Movie Journal: December

Hidden Figures

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 Top 25 Films of the Year, which was radically reshaped throughout the month as I tried to see as much as possible.

The worst film I watched in December was Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals. I was a big fan of Ford's A Single Man, which I found to be an aesthetically gorgeous and emotionally rich study of grief and loneliness, and while Nocturnal Animals 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.

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, Burn After Reading, 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 No Country For Old Men - 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?!"

I also watched Hail, Caesar! 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 Burn After Reading, I enjoyed Hail, Caesar! 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.

Let's dig in to the good stuff. Here are the ten best films I watched for the first time in December of 2016.

Ed's Top 25 Films of 2016

Suicide Squad, a film which will definitely not be appearing on this list

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 Mad Max: Fury Road), 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.

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 Letterboxd.

Now, let's begin.

Ed's Top 20 TV Shows of 2016

Michaela Coel as Tracey in Chewing Gum

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.

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.

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.

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 (Rectify) or because of a lackluster previous season (Girls). I'm sure they would have been included had I seen them (the positive response to the penultimate season of Girls, in particular, had me kicking myself for letting season four put me off). Also, I'm counting O.J.: Made in America as a film, which is why it is not included here. If it were included, it would rank very highly.

Like all lists, this is a subjective selection based on an incomplete experience.

Shot/Reverse Shot: 166. 2016 Round-up

With 2016 rapidly disappearing into the review, Matt and I talk about the best and worst things that the year had to offer. The hits, the misses, the deaths. We then say goodbye to the year (and Matt, since he's going to be traveling around the Americas for much of 2017) by counting down the SRS Top Ten of 2016.

Shot/Reverse Shot: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

To mark the release of the first "standalone" Star Wars movie from Disney and LucasFilm, Matt and I watched Gareth Edwards' Rogue One, a prequel to the original Star Wars in which a ragtag group of rebels led by Felicity Jones work together to steal the plans for the Death Star. We discuss the stuff we liked about it (the action and pacing), the stuff we didn't (undead Peter Cushing) and reveal the real reason behind those pesky reshoots.

Movie Journal: November

November was another month focused primarily on catching up with 2016 releases, with all but three of the twenty-four I watched coming out in the last twelve months. As is so often the case, a year that looked like it might be barren in August looks positively flush in November, as a consensus about the best films begins to form, and seemingly every week a film comes out which seems determined to shake up any established sense of order. It's chaotic and beautiful and it's my favourite period of the film calendar.

The worst film I saw this month was Mick Jackson's Denial, a moribund courtroom drama recounting the real case of a historian (Rachel Weisz) who was sued by Holocaust denier David Irving (Timothy Spall) - not to be confused with the defensive end for the Cowboys - for libel after she accurately described his beliefs and methods. It's a compelling story, but one which is retold with little drive or power, wasting a great cast on material that couldn't be more important, but which winds up feeling trivial. Not merely bad, but wholly inadequate.

Now, lets talk about that good good stuff. Here are the ten best films I watched for the first time in November of 2016.

Film Review: Moana (2016)

Halfway through Moana, the demigod Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) derisively calls the eponymous character (voiced by Auli'i Cravalho) "princess". She says that she isn't a princess, she's the daughter of a chief, and while Maui isn't swayed by the distinction, it's an important one to Moana - it's the latest example of man trying to define who she is, and in doing so underestimating her - but also for the film around her. "Princess" comes laden with certain expectations about responsibilities, behaviours, and decorum, just as the notion of a "Disney Princess" is associated with a certain kind of storytelling.

Film Review: De Palma (2015)

Documentaries about directors are relatively rare considering how often filmmakers like to talk about their craft, and good ones are even harder to find. That's partly because even the great directors run out of good production stories eventually - sure, Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark were fraught with disaster, but how many people really want to hear about the production of Always or The Terminal? But it's also because the subjects often want to present their work in a positive light, either due to nebulous concerns about their legacy, or because they are afraid that excess honesty might burn bridges and make it harder for them to work. That kind of mild self-censorship might be prudent, but it can get in the way of genuine insight.

Film Review: Into the Inferno (2016)

Considering his reputation as our foremost chronicler of Man's place in/battle with nature - one which may be defined more by the alt comedy world's fascination with him than by his actual work - it's surprising how little Werner Herzog's presence is felt in his latest, the Netflix documentary Into the Inferno. Sure, his unmistakable Bavarian drone carries the film along, and the subject matter - the destructive/cultural power of volcanoes - is perfectly suited to his unique blend of boundless curiosity and aching pessimism, but he's an almost entirely off-screen presence, and there's little sense of his personal involvement with the project. For the most part, the focus is on volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, who serves as presenter, expert and audience surrogate as he travels the world, investigating different active volcanoes and placing them in a global, historical context.

Movie Journal: October

Queen of Katwe

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

No, not because Christmas is just around the corner (though that is a plus) but because it's awards season! Good films are finally coming out again! After what has been one of the more dispiriting summers in recent memory, the next couple of months look phenomenal and the slow drip of interesting, challenging movies started in October, as reflected by this month's list, which is less reliant on non-2016 films than usual.

In total, I watched 22 films this month, 21 of which were first time viewings. The lone rewatch was of James Whale's Frankenstein, which I hadn't seen in about a decade, and was even more haunting and gorgeous than I remembered. Karloff's performance as The Monster is one for the ages, not merely because he's convincing as a hulking mass of murderous potential, but because he also makes The Monster's fear as he's trapped in a burning building feel palpably real.

The worst film I watched was Finian's Rainbow, Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of the 1947 musical about an Irish couple (Fred Astaire and Petula Clark) coming to America, pursued by a Leprechaun (Tommy Steele, in what may be the most grating performance ever committed to celluloid) and interrupting the lives of a small town while singing terrible, forgettable songs. Also, there's blackface for some reason. A thoroughly dispiriting watch, though it's weirdly inspirational; Coppola was only four years away from making The Godfather, after all, so anything is possible.

Without any further ado, let's talk about the best films I watched in October, 2016.

Film Review: Sully (2016)

As a recreation of an historical event and the man at its centre, Clint Eastwood's Sully is perfectly molded to its subject matter. It's a workmanlike, professional exercise in storytelling that is upended by a single event; the fateful day in January, 2009 when the engine of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's (Tom Hanks) plane was taken out by a bird strike, requiring him to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River, which he achieved without losing any of the one hundred and fifty-five lives on board.

Movie Journal: August

Wendy and Lucy

I'm somewhat late on this month's movie journal on account of work, and since I'm going to be spending much of the next week traveling and going to comedy shows, I thought I'd better write this now otherwise I'll be writing about films I saw in August in October, and that isn't a good look.

August was easily my weakest month for movies this year. Due to a hectic few weeks, I only managed to squeeze in 20 films throughout the month, one of which was Suicide Squad, far and away the worst film I've seen so far this year, and one of the most miserable cinematic experiences I can remember. I already spent two whole episodes of Shot/Reverse Shot talking about why it's terrible in and of itself and representative of everything wrong with blockbuster filmmaking, so let's leave it at that.

I also re-watched Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons for the first time in about a decade and it was roughly ten times better than I remembered. Admittedly, I remembered it being really good, but I didn't remember it being brilliant (until the tacked on happy ending, which is hilariously obvious and ill-fitting). It's easy to obsess over the fact that it's an incomplete work because swathes of it were cut and destroyed over seventy years ago, but focusing on the lost masterpiece that no one living has seen can only distract from the masterpiece that we actually have. It also reminded me of how much I enjoy the scene in The Squid in the Whale in which Jesse Eisenberg tries to impress a girl by bragging about having only seen stills of the film, a scene I think of very often because it's not a million miles away from what I was like as a teenager.

Right, let's get down to business. Here are the ten best films I watched for the first time in August.

Film Review: Weiner (2016)

In art and politics, timing is crucial. A gaffe or scandal at the wrong moment can sink a candidate, or be forgotten in a matter of days, depending on when it happens. Sometimes the difference between a boring documentary and a compelling one comes down to being in the right place at the right time. Both good and bad timing are in full effect in Weiner, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg's documentary about Anthony Weiner's ill-fated run for Mayor of New York in 2013, two years after he resigned from Congress amidst a sexting scandal. It was great timing for the filmmakers since production started as Weiner entered the race and was riding high in the polls, which in turn allowed them to be at the epicentre when a second sexting scandal fatally derailed his campaign. It was bad timing for the candidate, obviously, because he's not looking ahead to his re-election campaign right now.

Movie Journal: July

The Witch

Another late entry into this series, though one which is at least slightly less late than the June journal was. It's a shame, really, because July was easily the best month of the year for me in terms of the quality of movies I watched, so much so that I struggled to narrow this list down to just ten. For the record, films which just missed the cut include: Ghostbusters (2016), No Home Movie (2015), L'inhumaine (1924), Call Me Kuchu (2012) and Real Life (1979).

The worst film I watched in July was The Trip, Roger Corman's 1967 dalliance with psychedelia and LSD that is most notable for featuring such soon-to-be luminaries as Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Bruce Dern, and for being written by another future legend, Jack Nicholson. Any film with that pool of talent at its disposal is going to have some worthwhile stuff in it, and the last twenty minutes or so, when Fonda's character descends into a prolonged and disjointed acid trip that possibly destroys his mind, is visceral and brilliant in its use of abstract, associative editing. But it's a long and dull road to get to the one good part of the film.

I also watched Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, which I didn't think was as bad as most of the Internet did. It's not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a lot more fun than Man of Steel (it would almost have to be, admittedly) and it has the courtesy to be bad in interesting ways. Taken as a whole, it's an awful mess, but there are some individual scenes and sequences - most of them featuring Ben Affleck's Batman - that work really well, and I could see myself rewatching it dozens of times before I sat through even one minute of Zack Snyder's first Superman story again.

Now, let's get to the good stuff. Here are the ten best films I watched for the first time in July.

Movie Journal: June

The Lovers on the Bridge

I think it's fair to say that I've fallen off a little bit when it comes to these monthly journals, and this blog in general. In my defense, the last month or so has been pretty hectic with work (not to mention that I've spent way too much time delving into the ins and outs of the Presidential election, an occupation which is much too stressful to do without being paid), but that's not really much of an excuse considering I still managed to find time to watch a lot of films during that same time period, and these posts generally don't take that long to knock together. Here's hoping that I can finish the year off strong after this summer stumble.

I watched 33 films in June, and the worst of them was Stanley Kramer's On The Beach. Aside from the fact that the title caused me to constantly think of this sick guitar lick, which was a distraction even if it wasn't the film's fault, it was such a drab, dreary experience. Even for a film about people waiting to die from radiation poisoning, which has never been the perkiest of sub-genres, it proceeds at such a ponderous pace that it bores long before it has a chance to lecture on the absurdity of nuclear war. Kramer more ably balanced social commentary and genre filmmaking with The Defiant Ones and Judgement At Nuremberg. Here, the results are too turgid to contemplate.

Right, on to the good films I watched in June.

Halftime Top 10

O.J.: Made in America

Even though January of 2016 now seems like it happened 15 years ago, we are somehow only halfway through this fucking year, which means that it's a good time to look back over the last six months and consider how the year is shaping up, film-wise.

The answer is "not great", as evidenced by the fact that my number one film is arguably not actually a film, and the slate of mainstream fare has been pretty woeful with a few bright sparks dotted around the place. Still, there's plenty of promising stuff on the horizon - Manchester by the Sea! Rogue One! Kubo and the Two Strings! Moana! La La Land! - and I still have to catch up on a bunch of films that I haven't had a chance to see/haven't played anywhere near me (my anticipation for Green Room remains sky high), so there's still plenty of time for 2016 to sort itself out. 

Right, let's get to the top ten.

Film Review: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

In creating a mockumentary about the rise and fall (then rise) of a vainglorious pop superstar, The Lonely Island (a.k.a. Saturday Night Live alumni Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone) set themselves a dauntingly high bar. By making a faux-documentary set in the world of popular music and all the ridiculousness that comes along with it, they invite comparisons with This Is Spinal Tap, a beloved cult classic whose influence on the mockumentary format continues to this day. It takes an admirable confidence to want to be compared to the very best, but it also invites a level of scrutiny that goofy comedies usually try to avoid.

Movie Journal: May

Isabelle Adjani in Possession (1981)

I watched 38 films in May, which breaks down into 31 features and 7 shorts. One of those viewings was a rewatch of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, a film that I love more and more with each viewing, and which I find myself revisiting every few years. In addition to being an emotionally draining experience and a virtuoso display of editing and pacing (it's three hours long and it feels like maybe half that), I always forget at least five or six of the famous actors who are in it, so even though I know the layout of the film pretty well at this point, it's still able to surprise. It also gets funnier and funnier with each viewing, possibly because the story gets a little less overwhelming each time, so the genuinely funny moments don't get lost as easily as they did on my first viewing.

The worst film I watched all month was David A. Stewart's Honest, which I watched purely to discuss it on this episode of Shot/Reverse Shot. As bad as a Swinging London-set film, shot by The Other One from Eurythmics, starring three-quarters of All Saints and drenched in all the worst excesses of post-Guy Ritchie British gangster films may sound, I was still surprised by how dreary the whole thing was. I was hoping for camp value - and it does deliver that during a climactic scene involving the Irish neighbour from Shameless, a machete and a fortuitous watermelon - but for the most part it's just incompetent enough to be bad, but not incompetent enough to be compelling.

Fair play to the supporting actors, though, many of whom have gone on to find work in things like the Twilight series, Doctor Who and Game of Thrones, instead of having their careers fatally derailed by association.

Now, to the good stuff. Here are the ten best films that I watched for the very first time in May of 2016.

Movie Journal: April

Owing to a combination of work and family, this was a comparatively light month for me when it came to movie watching. I only watched 20 films that were new to me, though they all were of a pretty high quality so it balances out. Even the worst film I watched this month - Dheeraj Akolkar's Liv & Ingmar - wasn't bad per se, it was just a fairly middling documentary about two great artists that I hoped would be better. It did make me want to watch (or rewatch) a bunch of Ingmar Bergman films in the near future, so that's one positive to come out of an otherwise not especially enlightening experience.

Maybe my most significant viewing this month (aside from the ten listed below) was my rewatch (well, rewatches, since I watched it twice in one day) of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Everything I loved the first time - its energy, the new characters, the fact that everyone involved seems so excited to be making a Star Wars movie - was still present and correct, while the stuff that bothered me - the way the film stops dead every time an old character appears, the entire third act - didn't bother me as much. Its place as my third favourite Star Wars film is increasingly secure.

Right, to the business at hand. Here are the ten best films that I watched for the first time in April, 2016.

Film Review: The Jungle Book (2016)

One of the more surprising (not to mention lucrative) developments in recent years has been Walt Disney's decision to reach back into their cavernous back catalogue to create live-action versions of their animated classics. It's surprising both because of how successful those films have been (most notably Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide back in 2010), but also because it's such a simple idea that it feels like it should have happened ten times over already. With a steady stream of similar adaptations due over the next couple of years (some of which make more sense than others), Disney's nostalgia-mining looks set to continue for some time. We can only hope that the next installments display as much love and wit as Jon Favreau's take on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. Or, more accurately, his take on the 1967 Disney version of The Jungle Book, since the story and design of Favreau's film has much more in common with that than the original stories.