Movies

It's a brand new year, and no doubt there nothing anyone wants to do less than to look back at 2021, the year that looked at 2020 and said, "Hold my beer."

But in terms of entertainment options, 2021 had a better turnout than its predecessor, due in part to the reopening of movie theaters (although a good number of great stories were told through streaming services as well). Likewise, there was many good things in broadcast and streaming series to capture the attention, and a swell of wonderful stories in the comic book industry, largely bolstered by a rise in indepently produced products.

So we urge you to take a deep breath for one more last look at the year, and select the best among the nominees below to determine which ones deserve a Critical Blast Best of 2021 trophy.

This voting also includes the voting or our annual Bombshell of the Year, selecting among the twelve cosplayers who were each spotlighted in our monthly Bombshell of the Month feature.

According to World Health Organization statistics, by 2030, one in six people will be aged 60 years or over, and by the century’s mid-point, the figure will exceed 2.1 billion. As the population of many western industrialized nations grays at an unprecedented rate, the urge to avoid the effects of older age has evolved into an ever-present multi-billion-dollar industry. There’s an endless array of pills and potions, creams and cleanses, ointments and therapies that promise to fend off Father Time, and to some there’s no price too high to prolong their youth.

The comics-sphere is going to be abuzz this week with talk of the latest MCU joint venture, Spider-Man: No Way Home. Much of that buzz will come from people who haven't seen it yet and are excited to get to it, while those who have seen it try to hold the spoilery bits inside so they don't come across like the jackasses of the Internet.

Hee-haw.

2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home ended with one of the best cliffhangers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After swinging around Manhattan with his girlfriend, MJ (Zendaya), Spider-Man (Tom Holland) sees himself on a big screen in Times Square, but not as Spider-Man. Crusading journalist J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons), using doctored audio and video courtesy of the late “true hero” Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) shatters Spidey’s life by revealing his secret identity. The world now knows that Peter Parker is Spider-Man! “OMG!” as the kids say!

In 1990, celebrated director and screenwriter Gary Marshall launched the career of then Hollywood ingenue Hollywood Julia Roberts into orbit with the release of Pretty Woman, the second highest grossing film of that year. She played Vivian Ward, a Hollywood prostitute who gets hired by filthy rich businessman Edward Lewis, played by Hollywood heartthrob Richard Gere, to be his arm candy for a week of schmoozing other rich people to close a multimillion dollar business deal. At the time, popular sentiment regarded the film as a twist on the classic fairy tale story, with the common girl rescuing the dashing and rich hunk from his soul-crushing life. I remember watching the movie back then and being rather unimpressed. It was more cute than clever. I have never really understood the appeal of Richard Gere, but I did enjoy Julia Roberts' performance. The plot, however, just didn't click with me.

The 2022 Oscars will be a pretty stacked event given there are so many movies involved with four months left to go until the event is presented.

The show, which will be held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 27, is a highly-anticipated one that will name the Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture winners, among others.

Of course, many of the movies involved are must-watch for fans. And the list below names the best of them.

Red Notice, which debuts simultaneously on Netflix and in select theaters, was not a film I held out much hope for. Sure, it featured an outstanding cast of three of my favorite actors -- Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot, and Ryan Reynolds -- but it didn't have "blockbuster" vibes.

And while it's not going to win any nods from "The Academy," Red Notice will certainly get the recognition from the only crowd that matters: the audience. From the opening scene, the viewer is taken on a full-throttle roller-coaster ride of action and adventure, humor and heists. It's a buddy movie where the two are not even friends. It's an On The Road... picture with more explosions and chase scenes. In short, it's worth the watch, and worth the re-watch.

The 1978 film I Spit on Your Grave has been talked about since the film’s creation; and now, 43 years later, Jennifer gets her revenge again in ultra-gory, High Definition, in-your-face 4K!

However, it does need to be said: “Just how many versions, cuts, and different pressings of this film do you really need?”  The answer is: just this one. Ronin Films has given us the definitive edition this year with this brand new 4K, and brings all the special features from the previous editions along for the blood-soaked ride.

The original Candyman film starring Tony Todd was an outstanding entry into the horror/slasher genre of film. In a field that was overwhelmingly populated by white slashers (Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Leatherface, Freddy Krueger), Candyman took the urban legends of Bloody Mary (where saying the name so many times in a mirror summons the spirit of the killer) and created a supernatural urban nightmare.

In Nia DaCosta's 2021 remake, written by DaCosta with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, Candyman is a role -- an inner city juju cast upon the next avatar of Candyman for the purpose of avenging wrongs done to the black community over centuries. Like a red shirt on a Star Trek away team, if you wear a blue shirt and a badge in this film, you're going to die. You're not only a target of Candyman's wrath but you also demonstrate (bluntly) that you deserve it. Yes, the film is that woke.

Marvel’s The Eternals isn’t a bad movie, despite what the general negativity of the internet would have you believe. No, it’s not perfect, but it’s also not Thor: The Dark World either. When The Eternals opens in the U.S. on November 5, 2021, exclusively in theaters, it will do so having already been labelled as a flop by film critics who aren’t as familiar with the source material, by comic fans who are familiar and expect every panel of the comics to be reproduced on the big screen, and by the so-called “influencers” on social media who seem dead set on "cancelling" evetything for tthe vagueist of reasons. The film is arguably Marvel’s most ambitious offering to date, and also perhaps it’s least accessible entry in their cinematic universe.

Halloween is when the monsters all come out. And while recent years have brought us scary slashers like Freddy and Jason, or deceptively cute killer creatures like Gremlins, Critters, or Creepsters, the foundations of fright will always be the Universal Monsters -- those monsters from classic literature brought to life on the silver screen by Universal Pictures.

The history of Mesoamerican culture is bathed in blood. Rituals of human sacrifice were a cornerstone of Aztec faith, buttressing their belief that ravenous gods required victims to allow the sun to rise. With the Spanish conquest such ideas became interwoven within the fabric of Christianity, and to this day in remote areas of Mexico there exists a pervasive folk religion hidden beneath the modern veneer, a spiritual quilt that's part Catholic creed, part ancient native custom and part superstition. Even the notorious drug cartels that prey upon the population pray for the protection of Santa Muerte, the so-called Narco Saint, and for some the acceptance that the rites and deities of antiquity still exist comes easily.

Comics can boast of a big army of fans around the world, so filmmakers couldn't help but create many stunning movies based on the most popular comic books.

Lena Headey and Michael Caine turn in expected magnetic performances in this modern day loose adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic, Twist.

In this version, the titular Oliver Twist (Rafferty Law) is a young adult, not a mere street urchin, who is living homeless and known for his large-scale grafitti art, which ends up in places most people would consider impossible to get to. His chance encounter with Red (Sophie Simnett) brings him to the attention of Fagin (Michael Caine), the leader of a ragtag group of apprentice con artists who are looking to set up an art dealer for a big heist, partly for the money and partly for revenge. Complicating matters emotionally for Oliver is the presence of the malevolent Sikes (Lena Headey), who has a dominant relationship with Red that interferes with her and Oliver hooking up. 

There's a part of me that thinks it simply isn't fair to write a critical review of F9: The Fast Saga. While it's little more than a bunch of action scenes, stitched together loosely with the threads of something resembling a plot, there's also the fact that it never pretends to be anything more than that, that the audience isn't intended to have their minds engaged in solving a mystery but merely to have their adrenal glands engaged through the harrowing automotive special effects.

But I'm going to do it anyway, because I need more word count than just that first paragraph.

In the world of The Purge franchise, the U.S. government has been supplanted -- through elections -- with a new breed of "founding fathers" who have pushed through laws allowing the population to participate in bloody mayhem in order to "purge" the hate from their systems so that the rest of the year might be peaceful. Beginning at sundown and ending at sunup, Purge Night gives people the right to kill anyone with impunity, with no intervention from law enforcement or other emergency services. 'Tis the season for horror movies (check these out) with Halloween incoming, thus you might wonder if The Forever Purge should be on your horror to-watch list. Let's continue.

SLAXX is the Canadian horror comedy film about the dark side of killer fashion. Produced in 2020, the film made its debut on Shudder and DVD last month to audiences worldwide.

Directed by Elza Kephart, SLAXX is the story of a young woman named Libby (Romane Denis) who takes a position at a trendy clothing store only to have her dreams of working in the fashion industry turn into her worst nightmare. The night before the big launch of the company's newest jeans, called Super Shapers, one of Libby’s co-workers steal a pair of the new jeans from the backroom and puts them on. Little does she know this particular batch of the new jeans have been possessed by the spirit of a young Hindi child laborer who died while threshing the cotton she picked to make them. Out for revenge and thirsting for blood, the jeans kill the worker and proceed to run amok through the store feeding off the blood of all its inhabitants.

When Star Trek: The Motion Picture debuted in theaters, it had been ten years since the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise had come together on television. For the fans, it was a huge event that made largely forgivable the opportunity taken by the SFX department to show how cool computer generated fractal graphics could look. It was the launchpoint for five more movies to come, sometimes calling back to the television show but mostly introducing new concepts and new aliens.

It’s always exciting to see someone take huge risks on the big screen. Check out this list of the best gambling movies of all time from different eras.