1. NOMADLAND – “See you down the road”
   I didn't see it until this year, so I say it counts! A rare moment, near the end of the film, in which the normally reserved Fran (Frances McDormand) speaks openly about her loss of her husband, prompting a wonderfully empathetic response from nomad guru Bob Wells.  It’s a perfect distillation of Nomadland’s quiet, bittersweet power, encapsulated in Wells’ mantra about there being no final goodbyes in the life they’ve chosen – just “I’ll see you down the road.” His delivery of that line still brings tears to my eyes.
   
   
2. IN THE HEIGHTS – “When the Sun Goes Down”
   This is what you can do with a movie musical that you can’t do on stage.  No CGI, no cuts, just good old-fashioned movie magic: a camera tilt, a folding wall, artful choreography and set design, and full commitment from Lesley Grace and Corey Hawkins as the couple whose love defies gravity.  It’s pure cinematic delight, underscored by the sight gag of the adolescent kid who witnesses them dancing across his window and, like us, can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.
   
   
3. SUMMER OF SOUL – “Precious Lord”
   In a lineup of musical legends, the highlight of Questlove’s doc about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, aka “Black Woodstock,”  is the tag-team performance of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” – a song Martin Luther King, Jr. requested just before his assassination the year before – by then up-and-coming Mavis Staples and gospel queen Mahalia Jackson.  Staples begins gloriously, but once Jackson opens her mouth, the effect is jaw-dropping: you feel her channeling the collective grief and anger over MLK’s death and transmuting it into joy.  And when the two ladies join voices to take the crowd to church, it’s all over but the hallelujahs.

Lynn is a government lawyer who spends most of her time outside work obsessing over arts and pop culture of all kinds.  Her first love, though, will always be movies. She doesn't do social media. [All of Lynn's articles]

Glenn Dunks Top Three "Five-Star" Entertainments

 Beyond Raoul Peck’s Exterminate All the Brutes, which I reviewed earlier in the year, there have only been three 2021 titles to date that have given me the five-star warm and fuzzies. That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a lot to really like, though: Stephen Johnson’s High Ground, Questlove’s Summer of Soul, season 3 of FX’s Pose and queer history miniseries Pride. But these three? These have been everything.

• BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR
  Medicinally spiked mania in the form of this hyper-colored comedy from Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. I hope to one day watch this with a crowd of equally stoned goofballs.
  
  
• PRETEND IT'S A CITY
  Martin Scorsese follows Fran Lebowitz around (pre-pandemic) New York City and lets her be her acidic, witty best. I could’ve watched a dozen more episodes of this.
  
  
• BO BURNHAM'S INSIDE
  ‘Welcome to the internet…’, and what a swing for the fences this was. And so accidentally well-timed as my home city went back into a COVID lockdown as it popped up on Netflix. You could fill an entire Best Original Song category (Oscar and Emmy) with entries from Burnham’s quarantine project. I haven’t been able to stop listening for weeks now.

Glenn is an Australia-based award-winning film writer seeking out documentaries, obscure Australian cinema and queer art films. You can follow him on Twitter or Instagram. [All of Glenn's articles]

Cláudio Alves's Three Most Memorable Images of 2021

• The Galician coast dipped in blood, scarlet filters, and ruby light painting the landscape into oblivion. Yet, amid its monochrome, white-ish figures emerge. Are they ghosts? Witches? Monsters? Lois Patiño's RED MOON TIDE remains one of the most haunting flicks of 2021. Ever since watching it, I keep thinking back to its visuals. They torment me in dreams, nightmares.
  
  
• Youthful love, its sunny hedonism, and whole-bodied abandonment crash into grief. Ozon's SUMMER OF 85 features many an arresting image, all captured in celluloid glory by cinematographer Hichame Alaouié. However, it's the sight of a teenager desperately dancing on a grave that has stayed with me. The sight synthesizes euphoria mixed with mourning, the ghost of erotic desire and guilt holding hands.
  
  
• Few things have brought me more joy in this cinematic year than Nao Serati's costumes for THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT'S A RESURRECTION. Watching dearly departed actress Mary Twala stand in the Lesotho landscape, either garbed in deep mourning or jewel-toned costume, is akin to a miracle. Pierre De Villiers' lensing makes her shine like a flame of human resilience. 

Cláudio is a Portuguese film writer and costume designer for several small productions. You can follow him on
Twitter , Letterboxd, and Instagram. [All of Claudio's articles] 

Juan Carlos's Three First-Watches: World Cinema Edition

Christopher James Top Three Cries 

How many of you are easy criers? I am one for sure. There have been many things to cry about over the past year during the pandemic. For the first half of 2021, thankfully there have been more happy tears than sad tears. Here are my top three movie-related cries of the year.

1. GOING BACK TO THE THEATER
   For those LA readers, know it was important to go to the Landmark for my first movie theater experience. It was where I saw first run Oscar films as a college student and spent most weekend mornings of my adult life. Thankfully, the Landmark was still full of chatty septuagenarians buying the movie pour of Chardonnay. Together Together was wonderful and Ed Helms and Patti Harrison were both great. Yet still, nothing was more emotional than being back with my best friend in my favorite theater after a long 14 month absence.
   
   
2.  “PACIENCIA Y FE” - In the Heights
   In reality, most of In the Heights produced all sorts of tears - tears of joy (the high energy of the opening), tears of awe (the production number of “96,000”). However, Olga Merediz’s big number, “Paciencia y Fe,” really turned up the water works. Her tour de force look at her family’s immigration to America gave a more fully formed look at the changing neighborhood of Washington Heights. The number is a fully formed three-act story all distilled into five minutes.
   
   
3. A CAR DRIVES UP TO A BBQ - F9
   I have cried at most of the Fast and Furious movies. The latest (and goofiest) chapter was no exception. Paul Walker’s death still hangs over the franchise not as a figure of death, but as a warm friend looking down from beyond. In the final moment of the film, the crew acknowledges an empty chair at the table, referring to Walker’s Brian. Just then, a car drives up to the barbecue, reminding us that in the world of The Fast and the Furious, Brian O’Conner is alive and happy. It’s beautiful and I’m a sap.

1. THE FURIES (1950)
   Barbara Stanwyck is a (inter)national treasure. Monumental versatility aside though—she can do anything—the genre I perhaps love her most in is westerns. And this Anthony Mann-directed frontier melodrama may be her finest hour this side of Double Indemnity or The Lady Eve.
   
   
2. ORIGINAL CAST ALBUM: COMPANY (1970)
   For theater nerds (guilty), D.A. Pennebaker’s seminal documentary of the behind-the-scenes sturm und drang of one of legendary lyricist Stephen Sondheim's all-time greatest—and most autobiographical—musicals is a must. See/own it for the taut sequence of an at-wits-end Elaine Stritch alone!
   
   
3. PARIAH (2011)
   Released at the tail-end of Pride month, Dee Rees’ breakthrough is one of the best, most powerful films (LGBTQ+ or otherwise) of the decade, thanks in large part to an astounding central performance by Adepero Oduye, whom Meryl Streep quite rightly name-checked during her iconic (at least to me) 2012 Golden Globes acceptance speech in 2012.