The Usual Choices
Hacksaw Ridge (Mel Gibson)
La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
Lion (Garth Davis)
Manchester By the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)
Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
But how about...
The Nice Guys (Shane Black)
Mysteriously ignored by the viewing-public, this fun buddy movie is both an old-fashioned-romp & a cutting-edge-rush. Set in the groovy post-Sixties L.A. world, it somehow vitamises Boogie Nights, Lethal Weapon and Inherent Vice into a long, cool cocktail with a real kick to it (and a little umbrella of course). Violent for sure, with lotsa lotsa lotsa shooting for sure, but it retains a comicbook feel so the emphasis is on thrilling enjoyment rather than gritty suspense. While Russell Crowe & Ryan Gosling make a terrific odd-couple team, I'm not so sure about the 13 year old daughter who views hardcore porn and points guns whilst pining more over her lost bedroom than her dead mother. Just another example of the shrinking of childhood, I guess. But, for compensatory giggles, you get to see Kim Basinger trying to say her lines even though she clearly isn't able to move her face.
...and what about...
Sing Street (John Carney)
A sweetly-spirited charmer. Set in 1985 Dublin where times are tough all round, 15 year old Conor is economically-forced to attend rough Synge Street (geddit?) School. Weighed down by peer bullies and a supposed-Christian Brother principal-bastard, Conor forms a band with mates just to impress a girl. The music?...well, it's the Eighties, so it's Duran Duran, A-ha and The Cure; the band mimics what they hear and love, encouraged all the time by Conor's layabout stoner brother. The kids shoot videos, dress accordingly and change their attitude to life. No in-your-face heavy-drugs, precocious sex or gore-festive violence; instead, you get a teen film with heart, a couple of positive messages and decent-but-not-saccharine people. In the 21st Century...bloody rare.
...not to mention...
Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
How's this for a movie plot...a bus driver named Paterson lives & works in a town called Paterson and his hobbies are writing poetry and observing life...his wife creates in black & white patterns...and they have a bulldog who is more than he seems...yep, that's it. It takes a bit of getting used to this film's calm rhythm and methodical structure, but once you've settled in, any changes to the mundane routines are a genuine shock. I love how images and quirky features (twins & William Carlos Williams & water falling) keep rippling throughout the movie like pebbles thrown into a fluid universe. Wholly unique and wholly ordinary at the same time...like most of our lives.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Triple 9 (John Hillcoat)
I know that America invented the gangster movie genre (along with westerns and musicals), but there's a gaping chasm between Scarface & The Asphalt Jungle & The Godfather, and this piece of gloomy muck. Unpleasant from beginning to end, every character is a horrible person who does horrible things to themselves, each other and the people they apparently care about. And the USA urban trademarks are all here: guns absolutely everywhere & evil dirty cops & really evil Mafia warlords & easy-to-get drugs & women as possessions & multiple killings & the m.f. word peppered all about. Throw in Kate Winslet attempting a Boris 'n' Natasha accent and strong actors (Casey Affleck; Chiwetel Ejiofor) not doing any strong acting and you've got a crime flick that wants to be Heat and The Departed but is more like a shoot-'em-up video game that has been set on autoplay.
My Top 10 Films of 2016
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| "OMG...how did the 7XL diaphragm get loose?" |
#02 A Manchester By the Sea (Lonergan)
#03 A 20th Century Women (Mills)
#04 A Hacksaw Ridge (Gibson)
#05 A- Love & Friendship (Stillman)
#06 A- Hell and High Water (Mackenzie)
#07 A- The Nice Guys (Black)
#08 A- Nocturnal Animals (Ford)
#09 A- A Quiet Passion (Davies)
#10 A- Personal Shopper (Assayas)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 A- The Meddler (Scafaria)
#12 A- Denial (Jackson)
#13 A- The Girl on the Train (Taylor)
#14 A- Lady Macbeth (Oldboyd)
#15 B+ Alone in Berlin (Perez)
#16 B+ Sing Street (Carney)
#17 B+ Arrival (Villeneuve)
#18 B+ Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Yates)
#19 B+ Captain America: Civil War (Russo)
#20 B+ Lion (Davis)
#21 B+ Sully (Eastwood)
#22 B+ Goldstone (Sen)
#23 B+ Moonlight (Jenkins)
#24 B+ Captain Fantastic (Ross)
#25 B+ The Light Between Oceans (Cianfrance)
#26 B+ La La Land (Chazelle)
#27 B+ Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Snyder)
#28 B+ Doctor Strange (Derrickson)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B The Jungle Book [looks wonderful, but it sure ain't the cartoon]
> B Silence [noble, admirable, artistic and more than a little boring]
> B Split [The Three Faces of Eve + The Collector and as awkward as both]
> B I, Daniel Blake [shows you why real life is truly awful]
> B Jackie [don't watch this if you want the JFK story or are trying to quit smoking]
> B Deepwater Horizon [aka The Towering Inferno at Sea]
> B X-Men: Apocalypse [unimpressive villain = ordinary superhero flick]
> B Florence Foster Jenkins [light 'n' lovely 'n' fleeting]
> B Snowden [caused more apathy than paranoia]
> B Swiss Army Man [Robinson Crusoe + Donnie Darko + Monty Python...and not bad with it]
> B A Monster Calls [a motion picture book which school librarians will love]
> B- The Lost City of Z [an expedition into the wilds of the Amazon that becomes just a bloody long walk]
> B- Their Finest [WWII-blitzed London with laughs & tears & love & tragedy & courage...yet again]
> B- The Founder [wants you to openly jeer and secretly cheer for the American Way of doing business]
> B- Suicide Squad [The Dirty Dozen with too much plotting and too many attempts at emotional depth]
> B- Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children [wants to hop on the superhero bandwagon but misses]
> B- Hunt for the Wilderpeople [New Zealanders have weird taste]
> B- Midnight Special [the story doesn't move along enough, so all you experience is a sense of foreboding]
> B- Deadpool [more smart-arse than hero; more smart-arse than funny]
> B- LBJ [a Reader's Digest version of an underrated president]
> C 10 Cloverfield Lane [awkward mix of abduction 'n' confinement thriller and alien invasion horror]
> D Triple 9 [A Personal Unmentionable]
> D The Exception [a Mills & Boon look at the Nazis]
> E Collide [the heartwarming story of a man who becomes involved in the international drug trade because of his love for a good woman...nearly worth watching just to point & laugh at Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 2016 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
The Accountant (O’Connor); The BFG (Spielberg); The Birth of a Nation (Parker); Colossal (Vigalondo); Everybody Wants Some!! (Linklater); Fences (Washington); The Finest Hours (Gillespie); Frank & Lola (Ross); Hail, Caesar! (Coen); Indignation (Schamus); Loving (Nichols); Money Monster (Foster)
Best Performances of 2016
Casey Affleck in Manchester By the Sea
Mahershala Ali in Moonlight
Viola Davis in Fences
Ryan Gosling in La La Land
Natalie Portman in Jackie
Emma Stone in La La Land
Denzel Washington in Fences
But how about...
Timothy Spall in Denial
The bad guy is almost always the more interesting character in a movie. The true story of David Irving's (Holocaust denier and right wing extremist) 2000 libel trial, this film succeeds purely because Timothy plays David with an undercurrent of quiet foreboding and casual racism...he expects to be in control of public opinion, personal emotion and historical fact...alternative facts, as it were. His intellectual pomposity knows no bounds...he believes that if he says it, it must be accepted. Timothy portrays this pumping, breathing ego in the scariest way possible...as a quite ordinary human being who loves his children, lives next door and walks our streets. Real horror.
...and what about...
Eddie Redmayne in Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them
I acknowledge that this is a very unlikely choice, but hear me out: Eddie manages to create a wholly unique character in that most hackneyed / rapidly becoming tedious / the-characters-are-secondary-to-the-digital-SFX of movie genres...blockbuster fantasy franchise. And it's his character, rather than the scary monsters & the cute creatures & the smirking villains, that is the creation that you hang on to after the movie has ended. With lopsided headtilt, eyes staring into nowhere, chronically shy and a heart as big as a house, Eddie gives the most affecting performance in any fantasy film in recent recall. He really does.
...not to mention...
Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper
Do our young people really live like this? As modern as a stemless wineglass, Kristen plays a barely-in-her-twenties miss, zipping around Paris on her Vespa, buying clothes for rich celebrities, complaining about not having enough time for her Art and communicating technologically. She comes across as being bored shitless, so when her focus shifts to the possible-spirit of her dead twin, her sudden reinvolvement in her own life becomes riveting (and obviously a bit creepy). A poster girl for First World Problems, Kristen gives her potentially-vapid character subtle complexities which were probably not in the original script. A maturing actress...just don't expect to ever see her in a screwball comedy.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Ben Kingsley in Collide
It is bad enough that this film is yet another in the long line of action movies based around supposedly admirable heroes who sell drugs and violently hurt people just to survive...this film also features an embarrassing attempt by the normally-spot-on Ben Kingsley to play a debauched druglord of somewhere-foreign extraction. Draped in chunky gold jewellery and nearly-naked supermodels, the sleazebag talks in soft threatening cliches whilst self-lovingly buffing his chromedome and maintaining his moontan. It is beyond being over-the-top or an amusing caricature...it is stupid. Sir Ben...please...never again.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 2016
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| Benedict demonstrates the complex dexterity required for Insy Winsy Spider. |
#02 Casey Affleck in Manchester By the Sea
#03 Russell Crowe & Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys
#04 Susan Sarandon in The Meddler
#05 Annette Bening in 20th Century Women
#06 Timothy Spall in Denial
#07 Kate Beckinsale in Love & Friendship
#08 Tom Bennett in Love & Friendship
#09 Cynthia Nixon in A Quiet Passion
#10 Michael Shannon in Nocturnal Animals
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Sunny Pawar in Lion
#12 Andrew Garfield in Hacksaw Ridge
#13 Allison Janney in The Girl on the Train
#14 Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper
#15 Adam Driver in Paterson
#16 Catherine Bailey in A Quiet Passion
#17 Ashton Sanders in Moonlight
#18 Hugo Weaving in Hacksaw Ridge
#19 Jeff Bridges in Hell and High Water
#20 Amy Adams in Arrival
#21 Vince Vaughn in Hacksaw Ridge
#22 Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train
#23 Lewis MacDougall in A Monster Calls
#24 Kurt Russell in Deepwater Horizon
#25 Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone in La La Land
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins [another impersonation from Meryl rather than an acting performance]
> Mahershala Ali in Moonlight [outshone by the child and the teenager]
> Natalie Portman in Jackie [too much was shot in close-up so she was restricted to face-acting]
> Nicole Kidman & Dev Patel in Lion [how could they hope to make an impression after the little boy?]
> Viggo Mortensen in Captain Fantastic [failed to elicit any sympathy or understanding from me whatsoever]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 2016 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
SILVER: Manchester By the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)
BRONZE: 20th Century Women (Mike Mills)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
SILVER: Casey Affleck (Manchester By the Sea)
BRONZE: Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Susan Sarandon (The Meddler)
SILVER: Annette Bening (20th Century Women)
BRONZE: Kate Beckinsale (Love & Friendship)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Timothy Spall (Denial)
SILVER: Tom Bennett (Love & Friendship)
BRONZE: Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Allison Janney (The Girl on the Train)
SILVER: Catherine Bailey (A Quiet Passion)
BRONZE: Chloe Sevingly (Love & Friendship)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Russell Crowe & Ryan Gosling (The Nice Guys)
SILVER: Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone (La La Land)
BRONZE: Michael Fassbender & Alicia Vikander (The Light Between Oceans)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Sunny Pawar (Lion)
SILVER: Lewis MacDougall (A Monster Calls)
BRONZE: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo (Sing Street)
The Alternate Razzies for 2016 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Collide (Eran Creevy)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Ben Kingsley (Collide)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Kate Winslet (Triple 9)
