no more, ‘Oh, he’s a rookie, this and that’. It’s tie now, so I’m excited like I said before and I can’t wait to get to work.”

What he didn’t say:

“I should have been the quarterback from day one last season. And I wasn’t the quarterback from day one last season because the last coach didn’t have the slightest clue what he was doing. But he’s gone now. And so, we rejoice.”

In 2015, when John Fox was announced as the new head coach of the Chicago Bears, Jay Cutler was not in the room. He did not speak to the media. In 2018, when Matt Nagy was introduced, Mitch Trubisky was nowhere to be found. But Monday, after Ryan Poles and Matt Eberflus addressed the media, Justin Fields sat on the dais and spoke, at length. The owner had spoken. The GM had spoken. The head coach had spoken. And now it was the quarterback’s time. That is the hierarchy of every NFL team and Monday, for the first time, Fields ascended into that structure.

And he knew it.

The start of something special. pic.twitter.com/hVO3Su6g8I

— Chicago Bears (@ChicagoBears) February 1, 2022

The Future.

Fields’ comments mirrored everything reported about the kid since his time at Ohio State; an immense talent complemented by a tireless work ethic and an understanding of where he struggles on the field. Larry Mayer of ChicagoBears.com wrote an excellent column, detailing Fields’ excitement for the future with this new leadership in place.

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Dennis Wierzbicki-USA TODAY Sports

About twenty days ago, George McCaskey said he was “just a fan” of the Chicago Bears and that comment was met with an array of outrages. How could this man, the Chairman of the franchise (an official, paid position), be so naive as to suggest he does not bear responsibility for the franchise’s success on the field? Why hadn’t this man, tasked with leading the organization, used all the resources at his disposal to not only be more than a fan, but to be one of the more knowledgeable football men in the league?

It was the most damning moment in his tenure and two things happened in the immediate aftermath of that press conference. Ted Phillips and McCaskey had a heated conversation, as the club’s president made clear to its oblivious owner just how bad the press conference had gone. Then, McCaskey left Halas Hall, leaving Ted alone to discuss the GM candidates with the hiring team and organize their schedules. (Ted didn’t leave the building to well after midnight. McCaskey was not in contact.)

The tension thawed. McCaskey was on the Zoom for every GM candidate, although his participation was extremely limited. One source says the questioning broke down about 70-30, with Bill Polian asking the majority of the questions and Phillips asking the Bears-specific stuff. (Ryan Poles’ comments at his introductory presser mirrored the responses from most candidates, in that Polian was an exceptional leader of these calls.) Ted encouraged George to get more actively involved. George resisted, again not believing it was his place to do so.

Then, something changed.

The Bears interviewed Ryan Poles.

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We’ll have full coverage of the introductory presser this afternoon.