Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Everett Collection
It’s been a bad year for movies. I’ve heard this refrain countless times from friends and family, trapped in their homes over these agonizing months with only streaming and on-demand options to quench their cinema thirst. And they’ve got a point—sort of. Film distributors have been unreasonably intransigent during the pandemic, refusing to release their awards-courting offerings on streaming or pay-per-view platforms despite COVID cases reaching record highs. Want to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s instant-classic Licorice Pizza, Steven Spielberg’s dazzling West Side Story remake or why Lady Gaga watched panther videos to prep for House of Gucci? Sorry! That’d require you don a mask and brave a packed movie theater.
The reality is, it’s been a rich year for film—but some of the very best have flown under the radar, their lights dimmed by metaverses and finger-wagging celebs. Here are The Daily Beast’s picks for the most overlooked movies of 2021.
The Viewing Booth
There are many misconceptions and bad-faith arguments swirling about concerning the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict (Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution” for their treatment of the Palestinians). In Temple University researcher Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s eye-opening documentary experiment, Maia Levy, a Jewish American college student, is shown contrasting footage of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank—from B’Tselem activists and pro-Israeli sources—in a constructed viewing booth. Her reactions reveal her biases, as well as how images can shape our perspective.
Where to Watch: Its official website
The Card Counter
I was a bit mixed on Paul Schrader’s latest, centering a former Abu Ghraib torturer turned monk-like card shark, after first seeing it in Venice. But each subsequent viewing has unearthed hidden depths. Oscar Isaac has never been better as God’s Lonely Man, gambling his way through purgatory as penance in this nuanced examination of American violence and the scars it leaves on the soul.
Where to Watch: Apple TV+ or Prime (On-Demand)
Shiva Baby
The most nerve-wracking film of the year is this debut feature from Emma Seligman, an adaptation of her NYU thesis about a bisexual young woman (an outstanding Rachel Sennott, who deserves awards consideration) who attends a shiva with her family, only to weave her way around a series of landmines, from a salty ex and suffocating parents to the arrival of her emotionally vacant sugar daddy. We’re talking Uncut Gems-levels of anxiety here.
Where to Watch: HBO Max
About Endlessness
Every new film by the absurdist Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson—one of the most underrated directors on the planet—is cause for celebration, and this series of striking vignettes exploring the frailty (and silliness) of the human condition, and our reliance on religion as a balm, is no exception.
Where to Watch: Hulu
The Truffle Hunters
Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s documentary provides perhaps the most delightful movie-viewing experience of the year, following four elderly Northern Italian men, their frustrated wives, and their prized dogs as they hunt for the Alba truffle, which can go for tens of thousands of dollars a pound. Witnessing these sweet old men’s affinity for their feline friends will lighten any mood.
Where to Watch: Apple TV+ (On-Demand)
Sabaya
Hogir Hirori’s documentary follows a group of activists who rescue enslaved Yazidi women from the clutches of ISIS, infiltrating Syria’s al-Hol camp by cover of night and bringing them to safety. It’s an awe-inspiring portrait of true heroism that “boasts a proximity to its action that’s nail-bitingly extreme,” wrote our Nick Schager. “From early imagery shot from the POV of a woman wearing a niqab (i.e. an all-encompassing veil) as she walks through a camp’s dusty marketplace streets, her identity as an interloper concealed only by the black garment covering her from head to toe, it’s an anxiety-inducing portrait of courage and suffering.”
Where to Watch: Paramount+
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Though it proved too racy for the Oscars, what with its suite of unsimulated sex acts, Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s latest, about a history teacher who’s subjected to a Salem-esque trial by her students’ parents when a raunchy sex tape of hers finds its way onto the internet, is a scathing send-up of nationalism, sexism, and the ways people are absolutely losing their minds during the pandemic.
Where to Watch: Select Theaters and On-Demand
Test Pattern
“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” Those words by late civil-rights leader Malcolm X reverberate throughout filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford’s white-knuckle debut, about a Black woman—one half of an interracial couple—trying to process her sexual assault, only to find the system (and her white boyfriend) indifferent to her trauma.
Where to Watch: Starz