Riders of Justice

Most overlooked movies of 2021

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

Some of 2021’s best movie experiences are still under the radar. Here are seven films that you shouldn’t overlook.

All are available to stream at home. (There are more overlooked 2021 movies that I could recommend, but I’m not going to tease you with movies that you can’t find.)

  • Riders of Justice: Starring the charismatic Mads Mikkelsen, this character-driven thriller is near the top of my Best Movies of 2021. Riders of Justice has been inadequately described as a revenge thriller and an action comedy. It is gloriously satisfying as entertainment, but the more I think about it, Riders of Justice explores grief, revenge and mortality – they’re all in here. And it’s still very, very funny. Even Denmark overlooked Riders of Justice, submitting Flee as their entry for the Best International Feature Oscar instead. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.
  • Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road: An unusual documentary about an unusual man.  Brian Wilson, The Beach Boys’ songwriting and arranging genius weighs in on his life and work.  Wilson’s old and trusted friend drove him around important places in his life – in the format of Comedians in Cars Drinking Coffee – and it paid off with oft emotional revelations from the usually monosyllabic Wilson. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.
  • The Lost Leonardo: This documentary peels back the onion on an ever surprising tale of discovery, scholarship, fraud, commerce and politics in the refined and pretentious art world. Is a rediscovered Renaissance masterpiece authentic, and does it matter? Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.
  • Wildland: This remarkable Danish neo-noir gives family ties a bad name. The story simmers and evolves into a nail biter right up to its noir-stained epilogue. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu.
THE UNKNOWN SAINT. Photo courtesy of The Match Factory.
  • The Unknown Saint: This delightfully deadpan crime comedy is a shrine to really bad luck. Morocco’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature Oscar. Netflix.
  • Summertime: I can’t remember hearing so much poetry in a movie. This ever vibrant film is about giving voice, the voice of mostly young Los Angelenos, expressing themselves, mostly through poetry. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube and redbox.
  • Ma Belle, My Beauty: This simmering romantic drama is a gorgeous, sexy, character-driven film, an exploration of the post-breakup dynamics of polyamorous queer women. This is a beautiful, absorbing movie with the unexpected appearance of a strap-on. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.
Idella Johnson, Sivan Noam Shimon and Hannah Pepper in Marion Hill’s film MA BELLE, MY BEAUTY. Courtesy of SFILM.

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)

Movies to See Right Now

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

This week: my experience returning to theaters, the best movie of the year so far, and a marathon of Alfred Hitchcock.

I finally went to a movie theater for the first time in an unimaginable 473 days – and I was a little rusty. On a 92 degree day, I slipped into the air conditioned theater and, while trying to adjust my recliner, inadvertently turned on the seat heater. Everything else went well.

I found the Astronaut Pen that The Wife gave me, which fits easily in my pants pocket. And I still had my unlined notepad from Muji, so I can scrawl notes in the dark. (the downtown San Jose Muji did not survive COVID, so I’ll need another source.)

Incidentally, in that 473 days of COVID hermitage, I had watched 328 films at home – streaming, broadcast, DVD and screeners.

IN THEATERS

The Sparks Brothers: This affectionate documentary profiles a 54-year-old pop band, still tirelessly living their art. Both the subject band and the movie about them are very funny.

Truman and Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation: Two giants of American literature in their own words.

Also in theaters:

  • In the Heights: Vibrant, earnest and perfect for this moment. Also streaming on HBO Max.
  • Summer of 85: Director Francois Ozon reflects on how we remember our youth in this romantic teen coming of age story.
  • The Dry: a mystery as psychological as it is procedural. In theaters and also streaming on AppleTV, YouTube and Google Play
  • Undine: slow burn, barely flickering.
  • Censor: less scary and suspenseful than it is unpleasant.

ON VIDEO

Riders of Justice: It’s the year’s best movie so far. A character-driven comedy thriller embedded with deeper stuff. Marvelous. Also AppleTV.

Summertime: This ever vibrant film is about giving voice, the voice of mostly young Los Angelenos, expressing themselves mostly through poetry. Stream from Frameline through Sunday night, June 27.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE

ON TV

Starting Saturday, June 26, and continuing through early Monday. Turner Classic Movies will be airing FORTY-EIGHT HOURS of Alfred Hitchcock. The 23 different movies (Shadow of a Doubt plays twice on Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley) range from Hitchcock’s 1927 silent The Lodger to his 1976 Family Plot. The program includes Hitchcock’s best eight films: Vertigo, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Rope, The Birds and Shadow of a Doubt. 

Farley Granger, James Stewart and John Dahl in ROPE

RIDERS OF JUSTICE: thriller, comedy and much, much more

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

In the marvelous Riders of Justice, Mads Mikkelsen plays Markus, a soldier on active duty in the Middle East; when his wife dies in an accident, Markus returns home to tend to their teenage daughter. Then two geeky data scientists show up at his door with an anti-social hacker – and Markus learns that the tragedy may not have been an accident. Markus, a human killing machine, and the three supernerds team up on a quest for revenge.

Riders of JustIce has been inadequately described as a revenge thriller and an action comedy. It is gloriously satisfying as entertainment, but the more I think about it, Riders of Justice explores grief, revenge and mortality – they’re all in here. And it’s still very, very funny.

The key is that Riders of Justice is so character-driven. At first, Markus and his three compatriots seem to be comic types, but writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen has fleshed them out – each of these men has a personality formed by a trauma.

Markus has the laser focus of a combat commander, which he uses to deflect any contemplation of his feelings – or those of others, including his grief-wracked daughter.

Mathematician Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is just socially aware enough to recognize how inappropriate his buddies are. His partner Lennart (Lars Brygmann), with 40,000 hours of therapy under his belt, is both psychologically savvy and remarkably devoid of self-awareness or boundaries. The hacker Emmenthaler (Nicolas Bro) really can’t navigate any social interaction. These guys are hilarious from their opening presentation to a bunch of corporate suits, where they present an elaborate mathematical proof that rich people buy Mercedes and poor people drive Hyundais.

Mads Mikkelsen and Andrea Heick Gadeberg in RIDERS OF JUSTICE, a Magnet release. © Rolf Konow. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

Mads Mikkelsen is a favorite of mine. I can’t name a more compelling and versatile screen actor working to day. He has delivered some of the best performances of the past two decades in After the Wedding, The Hunt and Another Round. (And he was the Bond villain with the tears of blood in the 2006 Casino Royale). I recommend this wonderful NYT interview with Mikkelsen, who really used to be professional dancer (who knew?) and touches on his exhilarating dance scene in Another Round.

In Riders of Justice, Mikkelsen takes Markus’ men-don’t talk-about-their-feelings attitude just far enough to set up Jensen’s jokes and to create tension about what’s best for his daughter. It’s extreme, but not cartoonish.

Writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen, who won an Oscar for a 1998 short film, co-wrote Susanne Bier’s Brothers, After the Wedding and In a Better World. Brothers (Brødre) and After the Wedding (Efter brylluppet) are two of the best films of the 2000s; watch the Danish originals, not the putrid American remakes.

Jensen, with his wicked wit at the ready, has also written and directed The Green Butchers, Stealing Rembrandt, Flickering Lights and Men & Chicken.

Riders of Justice is the best movie that I’ve seen so far in 2021. Riders of Justice has slipped out of Bay Area theaters, but is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.