Best of 2021

Werewolves Within

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Werewolves Within
  • IMDb: link

Through the eyes of its newest resident, demoted but cheery Forest Ranger Finn Wheeler (Sam Richardson), we’re introduced to the odd mountain town of Beaverfield. Part horror, part comedy, and part whodunnit, Werewolves Within throws the likable Finn into the odd setting in which any member of the town might be a werewolf. Now can he find the wolf before it kills them or before the town full of lunatics kills each other?

Adapted from the video game of the same name by screenwriter Mishna Wolff and director Josh Ruben, Werewolves Within offers an enjoyable romp with a number of oddball locals played by the likes of George Basil, Sarah Burns, Catherine Curtin, Wayne Duvall, Rebecca Henderson, Glenn Fleshler, and Milana Vayntrub as the town’s only mail carrier.

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Flee

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Flee
  • IMDb: link

Flee offers a deeply personal take on the refugee experience in a mostly-animated documentary of a man struggling even decades later to express his emotions and memories from harrowing experiences fleeing Afghanistan to Moscow and eventually to Denmark. Our guide, referred to only as Amin, offers his story which is fleshed-out and explored further in animation by director Jonas Poher Rasmussen and his animation team. 

Given that non-animated segments are also used, such as stock footage of the times, I don’t know that the documentary will get the exposure it deserves for an animated film as well as for a documentary. In a year without a breakout animated film, Flee is a mesmerizing and unique film experience that reminds us how the past can continue to haunt someone long after they have reached the relative safety of a new land.

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tick, tick… BOOM!

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  • Title: tick, tick… BOOM!
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from Jonathan Larson‘s stage musical, the semi-autobiographical work takes us inside the struggles of aspiring musical theater playwright and composer attempting to complete an 8 year project of a dystopian futuristic musical called Superbia before his thirtieth birthday. Pressured by needing to compose a crucial song to complete the musical as the workshop for its one and only performance begins, his girlfriend (Alexandra Shipp) needing an answer to a crucial relationship question, another of his friends hospitalized after becoming HIV Positive, and the daily struggles of working at the Moondance Diner and finding ways to pay his bills, a constant ticking reminds Jon that he’s running out of time.

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Spencer

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Spencer
  • IMDb: link

Set at Christmas of 1991, Spencer offers a peek into the holiday with the Royal Family during a tumultuous time between Diana, Princess of Wales (Kristen Stewart), and her husband Prince Charles (Jack Farthing). With her husband’s affair and her marriage at a breaking point, Diana is forced into the traditions and expectations of the holiday which she begins fighting in her own way to try and avoid a death of one-thousand cuts.

The movie is most notable for the lovely performance of the fragile Diana feeling trapped on all sides and even haunted by Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson), whose similarities to her own situation have become a bit of an obsession. Stewart is perfect here in a role that requires a tremendous amount of vulnerability to carry a film with very little actual plot through until the end.

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Come from Away

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  • Title: Come from Away
  • IMDb: link

“We honor what was lost, but we also commemorate what we found.”

Twenty years after 9/11 and 14 months into the COVID shutdown, Broadway reopens for a performance of Come from Away featuring many of the original Broadway performers for a live recording on the musical about 7,000 strangers from all over the world stranded in the small town of Gander for five days. While originally planned to be a more traditional film, with scenes filmed in Newfoundland, the live performance of the first returning Broadway show brings its own kind of magic that is wonderful to watch unfold.

Based on true events, the Canadian musical by Irene Sankoff and David Hein offers plenty of both laughter and tears over its 106-minute running time featuring a small cast playing multiple roles of both the shaken visitors and incredibly hospitable locals. And director Christopher Ashley knows just how to frame each sequence, giving us the best seat in the house. 

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