The Wildcards of TV and Cinema in 2021

Every year, there's an undefinable, uncategorizable something on the screen. A trend, a performance or performer, a random coincidence that stands out to our critics. Let's take a look through their selection of TV and cinema wildcards.

---

The (In)Complete Story

Josh Kupecki wishes we could know when to let go

Fervent viewers’ compulsive inability to find closure in the complete stories of a limited series has led to the threat of at least one gratuitous revival (Big Little Lies), and more seem to be looming (don’t do it, Mare of Easttown!). There’s money to be made in returning to the well/bank, but it’s not a good look for anyone. Complicating matters further are series that stretch their narratives into endless gossamer until the audience forgets why they were watching in the first place. The ability to stop, and start, is becoming a lost art in storytelling.

---

Richard Jenkins in The Humans

Sarah Jane celebrates the ongoing greatness of the Bone Tomahawk star

When will the academy wake up to the fact that Richard Jenkins is one of the best actors of his (and several others) generation. He’s so great in everything he does. His work in Bone Tomahawk was tremendous and definitely Oscar worthy. He can be funny, too, like in Cabin in the Woods. His work in this year’s The Humans is so good, too. I think it’s because he inhabits his characters so much, he’s unrecognizable from role to role. Whatever the reason, Jenkins is absolutely one of the best actors working today and just give him a goddamn statue already.

---

David Knell in Pig

Richard Whittaker

There's too much fuss about A-list actors "slumming" in small parts for cachet and a short at a supporting actor nomination come award season. As the sell-out and self-betraying Chef Derek Finway in Pig, David Knell showed that even the smallest supporting part can be impactful. His line delivery of nonsense about his planned menu is a lifetime of emotion, and provides the perfect counterbalance to Nic Cage's depiction of a man who has cut away everything from his life that he does not love. But when he talks about his dream dish ("Liver Scotch Eggs with a honey-curry mustard") it's the turning point for one of the year's best films.

---

Fred Hechinger in ... Everything

Jenny Nulf explains why this is the year of the Fear Street star

Fred Hechinger perhaps had one of the best breakout years in recent memory. In the television landscape, he got to play a young Joel Edgerton in the incredible epic limited series The Underground Railroad, and in the biting satire The White Lotus he played a complex, privileged Gen Z kid discovering the world outside his cell phone. He also struck gold with Netflix films, starring in the wacko, much delayed film The Woman in the Window, and had great comic relief in the highly anticipated Fear Street adaptations. Hechinger is unassuming, but his talent packs a punch.

---

Ridley Scott Elicits the Year's Biggest Performances

Trace Sauveur basks in the glory of OTT acting

We had bestowed upon us two new features from Sir Ridley Scott this year and both came with their own uniquely unhinged performances, with Ben Affleck in The Last Duel and Jared Leto in House of Gucci. While Affleck’s orgy-loving playboy lord is more dialed in to the actual film than Leto’s straight-up diabolical “It’s-a-me-Mario!” Italian caricature, there’s no denying that both of them showed up to do some real capital-A Acting. Good or bad, I haven’t forgotten them.

---

In Black and White

Steve Davis celebrates the return of monochromatic movies

Silvery, crystalline, majestic: This year marked a welcome revival of black-and-white cinematography in three thematically diverse films: Belfast, Passing, and The Tragedy of Macbeth. The monochromatic palettes in each transported you to a particular time and place, imbuing those films’ stories with the clarity of history that multi-colored filmmaking can sometime swallow up.

---

Home (Confinement) Cinema

Marc Savlov is stuck inside again (and is not OK with it)

Stuck inside my home for yet another anti-year, I’ll just paraphrase Chief Brody: We’re gonna need a bigger home theater system. So we got one and its 7.1 Dolby Atomos® definitely delivers sternum-shattering UltraMegaTinnituSound™ directly into my cerebral cortex, sparking like a live wire in a cold shower. And yet the passionate cinemaphile that’s been lying dormant in my reptilian hindbrain has proved impossible to fool. The fire-crack and muzzle-flash of Mr. Wick painting the bad guys crimson with his trusty HK P30L just isn’t the same. I hunger for the communal dark, the heady stank of stale popcorn and tacky, cola-gloop on the soles of my Chuck Taylors. I yearn for that dreamiest of odors — “Perfume du Grindhouse.” And I whisper The Film Fanatic’s Prayer: “Dim the lights, draw the curtains, and Ars Gratia Artis.”