Yes, we should be entirely way done with 2021, but permit us to close the books on this difficult year with one last belated feature whose title is not meant to be a backhanded compliment to the films, nor scolding and yes, generally relative as many people did see them, but not most (and yes, there will be some overlap with our Best of 2021 coverage, though it’s minor)

READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2021

While most of us remain inside with far too many streaming options dangled in front of our eyes,  it doesn’t appear general audiences will be returning to theaters for movies that contain anything less than three Peter Parkers uniting on screen anytime soon.

Continue reading The 25 Best Films Of 2021 You Didn’t See at The Playlist.

After another year of being inside, the documentaries of 2021 have provided us with plenty of adventure. They have inspired a sense of looking all around you, or of going back into history to understand how we got to wherever the hell we are now. With filmmaking that continues to redefine what makes a documentary, these features have given us a sense of what’s on our minds, whether it’s immediate issues like journalism, the refugee crisis, policing, the ongoing pandemic, or less immediate but timeless issues, like the chords of a band that will always inspire.

Continue reading The Best Documentaries Of 2021 at The Playlist.

We celebrate the movies at this time of year, and in the wild rush to praise directors and actors for all that nifty directing and acting they did over the last 365 days, we all tend to forget that cinema is about more than just two sets of people. Just read Twitter. Who’s naming anyone other than auteurs and stars? How many times has Steven Spielberg’s name come up? How many times has Janusz Kamiński’s?

Continue reading The Best Cinematography Of 2021 at The Playlist.

In our annual aggregation of some of the most respected Best Films of the Year lists, we like to highlight folks that offer unique opinions regarding cinema. We’ve already seen John Waters offer up a pretty offbeat Top 10 this year. And now, The New Yorker offers its Top 35 Best Films of 2021, with a healthy number of picks that will likely surprise people.

READ MORE: The Best Film Posters Of 2021

Sure, The New Yorker lists plenty of high-profile films in the Top 35.

Continue reading The New Yorker’s Best Films Of 2021 Include ‘Zola,’ ‘Passing’ & Quite A Few Docs at The Playlist.

Thanks to some great investigative reporting, some of which is featured in the Oscar-winning film, “Spotlight,” the sexual abuse perpetrated by some priests against young boys has been in the national spotlight for years now. But just because folks know about it, the trauma inflicted on the victims doesn’t just go away. Dealing with that trauma, decades later, is the focus of the new documentary, “Procession.”

READ MORE: Fall 2021 Movie Preview: 60+ Must-See Films

As seen in the trailer, the Netflix doc, “Procession,” takes a unique look at the fallout of the sexual abuse that six Midwestern men experienced as young boys.

Continue reading ‘Procession’ Trailer: New Netflix Doc Shows The Lasting Trauma Of The Catholic Priest Sexual Abuse Scandal at The Playlist.

In the form-expanding documentaries of Robert Greene, the artifice of performance clears a path with higher emotional truth waiting at its summit. Still, the distance between the two has varied. Early works such as “Fake It So Real” and “Kati With an I” extended a relatively straightforward portraiture to people in Greene’s orbit — his wrestler cousin, his teenage stepsister — whose outward-facing lives spoke to his curiosity about how images and personae can be constructed and shown.

Continue reading ‘Procession’: Robert Greene’s Therapeutic Catholic Church Sex Abuse Survivors Doc Is Devastating [Telluride Review] at The Playlist.