The atrocious Italian accents are just the start of what’s wrong with Ridley Scott’s lead-footed screen telling of a lethal fashion family feud of the 1970s to ’90s.

Lady Gaga stumbles on the fashion world runway and so do her other top-billed actors, Adam Driver, Jared Leto and Al Pacino. Having endured the mind-numbing folly that is “Eternals,” can we just go back to the usual brightly coloured inanity? Critics, present company included, have long called for a different kind of Marvel movie. It’s a classic case of being careful what you wish for. The 10 alleged superheroes who populate this “Avengers” knock-off, costumed as if headed to an ABBA reunion concert, spend much of the film’s 157-minute running time standing around, bickering about what they’re supposed to be doing. Writer/director Chloé Zhao’s dreadfully dull Marvel movie is a serious slide from her Oscar-winning heights of “Nomadland,” my top film pick of 2020. Runners-up (in alphabetical order): “A Hero,” “CODA,” “Cyrano,” “King Richard,” “Passing,” “Petite Maman,” “Quo Vadis, Aida?” “West Side Story,” “Wild Indian,” “The Worst Person in the World.” They are films that should have been a lot better than they were.

I include my top three list of the year’s worst movies, which in my case means most disappointing. Not every movie in 2021 was great, of course. Fashioned out of footage that had been shelved for 50 years or more, they told brand new stories of artists and music that many of us had overlooked, forgotten or misconstrued. The three music documentaries on my list - “Summer of Soul,” “The Velvet Underground” and “The Beatles: Get Back” - represent gratifying conclusions in their entirety. I mean a finale of impact and intrigue that I didn’t see coming, delivering a sense of fulfilment and the urge to immediately watch the film again. And looking over my top 10 list of the year’s best films, I’m struck by how satisfying their endings were.īy this I don’t mean a conventional happy ending, that facile Hollywood construct so often based on contrivance. Yet the movies of the past 12 months offered solace and escape from daily woes, as movies so often do. The year 2021 is ending on a dispiriting note, with a global pandemic that continues to rage and any number of other concerns for our stressed-out planet.

The power hour movie