tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47572910768723184142024-02-20T01:30:10.837+00:00A Mighty Fine BlogFrançois Truffaut once said that "Film lovers are sick people." He may have been on to something.Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06115576347298118491noreply@blogger.comBlogger897125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-89743082368798857262024-01-03T23:07:00.003+00:002024-01-07T01:28:38.227+00:00Ed's Top 25 Films of 2022 (Not a Typo)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dekISKUPlA70_nKR3SNgow-VqV5bWFkiLwzPt15BcGvNixGjsjOvhsOZR9QysB30kINkDycJLvbd0jWKdLEnVoPiahLIeMssUj6GQXinU_k0_Uie24IuuD-kqJJvhbMWBWwbnYjTubdWUQhlGOpQRb7WMp-SOPW89Mzl_A1REm4elmd91pn28xfrmRSf/s1920/beauty.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9dekISKUPlA70_nKR3SNgow-VqV5bWFkiLwzPt15BcGvNixGjsjOvhsOZR9QysB30kINkDycJLvbd0jWKdLEnVoPiahLIeMssUj6GQXinU_k0_Uie24IuuD-kqJJvhbMWBWwbnYjTubdWUQhlGOpQRb7WMp-SOPW89Mzl_A1REm4elmd91pn28xfrmRSf/w640-h360/beauty.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i>All the Beauty and the Bloodshed</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Whereas most people rush to get their best films of the year lists out before the end of the year in question, I decided to take my time, catch up on as much from 2022 as I could, carefully weigh their strengths and weaknesses, and then forgot to write my list for another eleven months. Oops.</p><p>Despite this list being comically late, I do think that it was worth taking the extra time to make sure it was as complete as possible, since there are films on here that absolutely would not be if I had got my shit together and written it at the appropriate time. Something like Andrew Semans' <b><i>Resurrection</i></b>, for example, wasn't on my radar much last year at all. But I heard good things about it from people whose opinions I respect, I jumped at the chance to see it once it hit streaming, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. Sometimes truly impressive procrastination is the right move.</p><p>2022 felt like the first year since the pandemic started where cinema was truly back. I had been going back to see movies in theatres since early 2021, but generally theatres were still pretty empty, and even when there were busy they tended to lack the thrum of excitement that has always made going to the movies such a thrill for me. In 2022, however, my memories of seeing movies tended to be more about communal enjoyment of big spectacles, whether it was returning to Pandora, seeing Tom Cruise try to kill himself for our amusement but in a plane this time, or seeing Johnny Knoxville get absolutely obliterated by a bull. While there's no one thing that links the films on this list - other than that I really liked them - a recurring motif is maximalism, of people really swinging for the fences, which felt like turning the page on a few quiet, sad years.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>25. <b><i>Aftersun </i></b>(dir. Charlotte Wells)</p><p>When I originally put this list together, this was much higher up on the list. That it has fallen to the bottom is not to disparage it: Wells' semi-autobiographical film about a father (Paul Mescal) and daughter (Frankie Corio) on holiday in Turkey in the early '00s is still a startling debut, driven by two very strong performances and a sad, sun-tired tone that captures both the feeling of a slightly disappointing holiday and a bittersweet memory. But ultimately as I caught up on more movies, it faded from my memory more than a lot of the brasher films that resonated more with me this year. Still, a remarkable film, and I look forward to whatever Wells does next.<br /></p><p>24. <b><i>Emily The Criminal</i></b> (dir. John Patton Ford)</p><p><i>Emily The Criminal</i> is a real testament to how much a great actor can bring to a film, to elevate it above what could be fairly boilerplate material. Now the script is good, and the direction is also incredibly solid, but it is Aubrey Plaza as the eponymous Emily Who Is A Criminal that really puts it over. As a woman driven to take part in a credit card fraud scheme to stay afloat, Plaza conveys both toughness and desperation, making you believe that she would go to any lengths to get out of debt, and that she is not prepared for what that could mean. It's a performance that recalls Gena Rowlands in its rawness, which is about as high a compliment as I can pay.<br /></p><p>23.<b><i> Is That Black Enough for You ?!?</i></b> (dir. Elvis Mitchell)</p><p>Personal yet expansive, Mitchell's documentary offers a comprehensive overview of Black
cinema in the ‘70s and what made it such a vital and influential
movement, places it within the broader context of American culture,
as well as his own experiences with those films as a Black critic. It left me with
a long list of films to watch and soundtracks to listen to, which I have barely made a dent in. A terrific work of film criticism and memoir. <br /></p><p>22. <b><i>Mad God</i></b> (dir. Phil Tippett) </p><p>Probably the most disgusting film of the year, and they put out a new <i><b>Jackass </b></i>film, so the competition is pretty stiff. Tippett's stop-motion descent into Hell, a labour of love that took decades to complete, lives up to the hype and then some. The story is fairly thin and oblique, but the visceral detail of the world his character travels through and the sheer horror of what he encounters makes it a truly unforgettable experience. <br /></p><p>21. <b><i>Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero</i></b> (dir. Tetsuro Kodama)</p><p>So I got into <i>Dragon Ball</i> over the course of the pandemic, despite for years dismissing it as kiddie bullshit because my younger cousin was in to it when I was getting into high-minded Miyazaki anime. Now, it <i>is </i>kiddie bullshit, but it's fun kiddie bullshit, and really that's all that counts. This feature film focuses on many of the side characters from the series, especially Piccolo, and while that could have been to its detriment - why would you care about stuff that happens while Goku is off doing something else? - it frees it up to be really funny about the convoluted history of the series (Gohan asking Piccolo to grow really big for the final fight and him saying essentially "Oh, I forgot I could do that" in reply really cracked me up). The thing that really sets this apart is its use of CG animation, which retains the look of the series while giving it a fluidity and scale that the show, for all its creaky and cheap charm, rarely achieved. <br /></p><p>20. <b><i>Jackass Forever</i></b> (dir. Jeff Tremaine)</p><p><i>Mad God</i> may be grosser, but<i> Jackass Forever </i>has heart, so it just about edges it on aggregate. One of my favourite theatregoing experiences in 2022 was seeing this in a packed theatre and being able to hear everyone squirm during the especially disgusting moments, or wince when something particularly painful happened. That communal aspect has always been a big part of the <i>Jackass </i>experience - watching the third film with a bunch of friends in Sheffield not long before most of that group moved away is an indelible memory of my 20s - and getting to experience that once more with this valedictory send off of dick and fart gags was really quite lovely, in its way.<br /></p><p>19. <b><i>Three Thousand Years of Longing</i></b> (dir. George Miller)</p><p>It may be slightly hokey in its celebration of Capital-S Storytelling, but the scope of George Miller's vision and his fevered direction really help it break out of the self-satisfied trap that it could have found itself in. As a genie who recounts the events of his life and imprisonment, Idris Elba gives one of his best performances in years, mixing a cosmic grandness with a love for the earthiness of the real world, and Tilda Swinton is typically great as the woman who frees him, hears his story, and falls in love with him. A romantic movie that earns its slightly too neat ending. <br /></p><p>18. <b><i>Thirteen Lives</i></b> (dir. Ron Howard)</p><p>I guess Ron Howard was due to make another really good movie at some point, and nearly a decade after <i><b>Rush</b></i>, he finally delivered. The story of the Thai soccer team who became trapped in a cave could have made for something cheap and saccharine, and certainly when I heard that Howard was making the film that's what I expected, but it sidesteps that entirely by focusing on the long, difficult process of figuring out how to rescue the kids, making for a film which is much more intricate and involved than a standard "based on real life" awards contender. It also helps that it looks great, with frequent Apichatpong Weerasethakul cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom capturing the beauty of Thailand and the claustrophobia of the cave.<br /></p><p>17. <b><i>Benediction </i></b>(dir. Terence Davies)</p><p>Terence Davies' death understandable casts a pall over his final film, since it becomes in retrospect emblematic of the difficulties he had getting his work made and distributed. That a film of such beauty, grace and biting humour would struggle to get out to the wider world and generally go overlooked was typical of a career that itself was often ignored, and only really seemed to get the attention it deserved once it was over. Still, at least we have those movies, and <i>Benediction </i>is as good a coda as we could have hoped for, filled with a sense of possibility and lust in the scenes of young Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden) and a ruefulness in the scenes of him as an older man (Peter Capaldi).<br /></p><p>16. <b><i>Saint Omer </i></b>(dir. Alice Diop)</p><p>In its formal rigour and unsparing close-ups, this courtroom drama inspired by the real case of a woman being put on trial for murdering her child reminded me of Dreyer's <b><i>The Passion of Joan of Arc</i></b>, which is a lofty comparison but one I think it easily squares up to. Yet as a meditation on Motherhood, race and
post-colonial France, it is entirely its own. Hard to believe that Kayije
Kagame and Guslagie Malanda had hardly been in anything else before
this, since both give incredible, authentic and difficult performances. <br /></p><p>15. <b><i>Kimi </i></b>(dir. Steven Soderbergh)</p><p>A terrific, tight thriller that demonstrates that Soderbergh remains one
of our most naturally gifted visual storytellers, both in how he
synthesizes things like <b><i>Rear Window</i></b>,<b><i> The Conversation</i></b>, <b><i>Blow Out</i></b>,
<b><i>Affliction </i></b>and <b><i>Wait Until Dark </i></b>into something that feels fresh and
relevant, but also in his innate understanding of how funny it is to
have a big goon and a little goon working together. Probably still the best film to be informed by the pandemic - in its focus on a character who is still isolating from the world - without trying to tackle it head on. <br /></p><p>14. <b><i>Ambulance </i></b>(dir. Michael Bay)</p><p>Like a lot of cinephiles who came of age in the early '00s, I for a long time was very dismissive of Michael Bay. His movies were so brash, so lurid, so <i>gauche</i>, and while he had his fans among the vulgar auteurists, he was not someone I thought I needed to take seriously. And while no one is going to convince me that his <b><i>Transformers </i></b>films are any good, and the flagrant sexism in a lot of his movies remains pretty gross, I have grown to appreciate his distinctive and unabashedly populist style as blockbusters have become more boring and identikit over the last decade or so. All of this is to say that <i>Ambulance</i>, his brash and lurid film about two brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) who rob a bank and then tear around Los Angeles in an ambulance with an injured cop and a kidnapped paramedic (Eiza Gonzalez) in tow, came out at the right time for me to appreciate it as a somewhat nostalgic reminder of a kind of aggressively practical big-budget filmmaking that has been shunted to the sideline in recent years. Though what really stuck out to me - besides the genuinely sweet relationship between Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen - was the film's use of drone cinematography for its camerawork, which felt like Bay had learned a new language for action cinema and was determined to show it off in as many cool ways as possible. <br /></p><p>13. <b><i>Confess, Fletch</i></b> (dir. Greg Mottola)</p><p>A wonderfully avuncular film. Mottola really captures the laidback, loose energy of the Gregory MacDonald <i>Fletch </i>novels, and Jon Hamm is truly in his element as the independent journalist who just sort of swans his way in and out of crime scenes, annoying everyone around him until he gets what he needs. It also does what so many of my favourite comedies do, which is give as many of the supporting cast their own business or running gag to make the world feel more filled out, like this is some pocket dimension that is a little off to the side of our own but everyone is a little less sane and a lot funnier. I hope that they get to make more of these, but if not, this is a perfect little morsel.<br /></p><p>12. <b><i>Elvis </i></b>(dir. Baz Luhrmann)</p><p>It's very funny that I walked away from <i>Elvis </i>thinking it was one of Luhrmann's more restrained films, because it is a runaway freight train of a film that zooms through The King's life with glee. Yet compared to most of his work, it is extremely focused and grounded, in no small part thanks to Austin Butler's star-making performance as Elvis Presley, an extremely demanding role that puts him in almost every frame and requires him to go from happy-go-lucky singer to strung out, moldering icon, all while trying to lend some credence to Tom Hanks' utterly bizarre performance as Colonel Tom Parker. A cartoonish work with a human soul, much like the man himself. <br /></p><p>11. <b><i>Tar </i></b>(dir. Todd Field)</p><p>They finally made a movie about a quirked up white <i>girl </i>goated with the sauce, what a time to be alive. Cate Blanchett
is really phenomenal, giving her most vivid and lived-in performance in
years as Lydia Tar, an acclaimed conductor whose life is gradually going off the rails, in ways she doesn't realize until it's too late. Field lets every scene breathe, but the film moves very
quickly and is consistently compelling and engrossing. Also, for how
portentous the setting could be, it's really fun and
at times very funny. The cut to Lydia playing her accordion is a particularly killer joke, as is the revelation of what she is doing in the final scene.</p><p> </p><p>10. <b><i>RRR </i></b>(dir. S.S. Rajamouli)</p><div class="body-text -prose collapsible-text" data-full-text-url="/s/full-text/viewing:262431774/"> <p><i>Everyone
knows that Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem never met and became
buff best friends, but what this movie presupposes…</i></p><p>Probably the film I most regret not seeing on the big screen from 2022, since every beautiful,
melodramatic plot twist and bravura action sequence plays so well at home that I can only imagine how much more exhilarating it would have been to lose my mind over them with a crowd. An overwhelming and
joyous spectacle that moves at a dizzying pace despite its epic run
time. Truly no second is wasted.</p> </div><p>9. <b><i>Resurrection </i></b>(dir. Andrew Semans)</p><p>Quite simply one of the wildest films I've seen in a while. So much so that whenever I have described what happens in it to people, they always assume I'm making it up. A masterclass of dread and unease, shot through with a pitch-black sense of humour that only serves to heighten the sense of a world coming apart at the seams. Rebecca Hall is utterly incredible, and few things made me laugh as much as the cut to her intern's face after she finished her heartbreaking, deeply destabilizing monologue that forms the fulcrum point of the film.<br /></p><p>8.<b><i> We're All Going to the World's Fair</i></b> (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)</p><p>As someone who has lived much of my life online, I've always found depictions of the Internet in film and TV frustrating. It's very easy to portray it as a sinister place where danger lurks just a click away, and in the last decade it has become more poisonous and divisive as more people have piled in and brought their opinions and their neuroses with them, but my main experiences of the Internet have been of connecting with people over movies and TV shows we like, and some of the longest-lasting friendships I've had came from deciding to join a <i>Spaced </i>forum in 2005. It is a land of contrasts, to say the least, and <i>We're All Going to the World's Fair</i> is one of the best works of art about the Internet as both a profoundly lonely place, and as a place where you can reach out and connect with people, even if those connections are dangerous.<br /></p><p>7. <b><i>The Fablemans</i></b> (dir. Steven Spielberg)</p><p>Something that really bugged me during the awards conversation last year was how <i>The Fablemans </i>kept being lumped in with crap like <i><b>Empire of Light </b></i>as part of the year's crop of "magic of the movies" films, usually by people who hadn't seen it. And I get it: if you told me in isolation that Steven Spielberg had made a semi-autobiographical film that is in part about how he started making movies, I'd assume it was about that as well. But<i> The Fablemans </i>isn't that film. Even the one moment that seems like it would be - young Sammy/Steven seeing <i><b>The Greatest Show on Earth</b></i> - ends up being about how the train crash scene terrifies him and he sets about trying to recreate it to control the thing that scared him. It's a film about how one of the most successful and influential filmmakers in history seemingly thinks he makes movies to escape from the terrible things in his life, and maybe even alienated himself from other people in the process. It's a fascinating text! But also, it's a ridiculously fun movie about kids making movies for fun, teenage hijinks, and David Lynch playing John Ford. It's so much more enjoyable and weird a film than the discussion around it would have you believe, and a late masterpiece from one of the best to ever pick up a camera. <br /></p><p>6. <b><i>Top Gun: Maverick</i></b> (dir. Joseph Kosinski)</p><p>The meta-narrative about Tom Cruise being The Last Movie Star lends a certain frisson to all his work these days, and none more so than <i>Top Gun: Maverick</i>, which finds him being brought back to help an organization that views him as a relic whose time has passed, only for him to demonstrate that for all their technological advances, it's the <strike>movie star</strike> pilot that makes the difference. Of course the fascinating metaphorical considerations wouldn't matter much if the film wasn't fun as hell, and fortunately <i>Maverick </i>is, with the flying sequences besting those of the original, particularly the final attack run, and the dynamic between Cruise and his late co-pilot's son (Miles Teller) lending the film an emotional core to ground everything. <br /></p><p>5.<b><i> Avatar: The Way of Water </i></b>(dir. James Cameron)</p><p>I was pretty lukewarm on the first <i><b>Avatar </b></i>when it came out. I didn't dislike it by any means, but I thought it was a fine sci-fi action movie and that it was weird that James Cameron had taken so long to make it. In the lead-up to the release of the sequel I went and watched the re-release and was charmed by it, and while I still didn't love it, I was won over by the spectacle and the simple, earnest story. Even with that reappraisal, I was not prepared for how much I would dig the sequel, which has all the things that the original did well - thrilling action, breathtaking effects - and expands the world with more interesting supporting characters (most notably Payakan, the sad space whale) and a broader canvas. I particularly loved the contrast between the first half, which is extremely light on plot and consists largely of the Na'vi swimming around, and the second, which is some of the most fun and relentless action of Cameron's career.<br /></p><p>4. <b><i>Decision to Leave</i></b> (dir. Park Chan-wook)</p><p>Like so many of Park's films, <i>Decision to Leave</i> manages to be multiple things simultaneously; a compelling mystery, a breathtaking romance, a darkly comic thriller, and it does them all brilliantly. It's also one of the best films at using texting as both a plot device and as a method of illuminating the thoughts of the characters, since every pause and re-written text serves to bring us closer to their thought processes. <br /></p><p>3. <b><i>All That Breathes</i></b> (dir. Shaunak Sen)</p><p>A touching documentary about two brothers who spent their time trying to nurse black kites back to health in Delhi, <i>All That Breathes </i>is a really moving celebration of people doing quiet, noble work while placing them within the broader political context of Modi’s
India. Every time they talked about treating birds to honour their mother’s
memory it brought me to tears. <br /></p><p>2. <b><i>Nope </i></b>(dir. Jordan Peele) </p><p>The thing that really made <i>Nope </i>click for me after the first half,
which was funny and scary and looked beautiful but felt very scattered
and disparate, was the last flashback to Ricky (Steve Yuen) on the deadly set of the sitcom he starred in as a child. Seeing that
Ricky's defining memory of Gordy the chimp was of him trying to do the exploding
fist bump, even after he had brutally attacked two people, contextualized
why he felt that he could control the creature at the centre of the present-day story; he doesn't understand
how dangerous animals can be, but he thinks he has some innate connection to them, and that in turn gets a bunch of people killed. It was indicative of what Peele does brilliantly
in the film more broadly, of setting things up, no matter how obtuse or
far from the point of the story they might seem, and paying them off in
startling and surprising ways. It's classical Hollywood filmmaking at
its core, but done in a way which doesn't feel tired. It's Peele's thorniest film so far, but easily his best and most rewatchable.<br /></p><p></p><p>1. <b><i>All the Beauty and the Bloodshed</i></b> (dir. Laura Poitras)</p><p>I read <i><b>Empire of Pain</b></i>, Patrick Radden Keefe's thorough and horrifying account of the Sackler family's role in the opioid crisis, early in 2022, and while I loved it, as a work of journalism it had a certain remove to it that kept me from truly feeling as outraged by the whole situation as I probably should have been. It was all so big, the damage so immense, that it was hard to focus on any one element of it to be furious about. <i>All the Beauty and the Bloodshed</i> served as a powerful complementary work to that book, since by focusing on the experiences of Nan Goldin, the world-renowned photographer who herself became addicted to Oxycontin, it lends the story a fiercely personal perspective. And by highlighting her efforts to draw attention to the Sacklers' complicity in the crisis and their attempts to whitewash their reputation through their charitable endeavors, it also serves to show how her activism becomes a work of art, and her art a form of activism. A really staggering piece of work.</p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-22564622600538217592023-01-02T01:23:00.013+00:002023-01-02T16:49:22.416+00:00The Best Games I Played in 2022<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsud_1xEk-SkqESnADFW_Ol8cehFjIhMm9VtgTW8ub7-Vd7yhY9pb8okTWt9kv0VStgcGXbXZhZnz77sDzUpipP-A7_rzOlzzZLF3okYt0M-S-cA3cUDIk4-nG_OVxx_LJmLvYWhkWedbwbKsnszBkiaOD3Tp18SLhun5oOqFdAyYzzmuqI4rbeoIbIg/s1911/vs.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1206" data-original-width="1911" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsud_1xEk-SkqESnADFW_Ol8cehFjIhMm9VtgTW8ub7-Vd7yhY9pb8okTWt9kv0VStgcGXbXZhZnz77sDzUpipP-A7_rzOlzzZLF3okYt0M-S-cA3cUDIk4-nG_OVxx_LJmLvYWhkWedbwbKsnszBkiaOD3Tp18SLhun5oOqFdAyYzzmuqI4rbeoIbIg/w640-h404/vs.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Are ya winning, son? I don't know.</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Considering that I spent <a href="https://www.amightyfineblog.com/2021/12/the-best-games-i-played-in-2021-yakuza.html">most of last year playing through some extremely long games</a>, it's perhaps not a surprise that this year I gravitated towards games that offered a more condensed experience. Not necessarily games that could only be completed in a couple of hours (though there are a few that fit that description), but ones that you can pick up for 20-30 minutes, and then walk away feeling like you got something out of the experience.</p><p>That preference for shorter experiences explains some of the major absences on this list, so let's get them out of the way: I did not play <i><b>Elden Ring</b></i>, <i><b>God of War: Ragnarok</b></i> or <i><b>Horizon Forbidden West</b></i>. In part that's because they're all very long games and I was not in the mood for that this year, and partly because I have either a lack of experience with the previous games in those series/genres (I keep meaning to play the Soulsbourne games, and maybe this will be the year) or a lack of interest (I found the 2018 <i><b>God of War </b></i>pretty boring and not fun to play so didn't feel the need to run out and play the sequel). As such, those three behemoths of the year in gaming will not be on this list.<br /></p><p></p><p>Before we get to the top ten, I have a few honourable mentions, which this year are a mix of older games that I played for the first time, games from this year that I really liked but just missed the cut, and ones that I didn't spend enough time with, but was impressed by what I saw. </p><p><b><i>Yakuza: Like a Dragon</i></b> (PlayStation, Xbox, PC) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0LzqCnx2D19XQCogxaMvEXwpIkENw4jnQWEywtgXpSlVY2otclSa7WpC4mgaS18h8TzRodzH8aCpybqrkgQEq9GqO-gQ6t0r4pg2g0xXHjF60zwQvF38oF7bp5zjUgYp8HTaaTk-1sdurhqOA7FHebazTKlrdnj-XzLYPiZpNTMrygxyUx336wMPezA/s933/IMG_4618.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="933" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0LzqCnx2D19XQCogxaMvEXwpIkENw4jnQWEywtgXpSlVY2otclSa7WpC4mgaS18h8TzRodzH8aCpybqrkgQEq9GqO-gQ6t0r4pg2g0xXHjF60zwQvF38oF7bp5zjUgYp8HTaaTk-1sdurhqOA7FHebazTKlrdnj-XzLYPiZpNTMrygxyUx336wMPezA/w640-h360/IMG_4618.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Grizzled Yakuza is about to have an extremely bad time</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>I picked away at this spinoff from the main <i>Yakuza/Like a Dragon </i>series over the course of the year and finally finished it just days before the new year started. While it didn't quite hit the same highs as <b><i>Yakuza 0 </i></b>did for me, it's easily one of the best games in the series and the shift from the beat-em-up combat of the earlier games to turn-based RPG mechanics worked fantastically well, adding an extra layer of over-the-top ridiculousness to a series that has always gone big and delivered. I'm glad that I'm all caught up on the mainline series in time for the next installment, the remake of <i><b>Like a Dragon: Ishin! </b></i>that comes out in February. <br /></p><p><b><i>Pentiment</i></b> (Xbox, PC) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwID4BgcM4br4B4_W0Sg0ppJMrUE77dDgfINFYb7jE4ycLS8sfn89zDzEAmxf5OBbMAZPAGJAgYqIqWlOq5wLbrH-4_fuDy5g3HgMDV2iRR065THrgmBc78FKOE1mtZFIEOyFZWm_T75WoayQHgaxGmunPicvgKrXKyVwBlPFOLTzsq2J0UBScO1Rnyg/s1920/pentiment.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwID4BgcM4br4B4_W0Sg0ppJMrUE77dDgfINFYb7jE4ycLS8sfn89zDzEAmxf5OBbMAZPAGJAgYqIqWlOq5wLbrH-4_fuDy5g3HgMDV2iRR065THrgmBc78FKOE1mtZFIEOyFZWm_T75WoayQHgaxGmunPicvgKrXKyVwBlPFOLTzsq2J0UBScO1Rnyg/w640-h360/pentiment.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">If you ever wished the Bayeux Tapestry was a game, that's pretty weird, but also <i>Pentiment </i>will suffice</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>I played some of <i>Pentiment </i>when it came out in November, but didn't really get into it enough to include it in the top ten, but it's a beautifully-realized and engrossing game about history, not just as a setting but as a theme to be explored through point-and-click adventure mechanics. One of the most distinctive games of the year and I'm looking forward to playing it more in 2023.</p><p><i><b>S</b></i><b><i>uper Kiwi 64 </i></b>(Switch, PC) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHOJT3xZU_uE6gZmWLxzqc_0WxIoOVQyQOyhZwqdc_k0Qqz2TsvfzENnloRGzNrDXSnVubK6zqOX_9O4fRvOzsWH-VTr-OmDefX8mvFP7Foyiv2PNsLQlGiKVsUmbhU1QxW7LEnAGSrTu9_FM9zvgrv2Cf7sflgZRg6ZGjPOv7_-8Qp1SSeMAN6imGg/s1280/IMG_4616.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHOJT3xZU_uE6gZmWLxzqc_0WxIoOVQyQOyhZwqdc_k0Qqz2TsvfzENnloRGzNrDXSnVubK6zqOX_9O4fRvOzsWH-VTr-OmDefX8mvFP7Foyiv2PNsLQlGiKVsUmbhU1QxW7LEnAGSrTu9_FM9zvgrv2Cf7sflgZRg6ZGjPOv7_-8Qp1SSeMAN6imGg/w640-h360/IMG_4616.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This looks so bad and so good at the same time</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>A delightful hit of nostalgia that mimics the style and feel of N64-era collectathons like <b><i>Banjo-Kazooie</i></b>, which does not overstay its welcome since it takes literally an hour and a half to finish. Not a deep experience by any means, but a really excellent recreation of a specific style and vibe. </p><p>So now, here are the ten best games that I played in 2022. </p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><b>10. <i>Tunic</i></b> (Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEnZ8Z8gyC5Qtr8tpq6AzLZvoiySmS-Y64itlCCcJkb8JsZtoDWUEP-1hmQf8UoDCcnR46ZGak7kpv8rcVTZkDQ6oFY_pTq6B9HdE6bZkSPlq8_uOKSmJG2B4EL6vJ-3NIiyJlUGuDel497rfqsHkhlL7XVyT1sYuj_8KUSwrTzXbfISb2NbxN10TyMg/s1920/Tunic.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEnZ8Z8gyC5Qtr8tpq6AzLZvoiySmS-Y64itlCCcJkb8JsZtoDWUEP-1hmQf8UoDCcnR46ZGak7kpv8rcVTZkDQ6oFY_pTq6B9HdE6bZkSPlq8_uOKSmJG2B4EL6vJ-3NIiyJlUGuDel497rfqsHkhlL7XVyT1sYuj_8KUSwrTzXbfISb2NbxN10TyMg/w640-h360/Tunic.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This fox has seen some things</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>Back when it came out in March, <i>Tunic </i>was a strong contender for my game of the year. I really loved the cute aesthetic, the total sense of mystery surrounding both what the game's story was about and even how to play it, since you only find out how to do most things in the game through trial and error, blind luck, or finding pieces of the game manual (which itself is written in a fictional language, so it's only moderately helpful) around the world. No game this year produced more "Eureka!" moments for me than <i>Tunic</i>, which constantly surprised me by how much of it was hidden in plain sight, and there was something so incredibly satisfying about discovering a new short cut because I happened to be wandering around and stumbled on it. However, I lost interest in the game once it got into the back half, and that ultimately determined its place on this list. A real triumph of design that is probably too opaque for its own good.<br /></p><p><b>9. </b><i><b>The Case of the Golden Idol</b></i> (PC)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOYzoQOZVqC7O6DetDwfYuOxDftOYCWkDG4K5lSQ4S1CL5ejnh7_eVmsWcGHMu-jrFwcUlR6xlE2PPs-b_pWivzvD6EgHBXkBDDjM71oCLl-C6tqMy6ucB-XI3vrde02AhKF6wS0Wrr0Q5MIbnIL1-EIriLhuEhyD0pUahojS_a-GAhpZzTHd6vL5yWQ/s2048/20230101134850_1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOYzoQOZVqC7O6DetDwfYuOxDftOYCWkDG4K5lSQ4S1CL5ejnh7_eVmsWcGHMu-jrFwcUlR6xlE2PPs-b_pWivzvD6EgHBXkBDDjM71oCLl-C6tqMy6ucB-XI3vrde02AhKF6wS0Wrr0Q5MIbnIL1-EIriLhuEhyD0pUahojS_a-GAhpZzTHd6vL5yWQ/w640-h360/20230101134850_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This Is Fine</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>This detective game got a lot of comparisons to<b><i> Return of the Obra Dinn</i></b>, which is both a blessing and a curse, since that's incredibly high praise but also misrepresents what <i>Case of the Golden Idol </i>is going for. Whereas <i>Obra Dinn </i>has a high-concept magical realist mechanic underpinning the player's investigation of all its assorted crimes,<i> Case of the Golden Idol </i>is more traditional in its point and click mechanics, as it places you in a series of grim tableaux and asks you to figure out who everyone is and what happened by searching around and finding every possible piece of evidence. It's an extremely satisfying puzzle game with a pretty neat story and wonderful retro graphics.<br /></p><p><b>8. </b><i><b>Nobody Saves the World</b></i> (Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC)</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkQzo0uzVsVNsFtEsMbUNXEzwcZgLaj_Rp1h7_ZAX4axTYFcrhVfhAtO3ETtzYvoAzBaNiMTUCMdAao36OHjH18UR5E4HnH300MehVbVizywFq9QBbgIHYVzTbyWkWo2RC6TMVv7KZnQxvdG8qegccJfH9sKicEoNVBvH17ZsiXNFaj9gKRlhoixwmfQ/s1920/nobody.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkQzo0uzVsVNsFtEsMbUNXEzwcZgLaj_Rp1h7_ZAX4axTYFcrhVfhAtO3ETtzYvoAzBaNiMTUCMdAao36OHjH18UR5E4HnH300MehVbVizywFq9QBbgIHYVzTbyWkWo2RC6TMVv7KZnQxvdG8qegccJfH9sKicEoNVBvH17ZsiXNFaj9gKRlhoixwmfQ/w640-h360/nobody.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">oh shit oh shit oh shit</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>An early highlight of the year, this cute and inventive dungeon-crawler that allows you to transform into different character classes and animals and combine their abilities has a great, silly sense of humour and really rewards experimentation through its mix-and-match power system. Plus the wide variety of dungeons and side-quests in the game make it perfect for picking up and playing for half an hour or so, and coming away feeling like you've made some meaningful progress.<br /></p><p><b>7. </b><i><b>Cult of the Lamb</b></i> (Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, PC)</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizIdafKmMQAvFJl_CmASUNRM6xf7kSCaETi0tPf9cFLGN_R5JkM347jVq6jArayMoJw9dlgUABJQmc6BzGkmBFrVENADnbDR3Jpc-Zx1f-Ida6QZyrLofZGuhAaWyV-JhRQj9fubQ77_pEgKvGBIEcbyhtpeq0V8G4_SlzbKB_s671H2-i37pJAPdbrQ/s1280/IMG_4615.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizIdafKmMQAvFJl_CmASUNRM6xf7kSCaETi0tPf9cFLGN_R5JkM347jVq6jArayMoJw9dlgUABJQmc6BzGkmBFrVENADnbDR3Jpc-Zx1f-Ida6QZyrLofZGuhAaWyV-JhRQj9fubQ77_pEgKvGBIEcbyhtpeq0V8G4_SlzbKB_s671H2-i37pJAPdbrQ/w640-h360/IMG_4615.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Aww, so cute wait what</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>There's a bit of a jack of all trades quality to this adorably dark genre mashup, consisting as it does of two distinct halves: one in which you run through a bunch of procedurally generated dungeons and use various powers and upgrades to clear rooms, rescue potential cult members and advance the main story, and one in which you manage the cult you have built around you, through such humdrum activities as cleaning up feces and committing ritual sacrifices. While neither of those elements are <i>great </i>(if you want a top-tier roguelike then <b><i>Hades </i></b>and <i><b>The Binding of Isaac</b></i> do that much better, and there's countless weird management sims that are more in-depth than what <i>Cult of the Lamb</i> offers) they are still pretty good, and the way the game combines the two makes for a novel loop of going out to get more cult members, then having your growing cult make you more powerful in order to go out and make more runs. And underpinning it all is a darkly funny sense of humour that really gives the game a distinct identity.<br /></p><p>6. <i><b>Knotwords </b></i>(PC, Mobile) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXyqqOg8xY51-kuwL0WBGb4ICruDH9wF0ud1SEQWacMvg8EIunDkctLh-C09eYsEpDavHT4C1TiFgee5XqmoK_xNtWUAEie_JeKEcdd3vb__SMpy4-6lvXwm_IA85EhWJ8aMD-JqfpQQRUiTTe6jrv14PQZQAZJ14pt3yAFNkP56Ru44un86nplN3bmA/s2560/20230101133006_1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1361" data-original-width="2560" height="340" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXyqqOg8xY51-kuwL0WBGb4ICruDH9wF0ud1SEQWacMvg8EIunDkctLh-C09eYsEpDavHT4C1TiFgee5XqmoK_xNtWUAEie_JeKEcdd3vb__SMpy4-6lvXwm_IA85EhWJ8aMD-JqfpQQRUiTTe6jrv14PQZQAZJ14pt3yAFNkP56Ru44un86nplN3bmA/w640-h340/20230101133006_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Like all good crosswords, <i>Knotwords </i>has caused me to think of words like "Ulna" more times this year than I have in my entire life</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>As someone who likes to decompress at the end of the day with the New York Times Crossword, I can't say I expected someone to come up with a new and exciting twist on one of the more rigid and established puzzles going. But with <i>Knotwords</i>, Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger certainly made me look like a doofus. Basically a combination of a traditional crossword and sudoku, the game provides you with a fairly standard grid, which is then subdivided into smaller grids that tell you what letters you can use, and you then have to determine the order to create words and successfully complete the puzzle. It's a smart twist on an old favourite, and I've found doing the daily puzzles a nice way to get the gears working before I start work each day.<br /></p><p>5.<i><b> Live A Live </b></i>(Switch) </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKB-J-vzYgs8tgunTON4GxaRWZ1EtHlTpQ8v8caETWbc2tPtJXF0O6sLdc6mFdFB__YTpBwp0kT71UPL5zFdqwmMyQT6EUqxP7oNRErCZXpRmmo0aCfdl6wrRIEaLSaF6kLv09hLSfqK4HP-pjY1OMQyIHeHGXUOdkqUavHBd5dr8xVb-kQZUyAetEAQ/s1280/IMG_4613.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKB-J-vzYgs8tgunTON4GxaRWZ1EtHlTpQ8v8caETWbc2tPtJXF0O6sLdc6mFdFB__YTpBwp0kT71UPL5zFdqwmMyQT6EUqxP7oNRErCZXpRmmo0aCfdl6wrRIEaLSaF6kLv09hLSfqK4HP-pjY1OMQyIHeHGXUOdkqUavHBd5dr8xVb-kQZUyAetEAQ/w640-h360/IMG_4613.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">When I took this screenshot, I thought "Oh this is pretty," not realizing that immediately after this the game takes an insanely dark turn</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>My reaction to this remake of a 1994 JRPG that previously went unreleased in the West (though still proved influential since a lot of people imported it and took inspiration for it for their own work) had several phases. Initially, I thought it was a neat idea - the game consists of a series of short RPGs stories that take place in different time periods, ranging from prehistory to the distant future, with different characters and different mechanics in each - that was executed well, but which didn't initially grab me, so I played some of one of the stories and then planned to pick it up later. When I returned to it, I realized that I had picked one of the weaker stories (Near Future, for the curious) and tore through the rest, deeply impressed with how much variety and invention was on display, how different each section felt to play, and how well the short story approach worked, with each feeling like a self-contained quest that never ran too long. That got it on this list. Then I reached the point where all the stories converge, and was completely knocked out by how well it pulled all the threads together for a truly satisfying finale. The only thing I can think to compare it to is David Mitchell's novel <i>Cloud Atlas</i>, both in its approach and the cumulative effect of going through all of its stories.<br /></p><p>4. <b><i>Tinykin </i></b>(Xbox, Switch) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCl9en3L7dvQw5vxFcr75pS7Kb3No5lc6SdRTx7AFQNGB5--td7z2m4lDEIfNM8lnxpoEGLUIrm9YIkLpiCTo0efRbBZPJAwdo3KIoJFr2fAFC_2jrcITam_k7zfEOeL82aOplc6T6brpv9zivzcz_s1SC1rdFzoSSZ4HmCQQF3Yie42Au7DMBflrFiQ/s1920/tinykin.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCl9en3L7dvQw5vxFcr75pS7Kb3No5lc6SdRTx7AFQNGB5--td7z2m4lDEIfNM8lnxpoEGLUIrm9YIkLpiCTo0efRbBZPJAwdo3KIoJFr2fAFC_2jrcITam_k7zfEOeL82aOplc6T6brpv9zivzcz_s1SC1rdFzoSSZ4HmCQQF3Yie42Au7DMBflrFiQ/w640-h360/tinykin.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Grinding around the levels in this game never gets old</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>Like<i> Super Kiwi 64</i>, Tinykin draws inspiration from the 3D platformer design philosophy of the late '90s and early '00s, marries it to a simplified version of <i><b>Pikmin</b></i>, and throws it all into some surprisingly vast and complicated levels. The result is a hugely satisfying adventure that finds your character running around a giant version of a regular house, meeting various sentient bugs and trying to solve their problems using the titular creatures, who all have different abilities - some can stack to help you reach greater heights, some explode, some conduct electricity etc - that help you complete various puzzles. The exploration in this game feels fantastic, varying between walking, grinding on lines using a piece of soap that acts as a skateboard, and floating around in a bubble, all of which make the simple act of traveling around each area tremendously fun on a moment-to-moment basis. And, like many of the games on this list, it benefits from being a concentrated experience that you can finish in a few hours, so it never overstays its welcome.<br /></p><p>3. <i><b>Kirby and the Forgotten Land</b></i> (Switch) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguciWM_PLKMQowcOQzd15NqGZ_jdPYyXmL7Ur1NSecdQepDlxT5H-_zSs9iBXWWcs-HiJvglmQ82YW-8HIlM80HFWbQ-3jyLYXGI2CmrMRWu-8ciO-H9neq8pivUpqNfKN4JbFsCVuKc2JlSbEQHU95Xo8SOj_l8ro2NnkMOgDt4Bcc_RV14SJusLvhw/s1280/IMG_4614.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguciWM_PLKMQowcOQzd15NqGZ_jdPYyXmL7Ur1NSecdQepDlxT5H-_zSs9iBXWWcs-HiJvglmQ82YW-8HIlM80HFWbQ-3jyLYXGI2CmrMRWu-8ciO-H9neq8pivUpqNfKN4JbFsCVuKc2JlSbEQHU95Xo8SOj_l8ro2NnkMOgDt4Bcc_RV14SJusLvhw/w640-h360/IMG_4614.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Bet he's dreaming of murder again</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>This was the first mainline Kirby game I've ever played and it really made me want to go back and play the others, because this is quite wonderful. A pitch-perfect adventure story in which you guide a pink blob on his quest to kill God, <i>Kirby and the Forgotten Land</i> was one of the most consistently delightful games of the year. Not only are the levels varied and exciting enough to keep surprising you as you progress, the various powers Kirby can use via the distressingly named Mouthful Mode add a real sense of discovery to the whole thing. Playing through each level is equal parts about advancing the story and finding out what new way you're going to destroy adorable creatures. <br /></p><p>2. <i><b>Neon White</b></i> (PC, Switch) </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJwMXCzUeADxPSlgETuK2P5JIX5sF7sfmTvXaWSathYOh7EJWJHVVLT6cmvKNf7HWxH6tJbzFyazfw6ikobtRPIj1SvO4_Yv9WFYDXuMRnyOkh2oUzrdNH11FlnwtnVC1m2UrCtKEA2DgRdT48H7imwSMwRaragT_SRXNst-2Izq5JnNxOyajOCKmMGQ/s1280/IMG_4617.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJwMXCzUeADxPSlgETuK2P5JIX5sF7sfmTvXaWSathYOh7EJWJHVVLT6cmvKNf7HWxH6tJbzFyazfw6ikobtRPIj1SvO4_Yv9WFYDXuMRnyOkh2oUzrdNH11FlnwtnVC1m2UrCtKEA2DgRdT48H7imwSMwRaragT_SRXNst-2Izq5JnNxOyajOCKmMGQ/w640-h360/IMG_4617.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">It pained me to stop trying for a better time after pausing to get this screenshot</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>I have to apologize to everyone who follows me on Twitter for the month or so where every other tweet I posted was a<a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/1549204181822500864?s=20&t=qSVYeOW1qma08BFXxr32TQ"> clip of me doing something cool in <i>Neon White</i></a>. What's really amazing about the game is that it takes something that can be so difficult to get right - first-person platforming - and not only does it perfectly, but marries it to speedrunning, something which is generally pretty niche and considered the realm of only the very best or dedicated players, and makes it into a totally accessible and ridiculously fun experience. Beating the levels in this game as quickly as possible, and then trying to beat the times of my friends to try and get the top spot on every leaderboard, made<i> Neon White</i> one of the most compelling and purely enjoyable gaming experiences of the year for me. Seemingly everyone bashes the story, and it is very tropey and derivative of a lot of anime, but I didn't mind it. It's a cool setting within which to allow people to perform outrageous stunts, and I think that's lovely.<br /></p><p>1. <i><b>Vampire Survivors </b></i>(Xbox, PC, Mobile)</p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB9N8cyPKBMWp-m4PA0t30o6KHcyrEp9UxYcCiw6z42Z9hNHgZcLiWTsowL8SUXV2ag6-xp2iEGGJ-eWzFjkOrHg9FAlk4LrwDn4VvmXV_fAlUtmRGzPRU8XeL8bgcvHSg3wg4-rmJSwbNMH8LqLFhI-_Z_49RgpXRaHXEmyvCMRSsHcEpQ3pfce9d2g/s1917/vs2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1198" data-original-width="1917" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB9N8cyPKBMWp-m4PA0t30o6KHcyrEp9UxYcCiw6z42Z9hNHgZcLiWTsowL8SUXV2ag6-xp2iEGGJ-eWzFjkOrHg9FAlk4LrwDn4VvmXV_fAlUtmRGzPRU8XeL8bgcvHSg3wg4-rmJSwbNMH8LqLFhI-_Z_49RgpXRaHXEmyvCMRSsHcEpQ3pfce9d2g/w640-h400/vs2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A tad more legible than the first screenshot, huh</span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>I started playing <i>Vampire Survivors</i> back in February while it was in early access, and I had a good time with it. The basic concept was really intriguing yet extremely easy to grasp; you control a variety of characters who all look like legally dubious old <i>Castlevania </i>sprites and walk around a creepy and/or kooky location, killing monsters and picking up different weapons and power ups which gradually turn you into a frothing mound of death. It's a reverse bullet hell in which all you do is control the character's movements and choose what weapons to use or upgrade every time you go up a level. It was a cool idea, I played it for a few hours, and then I walked away happy with the time I had spent with it.</p><p>Then, a few months later, I heard that they had done a big update. And then they did another one, and another one, each time adding in new characters, new weapons, and new modes, to the extent that by the time the game properly came out in October, it was like four or five times bigger than it had been eight months earlier, and it was already a fairly robust experience to begin with. That sense of growth and progress kept me coming back and playing the game each time to see what new thing had been added, but what earns it the number one slot on my list is how, even as it grew in scope and ambition, the team behind <i>Vampire Survivors </i>never lost sight of the simple fun at the heart of the game, and instead enhanced and refined it. The game is still fundamentally as good as it was when it was in early access, it just gives you a lot more ways to play around with it, and the fact that the game remains as fun on my 300th run as it did on my first is largely why it tops my list for this year.<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-37167701948498686342022-12-23T19:09:00.000+00:002022-12-23T19:09:54.196+00:00The Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2022<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcgOahnMfckKWuy4_unFx036zNQgaNREZIZWEvaff0-1yyZu7hPopxcePNdeYwWoSl96cMp9ZCS4rvNKEXTXxQK_iQgFxcPBasJvQEaR3sVM_199NOIu7NCkmEKUt0-_uPLI3fIr0cuEE_PR9T_-oJ_ZroyWbhM_KxPEiqMUrzmCMguyMFchOvuspg4A/s1280/demolition%20man.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="1280" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcgOahnMfckKWuy4_unFx036zNQgaNREZIZWEvaff0-1yyZu7hPopxcePNdeYwWoSl96cMp9ZCS4rvNKEXTXxQK_iQgFxcPBasJvQEaR3sVM_199NOIu7NCkmEKUt0-_uPLI3fIr0cuEE_PR9T_-oJ_ZroyWbhM_KxPEiqMUrzmCMguyMFchOvuspg4A/w640-h320/demolition%20man.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />While I have done a better job of keeping up with current releases this year, mostly because the films that came out in 2022 are altogether more interesting than those that came out in 2021, it was still another big year for watching older movies for me. In addition to filling in some massive blind spots, including finally seeing one movie that cause multiple people on separate occasions to audibly gasp when I said I hadn't seen it, I tried to dig deeper into the works of filmmakers I was passingly familiar with but felt like I should know more about.<p></p><p>As such, to avoid this list being dominated by John Ford or Frederick Wiseman films, I'm only going to write about one film from each director and bundle the rest up under honourable mentions for each entry, since those directors in particularly have made a huge number of great movies and anyone looking for some suggestions could do worse than check those films out.</p><p>So here's the list of the best older movies I watched for the first time in 2022, presented in chronological release order since trying to rank these movies would drive me insane.<br /></p><p><i><b><span></span></b></i></p><a name='more'></a><i><b>Dragnet Girl </b></i>(dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1933)<br /><br />Sprightly crime romance set amidst small time crooks and the women who
love them. Like the other Ozu silent films that I've seen, it's got
tremendous energy to it, barrelling through the story at a pretty
frenetic pace (particularly in comparison to his sound-era work, which
is notably more sedate and less genre-oriented) but combines that with layered, complicated
characters whose wants and conflicts are beautifully sketched by the
minimal intertitles and the actors. Much less angsty than American crime
films of the same period, and with a great well of empathy for people
caught in a life of crime.<p></p><p><i><b>They Were Expendable</b></i> (dir. John Ford, 1945)</p><p>I watched a lot of John Ford movies this year and this story of PT boat crews doing battle against the Japanese was one of the best. It has an incredibly poignant mix of poetic, expressive scenes about
the souls of the men and women who risked their lives in WWII and
starker, documentary-like action capturing the reality of what combat
was like for PT boats.</p><p>It also has one of John Wayne's better performances. The
eulogy he delivers near the end is a wonderful encapsulation of how much
presence he brought and how captivating he could be on camera, even though he
was not a particularly versatile actor. One of his least starry
performances, but ironically one that illustrates why his
stardom endures. (<b>Honourable Mentions</b>: <i>Up the River</i>, <i>The Plough and the Stars</i>, <i>The Quiet Man</i>, <i>Young Mr. Lincoln</i>) <br /></p><p><i><b>Spring In A Small Town</b></i> (dir. Fei Mu, 1948)</p><p>Someone on Twitter cited this as a film that was criminally ignored in
the recent Sight and Sound poll of the greatest movies ever made and you know what? They were 100%
correct. A beautifully acted, delicate chamber piece about rekindled but
suppressed love that makes you care deeply for everyone in the
situation, and makes any possible resolution to it more and more painful the longer the story goes on.<br /></p><p><i><b>Titicut Follies</b></i> (dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1967)<br /></p><p>Prior to this year I was mainly familiar with Frederick Wiseman's more recent documentaries, so I decided to go back and become more familiar with his earlier work. There is a remarkable consistency to his style over the last 50 years, such as lack of narration or on-screen information to guide the audience the way many documentaries do, but nothing stands out more so than his ability to very clearly articulate his viewpoints about a given subject purely through editing. This is readily apparent in his debut, in which he captures the brutal conditions at a Massachusetts asylum, which is as searing an indictment of the people and structures that allow for such cruelty to occur as you are ever likely to see. A deeply difficult and uncomfortable watch. (<b>Honourable Mentions</b>: <i>Law and Order</i>,<i> Basic Training</i>,<i> Essene</i>)<br /></p><p><i><b>Conquest of the Planet of the Apes </b></i>(dir. J. Lee Thompson, 1972)<br /></p>While I have seen the original 1968 <i><b>Planet of the Apes</b> </i>many times over the years, I decided this year to finally watch the sequels, which I've long been fascinated by after reading this piece by Keith Phipps on <a href="https://thedissolve.com/features/laser-age/388-after-blowing-itself-up-the-planet-of-the-apes-ser/">The Dissolve</a> (RIP to a very good film site). They're all pretty good apart from the fifth and final film, <i><b>Battle For the Planet of the Apes</b></i>, which really feels like they ran out of ideas and budget, but the fourth film was the one that really stuck out to me. After diverging into culture-clash time-travel comedy for much of the third film (seriously, watch these movies if you haven't, they are wild), <i>Conquest </i>picks up the story at the point that apes have become a slave race to humans and shows what ultimately causes them to snap and overthrow their masters. It's a stark and bleak movie (particularly the director's cut) which argues pretty strongly for violent, revolutionary solutions to oppressive systems, while also featuring the single greatest line delivery in American cinema: <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/1480268427147321346?s=20&t=qNgDEhjB2H9j_TJwYXI1uw">"I knew that circus owner was lying."</a><br /><p></p><p><i><b>The Last of Sheila </b></i>(dir. Herbert Ross, 1973)</p><p>A really fun little mystery thriller about a group of movie industry types being
brought together on a yacht by a producer (James Coburn) a year
after the hit-and-run death of his wife in order to play a series of
games and riddles. The motives and secrets of all the
attendees unfold in compelling fashion in Stephen Sondheim and Anthony
Perkins' witty script, and the atmosphere is nicely balanced between
playfulness and menace. A clear influence on <i>Glass Onion</i>, which borrows its sun-kissed setting and premise of friends being brought together by a rich weirdo before going off in its own direction.<br /></p><p><i><b>Hooper </b></i>(dir. Hal Needham, 1978)</p><p>Usually when something is described as a love letter to cinema, it conjures up an artsy, dewy-eyed sentimental image, of people reverently staring at the silver screen in awe of the majesty of the moving image. By focusing on a stuntman (Burt Reynolds), <i>Hooper </i>is a love letter to the grunts and roughnecks who help make those images possible which has a lot of affection at its core, but of a rougher, rowdier sort. The stunts are, appropriately enough, really
fun and exciting, and the inside baseball Hollywood stuff is handled
with a deft winky knowingness that perfectly complements Reynolds' persona, without ever being quite as loose or throwaway as <i><b>Smokey and the Bandit</b></i>.</p><p><i><b>Dance Craze</b></i> (dir. Joe Massot, 1981)</p><p>The Specials, Madness, The Beat, The Selecter, Bad Manners and the
Bodysnatchers in concert, what more could you want? This documentary, consisting solely of footage of the aforementioned bands with zero filler, is a thrilling snapshot
of 2 Tone at its peak, given unexpected extra resonance by the recent death of Terry Hall.<br /></p><p></p><p><i><b>E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial</b></i> (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1982)</p><p>Despite being a fan of Spielberg and being in the right age range to have watched the film endlessly on VHS, I had never watched E.T. in its entirety until it was re-released this year. There's really not much to say about it except that it's a masterpiece. The sense of adventure and the humour of the film still work, its depiction of suburbia feels really authentic, as do the relationships between all the kids, and the emotional moments in the back half hit like a ton of bricks even if you know them all. </p><p><i><b>L'Argent </b></i>(dir. Robert Bresson, 1983)</p>As pure a distillation of the idea of money as a corrupting
influence as you're likely to see. The first hour is particularly great,
as Bresson follows the ripples out from one schoolboy being given a
counterfeit note and spending it at a shop, tracing the movement of the
note as it passes from person to person. Once it settles down to focus
on a single character in the last act it loses some of that energy, but
only comparatively speaking since its final scenes are as declarative
an indictment as its opening ones are abstract. <p></p><p><i><b>Star 80</b></i> (dir. Bob Fosse, 1983)</p>This film has the
dubious distinction of being the greatest film I would never ever
recommend to another person and may never watch again. In depicting the
murder of Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten (Mariel Hemingway) by her
ex-boyfriend Paul Snider (Eric Roberts), Bob Fosse recreates an
incredibly upsetting and sad series of events in upsetting and sad
detail, while Eric Roberts gives a revelatory performance as Snider that
is so pathetic and unsettling that a scene of him trying to pitch an
idea to an actor and being completely shutdown is almost as difficult to
watch as the murder-suicide that forms the crux of the whole story. A
profoundly depressing and distressing work of true crime filmmaking
lacking in any of the sick thrills that underpin the genre.<p></p><p><i><b>Runaway Train</b></i> (dir. Andrei Konchalovsky, 1985)</p><p>For years I only knew two things about <i>Runaway Train</i>:
John Voight and Eric Roberts were both Oscar-nominated for it, a rarity
for an action movie, and that it started out life as an Akira Kurosawa
project. It's a testament to how good the film is that I pretty much
immediately
stopped wondering how the unmade Kurosawa version would have turned out.
A taut movie about two convicts trapped on a train that is running out
of control (hence the aptly blunt title), it's anchored by a bunch of
great performances, cut
through with an existentialist edge that really comes to the fore in the
back half.</p><p><i><b>The Seventh Curse </b></i>(dir. Lam Nai-Choi, 1985)</p>One of the
most purely enjoyable films I've seen in a long time. A relentlessly fun
and entertaining Hong Kong action film about people doing battles with
ancient tribes and evil spirits. Seemingly the result of an experiment
to see if it would be possible to create a film that it not boring for
literally a single second, and a successful one.<p><i><b>Taipei Story</b></i> (dir. Edward Yang, 1985)</p><p>Edward Yang remains one of my worst cinematic blind spots, and I started to correct that this year by watching his story of a couple slowly being pulled apart by their diverging dreams and loyalties. An endlessly evocative film that pulls at the strings holding the relationship together until it can't take any more.<br /></p><p><i><b>Round Midnight </b></i>(dir. Bernard Tavernier, 1986)</p><div><p>Quite simply one of the best films of the 1980s. It’s very trite and cliched to say that a film is about the
power of music, but this is a rare film that fits the bill without
itself being trite and cliched. A warm and empathetic film about a
forgotten man being found again, and discovering community and support
through his music. </p><p>Special mention to Martin Scorsese for showing up for
five minutes in the last act of the film and acting like a shot of
caffeine. Truly nothing else could more effectively mark the film’s
action shifting from Paris back to New York than Marty picking the
characters up from the airport and talking a mile a minute.</p></div><p><i><b>King of New York </b></i>(dir. Abel Ferrara, 1990)</p><div><p>For years I put off watching this because I assumed it was one of those movies that capital-L Lads love because it's brutal (like<i><b> Boondock Saints</b></i>), when in fact it's one of those movies that capital-L Lads love because it's brutal <i>and</i> a great work of cinema (like <i><b>Goodfellas</b></i>). Christopher Walken stars as a drug lord just released from prison who sets out to wipe out his competition in order to improve the lives of the poor and needy of New York. I love how gaunt and wan Christopher Walken is throughout. He really looks like
someone who’s been hollowed out by the things he’s done, a real
creature of the underworld venturing out to feed. The inclusion of <b><i>Nosferatu</i></b> in one scene feels like putting too fine a point on it, but then again you could never accuse Ferrara of being too subtle, </p><p>Beyond
Walken, who really is magnetic in the lead role, the whole film feels
like an all-star game of actors who were killing it in the ‘90s. Wesley Snipes,
David Caruso, Giancarlo Esposito, Steve Buscemi, nothing but quality. And of course Laurence
Fishburne really stands out, bringing a raw nerve quality every second
he’s on screen.</p></div><p></p><p><i><b>Nightbreed</b></i> (dir. Clive Barker, 1990)</p><p>As a fan of the original <i>Hellraiser</i>, I was expecting <i>Nightbreed</i> to be fairly gruesome and to have some psycho-sexual overtones, but I did not expect it to be quite so ambitious or romantic. More of an urban fantasy story than an out and out horror, it follows a young man who discovers a secret society of monsters living under a graveyard in Calgary (sure, why not, they've gotta live somewhere) before joining them after he is killed by the police who wrongly believe him to be a serial killer. There's lots of gross and gory moments - the one that particularly sticks out in my memory being a man tearing his own scalp off - but it's mainly a story about outcasts finding community away from a world that hates them, a metaphor for homosexuality that is not hard to decipher, and which lends the film a poignancy that I found very sweet. And to top it all off, you get David Cronenberg as a deeply unnerving psychiatrist<br /></p><p><i><b>Batman: Mask of the Phantasm</b></i> (dirs. Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski 1993)<br /></p><p>Despite being obsessed with <i><b>Batman: The Animated Series</b></i> as a child, I never watched the feature-length spinoff, which means that for all this time I had denied myself one of, if not the best, cinematic Batman stories, as Bruce Wayne (the much-missed Kevin Conroy) is faced with the opportunity to leave his life of caped crusading behind, if only some mysterious new villain wasn't murdering some of Gotham's worst criminals. <br /></p><div><p>It's perhaps not coincidental that this and<i><b> Spider-Man 2</b></i>, the best comic-book movie, grapple with their heroes being tempted by the
possibility of living a normal life, and get so much emotional resonance and dramatic tension out of the pull between happiness and
their pursuit of justice.</p></div><p> </p><p><i><b>Demolition Man</b></i> (dir. Marco Brambilla, 1993)</p><p>I had somehow never seen this before and am kicking myself for waiting
so long. An hilarious vision of the future that manages to have the
broadest possible satire and a real tactile quality to it. All the sets
are so great, and really make for a complete vision of the future. The
performances are all top-notch. Sylvester Stallone and Sandra Bullock have a great
culture-clash dynamic between them, while as Simon Phoenix, Wesley
Snipes provides one of the most compelling villain performances of the
'90s. A joy.</p><p><i><b>Jerry Maguire</b></i> (dir. Cameron Crowe, 1996)</p><p> I remember seeing some of this on video in 1998 or thereabouts, and I know
most of the big moments from cultural osmosis, but watching it all
strung together revealed what Cameron Crowe does so well here and has
struggled with in many of his subsequent movies. This has a lot of the
extremely embarrassing sentimentality that made <b><i>Elizabethtown </i></b>a punching
bag, but balanced out by many, many moments of its whimsy getting
knocked down by unfeeling reality. That tension is central to making the
film so winning, since its world is so brutally cynical, but plausible,
that you can’t help but want these intense weirdos to succeed, and that
pushback is either absent from his later work or not credible enough to
balance out the treacle.</p><p>Anyway, this is all to say that I was
rolling my eyes when it revealed that the title of Jerry Maguire’s manifesto
was “The Things We Think But Do Not Say”, yet I was tearing up and ready
to cheer at the one-two punch of “You complete me.”/“You had me
at ‘hello.’”</p><p><i><b>The Rock</b></i> (dir. Michael Bay, 1996)</p><p>After being
bowled over by Bay's <b><i>Ambulance </i></b>early in the year, I decided to go back
and watch some of the films from his filmography that I had missed. That
was largely not a great use of my time, hence the lack of honourable
mentions under this one, but I did finally watch <i><b>The Rock</b></i> so it was all worth it, probably.</p><p>Unmistakably Bay, with his expressive and lurid visual style and broad
sense of humour coming through loud and clear, but restrained just
enough by the budget and technology of the time that it doesn't veer
into the excesses that would shape his work in the subsequent years. As
such the end result feels very much of a piece with the kind of tight
action-thrillers that Hollywood was putting out at the time - big name
cast, high concept plot - but with a distinctive visual and tonal
quality that sets it apart and still feels brash and fresh so many
years later.</p><p><i><b>Dirty Work</b></i> (dir. Bob Saget, 1998)</p><p>A perfect vehicle for Norm MacDonald since it tackles gross and offensive
material with an off-handed breeziness that makes gags about rape,
murder and incest seem positively quaint. It takes a little while to get
going, but once Norm and Artie Lange are looking for jobs, and
particularly once they start their revenge business, it really kicks
into gear, as their jobs form the perfect skeletal frame upon which to
hang a lot of very dumb jokes and bits. A hugely entertaining movie that isn't for everyone, but I had an absolutely great time with it.<br /></p><p><i><b>The Mission</b></i> (dir. Johnnie To, 1999)</p><p>I went through a pretty intense period in the summer of watching nothing but films by the Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To, and I can't recommend his filmography enough. Contained within it are some of the most intense and entertaining crime films I've ever seen, of which <i>The Mission</i>, about a group of five gangsters who are hired to protect a Triad boss who is in danger of being assassinated, was one of the best. I particularly love how To finds time for little fun moments like the team having a
kickabout with a ball of paper while they're waiting around, doing more
in a wordless minute to establish their friendship and bond than 10
minutes of dialogue ever could. It makes it so easy to care about the gunfights and
whether or not any of them will make it to the end, even though the
tone of those fights is very studied and cool. (<b>Honourable Mentions</b>: <i>Election</i>, <i>Election II</i>, <i>Throw Down</i>,<i> Blind Detective</i>)<br /></p><p><i><b>Frailty </b></i>(dir. Bill Paxton, 2000)</p><p>Just when I thought I couldn't miss Bill Paxton more, I watched <i><b>Frailty </b></i>and learned that not only was he an incredibly fine actor, but he was a pretty good director as well. A deeply unnerving horror movie about a man (Matthew McConaughey) telling an FBI agent about how his father (Paxton) trained him and his brother to kill people he believed to be demons. The thing that really impressed me about it was the precision of the filmmaking and how well Paxton maintains a tone of uncertainty throughout. He sustains the
question of whether the demons he's hunting are real or not through
to the end, which is no mean feat.<br /></p><p><i><b>Love & Basketball </b></i>(dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood)</p><p>It's a real testament to how good the writing, directing and acting in this sports romance is that it all builds to a final scene - in which Omar Epps and Sanaa Lathan play a game of one-on-one to determine if he will leave his fiancee so the two of them can get back together - that could feel totally corny and artificial, but instead feels earned and authentic. A decades-spanning romance that also illustrates the transcendental possibilities of sports better than just about any movie that isn't <b><i>Hoop Dreams</i></b>.<br /></p><p><i><b>Birth </b></i>(dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2004)</p><p>Considering that Jonathan Glazer directed one of my favourite films of the last decade in <b><i>Under the Skin</i></b>, and I also have a lot of affection for his debut <i><b>Sexy Beast</b></i>, I'd always been curious about the film he made between the two, a brittle character piece about a woman (Nicole Kidman) who meets a ten year old boy who claims to be the reincarnation of her deceased husband. It's an incredible exercise in tone and mood, as Glazer manages to perfectly
balance a story that could easily be laughable or totally off-putting,
but instead remains deeply compelling and affecting. Kidman is incredible, while the supporting cast is nothing but ringers doing
good work. Now if Glazer could put out a fourth film some time soon that would be pretty cool, to me.<br /></p><p><i><b>Bright Star</b></i> (dir. Jane Campion, 2009)</p><p>This was the first film I watched in 2022 and what a banger to start the year off. In detailing the romance between John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), Jane Campion crafts a film which is intensely sad, owing to Keats death at a young age, but also incredibly hot in that restrained way that the best period romances achieve. There's a real frisson between Whishaw and Cornish which illuminates the passion of Keats' poetry in a way which I hadn't appreciated before.<br /></p><p><i><b>Wolf Children</b></i> (dir. Mamoru Hosoda, 2012)<br /></p>I got really into
the works of Mamoru Hosoda this year ahead of the release of his new
film <i><b>Belle</b></i> (which, ironically, I still haven't got around to watching) and this fantastical story about a woman raising her two children (who also happen to be part werewolf) was the one that I found the most affecting. It's beautifully animated - every Hosoda movie looks absolutely incredible - with the more mundane scenes of domestic life having a true lived-in quality to them that lends a realism to the central dynamic between the mother and her children. It draws out a central contradiction of parenthood - it's an
extremely common experience which is unique to everyone who goes through
it - by adding in a fantastical element, making it at once extremely relatable to parents and children alike, but also hugely enjoyable since there's plenty of fun in trying to hide the fact that the kids are part wolf from society at large. Delicately drawn in every
sense, hugely affecting in its big and small moments, a real wondrous film. (<b>Honourable mentions</b>: <i>The Girl Who Leapt Through Time</i>, <i>Summer Wars</i>, <i>The Boy and the Beast</i>)<br /><p><i><b>Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning</b></i> (dir. John Hyams, 2012)</p><p>For years now I've heard people talk about how good the sixth (technically third since it ignores most of the previous films) installment in the<i> Universal Soldier</i> series is, and while I didn't doubt them per se, since the people who tended to sing the film's praises were people whose opinions I trusted, I always had a small doubting voice in my head saying "Well, how good could it be really?" </p><p>The answer, it turns out, is really fucking good. A brutal, sparse and unsettling action movie that tackles notions of
identity and memory in ways both thoughtful and violent. Returning stars Dolph Lundgren and
Jean-Claude Van Damme make for great sources of ambient menace as Hyams uses their
weathered physicality to set a grim tone belying the film's status as a late entry into a schlocky franchise. Scott Adkins also
makes for a compelling lead, not merely because he's obviously great at
the action, but because he manages to convey his characters' emotional pain and grief in
between the kicks.</p><p><i><b>Asako I & II</b></i> (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2018)</p><p>After Hamaguchi delivered two stunning films last year with<b><i> Drive My Car </i></b>and <i><b>Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy</b></i>, I had to go back and watch his earlier films, of which this romance was the highlight (though nothing I've seen so far has been less than terrific). With its bifurcated narrative about a woman (Erika Karata) who falls in love with a man who then disappears, and then years later meets another man who looks just like him (both played by Masahiro Higashide with a real Clark Kent/Superman degree of differentiation simply through demeanour), <i>Asako I & II</i> is a gorgeous movie about past loves and the pull they can still exert. (<b>Honourable Mention</b>: <i>Happy Hour</i>)<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-79203143327401762882022-12-04T19:57:00.006+00:002022-12-10T02:07:00.175+00:00Ed's Top 25 Films of 2021<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja3iAlcrLY9vkx8om8CC15m9CgQRpRyXY-AuEqKpbeTlPcLXRuPjZStp03Hlsxcw_L6AM7FbQN1DTeuOjO03LmR8zuFTGQRJoMxJgBkNQXGVxXSWpp7yJFviG6vG4bpyRd4Ao3Xm2uJthSB6ob61SqEoM91J7ZvDkxz-9i45pO3TaZeN3obm_tABEvSw/s1600/daystsaimingliang.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja3iAlcrLY9vkx8om8CC15m9CgQRpRyXY-AuEqKpbeTlPcLXRuPjZStp03Hlsxcw_L6AM7FbQN1DTeuOjO03LmR8zuFTGQRJoMxJgBkNQXGVxXSWpp7yJFviG6vG4bpyRd4Ao3Xm2uJthSB6ob61SqEoM91J7ZvDkxz-9i45pO3TaZeN3obm_tABEvSw/w640-h360/daystsaimingliang.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><i>Days</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />No, that's not a typo. Here, at the end of 2022, I realized that I forgot to actually do a best films of 2021 post last year, in part because I didn't feel like I had seen enough of the major films back in December 2021 to put together a decent list. So I kept putting it off as I caught up until I just forgot to actually write a list at all. And because the completionist aspect of my personality won't let me write a 2022 list without a 2021 list, here is a belated run down of the best films of 2021.<p></p><p>Before we get to the good films, a rundown of the worst films I saw. Usually I only single out one for that honour, but since the worst film I saw last year was <i><b>Space Jam: A New Legacy</b></i> and it would be charitable to call that IP car crash a film, I'll skip over that and instead say that <i><b>Being the Ricardos </b></i>was the worst film I saw in 2021. A totally inert take on interesting people and a potentially compelling story that doesn't even have the usual Aaron Sorkin saving grace of having memorable lines well-delivered. Over the course of his three films as a director, it has become painfully obvious that he has no idea how to direct actors to deliver his dialogue well or edit them so they play well on-screen. Someone needs to wrest the director's chair out of his hands and sit him behind a typewriter only from now on. Dreadful from start to finish.</p><p>And now here's the (very, very late) list. <br /></p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><i></i></p><p>25. <b><i>The Eyes of Tammy Faye</i></b> (dir. Michael Showalter) <br /></p><p>This is weighed down by a lot of the typical biopics cliches (in media res opening late in Tammy Faye Bakker's life that then flashes back; Wikipedia shallow run through of all the major events; photos of the real people at the end with text saying what happened to everyone) but I was won over by Showalter's unexpectedly straight-faced take on the material, which ends up accentuating the grotesqueness of the Bakkers' garish, hypocritical lifestyle. Jessica Chastain also conveys the sadness of Bakker as she becomes alienated from her fellow evangelicals, and I couldn't help but find the contrast between her inauthentic appearance and her authentic loneliness poignant. <br /></p><p>24. <i><b>Annette </b></i>(dir. Leos Carax) </p><p>To use a possibly strained metaphor, Annette feels like three very different musicians trying to play together with very little overlap between them. You have Sparks' theatricality, Carax's surrealism, and Adam Driver's earthy intensity, none of which mesh particularly well. Yet I found watching the struggle between the three elements fascinating, even more so during the moments it didn't work than during the ones where it did.<br /></p><p>23. <i><b>Attica </b></i>(dirs. Traci Curry and Stanley Nelson)<br /></p><p>A pretty conventional documentary, but an exceptionally well-done one nonetheless. In retelling the story of the Attica prison riot, not merely in terms of the riot itself but the underlying issues that made some sort of confrontation tragically inevitable, Curry and Nelson hit every beat of the story with a bracing and unwavering clarity, resulting in a searing indictment of a system that brutalizes everyone involved in it. <br /></p><p>22. <i><b>Dune </b></i>(dir. Denis Villeneuve) </p><p></p><p> Exactly
what I hoped for from an adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel. I was
particularly impressed by its starkness, and the way Villeneuve resists
the typical big sci-fi desire to fill the frame with stuff, which can so
often lead to mere clutter. Every image feels very considered and
purposeful. Yet he also handles the spectacle and the crowd pleasing
moments (like Duncan Idaho going sicko mode) very well, stopping it from
being totally po-faced.</p><p>21.<i><b> The Lost Daughter </b></i>(dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal)</p><p>As good as the performances in this are, with Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley and Ed Harris all typically great, what lingers the most for me is the tremendous sense of dislocation that Gyllenhaal creates. It's a film about the past and the present blurring, and of memory slipping in and out of focus as Colman's character contemplates what kind of mother she has been. A woozy, unsettling movie that I hope will lead to a long directorial career for Maggie Gyllenhaal.<br /></p><p>20. <i><b>The Power of the Dog </b></i>(dir. Jane Campion)</p><p>Probably the best moment of revelation for me watching a film this year came from realizing that Benedict Cumberbatch feeling miscast as a cowboy was a feature, not a bug. A wonderfully tactile film. <br /></p><p>19. <i><b>Witches of the Orient</b></i> (dir. Julien Faraut) </p><p>A wonderful documentary about the Japanese women’s volleyball team, which won Gold at the 1964 Olympics as part of a still-unbroken record 258 game winning streak. Utilizing archive footage, interviews with some of the surviving team members and scenes from <b><i>Attack No. 1</i></b>, an anime inspired by the team's success, the film blends together fact and legend in ways which are both conceptually intriguing and viscerally exciting.<br /></p><p>18. <i><b>The Hand of God</b></i> (dir. Paolo Sorrentino)</p><p>While I prefer Sorrentino when he's being big and gaudy, I couldn't help but be won over by his <i>roman a clef </i>about his youth in Naples. It's authentically sweet in its exploration of loss and art, which felt like a nice change of pace from someone who revels in excess and artifice.<br /></p><p>17. <i><b>The Velvet Underground</b></i> (dir. Todd Haynes)</p><p> A much richer and fuller appreciation of a great band than you get from most rock documentaries, in part because Haynes brings an immediacy to the filmmaking by never lingering on any interviews, instead using them to provide context to reams of incredible footage of The Velvet Underground, which he edits together with an intensity that places you in the grit and the grime of '60s New York. By establishing them as part of a much bigger wave of artists working in music, experimental cinema and the visual arts more broadly, the film also does a much better job of explaining why they were such an important group than just having a bunch of famous people talk about how influential they were or highlighting their favourite songs.<br /></p><p>16. <i><b>Luca </b></i>(dir. Enrico Casarosa)</p><p>My favourite Studio Ghibli movie is <i><b>Porco Rosso</b></i>, a magical realist work that takes place in sun-drenched mid-century Italy, so I was predisposed to like <i>Luca</i>, Pixar's lovely story of sea monsters trying to blend in with humans. A nicely low-stakes movie that explores its ideas around identity very deftly, while also having plenty of fun hijinks. <br /></p><p>15. <i><b>Nightmare Alley</b></i> (dir. Guillermo Del Toro)</p><p>A very handsomely staged movie that never lets its prestigious production values obscure the sinister pulpiness at its core. In adapting William Lindsay Gresham's novel, Del Toro brings all the A-list talent and budget that comes from winning a couple of Oscars to a story of con-men, carnies, and social climbing, and all the really good, nasty stuff that comes with that territory. Bradley Cooper gives one of his most wild-eyed and off-kilter performances in a while, while literally every other role is stacked with great actors getting to indulge in some well-judged hamminess. <br /></p><p>14. <i><b>Malignant </b></i>(dir. James Wan)</p><p>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. </p><p>I still can't believe James Wan made this movie. A schlocky and unrestrained horror romp with an unforgettable villain, performances so over the top they might as well be dead in Flanders Field, and a gleefully silly twist. A movie I wish I'd been able to see in a theatre because hearing an audience react to all of...<i>that</i>...would be such a joy.<br /></p><p>13. <i><b>The Card Counter </b></i>(dir. Paul Schrader)</p><p>At this point in his career, Schrader is like the band Spoon to me; he keeps doing more or less the same thing, but damn if it doesn't work for me each and every time.<i> The Card Counter </i>is yet another story of damaged men operating in insular worlds, haunted by their past actions and grasping for redemption. Hell, he even steals the ending of <b><i>Pickpocket </i></b>for the third time! But for all its familiarity, setting part of the story in Abu Ghraib and framing the story through what Oscar Isaacs' character did to the Iraqis and what the US government did to him (and therefore what the US did to Iraq) offers a broader, more searing indictment of an entire way of doing business, and how no one can truly escape it. Also, Tiffany Haddish is fantastic in it, and brings a real vulnerability to her role that makes the ultimate moment of grace so affecting.<br /></p><p>12. <i><b>Zola </b></i>(dir. Janicza Bravo)</p><p>"Based on a Twitter thread" obviously sounds like slim material for a movie, but when that thread is as wild and entertaining as the one that gave us <i>Zola</i>, it's silly to quibble about where it came from. There's a lot of movies I wish I'd been able to see with an audience
over the last few years, but I really think it would have been something
to hear a room full of people reaction to the full frontal montage.
Colman Domingo, man, what a screen presence! Truly one of our most
compelling actors.</p><p>11. <i><b>Benedetta </b></i>(dir. Paul Verhoeven)</p><p>Considering the logline "Paul Verhoeven made a lesbian nun movie", <i>Benedetta </i>ended up being pretty restrained. That's comparatively speaking, of course, since we're still talking about the man who gave us <i><b>RoboCop</b></i>, <i><b>Showgirls </b></i>and <b><i>Starship Troopers</i></b>, but between all the sacrilegious sex toys there is a fairly thoughtful and contemplative discussion of the tension between faith as practiced by individuals and proscribed by institutions, and how the corruption of the latter will lead them to crush genuine expressions of the former.<br /></p><p>10. <i><b>Wrath of Man </b></i>(dir. Guy Ritchie)</p><p>Almost certainly the most surprising entry on this list since, while I don't hate Guy Ritchie by any means, I've rarely liked any of his movies as much as I did this taut, economical thriller that reveals itself with a measured, ominous pace that really ratchets up the tension for its bloody climax and operative denouement. Boasts quite possibly Jason Statham's best performance, too. <br /></p><p>9. <i><b>The Last Duel </b></i>(dir. Ridley Scott)</p><p> Absolutely riveting from the word go, handles the nuance of its subject deftly while maintaining a sweeping scope, and full of great performances, with Jodie Comer, Matt Damon and Adam Driver being particularly brilliant at delivering similar yet distinct versions of their performances in each of the film's retelling of the same event. Special shout-out to Alex Lawther and Ben Affleck, who are both really fun as two men so powerful and distant from the concerns of normal people they seem constantly amused or befuddled by why anyone is making a fuss about the horrible things they do or enable.</p><p>8. <i><b>The Matrix Resurrections </b></i>(dir. Lana Wachowski)<br /></p> A love letter to its characters, a poison pen letter to Hollywood and the churn of trying to make everything old new again. I love the tension between the abundant love it has for its characters and the disdain it has for the forces that have brought them back to life. The action is underwhelming, which I can understand being a dealbreaker for a <i>Matrix </i>movie for most people, but the heart beats so strongly.<p>7. <i><b>The Beatles Get Back </b></i>(dir. Peter Jackson)</p><p> While I was watching Jackson's assemblage of hours of footage of The Beatles during the abortive <i>Get Back</i> sessions, I initially thought that it would have benefited from being eight one-hour episodes instead of three two-plus-hour ones, since so much of it feels aimless and meandering in a way that can be draining over that length of time.
However, the structure of the whole thing - with George leaving as the big event of Part 1, them deciding to do the rooftop concert at the end of Part 2 and the concert itself taking up much of Part 3 - works so well in this format, and even if so much of it feels like the band going round in circles, the catharsis of that ending would be considerably lessened without the constant stop-start, and the frustration of the band members giving way to moments of genuine inspiration.
It’s also hard to overstate how fascinating the little details are, and how compelling it is to see them slowly crafting these extremely famous songs from embryonic ideas, or seeing them just shooting the shit about what they watched on TV the night before. It feels like the fullest possible portrait of the band as they were beginning to spiral apart, showing how they still found fun and joy in the work even as things were undeniably strained, and how they were ultimately, at the heart of it all, <a href="https://www.gawker.com/culture/the-beatles-were-friends">friends</a>.<br /></p><p>6. <i><b>Drive My Car</b></i> (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)<br /></p><p>
Hamaguchi expands on Haruki Murakami's beautifully slight short story by making the supporting characters feel more vivid and alive, and also creating a third act that expands and explodes the themes of the story in interesting and unpredictable ways. A deeply engrossing work about loss, how hard it is to really know another person, and art as a way of processing trauma. The multi-lingual play being rehearsed throughout the film also provides one of the most complicated and hilarious jokes in any movie I saw last year.<br /></p><p>5. <i><b>Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time</b></i> (dir. Hideaki Anno) </p><p>A very sentimental inclusion, this one. I was late to the <b><i>Neon Genesis Evangelion</i></b> party, only watching the original anime series when it debuted on Netflix a few years ago, but its mix of mechs fighting monsters with an at times brutal depiction of depression really moved me, and the series and its extremely bleak cinematic spin-off <b><i>The End of Evangelion</i></b> are among some of my favourite works of art that I've encountered in the last few years. I caught up with the rebuilds of <i>Evangelion</i>, a series of feature film remakes/re-interpretations of the TV series and was pretty disappointed in them, so I went into the fourth and final film with a sense of obligation rather than excitement. Yet I was completely blown away by how well Anno and his team managed to resolve not only the story being told by the current run of films, but also the one that was told over the original run of the series and movie. Its final moments, in particular, granted closure to its characters, allowing them to escape the cycle they had been trapped in for 25 years, that felt like an incredibly generous and graceful end to the saga, and maybe a chance for Anno himself to find peace with a series that has bedeviled him for half his life. A startlingly sweet conclusion to a spiky, often disturbing saga.</p><p>4. <i><b>Old </b></i>(dir. M. Night Shyamalan) </p><p>A movie that somehow manages to triangulate between the works of Rod Serling and Michaelangelo Antonioni, this story of a beach which causes the people on it to age rapidly is a perfect high-concept idea for Shyamalan, whose unusual dialogue and rhythms fit so well within an absurd situation. He also manages to wring great moments of horror out of the premise, moments of extremely dark comedy, and touching moments as his characters find themselves contemplating a life that has truly flashed before their eyes.<br /></p><p>3. <i><b>The French Dispatch</b></i> (dir. Wes Anderson)</p><p>Very mannered, as is perhaps unsurprising given how much Anderson has refined his approach and his style over the years, but a lovely collection of stories that are filled with the sort of deadpan wit that has become his stock in trade. The Jeffrey Wright segment may be the best thing he has ever directed, and it does somewhat overshadow the film when rewatching it because I find myself impatiently waiting for it to start, but every story has some performance or turn of phrase or startling composition to recommend it.<br /></p><p>2. <i><b>Licorice Pizza</b></i> (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)</p><p>A shaggy, hilarious, blissful wander through '70s L.A. that I wanted to bask in. Each digression is so delightful that every time someone like Tom Waits or Sean Penn showed up I realized that I had forgotten they were meant to be in the film, so caught up was I in the larks of Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim. A charmingly aimless film full of unpredictability, and one I hope to revisit many more times in the years ahead so I can linger on every detail.<br /></p><p>1. <i><b>West Side Story</b></i> (dir. Steven Spielberg) and <b><i>Days</i> </b>(dir. Tsai Ming-liang)</p><p>Two extremely different movies get to share the top spot this year. One is a big-budget Hollywood musical full of the maximalism demanded by the genre, the other a quiet Taiwanese drama with barely any significant dialogue. Yet both movies are at their core about the need for connection and intimacy, and how the briefness of love (whether romantic or physical) makes it both tragic and beautiful.</p><p>More sentimentally, Spielberg is one of the first filmmakers I remember being truly aware of as a child, while I often credit watching Tsai's<i><b> Stray Dogs </b></i>as something that made me a more adventurous and curious cinephile. They're two of the most important filmmakers for me, personally, and that they both produced masterpieces this year makes it seem only appropriate that they both get to be number one.<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-20966894978436658962021-12-30T21:21:00.003+00:002022-12-10T02:07:21.280+00:00The Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2021<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNfgc7Jqa4Ji2S43tePZ679wH9P791akLy_S4zym-ojmPL3lUJdl_0c_GMTq3xqQ3yJCWP_Fb38OBEqrt845h1ceQ4jmX6TaQT1Pp4rxtlupWCWHj6ObvnRBk1nT1OieWVeQku5-YiYeDT6x6Xgc2oFDL4Nqms7NOLaz0Ab_LISzmx5oxsp4faLeZvsw=s1080" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="597" data-original-width="1080" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiNfgc7Jqa4Ji2S43tePZ679wH9P791akLy_S4zym-ojmPL3lUJdl_0c_GMTq3xqQ3yJCWP_Fb38OBEqrt845h1ceQ4jmX6TaQT1Pp4rxtlupWCWHj6ObvnRBk1nT1OieWVeQku5-YiYeDT6x6Xgc2oFDL4Nqms7NOLaz0Ab_LISzmx5oxsp4faLeZvsw=w640-h354" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><i>Rebels of the Neon God</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> </p><p>Much like last year, 2021 was a big year for watching older movies for me, since the relative slowdown of new releases caused by the pandemic made it a pretty good time to look back and watch things that I'd been meaning to see for a while and never got around to, in addition to revisiting old favourites because they had significant anniversaries (<i><b>The Lord of the Rings</b></i> trilogy), new installments (<b><i>The Matrix</i></b> trilogy, <i><b>The Animatrix</b></i>, cutscenes from <i><b>Enter the Matrix</b></i>) or just because they're rad and there's never a bad time to throw them on (<b><i>Speed</i></b>, <i><b>Ocean's Eleven</b></i>). </p><p>While getting vaccinated and cinemas re-opening meant that I was able to see more newer films this year than last year, and I generally feel better about my current best of the year list than at the same time in 2020, as is tradition, I won't be writing up that list until sometime in February (or March or April or I might just forget to do one as happened in 2019) since I like to spend January catching up on awards movies that expanded into more theatres (or, more likely given our weird reality, on streaming) rather than risk missing out on stuff that came out in November and December but only really starts to become available to most people in January. It feels like I shouldn't put the finishing touches on my list until I get to see <b><i>Drive My Car</i></b> at the very least, and who knows maybe <i><b>Memoria</b></i> will play within a thousand miles of me.</p><p>So this is a list of all the older movies I watched for the first time in 2021. It was frankly a nightmare putting this list together because I watched a lot of really good movies this year, ranging from films I've been meaning to see for years but never got around to, to movies that I only just heard about for the first time a few months ago. Whittling the long list down to this took ages, but these really feel like the films that stayed with me this year.<br /></p><p><i><b><span></span></b></i></p><a name='more'></a><i><b>Les Vampires</b></i> (dir. Louis Feuillade, 1915) <p></p><p>Each installment of Feuillade's serial about a gang of criminals terrorising Paris is a joy in and of itself, full of twists and double-crosses and daring escapes. But what I really loved about watching all seven-ish hours of it was seeing the making it up as they go along storytelling progress over time, as each storyline seemed to wrap up only to reveal <i>yet another person</i> is really the <i>true</i> leader of Les Vampires, necessitating a whole new chapter of the story. That sense of rushing headlong into the unknown, barely putting down tracks while the train is already in motion is absolutely intoxicating, and probably the most fun I've had watching a serialized narrative since the giddy early seasons of <b><i>Lost</i></b>.<br /></p><p><i><b>The Crowd</b></i> (dir. King Vidor, 1928)</p><p>For fear of sounding hyperbolic,<b> </b><i>The Crowd</i><b> </b>is a film which encompasses the agony and the ecstasy of life itself, all delivered in shimmering, unforgettable images. Following the story of one man from birth until adulthood, encompassing the loss of his father, the loss of a child, and the struggle of trying to escape the undifferentiated mass of humanity that provides the film's title, it's one of the purest and most keenly observed films about just trying to stay alive and above water that I've ever seen.<br /></p><p><i><b>The Invisible Man</b></i> (dir. James Whale, 1933) </p><p>Hard to argue with the cultural significance of Whale's two <b><i>Frankenstein</i></b> movies, but I think this one may be my favourite of his Universal monster movies. The invisibility effects themselves hold up tremendously well nearly eighty years later, but it's Claude Rains' gleeful performance that really sells the malevolence of Jack Griffin. The significant portions of the movie dedicated to Griffin messing with people and causing chaos in a small town also have a real <i>joie de vivre </i>to them, and feature some of the most bumbling and ineffectual police you will ever see.<br /></p><p><i><b>The Clock</b></i> (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1945)</p><p>if you ever needed a single movie to define the term "swooning romance", <i>The Clock</i> would more than suffice. Telling the story of a soldier (Robert Walker) who meets and falls madly in love with a young woman (Judy Garland) while on 48-hour leave, it's a joyous, old-fashioned Hollywood romance that is practically supernatural in its depiction of the power of love. Garland and Walker have terrific chemistry, more than justifying the leaps of faith required by the audience for the whole thing to hold together, and the supporting cast are all great as well, with Keenan Wynn getting a particularly virtuosic one-take scene as a drunk in a bar.<br /></p><p><b><i>Hangover Square</i></b> (dir. John Brahm, 1945)</p><p>After Stephen Sondheim passed away, a list of his favourite movies started circulating online and since I hadn't heard of this film and it was readily available on the Criterion Channel, I thought I'd watch it in tribute. Not only did Sondheim have tremendous taste, but if it turns out that he murdered a bunch of people in a fugue state at some point, then including this on that list is a really funny way of confessing. A pitch-black drama about a composer who occasionally has breaks with reality that just so happen to line up with terrible things happening around London, it's a tightly-wound coil of a movie that lets the audience know pretty early on that things aren't right, and holds us in suspense about when things will really start to go wrong.<br /></p><p><b><i>Nightmare Alley</i></b> (dir. Edmund Goulding, 1947) </p><p>No offense to Guillermo del Toro, whose work I generally like, but I watched the original<i> Nightmare Alley</i> in preparation for his new version and now I don't feel like I need to see the new one. A thrilling noir initially set in the world of carnies and freaks, before moving to the equally murky, but more nicely appointed, world of money and power, it's a great movie about a quintessentially American striver, and what lengths someone will go to to get what they want. Tyrone Power is really electrifying in the lead role, selling the easy charm of a confidence man with gusto, while also making his fall brutally human.<br /></p><p><i><b>Caught</b></i> (dir. Max Ophüls, 1949)<br /></p>Captivating drama about a young model who falls in love with a Howard Hughes-esque magnate, who then suffers at the hands of his cruel indifference. Ophüls’ camera is really intimate and intense, capturing the emotional pain inflicted with startling acuity, while also letting the light creep in when Barbara Bel Geddes’ character goes and gets a job working as a receptionist for James Mason, at his most charming. A gorgeous, brittle gem, easy to see why <i>Phantom Thread</i> earned a lot of comparisons to it a few years back.
<p><b><i>The Earrings of Madame de...</i></b> (dir. Max Ophüls, 1953) </p><p>Rapturous, yearning, yet pristine like a steel trap. All of the romantic dalliances and high society scheming that drive the plot are full of roiling passion, but hanging over everything is the question of when everything will come crumbling down. The eventual collapse winds up hitting so hard because you empathize with pretty much everyone, and yet know that they cannot act any differently because they are trapped by their class and background to act in ways that can only destroy them. In its way, as brutal and inexorable as any horror film.<br /></p><p><b><i>Islands of Fire</i></b> (dir. Vittoria De Seta, 1955) </p><p>I'm using this one as a catch-all for De Seta's collection of ten short documentaries about life in remote Italian island communities, which I watched on the Criterion Channel and found totally beguiling. The films are all brief, generally running less than twenty minutes, and extremely low on context or explanation outside of opening title cards that set the scene. Beyond that, they consist of gorgeously shot footage of people in small, out of the way communities living their lives and carrying out their daily tasks, be it catching tuna or working in a sulfur mine. <b><i>Islands of Fire</i></b> is the most dramatic of the bunch, capturing life in the shadow of an active volcano, but they are all perfect little snapshots of a lost way of life.<br /></p><p><i><b>7 Men From Now</b></i> (dir. Budd Boetticher, 1956)</p>
Tight as a drum Western in which Randolph Scott hunts down and kills the men responsible for the murder of his wife, with the title doubling as a countdown for the audience to when his grim task will be completed. The action is clean and tense, the interactions between Scott and his co-stars are full of energy and tension, with his dynamic with Lee Marvin being especially fraught, and the whole thing looks gorgeous. A pretty much perfect little thing, and I feel like I have to track down more Budd Boetticher movies to see if they are equally as good, or just because his name is such fun to say and type.
<p><i><b>Harakiri</b></i> (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1962) </p>
Like the other Kobayashi films I’ve seen, most notably his epic <i><b>The Human Condition</b></i> saga, this has an elegant intensity to it that I found absolutely riveting. Harakiri tells the story of a ronin (Tatsuya Nakadai) who arrives at the estate of a lord and requests permission to commit ritualistic suicide in the courtyard, with the film slowly revealing through flashbacks the connection that he has to the clan, and why his request is not as straightforward as it first appears. Every shot is beautifully composed, almost painterly, but the performances are all at a high key of emotion that prevents it from ever feeling dry. It’s a stylistically apt approach for the story which is so much about people being trapped by codes and systems, and trying to extract a modicum of decency from it.
<p><b><i>Dont Look Back </i></b>(dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)</p><p>Despite being a Bob Dylan dork and owning it on DVD for years, I had never previously sat down and watched arguably the single most important piece of iconography from the man's career. Even after decades of analysis and reappraisals, and Dylan himself changing so much as an artist, the sheer cool that leaks out of the screen when watching <i>Dont Look Back</i> is undiminished. Following Dylan on the 1965 UK tour that immediately preceded him going electric at the Newport Folk Festival, the film captures the media phenomenon of Dylan perfectly as he goes from show to show, meeting fans and sparring with journalists by giving them funny, oblique answers to their questions, as well as more relaxed scenes of Dylan and his crew hanging out. Even in those more candid scenes it does feel like a put-on, but then again the tension with Dylan has always been between man and myth, face and facade, and <i>Dont Look Back</i> really is a key, seminal text for that discourse.<br /></p><p><b><i>High Plains Drifter</i></b> (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1973)</p><p>There's some stiff competition, but this might be my favourite Eastwood Western, certainly my favourite of the ones he directed. Cut through with a dry sense of humour that contrasts nicely with the bloody revenge tale that forms the spine of the film, <i>High Plains Drifter</i> is among Eastwood's most visually lush movies, mixing great sweeping backdrops with moments of quiet surrealism as his unnamed gunman arrives in a town, agrees to protect it from violent bandits, then starts having the townsfolk start redecorating the place for reasons that don't become apparent until the film's violent, nightmarish finale.<br /></p><p><b><i>The Holy Mountain</i></b> (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973) </p><p>For years the only thing I knew about<i> The Holy Mountain</i> was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9zVhI_7Jb4">a sequence in which a man in a loincloth walks slowly down a rainbow-coloured corridor towards some sort of guru figure</a>. It's such a striking and weighty image that I assumed it must be from the finale of the movie, so I was surprised and delighted to discover that it happens in the first third, and that the movie only gets wilder from there. While certain aspects of Jodorowsky's psychedelic fable feel rote or tired at this point (the ending in particular is a kind of meta shrug that most film students would be embarrassed to use now) it's filled with surreal, kaleidoscopic imagery that speaks to what a brilliant stylist he is.<br /></p><p><b><i>Streets of Fire </i></b>(dir. Walter Hill, 1984) </p><p>Though this was my first time seeing this movie, I was deeply familiar with it thanks to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arxD3Ro9mAk">killer soundtrack</a>, which used to be on the iTunes at the box office of a cinema I worked at and which would be in pretty constant rotation whenever I was working. A luridly-coloured biker/street gang movie crossed with a musical, it's a movie that feels destined to be a cult hit because Hill pretty much just made it for himself from things he loved. While sometimes that gives you<b><i> Star Wars</i></b>, most of the time it results in idiosyncratic beauties like this, full of life and energy, destined to be loved by a small but passionate group of weirdos. The only knock against this movie is that Michael Paré is pretty boring as the lead, but Diane Lane and Willem Dafoe more than make up for it as his ex-lover and rival, respectively.<br /></p><p><i><b>His Motorbike, Her Island</b></i> (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986) <br /></p> Having only previously seen <b><i>House</i></b>, Obayashi's beautiful and unique take on the ghost story, it was great watching this as my second Obayashi film and seeing how that same playfulness and thorough understanding of how to bend and break cinematic conventions remain on full display with a much more conventional story. Told as a reminiscence on the part of the male lead, a young man who meets and falls in love with a woman while out riding his motorcycle, the story seems on its face very straightforward, but Obayashi makes it feel fresh, like he's the first person to ever tell a story of lost love. His staccato editing makes each scene really come alive, while the shifting use of colour, going from black-and-white to colour within the same scene or within the same frame, really makes it feel dreamlike and bigger than life, fitting the scale of the emotions of the movie.
<p><i><b>Crossing Delancey</b></i> (dir. Joan Micklin Silver, 1988) </p><p>An utterly charming romantic comedy that I think deserves to be spoken of alongside <b><i>When Harry Met Sally...</i></b> as one of the pinnacles of the form. Funny and spiky without being overly arch, it's got an absolutely dynamite pairing at its heart with Amy Irving as a bookseller in her thirties who is set up on a date with Peter Riegert, who runs his family pickle shop, only for the two to get off on the wrong foot. The push and pull between Irving and Riegert makes for a really compelling "will they won't they," with the moments of genuine pain they inflict on each other resonating just as strongly as the incredibly solid jokes.<br /></p><p><b><i>25 Ways to Quit Smoking </i></b>(dir. Bill Plympton, 1989)</p><p>As with the <i>Islands of Fire</i>, this is a catch-all for a slew of Bill Plympton animated shorts I watched this year, of which this and <b><i>How to Make Love to a Woman</i></b> were the best. Pretty straightforward stuff, the short consists of a series of suggestions for quitting smoking, which range from simple ("Use Aversion Therapy") to ridiculous ("Use Heat Seeking Missiles") all delivered in a deadpan, often violent style that keeps elaborating on the joke beautifully.<br /></p><p><b><i>Once Upon A Time in China II</i></b> (dir. Tsui Hark, 1992)</p><p>It's tough to pick between the first two films in Tsui Hark's epic saga of Chinese history, but I'm including the second here because it feels like a refinement of the style of the first one, with action set-pieces that are still exhilarating and inventive but with a little more polish, and because Donnie Yen plays the villain and the final confrontation between him and Jet Li as Chinese martial arts master, acupunturist and folk hero Wong Fei-hung, is fantastic.<br /></p><p><i><b>One False Move </b></i>(dir. Carl Franklin, 1992)</p><p>Lean, sun-dappled thriller that’s airtight but never mechanical. Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams and Michael Beach all bring a messy humanity to their characters, making their missteps and fuck-ups believable, rather than just feeling like necessary steps on the way to the final showdown. The scene of Thornton and Williams in a gas station, trying to figure out whether they’ve been spotted by a cop, is a masterclass in suspense, but that term could apply to the whole movie, which truly does not let up.
<i><b> </b></i></p><p><i><b>Rebels of the Neon God</b></i> (dir. Tsai Ming-liang, 1992)</p><p>As someone who loves Tsai's later work, which gets as close to a philosophy of "no plot, just vibes" as possible without becoming totally abstract, it was thrilling to watch his debut and see how much his style has been refined over the last thirty years, yet how much of it was right there from the beginning. With its hints of a love triangle and scenes of stealing motherboards from arcade machines in order to re-sell them, it's superficially busier than some of his subsequent movies, but also filled with indelible liminal moments of the characters just being teenagers, smoking and hanging around arcades in 1990s Taipei. Its mix of spurts of action with stretches of waiting for that action may be one of the best depictions of the experience of being a teenager that I've ever seen. <br /></p><p><b><i>Muriel's Wedding</i></b> (dir. P.J. Hogan, 1994)</p><p>A pretty much perfect comedy. Toni Colette plays Muriel Heslop, an awkward young woman who dreams of escaping her humdrum life who strikes up a friendship with someone she knew from high school (Rachel Griffiths) and sets about trying to build a new life for herself in Sydney, a plan which doesn't exactly work out how she wanted. Collette is fantastic as Muriel, managing to be acerbic and sympathetic as she tries to make her dreams come true, even if it involves a lot of lies and inflicting suffering on the people she cares about, and her relationship with Griffiths is now one of my favourite cinematic friendships. All that plus wall-to-wall ABBA on the soundtrack, what's not to like?<br /></p><p><i><b>Breakdown</b></i> (dir. Jonathan Mostow, 1997)</p><p>I have a very clear memory of seeing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvbT3SgC1B0">the trailer for <i>Breakdown</i></a> when it was about to come out in the UK (most likely attached to the 1998 version of <b><i>The Three Musketeers</i></b>, which was the only movie I remember going to see around that time) and being absolutely riveted by it. The premise - Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan play a married couple driving through the American West whose car breaks down, Quinlan gets a ride from J.T. Walsh who then kidnaps her, leaving Russell stranded in the middle of nowhere trying to rescue his wife - was so simple yet horrifying, and was amplified so much by the vast emptiness of America, that it really left me shaken, and I never forgot it. Fast forward 23 years or so and I finally got around to actually watching the movie and it more than delivers on its promise. Russell is a great everyman hero, the much-missed Walsh makes for a deeply unsettling villain, and Mostow (who sadly never hit these highs again in his subsequent work) delivers a taut, tense, vicious little thriller.<br /></p><p><b><i>The Wrong Guy</i></b> (dir. David Steinberg, 1997)</p><p>The highest compliment I can pay to <i>The Wrong Guy</i> is that it's the closest I've ever seen to a live-action <b><i>Simpsons</i></b> episode. Starring Dave Foley as an executive who goes on the run after discovering the dead body of his boss and assuming (because he removed the knife and then ran through the office covered in blood) that he's the prime suspect, it's an extremely silly riff on Hitchcock and derivative "wrong man" tropes that takes place in a universe full of the dumbest people you'll ever meet. It's a great vehicle for Foley and his particular knack for playing characters who can barely hold it together, which also fills out the world around him with great supporting characters, fun visual gags, and a <i>complete</i> comic sensibility that sadly didn't get more opportunities to play out on the big screen.<br /></p><p><b><i>Auto Focus</i></b> (dir. Paul Schrader, 2002) </p><p>Another movie that I've wanted to see for years - this time because I saw a BBC feature on it around the time of its release and thought it seemed fascinating and taboo - Schrader's retelling of the life and death of <i>Hogan's Heroes</i> star Bob Crane (played wonderfully by Greg Kinnear) is among Schrader's most visually compelling, shifting in style from a sunny, mid-century compositional style at the start of Crane's story to a bleaker, rawer style as his life begins to spiral amidst his sex and porn addictions, and using dream sequences that mix Crane's real-life and his on-screen persona to great effect, it's as audacious in its own way as his previous takes on the biopic, <b><i>Patty Hearst </i></b>and <b><i>Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters</i></b>. It's also a great showcase for Willem Dafoe, who plays Crane's friend and alleged killer, John Carpenter (not that one), allowing him to be both his warmest and seediest self.<br /></p><p><i><b>Godzilla: Final Wars</b></i> (dir. Ryûhei Kitamura, 2004)</p><p>This might be my most demented inclusion considering that <i>Godzilla: Final Wars</i> has a divisive reputation. Released to mark the 50th anniversary of the <i>Godzilla</i> franchise, it feels very much like a best of that crams in as many monsters and actors from the history of the series as possible, and as such has a chaotic, meta tone that verges on incoherence a lot of time (evidenced by probably the most famous moment from the film; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxhdo4HDgg">the newly revived Godzilla absolutely obliterating the one from the 1998 Roland Emmerich movie</a>). It's very much a love it or hate it proposition, but coming towards the end of my months-long project of watching all of the <i>Godzilla</i> movies, I found it be a hugely enjoyable installment, and it really felt like Kitamura was trying to push the series into a new direction, thematically and aesthetically, after a couple of so-so previous movies that mostly played it straight.<br /></p><p><b><i>It's Such a Beautiful Day</i></b> (dir. Don Hertzfeldt, 2012)</p><p>Despite adoring Hertzfeldt's more recent <b><i>World of Tomorrow</i></b> shorts, this year was the first time I investigated his earlier work, of which <i>It's Such a Beautiful Day</i> is the undoubted highlight. Animated in his signature simplistic yet layered style, in which characters that are basically stick figures exist in vivid, abstract landscapes, and narrated by Hertzfeldt himself, the film chronicles the mental decline of a man named Bill, who is suffering from a condition that affects his memories and causes him to have surreal, sometimes violent hallucinations. Hertzfeldt's delivery has a bluntness to it that makes the film by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, with jokes about the things Bill sees seguing seamlessly into lines about the nature of death and loneliness. His later work explores similar territory and expands upon it to great effect, but the rawness of this has a cutting quality all its own.<br /></p><p><b><i>63 Up</i></b> (dir. Michael Apted, 2019)</p><p>The death of Michael Apted can't help but cast a shadow over the most recent installment of his landmark documentary series, which has traced the lives of a small group of ordinary British people from the age of seven to, as the title says, sixty-three years old, with Apted checking in on them every seven years. Hopefully others will continue the series for as long as the participants are alive and willing to be involved, but if this proves to be the final film in the series, it feels like a good ending. Dealing as it does with the death of one of the long-time interviewees and the terminal illness of another, the documentary would already feel pretty significant in terms of the overall arc of the series, but considering that Brexit happened between this and the previous installment and British life in general became more chaotic between 2012 and 2019, it all feels very contemplative, and the poignancy that comes from the contrast between seeing the participants as children and as adults is heightened immeasurably by the now undeniable proximity of death, and their palpable concern about what the world will look like for their children and grandchildren.</p><p>On a lighter note, a fun game to play while watching it is to try and guess who voted Remain and who voted Leave. I got all but one of them right, which is a weird testament to how well Apted captured the essences of his cast over the course of the series.<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-58869902350206040742021-12-25T19:07:00.003+00:002022-12-10T02:07:44.678+00:00The Best Games I Played in 2021: Non-Yakuza Edition<p style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDa-tZMZiQuDhoEd2eP1d6ME2et5tqDAPy79hjZ1xgvfE8hR_01ok5RypF7onnwMhReL9VddTYOtRqvMQgXC5dTfGysxg3ej9aT2gwHbQ_0ZWnKoEMr9xgl8Htup5HysrXGtltQ-hcum2IrVouDr-csf9dWinLG7k2WAZfTu2Cwdp30SjwYekTjSgkbg=s1800" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDa-tZMZiQuDhoEd2eP1d6ME2et5tqDAPy79hjZ1xgvfE8hR_01ok5RypF7onnwMhReL9VddTYOtRqvMQgXC5dTfGysxg3ej9aT2gwHbQ_0ZWnKoEMr9xgl8Htup5HysrXGtltQ-hcum2IrVouDr-csf9dWinLG7k2WAZfTu2Cwdp30SjwYekTjSgkbg=w640-h320" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right" style="text-align: left;"><td class="tr-caption"><i>Inscryption</i></td></tr></tbody></table> </p><p style="text-align: left;">Whereas last year I spent most of my time playing older games that I kept meaning to play but never got around to until the pandemic gave me plenty of time to play through an extremely long game like <i><b>Persona 5</b></i>, this year I split my time between playing through the <i>Yakuza</i> series and trying to keep up with some of the more notable titles of the year. As such my list for 2021 consists mainly of games that actually came out this year with a few older titles sprinkled in, and I've split them into two lists rather than the undifferentiated list of all games that I used last year since I feel like I can actually field a decent best of the year list. And I also put all the <i>Yakuza</i> games I played <a href="https://www.amightyfineblog.com/2021/12/the-best-games-i-played-in-2021-yakuza.html">in their own list </a>so that they don't swamp this one.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Probably the biggest absence worth mentioning before getting into it is <b><i>Metroid Dread</i></b>, which I haven't had time to play yet but which would almost certainly be on there given how much I love Metroidvanias, and by all account it seems like a great one. Feel free to mentally slot it anywhere in the top five, which I'm pretty sure is where it will end up when I actually get around to it.<span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;">Older Games<br /></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90eFsDRxdS8"><i>Titanfall 2</i></a> (PS4, 2016)</h3><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p>I'm not sure there's much more that can be said about <i>Titanfall 2</i> at this point. It's probably one of the five best games of the last decade and pretty much everyone knows that by now, even if it didn't get the blockbuster sales that it deserved. Great to play, great story, has maybe the best level in any shooter ever ("Effect and Cause"). A stone cold classic.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZekdr76hAY"><i><span></span>Judgment</i></a> (PS4, 2018) </h3><p><i>Technically</i> not a <i>Yakuza</i> game, since while it does take place in Kamurocho and within the same continuity as the other games, it features different characters and is about solving crimes instead of committing them, so it's sneaking in. While it doesn't have the sweep or hit the operatic heights of its parent series, <i>Judgment</i> has maybe the best story that has been told in that universe, tasking the player with solving a mystery that goes all the way to the top. You get all the best stuff from <i>Yakuza</i> - fun combat, silly minigames, a great setting - but told with a leanness that really fits the shift in genre.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ6ayvNJDjs"><i>Monster Train</i></a> (Xbox Series X, 2020)</h3><p>I signed up for Xbox Game Pass this year, and while that's been good for playing some of the newer games Microsoft and their subsidiaries put out, it's been even better for trying out older games that I missed when they came out, or are from genres that I don't generally play. <i>Monster Train</i> falls into both categories, since I thought it looked cool when it came out last year, but I also have little grounding in card games so didn't feel like spending money to check out a game I might completely bounce off. Being able to download it as part of a subscription service completely removes that worry about wasting money, so I finally played it and really got into it. The design of the game and its various demonic creatures is extremely charming, the mechanics of the card game itself are easy to pick up, and the sense of progression as you get better is very rewarding.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kPSl2vyu2Y">Ori and the Will of the Wisps</a> </i>(Xbox Series X, 2020)</h3><p>Another game that I likely wouldn't have played unless it was right there on Game Pass, this sequel to <b><i>Ori and the Blind Forest</i></b> feels like one of the most thoroughly complete games I've played in a while. Everything about it fits together so perfectly, from the smooth movement to the beautiful art, to create a game that feels so seamless. Considering that it's a game all about exploring its world and learning new abilities in the best Metroidvania tradition, it's imperative that the movement feel good, and the movement in <i>Ori</i> is <i>great</i>. Running around that gorgeous world is an absolute joy, and going on an epic journey with that little guy made for one of my favourite games in recent memory.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33zqCAJ-qrE"><i>Astro's Playroom</i></a> (PS5, 2020)</h3><p>It's a low bar, sure, but <i>Astro's Playroom</i> has to be the best tech demo ever made. Included with the PS5, it's an absolutely adorable platform adventure that has you piloting Astrobot through extremely cute levels that double as a journey through the history of the PlayStation, collecting peripherals from various eras and running past recreations of iconic games like the <b><i>The Last of Us</i></b> and <i><b>Metal Gear Solid</b></i>. Beyond the pure nostalgia of being reminded of old games, and even old sounds and loading screens, it's an immensely fun game to play, and a case could be made (now, by me) that - since only like six PS5-exclusive games have come out in the past year - it's still the best game on the console.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;">2021 Games<br /></h2><h3 style="text-align: left;">Honorable Mention: <i><b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPjhqovgsoI">Babble Royale</a> </b></i><b>(PC)</b><i><b><br /></b></i></h3><p>Throwing this in here since it's in early access, and it feels weird to include a game that isn't finished. But even in its current state, this is one of the most fun spins on the battle royale I've played since <b><i>Tetris 99</i></b>. Essentially "Scrabble...<i>to the death</i>!" it has a small group of players drop onto a board with a starter letter, then requires you to keep coming up with new words to move closer to the centre of the gradually shrinking map, all the while trying to take out your opponents by making words that intersect with theirs. It's an extremely clever take on a genre that has so rapidly codified, and seeing those familiar elements used for, well, Scrabble is a delight. I'm really excited to see what happens with it over the months and years ahead.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Honorable Mention: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCBpwyS0E1o"><i>Tetris Effect Connected</i></a> (PS5)</h3><p>I can't in good conscience include an update to a game that is three years old as a proper entry, but <i>Tetris Effect</i> is one of my favourite games ever and the addition of a multiplayer mode that allows you to play cooperatively with other people really breathed new life into something that I had already spent countless hours playing.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">8. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jrtok2SfzE"><i>The Artful Escape</i> </a>(Xbox Series X)</h3><p>Truth be told, there's not a lot of game in<i> The Artful Escape</i>. As you leap through space playing the nephew of a famous folk musician, wailing out frenetic solos across the galaxy while the voice of Carl Weathers guides you, there isn't much in the way of an actual challenge. At most you do some simple rhythm games to win aliens over to your side, and most of the time you just run to the right while holding down a button to make the music go. But on the flipside, all that wild stuff I just mentioned is happening around you as you run to the right and hold down a button to make the music go. <i>The Artful Escape</i> has an abundance of style and imagery to it, and its story of self-acceptance and actualization, while pretty basic, is at least wrapped in a package that is constantly engaging to watch and pretty funny. Not a long game, nor a challenging one, but a good time.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">7. <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyMlV5_HRWk">Halo Infinite</a></i> (Xbox Series X) </h3><p>This is only so low on the list because I haven't had much time to play it, but what little I have played has been fantastic. I only played the first two <i>Halo</i> games before losing interest in the series, so when the trailer for <i>Infinite</i> debuted last year, and the lackluster reaction necessitated a lengthy delay, I didn't feel much need to check it out. The effusive response to the game's multiplayer, coupled with it being on Game Pass, persuaded me to give it a try and it's as smooth and polished a shooter as I've played in years. The action is satisfying, the story is engaging (even though, as someone returning to the series after a long absence, I have only a tenuous grasp of what is going on) and the addition of a grappling hook, while seemingly simple, does completely open up the movement and possibilities of the game even more than the pseudo-open world structure. With more time I'm sure it will rise higher, but for now this feels like the right place for it.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">6. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P58L0AVIEM"><i>Loop Hero</i></a> (PC)</h3><p>I'm sure there are antecedents to <i>Loop Hero</i> that provide a point of comparison and I just don't know them, but it truly feels like Four Quarters, the small team behind it, created their own genre with this mix of the adventure, strategy and rogue-like genres. Each playthrough finds the player character wandering through a void, fighting monsters, which is fairly standard on its face, except the user doesn't control the hero, who moves automatically on a pre-set loop, instead they control the world around them, placing buildings, mountains and fields, which spawn new enemies, alter the hero's stats, or produce resources that the player can use to improve their camp in the hub world. It's a strange, unique game that can be tricky to learn, but extremely rewarding and varied once you learn the ropes.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">5. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppkX8epoD9g"><i>Bowser's Fury</i> </a>(Nintendo Switch)</h3><p>I was excited to play the Switch release of <i><b>Super Mario 3D World</b></i> since I, like everyone, never bought a WiiU and so didn't get a chance to play it when it originally came out. But while I played through that over the course of a weekend and had a really good time with it, I spent far more time playing through this open world experiment that was included alongside it. Like most of the other 3D Mario games, <i>Bowser's Fury</i> has great platforming and movement, fun puzzles and a sense of adventure that few other games can match, but the ability to travel pretty much anywhere in its watery hub world and try different challenges in any order really shakes up the formula in a way which is both simple and profound. </p><p>Though not technically a full game, the extent to which it succeeds at taking something so familiar and making it feel fresh is startling, and I really hope they try the same approach for whatever the next full Mario game ends up being. It also inspired one of the funnier <a href="https://twitter.com/shrimpjaj/status/1366170100588404737?lang=en">James Austin Johnson Trump videos</a>, which you can't say for <i><b>Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart</b></i>.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">4. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBi9rqCZ4os"><i>Psychonauts 2</i></a> (Xbox Series X)</h3><p style="text-align: left;">I had not played the original <i>Psychonauts</i> prior to this year, so when I fired up the sequel I didn't really know what to expect outside of the general premise of psychics who go into the minds of other people and explore their psyches. I certainly got that, and the game is an extremely inventive adventure that makes great use of its premise to craft colorful, imaginative levels (the highlight being a psychedelic trip through the mind of a psych-rock singer voiced by Jack Black) and provide the player character, Raz, with plenty of opportunities to use his various powers to conquer both enemies and puzzles. </p><p style="text-align: left;">But beyond that, it's also an incredibly sweet and nuanced story about forgiveness and trauma, delivered with wit and humour by the team at Double Fine. Considering the sixteen year gap between the first and second games, this could have easily been one of those games that lands with a complete thud and fails to capture the magic of the original, but this really feels like they captured lightning in a bottle a second time.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">3. <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avAXhnbs69w">Hitman 3</a> </i>(PS5)</h3><p>I have long believed that the <i>Hitman</i> series, particularly the recent run of games produced by IO Interactive, are the perfect games for the age of live-streaming for one simple reason; it doesn't matter how good or bad you are at the games, it's still so much fun to watch people play them. Watching a total master complete a level with a Silent Assassin rating? Exhilarating. Watching someone who has no idea what they're doing Inspector Closseau their way through a level and leaving dozens of bodies in their wake? Hilarious, some of the easiest and most plentiful slapstick you are likely to find online. </p><p>Yet, despite having watched Giant Bomb's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUkOPrbj0yA">Hitsmas</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faM_MXjrQ3s">videos</a> multiple times, I had never actually played any of the games until this year, when IO rounded out their trilogy with this final(?) installment. Turns out it was a really good time to hop on board, because the six levels that comprise <i>Hitman 3</i> contain some of the most fun level design I've seen in years. </p><p>There's tremendous variety from level to level, whether it's scaling a skyscraper to kill two of the most powerful men in the world, impersonating a detective to solve an Agatha Christie-style murder in a country manor, or prowling through a German rave, trying to identify unknown assassins who are looking for you, the game constantly changes things up and keeps you on your toes even if you are following the relatively straightforward throughline of the story. But then within each level, there are so many ways that you can go about taking down your targets, and the game is so endlessly replayable as you try and investigate every nook and cranny. And that's before factoring in the Elusive Target events that IO periodically release that offer even more opportunities to explore familiar levels in new exciting ways. Honestly, it's ridiculous how good and generous these games are.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">2. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_tmwz-AhgQ"><i>Death's Door</i></a> (PS5)</h3><p>I'm not exceptionally good at video games. Like, I can solve puzzles okay and my reaction times are pretty decent, but I've never been particularly outstanding. What I do have, though, is perseverance, which is why I tend to gravitate towards games like <b><i>Cuphead</i></b>, which have reputations for being difficult, because I know that I'll be able to beat them if I just put in enough time and effort. I will grind those games down before they grind me down.</p><p>Which is why I fell in love so quickly and so completely with <i>Death's Door</i>, an extremely cute action-adventure game in which I died a lot. Playing as a crow who functions as a grim reaper of sorts, the game takes you through this decaying, stagnant world overrun by creatures who are determined to absolutely flatten you into a fine paste as you try to defeat large monsters and claim their souls. It's very indebted to <b><i>The Legend of Zelda</i> </b>series in that you explore various dungeons, learning different skills that allow you to progress and ultimately defeat each dungeon's big boss, but the game has its own distinctive Gothic fairytale look and atmosphere which keeps it from ever feeling derivative. </p><p>More importantly, the combat is extremely fun and honed to a fine edge. Learning the patterns of the enemies, particularly in the tougher boss battles, is very satisfying, since you can so easily see yourself improving every time you fail, to the extent that I would often get completely wrecked the first time I took on a boss, then after five or six attempts, I would defeat them while hardly taking any damage. Which is not to say that those fights wound up being easy, since winning still requires split-second dodges and laser-focused play, but that balance between being so difficult that every boss initially seems impossible, yet being accessible enough that you don't just throw up your hands after the tenth defeat, is a hard one to manage. <i>Death's Door</i> strikes it beautifully.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">1. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN5GSIWIN1k"><i>Inscryption</i></a> (PC)</h3><p>There's no good one to put this across in print, but as soon as I started writing this entry, I let out a big sigh because everyone who writes or talks about <i>Inscryption</i> very quickly falls into some variation on the same cliche - "Look, it's fantastic, but I don't want to spoil anything, you should really just play it." - and it really is hard to avoid it by the very nature of the game. <i>Inscryption</i> is nominally a card game in which you pull different creatures from a deck - squirrels, wolves, bears, various and sundry monsters - and place them opposite your opponent, the aim being to destroy all of their cards, and then do damage against the opponent until they are defeated or concede. Fairly standard stuff, familiar to anyone who has played <b><i>Slay the Spire</i></b> or any of the similar card battling games that have proliferated in the last few years.</p><p>Then there's the other stuff. The stuff you can't really talk about.</p><p><i>Inscryption</i>...changes. Even before it changes, it messes with you and subverts your expectations. When you start playing, you see that you're sat at a table opposite a malevolent-seeming figure who explains the rules to you, and it seems like a simple enough set up. Then, your opponent asks you to get something for him, and you realise that you can move around, and that in the cabin where this...person has confined you are a bunch of escape room-style puzzles that you can solve for extra cards or to advance the story. And underpinning it all is an atmosphere of quiet menace that is genuinely unsettling, even before the really creepy stuff kicks in.</p><p>But then again, you can't really talk about that stuff. </p><p>The most important thing I <i>can</i> say about <i>Inscryption</i> is that it is really, really fun to play, and that is key to why it is my game of the year. Strip out the all the weird stuff, and you still have a really well put together card game which is unforgiving if you mess up, but also open enough that, thanks to the ways in which you can upgrade and alter your cards, you can create some extremely powerful and broken attacks that just chew through everything. If that central core wasn't so robust, then everything else would just be oh-so-clever window dressing for a mediocre game. But <i>Inscryption</i> is fundamentally a really involving and engrossing card game. At least, initially.<br /></p><p>Look, it's fantastic, but I don't want to spoil anything, you should really just play it.</p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-89844861868783914622021-12-24T18:21:00.003+00:002022-12-10T02:08:18.407+00:00The Best Games I Played in 2021: Yakuza Edition<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOQsB4GS1lF41OGRsBZlOqV83OFavYSfX13v1cZytK0V9F4E__qXbjy-ZWT8xHPLW6ZTlDdEJOKFey2cb8rCxthdAV1jWMiIjGDTY2CSgvVvNDiau5tWafG7bJw-xVm6-kpRelgwPlkxgOjHUmSzrlopF_UcaCMnOU9KalO09bnDnlsnMcD27xuMCIdw=s3840" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3840" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiOQsB4GS1lF41OGRsBZlOqV83OFavYSfX13v1cZytK0V9F4E__qXbjy-ZWT8xHPLW6ZTlDdEJOKFey2cb8rCxthdAV1jWMiIjGDTY2CSgvVvNDiau5tWafG7bJw-xVm6-kpRelgwPlkxgOjHUmSzrlopF_UcaCMnOU9KalO09bnDnlsnMcD27xuMCIdw=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><i>What can I say, this game speaks to me</i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <p></p><p>Every year, I like to set myself little cultural projects. Things I can whittle away at over the course of 12 months like watching 52 films directed by women, or watching more films from India, so that I can force myself to experience new things and step outside of my comfort zone.</p><p>This year, I decided that my project would be to play through all of the main games in the <i><b>Yakuza </b></i>series. Produced by Sega, the sprawling and long-running series of action-adventure/RPG games encompasses over a dozen titles at this point if you include spin-offs, some of which can only be played (legally) on consoles that are no longer available. So for this, I played through the seven games focused on the story of Kazuma Kiryu, a sentient slab of muscles with an extremely well-developed sense of morality who starts out as a mid-level Yakuza enforcer in the first game, rises to become head of the powerful Tojo Clan, then walks away from it and spends the rest of the series trying to escape from his criminal past with extremely limited success. It's an epic saga that covers 30 years of Kiryu's life, and features some of the best long-form storytelling the medium of video games has ever attempted.</p><p>It is also an extremely ridiculous, melodramatic run of games that features over the top characters, wild action, more shirtless rooftops fights than you could possibly imagine, and a dizzying array of side-quests and minigames that add up to a frankly exhausting amount of videogame. The balance the series strikes between how silly its story is and how deeply it cares for its characters makes for an intoxicating mix, and while I started playing them because I'd heard they were unbelievably fun and engrossing, I very quickly found myself being invested in the story and character of Kiryu, and the series' prolonged interest in exploring the inner life (and outer violence) of a man approaching middle-age, reckoning with all the pain he has caused and trying to build something better for the next generation.</p><p>I also fell in love with Kamurocho, a fictional entertainment district in Tokyo which provides the main setting for much of the series. Not only is it a very fun place to run around, get into fights, and sample minigames that range from simple (darts and pool) to intricate (slot car racing and running a cabaret club) to extremely seedy ("massages" and softcore video booths), but it feels like a living, breathing city where things change every time you start a new game. Some of this reflects technological advances over the course of the series, but it also underpins one of the recurring themes of the series; the battle between an older way of doing things rooted in loyalty and the messiness of humanity, and a newer, heartless and more corporate way of living. </p><p>It's such a central idea to the games that there is a series-long subplot about how Kamurocho's one big public park, which serves as a home for the city's unhoused population, gets turned into a mall, forcing the people who previously lived there to eke out an even more meagre existence in the sewers. Not to throw all video games under the bus, since there are plenty of games out there that tackle big and complicated issues in innovative ways, but it is rare to see a series of this scale and prominence so interested in fundamental issues that shape modern life.</p><p>All that being said, the series is not without its flaws. Probably the biggest mark against it is the strain of transphobia which runs throughout, and while the games get better at handling their trans characters as they go along (to the extent that one of the <a href="https://www.thegamer.com/yakuza-3-remastered-transphobic-sidequest-removed/">most egregious substories</a> from the third game was removed entirely when it was re-released as part of the remastered collection of <i>3</i>, <i>4 </i>and <i>5</i>) at best it manages to be awkward at including them. This is not to say that all the violent crooks in this series of crime games should have good politics, far from it; many of the characters in the games are racist against Koreans and the Chinese, in fact their racism is central to the plots of at least two of the games, but there is always a sense that the Korean and Chinese characters in the game are people, whereas the trans characters in the game are, with very few exceptions, depicted as little more than jokes, and that runs counter to the warmth that can be found throughout the rest of the series.<br /></p><p>Since these games are all pretty long and involved, and it took me pretty much the whole year to work through them, I thought I would do a whole list ranking them separate from my best games list, rather than have that list consist of seven <i>Yakuza</i> games and <b><i>Inscryption</i></b>. So with all that out of the way, here is my ranking of the mainline <i>Yakuza</i> games.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><h3 style="text-align: left;">7. <i>Yakuza 3</i> (2009)<br /></h3><p>It feels unfair to put<i> Yakuza 3 </i>at the bottom considering that it's one of the more important games in terms of the emotional arc of the series. After spending two games mostly confined to the criminal milieus of Kamurocho and Sotenbori, the third one is the only game in the series that spends a significant amount of time depicting Kiryu's quiet life running an orphanage in Okinawa and trying to go legit, with the first few hours largely being a Good Dad Simulator in which he tries to help all his charges with their various problems. There's a vivid poignancy to a man whose entire body is sculpted for violence trying to make sure his kids are okay, but this also forms one of the core tenets of Kiryu's character for the rest of the series; his desire to leave his criminal life behind and start over as a civilian, and the stubborn refusal of the past to leave him alone. Without the firm grounding that this game gives to Kiryu's motivations, the later games wouldn't have nearly the resonance that they achieve.</p><p>However, while the first two games were rebuilt from the ground up with modern graphics and controls, the current version of <i>Yakuza 3</i> available as part of the Remastered collection is pretty much just the PS3 original with nicer textures and a better frame rate, and as such the combat is clunkier and less satisfying than the rest of the series, weighed down as it is by decade-old game design and the limitations of its era. Since combat plays such a big part of the experience of playing these games, it ultimately makes the game much more of a slog to play through than any of the others. If they ever did a full remake, it'd probably become an incredible game, whereas now it's merely quite good, but frustrating.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">6. <i>Yakuza 4</i> (2010)</h3><p>The first game in the series to introduce multiple playable characters suffers a little bit for its ambition. While the individual characters - in addition to Kiryu the series introduces kindhearted lender and hostess club owner Akiyama, physically imposing Yakuza hitman Saejima, and seemingly corrupt, but actually kind policeman Tanimura - are all very compelling, and giving them all distinct styles of combat, mini-games and storylines keeps things fresh, the pacing of the game overall is extremely lumpy. Just as you're making progress with a character, the action will switch to another one, and that stop-start rhythm never totally works. It all coalesces nicely at the end when all four heroes are brought together and get to fight each of their respective nemeses, but it's an uneven experience broken up by bursts of greatness.<br /></p><p>It also features hands down the worst section of any of the games, an incredibly boring speedboat chase that is very easy yet takes absolutely ages to complete. There are a few ill-advised vehicle sections sprinkled throughout the <i>Yakuza</i> series, but this one is far and away the most painful to play through.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">5. <i>Yakuza Kiwami</i> (2016)<br /></h3><p>A from the ground up remake of the first game, which originally came out on the PS2 in 2005, <i>Yakuza Kiwami</i> has the simplest and most straightforward story of the series, starting with Kiryu taking the fall for a murder committed by his best friend Nishikiyama, his return to Kamurocho after ten years in jail, and his subsequent embroilment in a power struggle for control of his former organization, the Tojo Clan. That comparative simplicity (in addition to dozens of side stories, the plot also involves the disappearance of Yumi, Kiryu's childhood friend and love of his life, and a hunt for a missing 10 billion Yen) lends the game a breakneck pace that the more sprawling games that followed often struggle to maintain, but by that same token it feels a little emptier than its successors, with fewer of the weird and idiosyncratic tangents that make the other games such a joy to get lost in. It's the best entry point for the series, since the newer engine and controls make it a smooth and intuitive experience (and it is literally the starting point for the whole saga), but having played through the entire series it does feel more like an appetizer than a main course.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">4. <i>Yakuza 5</i> (2012)</h3><p>In some ways, <i>Yakuza 5</i> is just <i>Yakuza 4 </i>blown up to an even bigger scale, since it lets you control five characters this time (the returning cast of Kiryu, Akiyama, and Saejima, with the addition of Kiryu's adoptive daughter Haruka and disgraced baseball star Shinada) spread over five distinct and bustling locations, and juggles five separate plotlines that gradually intersect. While that does magnify the flaws of the previous game - it also bounces somewhat awkwardly between its various threads, some of those plotlines are a real slog to get through (it took me about a month to work up the enthusiasm to get through the first Kiryu and Saejima chapters, after which I burned through the rest of the game in about a week) and the plot is labyrinthine and opaque even for a series that revels in convolution - it triumphs where <i>Yakuza 4</i> stumbles because it has a more emotionally resonant story. </p><p>Specifically, the game starts with Kiryu working anonymously as a taxi driver, far from the Morning Glory Orphanage, having decided that his criminal past would harm Haruka's chance of pursuing a career in music as an idol. Having spent the three previous games establishing what Haruka means to Kiryu, having him decide the best thing for her is to essentially disappear is heartbreaking, and the long road the game takes to their eventual reunion is among the more moving things the series achieves. </p><p>Also, since the Haruka sections don't feature any violence, instead consisting of rhythm games based around her singing and dancing, the game has a greater ebb and flow than the others, which makes the sheer length and sprawl of it feel a little more even than the similarly long, but exhausting fourth game. On top of all that, you get into multiple fist fights with a bear, which has to count for something.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">3. <i>Yakuza Kiwami 2</i> (2017)</h3><p>If <i>Yakuza Kiwami </i>feels like a warm up for later games, <i>Kiwami 2 </i>is the series firing on all cylinders. Refining the combat from the first game and, thanks to it not coming out on PS3 and having to account for the limitations of that older hardware, taking full advantage of the PS4's capabilities, it just feels bigger and fuller. Kamurocho and Sotenbori, the two primary settings, are richer and more detailed, the action is more complicated and exciting, and there is such a thrum of energy and possibility coursing through the whole game. More importantly than the purely mechanical improvements, the story in <i>Kiwami 2</i> really starts to approach the ridiculous, melodramatic heights of the series - it's a game where you have to fight your way up a pagoda, which is hidden underground before rising up when Kiryu arrives, only for you to reach the top and have to fight <i>two tigers</i> to the death, and that happens like one-third of the way into the game. It also introduces Daigo Dojima, a young man who reluctantly becomes the new Tojo Clan leader and one of the series' most important recurring characters, and boasts one of the series most compelling villains, Ryuji Goda, a sort of anti-Kiryu who is given much more depth and pathos than most antithetical game characters. <br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">2. <i>Yakuza 6: The Song of Life</i> (2016)</h3><p>I've written about how emotional the <i>Yakuza</i> games are several times so far, and while all the other games are very big and expressive, with cutscenes and plots that hinge on dramatic, <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/1466486831864819722?s=20">often ridiculous</a> moments, the series reaches its apotheosis with the final installment to feature Kiryu as the main character. It starts pummeling the heartstrings right out the gate, beginning with Kiryu going to prison immediately after being reunited with Haruka at the end of the previous game, it then jumps ahead a few years and reveals in rapid succession that while Kiryu was away Haruka 1. Disappeared 2. Had a baby, thereby making Kiryu effectively a grandfather and 3. Got hit by a car in a hit-and-run that may have sinister underpinnings, landing her in a coma which she may never wake up from. </p><p>It's an extremely fraught place to start, one exacerbated by the crime story part of the plot, which again finds the Tojo Clan under siege amidst a general sense of everything having spiraled out of control while Kiryu was in prison. It never really lets up, and that high emotional tenor makes for an exhilarating and cathartic finale, particularly the final fight, which pits Kiryu against one of the series' most loathsome antagonists, who it is a singular pleasure to beat to a bloody pulp for all the misery he inflicted upon Haruka.</p><p>Plus, in addition to all that, it's got some of the most refined combat and minigames the series has to offer, some great substories to explore, and a major role for legendary Japanese multi-hypenate "Beat" Takeshi Kitano. Truly, a game for all seasons.<br /></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">1. <i>Yakuza 0</i> (2015)</h3><p>It's pretty much a toss-up for the number one between this and <i>Yakuza 6</i>, since there's more or less total parity between them in terms of how good they look and how great they feel to play, and <i>6</i> would seem to have the edge thanks to how well it sticks the landing by ending Kiryu's story. But by dint of being a prequel set in 1988, the sheer novelty of <i>0</i>'s setting really makes it stand out.</p><p>While still taking place in Kamurocho, the backdrop of the gaudy peak of Japan's economic miracle really makes it feel like a different place, and fundamentally changes the player's relationship with money (which was generally pretty scarce in the other games) by making it something that literally flies out of people as you dropkick them through the streets of Tokyo, and by making money the game's equivalent of XP, since you have to spend it on new upgrades and abilities for Kiryu. Making the excess of the era a mechanic is a cute melding of text and subtext, but it also makes combat more innately satisfying, since seeing the amount of Yen you have shoot up every time you do a particularly flashy move or take enemies out quickly is just so much more satisfying than more abstract rewards like XP.</p><p>The game also distinguishes itself by letting you play as Goro Majima, Kiryu's sometimes rival, sometimes ally who crops up in most of the other games and is generally seen as a lunatic who can barely be controlled by his Tojo Clan bosses. Majima is a really fun character in the other games because he's such a wildcard, and his obsession with Kiryu (always expressed by an exuberant scream of "Kiryu-chan!" when he sees him) is one the series' best long-running relationships. However, by getting to see him as a young man exiled from his clan and forced to work a mostly legitimate job running a cabaret club, reframes him as a much more nuanced and tragic figure, and while his half of the story is less fleshed out than Kiryu's, it's a wildly successful re-examination of a character who otherwise is very one-note.</p><p>What really sets the game apart for me, though, is how sad it feels if you play the series in release order, with this as the penultimate entry. Several of the characters featured in the game wind up dead in the other games, and there's a real melancholy in getting to see them again, especially knowing that one of Kiryu's closest allies in this game winds up being his bitterest enemy in the first <i>Yakuza</i>. As fun and giddy as the game is, it is also pointedly framed as a peak for Kiryu, before everything starts to fall apart, never to be put back together again, and it's hard not to feel some poignancy seeing him at the start of a journey that is stranger and sadder than he could imagine, even as he's doing things <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/1459182971538313300?s=20">like this</a> to random thugs in the street.<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-26919219056717564002021-04-25T15:43:00.006+01:002022-12-10T02:08:42.456+00:00Ed's Top 25 Films of 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3VVpNxi5eYzvDiLBa8L8rRVQXsVubiPRvC3qJ1CBN2WyKsuy_Qt9O8-n0ul3xBpG3F25ooMRXibEgfmrOlf4a1_cUqVnk3sfg6-oMONcqaP8q3-2TQWJyfdZKFX-RP9jbPcaY6jHifT-j/s786/ICHIRO-SUZUKI-SEATTLE-PI.PNG-2.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="786" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3VVpNxi5eYzvDiLBa8L8rRVQXsVubiPRvC3qJ1CBN2WyKsuy_Qt9O8-n0ul3xBpG3F25ooMRXibEgfmrOlf4a1_cUqVnk3sfg6-oMONcqaP8q3-2TQWJyfdZKFX-RP9jbPcaY6jHifT-j/w640-h430/ICHIRO-SUZUKI-SEATTLE-PI.PNG-2.webp" width="640" /></a></div><p>A somewhat shorter list this year because I didn't see as many newer movies as usual, partly because cinemas were closed for a lot of the year (and even when they reopened I felt like I might as well wait until I get vaccinated before seeing movies in theatres again) and partly because I didn't watch as many movies this year in general. It was just very stressful all round, and if I wanted to relax at the end of a day fretting about how bad the pandemic could get, video games ended up being <a href="https://www.amightyfineblog.com/2020/12/the-best-games-i-played-in-2020.html">my go-to entertainment option</a> for much of 2020.</p><p>As such I find it pretty hard to gauge what kind of year it was for cinema. There were certainly some really good films released this year, in whatever form that ended up taking, but everything felt so disjointed and scattered. Everything felt impermanent and ephemeral, with nothing to moor all the movies that got out into the ether of VOD and streaming. Was 2020 a good movie year? Was it even a year? Who can say.</p><p>Anyway, these were the films that made a mark on me this year, and all but one of them could probably have the addendum "I wish I'd seen this in a movie theatre" attached.<br /></p><p>Before we get to the good stuff, let's indulge in a bit of negativity. Easily my least favourite film of the year was David Fincher's <b><i>Mank</i></b>, which I found to be a terribly dreary and affected bit of filmmaking about filmmaking that was hamstrung by a terrible Gary Oldman performance and a tin-eared, obvious script. It's not a bad film, but it was a terrible disappointment and I can't think of any film this year that had more going for it that so categorically failed to delivery on its promise<i><b>.</b></i></p><p><i><b><span></span></b></i></p><a name='more'></a><i><b>25. </b></i><i><b><i><b>Minari</b></i> </b></i>(dir. Lee Isaac Chung)<p></p>This
probably would be higher were it not for the final act, which I think
is fine, but feels out of balance with the rest of the movie as it
injects sudden disaster into the story in a way that feels a little too
neat. Regardless, the rest of it is so strong that it can weather it. A
plaintive, sweet, funny story of a Korean family moving to Arkansas in
the '80s to take up farming, Chung's film is one of small moments and details. There's so much richness to the relationships between the family members, how they fit in with the broader community, and the toll that trying to start from almost nothing takes on everyone.<br /><p><i><b> </b></i></p><p><i><b>24. Kajillionaire </b></i>(dir. Miranda July)</p><p>Fitting for a movie about con artists, there's a nice emotional subterfuge to <i>Kajillionaire</i>. It starts out fairly wry and deadpan as it shows a family of scammers (Evan Rachael Wood, Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger) working various schemes to get enough money together to pay rent, and by the end it delivers a genuinely moving romance between Wood and Gina Rodriguez, as a newcomer who joins the group because she's taken with their low-stakes outlaw ways. A piercing look at the ways in which someone can become completely shut down from the world, and what it takes to reach out and move on. </p><p><i><b>23. Tesla </b></i>(dir. Michael Almereyda)</p><p>It runs right up to the edge of "Today, we call them computers" towards the end, but it earns that moment of obviousness by preceding it with a real big musical swing, and for also spending so much of the running time puncturing the usual pomposity of the biopic. Through its use of direct address and deliberate artificiality, <i>Tesla </i>forgoes the pedestrian need to recreate every detail, and instead can focus on the meat of Nikolai Tesla's life; his inventions, his rivalries, and the people who were able to take advantage of him. Ethan Hawke is fantastic, giving the sort of nuanced, textured performance that in a less playful and arch film would probably get a lot of awards buzz. Could have used more invented (and inventive) scenes of him squaring off with Kyle MacLachlan as Edison, but what few there are were pretty great. <i><b><br /></b></i></p><p><i><b>22. She Dies Tomorrow </b></i>(dir. Amy Seimetz)</p><p>A film which generates a tremendous vibe of doom and ecstasy in the face of annihilation. Reminded me of <i><b>Inland Empire</b></i> and <i><b>Melancholia </b></i>in the best ways. Seimetz has a great eye and command of tone, particularly when directing scenes of people becoming consumed by the knowledge of their imminent deaths, and their acceptance of it. One of the best films at capturing the feeling of all our concurrent existential anxieties, and the way in which the death-sense (for lack of a better term) is transferred to other people really makes it eerily perfect at capturing the specific fear of the pandemic.<i><b><br /></b></i></p><p><i><b>21. Da 5 Bloods</b></i> (dir. Spike Lee)</p><p>The first ninety minutes or so of Lee's latest, in which four Black Vietnam war veterans return to Vietnam under the guise of looking for the grave of their leader who died in combat, is some of his most electrifying. It's a potent alternate vision of a war that has been covered so many times, almost always from the perspective of white characters, which gets at the thorny, complicated feelings its characters have over having gone to war for a country which so often mistreated and abused them. The final hour feels pretty aimless and loses a lot of that energy, but Delroy Lindo remains a captivating central figure throughout. <i><b> <br /></b></i></p><p><i><b>20. The Invisible Man</b></i> (dir. Leigh Whannell)<br /></p><p>The last film I was able to see in a theatre before everything started shutting down, and an extremely memorable one it was. A terrific reinvention of an old story, filled with moments of quiet dread. Elisabeth Moss is brilliant as a woman trying to convince everyone around her that she’s not crazy and that her ex is seemingly stalking her from beyond the grave, while Whannell ratchets up the tension magnificently every time someone disbelieves her. It was also fun seeing Whannell bring some of the same kineticism that marked his previous film, the exuberant sci-fi thriller <b><i>Upgrade</i></b>, but in a much more measured way so that when he let his camera get a little wild it really stood out.<br /><b></b><i><b></b></i></p><p><i><b>19. The Half of It</b></i> (dir. Alice Wu)</p><p>The extremely rare good Netflix movie. A romantic comedy that has all the elements to be too precious by half - it's a retelling of <i>Cyrano de Bergerac</i>, it's central character (Leah Lewis) is a budding cinephile - but avoids pretty much all the pitfalls thanks to an incredible young cast (the central love triangle being rounded out (assume for the sake of argument that you <i>can </i>round out a triangle) by Daniel Diemer and Alexxis Lemire) and a script which feels intensely authentic while being really, really funny. It's also a really beautifully shot movie, which makes for such a relief from the indifferently-shot comedies that the streamer tends to churn out.<br /><i><b></b></i></p><p><i><b>18. Wolfwalkers</b></i> (dirs. Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)</p><p>As with Tomm Moore's previous films, <b><i>The Secret of Kells</i></b> and <i><b>Song of the Sea</b></i>, <i>Wolfwalkers </i>is a gorgeous animation that draws on Irish folk tales to dazzling effect. The central friendship between an English girl whose father works to enforce English rule and a young Irish girl who can transform into a wolf is incredibly sweet and well played by the young voice actors, while the broader story of tension between the ruled and their rulers lends an epic sweep that contrasts plaintively with a much more intimate central story of identity.<br /></p><p><i><b>17. City Hall </b></i>(dir. Frederick Wiseman)</p><p>They say you can't fight it, but Frederick Wiseman sure can film it. Over the course of five and a half hours, Wiseman tracks the various facets of Boston's local government, with particular emphasis on then Mayor, now Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, in excruciating detail, offering a glimpse into the inner workings of a major city that feels both broad and specific. The end result is gently inspirational in how it shows the slow, thankless work that goes into trying to make peoples' lives even modestly better. <br /></p><p><i><b>16. The Painter and the Thief</b></i> (dir. Benjamin Ree)</p><p>One of those "too good to be true" stories - an artist approaches the man who stole one of her paintings and asks him to model for her - that too often make for lazy documentaries that are content to coast on how interesting the hook is, at the expense of actual filmmaking. Fortunately, Ree displays an indelible eye for composition fitting the subject matter, which ensures that even the talking heads scenes remain arresting, and has such intense empathy for both of his subjects. As the story moves past the initial<i><b> </b></i>crime and contact to focus more on the life of the thief, Karl-Bertil Nordland, and tracks his struggles with addiction and sobriety, it becomes a really moving account of one man trying to become better and surpass his surroundings, in ways that never feel trite or easy.<i><b> </b></i></p><p><i><b>15. Emma</b></i><b>. </b>(dir. Autumn De Wilde)<i><b> <br /></b></i></p><p>A sprightly adaptation of Jane Austen's farce of misunderstanding and misfiring romances that looks lovely, eschewing the sort of drab earth tones or grays that are so often the bane of British period adaptations, and boasts an immaculate cast of ringers like Bill Nighy, Miranda Hart and Mia Goth in supporting roles. The real highlights are Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role, book-ending a fantastic year for her with <b><i>The Queen's Gambit</i></b>, and Josh O'Connor giving one of the year's funniest performances as the buffoonish Mr. Elton. Reminded me very much of Whit Stillman's hilarious <i><b>Love & Friendship</b></i>, the only other recent Austen adaptation that really gets the tone of her writing and makes it work for contemporary audiences.<br /></p><p><i><b>14. The Way Back</b></i> (dir. Gavin O'Connor)</p><p>Given his transformation into a living meme of sadness and desperation, casting Ben Affleck as an alcoholic former high school basketball star who is brought in to coach his old team could not be more perfect. There is an authenticity to his performance that is enhanced tremendously by the extreme highs and deep valleys of his public persona, and he really convinces as an athlete gone to seed even before the story itself really kicks in. Beyond that masterstroke of casting, the film is a really solid example of how to tell a conventional sports story in a way which feels real and heartfelt without being corny. The minimalist score and O'Connor's decision not to show much of the games (most are briefly glimpsed before the final scores flash on screen) remove the usual crutches for this kind of movie, and places the emphasis on Affleck's struggles with alcohol, his gradual investment in the lives of his players, and his strained familial relations. It's the closest anything has come to the quiet euphoria of <b><i>Friday Night Lights</i></b> since that show went off the air, and there is no more glowing point of comparison for any story that deals with high school sports.</p><p><i><b>13. The Assistant </b></i>(dir. Kitty Greene)</p><p>There's lots to admire in <i>The Assistant</i>, from its painfully clear-eyed depiction of the toxic atmosphere that surrounds the unseen, Harvey Weinstein-esque film producer whose office provides the setting, to Julia Garner's great lead performance as Jane, the eponymous assistant who finds herself suffocating under the realisation that she is complicit in abuse, even if she doesn't actually <i>see</i> anything going on. What really stands out, though, is the centrepiece scene in which June goes to lodge a complaint with H.R., embodied with seeming obliviousness by Matthew Macfadyen. As the scene progresses, and as Garner and Macfadyen talk past each other and around the subject, the way that the actors handle the shifting power dynamics at play is some of the best command of tone I've seen in any film all year. It's a bruising scene at the heart of a blistering film, that really gets to the truth of how systems protect themselves.</p><p><i><b>12. Sound of Metal</b></i> (dir. Darius Marder)</p><p>It's hard to overstate how crucial the sound design in<i> Sound of Metal</i> is, and how intrinsic it is to the story being told. The film is about Ruben (Riz Ahmed), a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing, and much of the story depends on sound being muffled, distorted, or entirely absent to convey his sudden dislocation from the world, and the film is at its most thrilling and unsettling during the scenes in which Ruben has to adjust to his new reality. Even past the disorientating first act, the film keeps placing Ruben and the audience in a state of discomfort by having him live in a community of deaf people as a way of acclimating, resulting in numerous scenes of him sitting with groups of people communicating in sign language, which he initially cannot understand, and so therefore is not translated for the audience. There's a holistic commitment to representing what that kind of sudden change would feel like that makes the film much more enveloping than the premise alone would suggest. <br /></p><p><i><b>11. The Father</b></i> (dir. Florian Zeller)</p><p>Probably the film this year that had the greatest gulf between my expectations going in and my eventual reaction. When <i>The Father</i> started getting awards attention at the start of 2021, I assumed based on the generic title and the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10272386/mediaviewer/rm525706753/">sun-dappled promotional materials</a> that it would be bland awards season pablum, the sort of movie that no one seems to have seen, yet somehow gets five Oscar nominations before evaporating from the collective memory. Instead, it offers a stark look at the painful process of getting older and losing connection with reality. In telling the story of a man (Anthony Hopkins) suffering from dementia, Zeller plays with the boundaries of objectivity and subjectivity, having multiple actors play the people in Hopkins' life and giving him different dynamics with them depending on the scene, creating a constant uncertainty in both the character and the audience about who or what is real. It's incredibly effective, and (for fear of offering faint praise) one of the more compelling of this year's Best Picture nominees.<br /></p><p><i><b>10. Let Them All Talk</b></i> (dir. Steven Soderbergh)</p><p>It's been incredibly fun watching Soderbergh, having un-retired from directing features, navigate the chaotic, shifting landscape of modern moviemaking by making some of the oddest and most compelling movies of his career. Hopping from Netflix to HBOMax, he delivered one of his warmest, funniest movies in this semi-improvised story of a novelist (Meryl Streep) taking a cruise to England to receive an award, and insisting that two of her best friends (Candice Bergen and Dianne Wiest) and her nephew (Lucas Hedges) come with her. It's an incredibly deft piece of comedic filmmaking, with Soderbergh's sharp editing making for some of the film's funniest moments, that draws out the pasts of its characters without being overly declarative. It's probably the closest any American filmmaker has come to making a Hong Sang-soo movie in its shaggy delicacy.</p><p><i><b>9. David Byrne's American Utopia</b></i> (dir. Spike Lee)</p><p>Jonathan Demme's Talking Heads concert film <i><b>Stop Making Sense</b></i> is one of my favourite films of all time, and since this filmed version of David Byrne's Broadway show functions as something of a spiritual sequel to that film, it had a lot to live up to. While it can't match the earlier film's sheer coked-up energy, it is still a great showcase for the distinctive vision of Byrne, which is at once naive and piercing. Hearing songs from across Byrne's long career and having him talk about the songs between performances really offers a comprehensive worldview, one in which being around people is both the scariest thing you can do and the only thing that makes life worth living. It's an uproarious look at how messed up the world is and a plea for how much better things could be, all delivered brilliantly by Byrne and his supporting cast of dancers, singers and instrumentalists. Exhausting, nervy, and thrilling.<br /></p><p><i><b>8. On the Rocks</b></i> (dir. Sofia Coppola)</p><p>One of the most intensely lovely films of the year, Coppola's latest follows a writer (Rashida Jones) who starts to worry that her husband (Marlon Wayans) might be cheating on her, and whose incorrigible father (Bill Murray) offers to help her investigate. The milieu is very familiar, and will do little to allay criticisms that Coppola focuses too much on stories of the idle rich, but her skill at crafting complicated, fun and engaging characters within that world remains extremely sharp. The relationship between Jones and Murray is complicated and messy, with admiration and love being mixed in with distance and disappointment such that it is readily apparent why Jones would be both moved and annoyed by her father deciding to meddle in her life. It's also got plenty of great jokes dotted throughout, a well-crafted sense of slow-motion farce, and is such a gorgeous New York movie. </p><p><i><b>7. Possessor</b></i> (dir. Brandon Cronenberg)</p><p>There was a point early on in <b><i>Possessor</i></b>, as the camera lingered on a knife entering the flesh of a man being brutally stabbed by a woman being controlled by a shadowy organization, when I couldn't help but imagine David Cronenberg watching and thinking "A chip off the old block!" Considering the long shadow his father casts over horror cinema in general, and particularly the sub-genre of clinical, cerebral yet bloody body horror that he helped define and popularise in the '70s and '80s, it's all the more impressive that Brandon Cronenberg manages to do something exciting within the genre. Starring Andrea Riseborough as an agent who takes over the bodies of innocent people in order to commit assassinations, <i>Possessor </i>is an unsettling, antiseptic journey of shifting identities, depersonalisation, and disassociation that also plays like a compelling crime movie. At times it feels like watching someone play <i><b>Hitman </b></i>(a connection that is only furthered by casting Sean Bean, who appeared as an elusive target in <i>Hitman 2</i>, as Riseborough's next victim) if Agent 47 started fighting back. It really understands the unique voyeurism of an age in which so many experiences are mediated or observed, and the deadening endpoint of that process. It is also distressingly violent in places, with one moment involving teeth guaranteed to stick with me for a very long time.<br /></p><p><i><b>6. Lovers Rock</b></i> (dir. Steve McQueen)</p><p>Every installment of Steve McQueen's <i><b>Small Axe</b></i> anthology was among the best films I saw this year. Each film tells stories about the West Indian community in London during the '70s and '80s with an energy and clarity that really illuminated parts of Britain's history that are generally ignored by mainstream British culture, without ever feeling like a dry lecture or like it was pandering to a white audience. Of the five films, this depiction of one house party shone brightest. The story is fairly minimal, but it's full of details and texture; it really captures the excitement of being at a great, not-entirely-legal party, and it's a thrilling depiction of the rhythms of a night full of possibilities. Did this hit especially hard because stories of connection and frisson resonated more in a year that was so isolating? Of course, but the fun and intimacy and tension (sexual and otherwise) that underpins this movie would set it apart in any year, even if it happened to feel more potent in 2020.</p><p><i><b>5. Tenet </b></i>(dir. Christopher Nolan)</p><p>Perhaps fittingly, given the sheer number of times that "inversion" and its derivatives are said in Christopher Nolan's time-bending Bond movie, <i><b>Tenet </b></i>plays like an inverted version of his 2010 blockbuster <b><i>Inception</i></b>. Where that movie was visually impressive and had a lot of cool ideas, it was also bogged down by a constant need to explain its dream logic to the audience, and there was a constant sense that it was not as fun as it could have been because it kept stopping to explain. <i>Tenet</i>, by contrast, spends very little time explaining what is happening to the audience, and even when it does, it tends to do so using in-world jargon like "it's a temporal pincer movement" that give a sense of what is happening without getting derailed by the details. That can make it a frustrating experience for anyone who wants to track the logic of its backwards-forwards, palindromic approach to time-travel, but that misses the point that Nolan makes in one of the very first scenes when he has Clémence Poésy say, "Don't try to understand it. Feel it." <i>Tenet </i>is, above everything else, a roller coaster. An always moving rush of action that has some immensely cool and inventive sequences, most notably a highway chase involving cars going forwards and backwards in time simultaneously, that make good on its enjoyably fuzzy central concept. It's a wild ride and one of the most purely enjoyable blockbusters since <b><i>Mad Max: Fury Road</i></b>.<br /></p><p><i><b>4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always</b></i> (dir. Eliza Hittman)</p><p>As with <i>The Assistant</i>, <i>Never Rarely Sometimes Always</i> is an all-round great film that pivots around one particularly incredible scene. The sequence in which pregnant Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), having traveled to New York from rural Pennsylvania in order to get an abortion, has to answer a series of questions about her sexual health, delivered in a single take, is one of the best scenes of the year in terms of performance, writing, framing and pacing. Autumn's halting answers, half-answers and refusals reveal things about her situation, often without actually verbalising them, and display tremendous nuance and empathy for someone in a very difficult situation. The film around that scene is also great, though. Hittman's story is filled with moments of pain, humour and vivacity, and provides a clear-eyed view of the difficult realities of abortion in America, even in parts of the country where it is safe and available, for working class or poor people.<br /></p><p><b><i>3. Dick Johnson is Dead</i></b> (dir. Kirsten Johnson)</p><p>Considering how high-concept the premise of <i>Dick Johnson is Dead</i> is - a director tries to come to terms with the declining mental and physical health of her aging father by staging his death repeatedly, often in comically violent or shocking ways - it could easily have come across as glib and ironic on one hand, or mawkish and exploitative on the other. That it is neither, and is instead a playful yet wrenching exploration of aging that highlights the warmth and humour of the man at its centre, and never ever comes close to reducing him to a prop, is a testament to Kirsten Johnson's command of the documentary form. She knows exactly how to play with and push the limits of reality, while also bringing the audience closer to her father, and giving us a glimpse of what she is so afraid of losing.<br /></p><p><i><b>2. First Cow</b></i> (dir. Kelly Reichardt)</p><p>This would warrant inclusion if only because it provided multiple opportunities for Toby Jones to say "Clafoutis," something that all other films have been too cowardly to allow. But beyond that, this is yet another quiet, intimate story from Kelly Reichardt, probably the best American filmmaker currently working when it comes to telling quiet, intimate stories. Set in the Oregon territory in 1820, it follows two men (John Magaro and Orion Lee) who try to build a life for themselves by stealing milk from the first cow to arrive in the territory and using it for baking. A low-key crime film and a really sweet story of male companionship, it's one of the most oddly entertaining and beautiful films of the year.<br /></p><p><i><b>1. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIgK56cAjfY">The History of the Seattle Mariners</a></b></i> (dirs. Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein)</p><p>While <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvh6NLqKRfs&t=275s"><b><i>The Bob Emergency</i></b></a> remains Jon Bois' crowning achievement as a work of wonky, soulful and strange sports nerd filmmaking, the sheer scope of <i>The History of the Seattle Mariners</i> rivals it. Over nearly four hours, Bois and his Dorktown compatriot Alex Rubenstein sketch out the entire lifespan of the Mariners from their early years as easily one of the worst teams in professional baseball in the '70s and '80s, through their resurgence in the '90s and '00s thanks to superstars like Ken Griffey, Jr. and Ichiro Susuki, to their modern-day status as one of the few MLB teams to have never won a World Series. What makes their film great, instead of merely large, is Bois and Rubenstein's clear, unabashed affection for the weird contours of the Mariners' story. They delight in drawing out details like how pitcher Rick Honeycutt put a tack on his finger to cut the ball, and was caught in this small act of cheating because he forgot it was there and cut his forehead when he ran his hand absentmindedly across it. Or in the giddy excitement that announcer Dave Niehaus brought to even the most moribund Seattle home game. Or Jay Buhner's love of throwing up on cue, to the disgust of absolutely everyone.</p><p>It's a collection of small, indelible stories that fill in the gaps of a much grander one. The middle section of the film, which deals with Griffey's ascendance, also encompasses the period in the '90s when the team faced the very real possibility of being sold and moved to another city. Few things in movies this year were as thrilling as three competing lines on a graph; one showing how the Mariners were doing, one showing how the Angels were doing, and one showing how Seattlites voted on a measure to raise taxes to pay for a new stadium. As the three converge, Bois and Rubenstein sculpt a story that could not be more operatic if it tried, and which would be considered ridiculous and impossible if it hadn't actually happened; a team playing for its very existence, and beating all expectations.</p><p>It's a grand story, and one that Bois and Rubenstein tell with tremendous interest and humour. They clearly love turning potentially dry data into rich, human stories, and that palpable sense of being interested in other people and the world is what made <i>The History of the Seattle Mariners</i> stay with me.<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-26684411663810470302020-12-27T00:00:00.013+00:002022-12-10T02:08:59.432+00:00The Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2020<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4X6F3FmEmquOFIlNIbg9P7I-OE6TGiLSFS1LyoW2nMLXM4eYjGjbFJhG6UFoMjUM4yX1L57h4DCYFdLZ18IZ-60_LzWfBCphALWXUAI8OG7EFUWUwypA6oehOKCWLEg3xNIbOHXVZ3-O/s1280/goodbyedragoninn.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="1280" height="352" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4X6F3FmEmquOFIlNIbg9P7I-OE6TGiLSFS1LyoW2nMLXM4eYjGjbFJhG6UFoMjUM4yX1L57h4DCYFdLZ18IZ-60_LzWfBCphALWXUAI8OG7EFUWUwypA6oehOKCWLEg3xNIbOHXVZ3-O/w640-h352/goodbyedragoninn.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><div><b><i>Goodbye, Dragon Inn</i></b></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>As someone who has often complained about how hard it can be to keep up with new releases while also watching the thousands of older films that I've been meaning to see, there was a certain <b><i>Twilight Zone</i></b> irony to having a global pandemic shutter movie theatres for most of the year and push many major releases to some indeterminate time in the future. In the words of Mr. Henry Bemis, there was time now, so long as I didn't mind spending so much of it in my own flat.</p><p>During the many months of lockdown, I watched a lot of older movies that were new-to-me, and was able to finally check off some heavy hitters that I've had on my to-watch list for years. I didn't manage to complete some of the loftier goals I set myself (such as watching all of <i><b>Berlin Alexanderplatz</b></i>) or even some of the dumber ones (like watching <i><b>Eyes Wide Shut</b></i> every day of December leading up to Christmas) but since we're not getting out of this anytime soon, I might find time to fit them in before I write next year's post. As ever, though, as great as it was finally seeing movies that I expected to be great, the biggest thrill came from seeing films I knew nothing about, and realising that there is always more to discover.</p><p>Before we get to the list, a shout-out to the best film I rewatched this year: <b><i>Wayne's World</i></b>. We all needed a little comfort this year, and nothing allayed my anxiety as much as revisiting Aurora, Illinois and seeing that the film is just as funny as it was when I was seven, if not funnier since I understand a lot more of the jokes now. </p><p>Anyway, here are the best older films I watched for the first time in 2020. A good year, but only in this one respect.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><i><b>Hellzapoppin'</b></i> (dir. H.C. Potter, 1941)<p></p><p>The closest any live-action film I've seen has come to matching the madcap, discursive and meta energy of Looney Tunes, as comedians Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson go to Hell and try to make a movie out of their stage show <i>Hellzapoppin</i>'. That it maintains the blistering, disorientating momentum of its opening 10 minutes for the duration - even when it shifts to a more traditional plot about Olsen and Johnson trying to get a young couple together (which really just serves as a new venue for fourth wall breaking and piling on running gags) - without getting tiresome or overwhelming is even more impressive.<br /></p><p><i><b>Dragon Inn</b></i> (dir. King Hu, 1967) </p><p>What a blast! I've been meaning to watch this for years, and I regretted waiting so long from the moment that one of the heroes catches an arrow in a wine decanter, turns it around, then smacks the base so that the arrow flies back out and kills the archer who fired it. Deliriously fun, with an epic, adventurous spirit that easily places it alongside something like <b><i>Stagecoach</i></b> or <i><b>Seven Samurai</b></i> in the pantheon of great art that is also just so much fun.<br /></p><p><i><b>Italianamerican </b></i>(dir. Martin Scorsese, 1974)</p><p>Scorsese is such a passionate filmmaker, someone who so loves the potential of the medium, that it's tempting to say that all of his films are, on some level, an act of love. This short documentary in which he talks to his parents about their lives and their family feels especially worthy of the term, though. Charles and Catherine Scorsese are so fun together, and there were few more joyous moments for me than seeing Martin Scorsese chuckle to himself as his parents start in on a subject which they have clearly argued about hundreds of times before. Also provides a great sauce recipe, which no Marvel movie can claim.<br /></p><p><i><b>The Passenger </b></i>(dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)</p><p>Easily my favourite Antonioni, though admittedly that's a relatively low bar since he's always been a filmmaker whose skill I admire while not actually liking what he does with it. This one got me, though. Jack Nicholson is at his louche best as a journalist who steals a dead man's identity in order to start a new life, only to find himself caught in a fatal web of intrigue. The sultry, hazy mood is perfect for a story about shifting identity, and it does the art-house noir thing much more effectively than <b><i>Blow-U</i><i>p</i></b>.<br /></p><p><i><b>The Hitcher</b></i> (dir. Robert Harmon, 1986) </p><p>What a thoroughly <i>nasty</i> piece of work! Not necessarily in terms of the violence, which is on a par with horror films of its era and is fairly tame by today's standards, but in the bleak, nihilist tone. The terrible things that Rutger Hauer does to innocent bystanders in this, and the absolute torture he puts C. Thomas Howell through, speak to a clarity of purpose and a kind of perverted bravery that you don't get in a lot of horror films; It's the sort of film that threatens a whole family not to raise the stakes, but because it fully intends to butcher them all in the next scene. There's some deaths in this that are so senseless and cruel that I couldn't shake for days afterwards, pretty much all of which happen off screen, because of how rotten the whole thing made me feel. Really bracing stuff.<br /></p><p><i><b>True Stories</b></i> (dir. David Byrne, 1986)</p><p>This gained a new lease of life this year thanks to Criterion putting it out, and because the scene of John Goodman saying "I like sad songs. They make me want to lie on the floor." found a viral foothold with my fellow inveterate mopers on Twitter, and it's richly deserved. A funny and melancholy musical that feels like the missing link between Hal Ashby and Wes Anderson, it's shot through with David Byrne's naive yet piercing view of humanity, which has always underpinned his best songs and translates to film pretty well. Not a film for everyone, since it's plotless by design and his sketches of life in the fictional Virgil, Texas ride the line between wry appreciation and freak show gawping, but I found it to be incredibly winning.<br /></p><p><i><b>Matewan </b></i>(dir. John Sayles, 1987)</p><p>Made me more than a little sad that there isn’t a place for the kind of sprawling yet intimate epics that John Sayles made in the ‘80s and ‘90s anymore, especially since this is one of his best. In telling the story of the West Virginia miners' strike and the Battle of Matewan in 1920, Sayles tells a story of labor battling capitalism in ways which feel both grand and intimate, capturing both the sense of larger historical forces building to a bloody foregone conclusion and of real people trying to survive. An immensely tense windup to a brief and fateful shootout, shot through with a mournful, dusky tone.<br /></p><p><i><b>Defending Your Life</b></i> (dir. Albert Brooks, 1991)</p><p>As a huge fan of <i><b>A Matter of Life and Death</b></i> and <i><b>Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey</b></i>, I'm a big fan of any fantasy that wants to depict the afterlife as something of a bureaucratic headache, and Brooks' depiction of heaven as a really nice hotel where you hang out before trying to justify every single action you've ever taken is one of the most fun and existentially terrifying explorations of that concept. There's dozens upon dozens of great one-liners, most of which are delivered with oily charm by the late lamented Rip Torn, but there's also such a tremendous sweetness to it all, particularly in the romance between Brooks and Meryl Streep, which gives the rest of the film license to be as silly and creative as it is.<br /></p><p><i><b>Lorenzo's Oil</b></i> (dir. George Miller, 1992) </p><p>Prior to this year, I only knew this film for being the source of an incredibly strained joke in the mostly-forgotten Simon Pegg-Nick Frost-Seth Rogen movie <i><b>Paul</b></i>, and for it being something of an outlier in the career of George Miller, since it was a relatively straightforward drama drawn from real-life and with none of the fantastical elements that typify his work. Which is a long way of saying that I went into it with relatively low expectations, but found it to be very affecting and excellently done. In telling the story of two parents (Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon) trying to find a treatment for their terminally ill child, Miller avoids the kind of sanitised depictions of illness and long-term care that you tend to see in awards-friendly dramas, and instead makes a film which is genuinely upsetting in its depictions of grief and the effects of a degenerative disease without being exploitative. Visually striking and expressive throughout, with a tremendous control of its heightened yet human tone. Probably his best film not to feature war rigs or life-affirming pigs.<br /></p><p><i><b>Orlando </b></i>(dir. Sally Potter, 1992)</p><p>I've been meaning to watch this for years and unsurprisingly it’s great. Tilda Swinton is captivating as the immortal, gender-shifting title character, perfectly suited to the film’s playful yet sad tone as she adjusts to changing centuries and her own fortunes as her shift from male to female drastically alters her place in society. Lovely seeing the debuts of Simon Russell Beale and Toby Jones in minor roles, too.<br /></p><p><i><b>Crooklyn </b></i>(dir. Spike Lee, 1994) </p><p>The release of <b><i>Da 5 Bloods </i></b>on Netflix and <i><b>David Byrne's American Utopia</b></i> on HBO spurred me to revisit a lot of Spike Lee's earlier movies, and to fill in a few blind spots like this really lovely family drama set in 1970s Brooklyn. Inspired by Lee's own childhood, it's a beautifully observed, funny and moving story filled with small moments of family life that range from hilarious to heartbreaking. It was particularly good watching this in such close proximity to <i>Da 5 Bloods</i> and <i><b>Clockers</b></i> (1995), since all three show off what a brilliant, varied and underrated actor Delroy Lindo is.<br /></p><p><i><b>Open Your Eyes</b></i> (dir. Alejandro Amenábar, 1997)<br /></p><p>As someone who loves <i><b>Vanilla Sky</b></i>, which Cameron Crowe adapted from Amenábar's film but with a considerably largely scope and budget, it's hard for me to choose between the two in terms of which I prefer (though the music choices in <i>Vanilla Sky</i> do resonate with me a lot) but they do make for an interesting contrast. There's a very tactile quality to<i> Open Your Eyes</i>, stemming at least in part from the more modest production values, which gives it a distinctly different texture from <i>Vanilla Sky</i> and ultimately a different idea of what dreams feel like when we're in them, and by extension, filmmaking; do they feel real until someone points out that they aren't, or are they fantasias where everything feels off by design? The dialogue between original and remake made this a fascinating watch, even if I knew the twists and turns and ultimate destination ahead of time.<br /></p><p><i><b>Pickpocket </b></i>(dir. Jia Zhangke, 1997)</p><p>As someone who came a little late to the Jia party, it was great watching his debut and seeing him come out swinging with a gorgeous, sad story of a pickpocket who, after learning that he has not been invited to the wedding of one of his best friends, enters into a relationship with a prostitute. Despite the English-language title, it's more reminiscent of Rohmer than Bresson in its simple yet beautiful compositions and its unprepossessing yet aching story.<br /></p><p><i><b>Goodbye, Dragon Inn </b></i>(dir. Tsai Ming Liang, 2003) </p><p>I would probably have loved this if I'd seen it any other year - I've really enjoyed exploring Tsai's work after first encountering his 2013 film <i><b>Stray Dogs</b></i> - and it's in keeping with the slow, meditative and transfixing tone that typifies so much of his work. However, the story, of the last night at a Taipei movie theatre before it closes for good, had particular resonance in a year where so many movie theatres closed their doors, with many facing deeply uncertain futures. It also helped seeing <i>Dragon Inn</i>, which plays while the rest of the story is going on, since it added greater poignancy to the appearance of two actors from that earlier film, who come to see their younger selves on screen one last time. <br /></p><p><i><b>Nostalgia for the Light</b></i> (dir. Patricio Guzmán, 2010)</p><p>Patricio Guzmán’s documentary about the Atacama desert in Chile, and how it serves as a base for astronomers to peer into the past through its array of telescopes, but also played host to some of the atrocities of the Pinochet regime, is incredibly haunting. The staggering contrast between the high minded sense of wonder and discovery embodied by the scientists who look to the stars, and the mothers who search for the mass graves that may contain their children, makes for an unforgettable, often wrenching experience. Guzmán’s narration is beautiful, and the way he mixes the cosmic with the tragic is often spellbinding. A film I’ve been meaning to see for years which really lived up to my expectations.</p><p><i><b>88:88</b></i> (Isiah Medina, 2015)</p><p>Almost literally indescribable. A stream of consciousness assemblage of sounds and images that feels more like a sound collage or mixtape than a film, it's the sort of work that rewires your brain and makes you reconsider what film can do, and feel bitterly disappointed about how few people really push the boundaries of the medium. <br /></p><p><i><b>The Green Fog </b></i>(dirs.Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, 2017) </p><p>Exhilarating, inventive, often pretty funny interpolation of Alfred Hitchcock's <b><i>Vertigo</i></b>, reconstructed through films and TV shows shot in San Francisco. Beyond the "spot the movie/show" fun that comes from such a recognizable and much-photographed city, there is a real thrill in seeing how well the film conveys the key points of <i>Vertigo</i> without being able to directly show any of it. Very much a film for people who have seen too many films, but a great one nonetheless.<br /></p><p><i><b>Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda</b></i> (dir. Stephen Nomura Schible, 2017)</p><p>Despite being a fan of his work with Yellow Magic Orchestra in the '70s and his output as a film composer - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8JdWs3jtcs">his theme to </a><i><b><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8JdWs3jtcs">Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence</a> </b></i>may be the prettiest piece of music I've ever heard - I've never really delved too deep into the life and work of Ryuichi Sakamoto, so this documentary, which gives an overview of his long and varied career but mainly focuses on the aftermath of his 2014 cancer diagnosis, and his response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, was quietly revelatory for me. Through that lens, Schible captures a great artist wrestling with enormous questions and a sense of fragility, but not merely as an individual; a sense of how fleeting and delicate all life is, and how easily it can be snuffed out or swept away. A really beautiful work of documentary as both dissection and snapshot.<br /></p><p><i><b>Upgrade </b></i>(dir. Leigh Whannell, 2018)</p><p>I was a huge fan of Whannell's new version of <b><i>The Invisible Man</i></b> (which wound up being the last film I watched in a movie theatre, if you're in the mood for some mildly depressing trivia) and it made me want to check out his previous film, which if anything was even better. A technothriller about a man (Logan Marshall-Green) who has to share his body with an artificial intelligence, it plays like a lower budget and sharper version of <i><b>Venom</b></i> (a comparison that is only heightened by how much Marshall-Green and Tom Hardy look alike) that fully understands the potential of its premise for action, horror and comedy, with Whannell ably balancing all three tones and more besides. Marshall-Green is particularly great in the moments when he has to play the disconnect between his mind and his body, staring in mute horror as he breaks bones and contorts his assailants in ways that should not be possible.<br /></p><p><i><b>Bisbee '17 </b></i>(dir. Robert Greene, 2018)</p><p>As with his previous movies, Greene uses the documentary format and the idea of performance to thrilling effect, traveling to Bisbee, Arizona to orchestrate the recreation of a notorious mass deportation that took place in 1917, when over 1,200 striking miners were expelled from their homes, taken to the desert and left to die. In having residents of the town, some of whom are descended from people who were part of the deportation in one form or another, re-enact the past, they are forced to confront it, and Greene is able to illustrate the ways in which America avoids talking about the brutality of its history until it has no choice but to acknowledge it. A great work of ACAB cinema.<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-83185802991333724672020-12-21T02:16:00.004+00:002022-12-10T02:09:18.332+00:00The Best Games I Played in 2020<p><i><b></b></i></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5p_wqNZwBO4bTF069PSp4E9Jibi4TSaiKM_3ha4uruHUnUJAdrCFN0wxZQISNEWZQA3TYPjHtyjtIySEMitO30n18tI9kw6UPZ7nOAIpPM00awzeVQqzGm3-c2eYvsGEfIPSOnck20Nqw/s680/hadesscreenshot.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="383" data-original-width="680" height="369" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5p_wqNZwBO4bTF069PSp4E9Jibi4TSaiKM_3ha4uruHUnUJAdrCFN0wxZQISNEWZQA3TYPjHtyjtIySEMitO30n18tI9kw6UPZ7nOAIpPM00awzeVQqzGm3-c2eYvsGEfIPSOnck20Nqw/w656-h369/hadesscreenshot.jpeg" width="656" /></a></td></tr><tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><div><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Hades</i></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><b></b></i></div><p>Like many people, I found myself spending a lot more time at home this year. As the Coronavirus pandemic gathered steam in the spring, I started working from home, limiting travel, and looking for ways to occupy the many anxiety-riddled hours each day. Between reading Agatha Christie novels at an alarming rate and making a dent in the ever-growing list of films I've been meaning to watch (which I'll do another post on), I leaned on video games for comfort and escape, broadening my horizons a little by trying genres that I've previously been skeptical of, and ever so slightly reducing the backlog of games I've bought in sales over the years but never had the time to actually play (then buying more games in subsequent sales, thereby perpetuating the cycle). The games listed below (and ranked in no order other than chronological) were the ones that proved especially meaningful, and made the long stretches of worry and isolation a little more bearable. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><b></b><i><b></b></i></p><p><i><b>Castlevania: Symphony of the Night</b> </i>(1997)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>One of my favourite games of the last few years, and possibly of all time, was<i> Hollow Knight</i>, the gorgeously sad indie game from Team Cherry that really made me appreciate how much the exploration-plus-combat-plus-obtuse lore subgenre commonly known as Metroidvania has grown over the last few years. It also made me acutely aware that, for as much as I love some of its progeny and aspirants, I'd never played the game that really kickstarted the genre. So when I saw that <i>Symphony of the Night</i> was going cheap, I decided to enter Dracula's Castle and find out if man is, in fact, a miserable pile of secrets. Playing through the game felt a bit like homework at times - the combat is stodgier than I would like and some of the progression elements of the game, such as having to find new skills to uncover new areas, require so much backtracking that decent chunks of the game end up feeling like a slog - but you can't fault the ambition, the evocative Gothic style and ambience (aided by a wicked score), and the palpable sense that the team at Konami were defining a genre as they went along. Like watching old movies, it's both a joy on its own terms, and fascinating as a blueprint for what others would go on to do.<br /></p><p><i><b>Super Mario Galaxy</b></i> (2007)</p><p></p>Despite being an inveterate Nintendo hack for most of my life, I skipped the Wii and the WiiU entirely since they both came out during a period in my life when I wasn't really playing games (outside of drunken sessions of <i>Rock Band</i>), and as such missed out on a ton of games that have since been given new life on the Switch. <i>Galaxy</i>, being one of the only major 3D Mario games I'd never played, was my <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/1228177989390618624?s=20">semi-joking white whale</a> for years, and when it finally got a release as part of the (admittedly quite shitty and slapdash) <i>Mario All-Stars</i> package, I finally got to experience the dynamic, disorientating pleasures of Mario's journey through space. While the game has aged horribly in some respects - forcing the player to leave every level after collecting a star and using extra lives both feel positively paleolithic after <i>Mario Odyssey</i> dropped them - and the, ahem, switch from the Wii's motion controls to the weird compromise of using the touchscreen for handheld play is largely a wash, the breadth of imagination on display in the level design, boss fights and puzzles is undeniable. As with the best Nintendo games, there is a joy in merely existing in their worlds, in getting to wander around and see what new thing they have for you, and even when those "new" things are over a decade old, there's still a lot of wonder in discovering them for the first time. I eagerly await Nintendo finally putting out the second one so I can be overcharged for buying that as well.<br /><p></p><p><i><b>Persona 4: Dancing All Night</b></i> (2015)<br /></p><p></p><p></p><p>I've never been particularly good at rhythm games, and before this year my knowledge of the <i>Persona</i> series of RPGs was pretty minimal, and was solely derived from watching the Giant Bomb Endurance Run of the fourth game. However, that exposure was enough to tell me that I <i>really </i>liked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBWmvxc4L5I&list=PLBAF8C0CDA4778263">the music from that game</a>, and when the rhythm game spinoffs of <i>Persona 3, 4 </i>and <i>5</i> went on sale earlier this year I thought it was worth a punt. I played through all three games in the space of a week, and while they're all really fun to play and they make fantastic use of the series' music and settings, <i>Dancing All Night</i> made the most impact on me thanks to its ridiculously in-depth story mode, which finds the group of inquisitive teens from <i>Persona 4</i> going to Tokyo to perform at a concert, and winding up in a nightmare version of the collective unconscious in which they have to dance for their lives and ultimately save the world. The long stretches of the game that don't involve dancing, and instead feature characters talking at length about their fears and insecurities, make for a surprisingly soulful and moving experience, and adds unexpected weight to the dance sequences. The non-story modes that let you tackle different difficulties and rack up high scores give the game a huge amount of replayability, but that story and the characters are what really stand out.<br /></p><p><i><b>Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 </b></i>(2016)<i><b><br /></b></i></p><p>Like <i>Tetris</i>, <i>Pac-Man </i>is such a foundational game that it's hard to imagine anyone improving on the basic concept. As with the euphoric joy of <i>Tetris Effect</i>, though, this update of the arcade classic takes the core ideas - you're still an incomplete pizza eating pellets and dodging ghosts - and adds layers that enhance the experience without needlessly complicating it. The relentless speed of the game, which finds you trying to complete as many mazes as possible in a short time and trying to rack up big combos by eating pellets and ghosts without dying - make it incredibly challenging to begin with, but also makes it intensely replayable as you try to squeeze in a few more pellets and add a few more points on each run. This was an invaluable stress reliever during the early days of the pandemic.</p><p><i><b>Persona 5</b></i> (2016)</p><p>I've always struggled with JRPGs, and I usually struggle with them in the exact same way; I get swept along for the first 10-15 hours or so, really enjoy getting to know the characters and discovering the mechanics, before falling off once the story loses momentum or it becomes a prolonged session of grinding and leveling up.<i> Persona 5</i> avoids pretty much every pitfall I've encountered with other JRPGs by keeping that period of discovery going for about 30 hours, constantly introducing new mechanics, characters and locations so that it never feels like the game is settling into a rut, and by having a pretty relentless pace to its story. Your party - a group of teens who have the ability to enter the minds of criminals and evildoers, represented by Palaces that take the form of their targets' darkest desires - are always working to tight deadlines, so you have to complete each Palace and, in doing, induce a change of heart in the target, by a certain date on the calendar or risk utter failure. That keeps the game moving and provides a strong spine for all the other stuff that you get to do with your team, like study for exams, or work in a restaurant, or help a disgraced politician redeem himself and mount a comeback. The contrast between the mundanity of everyday life for the characters and the imaginative worlds they break into makes for a really compelling dynamic, yet the game makes both halves so distinctly and consistently fun and challenging that I never felt like I was wasting time by doing the normal stuff; it all felt like a necessary step on the journey. Also, in a year where so much of the world ground to a halt, it was always nice to have the opportunity to wander aimlessly around Tokyo in the rain, if only for a little bit.<br /></p><p><i><b>Uncharted: The Lost Legacy </b></i>(2017)<br /><b></b><i><b></b></i></p><p>The <i>Uncharted </i>series has long been a blind spot for me, so when Sony put the first three games out for free at the start of the pandemic I took the opportunity to catch up on this touchstone series. Those first three remain pretty fun, with the second one being a particular highlight, but they also showed their age and the mix of Nathan Drake solving puzzles between murder sprees got a little tired after a while. I then immediately rolled into <i>Uncharted 4: A Thief's End</i>, which felt like a huge leap up in terms of its combat, stealth and story, but also wore out its welcome with its fairly glacial pace, which stretches the kind of fleet-footed adventure romp that would work perfectly as a two hour film to around twelve hours. This spinoff to the series, built on the same engine as <i>Uncharted 4 </i>but focusing on supporting characters Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, feels like the best of all possible worlds; the combat, puzzles and stealth are all as fine-tuned as they were in the previous game - I spent a pretty significant chunk of time trying to take out enemies without being seen when I could probably have blasted through it much more quickly just because it was so much fun to sneak around and choke out mercenaries - but it takes roughly a third of the time to finish, making for the sort of sharp, focused storytelling that fits the pulpy material. The pseudo-open world sequence that makes up the middle section of the game, in which Chloe and Nadine tear around in a jeep solving different puzzles in any order you like, is almost certainly the best thing the series ever achieved.</p><p><b><i>Return of the Obra Dinn</i> </b>(2019)</p><p>Lucas Pope is the absolute king of making games that sound unplayable on paper, but are totally riveting in reality. His previous game, <i>Papers, Please</i>, found you having to take on the role of an immigration official who has to determine who gets to enter a fictional Eastern Bloc country, while <i>Return of the Obra Dinn </i>has you play a nineteenth-century claims adjuster for the East India Company tasked with trying to figure out how exactly everyone on the titular ship disappeared. It's a dry concept, but thrilling in execution, because the way that you investigate is by using a magic compass to witness the moment when any given character dies, allowing you to wander around and investigate various morbid and macabre tableaux as you try to piece together the identities of the people on the ship, what happened to them, and why. It's a great, involving exercise in deductive reasoning that rewards careful observation, with each successful solution feeling like a real triumph given how shrewdly the game doles out information. The monochrome pointillist visual style and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX5RJ4OgvPM">excellent score</a> also help make <i>Return of the Obra Dinn</i> a thoroughly unique experience.</p><p><i><b>Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition</b></i> (2020)</p><p>I first heard about <i>Kentucky Route Zero</i> in 2015 when I watched <a href="https://youtu.be/z8iKkAP1Itg?t=4840">an old episode of the Besties</a> in which they talked about it being one of the best games of 2013, but they also mentioned that at the time only two episodes and two interludes had been released, with five total full episodes planned. As someone who likes to play games in their entirety, I thought I'd wait until the whole thing was out, which <i>surely</i> would be soon. Five years later, the complete edition of the game finally came out and it was worth the wait. A surreal, unsettling, yet deeply felt game about people wandering a world they don't understand, it's the closest I've seen a video game get to the playful, humane sci-fi of Kurt Vonnegut, or the banal weirdness of Paul Auster. Directing the characters through the game's minimalist vision of America, engaging in conversations that never go how you'd expect, and which are often weird while still feeling true, makes for a wonderful, odd and unique experience.<br /></p><p><b><i>Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2</i></b> (2020)</p><p>I don't really have much nostalgia for the old <i>Tony Hawk</i> skateboarding games. The only iteration I ever put any time into was the Game Boy Advance version of the second game, which ruled, but wasn't exactly indicative of the overall experience of the series. Despite all that, when the remake of the first two games came out back in August, I found myself becoming mildly obsessed with watching people playing it online, until I couldn't resist buying it myself and putting hours and hours into completing every objective and getting the best high scores I could. As with <i>Persona 5</i>, I think at least part of that fascination comes from it being a game in which you can "go outside" and "do things" in a way that I avoided as much as possible for the majority of the year, but that undersells how rock solid the core elements of the <i>Tony Hawk</i> series are, and how well this spruced up version of the first two games showcases them. There is something so lizard brain pleasurable about picking up the game for the first time, eating absolute shit on your first attempt at the Warehouse as you learn the controls and figure out where everything is, then doing slightly better on the second attempt, and on every subsequent attempt, until you're racking up combos that run into seven or eight figures. That palpable sense of improvement is hard to beat as a motivator to keep playing a game. (Only my white-hot hatred of Downhill Jam, the worst level in either game, which I completed every objective on out of pure spite, surpasses it.)<br /></p><p><i><b>Hades</b></i> (2020)</p><p>I obviously didn't play enough games that came out this year to justify putting together a real game of the year list, but if I had, <i>Hades</i> would be number one with a bullet (or an arrow, or a sword, or a spear, depending on your preference). Set in the Underworld of Greek mythology, you play as Zagreus, son of Hades, as he tries to battle his way to the surface in order to find his long-lost mother, Persephone. It's a very simple loop: Zagreus enters a room, defeats all the enemies that appear, moves on to the next room, eventually fights some bosses, and if he dies at any point, he gets kicked back to the House of Hades and starts all over again. It's a straightforward run-based game, and while the mechanics of it alone would warrant its placement on this list - it is such a pleasure figuring out the patterns of the enemies, learning the best way to use the different weapons, and progressing closer and closer to the end - what cements it as a future classic is the writing. The exhaustive number of conversations that Zagreus has with the various Gods and denizens of the Underworld make developing relationships and learning about the lives of the other characters as much a driving force of playing <i>Hades </i>as hacking and slashing your way through Hell, and I certainly wouldn't have kept going back and completing dozens upon dozens of runs after beating the main core of the game if I wasn't so invested in figuring out how to reunite Orpheus and Eurydice, or romancing Thanatos. And that's without even getting into the artwork and design of the game, which is gorgeous and distinctive, and really brings Hades and its environs to vivid life. <br /></p><p><i><b>Spider-Man: Miles Morales</b></i> (2020)</p><p>As with<i> Lost Legacy,</i> <i>Miles Morales</i> feels like a refinement of its predecessor more than a revolution. Building on the scope and freedom of 2018's <i>Spider-Man</i>, this installment finds Peter Parker taking a much needed vacation and leaving New York in the (mostly) capable hands of his protegee, Miles Morales. As with the previous game, swinging around New York remains an indelible pleasure, even more so when it's covered in snow and Christmas decorations, and I spent so much of my time with the game just...hanging out, seeing what was up, occasionally stopping crimes and advancing the story whenever the mood took me. As with the first game, it's got some of the best bullshit in games: all the little side-quests, scavenger hunts and combat trials are really fun, and even when they aren't <i>that</i> compelling, you still get to swing around Manhattan and revel in the dynamism and movement of Miles as he comes into his own as a hero. Beyond that, this leaner spinoff cuts out some of the mission types that slowed down <i>Spider-Man</i>'s momentum (namely the stealth missions where you had to play as Mary Jane or a pre-powers Miles) in favour of focusing on combat, stealth missions that actually let you take out enemies, and an engrossing story that feels like Spider-Man, while being distinctly different than the infinite number of Peter Parker stories we've seen over the years. New, yet familiar, is a tough balance to pull off but <i>Miles Morales</i> does it with style.<br /></p>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-24739532380140868072020-01-17T23:48:00.000+00:002020-01-17T23:50:42.593+00:00Best Films of the 2010s<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9Cyv_tkX9HPCMQROW3vMcr2MLIi0HBi9KlYky3IFO02tN4s-l3Qu2BvNkbG5vKvwBImMzhnzdEfGVxQMSiktWJbn-JEJQsEXqYx6-NdsBQYYcfMOXakEvpFKEclYN7YdHSeroxuVnIW4/s1600/under+the+skin+best+of+the+decade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA9Cyv_tkX9HPCMQROW3vMcr2MLIi0HBi9KlYky3IFO02tN4s-l3Qu2BvNkbG5vKvwBImMzhnzdEfGVxQMSiktWJbn-JEJQsEXqYx6-NdsBQYYcfMOXakEvpFKEclYN7YdHSeroxuVnIW4/s640/under+the+skin+best+of+the+decade.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption">Scarlett Johansson in <i><b>Under the Skin</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The 2010s are well and truly over, so it's only right to take stock and try to figure our what cinema meant to me over the past ten years. During a decade that saw a lot of personal and professional disruption for me as I switched careers and continents, movies were a constant, even if my tastes shifted more than at any other time in my life. It's hard to imagine the me of 2010 being more excited about watching <b><i>An Elephant Sitting Still</i></b>, a four-hour Chinese drama, than the latest <b><i>Star Wars </i></b>movie, or earnestly insisting that one of most exhilarating things I saw all decade was a black-and-white Hungarian film about a horse, but here we are. We change, we grow, we become strangers to ourselves.<br />
<br />
Which is not to say that the list below, which encompasses the 100 films from the past decade that I think are real neat, is all bleakness. There's some incredibly silly comedies buried in there, and I dearly love the blockbusters that made a real impression on me. But as Hollywood spectable became more homogenous and I got most of my comedy from television and podcasts, those two genres, which defined my taste in movies through my teens and early twenties, fell off precipitiously.<br />
<br />
This is the final version of my list, not because it's in anyway definitive, but because I finally forced myself to stop tinkering with it. Having whittled it down from a longlist of about five hundred films, I've spent much of the last week going over it and moving things around, looking at other peoples' lists to see what I might have missed, or suddenly being reminded of a film I'd forgotten to include. (Case in point, mere minutes before writing this section, I suddenly realised that I had left off <b><i>The Skin I Live In</i></b>.) If I don't post this now, I might never get around to it, since there's always another great film to catch up on, or some unheralded masterpiece waiting to be discovered. As such, this is as good a list as any, though probably not as good as the list I would come up with if I revisited it ten years from now, when I've got an even better sense of what this whole decade looked like.<br />
<br />
Not to fill this whole preamble with caveats, but this is a personal list shaped by my own taste, but also by my own myopia. Even though I watched a lot of films this decade and feel like this is a pretty good sample of What Was Good In Cinema over the past ten years, I have by no means seen everything, let alone everything <i>good</i>. I set some time aside in the past few months to try and catch up on films and filmmakers that I had heard being discussed in the Best of the Decade discussion, and seeing films by directors like Hong Sang-soo and Zhangke Jia, both of whom were pretty prolific over the past decade but whose work I only just started to dig into, was a nice reminder that there is always so much out there waiting to be discovered.<br />
<br />
Before we get to the list itself, I feel the need to explain one notable omission: <b><i>Twin Peaks: The Return</i></b>. In the nearly three years since the continuation/conclusion(?) of David Lynch and Mark Frost's seminal funny/upsetting drama/nightmare aired on Showtime, the question of whether it can be considered a film, seeing as it's a pretty singular work from a visionary director and hews closer to the grammar and structure of avant-garde cinema than traditional television, has been litigated and re-litigated (and re-re-litigated) into absurdity. Ultimately, I come down on the side saying that it is a film in all the ways that count, and that future cinephiles and scholars should consider it as such within Lynch's oeuvre, but I also cannot divorce myself from the original context in which I and so many others watched it for the first time; broken up into eighteen episodes that aired week to week over the course of four months in the summer of 2017.<br />
<br />
This is not merely a formal distinction, but one tied into the broader experience of watching television versus watching a film. You generally don't watch a couple of scenes from a film, stop, read a review of the scene that you just watched, talk to friends about how they feel the film is going, then wait a week to see what the next couple of scenes will be like. It's a fundamentally different way of experiencing art and relating to other people experiencing that art, and while I believe that <i><b>Twin Peaks: The Return</b></i> fits certain, nebulous criteria that make it a film, I fell in love with it as a TV show, so ultimately I don't feel like I can include it on this list. Though, for the record, if I were to include it, it would probably be my number one.<br />
<br />
With that out of the way, here is my list of the 100 best films of the 2010s. I'm mostly happy with it.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><ol>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Under the Skin</b></i> (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Wind Rises </b></i>(dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b></i> (dir. George Miller, 2015)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>No Home Movie</b></i> (dir. Chantal Akerman, 2015)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Inside Llewyn Davis</b></i> (dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Holy Motors</b></i> (dir. Leos Carax, 2012)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Inherent Vice</b></i> (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Act of Killing</b></i> (dirs. Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn and Anonymous, 2012)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Phantom Thread</b></i> (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Uncut Gems</b></i> (dirs. Josh and Benny Safdie, 2019)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><b><i>American Honey</i></b> (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Silence </b></i>(dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Lenny Cooke</b></i> (dirs. Josh and Benny Safdie, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Shin Godzilla </b></i>(dirs. Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi) </span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><b><i>The Tale of Princess Kaguya</i></b> (dir. Isao Takahata, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Moonlight </b></i>(dir. Barry Jenkins, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Arbor </b></i>(dir. Clio Barnard, 2010)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Logan Lucky</b></i> (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Enough Said</b></i> (dir. Nicole Holofcenor, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Ash is Purest White</b></i> (dir. Zhangke Jia, 2018) </span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><b><i>Oslo, August 31st</i></b> (dir. Joachim Trier, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>On the Beach Alone at Night </b></i>(dir. Hong Sang-Soo, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Tangerine </b></i>(dir. Sean Baker, 2015) </span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Live </b></i>(dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Margaret </b></i>(dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>A Hidden Life</b></i> (dir. Terrence Malick, 2019)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>First Reformed</b></i> (dir. Paul Schrader, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Once Upon a Time in Anatolia </b></i>(dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Irishman </b></i>(dir. Martin Scorsese, 2019)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Minding the Gap</b></i> (dir. Bing Liu, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Shirkers</b></i> (dir. Sandi Tan, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Handmaiden</b></i> (dir. Park Chan-wook, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Stray Dogs</b></i> (dir. Tsai Ming-liang, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Mistress America</b></i> (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2015)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood</b></i> (dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2019)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Skin I Live In</b></i> (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 2011) </span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Support the Girls</b></i> (dir. Andrew Bujalski, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Good Time </b></i>(dirs. Josh and Benny Safdie, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>A Separation </b></i>(dir. Asghar Farhadi, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Elle </b></i>(dir. Paul Verhoeven, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Babadook</b></i> (dir. Jennifer Kent, 2014)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>A Ghost Story</b></i> (dir. David Lowery, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Dawson City: Frozen Time</b></i> (dir. Bill Morrison, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Let the Sunshine In </b></i>(dir. Claire Denis, 2017)</span></li>
<li><i><b><span class="s1">Parasite</span></b></i><span class="s1"><i><b> </b></i>(dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2019)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Wolf of Wall Street </b></i>(dir. Martin Scorsese, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Things to Come</b></i> (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Columbus</b></i> (dir. Kogonada, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>A Quiet Passion</b></i> (dir. Terence Davies, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>This is Not a Film </b></i>(dir. Jafar Panahi, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Song to Song</b></i> (dir. Terence Malick, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Bombay Beach</b></i> (dir. Alma Har'el, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>22 Jump Street</b></i> </span><span class="s1"><span class="s1">(dirs. Chris Miller and Phil Lord, 2014)</span></span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Madeline’s Madeline</b></i> (dir. Josephine Decker, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Meek’s Cutoff </b></i>(dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse</b></i> (dirs. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Another Year</b></i> (dir. Mike Leigh, 2010)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>God’s Own Country</b></i> (dir. Francis Lee, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Night Moves</b></i> (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Bob Emergency</b></i> (dir. Jon Bois, 2019)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><span class="s1"><i><b>A Silent Voice: The Movie</b></i> (dir. Naoko Yamada, 2016) </span></span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Revenge</b></i> (dir. Coralie Fargeat, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Fits</b></i> (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Obvious Child</b></i> (dir. Gillian Robespierre, 2014)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Raw</b></i> (dir. Julia Ducournau, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Turin Horse</b></i> (dirs. Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, 2011)<br />
</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><span class="s1"><i><b>Love and Friendship</b></i> (dir. Whit Stillman, 2016)</span></span></li>
<span class="s1">
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Cameraperson</b></i> (dir. Kirsten Johnson, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping</b></i> (dirs. Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Certain Women</b></i> (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2016) </span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Mission Impossible: Fallout </b></i>(dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Your Name. </b></i>(dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Leave No Trace</b></i> (dir. Debra Granik, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Zama</b></i> (dir. Lucrecia Martel, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Strong Island</b></i> (dir. Yance Ford, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Hale County This Morning, This Evening</b></i> (dir. RaMell Ross, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Edge of Tomorrow</b></i> (dir. Doug Liman, 2014)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Frances Ha</b></i> (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2012)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Grand Budapest Hotel </b></i>(dir. Wes Anderson, 2014)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Exit Through the Gift Shop</b></i> (dir. Banksy, 2010)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Comedy</b></i> (dir. Rick Alverson, 2012)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation</b></i> (dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>In This Corner of the World</b></i> (dir. Sunao Katabuchi, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Weekend</b></i> (dir. Andrew Haigh, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Spring Breakers</b></i> (dir. Harmony Korine, 2012)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>The Breadwinner</b></i> (dir. Nora Twomey, 2017)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Blue Ruin</b></i> (dir. Jeremy Saulnier, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Burning</b></i> (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2018)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><span class="s1"><i><b>Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi</b></i> (dir. Rian Johnson, 2017)</span> </span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Scott Pilgrim vs. The World </b></i>(dir. Edgar Wright, 2010)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Paterson</b></i> (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Paddington</b></i> (dir. Matt King, 2014)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Moneyball</b></i> (dir. Bennett Miller, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Certified Copy</b></i> (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)</span></li>
<li><i><b>High Life </b></i>(dir. Claire Denis, 2018)</li>
<li><i><b>The Clouds of Sils Maria </b></i>(dir. Olivier Assayas, 2014)</li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Samsara</b></i> (dir. Ron Fricke, 2011)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Hard to be a God</b></i> (dir. Aleksey German, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Upstream Color</b></i> (dir. Shane Carruth, 2013)</span></li>
<li><span class="s1"><i><b>Stoker</b></i> (dir. Park Chan-wook, 2013)</span></li>
</span></ol>
Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-60426372757961355222019-12-27T17:24:00.003+00:002019-12-27T17:24:45.949+00:00Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2019<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnIgEDKeJTi8fUi1NyY2ieQXHUFejyA-RShIPAeeypGidKMYofWUdHi1JSLX4bFkaF7tey6eNfY5pgpOSVoKzaAyITml-DfES0eHbPctQqqwJwIRSpkL8GmCnVne8hnL-4hl34OxcRhfxn/s1600/endofevaend.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnIgEDKeJTi8fUi1NyY2ieQXHUFejyA-RShIPAeeypGidKMYofWUdHi1JSLX4bFkaF7tey6eNfY5pgpOSVoKzaAyITml-DfES0eHbPctQqqwJwIRSpkL8GmCnVne8hnL-4hl34OxcRhfxn/s640/endofevaend.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Every year, I spend the first nine months or so thinking that the year is, at best, a mediocre one for cinema and at worst (as was the case this year) a medium-threatening calamity, and I start wondering if maybe all the great movies have been made. Maybe we're all just marching towards a content-slurry of Disney-owned IPs that all have the same depressingly predictable rhythm.<br />
<br />
Then October/November comes around, and the good movies that barely got any sort of release in the spring and dummer come out on home media, the weird auteurist oddities that Weird Auteurist Twitter got all hot under the collar about bubble to the surface, the awards contenders start to roll out, and very occasionally you'll get a <i><b>Parasite</b></i> or an <i><b>Uncut Gems</b></i> that sets your mind alight.<br />
<br />
But those nine months can be <i>rough</i>, especially in a year like this where there was, in my opinion, not one blockbuster worth thinking about, and it's where older movies can really fill the void. This year I didn't watch as many older movies as I would have liked, but I made a conscious effort to seek out movies by directors whose work I was familiar with but hadn't seen much of, an endeavour which bore fruit many times over, as the list below demonstrates. Whether it was the Rohmer-esque intimacy of Hong Sang-soo or the playful pop freneticism of Richard Lester, taking a first look at directors whose names I had heard bandied around for years but never investigated, or directors who I had seen one or two films by but whose work I had never explored more fully, proved incredibly rewarding, and was a reminder that there is always so much more to the world than our limited perception allows.<br />
<br />
Less successful was my attempt to broaden my horizons by watching 52 Indian films. I don't mind telling you, I failed pretty spectacularly at it. I didn't really have much of a plan in terms of where to watch Indian films, or in terms of which films would be worth prioritising so that I had a bit of mooring to work from. In short, the whole endeavour did not go well.<br />
<br />
However, the films I did watch were pretty terrific, with a strong showing for the films of Satyajit Ray, an artist whose work I have dabbled in before, but never really took the time to go much deeper into than the <b><i>Apu</i></b> <i><b>trilogy</b></i> and a handful of the other really famous ones. Even the least of his films that I watched this year was very, very good. I'm already dreading the day when I'll have no more of his films to discover for the first time.<br />
<br />
Anyway, here's to another year of discovery, and here are the best older films I watched for the first time in 2019.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b><i>What Price Hollywood?</i></b> (dir. George Cukor, 1932)<br />
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<div>
It’s remarkable just how sturdy the basic premise of <i>What Price Hollywood?</i>, which was basically retold four more times as <b><i>A Star is Born</i></b>, remains. That sense of one person ascending, the other falling, and the background of a grinding, uncaring industry for whom this is just another story, is really compelling, and oh so sad. Interesting to note that the major difference between this and <i>A Star is Born</i> is that the main characters don’t get married; Mary, the Esther/Ally equivalent, ends up marrying a different man, and their marriage ends up falling apart as a side-effect of her trying to help her failing mentor with his alcoholism. That difference ultimately gives <i>A Star is Born</i> more punch, since the disintegration of the relationship is more painful if it’s between two characters whose lives are entwined on every conceivable level, but the execution in <i>What Price Hollywood?</i> is so immaculate, particularly when Cukor handles the fizzy comedy of the getting-to-know-you/breaking into the industry stuff in the opening third, that a slightly messier finale can’t detract from how good everything leading up to it is.</div>
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<i><b>Baby Face</b></i> (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1933)<br />
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Slinky, sly and bracingly sexy drama about a woman who, on the advice of a Nietzsche-espousing patron at the bar she works at, decides to “exploit herself”, and turns a lifetime of sexual degradation on its head by manipulating all the men at a major bank to advance her station in life. Barbara Stanwyck is electrifying in the lead, bursting with charisma as she wraps almost every man she meets around her finger. The ease with which she glides past the many terrible things that happen to those around her really makes the film such fun, right up until the slightly too-neat ending.<br />
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<i><b>Devi</b></i> (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1960)<br />
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Gorgeous and achingly sad drama that highlights Ray's ability to draw poetry out of small moments of life, wrapped in a slow-motion tragedy about a young girl who is declared a goddess by her father-in-law, and whose life is irrevocably changed once those around her stop treating her as a human being. A fantastically tight and rigorous bit of tragedian storytelling.<br />
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<i><b>The Big City</b></i> (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1963) <br />
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Boasts a “character takes a few moments to think about what they’ve done and might mean for their future” scene to rival the end of <b><i>The Graduate</i></b>. A taut, affecting melodrama that skewers ideas about class and genre dynamics through the lens of one family struggling to make ends meet.<br />
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<i><b>The Coward</b></i> (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1965) <br />
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This was my favourite of the Ray movies that I watched this year. A movie which manages the remarkable feat of maintaining the sense of mystery and eroticism that marks the best <i>films noir</i>, but without any of the violence. There's an atmosphere throughout that something <i>could</i> happen, and the frisson between two former lovers (Soumitra Chatterjee and Madhabi Mukherjee) who meet again unexpectedly is electrifying. It's also one of the most gorgeously shot and composed films I've seen in ages.<br />
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<i><b>The Hero</b></i> (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1965)<br />
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A gripping character study of a movie star traveling by train to Delhi to collect an award who, through his conversations with the editor of a women’s magazine and several of the other passengers, is forced to reflect on his fame and what he sacrificed in order to achieve it. It’s really beautifully shot, most notably during its stark dream sequences, but also during its inventively staged dialogue scenes. The great triumph is how well Ray balances the life of the actor with the people he meets, making it feel like an ensemble populated by full, compelling characters, rather than a vehicle for one man’s moment of self-reflection.<br />
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<i><b>Le Samurai</b></i> (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)<br />
<br />
Suffers a little from just how seminal and influential it is; if you've seen any movie about an emotional distant, calculating hitman who gets double-crossed then a lot of it feels familiar. Yet that doesn't really detract from how brilliantly it does everything it pioneered. Alain Delon is quietly compelling as the assassin betrayed after a hit, and Melville's command of pace and tone is pretty masterful.<br />
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<i><b>Samurai Rebellion</b></i> (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1967)<br />
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A brooding, involving chamber drama that morphs into an all-out bloodbath. What marks Kobayashi as a true master is how he makes the former as compelling as the latter. This film made me really want a database of how many people different actors have killed on-screen. I feel like Toshiro Mifune would rank pretty high in that theoretical chart.<br />
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<i><b>Robin and Marian</b></i> (dir. Richard Lester, 1976)<br />
<br />
Every few years there's a re-imagining or reboot of Robin Hood that tries to find a new, more interesting spin on the character, and frankly not one of them has ever struck upon a better take on the story than this, one in which all the characters are old, tired, and the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) is just sick and tired of Robin's tomfoolery. Sean Connery makes for a great past his prime Robin, bringing movie star charisma to what is ultimately a sad tale of how time and change come for us all.<br />
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<i><b>Police Story</b></i> (dir. Jackie Chan, 1985)<br />
<br />
Tremendous fun for the first two thirds, even as it criminally under-uses Maggie Cheung, but the last 20 minutes are absolutely magical. A wonderful showcase for Jackie’s gifts as a physical performer, inventive choreographer, and as someone who knows intuitively how to be fascinating and engaging onscreen. As much as I have always loved watching him work, this was the first time all the Buster Keaton comparisons made total sense to me.<br />
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<i><b>Hollywood Shuffle</b></i> (dir. Robert Townsend, 1987)<br />
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Townsend's comedy about what it takes to be a black actor in Hollywood, and the ways in which Hollywood will only allow a certain type of blackness, is savage in 2019, so I can only imagine how it must have felt seeing it thirty-two years ago. Sharp, funny, surgical in its satire yet reflexive enough to go on flights of fantasy in pursuit of a great joke. The parodies of Hollywood movies glimpsed during the "Sneaking in the Movies" segment are particularly great.<br />
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<i><b>The Unbelievable Truth</b></i> (dir. Hal Hartley, 1989)<br />
<br />
My first Hal Hartley and I'm very excited to see more of his work. A lovely, funny, keenly observed and melancholy gem that puts most Sundance-ready indie cinema nowadays to shame. Adrienne Shelley was also such a phenomenal talent, and everything she did in her tragically too-brief life feels like a gift.<br />
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<i><b>To Sleep With Anger </b></i>(dir. Charles Burnett, 1990)<br />
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Probably the best performance I’ve ever seen from Danny Glover as a man who visits an old friend and his family, then proceeds to exploit and exacerbate the tensions between them to sow chaos. I love the way it mixes an intense chamber drama with an air of the absurd, particularly in the finale when the mundane and the macabre overlap. Only my second Burnett after <b><i>Killer of Sheep</i></b> and I really want to see so much more.<br />
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<b><i>The Last of the Mohicans</i></b> (dir. Michael Mann, 1992)<br />
<br />
As a big Michael Mann fan (Fann?) this was a pretty huge gap in his filmography for me, and it never felt like a priority because I'd always assumed it was one of his weaker movies for some reason. Turns out I was dead wrong, since it wound up being my third favourite of his films behind <b><i>The Insider </i></b>and <i><b>Heat</b></i>. A thrilling adventure underpinned by a kind of muscular romanticism that is present in much of Mann's work, but which is rarely allowed to be so central. Most importantly, I finally learned where t<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjdswqGGVg">he music from Doughboys live shows</a> comes from.<br />
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<i><b>Set It Off</b></i> (dir. F. Gary Gray, 1996)<br />
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An incredibly fun, tight thriller with star-making performances from Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox and Kimberley Elise. Gray handles both the action and the comedy with aplomb, beautifully mixing the two at times and allowing the cast to shine during the moments of real, wrenching emotion.<br />
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<i><b>The End of Evangelion </b></i>(dirs. Hideaki Anno and Kazuya Tsurumaki, 1997)<br />
<br />
<b><i>Neon Genesis Evangelion</i></b> was a big cultural blind spot for me that I finally managed to erase (Is that what you do with blind spots? "Look at" seems more accurate, yet more dumb. Not important.) this year thanks to Netflix's (admittedly flawed) release of the show and its sequel/rewrite/fuck you <i>The End of Evangelion</i>, one of the most formally daring films of the 1990s. Taking the criticisms of the finale of <i>Eva</i> (which, for the record, I found to be incredibly moving and cathartic, and one of the best finales to a show I have ever seen) and essentially saying "Is this what you want? How about this? Are you happy now?" to his detractors for an hour and a half, Anno delivers a bleaker, harsher take on all of his characters and their relationships than even the show, which wasn't particularly kind to anyone, managed. It also foreshadows the metastasis of entitled, abusive fandoms that came to define so much of Western popular culture in the 2010s, and suggests that the only way to counter it is to give the bad fans the most upsetting version of what they thought they wanted. The cinematic equivalent of forcing someone to smoke a whole carton of cigarettes.<br />
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<i><b>Hedwig and the Angry Inch</b></i> (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)<br />
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A vivid, exhilarating movie that throbs with energy and invention, and is powered by a great central performance from John Cameron Mitchell. The songs are also pretty phenomenal, melding rock and musical forms better than most who attempt that combination.<br />
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<i><b>Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India</b></i> (dir. Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001)<br />
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Among the most purely enjoyable film I watched all year, and a strong contender for one of the best sports films ever made. A riotous epic about class, caste, imperialism and cricket, with dynamite songs and wonderful choreography.<br />
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<i><b>Archipelago</b></i> (dir. Joanna Hogg, 2010)<br />
<br />
<b><i>The Souvenir</i></b> rightly got a lot of praise this year, and
I'm glad that Joanna Hogg is getting the attention she has long deserved, but
this feels like the film that really heralded a master. It's a more refined first film, <i>Unrelated</i>, both visually and in her writing, which has fewer instances of people awkwardly saying exactly what they mean, and makes greater use of her cast to imply the roiling tensions beneath the surface of a family vacation. She also brilliantly recreates the feeling of being near an argument and not wanting to get involved by having a huge blowout take place off-screen, something which predicts the even more intuitive choices in <i>The Souvenir</i>'s storytelling.<br />
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<i><b>The Garden of Words </b></i>(dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2013)<br />
<br />
I watched this because someone at work told me that they found Shinkai's 2017 film <b><i>Your Name.</i></b>, which I loved, to be a real disappointment after this earlier film. I still think <b><i>Your Name. </i></b>is an absolutely wonderful movie, but watching this really did give a sense of the breadth of Shinkai's talents, since the two could not be more different. A sweet, short and lovely film about two people forming a connection as they happen to meet at a park whenever it rains, which really digs into how that relationship ripples outwards through their lives. Gorgeously animated, too, with the rain effects giving their conversations a spectral calm and quietude.<br />
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<i><b>Oslo, August 31st</b></i> (dir. Joachim Trier, 2011)<br />
<br />
Much
of December was spent simultaneously trying to catch up on films from
this year that I wanted to get to before the year ended, and major movies
from the past decade that I missed but felt I needed to consider when I eventually
put together a Best of the 2010s list. It was pretty exhausting, but
it meant that I finally saw this, one of <u>the</u> great films of the
past ten years. A day in the life of an addict who leaves his rehab
facility to go for a job interview, it's an often painful, wrenching
film about someone trying so hard to stay afloat, but being gradually
worn down by the people he encounters and the memories they inevitably
stir up.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Lenny Cooke</b></i> (dirs. Josh and Benny Safdie, 2013)<br />
<br />
The release of <i><b>Uncut Gems</b></i> (which is going to be very high up in my Best of 2019 list) gave me a great excuse to catch up on some of the earlier films from the Safdie brothers, and this was easily my favourite. A sad and achingly human documentary about Lenny Cooke, who in 2001 was the highest rated high school basketball player in America, but who ultimately went undrafted while contemporaries like LeBron James went on to superstardom. Using footage shot by Adam Shopkom, who intended to make a film about Cooke in the early '00s but didn't finish the project, as well as interviews with Cooke around his 30th birthday in 2012, the Safdies craft a rich and moving portrait of a man who knows that his life could have turned out very differently.<br />
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<b><i>Rules Don't Apply</i></b> (dir. Warren Beatty, 2014)<br />
<br />
Considering Beatty spent decades wanting to make a film about Howard Hughes, it's hard not to think about how different the film would have been if he had made it as a younger man, but this feels like one of the more interesting versions we could have ended up with. A very fun little movie bolstered by two charming lead performances
from Alden Ehrenreich and Lily Collins, a deep bench of fun character
actors, and an undercurrent of melancholy that lends weight to what
might otherwise be a too light concoction. I was not prepared for how often the title is said (and sung) aloud. <br />
<br />
<i><b>Shin Godzilla</b></i> (dirs. Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi, 2016)<br />
<br />
I'd been meaning to see this for a few years, and my aforementioned <i>Eva</i> odyssey caused all things Anno to shoot way up in priority for me. An exciting and fun monster movie that also doubles up as a cutting satire of the inadequacies of bureaucracy to cope with a large-scale, devastating crisis. In re-imagining the Abe government's response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster as pulp entertainment, Anno and Higuchi take Godzilla back to its roots in more ways than one.<br />
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<b><i>On the Beach Alone at Night</i></b> (dir. Hong Sang-soo, 2017)<br />
<br />
Of the directors who really seemed to break through this decade, Hong Sang-soo remained my biggest blind spot until this year, when I watched a handful of his films on the Criterion Channel. Considering how much I adored this one, and at the very least really liked the others, I think I'm going to enjoy catching up on his already pretty significant oeuvre and seeing his newer work in the years to come.<br />
<br />
The kind of intimate, beautifully acted drama that is catnip to me. Kim Min-hee is absolutely stunning in the lead, really conveying the character’s sense of dislocation as she tries to make sense of her life following the end of an affair, and also letting the audience share her triumph, however Pyrrhic, when she confronts the man who disrupted her life.<br />
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<i><b>The Trial of Tim Heidecker</b></i> (dir. Eric Notarnicola, 2017)<br />
<br />
Bending the rules here since <i>The Trial </i>originally aired as a miniseries on Adult Swim, but I'm including it partly because it screened at the Museum of the Moving Image as a single piece this year, but mainly because it's my list and I set the rules.<br />
<br />
Prior to this year, I had seen a few episodes of Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington's webseries <b><i>On Cinema at the Cinema</i></b>. While I really liked it and enjoyed how they mercilessly made fun of the sort of people who profess to be experts on cinema but don't really know anything, I never kept up with it, and by the time it had grown to include a spinoff show-within-a-show called <i><b>Decker</b></i> (itself a brutal parody of action movies that has made it impossible for me to take most blockbusters even slightly seriously) and used the stars' Twitter accounts to expand the fiction into a sort of venomous ARG with their fans, I thought it was all just too much to follow.<br />
<br />
Then, I read about <b><i>Mister America</i></b>, the spinoff movie in which Heidecker, having avoided going to prison for inadvertently killing nineteen people at a poorly-planned EDM festival (with one additional death ruled as unrelated) runs for District Attorney of San Bernardino, California against the man who tried to convict him. I knew I had to dive back to see how the show about two guys pretending to review movies wound up with a murder trial.<br />
<br />
That's a lot of preamble, which feels appropriate since while <i>The Trial</i> is fantastic on its own terms, with Heidecker giving a terrific performance as a cruel narcissist who is incapable of admitting fault even if, deep down, he knows he's got blood on his hands, it really benefits from the seven years of setup that Heidecker and Turkington have created. Not merely from specific running jokes, like their years long argument about which <i>Star Trek </i>movie took place in San Francisco, but also in their hyper-specific dynamic, which they have crafted into a really cohesive double-act. There's also something so wonderful about the verisimilitude of the presentation, since the whole thing is filmed and edited like a livefeed of an actual trial, and the absolute absurdity of the story they have crafted.Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-58974621325695416752019-02-24T01:01:00.000+00:002019-02-24T02:30:50.061+00:00Ed's Top 30 Films of 2018<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1JhQsIy-tnM357WXtjb4Gq16A-F-oQBG5w-C0yDwgyZaeMdc7w8vHF3x_gCh2LtegeeDEW-s6LOKglSzohGpFPIAwD1N5j5IoFria4N65u99zkuYS5LQAGJtDgmfTh0tnr3XjOclJZFyK/s1600/ready_player_one_still_19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="768" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1JhQsIy-tnM357WXtjb4Gq16A-F-oQBG5w-C0yDwgyZaeMdc7w8vHF3x_gCh2LtegeeDEW-s6LOKglSzohGpFPIAwD1N5j5IoFria4N65u99zkuYS5LQAGJtDgmfTh0tnr3XjOclJZFyK/s640/ready_player_one_still_19.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="color: #0000ee;"><span style="color: black;"><b><i>Ready Player One</i></b>, a film which will definitely not be appearing on this list</span><u><br /></u></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A tiny bit late with this one, largely so that I could catch up on some of the big awards contenders which didn't hit any theatres near me before the end of 2018, but started to roll out in January and February. And partly because I tend to put things off when I can, especially when it's going to involve a whole lot of writing.<br />
<br />
So please enjoy this whole lot of writing, which started out as a Top 25, but expanded a bit as I saw more movies that I loved and wanted to include. 2018 was a good year for movies, all told. Maybe not the deepest bench, though, in the sense that while I found it hard to narrow this list to a mere <i>thirty</i> motion pictures, I couldn't expand it to a top 40 and feel strongly about everything that would be included on that list.<br />
<br />
Speaking of, here are some honorable mentions of movies I loved or liked, but didn't feel strongly enough about to include on this list: <i><b>Let the Sunshine In</b></i>, <i><b>Incredibles 2</b></i>, <i><b>John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection</b></i>,<i><b> Teen Titans Go! to the Movies</b></i>, <i><b>A Star is Born</b></i>, <i><b>A Simple Favor</b></i>, <i><b>The Little Stranger</b></i>, <i><b>Blockers</b></i>, <i><b>You Were Never Really Here</b></i>, <i><b>Zama</b></i>, <i><b>Black Panther</b></i>,<i><b> </b><b>Cold War</b></i>, <i><b>Ralph Breaks the Internet</b></i>, and <i><b>The Miseducation of Cameron Post</b></i>.<br />
<br />
Now, to the list!<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>30. <i><b>The Mule</b></i> (dir. Clint Eastwood)<br />
<br />
A very entertaining and intensely <i>weird</i> movie. Clint Eastwood has such an odd sense of humour and his style comprises so many disparate, conflicting elements, all of which are showcased in this, his best film in years. In one moment you have these gorgeous, painterly scenes showcasing the melancholy beauty of a broken America, and in the next you have scenes of Eastwood's character bonding with lesbian bikers in what feels like a low-key reimagining of <b><i>Pee-Wee's Big Adventure</i></b>. It's weird! A lot of stuff in the movie doesn't work - the whole subplot with Bradley Cooper and Michael Peña slowly zeroing in on Eastwood's nonagenarian drug runner by leaning on a cartel member (played by comedy podcast all-star Eugene Cordero) has no weight or tension to it at all - but it's distinctive, and that counts for a lot.<br />
<br />
29. <i><b>Vox Lux</b></i> (dir. Brady Corbet)<br />
<br />
A confession: I initially put this on my list out of spite, because the audience I saw it with were so vocal about how much they <u><b><i>hated</i></b></u> it that I was determined to like it, despite being decidedly mixed on it at the time. With a few months' distance, though, I find myself thinking more and more positively about Corbet's story of a Lady Gaga-esque pop star (Natalie Portman) and the queasy relationships that exist between trauma and art, artist and public, and persona and reality. I still have some pretty strong reservations about individual elements of the film - I have routinely described the opening scene as "despicable" to people - but the overall experience is so singular and distinctive that I have not been able to shake it.<br />
<br />
28. <b><i>Eighth Grade</i></b> (dir. Bo Burnham)<br />
<br />
A really smart, empathetic movie about growing up in the age of social media that avoids being condescending or patronizing anyone involved. As someone who has grown up online through his work on YouTube, Burnham displays an uncommon savvy for the ways in which technology suffuses every aspect of our lives, while also highlighting the ways in which it hasn't fundamentally altered how awkward and weird and awful being a teenager can be. Elsie Fisher gives one of the best teen performances I've ever seen, particularly when it comes to putting on a show of being fine when you're anything but.<br />
<br />
27. <i><b>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs</b></i> (dirs. Joel and Ethan Coen)<br />
<br />
You know it's been a pretty decent year for film if a very good Coen Brothers' movie barely misses out on my top 25. Debuting on Netflix might give the sense that <i>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs</i> is some sort of minor effort, as does the scrappiness inherent in the very idea of doing an anthology film, since they lend themselves to being mixed bags by their very nature. While some of the segments wound up falling a little flat for me (the James Franco one, despite some striking images and a great opportunity for Stephen Root to go nuts, feels eminently cut-able), most of them are vintage Coens, particularly in their mix of wry humour, violence, and preoccupation with death and the notion of morality in an amoral universe. "Meal Ticket" and "The Gal Who Got Rattled" are up there with the best things they've ever done.<br />
<br />
26. <i><b>Game Night</b></i> (dirs. John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein)<br />
<br />
I rented <i>Game Night</i> once it hit home media, having heard a lot of people say that it was really good and funny. And it was. So much so, that I watched it twice in one night. So much so, that midway through the second viewing, I had already ordered the blu-ray so that I would be able to watch and rewatch it to my heart's content. I've since seen it a bunch of times and it remains one of the most consistently funny comedies to come out of Hollywood in years. The cast are all phenomenal, though special attention should be paid to Rachel McAdams, who gets to be silly in a way that she hasn't for a while, and Jesse Plemons, who turns the sadsack quality that was so charming in <b><i>Friday Night Lights</i></b> into something strangely menacing. What really sets it apart is the film's deliberate aping of David Fincher's style; from the elaborate reversals that make up its plot to its use of long takes, from the cool colour palette to Cliff Martinez's thumping electronic score, it's a pretty thorough pastiche, but the jokes are so fast and numerous that it works as a really funny caper apart from its loving nods to<i><b> The Game</b></i>.<br />
<br />
25. <i><b>Cam</b></i> (dir. Daniel Goldhaber)<br />
<br />
The only movie I can think of that really conveys the desperate, performative dance of existing online, particularly for anyone who makes their living by monetizing their personality and their experiences. Madeline Brewer is superb as a cam girl who discovers that her account has been hacked, and now a woman who looks and sounds exactly like her is broadcasting to her loyal fans. But while the more overtly scary elements of the movie are really effective and unsettling, the most terrifying moments come from its depiction of the kind of fleeting, hardscrabble existence that defines the lives of many sex workers, particularly those who work primarily online.<br />
<br />
24. <i><b>Sorry to Bother You</b></i> (dir. Boots Riley)<br />
<br />
Messy in the best possible way; expansive and distinctive, it covers a
lot of ground as Boots Riley delivers a riotiously pro-union,
anti-corporatie comedy that gets progressively bolder and more
interesting the more he digs into his subject. Lakeith Stanfield continues to prove why he's one of the most interesting actors working today, while Armie Hammer plays on his decidedly preppy vibe in ways that are really cool and disturbing. Fantastic score from tUnE-yArDs, too.<br />
<br />
23. <i><b>Madeline's Madeline</b></i> (dir. Josephine Decker)<br />
<br />
Not since Lodge Kerrigan's <i><b>Keane</b></i> has a movie so fully placed me in the headspace of a character. An intense, exhilarating and discomforting experience, one which takes a potentially very trite and familiar story of someone finding solace in art, then being exploited by people around them, and telling it in a way which feels wholly new.<br />
<br />
22. <i><b>The Rider</b></i> (dir. Chloe Zhao)<br />
<br />
Up there with Nicholas Ray's <b><i>The Lusty Men</i></b> in the pantheon of quietly melancholy rodeo movies. Zhao gets great, authentic performances from her largely non-professional cast, while the harsh beauty of the South Dakota badlands serves as a beautiful backdrop for a story about someone contemplating a major change in their way of life.<br />
<br />
21. <i><b>Crazy Rich Asians</b></i> (dir. Jon M. Chu)<br />
<br />
Hugely funny, with a charming cast, performances from Constance Wu and Michelle Yeoh that have such a frisson they threaten to burn the screen itself, and a visual pop that is so rare in mainstream American comedies. <br />
<br />
20. <i><b>The Sisters Brothers</b></i> (dir. Jacques Audiard)<br />
<br />
While it didn't quite live up to my high expectations as someone who loved the Patrick DeWitt novel, I thought this was pretty great, and easily Audiard's best movie since <b><i>A Prophet</i></b>. Like the other Westerns on this list, it's a movie that mixes a dry sense of humour with moments of tremendous violence, with Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly making for surprisingly watchable and sympathetic mass murderers. It's at its best during a middle section in which Phoenix and Reilly spend time hanging out with the men they have nominally been sent to kill, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed, and Audiard really luxuriates in the uneasy but genuine friendship that develops between the men. It makes the inevitable fall all the harder.<br />
<br />
19. <i><b>Damsel</b></i> (dirs. The Zellner Brothers)<br />
<br />
Hugely enjoyable deadpan Western which, much like <i>The Ballad of Buster Scruggs</i>, depicts the West as a land filled with utter fuckups. Robert Pattinson is hilarious and pathetic as the lovesick suitor who sets off to find the woman he plans to marry, while Mia Wasikowska is brilliant as said woman, someone whose life is consistently made worse by men trying to save her.<br />
<br />
18. <i><b>Revenge</b></i> (dir. Coralie Fargeat)<br />
<br />
Thrilling distillation of the rape-revenge sub-genre down to its key elements, shot through with a righteous feminist fury. The bloody finale is particularly well-executed and satisfying.<br />
<br />
17. <i><b>Blindspotting</b></i> (dir. Carlos López Estrada)<br />
<br />
Something of the anti-<b><i>Vox Lux </i></b>on this list, in that most of it so terrific that I didn't mind that it flubbed the ending. A great day-in-the-life movie buoyed by a pair of exhilarating performances from Daveed Diggs, as a man on probation trying to stay out of trouble for just one more day, and Rafael Casal, as his best friend who seems determined to get into as much trouble as possible. It's a vibrant look at Oakland which comments on gentrification, race and different visions of masculinity in a way which never feels forced, and the question of whether or not their friendship will survive the day provides plenty of tension and focus during its tangents and episodes.<br />
<br />
16. <i><b>The Favourite</b></i> (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)<br />
<br />
The most I have liked a Lanthimos movie since <b><i>Dogtooth</i></b>, which is saying a lot because I think that movie is probably one of the best of the '00s. Less arch and distant than his two previous English-language movies (possibly because he was working from someone else's script), it still retains the eerie quality that has come to define a lot of his work, the sense that you're watching characters who aren't quite human. That works perfectly for a drama set in the court of Queen Anne, since the aristocracy aren't quite normal to begin with, and all the attendant layers of tradition and decorum lend themselves to Lanthimos' interest in power dynamics. The way that the film handles those dynamics proves to be its most masterful element, since the role of protagonist switches so deftly between Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman as their relationships to each other change that you almost don't realize the focus has shifted until it's undeniable.<br />
<br />
15. <i><b>First Reformed</b></i> (dir. Paul Schrader)<br />
<br />
Probably the one film on this list that I can not see myself revisiting. Not because of its quality, but because it's such an unsparing experience that it's hard to imagine going through it all over again. A bracing and clear-eyed look into the climate abyss that articulated a lot of anxieties I and many people of my generation have about the future in a way that few other films have attempted.<br />
<br />
14. <i><b>Hale County This Morning, This Evening</b></i> (dir. RaMell Ross)<br />
<br />
It was a very strong year for personal, form-breaking documentaries and <i>Hale County</i> was one of the most distinctive. Consisting of footage that Ross shot over the course of several years in the eponymous Alabama county, it's a lyrical and impressionistic look at what it means to be poor and black in America. Though he does hone in on a few people as subjects, including several high school basketball players and a couple who are expecting twins, Ross mainly tells his story through landscapes, small moments of life, like a child running around their living room, and in startling edits like the cut from sweat falling off a player's face to raindrops hitting the ground in a storm. It's a mosaic of life that finds time for quiet reflection, as well as one scene in which someone comes over to ask Ross what the hell he's doing filming smoke rising in front of some trees.<br />
<br />
13. <i><b>Shirkers</b></i> (dir. Sandi Tam)<br />
<br />
A
stunning work of deeply personal meta-fiction that works both as an
engrossing mystery, and as a thoughtful meditation on memory, the past,
and how people change. In tracing the story of how she and her friends
as teenagers, aided by an older man whose intentions were somewhat
murky, set out to make an independent road movie in Singapore in the
1990s, Tam plays in the same narrative documentary playground as
something like <i><b>Searching for Sugarman</b></i>, but to more thorny and complicated effect.<br />
<br />
12.<i><b> Annihilation</b></i> (dir. Alex Garland)<br />
<br />
A crushing, overwhelming sensory experience. Garland creates a
disquieting, menacing and beautiful world and sends compelling
characters to face it. Probably the film I've enjoyed reading about the most this year, since it seemed to spark off a lot of great critical writing, particularly in terms of its function as a metaphor for depression.<br />
<br />
11. <i><b>Mission Impossible - Fallout </b></i>(dir. Christopher McQuarrie)<br />
<br />
One day, years from now, Tom Cruise will die, and it will probably be because he had to film a scene in which he had to walk along the bottom of the Marianas trench while carrying three medicine balls in a rucksack. And the resulting movie will probably be pretty entertaining, because Cruise's dedication to giving audience's the most fun imaginable is seemingly boundless, and was in full display in this, the latest exhilarating installment in the venerable <i>Mission: Impossible</i> franchise. Cruise and his frequent collaborator Christopher McQuarrie delivered another globe-trotting wonder filled with incredible, death-defying stunts (including a giddy final helicopter chase) and a wry, knowing sense of humour that never gets in the way of, or undermines the joy of, the big, bold set pieces.<br />
<br />
10.<i><b> Leave No Trace</b></i> (dir. Debra Granik)<br />
<br />
There are so many ways that this movie could have gone wrong. Stories about characters who previously lived off the grid returning to society lend themselves so easily to cheesy jokes or to being patronising. Debra Granik's take on the material, however, is stark and humane. The story of a traumatised veteran (Ben Foster) and his young daughter (Thomasin McKenzie) trying to integrate into society after being forced from their campsite in an Oregon nature reserve is delivered with such tremendous care and delicacy. The film never once feels false or like it's shortchanging the complex relationship the characters have to each other and society in general, and instead makes that complexity key to its most wrenching moments. McKenzie and Foster give two of the best performances I saw all year, ones that feel incredibly lived in and real, suggesting so much depth. I hope that Debra Granik gets to make many, many more movies in the future.<br />
<br />
9. <i><b>Support the Girls</b></i> (dir. Andrew Bujalski)<br />
<br />
Like a Dardennes Brothers' movie with more jokes, <i>Support the Girls</i> is an immensely funny and charming comedy which also serves as a great articulation of the idea that you can love your job but the job will never love you. Regina Hall is wonderful as the owner of a Hooter's style restaurant (though they're trying to be more mainstream), fighting to keep everything under control even as things are crumbling around her, while Haley Lu Richardson continues to demonstrate why she's one of the best actors out there with a performance which is bubbly and fun without ever veering into caricature.<br />
<br />
8. <i><b>Burning</b></i> (dir. Lee Chang-dong)<br />
<br />
Probably the film I most regret not seeing in a theatre. In telling the story of a young man (Yoo Ah-in) trying to determine if the woman he is in love with (Jeon Jong-seo) disappeared because of something her new friend (Steven Yeun) might have done to her, Lee creates an atmosphere of doubt and unease that is almost suffocating. The mystery of the film is less "What happened to Hae-mi?" and more "How can we know anything?" Central to that fine balancing act is Yeun's performance as Ben, which leaves the audience wondering if he is just a rich, disinterested dilettante or an out-and-out psychopath until the very end of the film.<br />
<br />
7. <i><b>The Other Side of the Wind</b></i> (dir. Orson Welles???)<br />
<br />
Considering the long, strange, pseudo-mythic journey that Welles' long-unfinished movie went on between being filmed piecemeal in the 1970s to getting released on Netflix this year - one which involved the Iranian Revolution, Welles' death, and a complicated legal situation that left some doubt over who actually owned the movie - it would not have been surprising if it failed to live up to the hype. What movie could live up to such a legend? Turns out that this one could. Like a lot of Welles' work, it's rough and shaggy in all the right ways, with a vitality to it that is electrifying. In its heady mix of fiction, meta-fiction and (possibly unintentional) autobiography, it feels like a brutal refutation of New Hollywood and European arthouse movies of the '60s, and the ultimate expression of their promise. Welles making fun of Antonioni is better than any movie Antonioni actually made.<br />
<br />
6. <b><i>Mirai</i></b> (dir. Mamoru Hosoda)<br />
<br />
A thrilling, funny, visually dazzling anime that takes the story of a young boy learning to cope with the arrival of his baby sister and gradually spins it out to become a meditation on how each of us are the result of total accidents and tiny decisions made by thousands of people over many centuries. An exhilarating and transcendentally beautiful experience, which also has a dog that acts like an entitled prince.<br />
<br />
5. <b><i>If Beale Street Could Talk</i></b> (dir. Barry Jenkins)<br />
<br />
The film that initially prompted me to delay publishing this list, since I saw that it was coming to a theatre near me just after the New Year, and I thought that I couldn't in good conscience put together a list of the best films of 2018 without seeing the latest film from the director of my favourite film of 2016. (Also, I hadn't even started writing the list, and I will take any excuse to procrastinate on these things.)<br />
<br />
Anyway, <i>Beale Street </i>is superb, even if I prefer <i><b>Moonlight</b></i> slightly. As swooningly romantic and brutally honest a movie about black life in America as you are ever likely to see, Jenkins transforms James Baldwin's heady writing into lush, vivid images. <br />
<br />
4. <i><b>Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse</b></i> (dirs. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman)<br />
<br />
Spider-Man has been my favourite superhero ever since I watched the '90s animated series (with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EeIOeYKd-c">its vocoder-heavy theme tune</a>) as a kid, and <i>Into the Spider-Verse</i> is the best take on the character since the Sam Raimi movies. In its kaleidoscopic visual style and sharp, funny script, it captures the well-meaning confusion of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) as he comes to grips with his newfound powers and the ways they are going to impact his life. The movie's take on an older, sadder Peter Parker (Jake Johnson) also creates a funny contrast to his more idealistic protege and a strain of melancholy that lends a real poignancy to proceedings. Also, John Mulaney plays a talking pig who smashes a plate on his head for no reason. How could I <i>not</i> love it?<br />
<br />
3. <i><b>Minding the Gap</b></i> (dir. Bing Liu)<br />
<br />
It's all too easy to describe <i>Minding the Gap</i> as "<b><i>Hoop Dreams</i></b>, but with skateboarders", especially since Steve James, who directed the earlier movie, serves as a producer on Liu's movie. But also, it's <i>Hoop Dreams</i> with skateboarders! And not merely because both are intimately focused stories of young men growing up in Illinois, shot over many years, with a heavy emphasis on a specific sport; both use their respective sports to explore bigger questions about poverty, addiction, abuse, and masculinity. What sets <i>Minding the Gap</i> apart is the personal angle; since he's making a film about his friends, how they all bonded over skateboarding, and how their lives have all turned out, Bing Liu is both director and character. That lends an uncomfortable closeness to much of the film, one which is then starkly contrasted with the exhilarating footage of them skating around Rockford, Illinois, which has a grace, fluidity and freedom to it that hauntingly conveys the escape they all found in their shared pastime. It's use of "This Year" by The Mountain Goats is also a pretty good contender for best needle drop of 2018.<br />
<br />
2. <i><b>Paddington 2</b></i> (dir. Paul King)<br />
<br />
This was my number one movie of the year from when I saw it in January until sometime in November, when I started reconfiguring my list and trying to weigh all these disparate movies against each other. Building on the charm and humour of the first movie, King and his collaborators don't do much to shake up a successful formula: Ben Whishaw is brittle and sweet as the world's most endearing marmalade-loving bear, the special effects are by turns astonishing (Paddington himself is a seamless work of CGI) and deliberately old-fashioned (the pop-up book motif that mirrors the style of the movie's MacGuffin, an old book which contains clues that lead to immense wealth), and the great and good of British acting show up in roles both big and small. It's a surefire formula that worked gangbusters the first time and works just as well now.<br />
<br />
What sets the sequel apart from its predecessor is the plot point of putting Paddington in prison for a crime he didn't commit, which makes for moments both funny and heartbreaking as he adjusts to life behind bars, and Hugh Grant's hilarious, somewhat self-lacerating performance as Phoenix Buchanon, a washed-up actor trying to stage a comeback through elaborate larceny. It's a truly delectable performance that makes for a classic villainous turn.<br />
<br />
Also, the final scene of the movie (not counting the w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l post-credits musical number) is up there with <i><b>It's a Wonderful Life</b></i> in terms of reducing me to a blubbering wreck.<br />
<br />
1. <i><b>Can You Ever Forgive Me?</b></i> (dir. Marielle Heller)<br />
<br />
I'm obviously writing this before the Oscars have been handed out, but I think it's fair to predict that Melissa McCarthy was robbed. Here she is, giving the performance of her career to date. A performance that is rich, and complicated, and nuanced, and acerbic, and funny, and achingly, painfully human, and while the Academy did right by her with a nomination, it still feels like she has been greatly undervalued. Which is to say nothing of the disservice done to Marielle Heller, who crafted one of the great New York movies. A film that conjures up the wintry, romantic image of people milling around in dusty bars on cold days, trying to kill a few more hours and begrudgingly becoming friends with people through proximity if nothing else.<br />
<br />
That all of these delicious atmospherics are in service of a compelling crime caper, a forgery scheme rife with tension and humour, and a friendship, between McCarthy's Lee Israel and Richard E. Grant's Jack Hock, that is as messy and humane as anything you're likely to see this year, and you've got a real miracle of a film. Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-48144052090365075662018-12-29T00:24:00.001+00:002019-02-24T02:27:20.512+00:00The Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2018<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgibQSCXxolXCA0au8QXuRHuwakZW-9P1luVSzRd0Q1G_l-Lr4esm52o6tpkPdWOLhCZVfm6rUe1LKdkqXh2C3qWMMKnAQXcBoMak2GfWJIaJfS0TFL4TyJnJLSdYw-3fh7sVk6q5OtG7kq/s1600/the-devils-film-oliver-reed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="780" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgibQSCXxolXCA0au8QXuRHuwakZW-9P1luVSzRd0Q1G_l-Lr4esm52o6tpkPdWOLhCZVfm6rUe1LKdkqXh2C3qWMMKnAQXcBoMak2GfWJIaJfS0TFL4TyJnJLSdYw-3fh7sVk6q5OtG7kq/s640/the-devils-film-oliver-reed.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="left"><td class="tr-caption"><i><b>The Devils (1971)</b></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In the words of Aaron Lewis and/or Scott Aukerman, it's been a while.<br />
<br />
Owing to the demands of my actual real-life job, 2018 was the year in which I wrote the least, even as I didn't stop watching movies old and new. While I do miss writing (though it's probably more accurate to say that I miss having the time to write), I don't really miss the - entirely self-created - pressure to get reviews up as quickly as possible, rather than, you know, enjoying having seen a movie and letting my thoughts and feelings on it percolate for a bit.<br />
<br />
To that end, I'll be keeping with tradition and posting lists of the best movies I watched this year over the next few days. This list is a summary of the best older movies I watched for the first time this year (with the cutoff being pre-2010, for cleanliness), and my Best of 2018 list will probably go up in a few days, giving me time for some frantic last-minute movies like <i><b>Aquaman</b></i> and <i><b>The Mule</b></i>. (Sadly two different movies, but both Warner Bros. releases, and who's to say where the DCEU will go next?)<br />
<br />
Before we get into the list itself, I just wanted to mention how much I'll miss FilmStruck. Compiling this list, I realised that almost half of the films on it were ones I saw via that service, and while some were movies that I've been longing to see for years and finally had an easy way of watching, others were ones that I happened to take a chance on because they were included in one of their curated collections. Not since the pre-original content era of Netflix, when they bought huge libraries dirt cheap and you could while away an afternoon watching all four and a half hours of Fritz Lang's <i><b>Dr. Mabuse the Gambler</b></i>, has a streaming service offered the same dizzying rush of discovery. It was like a great local video store that happened to be in your home, and I'll miss it.<br />
<br />
<i>Note: The films are presented chronologically by year of release since they're all really good and trying to rank them would probably cause me to unravel like a shoddy jumper.</i><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><b><i>Twentieth Century</i></b> (dir. Howard Hawks, 1932) <br />
<br />
Though not the oldest movie I watched this year (I saw a handful of silent Lubitschs which were very good, but didn't leave that strong of an impression overall), Hawks' <i>ur</i>-screwball comedy was one of the most purely enjoyable. John Barrymore and Carole Lombard are brilliant as the Broadway impressario and the unknown actress he turns into a star, respectively, and the way their dynamic shifts over the course of the movie as she eclipses him is very deftly done. The real meat of the movie, though, comes in the second half, when the two estranged collaborators end up on the same train, and Barrymore starts scheming in close quarters. Very funny, while also fairly unsparing in its depiction of Barrymore's character as a manipulator and borderline abusive.<br />
<br />
<i><b>The Human Condition</b></i> (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1959-1961)<br />
<br />
I watched Kobayashi's humanist epic over the course of several months because, at more than 9 hours spread over three films, each of which is in turn split into two halves, it's quite a commitment. However, that I instantly remembered what had happened in the previous installments and was immediately drawn back into the story of a pacifist (Tatsuya Nakadai) trying to survive in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, even when it had been weeks or months between viewings, is a testament to the film's power. The journey that Kaji goes on over the course of the series is pretty heartbreaking, since we see him go from opposing the war to reluctantly running a labour camp to desperately clinging to life in Manchuria, all the while having his beliefs in humanity sorely, if not brutally, tested. <br />
<br />
<i><b>Purple Noon</b></i> (dir. René Clément, 1960)<br />
<br />
I'll always have a soft spot for Anthony Minghella's adaptation of <b><i>The Talented Mr. Ripley</i></b>, which is a wonderfully sultry and deeply stressful movie. However, Clément's earlier adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel might be a touch better, and it has a better handle on the effortless charm and sociopathy of Tom Ripley, played by Alain Delon at his most beautiful and beguiling. It does bungle the ending a tad by suggesting that Tom is about to get caught, but Delon does such a brilliant job of illustrating Ripley's cunning that even that feels like a mere inconvenience, and like he'll be out and about murdering to his heart's content in no time. <br />
<br />
<i><b>Kwaidan</b></i> (dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)<br />
<br />
I don't have many Halloween traditions, but I think I may make watching this anthology of Japanese horror stories one. Comprised of four stories that range in style and scope from small, plaintive ghost stories to century-spanning epics replete with naval battles, Kobayashi delivers harrowing jump scares and unnerving chills with aplomb. It's also vivid and vibrant in its use of colour, and Kobayashi's camera moves with a Sam Raimi-esque freneticism at times.<br />
<br />
<b><i>La Collectionneuse</i></b> (dir. Éric Rohmer, 1967)<br />
<br />
It's hard to describe <i>La Collectionneuse</i> without making it sound like a parody of a certain kind of French cinema. Beautiful people swanning around a big country house? Check. Love triangles? Check. Long, digressive discussions about art and love and whatever happens to go through the characters' minds? That's a big check. But it's probably the best possible version of that style of filmmaking. Rohmer had such a brilliant ability for making those sorts of heady discussions feel natural, and for preventing the emotions of the characters from being intellectualised to death. His story is populated by real people, they just happen to be much smarter and more gorgeous than anyone has any right to be. Also <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/1056355547849592832">every single shot in this movie</a> is utterly breathtaking and could be the cover to a great album.<br />
<br />
<i><b>The Firemen's Ball </b></i>(dir. Miloš Forman, 1967)<br />
<br />
Considering that he directed <i><b>Amadeus</b></i>, one of my favourite movies ever, I'd seen relatively little of Forman's work prior to his death earlier this year, something which I quickly set out to correct. This, the last of the films he made in his native Czechoslovakia before going into exile, was far and away my favourite. A bawdy and intricate comedy about a group of volunteer firefighters trying to organise a ball to commemorate their retired chairman, it beautifully captures the mounting sense of chaos that unfurls when a system allows the venal or merely incompetent any smidgen of power or influence. In its almost documentary realism and mounting absurdity, it feels like a predecessor to the work of Armando Iannucci.<br />
<br />
<i><b>The Sorrow and the Pity</b></i> (dir. Marcel Ophüls, 1969)<br />
<br />
A pretty immense piece of work, deserving of much higher renown than it currently has as a throwaway line in <b><i>Annie Hall</i></b>. Ophüls does “let’s hear from both sides” journalism than most of the modern practitioners: even though he talks at length with former German soldiers and a prototypical dapper Nazi, he never lets the movie melt into equivocation, or loses sight of his moral responsibility as the author of the work. It's as clear-eyed and thorough an account of French collaboration and resistance during World War II as you are likely to find.<br />
<br />
<i><b>The Devils</b></i> (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)<br />
<br />
A film that I'd been wanting to see for years and, while the version I saw was not the most complete version because, as far as I'm aware, that still hasn't been shown outside of special screenings, it was enough to demonstrate why it is held up as such a masterpiece of bravura British cinema. It's a visionary, excessive film which finds in the fall of Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) a vehicle for exploring the kind of mania and hysteria that could cause a community to claim to be possessed, and of the brutal corrupting power of religion to idly destroy anyone.<br />
<br />
<i><b>Fiddler on the Roof</b></i> (dir. Norman Jewison, 1971)<br />
<br />
One of the best musicals ever made, and I can't believe it took me this long to watch it. It brims with life, both in its joyous celebrations and in its terrible, unsettling hints of things to come. Topol's performance as Tevye is one of the most charismatic ever committed to the screen.<br />
<br />
<i><b>What's Up, Doc?</b></i> (dir. Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)<br />
<br />
Deeeeeelightful. The first act feels strained, with Bogdanovich and his cast ramping up to the pace and tone of screwball comedies and stumbling (albeit charmingly) from scene to scene. Once all four of the identical suitcases that form the backbone of the story’s craziness are in play and Ryan O’Neal is fighting the irresistible pull of Barbra Streisand at her cutest, it becomes a graceful, giddy romp. <br />
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More than any of Bogdanovich’s other films from his early period, it feels like a kid-in-a-candy-store movie. He’s clearly having a blast getting to make a live-action cartoon, paying homage to his heroes and repurposing old gags for a savvy ‘70s audience.<br />
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<b><i>The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum</i></b> (dirs. Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975)<br />
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Great thriller about a young woman who sleeps with a terrorist, then finds her life being torn apart by the tabloid press and an indifferent police force. It’s kind of like <b><i>Absence of Malice</i></b> but with the added complexity of sex and gender, as well as moments of absurdism. It's also a great showcase for that feeling of leaden, grey, Cold War hopelessness that you also see in some of Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's movies from the time, or even something less scrappy like the BBC version of <b><i>Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy</i></b>. A palpable sense that everyone could be blown off the face of the Earth at any moment, so you can either succumb to bleakness or try to do something.<br />
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<i><b>Abigail's Party</b></i> (dir. Mike Leigh, 1977)<br />
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Probably the biggest touchstone of late 20th century British drama, at least as far as mass media goes, and it does not disappoint. Alison Steadman is utterly brilliant as the hostess of a small dinner party which gradually becomes more uncomfortable and violent as every needling remark starts to make the guests' resentments, whether personal or just as a natural outgrowth of their respective classes, start to bubble up. A masterclass in how to use a confined space and a good cast to ratchet up tension, even when the stakes are seemingly so low. <br />
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<i><b>Hardcore</b></i> (dir, Paul Schrader, 1978)<br />
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When I was first getting into movies in any serious way, my primary gateway was trying to understand <i>Simpsons</i> jokes. Sure, I might have sought out <b><i>Rashomon</i></b> anyway, but wanting to know why Homer saying "That's not how I remember it" was funny spurred me on to see it much sooner. I know that I've matured and evolved as a person, because now I watch older movies to understand memes. I've been wanting to see this early Paul Schrader effort ever since seeing the scene in which George C. Scott, playing a Midwestern father whose daughter goes missing after visiting Los Angeles, sits in a movie theatre and reacts to footage of his daughter in a porn movie, used as a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig0kLoPYi-4">hyperbolic reaction to different media</a>.<br />
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The scene retains a lot of its visceral disquiet in its original context, even if I first experienced it in much more light-hearted circumstances. What was really surprising about seeing the movie, and where the scene is placed within it, was discovering that it happens in the first third. I had always assumed that it was this big, draining climactic moment, the culmination of a Schraderian descent into darkness. Instead it's more or less the inciting incident, and Scott searching for his daughter by becoming more involved in the late-70s porn scene - which Schrader depicts as a more frank version of Hollywood, with little of the keening judgement one might expect from someone who had a strict religious upbringing - makes for a more engrossing story overall, even as it flirts with ridiculousness.<br />
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<b><i>The Driller Killer</i></b> (dir. Abel Ferrara, 1979)<br />
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Probably the nastiest, scuzziest movie I watched all year. A brutal journey through New York at its seedy nadir (or its seedy peak, if you're into the whole No Wave, "I could be murdered at any moment!" thing) as a painter (Ferrera) grows increasingly frustrated and isolated from the people around him and starts taking a power drill to strangers. The performances and some of the gore effects are <i>rough</i>, but the atmosphere of the film is undeniable. Few films better conjure up the sense of alienation that comes from being in a big city, or the palpable dread that you'll be the one to slip through the cracks if you don't do something.<br />
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<i><b>Tampopo</b></i> (dir. Juzo Itami, 1985)<br />
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FilmStruck had a bunch of Itami's movies available at one point which I kept meaning to watch but never got around to. Just this one taste of his work has me regretting not seeing more when I had the opportunity, because it is as distinctive and strange a vision as I have seen in a while. A comedy sort-of-Western about a pair of truck drivers who decide to help a young woman improve her noodle recipe, it's a sensuous and funny film about the different ways in which we relate to food, an idea which is further explored through sketches, unconnected to the main narrative, about a couple introducing different foodstuffs into their sex life, and a dead woman coming back to life to make her family one last meal. An hilarious and thrillingly weird movie.<br />
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<i><b>City on Fire</b></i> (dir. Ringo Lam, 1987)<br />
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Like a lot of film people who came of age in the '90s and '00s, I knew this film primarily as one of Tarantino's main influences for <b><i>Reservoir Dogs</i></b>, and as such felt a kind of pathetically fanboyish desire to see it to get a fuller understanding of how that film came to be (even as I drifted away from QT and began to feel that, while he's good, everyone can stand to chill out just a bit). Beyond seeing just how much of <i>City of Fire</i>'s DNA wound up in that later movie - spoilers: A LOT - it's a brilliantly lean thriller that makes great use of Chow Yun-Fat's charisma, athleticism and vulnerability. Even as Chow's undercover cop is infiltrating a gang he will ultimately betray, you really feel like he forges a connection with the other gang members, which lends weight to the string of reversals and double-crosses that make up the end of the movie.<br />
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<i><b>Close-Up </b></i>(dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)<br />
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One of the last "major" Kiarostami movies that I hadn't seen, and it's probably my favourite. A knotty blend of fiction and documentary in which Kiarostami retells the story of a man who inveigled himself into the lives of a family by claiming to be a famous Iranian filmmaker, where the real people involved portray themselves in recreations, and also contains actual footage of the man's trial. It's a heady meditation on the nature of reality, storytelling, and cinematic form, but one which manages to be moving in its depiction of the hurt inflicted on the family, and the desire of the impersonator to be forgiven.<br />
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<i><b>The Exorcist III</b></i>, aka <i><b>Legion</b></i> (dir. William Peter Blatty, 1990/2016)<br />
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Another movie that I was partly driven to see because of its online presence (specifically<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_1362845487&feature=iv&src_vid=zH8ynu0jRvY&v=xQxbo85BxnI"> this shudder-inducing jump scare</a>), as well as its reputation as something of a wounded bird on account of how Blatty was forced to reshoot the ending and make it more of an <i>Exorcist</i> movie than he intended. I watched the reconstructed version from 2016, which suffers a little bit because it was assembled from different sources of varying quality (most of Brad Dourif's role as the villain is taken from video and is incredibly murky as a result), but those wind up being minor problems for a very effective and unsettling psychological thriller. George C. Scott is great as Detective Kinderman, taking over the role played by fellow initial-lover Lee J. Cobb in the original <i><b>Exorcist</b></i>, a man whose good-humour barely hides the dread that settles over him as he investigates a series of grizzly murders. In its mix of existential musings and elaborate deaths, it feels like a precursor of <i><b>Seven</b></i> and its derivatives, though it's considerably better than pretty much all of them.<br />
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<i><b>Basic Instinct</b></i> (dir. Paul Verheoven, 1992)<br />
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There's a broad sub-genre of movies that came out when I was young which still have an air of danger to them, for me. <i><b>Candyman</b></i> was the big one, mainly because the poster <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unknown-Candyman-Movie-Poster-24x36/dp/B004BIZVZG">freaked me the fuck out</a> when I saw it hanging in the corner shop where my family rented videos. <i>Basic Instinct</i> was another, largely because the hype around it in the early 90s made it sound so thoroughly sordid and illicit. It was a movie for grown-ups which even some grown-ups said people shouldn't see. It wasn't just dirty, it was <i>wrong</i>.<br />
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All of this is to say that I had built <i>Basic Instinct </i>up to be a very different movie in my head than what it actually is. I had envisioned this deeply transgressive, even perverted work of pure decadence, when it's in fact a knowingly silly dissection of American hangups around sex and sexuality circa 1992. Someone (most likely Griffin Newman or David Sims of the Blank Check podcast) described it as doing for sex what Verheoven's earlier movie <b><i>RoboCop</i></b> did for violence, and that is a perfect distillation of its overheated appeal. It takes an aspect of Hollywood filmmaking and pushes it to its ludicrous extremes, offering a take on film noir that removes all of the Hays Code-enforced subtlety and nuance to let its sweaty id run riot.<br />
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<i><b>My Cousin Vinny</b></i> (dir. Jonathan Lynn, 1992)<br />
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For years, I knew two things about <i>My Cousin Vinny</i>; that it was meant to be really good, and that people thought Marisa Tomei didn't deserve to win Best Supporting Actress for it (or at the very least that there was a long-standing rumour that Jack Palance read out her name by mistake and everyone just went with it). The first of those things is true and the second most definitely isn't. I mean, it is weird that she won, because it's not the kind of performance that usually wins Oscars. It's not especially showy, it's just a really funny performance in a really entertaining movie, one which functions as both a fun fish out of water comedy and as a solid courtroom/mystery.<br />
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</b></i> <i><b>Flesh and Bone </b></i>(dir. Steve Kloves, 1993) <br />
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This was recommended to me by my Shot/Reverse Shot co-host Matt Risby years ago, in part because we're both fans of Kloves' only other directorial effort, 1989's <b><i>The Fabulous Baker Boys</i></b>, and share a fascination with his career: other than directing those two wonderful, character-based dramas, his work since 1993 has consisted of adapting <i><b>Wonder Boys</b></i>, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, writing every <i><b>Harry Potter </b></i>movie except <b><i>Order of the Phoenix</i></b>, and most recently the first of those terrible Andrew Garfield-Emma Stone <b><i>Spider-Man</i></b> movies. Not the career you would expect from someone who made this movie, which is an expertly handled neo-Western about a man (Dennis Quaid) who finds himself coming back into contact with his criminal father (James Caan) after becoming involved with a stripper (Meg Ryan). It's rich in mood and texture, with Quaid on particularly great form as a quiet, intense person trying to keep it together.<br />
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<i><b>But I'm a Cheerleader</b></i> (dir. Jamie Babbit, 1999)<br />
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I'd been wanting to see this for a while, mainly because it has one of those titles that pops out the first time you read it, and was thrilled to finally see it in all its glowing, hilarious glory. Natasha Lyonne stars as Megan, a young woman who is sent to a gay conversion camp when her family and friends suspect her of being a lesbian, a setting which Babbit uses to mercilessly ridicule the kind of religious fundamentalists who would run such an institution, while also imbuing Megan's own discovery of her sexuality with real heart, particularly in her relationship with fellow student Graham (Clea DuVall).<br />
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Reading up on the film after watching it, I thought it was interesting that it was dismissed as sub-John Waters by a lot of critics. Waters' work was one of the things that occurred to me while watching it - the pastel colour scheme and heightened tone recall <i><b>Hairspray</b></i> and <i><b>Cry-Baby</b></i> very strongly - but Babbit uses that kind of arch, peppy satire to her own brilliant ends, injecting more emotion into the story through the trauma of repression. Not to drift into 2018 movies too much, but it makes for an interesting pairing with Desiree Akhavan's <b><i>The Miseducation of Cameron Post</i></b>, which tackles similar subject matter in a much more realistic and dramatic, though no more or less affecting, way.<br />
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<i><b>Josie & The Pussycats</b></i> (dirs. Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan, 2001)<br />
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In addition to FilmStruck helping guide my movie watching this year, I should also shout out the Blank Check podcast, which pointed me in the direction of movies I might not have sought out otherwise. This was definitely one of the most fun movies I watched as a result of listening to that show; a maximalist pop music/corporate entertainment satire that is giddily silly, has great songs, and an hilarious cast, with Rosario Dawson and Parker Posey being the undeniable MVPs. Tara Reid is also very funny playing one of the most sweetly naive human beings to ever grace a cinema screen.<br />
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<i><b>Shattered Glass </b></i>(dir. Billy Ray, 2003)<br />
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I'm a sucker for a good journalism movie, but what I really love is a good <i>bad</i> journalism movie. In telling the story of Stephen Glass (Hayden Christensen), a writer for <i>The New Republic </i>who was exposed for having fabricated dozens of stories, writer-director Billy Ray serves up great big helpings of very smart, capable people doing their jobs as best they can, even when that job means proving that someone they like, and like working with, is a total fraud who is about to be exposed and make them all into laughingstocks. The scenes of Glass' editor (Peter Sarsgaard) slowly dismantling his lies and realising just how easily his claims could be debunked are really electrifying, with Christensen's affectless quality being perfect for someone trying to smile and dissemble their way through a scandal.<br />
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<i><b>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</b></i> (dir. Apitchapong Weerasethakul, 2010)<br />
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Kind of impossible to describe. Like a lot of Weerasethakul’s work, it’s incredibly engrossing, and the way he forces you to lean in makes the minimal story (it's pretty much all in the title) and wry humour feel totally enveloping. There's something almost transcendent about the way in which he makes simple techniques, such as having a character slowly fade into a scene so that the audience only notices them at the same time that the other characters do, regain their power to astonish. Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-43140295081988709302017-12-31T23:59:00.000+00:002018-01-01T16:42:28.172+00:00Ed's Top 25 Films of 2017<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXvzPIZYCK7v6tGmdgQJHPrNNUp7WyQmzwJznUux0cMvxGQAiK8rClDTNaG-tqYA34a6EyeRfFsPJ7uZsh7e1wpcJZqu0m7CZ6O2yCIbbEKeBeXqcT1tMlUx8rENAq7p14kxzSxZyLBVz/s1600/hero_Mother-TIFF-2017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="1200" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXvzPIZYCK7v6tGmdgQJHPrNNUp7WyQmzwJznUux0cMvxGQAiK8rClDTNaG-tqYA34a6EyeRfFsPJ7uZsh7e1wpcJZqu0m7CZ6O2yCIbbEKeBeXqcT1tMlUx8rENAq7p14kxzSxZyLBVz/s640/hero_Mother-TIFF-2017.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13.464000701904297px;"><b><i>mother!</i></b>, a film which will definitely not be appearing on this list</td></tr>
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Now that 2017 is over and done with, it's time to take stock, and figure out what kind of year it has been. As is often the case, I thought it was a pretty great year for cinema, and I found something to love in lots of films I saw this year, from huge blockbusters that found time to ruminate on the nature of mythmaking, to heartfelt coming of age stories that also managed to be utterly horrifying. It was a good year, and while there are still some blindspots here and there - for example: I have yet to see <i><b>Call Me By Your Name</b></i>, which definitely seems like a movie I would like - I'm very happy with this list of the 25 films that stuck with me over the last year.<br />
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25. <b><i>Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer </i></b>(dir. Joseph Cedar)<br />
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One of the more pleasant surprises of 2017. An oddly charming comedy of manners with the clockwork plotting of a thriller, which takes Richard Gere's mostly harmless grifter from harassing Dan Stevens on his morning jogs to the centre of an international conspiracy. Lior Ashkenazi is absolutely wonderful as an Israeli politician who Norman befriends at a low-ebb, and who then offers him a level of access and importance that he had previously only dreamed about.<br />
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24. <b><i>Logan</i></b> (dir. James Mangold)<br />
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A poignant and wrenching film about decay and death which also happens to feature roughly eleven million people having adamantium claws rammed through their faces. Mangold finally gives us a good X-Men movie for the first time since 2003, largely by ignoring the leaden continuity and most of the rules of superhero cinema that have grown up in the intervening years, while Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart get to say heartfelt goodbyes* to characters they've been playing for the better part of two decades.<br />
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23. <b><i>Marjorie Prime</i></b> (dir. Michael Almereyda)<br />
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A lo-fi sci-fi film which uses a quartet of fantastic performances to sell its central conceit; a near-future in which sophisticated AIs can be used to replicate the dead, but only through interaction with the living who are meant to help fill in the details of their lives and their behaviours. Lois Smith deservedly gets the most attention as Marjorie, the older woman who interacts with the recreation of her dead husband (Jon Hamm), but Geena Davis is also brilliant and heartbreaking as her daughter, whose uneasiness with the technology takes on an increasingly tragic resonance. The particular structure of the film, which makes a different character the lead in each act, means that everyone gets a chance to shine, and results in a final scene which is among the most haunting and strange things I've ever seen in a movie.<br />
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22. <b><i>My Life as a Zucchini</i></b> (dir. Claude Barras)<br />
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Deeply sad and incredibly moving stop-motion animation about children in a foster home. It treats the childrens' stories of abandonment, abuse and trauma seriously, but finds humour and warmth in their time together without ever becoming trite.<br />
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21. <b><i>Landline</i></b> (dir. Gillian Robespierre)<br />
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A much less focused film (or perhaps "less easily defined by a single plot point") than <i><b>Obvious Child</b></i>, but it may be better for it. A warm, enveloping and digressive comedy that explores the lives of its characters with wit and heart, and ends almost every scene on a great joke. Jenny Slate remains a punchy miracle of a human being.<br />
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20. <b><i>A Quiet Passion</i></b> (dir. Terence Davies)<br />
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A bitingly funny, exquisitely sad film about creativity and loneliness. Davies' take on the life of Emily Dickinson sidesteps pretty much every pitfall of the biopic; it avoids easy efforts to psychoanalyse its subject in favour of letting Cynthia Nixon luxuriate in Dickinson's love for biting <i>bon mots</i> and slowly shrinking the scope and scale of her life until it is confined to a single room. A remarkable study of a remarkable woman.<br />
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19. <b><i>Step</i></b> (dir. Amanda Lipitz)<br />
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Filmed at a Baltimore high school against the backdrop of the Freddie Gray murder and its aftermath, <i>Step</i> is a documentary which is finely attuned to the cultural moment, and displays a keen understanding of how the personal and political are so inextricably intertwined. It follows a year in the life of a step team at The Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, showing how the creation and performance of their routines offers focus and escape for young black women who are all too aware of how limited their options are, and the fragility of their lives in a society where "it could have been me". An ultimately uplifting film, but one which treats the inner lives of its subjects with tremendous weight and respect.<br />
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18. <b><i>Wonderstruck</i></b> (dir. Todd Haynes)<br />
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I've read and heard a lot of withering criticism about <i>Wonderstruck</i> and I get it. Its bifurcated structure, with one storyline taking place in the 1920s and shot as a silent film, and the other taking place in the 1970s, is very bloody precious, as is the way Haynes runs the two strands in parallel and eventually brings them together. But, reader, I don't care about all that, because I cried pretty solidly for the last thirty minutes.<br />
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17. <b><i>Lucky</i></b> (dir. John Carroll Lynch)<br />
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A brilliant showcase for the late Harry Dean Stanton who takes to the character of Lucky, a brittle atheist forced to confront his own mortality, with customary gusto. It's a rambling film of funny, philosophical digressions which derives its greatest pleasures from seeing Stanton and longtime friend/collaborator David Lynch sitting at a bar, talking about a tortoise who wants to be free.<br />
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16. <b><i>Columbus</i></b> (dir. Kogonada)<br />
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Set in the city of Columbus, Indiana, which boasts a surprisingly large number of buildings in the Modern architectural style, Kogonada's film is one of the most visually striking releases of the year. Nearly every shot makes use of the startling and unique setting for maximum aesthetic and dramatic impact, at times seeming to strand John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson in an empty world in which they have no choice but to help each other cope with the problems caused, in one way or another, by their respective parents.<br />
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15. <b><i>Faces Places</i></b> (dirs. Agnès Varda and J.R.)<br />
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Agnès Varda has been one of the brightest lights of cinema for six decades now, and it's so wonderful getting to see her on such playful form as she approaches 90. A travelogue of sorts, <i>Faces Places</i> follows Varda as she travels around France in a van with the artist J.R., a kindred spirit despite being fifty-something years her junior. When they arrive in an interesting location, they set up a photo booth, take pictures of people, talk to them about their lives, then blow the pictures up to a massive scale and place them on nearby buildings. Their encounters with ordinary people (who are often more extraordinary than on first blush), and their often funny but occasional tense interactions with each other, make Varda and J.R.'s film one of the most sweetly and quietly moving documentaries of the year.<br />
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14.<b><i> Logan Lucky</i></b> (dir. Steven Soderbergh)<br />
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Steven Soderbergh ended his retirement - which only lasted four years and saw him work on films and TV shows nearly constantly - with a bang. Joe Bang, that is. While Channing Tatum, Adam Driver and Riley Keough all give winning performances as the scheming Logan siblings, it was Daniel Craig's volatile explosive expert who ran away with this sprightly Southern heist movie. No one has ever eked so much joy out of the word "incarcerated".<br />
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13. <b><i>The Post</i></b> (dir. Steven Spielberg)<br />
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Like his other recent "Soul of America" movies <b><i>Lincoln</i></b> and <b><i>Bridge of Spies</i></b>, Spielberg tackles a weighty historical subjects with tremendous deftness, turning the story of The Washington Post's friendly rivalry with The New York Times over who would be the first to publish The Pentagon Papers into a faintly giddy affair about professionals doing what they're best at, both because they believe in a Higher Truth and because they really, really enjoy the chase. That extends to the actors, too, with Tom Hanks relishing the chance to chew scenery as swashbuckling editor Ben Bradlee, Meryl Streep offering one of her lighter performances as The Post's publisher Katherine Graham, while a litany of great character actors (including, but not limited to, Bob Odenkirk, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, Alison Brie, Bradley Whitford and Tracy Letts) all get a scene or two to shine.<br />
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Spielberg does lay it on a little thick at times, even to the point of undercutting the points he is trying to make. The chief example being when Graham walks out of the Supreme Court past a crowd of awestruck women, which overstates a point he makes with an earlier, subtler scene in which she passes through an exclusively female crowd in order to enter the (formerly) male-only world of the New York Stock Exchange. However, it's hard to begrudge him such emphatic moments when the movie surrounding them is so much fun.<br />
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12. <b><i>Star Wars: The Last Jedi</i></b> (dir. Rian Johnson)<br />
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<i><b>The Force Awakens</b></i> was a really fun movie, but it wasn't particularly demanding. It presented all the stuff that people like about <i>Star Wars</i> in an exciting and efficient way, but it didn't ask much of the audience. Rian Johnson's addition to the series <i>is</i> demanding. It doesn't just reuse the symbols that George Lucas created, but questions them. Is the battle between the New Order and the Resistance - and, by extension, the old conflict between the Empire and the Rebels - a Manichean conflict between good and evil, or are there people in the middle who don't much care either way? If that's the case, what is ultimately worth fighting for? Were the Jedi a force for good, or were they a bunch of musty zealots who let the Universe go to hell because their belief in what was proper got in the way of doing what was right? That Johnson delivers a hugely fun <i>Star Wars</i> movie - complete with thrilling space battles, new aliens, and probably the best lightsaber fight of the whole series - while constantly arguing that <i>Star Wars</i> needs to end, or at the very least needs to die and be reborn as something new, makes his interrogation of its myths all the more impressive.<br />
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11. <b><i>Mudbound</i></b> (dir. Dee Rees)<br />
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It's a tremendous shame that Netflix's most significant release to date has been all but forgotten in the awards season crush, especially since far more people have willingly subjected themselves to <b><i>Bright</i></b> instead. (I at least have watched both, so I'm only halfway awful.) Dee Rees' film is a haunting story of two families - one black, one white - living and working next to each other in Mississippi after World War II, and coming to terms with (or, in most cases, fighting against) the shifts that conflict caused when black soldiers who fought overseas and experienced a taste of life without Jim Crow returned to a system of brutal segregation. One of the few modern movies with a two hour plus running time which felt like it deserved to be longer.<br />
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10. <b><i>Good Time</i></b> (dirs. Benny and Josh Safdie)<br />
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Much like his <b><i>Twilight</i></b> co-star Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson has spent most of the time since that series ended reinventing himself as a compelling character actor, letting the wild energy that he hid for his most famous role burst forth for directors like David Cronenberg and David Michôd. The Safdie brothers get his best performance yet in this brilliant, darkly funny movie about a bank robbery gone awry. As Pattinson tears around New York trying to scrape together enough money to bail out his brother (Benny Safdie, on heartbreaking form), he lets us see every ounce of his character's intelligence as he runs through every possible scheme, while also letting us know that he's not so smart that he can avoid the consequences of his actions. Rarely has a journey into darkness been this fun or unnerving.<br />
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9. <b><i>Strong Island</i></b> (dir. Yance Ford)<br />
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In a year of tough, uncompromising documentaries, <i>Strong Island</i> is easily one of the rawest and most vividly realised. Yance Ford explores the decades-old murder of his brother William, showing how the system failed to convict his killer despite overwhelming evidence, and how the pain of William's death continues to ripple out many years later. A powerful, personal and provocative work.<br />
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8. <b><i>Personal Shopper </i></b>(dir. Olivier Assayas)<br />
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I was not expecting this movie to be as unnerving and suspenseful as it is, mainly because I had purposefully avoided finding out too much about it. So much so that when people referred to it as a ghost story, I assumed they were being metaphorical, and not that there were actual apparitions in it. It's a film about haunting and being haunted, which manages to present great seriousness and silliness simultaneously, acknowledging the campy qualities of the supernatural while using them to explore grief and its ramifications in ways which I found shattering. Kristen Stewart's best performance in a run of really great work.<br />
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7. <b><i>City of Ghosts</i></b> (dir. Matthew Heineman)<br />
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A brutal movie whose flashes of hope and warmth only make its horrors more terrible (though the reverse is also true). Heineman's documentary follows the efforts of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a group of activists and citizen journalists who reported on the violence and oppression of ISIS when they captured Raqqa in 2014, as they risk their lives to tell the world about what was happening to their people. Beyond the undeniable heroism of the journalists themselves, the film shows the stress and strain of living life under constant threat of discovery, and the terrible toll that was exacted on them and their families as they were eventually forced to flee their homeland. A vital, overwhelming work.<br />
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6. <b><i>The Shape of Water</i></b> (dir. Guillermo del Toro)<br />
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I'm not sure if this is Guillermo del Toro's <i>best</i> film, though it certainly ranks pretty high for me, but it's probably the film which best embodies his sensibilities. At once gorgeously romantic and awash in fluids both bodily and otherwise, <i>The Shape of Water</i> reimagines the iconography of classic movie monsters like <i><b>The Creature from the Black Lagoon</b></i> and turns it into an achingly sweet story of outcasts finding love and escape through each other. Sally Hawkins is always great, but here she is <i>especially</i> great as a mute woman who discovers something wondrous and strange while working as a cleaner in a government testing facility at the height of the Cold War.<br />
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5. <b><i>Lady Bird</i></b> (dir. Greta Gerwig)<br />
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Hella tight. Greta Gerwig gives us a great coming of age story, complete with a complicated, authentic mother-daughter relationship between Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, and some of the funniest moments of the year (my personal highlight being the P.E. teacher having to take over the drama club at short notice). It's a richly detailed comedy that knows that specifics help make stories universal. Evoking Joan Didion in the opening of your film about Sacramento sets a high bar, but I think <i>Lady Bird</i> rose to meet it.<br />
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4. <b><i>Raw</i></b> (dir. Julia Ducournau)<br />
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Funny, horrifying, disgusting and insightful. An ingenious mix of body horror and coming of age story that is as invested in the sexual awakening of its central character and her fractious relationship with her older sister as it is in her gradually emerging cannibalism. Bonus points for using "Giddy Stratospheres" by The Long Blondes in one scene.<br />
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3. <b><i>God's Own Country</i></b> (dir. Francis Lee)<br />
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A bleak yet tender romance whose emotional brutality perfectly suits the Yorkshire Moors of its setting; it's at once lush and unforgiving. Josh O'Connor and Alec Secareanu are both fantastic physical performers, and are completely believable as men who spend all their time engaging in the back-breaking labour of running a farm, and as lovers who slowly, tentatively develop an emotional intimacy to match their physical one.<br />
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2. <b><i>Get Out</i></b> (dir. Jordan Peele)<br />
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Probably the most entertaining and disquieting film I've seen in years. Visually and tonally, Peele recalls everything from <i><b>The Stepford Wives</b></i> and <b><i>Rosemary's Baby</i></b> to <b><i>Under the Skin</i></b>, but the humour and perspective are uniquely his own. It also features at least half a dozen of the best performances I saw in any film this year, but the MVPs are Marcus Henderson, Lakeith Stanfield and Betty Gabriel, who all give layered performances which only become more nuanced and horrifying the more times you rewatch the movie. And few films this year demanded to be rewatched more than <i>Get Out</i>.<br />
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1. <b><i>Your Name.</i></b> (dir. Makoto Shinkai)<br />
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This was a late, surprise winner, so much so that I only watched it a couple of weeks ago on a whim because people had said that it was pretty good, and I knew that it had been shockingly successful for an anime. Knowing so little about it going in was a blessing, since part of what's so brilliant about Makoto Shinkai's swooningly romantic film is how it manages a very tricky shift in tone. It starts out as a faintly goofy, likable body-swap comedy in which a teenage boy and girl keep switching lives, and find themselves having to stumble through unfamiliar locations with new friends and families, then having to navigate the aftermath of that when they switch back. Once the film starts to explore the nature of that swap in more detail, the movie becomes something very different, and by the end I was practically shouting at the screen, urging the characters to figure something out. The ability for a movie to take me from skeptical laughter to the verge of tears in a matter of hours is everything I love about cinema, and one of many reasons why this charming, exhilarating movie is my favourite of the year.Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-12727940554991223112017-12-31T01:10:00.001+00:002017-12-31T01:10:17.777+00:00The Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'll be putting together my top films of 2017 list over the next day, so it's as good a time as any to look back at the older (i.e. pre-2010) movies I watched for the first time this year. I didn't watch as many movies this year as I would have liked, but I saw plenty of great ones, and here are the twenty that really stuck with me, presented alphabetically.<br />
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<b><i></i></b><br />
<a name='more'></a><b><i>The Addiction</i></b> (dir. Abel Ferrara, 1995)<br />
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Supremely satisfying vampire-as-drug addition movie with a great cast and a sense of moral and philosophical weight that at times verges on pretentiousness, but for the most part works. It's one of Ferrara's most beautiful-looking movies, and Lili Taylor is phenomenal as the young woman who slowly succumbs to vampirism over the film's running time.<br />
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<b><i>Araya</i></b> (dir. Margot Benacerraf, 1959)<br />
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Advances in digital photography over the last few decades has helped blur the lines between narrative and documentary films, resulting in movies from this year like <b><i>All These Sleepless Nights</i></b>, a documentary which could easily be mistaken for a Terrence Malick movie, and <b><i>Song to Song</i></b>, a Terrence Malick movie that could easily be mistaken for a documentary. If nothing else, Margot Benacerraf's <i><b>Araya</b></i> is an important reminder that there is nothing new under the sun, cinematically, since she created a documentary which looked and felt like a narrative feature decades before that was common. This hypnotic movie about the lives of people working in and around a salt mine in the Araya region of Venezuela is gorgeously shot - at times recalling Welles in its compositions - with a poetic emphasis on the physical rhythms of salt mining. Beyond the prosaic aspects of salt extraction, Benacerraf muses on the ways in which an industry can become so central to a way of life that it eventually warps time itself, as the people in the nearby village build their days and lives around it, and the threat of automation threatens to obliterate a way of life.<br />
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<b><i>The Beaches of Agnès</i></b> (dir. Agnès Varda, 2008)<br />
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Prior to the release of <i><b>Faces Places </b></i>this year, <i>The Beaches of Agnès</i> looked like it would be Varda's final feature film, and it would have been a fine capper to a restlessly creative career. Part documentary about her life and work, part personal rumination on loss and carrying on when so many you love have left, it's a spiky, sometimes hilarious, often touching movie brimming with invention.<br />
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<b><i>Bound</i></b> (dirs. The Wachowskis, 1996)<br />
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Despite being a fan of most of the Wachowskis' work - with even misfires like <b><i>Jupiter Ascending</i></b> being more fascinating and fun than most directors' successful movies - I had never seen their debut. It's a slick, sexy neo-noir which displays such a firm grasp of tone and tension that it's easy to see why they would soon reshape American action cinema.<br />
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<b><i>Daughters of the Dust</i></b> (dir. Julie Dash, 1991)<br />
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Beautiful and atmospheric film about several generations of a family living as part of an isolated black community on an island off the South Carolina-Georgia coast. Julie Dash explores the tensions between the characters with deftness, weaving an intense exploration of cultural and generational conflict into moments of gorgeous visual abstraction.<br />
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<b><i>Deathtrap</i></b> (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1982)<br />
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Hugely enjoyable adaptation of the Ira Levin play which makes almost no efforts to disguise its stage origins and is all the better for it. Lumet embraces the limited locations to generate a creeping sense of claustrophobia as Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve and Dyan Cannon slowly circle each other in a series of double, triple, and quadruple crosses. As someone who only really knows Reeve from the <i><b>Superman</b></i> movies and <b><i>Remains of the Day</i></b>, it was great seeing him get to cut loose in a much more expressive and playful role.<br />
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<b><i>Down With Love</i></b> (dir. Peyton Reed, 2003)<br />
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A super fun, incredibly specific movie that I still find it hard to believe was released by a major studio. Obviously there's an audience out there for a playful pastiche of Rock Hudson-Doris Day sex comedies because I am part of it, but not one large enough to justify the expense considering that the film was a bomb on release. A weird, unlikely and delightful film.<br />
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<b><i>The Headless Woman</i></b> (dir. Lucrecia Martel, 2008)<br />
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The rare enigmatic art film whose obtuseness feels narratively and emotionally essential to the story being told. A study in trauma and dissociation which perfectly mimics the breakdown of its central character and induces a sense of weightless unreality in the viewer.<br />
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<b><i>Hiroshima Mon Amour</i></b> (dir. Alain Resnais, 1959)<br />
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The most conventional Resnais movie I've seen - which is more a reflection of his other work than of <i>Hiroshima Mon Amour</i> itself - and probably my favourite. A gorgeous movie about memory and trauma which uses its flashback structure to devastating effect as a young French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) have a conversation about their respective pasts, and the areas of disagreement that emerge between them.<br />
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<b><i>If.... </i></b>(dir. Lindsay Anderson, 1968)<br />
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A film which throbs with so much antiestablishment anger that it remains vital nearly fifty years later. No longer just an offhanded reference in a Monty Python sketch to me.<br />
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<b><i>Imitation of Life</i></b> (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1959)<br />
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I watched both the 1934 and 1959 adaptations of Fannie Hurst's novel in fairly close proximity and while both have a lot to recommend them - the earlier adaptation is much punchier - Sirk's more sumptuous telling is more in tune with my own sensibilities. It's more sweeping than the Stahl version, but also more intuitive and thoughtful, really interrogating the friendship between a white woman (Lana Turner), her black housekeeper (Juanita Moore), and their respective daughters. A vivid, gorgeous story that effortlessly bundles commentary on race, gender and class into a story of family and fitful romances.<br />
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<b><i>In the Cut</i></b> (dir. Jane Campion, 2003)<br />
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I'd been meaning to see this movie for years, ever since seeing a review of it on (I think) the BBC's <i>Talking Movies</i> around the time of its release, which was otherwise overshadowed in the UK by Meg Ryan's awkward interview with Michael Parkinson. Freed from that (incredibly weird and regionally specific) controversy, it's easy to appreciate this sexy neo-noir for the way it vividly captures the sense of discomfort, dissolution and exhaustion that comes with being just a bit too warm. Ryan is great in the lead role as a woman who becomes embroiled in a grisly murder investigation when a severed arm winds up in her garden, and Mark Ruffalo is fantastic as the detective investigating the crime who falls into a relationship with her.<br />
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<b><i>The Long Voyage Home</i></b> (dir. John Ford, 1940)<br />
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A very sad and beautiful film about the crew of a ship carrying TNT across the Atlantic during World War II. Structurally it's unusual - and this is probably because it was adapted from four Eugene O'Neill plays - since the main plot resolves about half an hour before the film finishes, and it ends with this very mournful sequence of the sailors (including John Wayne playing a Swedish farmer, a fact which took a while for me to realise since he often just seems like John Wayne with a slight accent) wandering around London during a blackout, fighting (and largely failing) against their desire to get drunk. Gorgeous cinematography from Gregg Toland, too.<br />
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<b><i>Moonstruck</i></b> (dir. Norman Jewison, 1987)<br />
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One of the funniest, wisest and warmest romantic comedies of the 1980s. Cher is on great, deservedly Oscar-winning form as an Italian-American woman who gets engaged to a man she doesn't seem that thrilled about, only to fall in love with her fiancee's estranged brother (Nicolas Cage). John Patrick Shanley's script (which also won an Oscar) is full of great lines, elegantly juggles multiple plot strands before bringing them all together for a charming, witty resolution, and forcefully argues that love can be beautiful and romantic even when - or <i>especially</i> when - it's messy and ruinous.<br />
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<b><i>Putney Swope</i></b> (dir. Robert Downey Sr., 1969)<br />
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A great, scrappy movie which takes aim at pretty much every aspect of American society - race, class, sex, politics, capitalism - and tore into them relentlessly. The best example of an angry young man using his talents to rage against everything within reach, something which Downey achieves through unsparing, often bizarre humour.<br />
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<b><i>Return of the Secaucus Seven</i></b> (dir. John Sayles, 1978)<br />
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One of Sayles' most pleasurable films. A collection of funny, smart vignettes focused on a group of friends reuniting who are forced to reflect on how their lives have changed since their more radical youth. Much more naked cliff diving than I expected, too. Like, even within the scene in which naked cliff diving is established as a distinct possibility, there is a <i>lot</i> of naked cliff diving.<br />
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<b><i>Speed Racer </i></b>(dirs. The Wachowskis, 2008)<br />
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Another Wachowskis movie that I had never gotten around to, largely because its cinematic release coincided with my falling out of love with their work post-<i><b>Matrix Revolutions</b></i>. I really wish that I had seen this on a big screen, though, because it's a dazzling and unwaveringly earnest attempt to transpose every aspect of the '60s TV series - the candy colour palette, the wild tonal shifts, the bigger than big performances - to a live-action setting. That results in sudden and jarring changes from scene to scene (in one, we see our grief-stricken hero decide not to break his dead brother's record in order to keep his legacy intact; in the next we see a child and a chimp watch TV) but it's never boring. It's also fascinating seeing the Wachowskis let their idiosyncrasies loose on such a big canvas, crafting a movie which works as an overwhelming sensory experience and a deeply personal story about the limits of creating art under capitalism.<br />
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<b><i>Trouble Every Day</i></b> (dir. Claire Denis, 2002)<br />
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A dense and exhilarating horror* movies that I can’t wait to watch again, because after a single viewing I don't really know what it's <i>about</i>, other than sex, vampires and Vincent Gallo. An unforgettable and perplexingly sensual experience.<br />
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<b><i>Two for the Road</i></b> (dir. Stanley Donen, 1967)<br />
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I've been wanting to watch this for years, after seeing part of it featured in <i><b>The Story of Film</b><b></b></i>, and it did not disappoint. Stanley Donen directs the story of a married couple (Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn) traveling through France as their marriage is on the verge of collapse, which he then juxtaposes against trips they took earlier in their relationship, during happier, though often far from idyllic, times.<br />
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Donen's very playful in his editing, often having the characters drive past a previous or future version of themselves on the same bit of road, using geography to act as a bridge between events that took place years apart, or trusting the audience to keep track of the different outfits that Finney and Hepburn are wearing to keep the chronology straight. One of the most structurally daring Hollywood movies of that era (at least that I've seen).<br />
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<b><i>The Watermelon Woman</i></b> (dir. Cheryl Dunye, 1996)<br />
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Aside from a few rough performances, this is a brilliant, funny film which uses its movie-within-a-movie structure to talk openly about race, sex, and the ways in which black people are erased from their own narratives, even when people try to tell their stories.Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-2303915435306326152017-12-01T05:03:00.000+00:002017-12-01T05:03:29.198+00:00Movie Journal: November<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Awards season is in full swing, so I've spent most of this month frantically trying to catch up on films I missed earlier in the year, or ones that are only now starting to make the rounds. It's one of my favourite times of the year, as well as one of the most exhausting, since the conversation about what are the best movies of the year hasn't been winnowed down to four or five names yet. There has been a little winnowing, admittedly, but besides from <b><i>Get Out</i></b>, <b><i>Lady Bird</i></b> and <b><i>Call Be By Your Name</i></b>, there aren't that many movies that are completely dominating the conversation or feel like locks for Oscar nominations.<br />
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Before we get to the best movies I saw in November, let's dispense with Craig Gillespie's <b><i>I, Tonya</i></b>, easily the worst movie I watched this month and one of the worst movies I've seen all year. I went in hoping for it to be good, since the story of Tonya Harding could make for a great character study, and its mix of ambition and class is so quintessentially American. Plus, Margot Robbie is a bona fide movie star and it felt like a great vehicle for her (her performance is admittedly very good). At its best, the film recalls the blistering faux-hagiographies of <b><i>Goodfellas</i></b> or <b><i>Chopper</i></b>, but for the most part it displays the kind of purposeless kineticism that has characterized some of David O. Russell's more recent work; a lot of fidgety energy, constant voiceover and beyond blunt musical choices that add up to nothing of any real value. Good Allison Janney performance, though.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>10.<b><i> Marjorie Prime</i></b> (dir. Michael Almereyda, 2017)<br />
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In adapting Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Almereyda doesn't do much to disguise its stage bound origins, but there really isn't any need to break out material this heady and intricate: setting it anywhere other than a beach house would just be a distraction from its ideas. Lois Smith stars as an elderly woman named Marjorie whose son-in-law (Tim Robbins) has purchased an AI programmed to look like a younger version of her dead husband (Jon Hamm). As Marjorie interacts with the AI, sharing stories from "their" life together and explaining what her real husband was like, the film explores notions of memory and identity in a way that could feel artificial or airless in a conventional setting, but becomes electrifying thanks to the science fiction conceit. As the focus shifts to explore Marjorie's strained relationship with her daughter (Geena Davis), it becomes one of the year's most quietly affecting movies.<br />
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9. <b><i>Postcards From the Edge</i></b> (dir. Mike Nichols, 1990)<br />
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I'd been meaning to watch this adaptation of Carrie Fisher's semi-autobiographical novel about her struggles with substance abuse and her relationship with her mother for years and it did not disappoint. Meryl Streep is great as the Fisher stand-in - witty, acerbic, brilliant but fragile - while Shirley MacLaine makes for a great pseudo-Debbie Reynolds, evincing a mix of genuine affection for her daughter and a ruthless competitive streak. The sort of effortlessly great movie that the much-missed Mike Nichols could knock out of the park every once in a while.<br />
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8. <b><i>A Quiet Passon</i></b> (dir. Terence Davies, 2016)<br />
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When I found out that one of my favourite filmmakers was making a movie about the life of my favourite poet, starring one of my favourite working actors, it was pretty clear that I was going to at least <b>like</b> <i>A Quiet Passion</i>, but I was still bowled over by how good it is. Rather than tackling the life of Emily Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon) the way that a film about a significant literary figure would normally, Davies crafts a remarkably austere and brittle movie about a woman of immense gifts who gradually retreated from the world, and which makes the brutally unsentimental argument that posterity really doesn't count for anything when you've seen everything you love fade away. A biting movie hidden under the prestigious veneer of heritage filmmaking.<br />
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7. <b><i>Wonderstruck</i></b> (dir. Todd Haynes, 2017)<br />
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It's sometimes surprising when a movie becomes divisive, not because the movie in question is unimpeachable or anything, but because it seems so innocuous that it's hard to imagine people getting worked up about it. Take <i><b>La La Land</b></i> from last year; I personally didn't like it because I thought it was a bad musical, but I also didn't take umbrage with people liking it, and was taken aback by how sharply divided people ended up being about the movie.<br />
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That being said, I can totally understand why people hate <i><b>Wonderstruck</b></i>. With its dual narratives taking place fifty years apart, one of them shot like a silent movie, and both focused on precocious kids wandering around New York, it's more than a little precious. There's a level of sappiness to it which is otherwise absent from Haynes' work, and that could totally rub people the wrong way and I get it. I also, however, cried pretty consistently throughout the last twenty minutes, and found it to be a really cathartic and lovely experience.<br />
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6. <b><i>Lucky</i></b> (dir. John Carroll Lynch, 2017)<br />
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The death of Harry Dean Stanton can't help but hang over <i>Lucky</i>, one of his final movies and a rare opportunity for the character actor's character actor to play a leading role, since it was already so focused on aging and fear of death. As Lucky, a cranky nonagenarian atheist whose routine is thrown off balance by a minor health scare, Stanton gives a performance that is at once graceful and abrasive. He lets us feel every single day of his long life in every creaking movement, and each step carries a sense that it might be his last, but then he just turns around and tries to pick a fight with someone fifty years his junior. It's a movie in which any given scene can just as easily feature Stanton musing quietly on mortality, mumbling to himself as he grapples with the crossword, or screaming "cunts" at no one in particular. Director John Carroll Lynch, an immensely fine actor in his own right, gets great performances from his cast, including a delightful encounter between Stanton and his <b><i>Alien</i></b> co-star Tom Skerritt, and a series of short, warm and funny scenes between Stanton and frequent collaborator David Lynch, who plays one of his drinking buddies. It's the best possible version of those terrible movies about crotchety old people who get a second lease of life, largely because Lucky doesn't get a new lease on life, he just thinks deeply about the one he already has.<br />
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5. <b><i>Mudbound</i></b> (dir. Dee Rees, 2017)<br />
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The one significant problem I have with Dee Rees' excellent epic about race and racism in post-World War II Mississippi is that it feels about half an hour too short. In an age where every movie feels like it could use at least ten or twenty minutes trimmed off, Rees' lyrical film, with its multiple point-of-view characters, elliptical narration and expansive vision is the sort of thing that really needs time to breathe, and to let its tactile qualities seep into the audience. For its first two thirds, it's a pretty rapturous, if at times brutal and heartbreaking, experience, but the denouement feels a little hurried. As it stands, it's <i>merely</i> a brilliantly acted, visually stunning, and deeply affecting film that stands as easily one of the best films of 2017.<br />
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4. <b><i>The Shape of Water</i></b> (dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2017)<br />
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I'm a sucker for Guillermo del Toro, and have been since I took two incredibly skeptical friends to go and watch <i><b>Hellboy</b></i> on opening weekend (I loved it, but they remained pretty skeptical afterwards) and then felt compelled to follow him wherever he would take me. <b><i>The Shape of Water</i></b> is the movie I've been waiting for him to make for years; a lush fairytale that makes full use of his powers as a visual storyteller. While nominally a riff on <b><i>The Creature from the Black Lagoon</i></b>, at least in terms of the design of its central "monster", it's the kind of heartfelt love letter to outsiders that has become his stock in trade over the years. This variation on that theme is deepened considerably by a silent performance from the always great Sally Hawkins as a mute cleaner at a government facility who becomes fascinated by the amphibious man (del Toro regular and prodigious physical performer Doug Jones) being held there by shadowy national security types led by a rarely more menacing Michael Shannon.<br />
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3. <b><i>The Beaches of Agnès</i></b> (dir. Agnes Varda, 2008)<br />
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In what was at one point planned as her final film, pioneering French director Agnés Varda gives herself the same treatment she gave Jacques Demy with <i><b>Jacquot de Nantes</b></i> by producing a documentary/memoir which mixes art and life until no border between the two exists at all. The biggest difference between the two films is her own centrality to the storytelling as its subject: Demy was very ill during the production of <i>Jacquot de Nantes</i> so he was only glimpsed briefly. Varda, meanwhile, is onscreen for pretty much the entirety of <i>The Beaches of Agnés</i> and she is a great subject; funny, playful, but also achingly raw when she talks about the friends and loves who can’t be with her, she manages a delicate balance between opening her heart for the world to see, and staying removed enough to comment insightfully about her pain. The fact that it wasn’t her last film makes it seem like an even better tribute to her unstoppable creativity than it was nine years ago.<br />
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(It also features the best animated cat in movie history, voiced by a relentlessly hostile Chris Marker.)<br />
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2. <b><i>Lady Bird</i></b> (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2017)<br />
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As someone who was a pretty self-obsessed teenager in the early '00s, a lot of <b><i>Lady Bird</i></b>, Greta Gerwig's first solo directorial work, range uncomfortably true for me. In her use of editing to move abruptly from scene to scene, often starting mid-conversation, she perfectly captures the unique myopia of someone unable to look past their own hangups to realise that the people around them have serious problems to contend with. Yet Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) is not vilified for being self-centered or causing accidental pain to those around her, nor is she excused for kind of being an asshole. Gerwig's humane approach to her characters gives them all a sense of reality and inner life, even when they only prove tangential to the story of Lady Bird's sexual and emotional development. It's also funny, sharp and boasts a fantastic supporting cast, of which Laurie Metcalf (as Lady Bird's mother) is the undoubted highlight. Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet and Beanie Feldstein are no slouches, though.<br />
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1.<b><i> Strong Island</i></b> (dir. Yance Ford, 2017)<br />
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In ways both big and small, this deeply personal documentary, in which director Yance Ford revisits the murder of his older brother William in 1992, is one of the most wrenching movies I've seen all year. In a macro sense, it tells an all too familiar story of a young black man being gunned down by a white man who then pleads self-defense and gets away with murder. Ford's focus is on one specific crime and its impact on a small group of people, but it's a heartbreaking synecdoche for the ways in which systemic racism destroys black lives twice over: once by ending them, and once again by depriving them of justice. On a micro level, Ford captures in uncomfortably intimate detail the impact that William's death had on his family and friends, at one point vocalizing his own pain by letting out a howl of anguish that becomes distorted into a nightmarish soundscape. Ranks alongside<i><b> Dear Zachary</b></i> as one of the most purely upsetting documentaries about grief.Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-66346339405627163682017-06-11T12:51:00.000+01:002017-06-12T16:55:13.809+01:00Film Review: Wonder Woman (2017)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Even though she made her first appearance in 1941, thereby being part of the comics canon almost as long as fellow Justice League members Superman and Batman (who debuted in 1938 and 1939, respectively), Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta, a.k.a. Diana Prince, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, had never graced the silver screen until last year, when Gal Gadot briefly enlivened the slurry shipped to theatres as <b><i>Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice</i></b>. Sure, the character had appeared in various iterations of the D.C. animated universe, and she was brought to life on television by Lynda Carter in the iconic series from the 1970s, but film eluded her, even as Hollywood burned through six big-screen Batmen (including the late Adam West), three Supermen, two generations of X-Men (and three Kitty Prydes) and an ever-lengthening roll call of minor or cult characters who now find themselves household names.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>It wasn’t for lack of trying - Warner Bros. have been trying to make a Wonder Woman movie ever since the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman movies revived the commercial prospects of the genre. It briefly looked like it would happen in the mid-00s when Joss Whedon signed on to write and direct, but that fizzled out and he wound up making some other comic book movie.<br />
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Lots of explanations have been offered for why a Wonder Woman movie hasn’t happened sooner, such as the character not being well-known (even though, prior to the ‘00s superhero boom, she was one of maybe four or five superheroes that basically everybody could name) or that men won’t go to see movies headlined by women (which wasn’t true in the ‘90s and is doubly false in a post-<b><i>Hunger Games</i></b> world). Most of these boil down to thinly-veiled disguises for the same systemic sexism which prevents more movies for female audiences being made, and results in yearly stories about how “shocked” the industry is when movies by and for women do really well at the box office. <br />
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All of which makes it uniquely poignant that <b><i>Wonder Woman</i></b> finally arrives with Patty Jenkins, a director who herself has struggled, like many female filmmakers, to get movies made in Hollywood even though her first (and, prior to <i>Wonder Woman</i>, last) movie was <b><i>Monster</i></b>, an Oscar-winner which made a decent profit, sitting in the director’s chair. That the film itself is good, and at times great, is even sweeter.<br />
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After a brief scene in modern-day Paris, in which Diana (Gadot) receives a package from a certain moody billionaire containing a photograph of her as Wonder Woman with a group of soldiers in 1918, the story begins in Themyscira, the mystical, secret island inhabited by the Amazons, great warriors created by the Greek Gods to protect mankind from the corrupting influence of Ares, the God of War. A brief, breathless sequence introduces us to Diana as a young girl (played ably by Lilly Aspell) as she yearns to train in the art of combat alongside General Antiope (Robin Wright), even though her mother Hippolyta has misgivings about her learning to fight so soon. Jenkins moves nimbly from the scenes establishing the culture of Themyscira, with powerful women training their bodies and minds, to a relentless montage that encompasses Diana’s growth and development as a fighter, and the first stirrings of a greater power that sets her apart from the other Amazons.<br />
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Mankind, in the form of Captain Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), intrudes upon this militaristic idyll when his plane crashes through the barrier that keeps the island hidden from the rest of the world. After saving Steve from a horde of German soldiers who were pursuing him, a visibly shaken Diana learns (thanks to her trusty Lasso of Truth) of the devastation caused by The Great War. Even though the war is moving towards a peaceful resolution, the armistice is in jeopardy thanks to General Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston, whose transformation into Ray Wise is almost complete) who plans to use a deadlier form of mustard gas concocted by his his masked chemist henchwoman Dr. Poison (Elana Anaya) to inflict horrendous damage upon the British, French and American forces, thereby reversing the tide of the war. Believing that such brutality could only be the work of Ares, Diana decides to accompany Steve back to the world of men, determined to put an end to both the War and the God who may have started it.<br />
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One of the many refreshing aspects of <i>Wonder Woman</i> is its relative lack of plot. Unlike most modern blockbusters, the journey from point A to point B is not waylaid by a bunch of digressions and side-quests. The broad strokes of the story are pretty much there from the first act: Diana has lived a regimented but ultimately sheltered life on Themyscira, she has to come to our world to kill Ares, and to do that she'll need Steve's connections and knowledge to get to the Front. It’s a simple, elegant piece of mainstream storytelling that isn’t burdened with exposition (and what little there is gets relayed either through visual storytelling, or is buried in winning banter between Gadot and Pine). The film still has some of the expected blockbuster bloat and could lose 15 minutes or so, but at least its running time is mostly uncluttered.<br />
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Instead of plot, Jenkins injects character and humour. While the film boasts a couple of stunning set pieces - including the instant classic scene in which Diana ventures into No Man’s Land in order to pierce the German line and bring relief to a starving village - its strongest moments come when Diana and Steve get to know one another and navigate their very different perspectives on the world. Much like Kenneth Branagh’s <i><b>Thor</b></i>, which also dropped a God-like being into the concerns of everyday humanity, the film gets a lot of laughs from Diana’s interactions with the decidedly non-magical world of London circa-1918. Considering how relentlessly bleak the previous D.C. films have been, it’s thrilling and jarring to see a moment as whimsical as Diana having her first taste of ice cream, then turning to the vendor and telling them that they should be “very proud”. These aren’t the half-hearted gags that Ben Affleck croaked out in <i>Dawn of Justice</i>, or even the increasingly strained quips that have become a staple of the Marvel universe: <i>Wonder Woman</i> has legitimately great, honest to goodness jokes, and they serve a vital role in providing much needed contrast to the operatic bombast that the film inherits from its Zack Snyder-directed forebears.<br />
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Beyond the fish out of water conceit, the interplay between gender and setting is brilliantly used for both humour and drama. Taking Diana from a place where women are in command and men are a distant afterthought to one in which women are subservient in every conceivable arena is rife with possibilities, especially when you get to see the discomfort her presence brings to such all-male situations as army briefings and parliamentary discussions. (Jenkins does not exploit or linger on Gadot’s beauty, but she does playfully let it grind the British government to a halt for a minute.) It’s also delightful seeing the effect she has on Steve’s secretary Etta (Lucy Davis, at her most funny and charming) who, like the audience, is awed and inspired by Diana’s blithe disregard for patriarchy.<br />
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Central to all of this is Gal Gadot’s performance as Diana and, for fear of sounding hyperbolic, she is about as perfect for the role as you could hope. In her ability to convey a sense of disconnection from humanity, while also being completely and utterly earnest in her desire to help as many people as she can, she recalls Christopher Reeve’s Superman. Like Reeve, there is an almost instantaneous spark of revelation the moment she appears on-screen; a sense that she just <i>is</i> Wonder Woman, beyond a shadow of a doubt. Everything that made her the highlight of <i>Dawn of Justice</i> is heightened and expanded upon, thanks both to her more central role in the story and her undeniable chemistry with Chris Pine. Whether they are fighting side by side in an alley or he is awkwardly standing naked in front of her after a bath, there is a natural frisson between them that makes their relationship feel sexier and more tangible than any previous superhero pairing.<br />
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While the importance of <i>Wonder Woman</i> as the first female-led superhero movie since 2004’s <b><i>Catwoman </i></b>(as well as only the second female-directed superhero movie ever after Lexi Alexander’s <b><i>Punisher: War Zone</i></b>) cannot be overstated, it is ultimately a superhero movie, and that means it comes with some of the genre’s more regrettable flaws. In this case, it's a borderline dreadful third act which boils down to the familiar sight of two super-powered beings smashing the hell out of each other using every building and vehicle within reach.<br />
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What makes the reversion to the mean so dispiriting, apart from the sharp dip in quality from everything that came before, is that it squanders a (comparatively) quieter, even poetic ending, one which would have both complicated and clarified the themes of the movie and of Diana’s arc from powerful but naive warrior to someone who has witnessed the worst of humanity. A late in the game head fake does complicate her view of humanity, but it also muddies the driving message of the film (<i>all war is brutal and unforgiving, and World War I was infinitely more so for being pointless</i>), by layering on a slightly different one (<i>gratuitous violence is fucking sweet, brah</i>). There are graceful moments within the cacophony, mainly to do with the culmination of the Diana-Steve relationship, but its tedious bluntness is an unwelcome reminder (alongside the film’s colour palette, which runs the gamut from grim to sickly) that Zack Snyder, both as producer and co-screenwriter, is part of the film’s DNA.<br />
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Still, falling prey to the trappings of its genre shouldn’t overshadow how often <i>Wonder Woman</i> transcends them.<br />
<h3>
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Grade: B</h3>
Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-78522731233939765302017-03-06T03:01:00.002+00:002017-03-06T16:16:52.690+00:00Film Review: John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitKvkFEOR6HT_Pg9oxDnhhZ6YTPWHnIQyH3ZkJqHkxc7sq86-IeJ6-AVqR6Vo286508PxGS15PXrq4AsIUZLtcgylOfF11paw3F_3A62PbBZJbPhSKvFIiqPZ2_j9PXqkSsdQlJ3HOv9uf/s1600/john+wick+chapter+2+tailor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitKvkFEOR6HT_Pg9oxDnhhZ6YTPWHnIQyH3ZkJqHkxc7sq86-IeJ6-AVqR6Vo286508PxGS15PXrq4AsIUZLtcgylOfF11paw3F_3A62PbBZJbPhSKvFIiqPZ2_j9PXqkSsdQlJ3HOv9uf/s640/john+wick+chapter+2+tailor.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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One of the riskier unforced errors a film can make lies in referencing a better movie, since it runs the risk of making the audience think about what they could be watching instead. Chad Stahelski's <i><b>John Wick: Chapter 2</b></i> makes it twice in its first ten minutes.<br />
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First, it features a brief glimpse of Buster Keaton's <b><i>Sherlock, Jr.</i></b> (specifically the thrilling scene of Keaton nearly being hit by a train while riding a motorcycle) projected against the side of a building during a car chase through the streets of New York in which Wick (Keanu Reeves) pursues a henchmen working for Abram Tarasov (Peter Stormare), the brother of the antagonist from the first movie. Stahelski certainly gets points for boldness, since not only does the scene serve as an introduction to the action, but he also has the sound of the chase sync up with Keaton's film. It's a clever distillation of the remixing and recontextualising of cinematic references that marks both <i>John Wick</i> movies, an ethos which extended to the film's <a href="http://www.indiewire.com/2016/10/john-wick-chapter-2-poster-keanu-reeves-guns-1201734796/">brilliant poster</a>, and it's hard not to admire the chutzpah.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>The second, and more illuminating, instance comes when the film references the events of its own illustrious predecessor. As Wick dismantles Abram's entire warehouse full of goons in order to answer the one lingering question from the first <i>John Wick</i> that no one was asking - "But what happened to John's car, though?" - Stormare gives a rundown of what drew our hero out of retirement, as well as establishing that he is a legendary figure within a world of highly skilled assassins. It's a weird mixture of showing <i>and</i> telling, since everything Stormare says is backed up immediately by dynamic, beautifully shot and choreographed stunt work. Instead of underlininghis points, the juxtaposition undermines them since it makes his presence so transparently expositional.<br />
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It doesn't help that Stormare is literally only in that scene, reinforcing the idea that the opening ten minutes is just there to set the table for viewers, explaining things that fans of the original already know, but which new viewers don't need vocalised because we're seeing John Wick murder everyone, so they don't need someone else to explain that he's kind of a badass.<br />
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The film's obsession with its own mythology trips it up repeatedly as it tries to gain momentum. The plot of <i>John Wick</i> was pretty basic - man loses wife to illness, wife gifts man a puppy as a last act of love, man runs afoul of Eurotrash tosspots who kill puppy, man wipes out roughly 90% of New York's Russian population - but the hints of a broader world of assassins, all of whom abide by a draconian code of honour enforced by Ian McShane, added a bit of flavour and personality to a revenge story that Charles Bronson could easily have starred in once upon a time. The mythology was the salt that spiced up the meal.<br />
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In <i>John Wick: Chapter 2</i>, the salt <i>is</i> the meal.<br />
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After resolving his vendetta from the first film and vowing to return to a peaceful retirement, Wick is forced to take on a job for Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), a member of a powerful crime family to whom he owes a blood debt from his former life. Since Wick returned to a life of killing, even though it was brief and for a specific purpose, Santino wants to collect, and employs him to kill Santino's sister Gianna (Claduia Gerini) since she has inherited their father's place on the "High Table", a kind of Board of Trustees for criminals. After being coerced to take the job by the use of extreme force (by way of a burning house and an oddly beautiful visual nod to <i><b>Gone with the Wind</b></i>) Wick sets off for Rome, only to discover that his new assignment is just the start of his problems.<br />
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For much of <i>Chapter 2</i>'s first half, the elegant simplicity that made <i>John Wick</i> such a thrilling surprise is absent. After the exposition of the prologue, the film struggles to justify dragging its protagonist out of retirement once again, and continues to reiterate details from the first movie. While it's fun seeing actors like John Leguizamo and Lance Reddick return, Derek Kolstad's script strains to set all the necessary wheels in motion because so much of the story hinges on consequences from the previous film, as well as explaining entirely new concepts - like the aforementioned blood oath - which are not tackled in especially dynamic fashion.<br />
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It's reminiscent of the awkward shift that occurred between the first and second <b><i>Raid</i></b> movies; while the second films are undoubtedly better made and exhibit a greater confidence and zeal on the part of their directors, they fumble the transition from a simple, direct storyline to a convoluted and self-consciously epic one.<br />
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When the film stops rehashing old plot points and instead deepens its mythology by introducing new concepts and characters, it's wonderful, particularly since some of the sillier aspects are tackled with a sense of wry detachment. The two most exciting additions in this vein are The Sommelier, a gun merchant whose every transaction is conducted like a waiter helping a customer choose a nice red (played with silky-voiced decorum by the always welcome Peter Serafinowicz), and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne), an avuncular Welles-ian figure who runs a vast ring of homeless hitmen who operate throughout New York. Fishburne fits perfectly into the world of John Wick since he brings that distinct blend of charisma and gravitas needed to sell a character as fundamentally ridiculous as "Fagin, but with guns", yet beneath the charm is a steely resolve and cunning which makes his brief interactions with Wick fraught with possibility and intrigue.<br />
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His appearance also coincides with the beginning of the film's breathless, exhilarating second half, in which a contract is put out on Wick and he has to navigate the streets of New York while constantly being assaulted by a diverse and talented group of highly-motivated assassins. Watching Reeves shrug off attackers like a commuter dodging panhandlers is immensely satisfying, showcasing as it does both the actor's physical prowess and Stahelski's ability to find new and exciting ways for people to get shot in the head. More importantly, it's during the second half that the film rediscovers the clarity of narrative and purpose that the first half lacks; someone has wronged John Wick, he is going to plow through absolutely anyone who gets in his way until he has exacted his revenge. It still operates within a framework that is elaborate and bizarre, but it's one that has stakes that are easily grasped and appreciated, if not necessarily felt.<br />
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That final hour also lays the groundwork for a potential (and, given <i>Chapter 2</i>'s success, inevitable) third installment which promises to be both more off the wall yet direct than the second. It's a testament to<i> John Wick: Chapter 2</i> that, despite a shaky start and a tendency to dwell over its own storytelling, I came out of the film hungry for more. Even when it feels like it's dragging its feet, the film is never boring, thanks to its murderers' row of great character actors and action choreography that cannot be beat. Maybe the film will look better in a few years once the series is three or four movies deep, when the yeoman's work it has done fleshing out the world and getting John Wick firmly back into the killing business will bear fruit. At the moment, it's an at times frustrating, at times brilliant addition to the modern action canon.<br />
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<h3>
Grade: B-</h3>
Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-16008939904248290082017-01-07T22:51:00.000+00:002017-01-07T23:07:16.389+00:00Movie Journal: December<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNlUbHrKqFXbiKdb0eBR81vRm3cqKWyl5SoSPjxkjQnqAzOrM0QvGavtIDt4f7MfTXFRO044FScsc45a4E3lKRCndmYjcoE-MhmPjxgUPfx6DK1rrcjAWdKt5JIvSm5t7EbdGQ71MIieQV/s1600/hidden+figures.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNlUbHrKqFXbiKdb0eBR81vRm3cqKWyl5SoSPjxkjQnqAzOrM0QvGavtIDt4f7MfTXFRO044FScsc45a4E3lKRCndmYjcoE-MhmPjxgUPfx6DK1rrcjAWdKt5JIvSm5t7EbdGQ71MIieQV/s640/hidden+figures.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i>Hidden Figures</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>Unsurprisingly, since December coincides with the end of year list-making and awards-voting seasons, I spent most of the month frantically trying to catch up on films that I had missed, or which I finally had a chance to see thanks to expanded theatrical releases or screeners. I watched 28 films in December, the overwhelming majority of which were 2016 releases, with very few older films getting a look in. As a result, there's a lot of overlap between thes list and my <a href="http://www.amightyfineblog.com/2016/12/eds-top-25-films-of-2016.html">Top 25 Films of the Year</a>, which was radically reshaped throughout the month as I tried to see as much as possible.<br />
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The worst film I watched in December was Tom Ford's <b><i>Nocturnal Animals</i></b>. I was a big fan of Ford's <b><i><a href="http://www.amightyfineblog.com/2010/02/single-man.html">A Single Man</a></i></b>, which I found to be an aesthetically gorgeous and emotionally rich study of grief and loneliness, and while <i>Nocturnal Animals</i> was, if anything, an improvement in terms of achieving a better balance between story and style, the story it's telling is utter horseshit. A multi-stranded, multi-fictional narrative about an art dealer (Amy Adams) who receives a book written by her ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal), the violent plot of which she suspects is a form of revenge for past wrongdoings, it's a film whose overwrought cynicism winds up being completely laughable thanks to Ford's unceasing ponderousness. There are some good performances - Michael Shannon, unsurprisingly, is fantastic as a character in Gyllenhaal's book - but it's all in aid of a pointlessly mean movie which doesn't even find fun in its meanness.<br />
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Among the crush of new releases, work and Christmas, I found time to rewatch two Coen Brothers movies which I had underestimated on first viewing. First, <b><i>Burn After Reading</i></b>, which I didn't like when I saw it in the theatre back in 2008 because it felt aimless and incomplete, two of the main reasons why I liked it this time. It's not their funniest movie or their best comedy in terms of structure and intent, but it's a charming bit of nonsense filled with great actors having a lot of fun. Taken out of the original context - i.e. coming mere months after they won Best Picture, Director and Screenplay for <i><b>No Country For Old Men</b></i> - it's much easier to enjoy as a lark, a way for the Coens to unwind after making such a heavy drama. It also felt weirdly appropriate to watch a movie in which two of the most repeated refrains were "The Russians?" and "What the fuck?!"<br />
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I also watched <i><b>Hail, Caesar!</b></i> which I started an hour or so before midnight on New Year's Eve, so it was the last film I watched in 2016 and the first I watched in 2017. Unlike <i>Burn After Reading</i>, I enjoyed <i>Hail, Caesar!</i> on first viewing, but came away from my second with an even greater appreciation for it. Like the earlier film, its story is pretty superfluous to the jokes, but what becomes more apparent with each viewing is how lovingly the film views its motley crew of film industry types, and the appreciation it has for their skill and craft. From Eddie Mannix's (Josh Brolin) ability to somehow keep a studio running (even if it requires threats and manipulation) to Hobie Doyle's (Alden Ehrenreich) knack for lasso tricks, it's an oddly touching tribute to people who find comfort and fulfillment in their work, even if the work itself doesn't amount to much more than gossamer.<br />
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Let's dig in to the good stuff. Here are the ten best films I watched for the first time in December of 2016.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>1. <b><i>Moonlight</i></b> (dir. Barry Jenkins, 2016)<br />
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My favourite film of 2016, Jenkins' movie is a poetic study of sexuality, masculinity and identity that maintains a delicate balance between his lyrical style and an earthy focus on everyday experiences. The ensemble cast is phenomenal, with Naomie Harris, probable Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali, and Janelle Monáe being especially fantastic as the adults helping or hindering young Chiron through his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.<br />
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2. <b><i>Arrival</i></b> (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2016)<br />
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My fifth favourite film of 2016, and one which infuriated me by complicating my longstanding dislike for all of Villeneuve's work. A thoughtful, emotionally devastating work of science fiction whose plaintive calls for communication and understanding feel especially poignant in a year defined by hatred and misinformation.<br />
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3. <b><i>Cameraperson</i></b> (dir. Kirsten Johnson, 2016)<br />
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My eleventh favourite film of 2016 and one of the year's most distinctive documentaries. The way Johnson weaves together offcuts from documentaries she shot for other directors - including <b><i>Fahrenheit 9/11</i></b>, <b><i>The Invisible War </i></b>and <b><i>Citizenfour</i></b> - and her own home movies serves both as a playful deconstruction of documentary filmmaking itself, and as a meditation on how the line between art and life can be so painfully blurry.<br />
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4. <b><i>The Armor of Light</i></b> (dirs. Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes, 2015)<br />
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Not only one of my favourite films of the month, but one of my favourite "older" <a href="http://www.amightyfineblog.com/2016/12/film-discoveries-of-2016.html">film discoveries of the year</a>, it's a great documentary about faith and personal growth. It's so rare to see people in real-life change their viewpoints in the drastic way that Rob Schenck does, going from pro-gun alongside other conservative evangelical leaders to passionately anti-gun when he realises that it fundamentally clashes with his pro-life beliefs, and Disney and Hughes do a wonderful job of capturing the different stages of his intellectual and spiritual evolution.<br />
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5. <b><i>The Fits </i></b>(dir. Anna Rose Helmer, 2015)<br />
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My fourteenth favourite film of 2016, and easily one of the year's most unusual and distinctive visions. A movie which reimagines adolescence - and specifically black female adolescence - as an existential horror film in which acceptance - represented by a dance troupe - can lead to violent seizures, but one in which those seizures may actually be desirable parts of a rite of passage. (Or maybe it's not about that at all, since the movie is so oblique that you can get a lot of different interpretations out of it.)<br />
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6. <b><i>American Honey</i></b> (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2016)<br />
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My sixteenth favourite film of 2016. Not as good as <i><b>Fish Tank</b></i>, which tells a similar story in a more concise way, but a gorgeously shot, amorphous and enveloping movie which places the personal journey of self-discovery of a young woman (Sasha Lane) against the beautiful, sometimes desolate expanses of the Midwest.<br />
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7. <b><i>Hidden Figures</i></b> (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)<br />
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When I was younger, I was pretty dismissive of movies described as "middlebrow" by critics. (Though, in my defense, that's not the most appealing of sobriquets.) While I still tend to be wary of any film that seems to have been made with awards in mind, particularly biopics and adaptations of "serious" literature, or which aim for the kind of broad acceptance that requires the sanding off of any and all edges, I've learned to consider them on a case-by-case basis, since there's value in telling a capital-I important story in an accessible way, even if it's not the most formally or narratively daring approach.<br />
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Enter: <b><i>Hidden Figures</i></b>, one of the best examples of an uplifting, mainstream Hollywood movie that I've seen in years. Melfi's film tells the story of three African-American mathematicians working for NASA (played by Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe, making her second appearance on this list) who were crucial to the success of John Glenn's mission to orbit the Earth. It's a sparky, energetic movie with a great ensemble cast, one which avoids the pitfalls of being stodgy or feeling like homework, but what sets it apart is its nuanced depiction of racism in 1960s Virginia.<br />
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While there are moments of overt prejudice depicted, for the most part it's about institutional racism, and how people who would never consider themselves racist - such as the characters played by Jim Parsons and Kirsten Dunst - still did and said racist things because they were born into a fundamentally racist society, and believed in preserving the <i>status quo</i> that had existed for decades. The film also manages to subvert the White Saviour archetype by having Henson's boss (Kevin Costner, doing great work) tackle segregation in NASA facilities not because he's the only one who can see that it's wrong, or because he has a great moral revelation, but because he discovers that having separate White and Colored bathrooms hurts the efficiency of his team. It's a fantastic film that has only grown in my estimation as time has passed.<br />
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8. <b><i>Miss Stevens</i></b> (dir. Julia Hart, 2016)<br />
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My seventeenth favourite movie of 2016. Could have easily been one of those insufferable indie dramadies that comes out of Sundance with a lot of buzz then is promptly forgotten about, but ends up being a gentle and deeply felt movie about believably broken people trying to do their best.<br />
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9. <b><i>Midnight Special</i></b> (dir. Jeff Nichols, 2016)<br />
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My twenty-first favourite movie of 2016. Probably Nichols' least cohesive film to date on account of its uneasy blend of intense character drama and odd science fiction thriller, but the cast manage to bring a lot of emotional realism to an at times ill-defined concept, making a story that could be cheesy or incomprehensible into an affecting story about faith and parenthood.<br />
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10. <b><i>Fences</i></b> (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)<br />
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It always feels churlish to point out that an adaptation of a play feels like an adaptation of a play, but boy, does <i><b>Fences</b></i> feel like an adaptation of a play, at least for its first twenty minutes or so. The cast's breathless delivery of August Wilson's dialogue, mixed with attempts to "open up" the story by having those conversations happen in a couple of different locations, makes what should be scene-setting feel intensely stressful. Once the film settles down, the story of a garbage collector (Washington) and his strained relationships with his wife (Viola Davis) and children in 1950s Pittsburgh develops a compelling rhythm of its own. It's a showcase for powerhouse performances from superb actors, one which overcomes its early hiccups to become a fascinating study of inter-generational conflict in one family about what it means to be a father, a man, and black in America during a turbulent, changing time.Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-74409582769852111102017-01-02T15:12:00.000+00:002017-01-02T15:12:20.129+00:00Shot/Reverse Shot: 167 - 2017 Preview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There's a brand new year stretching out ahead of us, which means 12 months of films good and bad to sift through. To help sort the wheat from the chaff (except in the instances where the chaff sounds weirdly fascinating), I'm joined by <a href="https://twitter.com/john_hunter?lang=en">John Hunter</a> to discuss the films and TV shows that we're most intrigued by between now and when awards season kicks off in September.<br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="100" id="audio_iframe" scrolling="no" src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/k65be-65ae60" width="100%"></iframe>Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-79591057366225189642016-12-31T19:38:00.000+00:002017-01-02T22:41:24.798+00:00Ed's Top 25 Films of 2016<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpXeJaMGXQkshYePmvcj0_kvvO8fqSxcHVj3NZ-KWU4YtuJyfcQvRbxnl231ojpZltJvmEI7JzITNRQrdZmKTAZ2mKefkYlpTvPWWZQZ0ljGTNwIS77e-VjsFC804RA_xUCYgBZoOb8bG3/s1600/joker+suicide+squad+prick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpXeJaMGXQkshYePmvcj0_kvvO8fqSxcHVj3NZ-KWU4YtuJyfcQvRbxnl231ojpZltJvmEI7JzITNRQrdZmKTAZ2mKefkYlpTvPWWZQZ0ljGTNwIS77e-VjsFC804RA_xUCYgBZoOb8bG3/s640/joker+suicide+squad+prick.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><i>Suicide Squad</i></b>, a film which will definitely not be appearing on this list</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">While 2016 was probably the worst year for mainstream cinema in ages, with a dearth of good, or even passable blockbusters to justify the big-budget model (and certainly nothing on par with <i><b>Mad Max: Fury Road</b></i>), it ended strongly thanks to a bumper crop of award season contenders. Even before that, 2016 reaffirmed my belief that every year is a good year for film if you're willing to look hard enough, and the ever increasing variety of distribution options available means that it's easier than ever to sample the best films any given year has to offer, even if you can't see many of them in a theatre.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">Since it was, in my estimation, a really good year, I've expanded my usual top 20 to a top 25. As with any list, I'm already unhappy with it, and if you'd like to see what movies just missed out (and which might have been included if I had put this list together on another day) then you can see the full rankings on <a href="http://letterboxd.com/edwindavies/list/films-of-2016/">Letterboxd</a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">Now, let's begin.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">25. </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://www.amightyfineblog.com/2016/11/film-review-de-palma-2015.html">De Palma</a> </i></b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(dirs. Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You need a fascinating subject to sustain a feature-length conversation and Brian De Palma is, among other things, a fascinating guy. Covering the entirety of his career from his early days in New York’s avant-garde film scene, through his commercial peak in the ‘70s and ‘80s, right up to his decades long exile from Hollywood, Baumbach and Paltrow’s documentary is a fast-moving jaunt through an uneven but irrepressible body of work. At the centre of it all is De Palma, who offers the kind of insights and anecdotes that every interviewer dreams of getting, but only occasionally stumbles upon. While it doesn’t dig in to every film to the extent that it does <i><b>Carrie</b></i> or <b><i>The Untouchables</i></b>, it offers enough of a taste to make you want to seek out the ones that it merely glances at.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">24. <b><i>Tower</i></b> (dir. Keith Maitland)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In a strong year for documentaries, <i>Tower </i>proved to be one of the best and most distinctive thanks to two smart choices. The first is a matter of style: in recounting the story of Charles Whitman's shooting spree from the tower of the University of Texas in Austin, the first mass shooting in modern American history, Maitland uses rotoscope animation (alongside interviews and some archive footage) to recreate the events of August 1, 1966 in a way which is visually compelling but not as tawdry or exploitative as live-action would have been. The second is a matter of focus: little to no time is spent on the man who killed nineteen people and injured thirty-two more. Instead, Maitland lets the survivors recount what happened to them in vivid, often heart-wrenching detail, allowing them to tell their stories of what happened on that day and what happened next.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">23. <b><i>Queen of Katwe </i></b>(dir. Mira Nair)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A crowdpleaser that failed to find a crowd, Nair's real-life story of a Ugandan chess prodigy (Madina Nalwanga) and the tension that arises between her mother (Lupita Nyong'o) and her teacher (David Oyelewo) over her success deserved to be a much bigger success than it was. It's a beautifully observed drama, a tense sports movie, and a non-exploitative look at extreme poverty that displays much more grit and honesty than you would expect of a glossy Disney production. At the same time, it was one of the most visually sumptuous mainstream releases of the year, with Nair finding beauty and joy amid deprivation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">22. <b><i>Kate Plays Christine </i></b>(dir. Robert Greene)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A playful metatextual documentary about performance and the very concept of non-fiction filmmaking, Greene’s followup to <b><i>Actress</i></b> begins as a detail-orientated study of acting as a profession and an artform. As it follows actress Kate Lyn Shiel as she prepares to play the role of Christine Chubbock, a Florida news anchor who committed suicide on live television in 1974, we see all the work and research that goes into playing a real person, from studying tapes and newspaper archives to learning about firearms. But it’s complicated by the fact that, in a Charlie Kaufman-worthy twist, the film she’s preparing for does not actually exist (even though, weirdly, there was a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4666726/">wholly separate movie about Christine Chubbock</a> made this year). The film bounces between these different layers of fiction, ultimately landing on a heavy-handed point about voyeurism which doesn’t detract from what a fascinating, at times unnerving journey the film takes to reach its natural endpoint.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">21. <b><i>Midnight Special </i></b>(dir. Jeff Nichols)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">After the critical and commercial success of 2012's <b><i>Mud</i></b>, I had high hopes that Jeff Nichols' followup would prove to be his <b><i>Looper</i></b>; a lean, sharp sci-fi movie that ushered him into the big leagues. While that situation didn't exactly play out at the box office, and Nichols' other 2016 film <b><i>Loving</i></b> is getting a lot more attention, <i>Midnight Special</i> was another great addition to Nichols' oeuvre. A supernatural chase film that owed a debt to <b><i>Escape to Witch Mountain</i></b> and <b><i>Starman</i></b>, it's a relentlessly tense story of a father (Nichols regular and all-round mensch Michael Shannon) trying to protect his son (Jaeden Lieberher) from the U.S. Government and a mysterious cult, both of whom are interested in the strange powers that he exhibits. In a year in which<b><i> Stranger Things</i></b> traded on nostalgia and became a cultural touchstone, it's a shame that this soulful throwback to '80s sci-fi went more or less ignored.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">20. <b><i>The Salesman</i></b> (dir. Asghar Farhadi)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Since breaking through with <b><i>A Separation</i></b> a few years ago, Farhadi has become firmly established as one the world's great dramatists. His elegant tales of ordinary Iranians are masterclasses in structure and tension, and an always timely reminder that the most devastating stories can unfold on the smallest and most intimate scale. In this instance, he explores what happens when a series of misunderstandings sends a teacher (Shahab Hosseini) on an ill-advised quest for revenge after his wife (Taraneh Alidoosti) is attacked in their home. Broken up by glimpses of their performance in a production of<i> Death of a Salesman</i>, the film functions as a nuanced and delicate exploration of trauma and masculinity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">19. <a href="http://www.amightyfineblog.com/2016/06/film-review-popstar-never-stop-never.html"><span style="color: #e4af09;"><b><i>Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping</i></b></span></a> (dirs. Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hands down the funniest film I saw all year. A meticulously crafted mockumentary that both mocks and adores the excesses of its target, pop superstar Conner4Real, played by Andy Samberg. Powered by some hilarious Lonely Island songs and an ensemble comprising some of the finest, funniest actors currently working, <i>Popstar</i> is one of the most densely packed and heartfelt comedies in years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">18. <b><i>Green Room</i></b> (dir. Jeremy Saulnier)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Saulnier’s follow-up to his blackly funny revenge thriller <b><i>Blue Ruin</i></b> was a slicker offering, complete with big name stars and a higher budget, but it lost none of its predecessor’s knack for delivering punishing violence. Riffing on siege movies like <b><i>Assault on Precinct 13</i></b>, the film trapped a punk band in the green room of a club occupied by neo-Nazis. Their already dire situation is made worse by the fact that they witnessed a murder being committed by one of the Nazis, the Nazis need to cover it up, and there’s no way out that doesn’t involve a lot of death. Saulnier alternates between long stretches of planning, brief bursts of chaos, and exquisitely elongated, desperate battles in which characters fight tooth and nail for their lives. It’s a brutal movie whose darkness is both alleviated and made much worse by the performances of its young cast, including Alia Shawkat and the late Anton Yelchin. As a group of funny, charismatic young people in a bad spot, they manage to make light of what’s going on, which in turns makes every death and dismemberment all the harder to watch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">17. <b><i>Miss Stevens</i></b> (dir. Julia Hart)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reminiscent of some of Tom McCarthy’s work, in that it takes a premise which could have been cloying or saccharine and turns it into something quietly brilliant, Hart’s film about a teacher (Lily Rabe) who takes three of her students to a drama competition for the weekend is an assured and beautiful film about the difficulty that comes with being empathetic and caring, how doing the right thing can often be painful, and carrying on when everything seems broken. It’s also really funny, and not in the “has a few jokes, so let’s call it a dramedy" way, but because it has well-written, well-acted characters who are placed in awkward and difficult situations, and want to make themselves feel better so they say funny things. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">16. <b><i>American Honey</i></b> (dir. Andrea Arnold)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An expansion of the work Arnold did in her great 2009 film <b><i>Fish Tank</i></b>, <b><i>American Honey</i></b> is another coming of age story in which a young woman played by a non-actor (Sasha Lane here, Katie Jarvis in <i>Fish Tank</i>) gets involved with an older man played by a more well-known actor (Shia LaBeouf as opposed to Michael Fassbender). Yet while <i>Fish Tank</i> was confined to the immediate area surrounding a housing estate,<i> American Honey</i> takes the Midwest as its canvas as Star (Lane) and Jake (LaBeouf) travel hundreds of miles to sell magazines as part of a scam orchestrated by their boss, Krystal (Riley Keough). The intense intimacy of Robbie Ryan's cinematography, which captures the action in natural light, conveys the joy and confusion of being young and untethered better than any film I've seen in recent memory, and the tension between the cast's vibrancy and Arnold's worldliness is palpable throughout. It's indicative of the amorphous, experiential quality of the film that it is able to use Rihanna's "We Found Love" as both an ironic comment on the superficiality of pop music and to soundtrack a moment of genuine human connection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">15. <b><i>Manchester by the Sea</i></b> (dir. Kenneth Lonergan)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In stark contrast to Lonergan’s last film, <b><i>Margaret</i></b>, an at times overwhelmingly emotional movie that was dumped and ignored by its studio, <i>Manchester by the Sea </i>is a bleakly austere movie that’s made a little money and is a frontrunner for at least a few Oscars. Like all of his directorial efforts, Lonergan’s film is a richly textured study of grief and trauma, one which is played out through the performances of Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges as an uncle/nephew pairing of emotionally guarded New Englanders coming to term with a sudden death in their family. It’s a fairly long film made up of small, indelibly painful moments, such as the way in which Hedges, having been convinced that he should see the body of his father (played by Kyle Chandler in flashbacks) walks into the morgue then immediately walks out again, or the way that Affleck does everything he can to avoid talking about the various deaths that have marked his life. There are the requisite big, emotional scenes - including a powerhouse monologue from Michelle Williams as Affleck’s ex-wife - but for the most part it’s a film about the ways in which grief can be all-encompassing, not because of the big, unavoidable absences, but because of the little, surprising ones.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">14. <b><i>The Fits</i></b> (dir. Anna Rose Helmer)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>The Fits</i> is an easy film to describe, but almost impossible to explain. At its core, it's a movie about a tomboy (Royalty Hightower) who decides to join a dance troupe who train at the Ohio gym where she and her older brother usually work out together. Her efforts to fit in are complicated when members of the group start experiencing strange seizures which don't seem to have any clear cause. On the most basic level, it's a dance film and a horror film, except the "horror" is more the existential dread of growing up and trying to fit in, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. The fits themselves are hard to watch and terrify the characters who witness them, but they also have the ecstatic quality associated with religious mania. Its 72 minute runtime means that the film doesn’t have time to get bogged down in specifics, which leaves plenty of gaps in a movie that invites multiple interpretations and deep consideration.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">13. <b><i>Lemonade</i></b> (dirs. Beyoncé et al.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The "visual album" tag would make it easy to dismiss <i>Lemonade</i> as a collection of music videos intended to promote an album. To do so would do a great disservice to the work of those involved, as well to Beyoncé's over-arching vision as the author of the work. <i>Lemonade</i> is a collection of disparate chapters, connected together by poems by Somali poet Warsan Shire, that combine to form an oblique, but unmistakable story of a woman's pain over a betrayal and the various stages she experiences on the way to some form of self-discovering and grace. More than that, it's a celebration of black culture, <a href="https://venturesafrica.com/features/the-african-influences-in-beyonces-lemonade-album-explained/"><span style="color: #e4af09;">African culture</span></a>, and black women in particular, with a dizzying array of influences that are still being digested and picked over months after the film debuted on HBO.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">12. <a href="http://www.amightyfineblog.com/2016/11/film-review-moana-2016.html"><span style="color: #e4af09;"><b><i>Moana</i></b></span></a><b><i> </i></b>(dirs. Ron Clements, John Musker, Don Hall and Chris Williams)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Possibly the best film to come out since John Lasseter oversaw an overhaul of Disney's feature animation division, <i>Moana</i>'s a gorgeous, hopeful and exhilarating addition to the company's illustrious canon. The songs are fantastic, the voiceover performances are some of the best I've heard, and the whole thing is a rip-roaring adventure which adds to, yet subverts the Disney Princess genre in ways that are fun for longstanding fans, while offering a new, potentially exciting path for the company to pursue in the years ahead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">11. <b><i>Cameraperson</i></b> (dir. Kirsten Johnson)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A film which sounds great in the abstract and is even better in practice, <i>Cameraperson</i> is a visual memoir compiled from offcuts and outtakes from the many documentaries that Kirsten Johnson has worked on over the years. On one level, it's a great deconstruction of how documentaries are made, with audio of Johnson and various directors discussing how to set up establishing shots serving as a reminder that documentaries are as constructed as narrative features. Yet mixed in with clips from heavy hitters like <b><i>Fahrenheit 9/11</i></b>, <b><i>The Invisible War</i></b>, and <b><i>Citizenfour</i></b> are snippets of Johnson's own home movies, including heart-wrenching glimpses of her mother suffering from the ravages of Alzheimer's. Their inclusion blurs the lines between the personal and the professional, suggesting that there is little divide between a life spent documenting the beauty and violence of the world, and capturing quiet moments with her family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">10. <b><i>The Invitation </i></b>(dir. Karyn Kusama)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A great, disquieting thriller that makes the most of its limited location, great cast, and sense of impending doom to create an unbearable air of </span><span style="color: #454545; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">claustrophobia and suspicion. It's best to know as little about it as possible when going in since most of the fun comes from seeing the ways in which Kusama is able to pull the rug out from under her characters, and the audience, through many acts of subtle misdirection. It also has one of the very best endings to a film I saw this year.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">9. <b><i>The Edge of Seventeen </i></b>(dir. Kelly Fremon Craig)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There were films that made me laugh more than <i>The Edge of Seventeen</i> did, and there were films that affected me more emotionally, but there were none that I related to more painfully. It's the best representation of being an awkward teenager I've ever seen. Hailee Steinfeld gives a phenomenal performance as a young woman whose world unravels when her brother and best friend start dating, which in turn exacerbates all the other relationships in her life. It's a movie which goes for big laughs and big emotions because everything just <i>feels </i>bigger when you're a teenager, but it never exaggerates so much that it falls into caricature. Like <b><i>Say Anything...</i></b> or the best of John Hughes' oeuvre, it magnifies the concerns of teenage life just enough that they can carry a feature film, but not so much that they stop being recognisably human. It's one of the best teen movies in years, possibly ever.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">8.<b><i> Love & Friendship</i></b> (dir. Whit Stillman)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The most sparkling and effervescent comedy of the year. Whit Stillman's archness is perfectly suited to the world of Jane Austen, and Kate Beckinsale seems to relish the chance to dig into some cutting, precise dialogue as she manoeuvres through and manipulates members of high society, all in aid of providing a better future for a daughter who she doesn't even seem to like that much. Although Beckinsale is the undisputed star, giving one of her best performances is years, special mention should be made of Tom Bennett, who plays her most idiotic suitor and gets one of the funniest scenes of the year. I'll never look at peas the same way again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">7. <b><i>Certain Women</i></b> (dir. Kelly Reichardt)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Adapted from three short stories by Maile Meloy, Reichardt's seventh feature is, like many of her previous films, a tender look at life in the parts of America that tend to get forgotten </span><span style="color: #454545; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">about by people who make movies. In this instance, the stories all unfold in Montana, and focus on three women - Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and Lily Gladstone - as they deal with three very different relationships. Dern plays a lawyer whose client (Jared Harris) dismisses her advice then takes extreme action after discovering something about his case; Williams tries to get sandstone from an old man (René Auberjonois) to help build a new house; Gladstone plays a rancher who develops a friendship with a lawyer teaching a night school class (Kristen Stewart). All three stories are wonderful, Raymond Carver-like tragicomic playlets about people trying to live their lives, and Reichardt is a master of </span></span><span style="color: #454545; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">conveying the ways in which everyday life can be crushing and depressing, even though her movies are not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">6.<b><i> I Am Not Your Negro</i></b> (dir. Raoul Peck)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Based on an incomplete novel by James Baldwin, <i>I Am Not Your Negro</i> manages to provide both a rundown of who Baldwin was and why he remains one of the most scintillating intellectual lights of the Civil Rights Movement, but also ably and thrillingly illustrates his philosophy. As is only fitting for a captivating speaker and a beautiful writer, the film allows Baldwin to speak for himself, both through archive footage and extracts read by Samuel L. Jackson, which allows Peck to shape the film as a posthumous commentary on race in America from someone who knew and understood the face of racism in his lifetime, and would have little trouble recognising it today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">5. <b><i>Arrival </i></b>(dir. Denis Villeneuve)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the most surprising inclusion on this list because I am not a fan of the work of Denis Villeneuve: I hated <b><i>Sicario</i></b>, tolerated <b><i>Enemy</i></b>, and I'm still angry at <b><i>Prisoners</i></b>. I didn't have high hopes for his latest film, even though the reviews were good (because they're always good and they're always <i>wrong</i>) and the premise - aliens appear on Earth and scientists try to figure out what they want - is completely in my wheelhouse. It was only after much prodding from my podcast co-host Matt, who loved the film and wanted to talk about it on our <a href="http://www.srspodcast.com/e/166-2016-round-up/">end-of-year episode</a>, that I overcame my skepticism and went to see <i>Arrival</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I found the first hour really intricate and engaging, as Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner make tentative progress talking to creatures whose language doesn't remotely resemble human speech. It played with a cerebral brand of sci-fi that rarely gets given a big budget, so delighted me as someone who had gotten used to the idea that smart science fiction would forever be confined to low-budget indies. Then, about two-thirds of the way through, the story took a turn which I had not anticipated, and which delivered such an emotional gut-punch that I found myself audibly gasping and fighting back tears for five minutes. The marriage between Villeneuve's stark visuals and Eric Heisserer's intricate screenplay (adapted from a story by Ted Chiang) creates something which is emotionally satisfying (or devastating) even as it deals with the minutiae of linguistical theory. Of the two female-led science fiction films featuring Forest Whittaker and squid monsters that came out in 2016, <i>Arrival </i>was easily the best.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">4. <b><i>Kubo and the Two Strings</i></b> (dir. Travis Knight)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">The fourth and best film from Laika Studios, the stop-motion animation company who previously produced such delights as <i><b>Coraline</b></i> and <b><i>ParaNorman</i></b>, was one of the most thrilling adventures of the year. In telling the story of a young boy who has the power to alter the world around him by playing music, it created a beautiful animated world of sea monsters, dragons and samurai, all of whom ultimately help him cope with death and trauma. Like all of Laika's films, <i>Kubo</i> balances heavy subject matter with ebullient fantasy, and almost as if to maintain that balance, the fantasy became even more ambitious and awe-inspiring as the material got sadder and darker. The end result of which was a poignant mix of breathless action, goofy comedy, and aching sadness.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">3. <b><i>O.J.: Made in America</i></b> (dir. Ezra Edelman)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">Considering that </span><i style="color: #454545;"><b>The People v. O.J. Simpson</b></i><span style="color: #454545;"> came out at the start of the year and seemed to scratch the apparently still existent itch people have for stories about O.J. Simpson, it didn't seem like Edelman's documentary would have that much to add. With its more than eight hour running time, and a scope that encompassed hundreds of years, <i>Made in America</i> demonstrated that there was much, much more to be said about the O.J. Simpson trial, and how it reflected the society around it. Encompassing everything from the Great Migration to the Watts Riots, the institutional racism of the LAPD and the </span></span><span style="color: #454545; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rodney King verdict, not to mention O.J.'s football and acting career, Edelman creates a panoramic vision of racial tension in Los Angeles before he even gets to the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Through providing so much deep background, the film shows how the O.J. trial came to exist at the centre of a unique nexus of race, gender and celebrity, and how it was the flashpoint of a conflict that had been going on for years. It makes for a thrilling, engrossing and exhausting work of history and storytelling.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">2. <b><i>13th </i></b>(dir. Ava DuVernay)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">In her last film, </span><i style="color: #454545;"><b>Selma</b></i><span style="color: #454545;">, Ava DuVerney chronicled the bravery and hard work of those involved in the Civil Rights struggle during the 1960s. </span><i style="color: #454545;">13th </i><span style="color: #454545;">feels like an appropriate followup, since it's an urgent reminder that the work is not yet finished, and that civil rights are as endangered now as they have ever been. Taking its title and jumping off point from the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery except in the case of imprisonment, DuVernay compellingly argues that the white establishment in America used that loophole as a way to perpetuate the limits of slavery, which can be seen as a direct cause of Jim Crow laws in the late 19th and early 20th century, and more recent attempts to restrict voting rights for African-Americans. She also draws an unmistakable line between America's history of lynching and the unending spate of police involved shootings, and rhetoric of Donald Trump and the repressive actions of past administrations. In a year that saw plenty of films and TV shows about the black experience in America, <i>13th</i> was the most passionate and necessary.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">1. <b><i>Moonlight </i></b>(dir. Barry Jenkins)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Moonlight</i> has often been compared to Richard Linklater's <i><b>Boyhood</b></i> on account of how it follows the development of a single character from childhood to adulthood, but it's a misguided comparison, not least because of the vastly different ways in which the films were made. If anything, the film is closer to Linklater's <b><i>Before</i></b> trilogy, except instead of being spread over 18 years, it manages to pack all that longing and growth into less than two hours.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The film's episodic, triptych structure, in which each act focuses on a different period in the life of Chiron, a young, gay black man coming to terms with his sexuality, lends it a terrific emotional power. As each new actor takes over the role - with Alex Hibbert playing Chiron as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teenager, and Trevante Rhodes as an adult - they create their own interpretation of this same man at different points in his life, while also building on the work of the actor who came before. Even though each actor has a different physicality, they all convey the same scared, wounded soul, and the magic of the film lies in being able to see some of the child Chiron in his adult self, particularly when he interacts with his abusive, drug-addicted mother (played brilliantly by Naomie Harris throughout).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">The structure also helps make </span><i style="color: #454545;">Moonlight</i><span style="color: #454545;"> a great film about different notions of identity. Each chapter takes its title from the names that Chiron goes by at different times in his life - "Little" as a child due to his small stature, "Chiron" as a teenager as he tries to redefined himself, "Black" as an adult, as he uses a name given to him by a boy he loved - and in so doing it asserts that we are all different people at different points in our lives, even though we occupy the same body. Its exploration of sexual identity, male identity, and black identity is effortless yet complex, with characters like Mahershala Ali's Juan, a drug dealer who takes a shine to "Little" Chiron and tries to help him out, embodying everything that the film does right by being allowed to be charming and likable, but also conflicted about what his role in Chiron's life should be, and what he can teach him about the world. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #454545;">Jenkins' script - adapted from an unproduced play by Tarell Alvin McCraney - is marked by subtle gestures and half-formed thoughts. It's an intuitive work that leaves a lot unsaid, but provides enough information for the audience to figure out what must have happened in the long stretches of Chiron's life that we don't see, and while the jumps in time are sizable, his progression feels logical. It's also, in addition to being a great character study, a haunting and affecting romance, with shades of Wong Kar-Wai's best work. A work of rare beauty, empathy and grace.</span></span></div>
Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-2068341941272770202016-12-31T04:47:00.000+00:002016-12-31T05:02:45.067+00:00What I Have Learned From #52FilmsByWomen<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBuoDMbSGERybDl2YsiHVbC0_DN3YHlAH8_4Qf74VfQvUZ_AklyOeOcatpD0Am051DUQ2B-AYiWk5WwzwUUQICzo70oPqqGy3k8dcXi1AyzSH3kDtWnvMoY3m0s7KnlBgEb4ktp3eRbsTM/s1600/chantal-akerman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBuoDMbSGERybDl2YsiHVbC0_DN3YHlAH8_4Qf74VfQvUZ_AklyOeOcatpD0Am051DUQ2B-AYiWk5WwzwUUQICzo70oPqqGy3k8dcXi1AyzSH3kDtWnvMoY3m0s7KnlBgEb4ktp3eRbsTM/s640/chantal-akerman.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Chantal Akerman</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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I'm not one for making New Year's Resolutions. On the rare occasions that I do make them, they tend to be fairly vague like "lose weight" or "keep in touch with friends more", things that I already do, or would probably do at any time of the year, or which I can carry over from year to year, so notions of success and failure are pretty much negligible.</div>
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This year was different. After looking over the <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/683305304541511681">list of books</a> I read in 2015 and realising that the majority of them were written by men (specifically straight, white men) I resolved to consume art made by more diverse voices in 2016. To that end, I decided to make two broad changes. First, I would try to read an equal number of books written by men and women, something which <a href="https://twitter.com/EdwinJDavies/status/814611843687862272">I more or less</a> stuck to, though in the final count I read 22 books written by men vs. 19 books written by women. Secondly, inspired by Marya Gates' <a href="https://cinema-fanatic.com/2016/01/01/a-year-with-women-what-i-learned-only-watching-films-directed-by-women-in-2015/">A Year With Women</a> project, in which she only watched films directed by women for a year, I committed myself to watching more films directed or co-directed by women in 2016, using Women in Film's <a href="https://womeninfilm.org/52-films/">52 Films By Women</a> pledge to give myself a goal and structure.<br />
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With 2016 about to disappear into the rearview, I wanted to share what I learned from making this admittedly very small change to my viewing habits, what it has taught me about the film industry, myself, and how I'll try and carry these lessons into 2017 and beyond.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>My main takeaway was nothing surprising or new, but something I had known before without fully appreciated. Namely, that institutional sexism makes it much harder for female directors to get movies made (specifically in America, but it's a global problem), and how the effect of that initial hurdle trickles all the way down. Since there are fewer opportunities for women to direct to begin with - as we are reminded every time that a middling, undistinguished male director (or <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-flash/37215/the-flash-seth-grahame-smith-set-to-write-and-direct-movie">middling, undistinguished male who has never directed a film before</a>) is offered the chance to direct a big-budget movie - fewer movies directed by women get made. Because fewer movies directed by women get made, fewer get a wide release. Because fewer films get a wide release, they have fewer opportunities to make money. And because they have fewer opportunities to make money and demonstrate that female directors are as commercially viable as male ones, female directors get fewer opportunities to direct, and so the cycle goes on and on.<br />
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This was something I knew intellectually, but it was only when I set out to actually watch more movies directed by women that I became aware of how comparatively rare they are. It's incredibly easy to see movies by men passively: of the 347 movies I watched this year, 295 were directed by men. I did not have to look for movies directed by men, they found me almost every time that I walked into a theatre, turned on a TV, or booted up a streaming service. You have to work to find films directed by women, even in an age where streaming puts thousands of movies at our disposal every second of the day. While curated or specialist services like MUBI or FilmStruck are better at highlighting work by women - MUBI in particularly always seem to have at least a few available - it's still dispiriting to scroll through lists of titles and be reminded of the disparity.<br />
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Yet even with its problems, streaming proved to be a godsend for this (admittedly low-effort) task. If I had wanted to really make things tough and add extra rules, such as mandating that I had to see all 52 films in theatres (turning this into the film equivalent of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon#Fan_community">Nuzlocke</a> challenge) it would have literally been impossible. While more than 52 films directed by women were released in theatres in the US in 2016, <a href="https://twitter.com/oldfilmsflicker/status/800460896996913153">a grand total of 8 actually received wide releases</a>. The rest received limited or platform releases, and while a few of them did end up playing near me, most of them did not, and certainly not enough did to reach the goal. Conversely, it would have required almost no extra effort for me to watch 52 films directed by men in theatres: I got more than halfway there just by sticking to my regular, not-especially-demanding viewing habits.<br />
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It wasn't all terrible, though. In contrast to the dearth of Hollywood films directed by women, I was pleasantly surprised by how many female documentary filmmakers there are, and not merely directors. Even in the case of documentaries directed by men, I saw more women listed as producers, editors, and cinematographers than in many narrative films. That's obviously a subjective observation based on a limited sample size, but it did reinforce observations I'd made from attending Sheffield Doc/Fest in the past, which always features a lot of films directed or produced by women, and as a somewhat major and specialised festival, offers a microcosm of what is happening with the industry more generally.<br />
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The same also seemed to be true of independent narrative features, but it was still harder (though by no means impossible) to find a low-budget indie directed by a woman than to find a documentary directed by a woman. So while plenty of films by women are being made, having to seek them out made it clearer to me that there is a hierarchy in place when it comes to what kinds of movies women are able to make, and how they are likely to be distributed.<br />
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There's probably a lot more that could be said about the film industry and how it undervalues or outright ignores talented female filmmakers (not to mention up-and-coming filmmakers looking for their first shot) but others can and have made those observations much more eloquently than I could. Needless to say, it's tough out there, and it isn't getting appreciably easier.<br />
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Personally, this experience taught me that I am lazy, and that I'm probably dealing with some latent sexism about female-driven films. The first point is borne out by the fact that I could have sought out the work of Agnès Varda or Chantal Akerman - the two directors whose work I most enjoyed discovering this year - in the past, but chose not to, instead putting them on the back burner in favour of rewatching <i><b>The Thing</b></i> for the twentieth time. Now, I love <i>The Thing</i>, and I sincerely believe that it's one of the greatest movies ever made, but I would probably be a better cinephile (if not a better person) if I had seen <i><b>Cléo from 5 to 7 </b></i>or <b><i>News From Home</i></b> years ago.<br />
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As to the second point, taking part in this challenge forced me to watch movies which I probably would not have seen otherwise because there's some adolescent part of my brain which thinks of them as less important or less valuable because they seem like "movies for girls". I try to be as open-minded about the kinds of movies I watch, and I will generally give anything a try, but if I hadn't known that <i><b>The Dressmaker </b></i>was directed by a woman, and that watching it would help me reach my goal, I probably wouldn't have seen it because it's a melodrama nominally about fashion. And I'd have been poorer for not seeing it, because that movie is a fucking blast. I would like to think that this isn't a major part of my personality, but it was humbling to realise the limits of my supposed open-mindedness, and to reconsider why I dismiss some movies out of hand but not others.<br />
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Enough of what I have learned, the important thing now is what I'll do with it. Firstly, I'm going to keep watching as many films directed by women as I can. 52 films in a year is a nice, achievable number, but it's too small. With the resources available, I should at the very least be able to make the imbalance between male and female-directed films much smaller in 2017 than it was in 2016.<br />
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I'm also going to pay to see as many movies directed by women in the theatre as possible. I'm genuinely proud that I paid money to see <b><i>The Edge of Seventeen</i></b> and <b><i>Queen of Katwe</i></b>, both because they are two of my favourite films of the year, and because in doing so I made a direct, quantifiable statement by contributing to their box office, even if neither film ended up making all that much money. Money talks, and while it's a small contribution to an ongoing conversation, it <i>is</i> a contribution.<br />
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Also, I'm going to try to shine a spotlight on films directed by women whenever I can. I don't have the biggest platform in the world, but if I can convince a handful of people to check out these movies, through talking about them on my podcast, through a review, or even a tweet, then that's something. I can't commission films or hire women to make them, but I can support and advocate for those that already exist. These are small promises, yes, but they are ones I can keep, and I hope they can do some good.<br />
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To that end, if you want some suggestions for movies directed by women to watch, here's a Letterboxd <a href="http://letterboxd.com/edwindavies/list/52filmsbywomen-list/">list</a> of all the films I watched as part of this project. I'd recommend all of them, with the possible exception of Mira Nair's 2004 version of <b><i>Vanity Fair</i></b>, which is a bit of a drag. They can't all be winners, but they deserve the same chance to be losers.</div>
Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-51876838895911369672016-12-29T16:06:00.000+00:002016-12-29T16:06:11.451+00:00Film Discoveries of 2016<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0JX-Rwvgck7QqFIekTop_PEuDGRr6HAveS_k0xeMM3snAxXsvfuiUMiACwX68g6e0ZalVDeX8lFiTOyEW06qDit_OeWOushZCnrMQIqZm7Kht8ZvZmzfqPLfkM0ue4Vk4wljgSSPnvbN/s1600/only-angels-have-wings-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0JX-Rwvgck7QqFIekTop_PEuDGRr6HAveS_k0xeMM3snAxXsvfuiUMiACwX68g6e0ZalVDeX8lFiTOyEW06qDit_OeWOushZCnrMQIqZm7Kht8ZvZmzfqPLfkM0ue4Vk4wljgSSPnvbN/s640/only-angels-have-wings-01.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;"><i>Only Angels Have Wings</i></td></tr>
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Over the last two years, I have been maintaining a <a href="http://www.amightyfineblog.com/search/label/movie%20journal">movie journal</a> as a way of keeping track of the best new and old films I watch in a given month. This is partly an administrative task - it's a lot easier to make end of year lists if you already have a bunch of lists to work from - but it's also part of an ongoing desire to watch more, and more varied, films. If I get to the end of a given month and I see that I've watched a lot of French or Japanese films (or not enough French and Japanese films, for that matter), or if I've watched a lot of <i>films</i> <i>noir</i> at the expense of everything else, that gives me an impetus to seek out films from other eras, countries or genres in the immediate future. It's an awkward self-correcting system, but it more or less keeps things balanced.<br />
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To put a cap on a year in which I watched around 250 older movies (i.e. ones released before 2016), I looked back and picked out the ones that have stuck with me the most over the last twelve months. Since it's hard to rank them all against each other, I have ordered them chronologically by release date (though I will call out the very best older film I watched because it also happened to be the very best thing I watched all year) to give a sense of what my film watching year looked like away from the 2016 treadmill.<br />
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In some cases these films lingered because they led me to discover others films from a specific filmmaker or movement that I hadn't considered before, in others it was because they were just great. In several cases, it was because they were among the stranger films I've ever seen, and featured images that I won't forget any time soon. For whatever reason, these are the twenty older movies that had the biggest impact on me in 2016.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b><i>Only Angels Have Wings</i></b> (dir. Howard Hawks, 1939)<br />
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Although he wasn't one of the most prolific directors to come out of Hollywood's early years - largely because, unlike someone like John Ford, he didn't direct a ton of silent films - Howard Hawks has such a strong catalogue of classics and near-classics that there always seems to be one great film more waiting for me, even after I think I've seen all the major ones. <i>Only Angels Have Wings </i>was the latest Hawks joint to sneak up on me, being a film which I had not heard of before but which became a firm favourite as soon as I finished watching it. Starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth, it's almost the Platonic ideal of a Howard Hawks movie; charming, attractive people throwing barbs back and forth at each other while working to achieve a common goal, in this case operating a crumbling airline in South America. It's got action, suspense and charm to burn.<br />
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<b><i>Gaslight</i></b> (dir. George Cukor, 1944)<br />
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There's something about the cheeriness of old Hollywood films that makes their darkness so much more sinister. There's a lot of pep and energy to the performances, and they try to toss out as many solid quips as the story will allow, but that all makes for a stark contrast when evil is a foot. That dichotomy is used to particularly memorable effect in George Cukor's tale of a woman (Ingrid Bergman) being slowly driven mad by the people around her: the <i>joie de vivre</i> of Charles Boyer and Angela Lansbury only adds to the sense that Bergman is experiencing an entirely different reality. Arguably the most useful film to watch in 2016, if only because the term "gaslighting" is going to get a lot more common in the next few years.<br />
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<i><b>Sergeant Rutledge</b></i> (dir. John Ford, 1960)<br />
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John Ford directed so many movies, not to mention so many Westerns, that it's hardly surprising that buried among iconic films like <i><b>Stagecoach</b></i> and <b><i>The Searchers </i></b>there are plenty of good, even great film that don't get as much attention. <i>Sergeant Rutledge</i> is one such movie, and it's a fine piece of filmmaking. Woody Strode plays a decorated and beloved soldier accused of rape and murder, while Jeffrey Hunter plays the man assigned to defend him at his court martial. It's a rigorously structured courtroom drama/mystery peppered with flashbacks to allow for some derring-do to break up the film's attacks on racism and bigotry, a mix that could have backfired by cheapening the moral arguments in the case, but ends up reinforcing Rutledge's decency and grace. It's basically a Stanley Kramer movie that's actually enjoyable.<br />
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<b><i>Cléo From 5 to 7 </i></b>(dir. Agnès Varda, 1961)<br />
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I said I would call out the best film I saw this year and here it is. A movie so great that I felt elated after seeing it and angry at myself for not watching it sooner. Varda only covers two hours in the life of Cléo (Corinne Marchand), a singer worried that she might have cancer, but in those two hours she manages to convey so much about her life and worldview; her hopes, her fears, her philosophy. It's all so sickeningly French and gorgeous.<br />
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<b><i>The L-Shaped Room </i></b>(dir. Bryan Forbes, 1962)<br />
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It's nothing new to say that British cinema has something of an inferiority complex. Apart from the occasional film that succeeds and makes waves worldwide, or at the very least breaks out of the usual period piece/urban crime drama/bad comedy molds, our national cinema tends to be overshadowed by Hollywood, Europe, and basically anywhere that isn't Britain. The lackluster state of contemporary British films has had the adverse effect of making me underrate or outright dismiss a lot of the older ones, a mistake which I'll try not to make again after watching films like <i><b>Look Back in Anger</b></i>,<b><i> Saturday Night and Sunday Morning</i></b>, and <i>The L-Shaped Room</i>. While it hews to the social realist vein of British cinema in telling its story of a French woman (Leslie Caron) who moves into a boarding house after becoming pregnant, the film is much livelier than that tag would suggest. It's an at times giddy story about bonhomie and friendship in adversity which never loses sight of its heroine's dire situation.<br />
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<b><i>Black Girl</i></b> (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)<br />
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One of the best films I've ever seen about colonialism and its aftermath, Sembene takes the story of a Senegalese girl (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) who goes to work as a maid in France and turns it into an unforgiving and unremitting indictment of how France (and, by extension, all European powers) used and abused the people they invaded, colonised and ruled for decades, and continued to do so even after their empires started to fall apart. Yet despite its bleakness, it manages to feel lively and exciting, if only because of the thrill that comes from articulating a cogent political argument through art.<br />
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<b><i>Closely Watched Trains</i></b> (dir. Jirí Menzel, 1966)<br />
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One of the targets I set myself this year was to watch some of the major films of the Czech New Wave since it was one of the film movements from the '60s that I had largely ignored. While I loved the surreal, aggressive inventiveness of <i><b>Daisies</b></i>, this coming of age story about working at a train station was the one that most surprised me because, based solely on the name, I assumed it was going to be a weighty, punishing drama. While it deals with serious ideas through its World War II setting, it's defined mainly be a bawdiness and a sense of fun that I absolutely was not expecting, but came away thoroughly delighted by.<br />
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<b><i>Seconds</i></b> (dir. John Frankenheimer, 1966)<br />
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John Frankenheimer is one of those reliable journeyman directors who directed some great films - most notably <i><b>The Manchurian Candidate</b></i> - but was distinguished more by solid craftsmanship than a clear artistic vision. Which makes <i>Seconds</i> an interesting film in his oeuvre because, although it exhibits the same polish as his other films, it also displays a visual sophistication lacking from the solid action films, thrillers and dramas that made his name. It's a nightmarish vision of a man who pays a company to fake his own death, then rebuild his body so that he looks by Rock Hudson, a process which is supposed to make him happy but ultimately causes his entire world to fall apart. One of the most savage and compelling movies ever made about the promise of America.<br />
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<b><i>Portrait of Jason</i></b> (dir. Shirley Clarke, 1967)<br />
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Something I've realised this year - in part thanks to my decision to mainline episodes <b><i>Billy on the Street</i></b> - is that I'm fascinated by situations in which a usually benign interaction turns contentious or toxic, but both parties continue with it because they're being filmed. Such is the case with Clarke's film, in which she interviews Jason Holliday, a gay cabaret performer whose life story is unfurled through a series of long monologues prompted by increasingly antagonistic questions from Clarke and crew. Even as their conversation becomes increasingly ugly, neither side backs down or tries to end it because of the presence of a camera and expectations about the need for performance, which in turns prompts a deeper and more revealing conversation that the film's initial string of interesting but superficial stories would suggest.<br />
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<b><i>News From Home</i></b> (dir. Chantal Akerman, 1977)<br />
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When Chantal Akerman took her own life last year, I resolved to see as much of her work as possible. She had been someone whose name I had heard a lot from friends who knew a lot more about cinema than I did, and I felt that I had been letting the side down by not seeking out her work with enough urgency while she was alive. I've now seen about a dozen of her films and she has become one of my favourite filmmakers, and this documentary is the one that hit an especially strong chord with me. Consisting of footage of New York played under voiceover of Akerman reading letters from her mother, it's a deeply melancholy film about homesickness, loneliness, and the pull of the past, played out in the conflict between the images and the soundtrack; the bustling, chaotic world of Akerman's adulthood versus the calmer, quainter concerns of her distant family.<br />
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<b><i>Possession</i></b> (dir. Andrzej Żuławski, 1981)<br />
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If you ever want to see what happens when someone really goes for it, watch Isabelle Adjani in <i>Possession</i>. It's a performance of pure hysteria and madness that veers between funny and disturbing pretty quickly. Yet whether she's asking her husband (Sam Neill) for a divorce or screaming in a tunnel covered in her own blood, she's never less than convincing. <i>Possession</i> is a unique vision of horror that is hard to shake, largely because it's hard to describe or understand. It feels like a work of pure id, and whatever Żuławski was letting out into the world is difficult to parse, but exciting to consider.<br />
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<b><i>Let's Get Lost </i></b>(dir. Bruce Weber, 1988)<br />
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How much I like a music documentary is usually diametrically opposed to how much I know about the subject. If I'm already a fan, then I get bored of hearing stuff I already know about an artist I already like. Case in point: I knew nothing about jazz legend Chet Baker prior to watching <i>Let's Get Lost</i> and came away absolutely enraptured by the film, in large part because it avoids all the cliches of the form. It doesn't try to capture every detail of Baker's work and life, but instead offers a sketch of his past, full of hope and promise, before contrasting it against his later years, when drugs and alcohol had ravaged his body and almost destroyed his career. It's a deeply sad film, made even more so by Baker's death not long after filming had been completed, but one which captures something of Baker's charisma and charm. You can see why people kept wanting to work with him, even when he struggled to work at all.<br />
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<b><i>The Lovers on the Bridge</i></b> (dir. Leos Carax, 1991)<br />
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Carax's wildly expensive folly - the film was delayed so often that it was only completed after multiple backers injected money into it over several years - was worth every franc. A giddy mashup of grand excess and painful intimacy, it's a small love story played out against a grand location, driven by two incredible performances from Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche. One of the most swooningly romantic movies ever made to also feature a mashup of Public Enemy and Benjamin Britten.<br />
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<b><i>Jacquot de Nantes </i></b>(dir. Agnès Varda, 1991)<br />
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Agnès Varda was a filmmaker whose work I really dug into this year, and while there were a bunch of great, inventive films by her which I could have included here, this documentary about/tribute to her late husband - the brilliant director Jacques Demy - was the one that had the biggest emotional impact. Mixing together interviews with Demy conducted towards the end of his life, footage from his films and re-enactments of events from his life that inspired his work, it's a gorgeous, loving celebration of the man and his work which deftly blurs the line between the two.<br />
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<b><i>Wendy and Lucy </i></b>(dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2008)<br />
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One of my goals this year was to watch more films directed by women - something which I will discuss in more detail in a later post - and part of that involved exploring the works of female directors who I had heard of, but had little direct experience with. As a result, 2016 became the year I fell in love with Kelly Reichardt's work, a process which began with this beautifully observed drama about Wendy (Michelle Williams), a young woman traveling to Alaska with her dog, Lucy, who she subsequently loses when she gets arrested for shoplifting. The entire film is wonderful, with a really keen sense of Wendy's deprivation as she tries to survive with nothing but a small amount of money and a supremely busted car, but the second half, in which she tries to find Lucy, is spectacular. It manages to be a low-key drama and a deeply stressful thriller (especially if you're a dog person) that boasts a rare, perfect ending.<br />
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<b><i>3 Idiots</i></b> (dir. Rajkumar Hirani, 2009)<br />
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There are a lot of countries whose film industries I am largely ignorant of, but the one that I always feel the most ashamed about is India's. I know Satyajit Ray's work and I know about some of the important movies thanks to Mark Cousins' <b><i>The Story of Film</i></b>, but other than that I know next to nothing about Bollywood, which is surprising given that I love musicals and love nothing more than a story filled with big, soaring emotions. Hopefully<i> 3 Idiots</i>, one of the most successful Bollywood films ever, will act as something of a gateway for me, because I loved every minute of this goofy, exuberant story of three friends looking for an old college pal who has gone missing. [Stefon voice] It's got everything: songs, a birth in a flood, people being electrocuted while pissing. What more could you want from a movie?<br />
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<b><i>Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine</i></b> (dir. Peter Tscherkassky, 2005)<br />
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I've got an admittedly low tolerance for experimental films. I can appreciate them intellectually, but lose patient with them very quickly if there isn't much of a story to hang the experimentation on. At a little under seventeen minutes, Tscherkassky's short film is the perfect length so that it doesn't wear out its welcome, while the way in which it recontextualises footage from <i><b>The Good, The Bad and the Ugly</b></i> makes for an exciting bit of borderline sacrilege. I didn't think that things could get worse for Eli Wallach's character, but Tscherkassky's assault of sound and imagery turns what was merely a bad situation into an existential hellscape.<br />
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<b><i>Boy</i></b> (dir. Taika Waititi, 2010)<br />
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I watched this in anticipation of Waititi's <i><b>The Hunt for the Wilderpeople</b></i> and I almost wish that I hadn't. While <i>Wilderpeople</i> is a thoroughly charming and wonderful movie, it's maybe only about half as charming and wonderful as <i>Boy</i>, and seeing the earlier film gave me unreasonable expectations. It's one of the best coming of age stories I've ever seen, one filled with memorable characters, hilarious dialogue and, through its young lead's imagination, some delightfully weird imagery. Now that Waititi is part of the Disney juggernaut - he co-wrote <i><b>Moana</b></i> and is directing the third <b><i>Thor</i></b> movie - I'm not sure how many more of these small, personal films he'll get to make, which makes a film as perfect as <i>Boy</i> even more precious.<br />
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<b><i>Coherence</i></b> (dir. James Ward Byrkit, 2013)<br />
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Considering that<b><i> The Invitation</i></b> was one of my favourite films of 2016, it's becoming increasingly clear that my favourite niche sub-genre is "low-budget genre movies about dinner parties gone wrong". The comparison to Karyn Kusama's film is a little facile, though, since the two films could not be more different in tone and complexity: while <i>The Invitation</i> is a taught mystery, <i>Coherence</i> is a heady sci-fi mindfuck that takes a single setting (the aforementioned dinner party) and uses it to spin a tale about comets, fractured identities, and multiple realities. The endless result is overwhelming and delirious.<br />
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<b><i>The Armor of Light </i></b>(dirs. Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes, 2015)<br />
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This is the most recent film on this list, both in terms of release date and (since I watched it yesterday) initial viewing. I'd read a lot of great reviews of it towards the end of last year but had no opportunity to actually see it at the time. I'm glad that I made the effort because Disney and Hughes' documentary about Rob Schenck, a pro-life Evangelical preacher who began to speak out against gun violence following the Washington Navy Yard shootings in 2013, as well as the story and activism of Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, the black teenager who was shot and killed by a white motorist over an argument about loud music, is incredible.<br />
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The arguments about gun control are well-known and oft-stated at this point, but what makes <i>The Armor of Light </i>so fascinating is the way in which it chronicles Schenck's ethical and moral evolution as someone who vehemently opposes abortion, but finds himself unable to maintain a pro-gun stance while claiming to be pro-life. His realisation about how central gun culture has become to the Evangelical movement is striking to behold, as it offers the rare sight of watching someone's thinking and beliefs change on-screen. His interactions with McBath as she becomes more involved with advocacy groups are also incredibly powerful; it's as clear and potent an example I've ever seen of the power of empathy to change the lives of individuals, and maybe the world. A film of tremendous grace and understanding.Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4757291076872318414.post-2343508983031558962016-12-27T01:23:00.004+00:002016-12-28T18:35:48.643+00:00Ed's Top 20 TV Shows of 2016<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBFoMJ2ha4t24hlYifKZPLt1Aei1c1eiGdhInLGxBBtlEEGvDFoj74EwzFHv1W7yAFs_-aHG0zvKajotY8MuADfK9EsPRRjeJ1HrZrZzQrQBvXwhgK1FMFwYQQbHTqFDWGJnQojuCYzLAK/s1600/michaela_coel+CHEWING+GUM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBFoMJ2ha4t24hlYifKZPLt1Aei1c1eiGdhInLGxBBtlEEGvDFoj74EwzFHv1W7yAFs_-aHG0zvKajotY8MuADfK9EsPRRjeJ1HrZrZzQrQBvXwhgK1FMFwYQQbHTqFDWGJnQojuCYzLAK/s640/michaela_coel+CHEWING+GUM.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: right;">Michaela Coel as Tracey in <i>Chewing Gum</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It was a turbulent year, 2016. Lots of death. Acres of sadness. Elections that took up way too much of our time and ended badly. And while there were plenty of distractions to be found on TV - even if "escapism" in this case meant being transported to a world even more brutal and chaotic than our own - many of the best shows tried to engage with the big questions that we usually watch TV to avoid.<br />
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As you can see from this list of the twenty shows that I personally thought were the best from a dizzyingly strong and varied year, it was something of a watershed year for shows about race in America and elsewhere. A slew of shows in massively different genres tackled the history of racism, the contemporary black experience, and the friction that exists at the points where black and white America meet. It was also, in a bitterly ironic turn, all things considered, a great year for shows by and about women, with shows both new and old offering different takes on feminism, female friendships, and the challenges of being a woman.<br />
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Considering how central racism and misogyny ended up being to the Presidential election, it's appropriate that some of best shows of the year (including THE best show of the year) tackled issues of race and gender so directly. It will be interesting, to say the least, to see how this most dynamic, splintered and fast-moving of art forms responds to the next few years, because those problems are not going away any time soon.<br />
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A brief note on eligibility for this list: Obviously I can't watch every show on TV (especially in a year where American networks alone produced 455 original shows) so series I didn't watch (or didn't watch enough of) were not eligible. There were several shows that I loved in the past which I didn't watch this year either due to a lack of time, availability (<b><i>Rectify</i></b>) or because of a lackluster previous season (<b><i>Girls</i></b>). I'm sure they would have been included had I seen them (the positive response to the penultimate season of <i>Girls</i>, in particular, had me kicking myself for letting season four put me off). Also, I'm counting <b><i>O.J.: Made in America</i></b> as a film, which is why it is not included here. If it were included, it would rank very highly.<br />
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Like all lists, this is a subjective selection based on an incomplete experience.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><b>20. <i>Horace and Pete</i></b> (louisck.net)<br />
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When FX announced last year that Louis CK's hilarious, endlessly inventive show <b style="font-style: italic;">Louie</b>, arguably the most influential comedy of the decade, would be going on an indefinite hiatus, it seemed like we might have to wait a while for his next project to emerge. After all, he'd spent the last five years directing, writing, acting in and often editing 61 episodes of television while also continuing to perform new stand-up material around the country. He'd be forgiven for taking things easy for a while.<br />
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Instead, CK jumped into a new venture, a previously unannounced web series starring himself, Steve Buscemi, Alan Alda, Edie Falco, Jessica Lange, and a cadre of great actors (like Rebecca Hall and Laurie Metcalf) who dropped in for the occasional guest spot. If the cast wasn't stunning enough, the show itself was a stark departure; a bleak, brutally sad series about the latest in a long line of men named Horace and Pete to own a crumbling bar in Brooklyn. Through their toxic relationships with each other and the assorted members of their family, and the interactions between the bar patrons, <i>Horace and Pete</i> explored decades of anger and regret, the political turmoil of America in an election year, and the crushing disappointment of unfulfilled lives. Just as CK's first sitcom, <i><b>Lucky Louie</b></i>, hearkened back to the unvarnished, often confrontational sitcoms of the '50s, '60s and '70s, <i>Horace and Pete</i> had the feel of the live plays that were a staple of television's early years, but delivered with a tone (not to mention distribution model) that could not be more contemporary.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Episode 3", in which Laurie Metcalf all but guarantees herself an Emmy.<br />
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<b>19. <i>This Is Us</i> </b>(NBC)<br />
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I've been looking for a reliable tearjerker since <b><i>Friday Night Lights</i></b> and <i><b>Parks & Rec</b></i> went off the air and a contender finally arrived in the most unlikely form: A network drama which manages to effortlessly span multiple decades, tones, and genres, all while focusing on the interconnected lives of a group of people who share a birthday. That description is deliberately vague because part of the joy of this show is seeing how the pieces fit together, and what connects new parents (Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore), a sitcom star (Justin Hartley), a woman who begins a tentative new romance at a weight loss group (Chrissy Metz) and a man who finally meets his biological father (Sterling K. Brown). <i>This Is Us</i> manages to deliver compelling twists that don't interfere with its subtle, often moving character work, and moves easily between drama, comedy and satire without missing a beat. It's an old-fashioned ensemble drama delivered in a novel, exciting way, and a reaffirmation that old ideas are not bad ideas, they just have to be done right.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Pilot", in which all the players are introduced and the most effective revelation of the show (so far) is delivered flawlessly.<br />
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<b>18. <i>The Night Of </i></b>(HBO)<br />
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<i><b>The Night Of</b></i> went through a protracted and painful journey before debuting on HBO over the Summer. Based on the BBC series <b><i>Criminal Justice</i></b>, it was initially planned as a vehicle for James Gandolfini, marking his return to television for the first time since <i><b>The Sopranos </b></i>ended in 2006. When Gandolfini passed away in 2013, Robert De Niro was cast to replace him, and was then replaced in turn by John Turturro. It's a credit to everyone involved that none of that tumult shows in the final project, which is an elegant and brooding exploration of the criminal justice system, and what it does to a young Pakistani-American (Riz Ahmed) arrested for a murder which he may not have committed. Ahmed is great as Naz, a basically good guy who finds himself at the mercy of first the police, then his fellow inmates, and eventually the court; the great character actor Bill Camp is terrific as the detective who arrests him but is plagued by doubts; while Turturro is on career-best form as John Stone, an unscrupulous lawyer plagued by eczema and willing to do anything to free his client.<br />
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The story suffers from expanding the original's five episodes to eight, which results in some wheel-spinning and a loss of momentum in its middle chapters. What it loses in forward movement it gains in theme and atmosphere, as writer Richard Price (the novel <i style="font-weight: bold;">Clockers</i> and its Spike Lee-directed film version, <b><i>The Wire</i></b>) more fully explores the ways in which prison brutalises prisoners, arguing that the justice system is more effective at creating a hardened criminal than reforming one.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "The Art of War", in which Naz becomes more enmeshed in prison life and Stone begins to dig more deeply into the case in the hope of finding different suspects.<br />
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<b>17. <i>Game of Thrones</i></b><i> </i>(HBO)<br />
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HBO's flagship series entered its sixth season with a daunting task. Having more or less exhausted the story material provided by George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, show runners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff had to take a much bolder leap than they had in the past. Instead of making relatively small changes to the source material, they had to set out on their own path with only the slim guidance of Martin's planned novels to work with.<br />
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The upshot of all this was that, after the often stodgy fifth season, which felt like they were trying to stretch the story out for as long as possible in the hope that Martin would finish the next book in time, the sixth moved like a fucking freight train. With renewed urgency, Weiss and Benioff tore through plot points, fan theories and characters with a speed and intensity that was unrecognisable compared to the more sedate pace of seasons past. For those who had long hoped that "R + L = J" would be proved canonical, or that The Cleganebowl would one day happen, this season was especially sweet, as was its insistence on given Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) plenty of scenes together, while "The Battle of the Bastards" delivered the series' most stunning action sequence to date. The constant stream of dopamine hits offered by this season made it less complicated and involving than its predecessors, but also much more fun.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "The Door", in which a beloved character dies in the most noble (yet convoluted) way imaginable.<br />
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<b>16. <i>Insecure</i></b> (HBO)<br />
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One of the main criticisms leveled at the ongoing trend for distinctive, auteurist TV dramedies (think previous HBO shows like <i>Girls</i> or <b><i>Looking</i></b>, and more recently Amazon's <i><b>Transparent</b></i>) is that they prize the first half of the portmanteau over the second. Such a claim could not be made of <b style="font-style: italic;">Insecure</b>: While Issa Rae's show (co-created with Larry Wilmore) has a woozy, bleached-out look reminiscent of its HBO compatriots, and it treats the romantic and professional crises of Rae's character ( also called Issa) just as seriously as Andrew Haigh treated the lives of his characters, it's funny as fuck. Rae and her writers mine every ounce of comedy out of their exploration of what it means to be black, particularly when working in predominantly white workplaces, and the ways in which gender and race inform every aspect of Issa's life, as well as that of her best friend Molly (Yvonne Orji), as they navigate the already messy territory of their late-20s.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Insecure as Fuck', in which we are introduced to the characters, and Issa performs the instant classic rap "Broken Pussy".<br />
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<b>15.<i> Difficult People</i> </b>(Hulu)<br />
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Season one of Julie Klausner's blistering update of the <i>Seinfeld</i> formula - irredeemable New Yorkers hatching schemes and trading barbs - was very enjoyable, but was also finding its feet as it went, as evidenced by its tendency to lean too heavily on Klausner and her costar Billy Eichner at the expense of a strong ensemble. The second season was an unqualified success, with scripts that dovetailed to create brilliant, baffling farces, more room to develop its supporting cast (including the introduction of my favourite new character of 2016: Lola (Shakina Nayfack,) the trans truther) and more obtuse pop culture references than even the most pop culture-addled misfit, i.e. me, could handle. There's a long, complicated and dull argument to be had about what the "best" comedy on television is right now, but there is no question in my mind about which is the funniest. Season one had potential, season two fulfilled it. I can't wait for season three.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Patches", in which a series of beautifully constructed misunderstandings lead to Klausner getting cast for a Showtime series because the casting director thinks that she is mentally handicapped, while Eichner inadvertently becomes a replacement child for Klausner's mother (Andrea Martin).<br />
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<b>14. <i>Chewing Gum</i>* (E4)</b><br />
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</b> Adapted from Michaela Coel's play <i>Chewing Gum Dreams</i>, <b style="font-style: italic;">Chewing Gum </b>is one of the most exuberant British comedies in years. Following the efforts of Tracey (Coel), a 24-year old from a deeply religious family, to lose her virginity, it's a raucous show about fumbling desire and the vibrancy of life on a council estate in modern, multicultural London. Coel's central performance as Tracey is fantastic - funny, warm, believably awkward - and the writing is razor-sharp, both on a line-by-line basis and in its ability to tell the ongoing story of a young woman's sexual awakening over six episodes. It may be the best structured British series since <b><i>Spaced</i></b>, a comparison I don't make lightly. Post-Brexit, its depiction of a Britain of all colours and sexualities feels even more valuable.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "The Last Supper", in which Tracey's cousin Boy Tracey comes to visit and the tensions bubbling under the surface for the past four episodes come to a head at a chaotic family dinner.<br />
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</b>*Technically a 2015 show, but it debuted on Netflix in the US this year so I'm counting it.<br />
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<b>13. <i>BoJack Horseman</i></b> (Netflix)<br />
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The crown jewel of Netflix's original programming continues to be this animated series, which manages to be both one of the funniest and one of the saddest shows currently on television. To give a sense of its ambition, the third season took on emotional territory previously explored in season five of <b><i>Mad Men</i></b> (and did so brilliantly) as BoJack (Will Arnett) tried to become a better person while also gunning for an Oscar for his performance in a biopic Secretariat. The show dug deeper into the backstory of the characters, relished the opportunity that the Oscar subplot offered to satirise Hollywood and the months-long mud wrestle that is awards season, and, after a brief period of calm, plunged BoJack into the deepest, bleakest hole of his life. A show about talking animals shouldn't be this moving, but it is.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Fish Out of Water", in which BoJack goes to an underwater film festival and accidentally finds himself caring for a lost baby seahorse. A near-wordless half hour that has all the grace and charm of Tati.<br />
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<b>12. <i>Westworld</i></b> (HBO)<br />
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Last year, <i><b>Jurassic World </b></i>took an old Michael Crichton story and rehashed its story beats without doing much with his ideas. This year, <i><b>Westworld</b></i> did the opposite. While it shares the name and setting of Crichton's 1973 classic about a Western-themed amusement park in which paying customers play out their violent and sexual fantasies against advanced androids, showrunner Jonathan Nolan took it to deeper, stranger territory, crafting a story that explored the philosophical ramifications of artificial intelligence and the very purpose of storytelling in a way that Crichton's leaner original did not. Plus, it's got lots of great action set pieces and explosions, which is nice. It's a sweeping epic underpinned by a long list of great performances from (but not limited to) Evan Rachel Wood, James Marsden, Ed Harris, Thandie Newton and Anthony Hopkins. The latter, playing the creator of the park, does some of his best work in decades.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Dissonance Theory", in which the pieces start to fall into place and Maeve (Newton) starts to become aware of the true nature of her existence.<br />
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<b>11. <i>Broad City</i></b> (Comedy Central)<br />
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The problem with being one of the most exciting shows on television is that it's hard to replicate the shock of the new, and even if the quality remains the same, that initial surprise can never be recaptured. Such is the case with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer's series about friendship and the travails of being a young woman in New York (or at least the only slightly exaggerated version of New York they inhabit). They delivered another string of great, funny episodes this year, but after you've seen them be bold and brilliant twice already, by the third time round it starts to feel expected. That doesn't take away from the fact that <i>Broad City</i> gave us such delights as a trip to Abbi's childhood home in Pennsylvania, a relationship between Abbi and her boss that caused a believable fault line in her friendship with Ilana, and the sight of Ilana riding a naked Blake Griffin like a horse.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Rat Pack", in which Abbi experiments with Tinder and a party devolves into a clandestine hunt for a rat.<br />
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<b>10. <i>Silicon Valley</i></b> (HBO)<br />
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In its fitfully great first season, <b style="font-style: italic;">Silicon Valley</b> was characterized (fairly) as "<b><i>Entourage</i></b>, but nerds" as its assortment of tech bros kept getting themselves into scrapes, all of which were pretty much resolved by the end of the episode. In its second and third seasons, the show figured out that it was more compelling to have them resolve their immediate problems only if it caused much worse trouble further down the road. As Pied Piper became a more viable commercial prospect in season three, its founding members found themselves being sidetracked by their own creation as CEO Richard (Thomas Middleditch) was replaced by a feckless company man (the great Stephen Tobolowsky) and they were forced to work on a project they hated. Their bitterness and frustration, while warranted, spurred them on to misguided action, including a heist which unravels in truly spectacular fashion, while offering an ever more incisive critique of the cult of Silicon Valley, and the broader tech industry it represents.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Bachmanity Insanity", in which Bachman (T.J. Miller) lets his hubris get the better of him, setting up both his financial ruin and a surprisingly sweet season finale.<br />
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<b>9. <i>Veep</i></b> (HBO)<br />
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You'd never know that <i><b>Veep</b></i> lost its creator and showrunner this year after Armando Iannucci left to pursue other projects. The best ensemble on television, along with some of its sharpest writers, took the previous season's cliffhanger - in which President Selina Meyer's (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) re-election hopes ended in an Electoral College tie - and used it to spark a series of professional and personal crises for Meyer and her staff (and to teach an unexpected civics lesson). Whether it was chronicling incompetent former staffer Jonah's (Timothy Simons) run for Congress or Selina's mixed feelings about her mother's death, the show was never less than brilliant from the first minute to the last.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "C**tgate", which uses chaos and farce to lay bare the experience of being a woman in politics.<br />
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<b>8. <i>Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</i></b> (CW)<br />
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No show on television has a steeper uphill climb than <b style="font-style: italic;">Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</b> on a week-to-week basis. Apart from being saddled with a title which, while intended as a winking bit of irony, can be off-putting, it's also a musical that delivers at least two or three original songs every week. It's a daunting task which creator and star Rachel Bloom and her team meet and surpass each and every week, creating a show which works as a delightful musical, a fiercely smart show about sex and gender, and a showcase for a ridiculously talented ensemble. It also has, in Bloom's character Rebecca Bunch, one of the most interesting characters in all of TV: A sweet-natured, relatable heroine who is unquestionably a stalker. The fact that the show has managed to maintain its edge even after blowing up its premise at the end of season one is a reassuring sign for its creative future, even if its commercial one is constantly imperiled by low ratings.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Josh Has No Idea Where I Am!", in which Rebecca goes missing and has a long-delayed revelation while her friends try to figure out what happened to her.<br />
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<b>7. <i>Fleabag</i></b> (BBC Three)<br />
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For about a week or two, everyone on Twitter started posting pictures of three fictional characters who they felt best summed up the constituent elements of their personality. In response to that, my friend Lewis posited a new version of the game: post a picture of Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and two other characters, because no other character has been so instantly and completely relatable. Based on Waller-Bridge's one woman show, <i>Fleabag</i> is a pitch-black comedy about a couple of weeks in the life of a young woman trying to maintain a certain degree of nihilistic remove in the aftermath of a sudden tragedy. As well as being a great study of a fascinating character - the kind of complex role that in recent years has been the domain of men in pensive American dramas - it's blisteringly, brutally funny, like if Chris Morris remade <b><i>Amelie</i></b> and replaced all of the whimsy with bitter disdain. It's also an exceptionally well-structured work of storytelling, one which deftly sets up a surprisingly moving finale by delivering a real gut punch. Between this and<i> Chewing Gum</i>, it's clearly a boom time for female-driven British sitcoms based on plays.<br />
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</b> <i>Standout Episode</i>: "Episode 4", in which Fleabag and her sister Claire (Sian Clifford) are sent away to a silent retreat and are forced to contend with their shared past and very different worldviews.<br />
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</b> <b>6. <i>The Americans</i></b> (FX)<br />
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When <i>The Americans</i> started in 2013, it came with a can't-miss premise (Russian spies try to maintain their cover as an all-American family in the heart of Reagan-era Washington) that also seemed like it would be hard to sustain. Television is built on the constant reassertion of the status quo, and the need for dramatic spy antics would make it hard to put the genie back in the bottle week after week, especially when balanced against an intense exploration of marriage and family. The genius of the show is that the status quo is constantly being redefined and re-established, with each new change further complicating the relationship between Elizabeth and Philip Jennings (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), their relationship with their children (Holly Taylor and Keidrich Sellati) and their unsuspecting (for now) FBI agent neighbour (Noah Emmerich). This season saw the Jennings' secret being half-revealed to the pastor of their daughter Paige, necessitating a multiple-episode discussion about how to contain the knowledge, and the introduction of another Russian agent (Dylan Baker) whose solitude and loneliness served as a potent contrast to the intimacy that exists between Elizabeth and Philip. A number of shocking deaths added to the general sense of things beginning to spiral out of control, something which will surely only grow more pronounced over the show's final two seasons.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Chloramphenicol", an episode which heightens the conflicts of the early part of the season to a fever pitch by separating the members of the Jennings family, then delivers one of the show's biggest shocks yet.<br />
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</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">5.</span><i style="font-weight: bold;"> Search Party</i> (TBS)<br />
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One of my favourite films of the last ten years is Aaron Katz's <i><b>Cold Weather</b></i>. It's a rain-soaked, unmistakably Portland take on a detective story in which a young man investigates his ex-girlfriend's disappearance, a mystery which briefly lends structure and meaning to an aimless in-between period in his life. <i>Search Party</i>, created by Sarah-Violet Bliss, Charles Rogers and Michael Showalter, starts from a similar premise: A young woman (Alia Shawkat, one of our most consistently brilliant actors) finds herself stuck in a personal and professional rut. When she discovers that someone she went to college with has gone missing, she enlists her group of self-obsessed friends in her quest to figure out what happened, setting in motion a strange and calamitous series of events. It's an often hilarious comedy and a compelling mystery which manages to both critique the narcissism of its characters while having a lot of sympathy for them, even in their darkest and most misguided moments. Plus, it's got GOATs like Rosie Perez, Christine Taylor, Ron Livingston and Parker Posey, all of whom do great work in supporting roles.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "The Captive Dinner Guest", in which Dory (Shawkat) and her friends lure a potential suspect to her apartment in the hopes of extracting information from him.<br />
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</b> <b>4. <i>The Good Place</i></b> (NBC)<br />
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You could never fault Mike Schur for a lack of ambition. After co-creating two of the best sitcoms of the past decade (<b><i>Parks & Recreation</i> </b>and <i><b>Brooklyn Nine-Nine</b></i>) he could have relaxed a bit, or at least made another show about lovable public servants (as long as we're not talking about those contemptible librarians). Instead, he made a sitcom about the very nature of good and evil, which from its first episode creates an entirely new mythology about how the afterlife works. And because it's from Mike Schur, it not only works, but manages to be funny and heartwarming at the same time.<br />
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Kristen Bell stars as Eleanor, an averagely awful person who accidentally winds up in The Good Place, the part of the afterlife reserved for only the smallest percentage of truly good and selfless human beings. The early episodes of the season focus on Eleanor's attempts to hide her illegitimate status from the architect of The Good Place (Ted Danson, in the role he was born to play as a celestial being who finds every human activity fascinating) while working with Chidi (William Jackson Harper) an ethics professor who tries to help her understand what it means to be a 'good' person. While there's a lot of great jokes contained in that premise, the show quickly detonates it, setting up new, more complicated conflicts that are only just starting to play out. It's unclear if <i>The Good Place</i> will have the longevity of Schur's other sitcoms, but after only ten episodes it can sit comfortably alongside them as a pinnacle of the form.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Most Improved Player", in which the rules of The Good Place are called into question, Ted Danson and Kristen Bell make talking at a table into electrifying television, and we get a first hint of The Bad Place.<br />
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<b>3. <i>Better Call Saul</i></b> (AMC)</div>
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By the end of its first season, <i><b>Better Call Saul </b></i>had justified its right to exist as a separate entity by showing that there was a compelling story to be told about how well-meaning but morally flexible Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) became <i><b>Breaking Ba</b></i><b><i>d</i></b>'s criminal lawyer (in every possible sense) Saul Goodman. By the end of its season second, that story became almost too much to bear, as McGill's transformation became a slow-motion tragedy endangering the lives of the people he cares about the most. That's largely due to Odenkirk's charismatic central performance and his ability to be both sincere and cynical at the same time, but also creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould's willingness to let their story unfold at its own pace. We still haven't really met Saul, and we still might not by the end of the upcoming third season, but taking such a long time still doesn't feel excessive. This story is going to take as long as it needs to, and I am happy to be along for the ride, even as I dread the destination.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Nailed", a great showcase for Michael McKean as Jimmy's brother Chuck, who spends the episode trying to uncover one of Jimmy's schemes, with dire consequences.<br />
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<b>2.</b> <b><i>Atlanta</i></b> (FX)<br />
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2016 was a good year to be Donald Glover and basically no one else. (Well, except maybe Riz Ahmed.) Not only did he put out a great new album as Childish Gambino, he also got cast as Lando Calrissian in the Han Solo standalone <i>Star Wars</i> movie and created, wrote and starred in his own critically acclaimed TV series. <i><b>Atlanta</b></i> feels like the natural culmination of the post-<i><b>Girls</b></i>, post-<i><b>Louie</b></i> movement of auteurist sitcoms that gave us <b><i>Master of None</i></b>, <i>Broad City</i> and <b><i>Baskets</i></b>. Like those shows, <i>Atlanta</i> feels like a distinctive, idiosyncratic vision, one informed by Glover's musical career, his sketch comedy background, and his childhood in the city. It's a show which manages to be both authentic, particularly in its depiction of what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck and the ease with which it discusses race, while also being surreal and prone to moments of absurdism, such as the decision to make the seventh episode a fake public access talk show, complete with satirical commercials. It also boasts one of the best performances on television from Brian Tyree Henry as Paper Boi, the cousin to Glover's Earn and an ascendant rapper who spends much of the first season grappling with his newfound fame and his desire for more of it.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Juneteenth", in which Earn and his girlfriend Van (Zadie Beetz) attend a Juneteenth party hosted by a rich white guy who knows a lot about black culture and his black, aggressively bourgeois wife. It's the show at its most cutting, incisive and funny, and also features the most painful moment of cringe comedy I have seen in years, if not ever.<br />
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<b><i>1. The People v. O.J. Simpson: </i></b><b><i>American Crime Story</i></b><b><i> </i></b>(FX)<br />
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Before it aired, there was little reason to suspect that <i>The People v. O.J. Simpson</i> would be good. The early trailers veered from atmospheric to garish, some of the casting choices (John Travolta? David Schwimmer? Cuba Gooding Jr.?) seemed like exercises in kitschy gimmickry, and the involvement of Ryan Murphy (he of the transcendent disaster that was <b><i>Glee</i></b> and the straight-up disaster that is <b><i>American Horror Story</i></b>) should have sent chills down our collective spine. Within a few episodes, though, we stopped watching out of morbid curiosity and switched to outright adulation. The show became a phenomenon and, in retrospect, it's easy to see why. You have great source material (Jeffrey Toobin's "The Run of His Life") adapted by talented writers (<b><i>Ed Wood </i></b>and <b><i>The People v. Larry Flint </i></b>screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski) and performed by actors who knew exactly how to pitch their performances. (Sure, Travolta isn't the most subtle of performers, but Robert Shapiro is not a subtle man, so his eerie hamminess actually fits.)<br />
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Outside of the marquee casting choices, the true revelations of the season lay with its less famous cast members: Sarah Paulson's relentless, brittle turn as Marcia Clark, the barely suppressed rage that Sterling K. Brown brought to Christopher Darden, and Courtney B. Vance's electrifying, unmissable performance as Johnny Cochran. All of these factors made <i>The People v. O.J. Simpson</i> something miraculous - an exercise in camp which had real, substantive things to say about race and gender in America, and a wildly entertaining romp which ended on a note of haunting emptiness. It earned the sweeping grandeur implied by its subtitle.<br />
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<i>Standout Episode</i>: "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia", in which Sarah Paulson is allowed to dig deep into the character of Marcia Clark as she juggles the case, her divorce proceedings, and the glaring eye of a media seemingly hellbent on turning her into a villain.Edwin Davieshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03524234077517383056noreply@blogger.com