Look, let's be honest. Whether we're punching the air in triumph, weeping and cursing, or just plain exhausted, we've all staggered a bit to the finish line this year. 2019 has been a big year for us, and pretty much everyone we know personally. On the balance, for us, it's been a good one, but we're happy for the chance to stop and take a breather.

Here at Cinema Viscera, the year leapt out of the blocks and never stopped racing: We began by launching into pre-production on our second feature, the horror film Apparitions, then shot it over 23 days from mid-March to early May (with another day or two of "second unit"-style exteriors later on). The second half of the year saw me editing the film, us finding an Executive Producer in the gentlemanly form of Marc Gracie, Pez being nominated for and picking up awards for a web series she devised and mentored the writing for (Last Breath for Girls Act Good), us getting our first feature, Trench, streaming and available to the (briefly to the US, UK and European, largely to the Australian and Kiwi) public on Amazon Prime and iTunes, as well as a free-to-air TV broadcast on Melbourne's Channel 31, Pez teaming with illustrator Jess Dubblu to start work on Cinema Viscera's first ever web comic (and longtime Pez pet project), The Others, the first issue of which we're planning for March 2020, us launching a Patreon page to try and build some ongoing support to spend more of our time making our own work, us teaching a quintet of teen actors an 8-week course in how to create their own content, writing short segments for our upcoming Christmas-set multi-genre anthology project December, and, for me, freelance work finally starting to trickle in.

I guess what I'm saying is, we need a rest.

Somehow, amongst all this, I got to watch some movies.

In fact, I saw over 100 new movies for the first time since 2015 (115, my highest total since 2014)! This was very much aided by a fateful phone call, way back in January, which saw me recruited to take over as anchor for Melbourne's RRR FM's long-running film criticism radio show and podcast, Plato's Cave, which has been a joy to host and shoot one's mouth off about movies new and old with my outstanding co-hosts (Sally Christie, Emma Westwood, Cerise Howard and Flick Ford) every Monday night. This venture led to another discovery for Pez and I this year: the monthly screenings of the Melbourne film collective Cinemaniacs, who not only show a terrific selection of older, harder-to-find titles on the big screen (we saw Sleepaway Camp, Madman (1981), Day of the Animals and Wolf Lake), but are also one of the most welcoming, fun and joyous film communities we've found, which has been a relief, given how disenchanted we were beginning to become with Melbourne's film scene. Lee, the aforementioned Sally, Therese, Bria and co. do a wonderful job -- and, with their longtime home of the Backlot Studios cinema suddenly closing, here's hoping they find an equally versatile and luxurious new home in 2020.

Now, speaking of older/retro titles... let's get to the things you all came here for, yes?

Including the 115 new films I saw this year, I came dangerously close to a one-film-per-day average -- always something of a mini-Holy Grail for me! -- but finally fell just short at 320 feature films (in addition to 11 complete seasons of TV). Of those features, 82 were older films, released in 2016 or earlier, which I saw for the first time this year. Here were the 20 I liked the most...

#20: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Shame it wasn't the end, as the series goes out surprisingly strong with this fourth installment, with Joseph Zito directing arguably -- or, at the very least, level with Part II (Baghead Jason forever!) as -- the best film of the series. Jason Voorhees' first full outing as the hockey mask-wearing, machete-wielding icon we all know and love is a genuine banger; a likeable cast of characters (one performed by a pre-Goonies Corey Feldman and a young Crispin Glover!), cute dialogue, a genuinely surprising twist on the "final girl" trope and Tom Savini's peerless special makeup effects add so much. It would have been a hell of mic drop to end the series here. I  sincerely wish they had.

#19: Blue Collar (1978)
Paul Schrader's debut as director after scorching a trail as a screenwriter through the 1970s 'New Hollywood', Blue Collar takes a greasy wrench to American class struggles, unions corrupted and corroded by Capitalism's gnarled, avaricious hand, and the notion that, no matter the purity of our intentions, it's probable we'll all get screwed over in the end. The film catches us off guard, unfolding as a kind of bawdy, shouty heist comedy, but as the film wears on, this just adds to the film's cumulative anxiety, especially as the lead trio (played by a brilliant Yaphet Kotto, an electric Harvey Keitel and a jangly, on-edge Richard Pryor), their personal moral codes and hard limits, become clearer.  The entire film ripples with a barely hinged collective energy that devolves into sadness as the wheels of their scheme, and their grip upon their own lives, gradually fall away. Schrader doesn't do happy.

#18: The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
I've not seen nearly enough Ken Russell films, but if this one is any indication, I need to rectify that. Nominally based upon a Bram Stoker story, this is really just stark raving mad fun as only Russell can conjure, with indelible imagery (those crucifixion visions are a trip), excellent makeup work and general, all-round pisstaking... and, yet, it still manages to be rather sexy? Pairing Hugh Grant with Peter Capaldi in their twenties is some kind of prescient genius, as the two of them make a delightful duo of befuddled heroes of sorts, but the entire film is lifted and stolen wholesale by Amanda Donohoe, who is a blast as the delectably devious Lady Sylvia -- perhaps more snake than human -- whose physicality, wardrobe and wry humour in this role are incredible. A delight!

#17: Baghead (2008)
Exactly what the notion of "A Duplass Brothers horror movie" promises: more of a tight improv comedy that a horror film intrudes upon, while being far too relatable, hilarious, affectionate, satirical (more of actors than the horror genre) and, now and again, even creepy! Even though its final scene kind of lays there, the rest is excellent, well-performed fun that takes pure joy in playing with its audience, whether with cringe comedy or sudden frights.

#16: A Letter to Elia (2010)
I used to co-host a podcast called Hell is For Hyphenates, where a different, usually film-related guest each month would choose a filmmaker they love and we'd join them on a deep dive into that filmmaker's career. We always wondered who someone like, say, Martin Scorsese would choose if, by some startling twist of fate, he ever wound up on the show. A Letter To Elia is the answer and the show: Marty, the scamp, went and had the conversation without us. It's a beautiful, concise and hugely accessible tribute from one great director to another who inspired, even shaped, him, covering most of Kazan's films individually and passing on pure enthusiasm as only Marty can. Scorsese is more circumspect about Kazan's controversial role in the 1950s' Blacklist, not running from it or apologising for him, but merely emphasising that it doesn't take away from the power or quality of the work Kazan crafted (whether Kazan should have continued to enjoy the privilege to do so, where so many didn't, is forever up for debate), nor of its ability to endure, delight and inspire generations to come.

#15: Milius (2013)
I won't lie: I'd been looking forward to this one for a while. While it's most definitely a loving portrait of The Big Lebowski's Walter Sobchak -- sorry, I mean writer, director and self-proclaimed "zen anarchist", John Milius -- the filmmakers and their hall-of-fame roster of interviewees (everyone from Spielberg and Lucas to Stallone and Schwarzengger!) can't help but struggle to negotiate the man's more difficult, provocative (and, sometimes, purely performative) political and philosophical proclivities, while exploring his relatively brief but hugely influential, increasingly overlooked career as a 'New Hollywood' force. Essential viewing for fans of that era of cinema, packed with terrific anecdotes and concluding with a poignant twist I knew nothing of going in, this is a definitive portrait of one of American cinema's most fascinating, controversial and contradictory figures.

#14: The Purge (2013)
Plunging the viewer in immediately and never letting go, The Purge is a primal, taut and witty high-concept home invasion chiller -- one that, just six years on, is growing more and more into itself (for better or worse). While certain aspects of the concept take a leap of faith to buy into, it pivots upon the unsettling, and all-too-plausible, idea that Americans are collectively seething with such unquenchable rage that they'd dutifully toe the line for 364.5 days a year, provided they get 12 hours annually to run rampant and kill any and every person they damn well please. You don't find many story concepts as darkly hilarious as they are profoundly chilling. Sure, there's more than a few gaps in logic, but this is a sharp, lean and very mean little flick with a trio of terrific performances and a gift for crafting genuinely scary set pieces and blunt-force social commentary, leading to a resolution that's very funny and very pertinent to where America (and, let's face it, ourselves) are today. And it's a brisk 86 minutes long!

#13: Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971)
Full of atmosphere you can cut with a knife, this cumulatively effective, low-key four-hander is unafraid to switch up horror sub-genres (it cycles through at least three) and really creeps up on you, its swirl of psychological terror well grounded in character and relationships, driven by terrific, layered performances from its two female leads (Broadway actors Zohra Lampert and Mariclare Costello) and some innovative sound design... not to mention a town full of creepy seniors acting like juvie bullies! It's a slow burn you have to give yourself over to and sink into -- turn the lights off and put the phone away -- if you do, you'll be rewarded.

#12: The Woman Next Door (1981)
Probably the closest Truffaut came to Hitchcock outside of The Bride Wore Black, what starts as a gentle, even lightly comedic, tale of a family man who finds out his new neighbour's wife is the ex-girlfriend with whom he flipped out to the point of obsession years earlier, gradually becomes a sort of proto-Fatal Attraction relationship thriller, as the effect she has on him is pretty much reciprocal, wreaking havoc on their respective marriages in the process and leading to a dark, strangely inevitable conclusion. Depardieu and Ardant are electric as the crazy-making couple, lighting up a narrative which may feel slightly strident to US, UK or Oz audiences, but feels largely in step with French cinema and literature as we know it, where passionate love and psychotic obsession are separated by the thinnest of lines, but to which Truffaut's humanism and writing of relationships is a welcome addition, adding a mordant humour and small human touches to what could have been a standard potboiler. It's a 105-minute-long car crash, and I adored it.

#11: Public Speaking (2010)
I didn't know much about Fran Lebowitz beforehand, other than her name and her face, but after seeing Martin Scorsese's feature-length profile of her, I'm a believer. (He's also found someone who talks as fast as he does!) Scorsese's best documentaries so powerfully communicate his enthusiasm for his subjects that the viewer feels compelled to seek their work out, and, in this vein, Public Speaking is among my favourites. Scorsese gives full rein to Lebowitz's razor wit and brilliant perspective, having her riff on questions direct to camera (over Marty's shoulder, which often convulses as she cracks him up) and sampling past interviews and keynote addresses she's given. Lebowitz expresses her ideas in such a beautifully constructed, clear-eyed and hilarious way, she's shown not only to be one of our time's greatest wits, but greatest thinkers, full stop.

#10: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982)
What outwardly seemed to be a quaint, it-was-a-different-time cringefest is (despite its outdated title) actually a funny, warm, sex-positive and kind of beautiful film, anchored by two enormously charismatic performances from Dolly and Burt, alive with genuine chemistry. Director/co-writer Colin Higgins knew a thing or two about smuggling progressive ideas into crowd-pleasing comedies — witness Harold and Maude and 9 To 5 —  creating a feelgood film about sex workers’ right to operate without falling under the hammer of the moral majority... but he also knows not to give us a false victory. Also, you get Charles Durning singing and dancing up a storm, lots of catchy songs and Dolly singing ‘I Will Always Love You’ to Burt (a decade before Whitney used it to conquer the world), defying you not to well up. What more could you want?

#9: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Okay, okay, so I'm much too late to this party, but what a tight, efficient nightmare of paranoia this is! Outside of its then-current metaphor of the American government's hysteria over Communist takeover (one seemingly easily adaptable to a different fear at any given time, which tells us something about humanity), it taps into the simple, uncanny terror of knowing the person you knew is no longer that person, despite looking and sounding identical to them. While it doesn't quite cover the mechanics of the snatching (where do the bodies go?), this is a riveting, urgent, tight and well-crafted film, which makes the unthinkable feel uncomfortably real. Had me wishing Don Siegel did more science-fiction.

#8: Starman (1984)
Carpenter's answer to E.T. -- which notably wiped out his previous film, The Thing, at the box office -- is a beautiful, humane, clever science-fiction parable that largely avoids sentiment and presents Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen with roles which rank among the best of their careers. A story about dealing with grief, the realisation that there are much larger forces at work in our lives which we can scarcely hope to comprehend, and the hope this can provide, while Starman is often seen (not incorrectly) as Carpenter's most "mature" film, it is also an invigorating, wonderful piece of genre cinema that stands tall beside the director's best horror and action pictures.

#7: Dial Code Santa Claus (1989)
Or, Home Alone Part 0: A Very Traumatic Christmas. Imagine Home Alone but French, with Luc Bessonesque visual heat, a lot less mugging, an adorable Rambo-obsessed kid, his kindly Grandpa, a house full of secret passages, toys and trapdoors, a genuinely terrifying killer pedo dressed as Santa, a Bonnie Tyler song interlude and— wait, is it redundant to mention it’s totally insane and vehemently NOT FOR CHILDREN?? This might be a new Christmas fave.

#6: The Psychic (1977)
LOVED this! The first Lucio Fulci film I've seen that feels like a real movie, rather than a grab-bag of WTF moments. Jennifer O'Neill is terrific as a psychic whose visions aren't what they seem, spending most of the movie trying to put the pieces in her head together like a dark jigsaw puzzle. It's riveting, clever, propulsive, playing like Edgar Allan Poe meets Stephen King in Italy, makes (shockingly, for Fulci) total narrative and character sense and, even if you get ahead of it, it's a ticking-clock blast.

#5: The Wild Child (1970)
A small, simple, utterly lovely film, based on a true story, of a feral boy found alone in the woods of rural France who, after a time of bullying and misunderstanding at a special school, is taken in by a kindly doctor and his housekeeper, who teach the child to communicate and give him a place to belong -- and never, ever as sentimental as that may sound. Truffaut's much too skilled a storyteller for that, and this is indeed the best possible version of this kind of story. Shot in black and white and somehow looking like a film shot 30-40 years before it actually was, this is infused with the humanism, curiosity and cinephilia which distinguishes Truffaut's work. It's gentle, frequently funny and touching, with an astonishing performance from Jean-Pierre Cargol as the boy, Victor, and pretty terrific work from Truffaut himself as the doctor. The way he drew performances from kids is nothing less than pure sorcery.

#4: Shame (1988)
A startlingly effective, sadly still relevant and criminally underseen rape-revenge action drama, which boasts a hurricane star performance from Deborra-Lee Furness and, even with its late-"Ozploitation"/Oz New Wave trappings (with a clear influence in 1979's Mad Max), is honest, intelligent, claustrophobic and unsparing, yet surprisingly restrained (it's never gross or male-gazey, and the attacks are never seen on screen), serving as a heartfelt plea to listen to women, a savage critique of unchecked Australian misogyny and a crackerjack action thriller, all building to an upsetting gut punch of an ending. An unsung -- and genuinely important -- Australian classic.

#3: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
An Invasion for the Parallax View/Three Days of the Condor age, director Philip Kaufman grounds his remake in post-JFK conspiracy theory, just as the original was borne of anti-communist paranoia — and it’s even better; it's persuasively apocalyptic, with horrifying makeup effects, a superb cast (especially Jeff Goldblum and Veronica Cartwright as a beautifully offbeat couple) and a perfect ending, sadly spoiled by a million memes. A genuinely scary and propulsive sci-fi-horror film born of 1970s 'New Hollywood' character focus and thematic nihilism.

#2: Small Change (1976)
As one who doesn’t much care for films about children, I’m constantly amazed by the way Truffaut crafts stories about the everyday lives of kids, which always manage to be utterly delightful without sentimentality, and joyous without shying away from the hardships of life. (It often helps that the kids in his movies are, generally, little ratbags.) The kids here are so wonderfully natural and off-the-cuff, it feels like you’re observing lives lived — even when it briefly takes a turn for the surreal (“Gregory goes boom!”) — in a way that’s affectionate, lived-in and completely unpredictable. The way the kids’ clothing is colour-coded so we can distinguish them quickly is both a terrific storytelling trick and gives the film an near-comic-strip feel at times. The film also takes a humanistic look at class disparity and the way societies aim to work. I love that everybody in Truffaut’s films are trying to be their best selves, flaws, complexities and all. I won’t spoil their antics here, but my MVPs are the green-skivvied ne’er-do-well De Luca brothers, and Sylvie, whose response to being grounded is pure genius.

#1: Model Shop (1969)
My first encounter with Jacques Demy (oh, I'll be back) and a huge influence on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Model Shop sees 2001’s Gary Lockwood as an aimless, seemingly impassive young man about to be drafted to Vietnam, who spends 24 hours driving around L.A. looking for options to dodge the draft and his girlfriend while aggressively angling to court Lola (Anouk Aimee), a French model/actress running from her life as a mother to a young child as she tries to figure things out, who is absolutely on to him. A sublimely character-powered study of two lost souls striving for connection amidst the disillusionment and hopelessness of a shifting time, Demy lets his characters move and breathe -- flaws, questionable choices, erroneous behaviour and all -- throughout this world, a beautifully lensed late-60s Los Angeles on the verge of epochal change itself, dialing the viewer in to their inner turmoil and revealing that, amongst the chaos of an ever-shifting, slowly decaying world, moments of connection are all we have... and that those are something worth living, and even risking death, for. Of all of my discoveries this year, this was the one that came back to haunt my thoughts the most.

As usual, the criteria for this list are feature films that received their premiere paid public release in Australia in 2019, whether via cinema, home video, streaming, video on demand or film festivals, that I saw this year (as opposed to seeing at festivals last year).

As mentioned earlier, the amount of new films I saw this year skyrocketed, from just 84 last year to 116 this year.

I should also let you know that I didn't catch such lauded or popular titles as Amazing Grace, Apollo 11, Birds of Passage, Border, Capernaum, Captain Marvel, Eighth Grade, Fighting With My Family, Happy As Lazzaro, I Lost My Body, The Kid Who Would Be King, The Kindergarten Teacher, Knife+Heart, Les Misérables, Little Women, Mid90s, The Mule, The Report, Shazam!, The Sisters Brothers, The Souvenir, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Support The Girls, The Third Wife, Thunder Road, Transit, Triple Frontier, The Two Popes, Woman at War or Yesterday. (Among many more.)

Other buzz titles, such as 1917, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Bombshell, Clemency, A Hidden Life, Honey Boy, The Lighthouse, Uncut Gems and Waves, are due for 2020 releases down here.

Having said that, here are my...

#30: Sometimes Always Never  (Director: Carl Hunter)
Such a wonderful surprise! Ignore the dreadful trailer and seek this out. While Hunter's direction is a bit too self-consciously quirky at times, the script — about a distant, ordered, conceited Scrabble-champion father (the incomparable Bill Nighy, who relishes a complex lead role) and his annoyed, oft-dismissed son (Sam Riley, also wonderful) as they search for their son and brother who disappeared decades earlier — is excellent, taking us on unexpected turns through family secrets and emotional debris, being painful, funny and heartfelt without ever falling to sentimentality, and giving Jenny Agutter arguably her best big screen role since An American Werewolf in London.

#29: High Flying Bird  (Director: Steven Soderbergh)
Soderbergh’s NBA lockout drama is dense with insider lingo as writer Tarell Alvin (Moonlight) McCraney’s crackling dialogue ricochets off the walls — it doesn’t stop to wait for stragglers, so I’d advise switching on the subtitles to catch it all — but amongst all the wheeling-and-dealing and fake-outs, there’s a fiercely political heart pumping in this lean machine. Andre Holland, as sports agent Ray Burke, walks into this as a terrific emerging character actor and leaves it a bona fide movie star. Soderbergh tracks 48 hours in Burke’s professional life like he’s executing a heist, but the real score is how the film layers in themes of capitalism driving sport, the way black men are still physically toiling for the ultimate profit of the white man and a potential path to liberation. A thematic slow burn on a continual fast break, this Bird (shot on an iPhone with a minimal crew!) flies higher than any Soderbergh effort since Behind The Candelabra.

#28: Dogman  (Director: Matteo Garrone)
Terrific, almost unbearably tense, modern Italian crime drama founded in the need to stand up to dictators, no matter how small or powerless we may seem... and how enormously difficult that is. Marcello Fonte is heartbreakingly great as the dog groomer who thrives on the love of his daughter and the respect and friendship of his community. Edoardo Pesce is a singular presence as a terrifying hulk of a man, a bully who moves through the world like an overgrown child, and the way director Garrone uses the mere physicality of these two actors -- and the succession of wonderful, adorable doggos Marcello takes care of -- against each other and their landscape, leaves us constantly terrified for Marcello and the dogs' safety whenever the walls start to close in. Likewise, the near-abandoned seaside strip Garrone sets this in reflects a dream of Italy that's since become rotted, corroded, its community broken and crumbling.

#27: Her Smell  (Director: Alex Ross Perry)
Owned by Elisabeth Moss' incandescent, open-nerved performance and structured like Steve Jobs, this musical drama takes a look at five key moments in the life of Becky Something (Moss), a charismatic flame of a rock star as she gradually burns out of control, then struggles to put her life back together. Perry's gift for capturing anxious social interactions and combative personalities in a way that feels both painfully real and almost cruelly funny is all here, but there's more pain than laughs this time. As with a lot of these sorts of films, the music played by the band at its heart is never quite as great as you want it to be (or, indeed, as the film builds it up to be), but the drama around the music is uncomfortable, heart-wrenching and always engrossing, ultimately full of empathy and heart for life's fuckups. Oh, and it also has the most moving rendition of Bryan Adams' 'Heaven' you never expected to see.

#26: Yellow is Forbidden  (Director: Pietra Brettkelly)
Beautiful, intimate documentary following the work and process of Chinese fashion maestro Guo Pei and her quest to create astonishing wearable works of art while bringing traditional methods into the 21st century, whilst creating within the outwardly-ascendant yet still oppressive Chinese regime. While not quite the emotional ride of McQueen, last year's portrait of a similarly inspired designer, it's still an enormously engaging, detailed look behind the curtain of a true artist, who, even at the top of her game, still finds herself pulled between artistic, commercial and political forces.

#25: Brittany Runs a Marathon  (Director: Paul Downs Colaizzo)
A hugely effective, emotionally grounded comedy-drama that truly earns its "feelgood" stripes, rarely taking the easy way out or making it easy on its characters, whom writer/director Paul Downs Colaizzo and his improv-gun cast refuse to sand over the spikier edges of. It's a wellness cliche, but this is the film I've seen that really gets the idea that physical fitness is less important than emotional fitness and finding your community, even when that's the last damn thing you want to do. Jillian Bell really puts everything out there in this, giving one of the year's most criminally underrated performances.

#24: Portrait of a Lady on Fire  (Director: Celine Sciamma)
Sciamma's sumptuously designed romance has an intriguing focus on looking, being seen and how others see us, but is primarily a terrific character piece with a quartet of excellent lead performances that makes its small story, at least for a while, seem huge. Sciamma captures genuine moments of sensuality -- the small interludes and gestures the women have to steal when no-one is looking are sublime -- the leads' chemistry is palpable, the framing device works well, and cinematographer Claire Mathon gloriously captures painterly vistas, but... there's a pristine, airbrushed, modern Vanity Fair cover shoot artifice to the film that always feels constantly at odds with the very real energy the actors create together and its keen attention to small character beats, pulling one out of its carefully crafted intimacy (films like Barry Lyndon and 1978's The Duellists manage to recreate the look of paintings without sacrificing the grit and grime that lay beneath them). However, the tremendous way the film builds to its shattering, perfectly staged final scene is almost enough to make one forget all that, reminding us of the rare transcendent period romantic drama this comes so thrillingly close to being.

#23: Hustlers  (Director: Lorene Scafaria)
Full of exuberance, sisterhood and both a kick to the ass of unchecked Capitalism and a cautionary tale of becoming seduced by it, this based-on-truth tale of a cadre of exotic dancers who respond to the 2008 GFC killing their careers by getting their own back at the Wall Street types whose lifestyles brought it all about is fun, brash, bright and quite often exhilarating. While it's a little PG-13 about being a film set in and around strip clubs, this gets as close and frank to the language of a big-time club as a Hollywood studio film of that rating will allow without ever demonising the lifestyle, which is admirable enough. Scafaria makes some emotive and clever directorial decisions with sound and image (a dictaphone switched off during a scene kills the dialogue for the rest of it, an flashback of a surreptitiously taped situation plays with the crushed audio from the tape, there's some stylish mirroring and use of closeups, and so on). Plus, how can you hate a film that takes this much joy in deploying Janet Jackson's 'Miss You Much'?

#22: Last Christmas  (Director: Paul Feig)
Here's where The Internet starts plotting my cancellation. "First you placed Portrait of a Lady on Fire way down in the 20s, then you have the gall to rank it below Last fucking Christmas??!" Before you murder me for this seemingly insane ranking, let me tell you a little about myself: 1) I am a Christmas tragic. 2) 'Shambolic Screwup With a Heart' is one of my favourite character types (hell, the lead in Trench was one). 3) I adore everything George Michael-related. 4) I’ll watch Emma Thompson in just about anything. So, as you can see, this film hit a bunch of my sweet spots. It’s also sweet, adorable, cheesy in all the right Christmas movie ways, full of charm and fun characters and Emilia Clarke makes a pretty great loveable screwup rom-com lead. Plus it has Michelle Yeoh as a sardonic proprietor of a store full of garish Christmas trinkets. WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE???

#21: The Guilty  (Director: Gustav Möller)
This elegantly shot, economically paced high-concept thriller succeeds in that most difficult of conceits: the one-character, one-location drama. Möller's script introduces us to a lead character who isn't particularly warm or ingratiating, but as his concern to solve this ever-evolving, increasingly stranger situation builds, and his world begins to gradually fall apart, we're right there with him. The script is kind of low-key M. Night Shyamalan in the way it springs intriguing twists and shocks, and the surprisingly simple shooting and blocking style -- there aren't any wild De Palma-esque flourishes here, just an extremely canny sense of when to stay back, when to go in close, when to glimpse others, when to turn on a flashing red light, and so on -- really allows the film to rest upon the excellent performance of its leading actor (Jakob Cedergren) and the voice cast. Tight, riveting stuff, superbly played.

And now... this year sees an unprecedented occurrence.

For in almost 30 years of counting down films (15 of those online), I've never, ever had, allowed, or even considered, a tie at #1.


Until now.

(Directors: Quentin Tarantino and Bong Joon-Ho)

I've tried. The Movie Gods know I've tried. But I just can't split them. Upon seeing Parasite, it immediately became not only my favourite film of 2019, but my favourite of the last two-and-a-half years. The third time (yep) I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, I already knew the film had bewitched me from its initial viewing, but it became clear it is obviously my favourite film of 2019.

Except, it couldn't unseat Parasite. Nor vice versa. They both give me different things, fulfiling two sides of exactly what I want out of filmmaking right now, and they absolutely had to share the throne. One is a film powered by place, by mood, by a feeling, underlined by joy, a lost art, melancholy, nostalgia and, ultimately, mortality; the other, powered by one of the best screenplays of modern times, by an endlessly, sharply twisting sea monster of a story and characters both defiant of and beholden to their natures, underlined by lifetimes of institutionalised resentment, speaking to struggles we as a society face right now (and have for far too long).

Class conflict and wealth disparity have been explored in a lot of films this year, but no film has nailed it quite as cogently or entertainingly as Parasite. As brilliantly assembled like a Swiss clock and stacked with outstanding performances (Song Kang-Ho is a Korean national treasure at this point), Bong Joon-Ho's hilarious, poignant, wholly unpredictable and deeply furious film is essential viewing and his best picture to date. From its knockabout, cheeky setup, the delightfully improbable but insanely skilful way the family insinuate themselves into this rich family's home is hilarious, satirical fun to watch...

And then they find a secret door.

Nothing will prepare you for what happens next, or where it goes, no where it ends up. Remember when we, as a culture, were most drawn to films with "a great story"? Not because they had the biggest and loudest ads, or the most expensive VFX, or because they were part of a 20-part overgrown TV series for cinema? Where you just went to get immersed in a world and have it take you to the most unexpected of places, while also resonating with fundamental truths about our own world? Parasite is that movie, and I want more of them. When it comes to filmmakers of the 2000s South Korean "New Wave", I've always been a Park Chan-Wook devotee, but this film sees Bong finally close the gap. It's sublimely crafted from top to toe (shout out to Lee Ha-jun and Mo So-ra, whose production design choices are exquisite) and sure to be frequently rewatchable. It's all too rare nowadays, but I found myself weeping tears of joy at the end, instantly convinced I'd just seen a masterpiece. 

The qualities I was just ascribing to Parasite are similar to sentiments I've often held about the films of Quentin Tarantino. Anyone who knows me, knows the way his films -- ever since seeing Reservoir Dogs on its opening day of Australian release in 1993 (yeah, it took an age to get out here) -- hit me right in the heart. And the gut. And the brain. But Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has hit me unlike any other of the writer/director's films. The first viewing was hugely enjoyable, a party, a fantasy camp visit to film sets and the Los Angeles of 50 years ago, and a consummate "hangout movie" in the vein of Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown and Death Proof. Of course, like every other Tarantino film, I went to see it again, and loved it just as much. But there was a feeling that, while I was thrilled and delighted by it... I wasn't sure I had my finger on why. But it kept swirling around in my head, for weeks after.

I needed to see it again, as soon as possible.

It was the third time that unlocked it for me. If Inglourious Basterds is Tarantino's testament to the power of cinema to change the world, then Once Upon a Time in Hollywood sees the filmmaker reckoning with death, mortality and the unique power of cinema (and television) to stave it off, even if it is only for a few precious hours of a given film's running time. Everybody in this film is facing the end of something, whether they're aware of it or not. Sometimes they just miss it. The film is populated almost entirely by ghosts; with few exceptions, most of the real-life figures dramatised in the film are now dead. The actors populating its world ply their trade in genres largely phased out of mainstream popularity. It's a memoryscape, a fairytale, an exhumation and a fever dream all at once -- perhaps this is why the film seems to hold a kind of hypnotic power. How much of this is happening? How much exists only in the characters' heads? How much is anecdotal? How much is nostalgia and how much is playing with the notions and fallacies of nostalgia? It reckons with the past and beckons to the future, often by presenting the world of 1969 Hollywood without judgement, letting the viewer to come to their own conclusions . There's no doubt that a working knowledge of the Manson Family murder case is key to appreciating this film, especially during its turbulent final act. Without it, I can't imagine the final shot packing the emotional wallop it gives me every time.

This is perhaps the most soulful, open-hearted and affectionate work of Tarantino's career and proves something that anyone watching the director closely all these years has known all along: beneath the bluster and myth-making, he's a loving, big-hearted, damn near sentimental dude. For him, movies are the best form of immortality we have, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is his tribute to spending one last night with the people and time and work and town he grew up loving, one that is now lost, long since corrupted, upholstered, advanced, succeeded... but which will always exist in the movies.

Thank you all for joining me on this wild, customarily bloated ride through my faves of 2019! I'm planning to post a mini-blog revealing my Top 20 films of the 2010s, so look out for that soon. Whether I finish that tonight or not (probably not), myself and Pez thank you again for all of your support and encouragement (and seeing our movie!) during the year, and we wish each and every one of you a happy, healthy and spectacular 2020 -- and an exciting new decade.

Love and cinema,
Paul and Pez
xx

Welcome back, Viscerati!

So, this was a huge year for us here at Cinema Viscera. In summary:

We won a place in Creative Partnerships Australia's MATCH Lab program, meaning the government would match up to $7,500 that we could raise for our new film. We premiered our first ever feature at a Melbourne film festival. We had our first public, non-festival cinema screening. We raised the money to shoot our second feature. We secured distribution for Trench (coming to DVD, iTunes and Amazon early 2019). Pez and I traveled overseas together for the first time (my first time ever out of Australia!) to London and Paris, the latter of which we fell hard for, rediscovering ourselves and cinema. I won an award for editing a webseries. Pez wrote for a television show. We wrote our second feature and had two live reads of the script, which received terrific feedback. We have cast, filled most crew roles and secured the major location for the new flick.

You bet your ass we're ready for 2019.

Our World Premiere of Trench in April, in a sold-out screening at the Setting Sun Film Festival in Yarraville's gorgeous Sun Theatre, was simply perfect. The film got a lovely response, Pez, Sam Hill and I had a fun Q&A afterwards, and we remain endlessly grateful to Anna Bourozikas and everyone involved with the SSFF and everyone who came out to see us.

Same goes for our excellent screening at Lido Cinemas in Hawthorn, which attracted over 100 people and saw Trench have another fine time, with a hugely positive response and a fun Q&A, hosted by none other than our great friend Guy Davis, who's wonderful in the film as shock comic Jimmy Kay. Again, we thank Eddie, Bridgette, Juanita and James at the Lido for all their help and hospitality, and everybody who attended. We love you all.

But enough about me and mine, you're all here for the countdown, right?

Every year, at this point in the post, I present my top 20 first-time viewings of films that are more than 2-3 years old. I will get to that in due course... but first, allow me to share something, by way of context, that was even more important to me this year...

So the photo gallery above might give you an idea as to what my major cinematic discovery of 2018 really was: the 5th and 6th Arrondissements of Paris, which contain over 20 cinemas between them (also, a shoutout goes to the BFI Southbank and Prince Charles Cinema in London)!

Cinema culture is truly alive and well in the City of Lights, with a veritable cinematheque (in addition to the actual Cinémathèque Française) screening in most districts every single day. Within a 30 minute walk of our AirBNB apartment, we were treated to everything from classic Golden Age Hollywood -- Lubitsch, Hitchcock, Westerns -- to '70s New Hollywood -- Dennis Hopper, Michael Cimino, a sidebar dedicated to cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond -- as well as all the new releases. (Thankfully, most French cinemas play non-French films in "Version Originale", meaning, in their original languages with French subtitles... which meant, with our extremely limited knowledge of French, we were restricted to watching English language movies**, as the other retrospectives that were showing, films by Ozu and Pasolini, were in Japanese and Italian, respectively.) But there was so many options on offer, even with this minor restriction we were spoiled for choice. What's more, no matter what the film, the size of the cinema or time of day or night, every session had at least 15-20 people in it, right up to over 100 at times. Cinema, like art and literature, is in Paris' bones.

Our favourite cinemas were often the independent, what Parisians call "neighbourhood cinemas", tucked into side-streets and hotel/restaurant strips: Le Grand Action, La Filmotheque du Quartier Latin and the sister cinemas Christine 21 and Écoles 21 which, we only found out after we left, were owned by Isabelle Huppert and ran by her son! (We didn't get to go to the stylish Le Champo, nor see a film at the Cinémathèque Française, which closed for August holidays soon after we arrived. We did see its excellent museum and incredible gift shop, though.)

**We did get caught with one session, however: the Christine 21's Dario Argento retrospective played four out of five of his films with their English dub... until our session of Profondo Rosso/Deep Red unspooled and we suddenly realised we had to piece the dialogue together from the Italian language track and French subtitles! Thankfully, in a testament to this most boldly visual of directors, we were able to understand the narrative without much issue; we absorbed about 90% of the plot -- which wasn't much less than what made sense to me in its English language dub -- and Pez, seeing it for the first time, adored it, instantly becoming her favourite Argento picture!)

BFI Southbank's diverse and incredible programming had them playing seasons on Harold Pinter and Joan Crawford, and about to launch into a season called 'Black and Banned', on previously banned films by Black filmmakers and/or featuring progressive or provocative portrayals of Afro-English life. Leicester Square is also a hotbed of big screen treats, led by the amazing program of the Prince Charles Cinema, chock full of cult delights, nostalgia hits and special events, alongside the classy arthouse cinema Curzon Soho and the giant Vue multiplex.

This may read as a digression, but this trip truly made Pez and I rediscover our love of taking the time to see films on the big screen, especially older films. Pez fell hard for cinema, in a way even I had never seen before, and I recaptured the rush of discovery and the instant, powerful love of a place where downloading and streaming services weren't at the front of mind, where a smorgasbord of brilliantly curated cinema history was just a short walk away. Now, we just need to learn to fluently read French...

With this in mind, I give you my top 20 discoveries of 2018, counting down from 20 to 1...

#19-20: The inaugural Paracinema Fest -- Melbourne's brand-new film festival of the weird and wonderful -- was where I discovered the wonders of 'Wakaliwood' and Ramon Film Productions, Uganda's first and preeminent action filmmakers. I saw their first action epic, 2010's Who Killed Captain Alex?, and their 2016 action-comedy-drama BadBlack, in a double feature (they run for barely over an hour each) and enjoyed the most fun I've had in a cinema in years. Both rough as guts (Captain Alex was reportedly made for US$200) and surprisingly proficient, they're also extremely smart about their limitations -- the films are accompanied by a voice-over by a person named "VJ (Video Joker) Emmie", who hilariously hypes, explains and mocks what's on screen -- and, while I enjoyed the bonkers Captain Alex slightly more, BadBlack has moments of pathos that are genuinely affecting. These films bring back the sheer joy we felt when we first picked up a camera and told our friends to pretend, to make the kickass movies we always imagined ourselves in. Wakaliwood forever!

#18: While in Paris, I found a giant DVD box set containing the complete works of François Truffaut, which I couldn't buy at the time and coveted furiously -- it was a bit costly and too heavy to pack into our luggage -- but mere weeks after we arrived home, you best believe I secured that shit. With the possible exception of Agnes Varda, Truffaut has always been the French New Wave filmmaker for me. His mix of novelistic storytelling, observational asides, open-hearted humanity and kindness to his characters -- not to mention his affection for and subversion of cinema history and genre conventions -- has always endeared him to me.  1960's Shoot the Piano Player, his still-underseen sophomore effort after The 400 Blows, is full of the kind of puckish playfulness, unpredictability and romantic musings I love him for, and at 82 minutes, it's a breeze that captures the adventure and lawlessness of the Nouvelle Vague.

#17: Frank Henenlotter is a madman. For proof, look no further than his debut feature, 1982's Basket Case, which is as deliriously deranged as cult or 'grindhouse' cinema gets. In short, a quiet young man checks into a crumbling New York City hotel, unusually protective of his mysterious basket... which contains his deformed, seperated siamese twin, more vampiric growth than man, with a thirst for blood and vengeance. This delivers on everything its berserk premise promises, with blood and gore and sleaze aplenty, but there's also a humanity here, which also runs through Henenlotter's subsequent, equally bizarre work; the outsider community of New Yorkers who share the fleapit hotel with our brothers grim are hilarious, fascinating and bring a comic reality to the utterly insane goings-on... and we even feel a pinch of sadness for poor Belial, as well. He may be a toxic, possessive, screwed-up little tumour, but we know why he's angry.

#16: 1983's Betrayal was a welcome treat delivered by London's BFI Southbank (on 35mm) as part of its Harold Pinter season. A three-hander adapted by Pinter from his own play, which famously tells the story of an infidelity in reverse chronological order, it stars Patricia Hodge (perhaps known best nowadays as Miranda Hart's mother on TV's Miranda) and Jeremy Irons as the cheating couple, and Ben Kingsley as Hodge's husband and Irons' best friend. Beginning with Hodge and Irons meeting after their affair has ended, we're taken, months and years at a time, backwards through their seven-year affair, ending just before the affair begins. It's a novel device, making the usually rote and tawdry infidelity plot incredibly poignant, as the film ends with such hope and love despite all the hurt and, yes, betrayal we've been through. Also, this is Pinter, so the dialogue is consistently scorching, funny and full of secrets and lies, the characters achingly flawed and puffed up on their own middle-class visions of themselves -- and the three superb leads rip into every single moment of it, and director David Jones knows well enough to let them play. Not easy to find, but worth seeking out.

#15: The Leopard Man, legendary horror producer Val Lewton’s third and final collaboration with director Jacques Tourneur after Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie, drips with just as much atmosphere but even more terror -- and, in 1943, just might have been Hollywood's very first Serial Killer thriller. Filled with exquisite chiaroscuro moments of pure dread courtesy of cinematographer Robert De Grasse, while Ardel Ray and Edward Dein's script presents every last one of its characters with hints of rich interior lives, which makes the suspense and kills incredibly effective and borderline upsetting. Sure, there's a couple of slightly silly moments, but on the whole, it's intelligently crafted, takes no prisoners and clocks in at a mere 66 minutes, with perhaps the very best set-pieces of all Lewton’s films.

#14: Something of a love letter to human beings — from the perspective of angels watching over us — emerging from a West Germany (the Berlin Wall was three years yet from falling) still wrestling with its past and its own humanity, Wim Wenders' 1987 classic Wings of Desire is beautifully played and touchingly sincere without ever growing sentimental. It ambles a bit at times — those trapeze sequences could do with a trim — and some of its characters’ voiceover monologues are more grandiloquent than they need to be (and this is coming from someone who just used the word “grandiloquent”), but this is such an utterly gorgeous, hopeful, thoughtful film... and if you need any more convincing, you get Peter Falk playing himself to loveable effect, Robby Müller’s luscious black-and-white cinematography and (in a fashion) Nick Cave playing Cupid. A gorgeous, big-hearted film, as relevant today as ever.

#13: Speaking of Truffaut, 1964's The Soft Skin must rank high among his most underrated films; this domestic drama of infidelity, laced with dark comedy, is a slow-burn to begin, following Pierre, a pompous, egotistical star academic, from his seemingly happy family home to barging his way into an affair with a flight attendant... Now, don't let this initial perspective scare you away -- it's borderline crazy at first, given how difficult it is to identify with this guy (even given Jean Desailly's excellent performance, somehow both hapless sad-sack and dominating blowhard) -- because we slowly discover that this is Truffaut lashing out at himself as a vainglorious artist who’s been careless with the women around him. From there, in a series of blackly comic calamities worthy of the Coens, not-so-lucky Pierre begins to feel his world collapse from beneath him — and it’s the women, brilliantly played by Nelly Benedetti and Françoise Dorleac, who take hold of the story as they begin to realise they’re better off without this jerk... manifesting in dramatically different ways, leading to a shocking ending that's as savage a self-criticism as any director has ever put on screen.

#12: Previous a lost film of some legend, Dennis Hopper’s second film, 1971's The Last Movie, may have burned all his credit with Hollywood studio credit to the ground, but I found it to be not only a more than worthy follow-up to Easy Rider but even better, and not at all the out-of-control drug-fuelled clustercuss we’d been led to believe. It’s an inspired, experimental, energetic, thoughtful and witty takedown of the desolation of Hollywood excess, movies’ effect on culture, misogyny (although, to be fair, the film falls on both sides of the line at times), Hopper himself, the end of the counterculture and Old Hollywood making way for the New — whether it liked it or not. It's shaggy and undisciplined, but also riveting and often thrilling. So glad this has been given the full restoration/rerelease treatment, to be rediscovered for the lost gem it is.

#11: A very special cinematic discovery we made in Paris were the films of Ernst Lubitsch. Seeing a retrospective of his films at the amazing Filmotheque du Quartier Latin proved that the once-famed "Lubitsch Touch" is not only a thing, but that it endures. A delightful and surprisingly progressive highlight was his 1933 comedy Design for Living, featuring a hilarious, winning Miriam Hopkins as Gilda, an American in Paris who can't choose between her two boyfriends (also struggling Americans in Paris), intellectual playrwright Tom (a brilliant Fredric March) and hot-blooded painter George (a surprisingly funny and loose Gary Cooper), who also happen to be best friends. How they begin to compromise and navigate this three-way relationship is both incredibly funny and enormously daring for the time -- hell, even by today's four-quadrant-seeking Hollywood standards -- it doesn't quite go where you may think, but, boy, it gets refreshingly close. As you'd expect of a play by Noël Coward adapted for the screen by Ben Hecht and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it's also a screwball comedy of the highest order, matching even Howard Hawks' best work, providing some of the biggest laugh-out-loud moments I had all year.

At #10 is that man Truffaut again, with 1970's Bed & Board, the third film in his Antoine Doinel cycle, which started with The 400 Blows. Picking up just two years after Stolen Kisses, Bed & Board finds Antoine happily married, until he — still young, restless and pathologically unemployable — starts to chafe against the boundaries of married life... which is a problem, because there’s a baby on the way. Not as ebullient or hilarious as its predecessor, but emotionally true to two idealistic characters we love — one who dreamed and one who perhaps settled, both far too young — whose marriage seems to be deflating before our very eyes... or is it merely the pains of growth and compromise endemic to married life? Jean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Jade are charming as hell, and Truffaut injects impish gags amongst the emotional rollercoaster of his increasingly-semi-autobiographical tale (such as Antoine’s bizarre jobs, which become a constant source of hilarious bemusement). While it all ends on a hopeful note, whether Antoine and Christine will last the distance is no clearer then than at the beginning... but we know they’re in with a shot, which is only what all we can all hope for, really.

#9: For some reason, I'd never managed to catch up with Jocelyn Moorhouse's 1991 debut feature, Proof, and I'm now slightly ashamed that I slept on this modern classic of Australian cinema for so long. A wonderfully caustic three-hander about control and obsession, and how we can sometimes substitute those for love, with all three leads -- Genevieve Picot, Hugo Weaving and Russell Crowe -- in cracking early-career form. Moorhouse makes a smashing debut that’s wryly observant of human nature, tightens the emotional screws at every turn and is hell of a lot funnier than one may expect.

#8: While we're on 'Modern Australian Classic' detail, I'm thrilled to have crossed paths with Rolf de Heer's beautiful 2013 collaboration with David Gulpilil, Charlie's Country. As achingly sad and thoroughly lived-in as it is infused with humour, humanity and hope, this compelling portrait of modern-day life for many indigenous Australians manages to both simmer with anger and be fiercely proud. It’s told through the eyes of Charlie, who’s very much informed by star/co-writer Gulpilil, people he’s known and the two worlds he’s straddled his entire life — the culture of his people, and the culture and rules that were forced upon them. In a career built upon wry, soulful performances, this might be Gulpilil’s finest hour.

#7: Another film I was shocked I hadn't seen before now was 1995's La Haine, a thrilling, absorbing, propulsive look at three underprivileged kids (electrifyingly played by Vincent Cassel, Saïd Taghmaoui and Abdel Ahmed Ghili) living on the fringes of Paris, looking for a good time and finding trouble (sometimes prejudicial, sometimes self-inflicted) over 24 hours across the backdrop of a community about to explode... all careening towards one of the greatest, saddest, most chilling endings in film history. One heck of a debut (sadly, to date, never matched) by writer-director-actor Mathieu Kassovitz.

#6: How is Scarecrow, a Cannes Palme d'Or winner starring Al Pacino and Gene Hackman in 1973, mere moments after The Godfather and The French Connection, not considered a major work of the New Hollywood?! It's a character study of two itinerant men on the fringes, hot-tempered Max (Hackman), who dreams of opening his own car wash, and jovial, naive Lion (Pacino), who's returned from sea to reunite with his young son. Their initially wary alliance becomes an affectionate, co-dependent friendship as we follow them from California towards Pittsburgh, where Max's own Shangri-La -- the car wash he's saved what little he has to buy -- is located. It's a treat to see two great actors showing rare sides of themselves -- Hackman as a hair-trigger tornado right out of a Bukowski novel, and Pacino as a soft, loveable goofball -- to devastating effect. (Richard Lynch also makes a strong impression as a convict.) Unafraid to sit with its characters' flaws and imbued with real affection for folks living on the outside of the American Dream, this is a lovely, funny, tragic and ultimately heartbreaking film, which builds to a pitch-perfect ending.

#5: After watching it in fragments over the years -- never in one sitting, and every time at least five years apart -- I finally got to see Sam Peckinpah's seminal Western, 1969's The Wild Bunch, on the big screen and... oh boy. Wow, I was not prepared. The film is merciless, punishing and pitiless, presenting the good ol' American Wild West as a dystopian apocalypse -- self-mythologising and “legends” be damned. Everything about this West is damaged, decayed, dusty and decrepit, where death is easy, honour is hard, money is the goal, women are commodities, love is mocked and machismo is both a survival mechanism and a death wish. Legends are created because, often, that's all person has left to bargain with. The all-star cast are excellent from top to bottom, but the mood and tenor of this film belongs to Peckinpah. I’m surprised anyone made a western again after this. In terms of abandon-hope-all-ye-who-enter-here bleakness, I’ll stack Peckinpah’s worldview up against any social realist filmmaker on the planet.

#4: At his best, Abel Ferrara is an exploitation filmmaker with an artist’s soul — but even given that, he really surprised me here: his 1981 thriller MS. 45  (formerly known in Australia as Angel of Vengeance) is thrilling, unsettling, witty and quite ahead of its time in a lot of ways (especially the way it depicts everyday sexist micro-aggressions) and a huge cut above in the r*pe-revenge genre I normally loathe — it’s not male-gazey or gross — led by a hugely effective performance by Zöe Tamerlis. It’s basically #MeToo: The Movie, fuelled by righteous rage, but one that eventually spirals out of control. Plus it’s all set in the gloriously grimy early ‘80s New York that I love — you could never get so many amazing location shots on a US$62k budget today! Brutal at times, but highly recommended.

#3: What if somebody made the best, most formally audacious horror film of the 2010s and nobody cared? Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani's 2013 giallo-gasm The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears is a stunner from beginning to end, crafted with surgical precision and an undeniable enthusiasm for the genre, deploying image, montage and sound with the playful inventiveness of experimental cinema, while also managing to draw us into its bizarro, persona-shifting murder plot. What’s more, the directors build some truly intense sequences of suspense and murder — often involving straight razors — while subverting and critiquing the film history they adore, luxuriating in their thematic and sensual pleasures. The way Cattet/Forzani play with truth, identity, time, the past’s relation to the present and the very way storytelling is delivered is consistently intriguing, beguiling and, more often than not, thrilling. Every aspect of this film, from Manuel Dacosse’s sublime cinematography, to the intricate production design and to-DIE-for locations, to the score (both original and repurposed), to the Argento-on-steroids lighting design and  the way they use and isolate sounds, is exquisite — it’s a dark, devious, pervy pleasure ripe for rediscovery... and your total submission. <...cue creaking leather sound...>

#2: While not John Carpenter’s “official” debut, 1976's Assault On Precinct 13, his second feature, feels every frame like the director’s origin story. Both gritty little exploitation flick and supremely entertaining, surprisingly sharp ‘70s drive-in homage to the works of Howard Hawks, that puts all of Carpenter’s visual signatures — 2.35:1 widescreen frame, colourful expressionistic lighting, unnamed & unknowable assailants emerging from darkness — from day one. (Many of these qualities would show up, to devastating effect, two years later in Halloween.) The performances, dialogue and storytelling are much more sophisticated than anyone going into this would have any right to expect, and it’s this care and quality control — as well as his facility for action and suspense — that immediately marks Carpenter as a talent to watch. What’s more, with its African-American cop lead, defiant white crim and kickass female secretary — not to mention its surprisingly racially diverse street gangs! — its approach to casting and characterisation is disarmingly progressive. It’s a blast to watch characters in a micro-budget ‘70s drive-in movie doing a wonderful riff on Bogie and Bacall — if Bogie and Bacall we’re locked in a crumbling L.A. police station besieged by evil gangs. I literally applauded at the end.

For my #1 discovery of 2018, we return to Ernst Lubitsch and 1942's To Be Or Not To Be. Hilarious from the opening minutes, moving a million miles an hour yet giving us everything we need, we know we’re in safe hands — this indeed sees Lubitsch at his most laugh-out loud funny, but he’s also revealed here to be at his most deft, political and daring. The film was made before America entered World War II, when the US government and Hollywood establishment were still taking pains not to offend Hitler, so Lubitsch constructed this comedy as his plea to convince the US that the Nazis were a major threat the world needed to mobilise against. As non-stop funny as the film is, the fact that it never keeps the Nazis' very real atrocity far from mind is even more of a magic trick. While it runs like a sleek joke machine, this is, above all, a comedy based in character, irony, vanity and inherent decency. Given this monster of a script to play around with, Carole Lombard (sadly, this was her final film role, before dying in a plane crash) and Jack Benny give remarkable comic performances, surrounded by a wonderful ensemble. Fast, funny and truly furious, this might be Lubitsch’s most accessible masterpiece.

As usual, the criteria for this list are feature films that received their premiere paid public release in Australia - whether via cinema, video, VoD or film festivals - during 2018, that I saw this year (as opposed to, say, seeing in festivals last year).

For the first time in years, the number of new films I saw didn't plummet from the previous year; I saw 84 new films in 2018, as opposed to 85 in 2017.

I should also let you know that I didn't catch such lauded or popular titles as American Animals, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Aquaman, Beirut, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Cold War, Creed II, Deadpool 2, Eighth Grade, Fahrenheit 11/9, Ghost Stories, Hotel Artemis, The Incredibles 2, Lean On Pete, Outside In, Ralph Breaks The Internet, The Rider, A Simple Favor, Searching, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Support the Girls, Sweet Country, They Shall Not Grow Old, Thoroughbreds, Three Identical Strangers, Under the Silver Lake, Vice, Won't You Be My Neighbor? or A Wrinkle in Time. (Some titles, such as Burning, If Beale Street Could Talk and The Tale, are due for 2019 releases here.)

Up front, I have to say 2018 was a damn strong year for cinema. I liked 44 of the 84 films enough to rate them 3.5 stars and up. Of course, it's easier to be positive about any year in movies when you're not forced to see everything, as a critic would, but in my experience, this has been one of the better years of the 2010s for cinematic offerings.

Okay. Less chatting, more counting down. Annnnnnnd go:

From #30-26:
With Madeline's Madeline, writer-director Josephine Decker delivers the best prolonged cinematic anxiety attack since mother! and does an alarmingly great job of placing us in its lead character’s fraught, precarious subjective reality, and she both examines the rush of artistic discovery and the interpersonal boundaries (or lack thereof) of the artistic process, and skewers the hubris of creators that cast aside any duty of care toward their performers. Molly Parker, Miranda July and startling newcomer Helena Howard deliver a fascinating, deftly layered triangle of performances that threaten to combust whenever any combination of the trio share space together. To be honest, I was eating out of this film’s hand until the final ten minutes, where subjective reality tips over into pure fantasy and — while I think I can see why Decker did it — I wasn’t wild about the choice or depiction of this resolution. Still, this is a compelling, thoughtful and riveting personal drama, crafted like a psychological thriller, that’s absolutely worth diving into.

Tully sees Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman -- always bringing out the best out of one another -- dipping into magical realism to explore the everyday strains of motherhood, the point when you've given so much of your life to maintaining your family you begin to lose yourself, and emerge with a frank, funny and all-too-rare portrait of what a giant pressure and compromise motherhood (and marriage) can be. In a beautifully calibrated performance, Charlize Theron portrays a woman whose efforts to maintain a functioning family life have hit physical and emotional breaking point -- Theron's comic timing is excellent and continually underrated. Cody's screenplay again shows she's lost none of her hammer for nailing uncomfortable truths, and even a late development which feels fanciful at first, is, upon reflection, very much earned and well-placed. Reitman steers the ship with class and deft, unobtrusive skill, letting Cody's script do the heavy lifting. Sure, the pacing's a little floaty at times, and it ultimately lacks the acidic, take-no-prisoners bite of this trio's Young Adult, but this is a very funny, deeply felt take on a subject that few films are willing to tackle so honestly.

Definitely delivering what it says on the box, Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy is as stylistically berserk and thrillingly dreamlike as any film we’ve seen in the 21st century thus far... but more unexpected, is the depth of emotion at play here. The first half of the film is dreamy, creepy and increasingly poignant, driven by the performances of Andrea Riseborough and, yes, Nicolas Cage, leading to a disarmingly moving scene where his character breaks down with grief (which, annoyingly, the audience around us seemed to find hilarious, presumably primed to cackle at watching Cage spack out, rather than actually sit in the moment with the character). Of course, this all explodes into a second half of righteous heavy metal vengeance (with a magnificent late title reveal!) that is as dark, bizarre and bloody as one had been led to expect, to a showdown that’s very effective, if somewhat protracted... but, to be honest? I kinda missed the sadness.

Cargo already had a head start for me, as Martin Freeman is one of my favourite people to watch on a screen right now, and the 2013 short this is expands upon is my favourite Tropfest finalist ever, but Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling’s feature debut is a tense, gripping and disarmingly lovely take on a tired sub-genre. Surrounded by an equally terrific cast, Freeman brings subtle grace notes of grief, anger and confusion to his role as a dying father who needs to find someone to care for his daughter in a world gone to hell. The way this film engages with Australia’s past and indigenous culture is intelligent and sensitive, while retaining a welcome empathy for even the worst of its characters. There are a few script moments that clang, a lack of clarity around some aspects of the story and world, but they only stand out because Ramke & Howling get everything else so right. In the end, it delivers all the emotional and sociopolitical beats it needs to, without sacrificing complexity.

Avengers: Infinity War might seem like a season finale of an epic TV show, but thankfully the Russo Brothers and Marvel have delivered a smashing entertainment, full of terrific character asides, genuinely epic showdowns, shockingly robust VFX, mostly coherent battles and curveball twists. Brolin’s Thanos eventually convinces as a flesh-and-blood character, the Guardians mesh with the Avengers surprisingly well, and — given its ridiculous scale — it deftly avoids character overload. (Oh, Thor is the film’s MVP, in case you’re wondering.) Given the entire thing was shot in IMAX, there’s far too much dark metal-on-dark metal and floating debris substituting for production design, but I found myself genuinely impressed by the writing. The way it gives every character something to do (except Black Widow, sadly), imbues its Big Bad with emotional depth and keeps all its plates spinning without losing a step, is quite something. All this and the sheer number of active participants means it's the rare blockbuster where the 150 minute running time feels not only justified, but goes by in a flash, barely stopping to race toward its somewhat audacious climax — and a wonderful final (pre-credits) scene that plays more like Brothers Coen than Russo.

From #25-21:
Climax, Gaspar Noé’s latest descent into Hell, introduces us to a diverse troupe of young dancers at a private party, where, after a stunning dance sequence, we overhear  conversations revealing festering tensions, toxic attitudes and sexual frustrations... then, after a customarily vibrant mid-movie credits sequence, a rogue element is introduced and everything goes to... well, you know Noé. As ever, he skillfully, if bombastically, uses every element at his disposal — swirling cinematography, segmented soundtracks, dancers’ bodies — to create a full-scale anxiety attack. But rather than empty style, Noé re-purposes a reportedly true story to present a microcosm of a modern France still grappling with immigration, globalisation and national identity, ever-struggling to live up to its credo of Liberty, Egality and Fraternity. It’s also a fractured study in humanity, and a vigorous assault on the senses... which can be frustrating at times: sounds, visuals and sentiments are repeated, like a thumping house track, to a numbing, even aggravating, extent -- but like any rave, it’s all part of the experience. Sometimes it’s best not to fight the chaos, but rather carve out your own corner of bliss on the periphery, dance to your own beat and forget the wolfpack.

A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, is agonisingly close to greatness, giving his wildly divergent cast room to play and bloom, while giving the film an impressive visual scope and momentum. Gaga delivers a hell of a turn — we know she’s got the voice and charisma, but it’s the quiet moments, anger and vulnerability that sell her as an actor — and Cooper is just beautiful, his character refreshingly gentle even as he slides into despair, and the two are genuinely affecting together. The song score does everything asked of it and the film sells every emotional beat... except one, which is where the film almost lost me; it seemed to arrive a few scenes too early to feel truly organic or earned. It feels petulant to hold this one thing against the film, but it gets everything else so right: the magic they bring out of each other, the rush of seeing your art performed and your voice validated, the struggle to stay authentic, the pain of watching a loved one crumble... while never descending to cheap melodrama or artificial conflict, crafting a moving love story that doubles as a plea to stay authentic in a hyper-commercialised world.

A Quiet Place was the shock horror box office bonanza of 2018 and, in hindsight, it's easy to see why. John Krasinski delivers Spielbergian sci-fi/horror in his third feature as director and, while it can be a little broad at times, he and his team have crafted a lean, tense experience, which admirably takes time to develop family dynamics and a backdrop of grief to fashion their parental anxiety narrative around, lending some weight to the otherwise wafer-thin story and questionable decisions (a pregnancy? In this world? Really?!). The cast are terrific, but Millicent Simmonds steals the show as their thoughtful, alienated daughter. Rad, unsettling creature design, too.

Roma, Alfonso Cuaron’s lovely neo-realist memoryscape and tribute to both his childhood housekeeper and the overlooked underclass of Mexico is, like the director's Children of Men, a very, very good film with a three or four all-time great scenes. Cuaron’s own cinematography is beautiful, the performances are pitch-perfect, it’s loaded with period detail and builds to two of the most astonishing scenes in modern cinema history. It’s an incredibly easy film to sink into, but it is lengthy, and seems to wander about from time to time -- it's not always clear why we're spending so much time in a particular place; now and again it feels like Cuaron is lost in a fond remembrance rather than moving the story forward -- and one feels distant, like an observer, at all times (especially given Cuaron’s affection for single long takes), which is interesting given how personal and affectionate it is... but overall, this is a truly beautiful work.

Foxtrot is a searing indictment of war, toxic masculinity and generational sins (and the price that ultimately must be paid), as well as of a culture that conscripts its young adults. Returning to the homefront after his stunning 2009 debut Lebanon, writer/director Samuel Maoz places us in his characters’ heads with enough show-offy visual flourishes and camera angles to make Brian De Palma jealous, but still manages to pack an emotional punch — and there’s a handful of stand-alone set-pieces in here that say more on the subject than entire films.

1. PHANTOM THREAD
Sometimes, an artist's greatest gift can be to deliver the right work at the right moment. In a landscape where so much film, TV, music and art is so politically overbearing, so intent on shouting at us in a manner uncomfortably similar to Facebook rants, Paul Thomas Anderson conjures a bewitching, engrossing and devilishly funny film that looks and feels like a 1950s romantic drama, weaving one of the most fascinating screen relationships I've seen in an age, one of the very best satires of the concessions, compromises and control measures we navigate to make relationships work... and, beneath it all, slowly and mercilessly dismantling the image of the exacting, egotistical Great Male Creator, brick by brick.

The performances in this film are extraordinary across the board, with Daniel Day Lewis giving his most delicate, subtle and funny performance in years, Vicky Krieps is just a flat-out revelation, her performance working on an alarming amount of levels, and, with each withering glance and weapons-grade line of dialogue, Lesley Manville is a giant-slaying gift. (Speaking of weapons, comedienne Julia Davis is also brilliantly deployed in her brief role.)

One of the most unpredictable screen stories of recent years, and 21st century cinema thus far, Paul Thomas Anderson's film is hypnotic, exquisite (Anderson shot the film himself, which, considering how luscious the film looks, is mind-boggling to me), beautifully layered, shockingly fun, even poignant at times and, much like the director's very different Punch-Drunk Love, bizarrely yet genuinely romantic -- accessing the truth of relationships in a way most conventional screen romances never dare, or even seem to understand. Even in a filmography stacked with modern masterpieces, this particular one seems to emerge damn near from nowhere, surprising even for a director many regard as the best of his generation.

And that's that! Thank you all for reading this gigantic wrap-up (even those of you who just skipped to the end -- don't worry, I feel you) and joining me to put a pin in 2018!

Here at Cinema Viscera, we're gearing up for a big year (for a start, we're shooting our second movie!!!) and we can't wait to let you in on all the cool stuff we've been cooking up.

(And personally, I'm counting down the days to the release of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which might be as well be The Matrix's algorithmic creation of a film very much For Me.)

Thank you all for reading, and, as always...

Vive le cinéma!

Paul Anthony Nelson