WASHINGTON HEIGHTS, WEST SIDE, HARLEM AND POINTS BEYOND...

There's been a lot of bashing of 2021 leading up to the New Year. I certainly wouldn't deny that it's been a rough 12 months, ending with passing of the great Betty White; still I'm loathe to speak too harshly of a year which has allowed me, my family, and, however precariously, my beloved country to survive, at least to fight another year.

So here's to a superb 2022. And here's my Top Ten list for the rather inauspicious movie year just past:

1. In the Heights--On balance, I don't think that any new movie I saw this year left me feeling as invigorated as this version of Lin-Manuel Miranda's pre-Hamilton musical about life in Washington Heights. Olga Merediz shines as the Abuela.

2. West Side Story--Yeah, I was skeptical too, but it really works.

3. Summer of Soul--Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's documentary, pieced together from film of the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969, features thrilling outdoor concert footage of Sly and the Family Stone, The 5th Dimension, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, The Staple Singers and Gladys Knight and the Pips, to name only a very few. Does anything more need to be said?

4. Belfast--Some of the sentiment doesn't register, and it's worth remembering that writer-director Kenneth Branagh's childhood point of view as a Protestant (the only point of view available to him, of course) was a good deal cozier than the Catholic point of view. Still, this is a warm, touching and beautifully-acted memory play, enriched with Van Morrison songs.

5. Nightmare Alley--The first half is livelier than the second half, but this lower-depths carny melodrama packs a final punch that the 1947 original didn't.

6. Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time--Made over more than 30 years, this documentary chronicle of the author and his friendship with director Robert B. Weide seems uncommonly intimate.

7. Zola--Probably the first movie ever based on a Twitter thread, Janicza Bravo's tale of a young stripper realizing she's been lured into a sex trafficking ring is tense and grimly funny, and it rings disturbingly true.

8. The Mauritanian--This near-Kafka-esque drama about the Gitmo-ing of Mohamedou Ould Salahi and the legal battle to free him is blood-boiling, as it should be.

9. Spider-Man: No Way Home--This all-star line-up of villains--and Spideys!--is a deep dive into the endlessly re-booting Marvel "Metaverse"; really it's an elaborate and pretty amusing joke on the common, obsessive nerd need to make every version of a pop franchise jibe with every other version of a pop franchise.

10. The Amusement Park--Completed in 1973 but not premiered until this year, George Romero's hour-long allegorical drama on the abuses suffered by the aged, produced by the Lutheran Society, has true emotional impact. It's a fine time capsule of a western Pennsylvania amusement park in the early '70s, too.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Dear Evan Hansen would both have made the list if they were as good overall as their lead performances. Other flicks that, however uneven or trivial, I'm not sorry I sat through this year: Joel Coen's version of Shakespeare's Scottish Play; A Quiet Place Part II; Godzilla vs. Kong; Cruella; Spencer; Werewolves Within; Flag Day; YouthMin: A Mockumentary; King Richard; Sam & Mattie Make a Zombie Movie; Don't Breathe 2; The Green Knight; The Tender Bar; Old; Blue Bayou and the slightly maligned Cinderella, among others. I should also note that there are movies I haven't caught up with yet, including Licorice Pizza and The French Dispatch, that might well have altered this list.

THINK YOU'VE GOT TROUBLES?

Opening this weekend:

Belfast--One day in 1969, nine-year-old Buddy is walking home through the teeming, friendly streets of his working-class, religiously-mixed neighborhood in the title city. Just before he gets there, a furious mob suddenly rounds the corner and starts smashing windows of his Catholic neighbors. Before long the streets are full of tanks and soldiers and barricades.

This is the beginning of "The Troubles," the decades-long strife between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast. But for Buddy (Jude Hill), the more pressing issues are his crush on a beautiful classmate, or which movie he'll be taken to see, or keeping straight which road his fire-and-brimstone (Protestant) clergyman recommends he take to avoid damnation.

We see the struggles of his beautiful, decent mother (Caitriona Balfe), to raise him and his siblings during the frequent and lengthy absences of his loving but financially nonchalant father (Jamie Dornan), and the gentle teasing between his mutually adoring grandparents (Judy Dench and Ciaran Hinds), all through Buddy's eyes. We also see his father's courageous refusal to be roped in to the mob by local protestant thugs, and we hear his parents debate whether to leave their beloved hometown.

The film, written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, is largely autobiographical; it's much like Branagh's version of John Boorman's great Hope and Glory (1987), about childhood fun during the Blitz. After a glimpse of modern-day Belfast, the movie is rendered in crisply beautiful black and white by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, with moments in vivid color when Buddy sees movies like One Million Years B.C. or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or when he's taken to see A Christmas Carol onstage.

The period detail is convincing, and the acting is terrific, with Dench and Hinds unsurprisingly filching big chunks of the movie as the grandparents. Their roles, especially Dench's, are arguably underwritten, but they let us see, without telegraphing, oceanic expanses of love and worry and pride behind their offhanded manner. Branagh confers a child's-eye glamor on Dornan and Balfe; the latter lets us see her passionate nature in a couple of scenes in which she dances. And young Hill is splendidly unfussy and direct as Buddy.

Not every aspect of Belfast works; Buddy's crush, for instance, doesn't build up much audience investment, and his siblings barely register. But the movie sneaks up on you emotionally. By the end I was in tears, very honestly won.

Also, any movie with a soundtrack made up of one Van Morrison tune after another is sure to be worth seeing, if only for that.