Guardian writers discuss their favourite bits from some of the year’s finest films, from In the Heights to The Power of the Dog to Licorice Pizza
When I say I missed the cinema, specifically I meant I missed seeing musicals on the big screen. While Jon M Chu’s In the Heights was made before the pandemic, his commitment to the supremacy of the production number delivered what our eyes were craving. Naturally, the film opens up the musical’s theatre staging, and it begins with a vast ensemble song of escalating excess, but it’s the 96,000 routine, about a third of the way in, which made the biggest splash and proved the director’s commitment to Technicolor extravagance by way of Busby Berkeley, aqua aerobics and gurning contortionists. Aptly, it’s a song about bragging and wish-fulfilment, in which the cast speculate on how they’d spend a lottery windfall. And for a song about big numbers, the scale is as massive as it ought to be: bikini overkill. It’s a little daft, sure, but so exuberant, you’ll grin all the way through – even at the goofy graffiti effects. Pamela Hutchinson