Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Directed by Jon Watts
By now you’ve all seen it, or at the very least overheard someone talk about it, but regardless of what you may have picked-up, the latest edition into the now decades-old Spider-Man cinematic saga is easily its best yet. It’s a risky film, but it pays off in ways not commonly found in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. For one, No Way Home offers a surprising amount of earned emotional depth. Where most of its contemporaries force feed us lazy and predictable melancholic gloom, director Jon Watts – along with writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers – deliver a much more genuine sense of sentimentality. You may see some of it coming, but the impact is no less authentic. Perhaps most surprising, though, is that after two previous stand-alone MCU films and a handful of franchise appearances, Spidey (Tom Holland – the best to ever don the red and blue, sorry haters, not sorry) is finally delivered the blow (and the line) that turns him into the hero we all love so dearly. It’s a wonderfully emotional swerve that at last does cinematic justice to one of the most iconic origin stories ever told.
Free Guy (2021)
Directed by Shawn Levy
I don’t play video games, I don’t care about video games, and therefore it should stand to reason that movies with video game themes likely won’t resonate with me. Free Guy is a prime example of this, but manages to go a step further by actively annoying me as well. Once again, Ryan Reynolds plays Ryan Reynolds in a very Ryan Reynolds-centric action/comedy, but this time around he’s a video game background NPC who becomes sentient and starts living life to the fullest. For reasons I’m not exactly clear on or understand why they matter at all, the game designers in the real world use this new in-game anomaly to battle over the rights to the game’s code, or ownership, or something – I’m not sure. Big fights happen, lots of stuff gets wrecked, pop culture is referenced, and everything works out the way it’s supposed to. Next.
Identifying Features (2021)
Directed by Fernanda Valadez
Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features could easily be a dystopian cautionary fable if its story wasn’t so firmly grounded in the horrifying reality so many face on an everyday basis. This is not a film meant to be enjoyed, but rather absorbed as a distressing reminder of willfully ignored truths – truths easily rejected by those in positions of privilege. Valadez uses her camera to paint vivid landscapes full of wonder and beauty, but then distorts them with lawless violence. Our guide on this grueling journey is Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández), a desperate mother trying to find her missing son in modern-day Mexico. As the mystery unfolds, so do the levels of corruption and cover-up, until the film’s heartbreaking and shocking climax reveals what we may have suspected all along. Valadez makes no apologies for the frankness of her film, nor for her gritty depiction of life under a system unwilling to protect its own citizens, and why should she? The harsh realities of Identifying Features are not meant to be rationalized or dismissed, they’re meant to be acted on.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.