2019 in Review – My Top 20 Films

So through a combination of busyness and laziness, it’s finally in February that I get round to publishing my list of my favourite films from last year. Added to that laziness and delay is the sad fact I only got round to writing my little thoughts for half the films, so do please excuse the gaps at the top of the list here.

As always, I’ve loved getting to see a breadth of films from all over the world, many of which emerged unexpectedly and totally caught me by surprise. Also given the fact that I watched many of these on streaming services (Netflix and MUBI) can’t help but reflect the way industry is changing and the way we get to view films is changing with it. It’s not all bad, as these services gave me the chance to watch some obscure foreign films that barely got released even in London.

There are trailers linked to all the films below if you want to check any out!

20. Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov; Russia)

 

 

 

 

 

19. Us (Jordan Peele; USA)

 

 

 

 

 

18. Midsommar (Ari Aster; USA/Sweden/Hungary)

 

 

 

 

 

17. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos; UK/Ireland/USA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

16. Atlantics (Mati Diop; Senegal/France/Belgium)

 

 

 

 

 

15. Burning (Lee Chang-dong; South Korea)

 

 

 

 

 

14. In Fabric (Peter Strickland; UK)

 

 

 

 

 

13. Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley; USA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

12. Ad Astra (James Gray; USA)

 

 

 

 

 

11. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach; USA/UK)

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. The Farewell (Lulu Wang; USA)

Whilst I loved getting to see a depiction of ordinary suburban Chinese life and customs which have hardly been seen on cinema screens in the UK before, it’s the way that The Farewell depicts a very specific family crisis yet imbues it with an authenticity and humour that makes it feel universal. It might be a bit hyperbolic to say anyone who has spent time with their extended families will find much to appreciate and relate to here, but it’s true – characters are multi-faceted and contradictory, much tension is unspoken, many situations are awkward. But at heart it’s about a family that loves each other coming together for what could potentially be their last visit to their ageing matriarch. Charming, funny, and just a little emotionally devastating, Lulu Wang has a gift for turning seemingly ordinary dialogue into both realistically ridiculous, and subtly complex.

9. Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria; USA)

So much about this film could have gone wrong. Based upon a New York magazine article about a group of strippers drugging and stealing from the wealthy men who visit their club, it could have fallen into spurious territory or easily have been tastelessly tone deaf. It’s a credit to writer-director Lorene Scafaria that this headline grabbing set-up becomes a hugely entertaining but thoughtful film about female friendship, toxic masculinity, attitudes towards sex work and conflicting attitudes it creates for those who work in it and those who exploit it, and the continuing struggles of being a woman in what is still a staunchly patriarchal America. Excellent performances all round also help avoid turning characters into stereotypes, and the central friendship between Destiny (Constance Wu) and Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) was one of the most compelling character story arcs I saw all year.

8. Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar; Spain)

Pedro Almodóvar’s best film since The Skin I Live In from 2011. This may be one of his quieter and more low-key films, but it displays one of the most distinct and authorial filmmakers working today at the height of his creative powers. Grounded by a sensitive central performance by Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory is an incredibly skilfully told story of film director confronting his later years in life, his creative block and long term illnesses by taking the time to look back over the successes and failures of his past, and the relationships that have defined who he is as a son, an artist, a gay man, a partner. The autobiographical aspects can’t be ignored, but it’s Almodóvar’s genius in blending the features of himself and his previous work that viewers will recognise, with a deeply insightful fictional character study that feels imbued with vitality, humour and sorrow. The best way to describe this film is ‘rich’ – it has a bit of everything really: moving, funny, entertaining, and often profound.

7. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese; USA)

The ultimate Martin Scorsese greatest hits film. The epitome of so much that defined his oeuvre and made his name. That all these aspects of his previous work can come together and make something so epic, so masterfully told and constructed, and so surprisingly funny that it makes the longest film I’ve ever seen at a cinema just breeze by. Minor quibbles with the otherwise pretty astonishing de-ageing technology aside, it’s the strength of the film’s drive and directorial control that you come to forgive and even love its major indulgences. In the end, it finds Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian in a reflective mood, mirroring the thrills and successes of gangster Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) with the blistering energy of Scorsese’s back catalogue, yet patiently asks what it all comes to in the end and what satisfaction and meaning a life dedicated to crime actually brings. And in the end, it’s always a pleasure to see Joe Pesci onscreen again in a measured and charismatic turn, and Al Pacino getting the biggest laughs chewing every corner of every scene he’s in. I’m so glad I got to see this on the big screen.

6. Monos (Alejandro Landes; Colombia/USA)

I love films like Monos. Films that really push the boundaries of what cinema can be in terms of storytelling and experiences, it’s brimming with innovation and a sharp artistic eye, it feels like cinema in its purest form. Almost like a Yorgos Lanthimos film with its otherworldly outsider’s view of a disturbing yet quirky world, Monos is a Colombian film depicting a band of child soldiers atop a mountain. Infrequently visited by a tiny but muscular overseer and tasked with guarding an American hostage, the teens are otherwise left to fend for themselves, combatting both boredom, raging hormones, tribal allegiances and power play, and the distant threat of warfare and violence. The film makes no attempt to explain the context of the situation – we never know the causes of the war or who is fighting, instead focusing solely on the impact these abuses of power have on those stuck on the lowest rungs of society. It’s blisteringly creative and strikingly shot in locations that have never been filmed before, the film is incredible to look at. Strange and challenging, the film is part Lord of the Flies mixed with the psychedelic madness of war a la Apocalypse Now.

5. Beats (Brian Welsh; UK)

I’m sure it won’t surprise any of you that this film, an ode to raves and dance music, would appeal to me so directly.  Steeped in a nostalgia for a period when I was barely 1 year old, filmed in stylised black and white, and with a killer soundtrack to boot, Beats was one of the most exhilarating films I’d seen in a long time. Scotland, 1994. Two mates from very different backgrounds, Johnno (Christian Ortega) and Spanner (Lorn Macdonald) attempt to discover a fabled illegal rave as foretold on the pirate radio. Featuring the most awe-inspiring and thrilling depiction of club culture I’ve seen on screen, Beats is a thoroughly entertaining love letter to a time and place when youth culture rallied against the world in a new way and a new breed of music found its prime audience. At its heart in a way is a love story between two friends, both aware that adulthood beckons and life as they know it won’t be the same again.

4. Knives Out (Rian Johnson; USA)

The most deliriously enjoyable film I saw all year. And judging by the response in the packed screening I saw it in, one the most crowd-pleasing too. A loving pastiche which knows exactly what sort of film it is and doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest, Knives Out roots itself within the foundations of the classic Agatha Christie whodunit mystery but takes great pleasure in occasionally upturning the conventions of the genre to pull the rug from under the audience. Silly enough to be surprisingly one of the funnier films I saw this year, and not shirking away from deliberately convoluted plotting, at heart the film realises its wire balancing act between surprising the audience but sticking close enough to the familiar tropes to be overwhelming pleasing to watch.

3. Minding the Gap (Bing Liu; USA)

Nominated for Best Documentary at last year’s Oscars, Minding the Gap at first seems almost a home movie of friends skateboarding. Filmed over several years in the struggling town of Rockford, Illinois, director Bing Liu’s astonishing eye for detail instead turns this into a remarkable portrait of what it means to grow up, when whole lifetimes feel lost because opportunities are scarce, and questions what it means to be a man in a time when notions of masculinity are shifting. Searingly intimate, the very different paths these young men take is presented almost painfully honestly through Liu’s camera: how can life have meaning when it feels like the whole world is against you because of your race, your economic background, your family history. Skateboarding is a release for these guys, but it can only take them so far in life. It’s the background for Minding the Gap as we see them work through hardship and trauma, and offers a film of epic scope and incredible depth, far more so than most fictional dramas can ever hope to depict. I found this very moving.

2. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins; USA)

Following up the era- defining Moonlight would be no easy task. But ambition is one thing writer-director Barry Jenkins certainly doesn’t lack, choosing to adapt James Baldwin’s love story, a portrait of African American communities and families banding together in times of oppression. Lush, sweeping and feeling perhaps even more personal to me as Moonlight did, Beale Street feels … with a vitality which embraces you through the screen. Depicting a young black couple torn apart when Fonny (Stephan James) is falsely accused of rape by a racist cop, the film marries this heartbreaking story of the past with a modern eye, offering a critical but actually optimistic and poetic study of America. At its heart it’s an expressionistic love story, Jenkins again proving himself to be one of the most accomplished visual storytellers working today.

1. For Sama (Waad Al-Kateab, Edward Watts; UK/USA/Syria)

In a year of strong documentaries, For Sama does what factual content can do best – it teaches you about a situation which can be impossible to imagine, offers a deeply personal take on the world which is informative and moving, and it is powerful in a way which could instigate change and discussion. Filmed over several years during the Siege of Aleppo of the Syrian Civil War, our guide is filmmaker and journalist Waad Al-Kateab who documents the ongoing attacks on the city she has called home during her studies. She begins a relationship with a doctor running one of the few hospitals left in the city. After falling pregnant, the couple decide the stay to assist the resistance and help survivors, and she gives birth to Sama, to whom the film is dedicated.

Putting human faces on footage that’s often easy to detach from when seen as news footage, For Sama is tough and hearbreaking. The camera never turns away as mass casualties are brought in to the hospital, and families torn apart, children made orphans. Less a political comment on the context surrounding the war, and more simply a document of how humans survive under extreme stress in the middle of a warzone, it’s often a gruelling and upsetting watch. Not least seeing the children growing up there, playing in the wreckage of burnt out buses and hardly flinching when rockets strike nearby. But it’s a film built on hope – in trying to understand why they stay behind in a warzone, we see the innate importance that comes from caring for one another and the inherent goodness that can be found in relationships of all kinds, most especially in times of crisis. It’s agonising to think that this ever happened and that thousands lived, and thousands more continue to live through this every day. But films like this are important; important to preserve as records in the hope that tragedies like this might one day be a thing of the past. The film is available to screen for free on the Channel 4 website.

My Top 20 Films of 2015: Part 1

Given the sheer breadth of films I’ve seen in 2015 and just how excellent many of them were, I’ve ended up extending the list to 20 entries this year. There was so much that I enjoyed, and many emotional and mind-blowing moments that I wanted to talk about that it seemed a shame to miss too much off.

My list is based on films with UK release dates in 2015. I spent the first few months of the year living in London, which gave me access to a wider range of cinemas than I had ever experienced before, and a number of limited release films which I probably would have struggled to see elsewhere. I also had money saved then, and could afford to go at least once a week! Moving back home, my trips were less frequent, but still regular. Saying that, there was still a huge amount I missed this year which I need to seek out.

I’ve realised my tastes have gotten especially … abstract this year. I love actively seeking out the most unusual and non-mainstream films going, as I increasingly find them so much more inspiring, satisfying and original than many major releases (not to say I haven’t been to see many of the biggest films of the year and not enjoyed them). So I imagine some of my choices might be a bit off-kilter for most people’s tastes, but these are the films that have really blown me away this year.

It was also a standout year for marginalised voices, with a wonderful range of films by and about women, and people and cultures not readily seen on the big screen. Many of the films on my list are also debuts, which is an incredibly exciting indictment of what the future of cinema may hold.

Honourable mentions: White Bird in a Blizzard; White God; Birdman; Whiplash; Spectre; Phoenix; Girlhood; Star Wars: The Force Awakens; Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation; Selma

20. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, USA)
Billed as “the first Iranian vampire western”, Ana Lily Amirpour’s assuredly confident debut is an exercise in pure style but one which thankfully doesn’t excise substance. In an Iranian ghost town dogged by drug addiction and mired in decline, a lone female vampire glides along the streets, casually observing and haunting the prostitutes and lost souls in the night. A young man in debt to a dangerous pimp begins a tentative relationship with this unfathomable girl.

It’s a fascinating feminist work exploring female autonomy and strength under pressure, with splendid moody black and white cinematography that makes this one of the most distinct films of the year. Glacially slow at times, but with an eye for bold visual style and full of love for a whole gamut of genre influences, A Girl Walks… is a highly impressive addition to the vampire canon we never thought was needed.

19. Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, USA)
At a time when so many action films rely on rapid editing and visual excess to create excitement, it is doubly thrilling that Sicario is such a patient film. It takes its time. Scenarios and settings are allowed to develop, the stakes are heightened, and the consequences can be explored in all their brutal detail.

An overwhelming sense of hopelessness hangs over everything and everyone – FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) falling in out of her depth with the umbrous missions of CIA officer Matt Graver (Josh Brolin); the impossible task of the Mexican police in a state where corpses are left hanging in the street; the endless machinations of both sides of the conflict. At once both a desperately sad film about the failure of the War on Drugs and the ruinous damage it has caused, and a blisteringly original action film and revenge story, Sicario can’t help but leave you shaken.

18. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, UK)
Probably the most beguiling and idiosyncratic film I’ve seen all year, The Duke of Burgundy is a rich fever dream of sensation for heart and mind. In a world without men, we observe the unusual play of power between a loving sadomasochistic couple (Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara D’Anna) as they perform their repetitive rituals. Deeply European in sensibility, plot structures concerning the blurring boundaries between dominant and submissive are subsumed within the heady atmosphere of deep longing which positively drips off the screen.

Every little detail is presented with the most exquisite care and attention. Each frame is unbelievably pretty and every gesture, every brief touch of fingers along skin, the brush of luxurious material or the flutter of a butterfly’s wings becomes a fetishistic indulgence of the most exquisite kind. At its heart though, this is a generous affable story of the complex love between two women. I can’t wait to see this again; I’m sure a second viewing will divulge new pleasures.

17. The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky, Chile/France)
Cult arthouse hero Alejandro Jodorowsky returns with his first film in 23 years and it was wonderful to have him back. An outlandish and deliciously unhinged autobiography of his childhood and struggles with his father, mixed with Jodorowsky’s trademark spiritual allegory and fantastical black humour, it honestly feels as fresh and urgent as the best of his work from the 1970s. There is a sense of spectacle and a number of incredible shots unlike anything I’ve seen.

The explicit content and blatant slaps in the face of all plotting and thematic conventions, plus the fact it’s simply batshit crazy, means more casual cinemagoers will likely be left frustrated. But for fans of his work, myself included, The Dance of Reality is a treat, and it was a pleasure to have seen it on a big screen with an audience. This is the most unashamedly auterist film of 2015, one that feels almost of another era for its sheer audacity and singularity.

16. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, Japan)
Sadly set to be one of Studio Ghibli’s final films, Princess Kaguya surely has to be one of the most beautiful animations ever made. Every frame is a work of art in its own way with a glorious focus on line and texture hardly seen in animation these days – the complete film is a magical moving watercolour whose sheer beauty at times brought tears to my eyes (I know, it sounds ridiculous but it really did)

Inspired by a traditional Japanese folk tale of a bamboo cutter who discovers a magical girl and vast riches growing in bamboo shoots, the story is given a modern feminist sensibility about the importance of respect and honesty, and the way wealth and power corrupts. I know some have found the traditional Japanese elements involving the spiritual a little alienating, but you’ve just got to throw yourself into this world. And see it in the Japanese language if you can.

15. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, USA)
At first glance, this looks like the epitome of the quirky Sundance teen hit about artsy middle class teenagers. Which is why I couldn’t believe how very much in love I fell with Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a thoughtful and genuine story of friendship which is also a welcome, playfully critical antidote to the more self-indulgent trends of recent teen movies, especially illness movies.

Concerning Greg (Thomas Mann), a painfully awkward high school senior whose comfortable non-status at school is disrupted when he’s asked to befriend Rachel (Olivia Cooke), who is diagnosed with leukaemia, the film is a decidedly arch and self-aware film about teen films, full of knowingly ironic dialogue and comic stereotypes. But I felt the strength of the performances and characterisation drew the film from the brink of irritating pastiche to become something much warmer and more likeable. It is choc-a-bloc full of classic film and music references which of course I lapped up, but it was the moving and heartfelt moments which unexpectedly left me a emotional wreck that really made me love this film.

14. The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK/Greece/France/Netherlands)
One of my own most anticipated films last year, I’m glad to say The Lobster mostly delivers. A sci-fi comedy romantic drama that depicts a future society where it is illegal to be single, we watch freshly divorced David (Colin Farrell) as he’s shipped to a special hotel to find a new partner. What follows is a bizarre satire of dating routines and a chilly experiment of social mores pushed to their limits which we are invited to observe with pleasure.

Brimming with endless standout setpieces, a fine cast and a fiercely original script, The Lobster marks Lanthimos as one of the most singular directors working today. The film stalls somewhat in its final scenes in the forest, but the sheer commitment to its deadpan absurdity is bewildering and extremely entertaining.

13. A Most Violent Year (J. C. Chandor, USA)
It may be because it has been nearly a whole year since this was released (longer in America) that this film seems to have been so gravely underappreciated, forgotten almost. Which is a great shame, as this was surely one of the most assured and thrilling films I’ve seen this year. Oscar Isaac (what a great year he’s had!) stars as Abel Morales, head of a small heating oil company in early 1980s New York. He’s under immense pressure – more of his truck deliveries are being hijacked and stolen, and a determined district attorney (David Oyelowo) is scrutinising the industry, steadfastly rooting out corruption. Torn between the more determinedly pragmatic approach of his wife (Jessica Chastain) and his own tenacious need to remain legitimate, Morales struggles to keep all his plates spinning.

A real slow burner thriller, A Most Violent Year is less of the action thriller than many had come to expect. Instead, it’s a frosty character study which values intricate plotting and rewards audiences ready for sophisticated drama. It recalls the best of New Hollywood-era crime cinema, especially the films of Sidney Lumet, and confirms Chandor as one of the most promising writer-directors working today. Excellent stuff.

12. Wild Tales (Damián Szifron, Argentina/Spain)
My God, this film is fun. A portmanteau of six short films all linked by themes of violence and revenge, which includes a demolitions expert waging war against a car towing company, road rage getting out control, and possibly the worst wedding reception in history. The first and shortest story is a veritable gut-punch, with one of the most hilariously dark scenarios in a film in years.

In anthology films like this, it’s frequently inevitable that some parts outshine others but thankfully in this each story has its own strengths. It covers a bewildering array of conflicts, many linked by raw frustrations with bureaucracy, technology and infrastructure that can’t help but make you feel tensions might be running deep in parts of Argentina. At once tense, frustrating, and more than a little fucked up, Wild Tales is an intensely satisfying experience, if not simply for the fact that your day cannot possibly get any worse than the ones here.

11. Tangerine (Sean Baker, USA)
Much of the publicity surrounding this ultra-low budget film was astonishment at how the entire thing was filmed on an iPhone 5. And it does look fantastic, drowning in lush sunshine and neon glows. But it’s so much more than. It’s a boundless portrait of Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez), a transgender sex worker who, upon being released from prison on Christmas Eve, discovers her pimp boyfriend has cheated on her with a cisgender woman. This sets off a raucous chain of events, as Sin-Dee storms across LA trying to find the mystery woman, and best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) is left trying to calm her down.

There’s so so much to admire and love about this film. It’s a remarkable example of just how expansive and creative low budget cinema can be. It features trans characters played by actual trans performers. And it’s an immensely enjoyable and deliciously purile black comedy, which recalls the best of John Waters’ filthiest comedies. It feels completely genuine, making it a quotable, brash and confrontational experience. Building to an epic confrontation that leaves you watching through your fingers through sheer awkwardness, I left feeling both exhausted and exhilarated. If there is any one film on this list I feel everyone should watch to see what cinema is capable of, this would be it. Go see it!

Some late thoughts on The Lobster

2015
Writers: Efthimis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

There probably isn’t a premise more distinct and downright bonkers than Yorgos Lanthimos’s sci-fi romantic black comedy drama The Lobster. Set in the near future in a society in which the law orders everyone to be in a couple, it follows newly-single Colin Farrell as he gets taken to a special hotel to meet a new partner. The clincher being, he has only 45 days before his time runs out and he gets turned into an animal.

The other inhabitants of the hotel are equally confused and desperate, relegated to nothing more than their ‘distinct features’ in the completely functional attempts to pair up. There’s John C Reilly’s Lisping Man, Ben Whishaw’s Limping Man, Ashely Jensen’s Biscuit Woman and Jessica Barden’s Nosebleed Woman. On top of that, the inhabitants are sent into the forest each day to hunt with tranquilisers the renegade loners who camp there, those who defy to be single.

Such a set up is so unusual and approached so clinically that it’s hard to take this film seriously as a piece of drama. Instead, you’re invited to engage with this world from a distance, to marvel at the eccentricity of its constituent parts and appreciate the sheer mundanity of its greyish cinematography and perfectly parallel, even logical framing and camera shots. I was expecting some sort of reasoning behind the government policy, maybe it being a means of managing underpopulation or dictatorial dominance. But like Lanthimos’s previous films Dogtooth and Alps, this film completely omits any sort of explanatory context.

This isn’t meant as a critique. Like his previous films, The Lobster showcases Lanthimos’s distinct love of world-building and creating unique and thought-promoting scenarios, such as the rigid structuring of the hotel. Every aspect and set-up is thought-through for maximum impact – the way the residents eat meals at rows of single tables, the ridiculously literal presentations they are given on the benefits of coupledom (woman walks alone; woman walks with man), the callous methods and punishments for testing the residents’ sexual functionality. In all, it makes an engrossing and surprisingly satisfying watch, one where I couldn’t help wanting to see what could possibly come next. Thankfully, the tone is so knowingly ludicrous that the film ends up being a lot funnier than I was expecting (or at least the trailer led me to expect).

The whole scenario perfectly suits the director’s love of arch, precise and literal dialogue. The cleverness of the dating context helps create a quiet sense of desperation, and provides one of the film’s many, almost cluttered, themes on the absurdity of dating and the social etiquettes and behaviours involved. Overall, like his previous work, the greatest sense one gets of watching this is that you’re asked to study this world as if through a microscope. Rachel Weisz’s forceful narration describes scenes in the minutest of detail and the camera maintains an incredibly still distance, asking us to consider these sad little characters as they are in their laboratory-like Perspex cage. The film is often quite cruel in its mockery of the protagonists, and encourages us, with our outsider status, to share in laughing at the ridiculousness of the scenarios and how unerringly stupid the characters are for taking part in it, from watching Ben Whishaw willingly and repeatedly smash his face into a table to gazing at John C Reilly tumble down a hill in slow-motion. It’s gleefully enjoyable, in a way that almost made me feel a little guilty for taking such pleasure in such preposterous meanness.

Thinking about it afterwards, The Lobster seems to me overall to be a critique of fundamentalism, and the foundation that one can understand or control something by looking at it literally, like the hotel’s unfounded notion that happy couples can be made from a single shared defining characteristic. Similarly, I couldn’t help thinking about how the media and governments like to define people into broad, often reductive, categories which hardly ever get to the root of understanding people and why they do what they do.

The Lobster loses its way once the film leaves the hotel and moves into the forest. It’s too long – a good 15-20 minutes or so could probably be shaved from the exploration of the forest-dwellers’ strange routines and instead be used to focus more on the basics of the story. In the end though, I was a big big fan of this movie, and can heartedly say I don’t think I’ve ever really seen anything like it, which is always a plus in my view. At the very least, it had my friends and me debating long afterwards, though mostly about which animals we’d like to be turned into.