Slow Machine

Best Movies of 2021 – So Far

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Photo caption: RIDERS OF JUSTICE, a Magnet release. © Kasper Tuxen. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year.  By the end of the year, I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here are my Best Movies of 2020 and Best Movies of 2019 lists.

To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later.

THE BEST OF THE YEAR

Here’s the running list as of mid-July:

  • Riders of Justice: A character-driven comedy thriller, embedded with deeper stuff. Marvelous. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
  • Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised): Questlove’s magnificent revelation of the long-overlooked 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival – glorious musical performances at an important moment in our history and culture. In theaters and streaming on Hulu.
  • Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain: An unusually profound, revealing and unsentimental biodoc of a complicated man – a shy bad ass, an outwardly cynical romantic, a brooding humorist. A triumph for director Morgan Neville, Oscar-winner for 20 Feet from Stardom.
  • About Endlessness: The master of the droll, deadpan and absurd probes the meaning of life. One of the best movies of the year, but NOT FOR EVERYONE. Streaming on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
  • Slow Machine: An incomprehensible art film that is surprisingly engrossing.
  • Special mention: Lune: This Canadian indie, the Must See at this year’s Cinequest, is an astonishingly authentic exploration of bipolar disorder. A mother and teen daughter must navigate the impacts of the mom’s illness. Played by writer and co-director Aviva Armour-Ostroff, the mom Miriam is the most singular movie character I’ve seen recently. Miriam’s streams of manic speech have the rhythm of poetry. On the festival circuit and not yet available to stream.

Note that you see Summer of Soul and Roadrunner in theaters this week, and you can stream Summer of Soul and Riders of Justice at home.

There’s still plenty of room for more excellent 2021 movies. I’m especially eager to see the new works from directors Sean Baker, Asgar Farhadi, Joachim Trier, Hong Sang-soo, Todd Haynes, Joanna Hogg, Pedro Almodovar, Jacques Audiard, Emmanuelle Bercot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Arnaud Deplechin, Leos Carax, Francois Ozon, Paul Verhoeven, Ruben Ostlund and Valdimar Johannson. Stay tuned.

Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson in SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)

SLOW MACHINE: incomprehensibly engrossing

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Photo caption: Stephanie Hayes in SLOW MACHINE. Photo courtesy of Grasshopper Films.

Slow Machine dives enigmatically into paranoia. A 72-minute art film shot on 16mm and a very low budget, Slow Machine is surprisingly engrossing.

After a night of hard drinking, Swedish actress Stephanie (Stephanie Hayes) wakes up in an unfamiliar Queens apartment. She has been brought there for her safety by Gerard (Scott Shepherd), an NYPD counter intelligence officer.  It’s not his apartment, but one he uses for his work.

Stephanie is trying to get her bearings and assess Gerard while he chatters amiably, describing himself as “emotionally promiscuous”. Gerard has a rare quality – he is loquacious without being tiresome – you can’t help but listen to guy. He is transparently mysterious, if that’s a thing.

Despite initial resistance, Stephanie becomes involved with Gerard. Then an unexpected event causes Stephanie to hide out at an acquaintance’s house.

Stephanie has found herself in a paranoid mystery, but she’s mysterious herself. Shifting between accents, she often sounds like she is fabricating. She deflects men’s passes with practiced moxie, but she can be paralyzed with terror.

The story is not the point. Slow Machine draws us in as we try to figure out who these people are and what is going on.

There are lots of unexpected nuggets. Chloe Sevigny shows up and plays a version of herself. Gerard’s unseen fiance is an anthropologist studying the setups in porn movies. A touch football game breaks out. Stephanie rehearses with Gerard for an audition, and the scene becomes riveting.

Slow Machine is the first feature for co-directors Joe Denardo and Paul Felten; Felten wrote the screenplay. 

Slow Machine is not for folks who need their movies to be linear or even coherent. Why is this movie so engrossing? Beats me, but it is seductive and ever watchable.

Slow Machine is streaming on Virtual Cinema, I saw it at Laemmle, and it’s coming to the Roxie.

Stephanie Hayes in SLOW MACHINE. Photo courtesy of Grasshopper Films.