The Best Film Scenes of 2021

From a seemingly never-ending pandemic to increasing political and social polarization, life feels palpably more uncertain than ever. But the comfort of certainty was at least easy to come by at the movies this year. Be it a subtle yet profound exploration of essential truths or an action set piece marked by supreme aesthetic wizardry, the best film scenes of 2021 were positively transporting. Especially nowadays, the effect of watching one of these scenes feels much like a young woman’s dream sequence of exhilarating charm in director Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World: The unsavory aspects of the real world are tuned out, time seems to stand still, and our imaginations run wild. Wes Greene

The Card Counter, William Tell’s Overture

Sometimes the action of a scene is so mesmerizing to watch that subtextual or thematic underpinnings can feel downright meaningless. Case in point, the sequence in The Card Counter where card shark William Tell (Oscar Isaac) formally introduces his skills to his protégé, Cirk (Tye Sheridan), at a diner. This moment is a phenomenal showcase for some head-spinning, stunningly dexterous sleights of hand—so sharp and controlled that, if you’re so inclined, you can read as a metaphor for Paul Schrader’s filmmaking. Greene

Copshop, A Lamb in Balloon Man’s Clothing

Joe Carnahan’s Copshop introduces us to Anthony Lamb (Toby Huss) after the assassin waltzes into the police station housing his target (Frank Grillo) disguised as a balloon delivery man. After some idle chatter, the man smoothly and chillingly takes out the officer (Robert Walker Branchaud) on duty with a bullet to the head, then casually quips about wishing to know what’s going through the man’s mind. Carnahan has long laced violent set pieces with pitch-black humor, but the scene’s sophisticated, elaborate comedic staging in particular takes the filmmaker’s proclivities to gonzo new heights. Greene

Days, The Massage

It isn’t just that the (in more ways than one) climactic tryst between Days’s two lonely central characters (Lee Kang-sheng and Anong Houngheuangsy) is predominantly captured in two roughly nine-minute-long takes. The sequence is also, with its elegant mix of poignant tenderness and frank sexuality captured in the moments that cap the massage, one of director Tsai Ming-liang’s most unforgettable depictions of how a physical connection between two souls can be a powerful remedy for a wounded soul. Greene

Dune, Sandworm Snacks on Spice Harvester

When Duke Atreides (Oscar Isaac) and his son (Timothée Chalamet) tour Arrakis’s spice-mining operation, things quickly go south across Dune’s standout sequence, which blends epic scale and lysergic freak-out. As a spice harvester trawls the vast desert, its surface undulates in the distance, signaling an approaching sandworm. What follows is a remarkably sustained burst of tension as the worm gets closer and Duke Atreides attempts to evacuate those on the ground, including his son, who enters a trance state after overdosing on the spice that clouds the air. And in one of the best displays of blockbuster CGI in years, the sand beneath the harvester collapses and reveals the giant maw of the worm, its infinite cilia-like teeth heightening the surreal terror of a world seemingly about to fall down into hell. Jake Cole

In the Heights, If I Won the Lotto

Jon M. Chu’s In the Heights surges with cinematographic empathy that matches its protagonist’s desire to recognize the dignity and humanity in everyone he meets: Usnavi (Anthony Ramos), like Lin-Manuel Miranda, sees the artistry and grace in his neighbors and insists that we see them that way too. The filmmakers execute what couldn’t be done on stage by centering geography throughout. Scenes dig into Washington Heights locations and linger long enough in each place to articulate their beauty, none deeper than the “96,000” number set at a public pool. This space is densely detailed, sometimes even overwhelming in its exuberant specificity. The sequence is a harmonious marriage of reality and fantasy, reaching for Busby Berkeley scope without every losing sight of people’s dreams of better lives. Dan Rubins

Licorice Pizza, Downhill Coasting

Licorice Pizza’s tempo is typically in synch with the fast-talking Gary’s (Cooper Hoffman) energy, but its most arresting moment is its most tranquil. Left enervated by his encounter with coked-up Hollywood producer Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper), Gary takes a crowbar to the man’s luxury car, only to find out that the getaway van that Alana (Alana Haim) is driving has run out of gas. Stranded on a hill, they rely on gravity to transport them from the scene of the crime, and for a few minutes Paul Thomas Anderson’s film slows down for a series of gentle, rolling shots of the vehicle coasting against a cool, pre-dawn sky. Cole

Memoria, Sonic Transference

After establishing its oblique narrative circumstances at length in Bogotá, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria decamps at its midway point to the outskirts of the Colombian rainforest, at which point a spell of languorous mystery washes over the film. The pinnacle of this transporting back half is a scene of wordless commiseration between Tilda Swinton’s restless empath, Jessica, and a small-town fisherman, Hernan (Elkin Díaz), whom she’s identified as an inheritor of the same unplaceable grief that’s plagued her throughout the film. In a deceptively modest long take, the two hold hands in Hernan’s kitchen, sparking a flurry of sonic fragments that suggests a transference of troubling memories—an ineffably moving summation of the film’s exploration of history’s subterranean sway on the present. Carson Lund

Nobody, Bus Fight

“Auditor” is a code word for high-paid assassin, a profession that Hutch (Bob Odenkirk) abandoned years earlier for a “normal life.” This premise recalls Brad Bird’s The Incredibles, as well as Bill’s Superman monologue at the end of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 2, both of which posited an über-male’s embrace of normalcy as a self-castrating act of contempt for the very sort of man he’s impersonating. Like the characters in those films, Hutch realizes that he’s taken his beta act too far, which leads to Nobody’s one remarkable set piece, a battle royale on a bus that disquietingly mixes stylized choreography with graphic, corporeal violence. Chuck Bowen

Pig, A Word with the Chef

Long into Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, it’s revealed that Rob (Nicolas Cage) was once a hot-stuff chef, and the film begins to flirt with becoming a criticism-slash-satire of the pretensions driving modern restaurant culture. One of Pig’s most piercing moments is Rob’s plea to a hip restauranteur (David Knell) to return to his roots and open the pub he always wanted, rather than marketing captured vapor as cuisine. Such scenes underscore the film’s reactionary qualities, as it clearly sees critics and fancy chefs as ubiquitous fakes taking the power of true, essentially proletarian food from the populace. Like Brad Bird’s Ratatouille, Pig may not be able to imagine a critic who’s as ecstatic about their passions as any regular person (though this critic can attest that a few of them do exist). That said, the mini op-eds that Sarnoski places in Rob’s mouth are persuasive. For one, the extreme rarefication of food, our lifeblood and a source of profound pleasure, is indeed obscene. Bowen

The Power of the Dog, The Duel

“Show, don’t tell” has its limits as a catch-all directorial credo, but it’s hard to deny that Jane Campion puts this idea to breathtaking use on multiple occasions in The Power of the Dog in an effort to deepen the interpersonal relationships in a sprawling setting where verbal communication is often terse and indirect at best. There’s no better example of Campion’s resourceful feel for characterization than one nonverbal standoff between new in-laws Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst). As the anxious Rose practices on her baby grand piano, the domineering Phil interjects from upstairs with a competing banjo melody, an imposition that leads to a halting, dissonant back and forth. The mounting musical tension speaks volumes about the larger domestic battle taking place within the cavernous house. Lund

Red Rocket, Bye Bye Bye

Cheekily set to NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye,” Red Rocket’s hilarious show stopper of a sequence features charismatic dirtbag Mikey (Simon Rex) escaping his adversaries by sprinting buck naked through streets of an East Texas oil town. After charting how Mikey’s actions become increasingly dangerous and predatory, director Sean Baker presents Mikey’s comeuppance not proportionate to the character’s dark predilections, but as a biting moment of ego-deflating humiliation—and an uproarious bit of shock comedy to boot. Greene

There Is No Evil, Another Day at the Office

Nothing much happens in the monotonous, humdrum life of mopey family man and working stiff Heshmat (Ehsan Mirhosseini) in the first segment of Mohammad Rasoulof’s There Is No Evil. That is, until we see Heshmat at work and whiling the time away waiting to simply press a button—which leads to a shocking cut to a group of prisoners being hanged, and revealing Heshmat to be an executioner for the Iranian regime. In one brief, brutal moment, Rasoulof effectively forces us to not only consider the political and ethical implications of such an act, but also the very essence of Heshmat’s being. Greene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKalu01QnRk

Titane, Mechanophilia

At question early on in Titane is the way bodies become seen as machines, instrumental objects with components and fluids onto which we project our desires. Alexia’s (Agathe Rousselle) role as a dancer who gyrates on top of expensive vehicles makes her into a sexual object for the men who flock to watch her, but for her it’s clearly always been about a fusion with the metal. Ducournau illustrates this early on with an utterly hypnotic, flagrantly male-gazey sequence scrutinizing the parts of the woman’s scantily clad, writhing body in the same way that the opening shot takes us through a roaring engine. As the seductive grinding gives way to obsessive licking, it becomes clear that Alexia isn’t satisfying any kind of conventional exhibitionist streak. If she’s parading something, it’s her desire for the embrace of the inorganic. Pat Brown

The Velvet Underground, Lou’s Childhood

Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground is both a poignant biography of musical misfits and, in its whirlwind archival montages, a pop-cultural dreamscape. Early on, Lou Reed’s stifling childhood is affectingly recounted by a succession of narrators, including Reed himself. In a nod to the split-screen form of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s Chelsea Girls, playing concurrently on the other half of the screen is an unbroken archival shot of a young Reed staring back at us, almost judging us for peering through this cine-window into his soul. Greene

Violation, Revenge

Though Miriam’s (Sims-Fewer) rape in Violation is presented in extreme close-up as a disorienting tangle of limbs, the violence she enacts on her brother-in-law, Dylan (Jesse LaVercombe), is as gruesome as it is unambiguous. There’s some question of whether or not she’s defending her sister, Greta (Anna Maguire), from a man she doesn’t deem good enough for her, as well as how reliable that perception may even be. For much of the film, we feel alienated from her, the apprehension on her face open to all sorts of meanings as she seemingly lures Dylan into an affair. And while revenge is a dish that’s often satisfyingly served in films such as this, there’s a pervasive disorientation and uncertainty at play here that makes what Miriam does to Dylan feel truly uncomfortable, especially considering the duration of the act of revenge. Steven Scaife

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, The Library Is Open

In Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy’s second and most daring episode, Nao (Mori Katsuki) visits Segawa’s (Shibukawa Kiyohiko) office at the school where he works and reads a sexual scene from his novel to him, in which a woman carefully shaves a man’s genitals and brings him to climax. That scene, offered up as a mirror into Segawa’s anguished soul, is astonishing in its own right, and its resigned yet wistful evocation of male powerlessness (or feelings thereof) encourages Nao to take control with him in manner that she somehow can’t with Sasaki (Kai Shouma). Riffing on his book, Segawa and Nao slip into a pseudo-role-play that fills missing pieces in each of their lives, fulfilling dormant fantasies and cauterizing past hurts. It’s a rapturous, nurturing, bottomless love scene of sorts, with echoes and echoes of overlapping past and present experiences. Bowen

The Worst Person in the World, Time Stands Still

When Julie (Renate Reinsve) wakes up and sees her boyfriend, Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), pouring his morning coffee for what must be the umpteenth time, the world suddenly freezes around her. With this extended sequence from The Worst Person in the World, director Joachim Trier captures the bittersweet nature of Julie wanting to escape the monotony of a stagnant relationship as she runs through Oslo’s streets to meet her potential love interest, Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), as well as riffs on the theme of time waiting for no one with a joyful and intoxicating sense of romanticism. Greene