Hey there, Viscerals! What a year, huh? Shame it was so uneventful. Nothing of social or artistic or political consequence happened and we all lived happily ever after! Okay, I'll dispense with the sarcasm. Honestly, I'm not sure what I can say about this year that hasn't been said already, repeatedly and more eloquently. We lost titans of the arts -- from David Bowie and Alan Rickman, to Prince and Leonard Cohen, and then some -- while the far-right swept to power in a depressing majority of developed nations as fears around economic disparity and radicalised terrorism took hold (boosted and manipulated by a media often all-too-willing to seek clickbait headlines and controversial soundbites over facts, but that's another conversation for another forum). I mention this as the major events of 2016 have left a lot of people around the globe uncertain at best -- and terrified at worst -- at what awaits us in 2017, and this climate can't help but find itself reflected in the art we saw and heard this year. As a consequence, my favourite films of 2016 list boasts some choices that, while still great films on their own terms as art, entertainment or documentary, are undeniably politically motivated; cinema that aims to illuminate, educate and/or shock us out of our reverie (if the news hasn't done that already). Many of my favourite film experiences of this year were, in some way or another, reflections of where we're at as a society right now, and, while we've come so far, highlight symptoms of a society still in need of many cures. However doesn't mean I've gone all self-righteous and shit. Some killer big-and-small-screen entertainments made my faves of 2016 as well, because I'm a human being who enjoys popcorn and a good time like everyone else. So, without further waffling, let's jump in by busting a widely-spoken myth, straight up: CINEMA IS NOT DEAD. Breathless obituaries were issued for cinema/movies/feature films/the theatrical experience in 2016; everyone from the Huffington Post to the Boston Globe (you'd think a Best Picture Oscar about their workplace would stay their hand) and Bret Easton Ellis told Movies to kindly step aside, your time is over, Television is now the dominant screen art form, forever and ever, amen. I respectfully disagree. Every art form bursts with valid perspectives and fresh takes on old themes each and every year. The first flaw most of these articles make is assessing "Cinema" by looking almost solely at blockbusters and awards season titles, which is like assessing literature by focusing on E.L James and Stephanie Meyer -- based upon that criteria, the novel is well dead and buried, too! Just because gargantuan promotional budgets try to force blockbuster behemoths into the zeitgeist, doesn't mean they represent the art form, or, indeed, that they were of any worth in the first place. If you look around, even a few inches either side of your local multiplex, you can see vital, exciting cinema to prove the seventh art is as thrilling as ever. (After all, for every Mad Men or Stranger Things or The Night Of, there's a Luke Cage or a Keeping Up With The Kardashians or, well, most of the soapy dross that continues to flood network prime time TV. Again, it conveniently suits these arguments to focus on the top 1% of great works, ignoring the garbage it floats atop.) Okay? Are we all agreed? While, yes, there is some brilliant television, and, yes, gee whiz it can tell stories in such a different way to cinema (well, being a different art form, of course that's true) -- my own highlights of the year include the brilliant final season of Mad Men, the adorably fun Stranger Things, the claustrophobic real-world terror of The Night Of (welcome back, Richard Price!), the salty, kickass (if somewhat overlong) Jessica Jones and the beautifully melancholic first season of Transparent -- let us come to our collective senses and agree that the reports of the death of movies have been greatly exaggerated. (Read on, to find some supporting documents as to the continued health and life of the art form.) SOME GOOD -- NO, GREAT -- STUFF HAPPENED TO ME THIS YEAR. Doom and gloom, sturm und drang, was not hard to find in 2016, with no shortage of people calling for the year's head, as "Fuck you, 2016" became a popular refrain. But here's the thing: while, yes, in a lot of ways (especially in the realms of politics, socioeconomics and celebrity passings), the year did suck for a lot of people... I actually had a pretty great 2016. Perhaps the best year I've had this decade. For starters, we made a movie. I've wanted to make films for 25 years, only got serious about it 8-9 years ago and, after making five short films during that time, finally got lucky enough to be given the chance to make my very first feature, Trench, this year. We set up and shot the film for $15,000 over 16 days during a balmy April in Melbourne, and -- daily heart-into-throat stress attacks aside -- it was a truly special, memorable time of my life, surrounded by a small cast and crew of the most lovely, giving, talented and beautiful souls I've had the pleasure to know and work with, who pulled together their incredible skills (for whatever reason!) to help my partner and I make our crazy little modern Melbourne comedy/noir picture. This circle of kindness opened wider still, when we raised almost $14,000 for post-production mid-year, thanks to 230 wonderful people who wanted nothing but to help us realise our dream (and, yes, get a tax deduction as well). To my ears, no amount of thanks I can give these people -- cast, crew and donors -- sounds adequate. The reason Trench exists is because of you. As the time of writing, we have a fine cut locked in, and we'll be spending January getting the picture and sound sorted, aiming to complete the film by the end of that month, to screen for sales agents, distributors and festivals! (Not bad for a film we didn't start writing until late August 2015.) I also got to attend a film festival as a filmmaker for the very first time, as my most recent short film, Cigarette, was selected to screen at this year's Monster Fest -- Australia's premier genre and fantastic film festival! -- in Melbourne this November. The job festival director Kier-La Janisse and her team have done over the last two years in raising the game of this relatively young festival has been nothing short of awesome: the program featured the very best films to emerge from the world's major genre fests, such as Sitges, Fantasia and Fantastic Fest, as well as shining a light on emerging Australian talents. From Opening to Closing Nights, I made full advantage of my VIP lanyard, seeing 9 films in 4 days, being roped into an impromptu session of the VHS board game Nightmare and meeting all manner of cool people, from filmmakers to festival programmers to film fans alike. I got to be the subject of my very first recorded interview and Q&A as a filmmaker, and got to sit in an audience with my cast and crew, watching our hard work beam onto the big screen. The entire festival treated me beautifully, and it was a wonderful experience I shall forever treasure... and, I dare say, felt like the turning of a personal corner. Another professional delight this year wasn't even mine: it was watching my great friend Tim Egan's short horror/sci-fi/thriller, Curve -- unbelievably, his first short film in over 15 years -- conquer the world, premiering at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival, before going on to screen and win major prizes at Fantastic Fest, Toronto After Dark and, most notably, Sitges, where its award win qualified it for the Academy Awards(!). Every week for the last six months, it seems, Curve was selected to screen at another festival across the world. My proudest moment, however, was sitting in the audience at the Melbourne International Film Festival -- a key Melbourne event Tim and I have attended, both together and apart, for the best part of 20 years -- and watching the screen extend from a 16:9 aspect ratio, extending further, seemingly to infinity, to handle the sheer visual heft of Curve's 2.35:1 ratio, before the film exploded onto screen in all its darkly thrilling glory. Tim and I have worked together on various projects in various capacities over the last ten years, and he's always struck me as a singular talent -- I count him as a key creative mentor, which is unusual to say about someone five years younger than you, but Tim's no ordinary cat -- and the fact that Curve has made such a far-reaching impression, effectively announcing Tim Egan to the world just confirms everything I've ever thought about him, and it couldn't happen to a nicer dude. One last professional joy for me also wasn't my own, nor was it even cinematic: another of my closest friends, Lee Zachariah, turned the toughest emotional time of his life into his very first book, Double Dissolution: Heartbreak and Chaos on the Campaign Trail, which sees him covering the 2016 Australian Federal Election whilst recovering from the disintegration of his marriage. I'm still in the midst of reading it, but thus far it's everything I expect from Lee and then some: honest, insightful, brilliant and hilarious. Double Dissolution is available in bookstores throughout Australia, or at the link I've helpfully laid into the book's title above. If you haven't yet, I urge you to grab one for yourself, and more copies for others. But enough about me and my friends... PAUL ANTHONY NELSON'S FAVOURITE FILMS OF 2016 Some disclaimers to start: 1) As always, this countdown reflects my own personal thoughts, and not the views of our production company or any other people within it. 2) As ever, the films eligible for this countdown were every feature film to receive a paid public non-invitation screening of any kind: so, everything released to cinemas, home video, video on demand, streaming channels or film festivals. In 2016, I saw 97 such films (33 of them at festivals), the first time in recent memory I've not hit the ton. (Something something I've been making my own damn film, etc.) 3) After emerging shattered, enraged and gobsmacked from the absolute worst film I saw this year, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice -- I don't like announcing my worst-of-the-year, but I'll make an exception for this comically inept, aggressively mean-spirited, chronically misjudged ten-ton turkey -- I implemented a new rule I would stick to for the rest of the year (and possibly beyond): I would see no more blockbuster sequels, reboots or remakes. (I saw Captain America: Civil War beforehand, and the only four blockbusters I saw for the remainder of the year were what I've taken to calling "Lateral Blockbusters", that is, original films set in existing universes: Suicide Squad, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and Rogue One. None of which came anywhere close to making this list, just so you know.) 4) Past readers of these year-end blogs may be expecting a wrap-up of my favourite retrospective screenings of the year. Unfortunately, I'm just not able to do one this time around. What with making Trench and generally being busier than ever, I just didn't have the chance to see as much stuff this year. Another reason for this paucity is the fact this was my first year not co-hosting the Hell Is For Hyphenates podcast, which forced me to explore the career of a different great filmmaker every month. Yet another was, I watched a stack of film noir both new and old in research for Trench, but very few (of those I hadn't seen before) excited me. You can see the list of what I watched here -- for fun, when Trench comes out next year, see if you can find any trace of them in it! But also... while I saw a lot I liked and some I loved, there just wasn't a truly revelatory experience like I had felt in past years, like discovering Robert Altman, or Masaki Kobayashi's Human Condition trilogy, or being blown away by the restoration of William Friedkin's Sorcerer or seeing Pulp Fiction on the big screen for the first time in 20 years. 5) However, one of my most fun film experiences this year was what I termed 'Shocktoberfest 2016', where I watched 31 horror films (and the Charlie Brown Halloween special!) in the 31 days of October on the flimsy excuse of celebrating Halloween. I really dug a lot of what I saw, and it was fun to rekindle my true love for horror again. You can find the full list of what I watched here. (The biggest revelation of the whole thing, for me, was how brilliantly Cujo held up. A claustrophobic nightmare about the erosion of the modern American family. Everyone in the film, even poor Cujo himself, is a victim. It's frightening and poignant stuff.) 6) All right, real quick: my favourite first-time retrospective viewings of 2016 were... THE TOP 20 FILMS OF 2016. Firstly, ten Honourable Mentions, all of which could have secured the #20 ranking on any given day: Louis Theroux's customarily funny yet quietly frightening big-screen debut, MY SCIENTOLOGY MOVIE; Shane Black's colourfully intoxicating, razor-sharp return to L.A. neo-noir, THE NICE GUYS; Grant Scicluna's beautifully slow-burning rural Aussie noir debut, DOWNRIVER; Park Chan-Wook's sexy, twisted, bravura return to form, THE HANDMAIDEN; Jesse Moss' unexpectedly lovely look at the friendship between Hal Needham and Burt Reynolds (and, thus, 1970s American machismo), THE BANDIT; Rock Baijnauth's charming, affectionate document of coffee-crafting excellence, BARISTA; Jennifer Peedom's astonishingly right-place-right-time debut documentary and damning examination of class and exploitation, SHERPA; David Farrier & Dylan Reeve's insane, hilarious and increasingly unnerving exploration into the world of "competitive tickling," TICKLED; Mattie Do's deliciously complex, Laos-set modern gothic drama of class warfare, DEAREST SISTER; Ben Wheatley's caustic, visionary and all-too-uncomfortably relevant Ballard adaptation, HIGH-RISE.
1) THE HATEFUL EIGHT General theatrical release. Review: Funny how the first film I saw in 2016 was also the one to most accurately frame the violently toxic, tumultuous socio-political landscape to come. Anyone who knows me knows Quentin Tarantino is my favourite filmmaker and artistic idol, but even I didn't quite expect him to come up with this. (Also, for those who see this atop this year's countdown and find it painfully predictable, allow me to correct you: The last QT film to top any of my yearly best lists was KILL BILL VOLUME 1, waaaay back in 2002.) The Hateful Eight is not only Tarantino's purest spaghetti western to date, but also his most political film yet: a gleefully nasty, unflinchingly nihilistic mirror to a racist, misogynistic United States of America. It has something on its mind in a prominent way that Tarantino's films have always downplayed; they're always about something, but only lately have the works themselves been brazen and pissed off enough to openly admit it. It's a beautifully bilateral film: both thrillingly entertaining -- bursting with witty scripting and indelible, complex characters, -- and teeth-baringly vicious, out to leave a deep and painful mark. In an often painful year full of intelligent, angry films about the world we find ourselves in right now, I couldn't help but find this one of the most truthful. But it's no tract: The Hateful Eight is a big, blasting, booming cinematic tableau writ large -- quite literally, in its full 168-minute-plus-15-minute-interval, 2.76:1 aspect ratio, Ultra Panavision 70mm film glory -- with work from its cast (particularly Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell and Walton Goggins) that ranks among the best of their career. And while we're discussing "career-best work", can we talke about il maestro Ennio Morricone, who delivered the year's most distinctive, thrilling, even bone-chilling, musical score? I saw this behemoth three times on the big screen -- something I've not done since, well, Death Proof -- and it wouldn't take much coaxing to lure me into a fourth. Although it made its world premiere at the tail end of 2015, The Hateful Eight has proved to be the definitive film of 2016, and the ultimate summation of the obsessions, concerns and filmmaking powers of Quentin Tarantino to date. Perhaps this might just be his masterpiece. Thank you for reading my wrap of the films of 2016! If you want to know everything I saw (and where on my list it landed), check out my entire list on Letterboxd, right at this link: http://letterboxd.com/cinemaviscera/list/my-best-to-worst-new-releases-of-2016/
I look forward to seeing you around these parts in 2017 -- visit cinemaviscera.com and trenchfilmnoir.com for all the exciting developments on what promises to be our biggest and best year yet! Love, peace and cinema, PAN xx
0 Comments
A brief summation to begin. Another year, and another promise to blog more has been broken. Why do you all keep believing me? (NB. Regarding the banner picture up there: Only two of those five films made my list. Care to wager which before you keep on reading? Meet you at the end.) 2015 has been a crazier year than most. Perhaps even the craziest of my life to date. Here's hoping the madness doesn't stop here. The year opened with me in pre-production on my short film Cigarette, seeking freelance video work and creative inspiration, editing Cigarette, had me turning 40 bang in the middle, then really kicked off, with my partner in life, crime and creativity, Perri Cummings, and I writing a feature screenplay and shooting a "rough draft" version of the entire 83-minute thing in two days before showing it to a small audience, departing as co-host of the film review podcast Hell is For Hyphenates after five-and-a-half wonderful years, rewriting our movie script, re-shooting some scenes and screening it again, readying Cigarette for festival release and ended with us working on writing our third draft of said feature film -- by now called Trench -- and gearing up to shoot it -- yes, to make our very first feature-length movie -- in early 2016! The prospect of 2016, with a short film going out to festivals, a feature film shoot (and likely going out to festivals itself by year's end!) and more semi-regular freelance video work -- as well as all the new stuff I'll learn and films I'll see (what with new works by Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Kaufman, Todd Haynes and Aaron Sorkin heading our way... and that's just January!!) -- thrills me with prospective delight. And now... the films. 2015 has been an odd duck of a year, feature film-wise (at least, the ones I've seen): Films with massive reputations that underwhelmed, films that made full contact with greatness but didn't know when to quit, largely unheralded films that quietly stunned and -- most shockingly, for me -- a clutch of mega-budget blockbusters that were so great, they pushed the form forward. But let's hop in the wayback machine, real quick: My Favourite Unearthed Treasures of 2015. One delight of being a movie fan in this day and age, with unparalleled access to films from bygone eras, is being able to explore film history at your own pace and temper. Being co-host of the fabulous* podcast (*I can say that now, as I'm no longer on it) Hell is For Hyphenates was one hell of a way to have this exploration curated, thanks to a different guest choosing the filmmaker whose career I'd spend the next month examining. While I don't regret my decision to leave Hyphenates after over a half-decade, I will miss being pushed toward some corners of film history I may not have thought to explore. Case in point: my first big discoveries of 2015: Most people are more likely to think of Kobayashi as a character in The Usual Suspects than a master of Japanese cinema, but this needs to change. Masaki Kobayashi was a contemporary of Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa and Keisuke Kinoshita, which may explain why he got lost in the shuffle a little. (Great trivia note: this titanic quartet were all friends, and even formed a production company in the late 1960s known as Yonki no kai, which translates as "The Four Horsemen Club"!) While Kobayashi's filmography was perhaps slightly more uneven than at least Kurosawa's, I was stunned and delighted to find his peaks stood shoulder to shoulder with even Akira's best. HARA-KIRI (known in Japan by its original title SEPPUKU -- both terms meaning ritual suicide; the latter, the more traditional Japanese term) is a searing critique of Samurai culture and the hypocrisy inherent within all systems believing themselves beyond reproach, whether political or patriotic (or, by inference, patriarchal). Kobayashi's film starts with a seemingly humble, broken-down ronin in feudal Japan offering his services to a wealthy family, which has apparently been happening a lot of late. The deal is, they offer employment or seppuku, and whichever one the house chooses, the ronin must obey. Your more greedy families, not wanting to potentially pay some layabout claiming to be samurai to loaf about their houses, tend to choose the latter... as they do with this ronin I introduced earlier. But, in preparing to kill himself for this proud and wealthy house's gratification, our ronin has a story to tell... I won't say any more, except to say it's both thrillingly exciting and crushingly sad, one of the greatest revenge yarns ever told and, despite revolving almost entirely upon obsolete social structures, is as relevant and excoriating now as ever. It's astonishingly good. Also astonishingly good is THE HUMAN CONDITION, the trilogy -- yes, trilogy -- of films Kobayashi made right before HARA-KIRI. Kobayashi was an avowed pacifist who refused to enlist for World War II, was promptly drafted and thrown into the conflict, and, after refusing to take a rank above private, was captured and detained into a POW camp. So, when he discovered Junpei Gomikawa's epic novel about Kaji, a pacifist whose wartime experience weirdly mirrored his -- albeit with a few more horrific trials of mind, body and spirit thrown in -- it was small wonder Kobayashi took it upon himself to devote three years of his life to adapting Gomikawa's book to the screen. Both personal and sweeping, intimate and grand, THE HUMAN CONDITION, watched in its 10 hour entirety, is, quite simply, not only one of the greatest anti-war statements, but greatest achievements in cinema history. If Kurosawa had Toshiro Mifune as his ever-malleable muse, Kobayashi found his own in Tatsuya Nakadai, who is simply phenomenal as Kaji. It's a masterpiece that will shatter you. I have screenwriter Mark Protosevich to thank for this discovery, and you can listen to our Hell is For Hyphenates chat here. My other favourite discoveries of 2015 include: - Don Herzfeldt's beautiful tryptich of animated shorts combined into one indelibly heartbreaking 62-minute feature, IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY. By following Bill, a man whose perception of reality and memory is becoming increasingly blurred and untethered, if there's a better, more deeply felt film about hopes, dreams, dealing with mental illness and just struggling through day-to-day life, I've yet to see it. Pretty incredible when you consider it's a film populated entirely by stick figures. One of the great works of the 2010s -- and would have been my favourite film of 2012 if I'd seen it that year. - Not technically a discovery, but a film I'd seen some 25 years ago as a teen and (clearly) fundamentally didn't understand, seeing Spike Lee's definitive "joint" DO THE RIGHT THING on the big screen in bright, blazing, clarion call colour was an incredible experience. I now know why there was such a furore over its Oscar shutout in 1990, and why it appears on so many Best Films of the 1980s lists -- because it's a masterpiece. Angry, hilarious, blissful, bruised, beautiful and unstoppably exuberant, DO THE RIGHT THING is everything we love about Spike Lee as a filmmaker, all at once. But what's both wonderful and awful about this film, is how brand new it feels, even 26 years later -- for the best (Lee's vibrant, immediate cinema, the lived-in performances, the somewhat timeless Brooklyn/Bed-Stuy archetypes) and worst (America's seemingly endless struggle with racism and identity, police brutality and persecution of African-Americans) reasons. - Sometimes, you're ridiculously late to the best parties... but the great thing about cinema is those parties never have to end. Case in point: me finally getting around to seeing the films of French New Wave titan Agnes Varda, again thanks to Philippa Hawker and Hell is For Hyphenates. A million miles away from the pretentious essayist provocations of Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda is such an irresistibly puckish, inquisitive filmmaker, her films so alive with humour, curiosity, creativity and humanity, they can't help but be instantly engrossing. The best of her considerable body of work is tough to choose, but for me, her career-defining second feature, CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, is the one. Following a popular singer (played by the gorgeous Corinne Marchand) on a pivotal day in her life, as she waits for some potentially terrible news, struggles with creativity and ego and maybe even falls in love -- all in real time (the 90-minute film's title should actually be CLEO FROM 5 TO 6:30, but I understand that's not nearly as catchy). It's all those adjectives I assigned to Varda's work earlier, but also impossibly cool, raw, sensual and adorable. The only film Varda made that, I would say, equals CLEO would be her final feature documentary, the self-reflexive retrospective THE BEACHES OF AGNES... but that is best viewed after seeing everything she's done, which you should absolutely do, because there are no duds in this deck. She's amazing. - Speaking of cinematic masters, the more Ingmar Bergman films I see, the more I'm gobsmacked. Like Varda, his films are always so heartbreakingly human, inquisitive about humanity and surprisingly funny -- or frightening. His 1960 masterpiece THE VIRGIN SPRING fits firmly into the latter category. Set in medieval Sweden, it's the story of a devoutly religious family whose beloved daughter is raped and killed by a roving band of thugs... who then, unbeknownst to all, are taken into the family's home to stay the night. The almost unbearable sadness of the situation, the even-nowadays-grueling attack scene and growing tension over who will discover what about whom and when, all adds up to a brilliantly claustrophobic fable of human nature, crime and punishment and who we all really are when pushed. It's an astonishing work in a career of them by the Swedish master. (I also saw FANNY AND ALEXANDER this year, which was also brilliant, and full of so many unexpected moments and flourishes.) Now, let's jump back into the wayback machine and return to... My Favourite Films of 2015. As I do every year, I must preface my list with a few caveats: 1) Films eligible for this list include any feature-length fiction/narrative or documentary film given its first paid public release -- that includes cinema releases wide and exclusive, DVD/Blu-Ray, VoD, streaming and film festivals -- anything any member of the public can pay to go see -- in Australia in 2015. 2) Except for one film which was released on Boxing Day last year, but I only saw this year, which came oh-so-close to finishing in my Top 20 this year. You'll find him, his marmalade sandwiches and his hard stare in my Honourable Mentions. 3) The eligible field this year was bang on 100 films -- down from 115 last year, 145 in 2013 and a whopping 155 in 2012 -- hey, I told you up front it was a busy year for me! As I said earlier, 2015 was an odd duck of a movie year: I liked the vast majority of what I saw, only loved but a few and pledged my unquestioned allegiance to fewer still. First, I give you my... Honourable Mentions. 30) A MOST VIOLENT YEAR (Dir: JC Chandor) Low-key, 1970s-style study of struggle for integrity in the face of capitalist greed and gun violence slowly grips tight. 29) PUTUPARRI AND THE RAINMAKERS (documentary, Dir: Nicole Ma) Hurt but hopeful record of a tribe -- and its troubled but inspiring, constantly evolving leader's -- long quest to regain their native land. Incredible access to our oldest culture. 28) THE WOLFPACK (documentary, Dir: Crystal Mozelle) Fascinating documentary of an especially odd family makes its potentially very dark material relatable -- even adorable -- by choosing to focus on the resilience and enthusiasm of its loveable subjects. 27) MI ROMANTIC ROMANI (aka IO ROM ROMANTICA) (Dir: Laura Halilovic) Lovely family comedy set amongst Romani culture in contemporary Italy, tackling topics of adaptation and prejudice with gorgeous subtlety and economy. 26) THAT SUGAR FILM (documentary, Dir: Damon Gameau) Think you knew sugar? Actor-turned-filmmaker Gameau spoils your party with some genuine shocks and revelations in this rigorous, highly entertaining documentary. 25) CITY OF GOLD (documentary, Dir: Laura Gabbert) Lovely, well-crafted portrait of famed Los Angeles food writer Jonathan Gold proves as much a love poem to L.A and multiculturalism as it is to its big-hearted subject. 24) ARABIAN NIGHTS, VOLUME 1: THE RESTLESS ONE (Dir: Miguel Gomes) Opening chapter to Gomes' playful epic is digressive and elliptical -- even maddening -- to a fault, but also wildly creative, hilariously droll and touches troubling political chords. 23) 99 HOMES (Dir: Ramin Bahrani) Bracing, unbearably tense drama set amongst global economic crisis shows human face of those crumbling and prospering, refusing to judge -- at least, until the climax. 22) PADDINGTON (Dir: Paul King) Adorable adaptation of beloved bear is stacks of fun, yet gently, powerfully weaves in themes of refugee experience and prejudice. 21) JOY (Dir: David O. Russell) Engrossing, moving study of a modern self-made woman starts in heavy exposition overload, but rouses -- even genuinely thrills -- once everything clicks into place. The Top 20 (at last).20) THE MARTIAN (Dir: Ridley Scott) Who knew Ridley Scott could be this playful?? A hugely entertaining blockbuster that doesn't dial down the smarts, steering a brilliant, TOWERING INFERNO-level cast through a rollicking, riveting sci-fi tale of scientific can-do. And awesome disco tunes. 19) LISTEN UP PHILIP (Dir: Alex Ross Perry) Misanthropic jerks are rarely so fun to watch, as Perry and his ace cast dig deep into character with wicked humour and withering insight. 18) AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (Dir: Joss Whedon) Unjustly maligned follow-up is by far the better Avengers movie, bringing the kind of character detail and dynamics that only Whedon can provide, along with kinetic, splash-page thrills in ways the first film didn't -- and channels comics like no film before. 17) THE FORBIDDEN ROOM (Dirs: Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson) Cinema's mad genius Guy Maddin is unfiltered and unstoppable, delivering a cinematic fever dream that hurtles relentlessly through lost cinematic genres, in astonishing -- if kind of exhausting -- style. 16) BRIDGE OF SPIES (Dir: Steven Spielberg) Spielberg's most classical, humanist work in years unearths a most worthy biopic subject in insurance-turned-unwitting-human-rights lawyer John Donovan, and towering work from Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks. 15) CHRONIC (Dir: Michel Franco) Crisp, confronting character study of living with illness -- both physical and emotional -- demands attention, with sparse dialogue, brilliant performances -- one of Tim Roth's very best, which is saying something -- and elegant storytelling. 14) A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE (Dir: Roy Andersson) The best of Roy Andersson's savagely mordant "Living Being" trilogy swings from hilarity and tenderness to human cruelty, with fearless confidence. 13) ARABIAN NIGHTS, VOLUME 2: THE DESOLATE ONE (Dir: Miguel Gomes) Obscure opening chapter segues to relentlessly engaging, melancholy tales of complicity and community in hard times, anchored by an astonishing trial scene, and the most heartbreaking little puppy you ever did see. 12) MY LOVE, DON'T CROSS THAT RIVER (documentary, Dir: Jin Mo-Young) With astonishing access to their lives, Jin crafts a lovingly observed, emotionally gruelling record of nonagenarian couple facing mortality together. (Bring all the tissues.) 11) MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE ROGUE NATION (Dir: Christopher McQuarrie) Expanding upon the excellent GHOST PROTOCOL, the latest in the Best Superspy franchise of all is a blissfully silly, twisty and ingenious blast -- and, in Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust, packs a female match for Hunt in kickassery. The best MISSION since De Palma's original -- which is probably no accident, given they're the two most Hitchcock-influenced of the series. The Top 10 of 2015. 10) NASTY BABY (Dir: Sebastian Silva) Silva again proves himself to be a puckish master of rug-pulling tonal shifts, as his darkly funny, riveting descent into moral quagmire explores class tensions and shifting sands of generational fortune. 9) CITIZENFOUR (documentary, Dir: Laura Poitras) Essential, stunning reportage of Edward Snowden's NSA leak (as it was happening!) and its implications terrifies as much as it enlightens... and HOW it was made astounds. The very act of making this film feels like a risky, heroic act. 8) WELCOME TO LEITH (documentary, Dirs: Michael Beach Nichols & Christopher K Walker) Terrifying account of a tiny town's struggle to quash an Aryan terrorist takeover manages to both inspire and sicken. This and CITIZENFOUR make for the best horror movie double feature of 2015 -- because it's all horrifyingly true. 7) EX MACHINA (Dir: Alex Garland) This Thoroughly Modern Prometheus skilfully tackles big issues around technology and free will, with admirable rigour and visceral discomfort. There is no programming more human than self-interest. Best riff on Frankenstein in years. 6) WHILE WE'RE YOUNG (Dir: Noah Baumbach) Baumbach's sharp, funny and sometimes confronting look on the gap between Generations X and Y may be the definitive take on it so far -- and could cut too close to bone for some, as gleefully, but honestly, critical as it is. 5) FOXCATCHER (Dir: Bennett Miller) Sublime direction and brilliant performances drive this chilling true-life tragedy of lives destroyed by wealthy male privilege run amok. Less a tale told than observed, through fragments of behaviour. 4) BIRDMAN, OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) (Dir: Alejandro G. Iñárritu) Bracing, perfectly played and wildly entertaining theatrical headtrip through a thespian superego, hilariously tackling artistic relevance and fame's corrosiveness. Michael Keaton is sublime, and I could watch him and Edward Norton play acting tennis all day long. 3) BEASTS OF NO NATION (Dir: Cary Joji Fukunaga) Fukunaga follows up his TRUE DETECTIVE triumph with a boldly cinematic, relentlessly confronting child's-eye-view of the West African conflict, as we follow a boy from happy kid to child soldier and beyond. An almost unbearably sad account of a broken cycle of despair, driven by political greed, overseas interests and power-mad ideologues. Abraham Attah and Idris Elba give incredible performances. 2) INSIDE OUT (Dirs: Pete Docter & Ronnie del Carmen) Lovely, perceptive and remarkably complex examination of emotion and experience, through a supreme family entertainment. Key viewing for kids and adults, mining the most primal of human experiences to show us why all emotions, even sadness, are not only useful, but essential. Pixar's greatest magic trick to date and their best film in years hits raw nerves, earning its crushing, mass-sob-inducing finale. Beautifully designed with a retro flavour and perfectly voice-cast, too. (One last word: Bingbong.) 1) MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (Dir: George Miller) Was there ever any doubt? From the second George Miller's exhilarating sequel/reboot/reinvention began to the moment it concluded, I was in the hot, hard grip of its pure, astonishing mania. Astoundingly visceral, FURY ROAD is the place where next-level practical stunts and choreographed action meets insanely detailed, almost surreal design (it felt to me like Jodorowsky on all the crack at times) and sinewy, locomotive scripting. How refreshing, in this backstory-obsessed age that spends forever (even entire trilogies) explaining how everyone got to where, to have this movie throw us mercilessly into a world we barely recognise, with characters we don't know, left to adapt to this world or die. From Junkie XL's stirring, percussive blast of a score, to John Seale's kinetic, seemingly-positioned-everywhere cinematography, to Charlize Theron heisting the film in broad daylight from an already terrific Tom Hardy with her already-classic one-armed super-heroine Furiosa, to the wonderfully powerful feminist subtext laid throughout, George Miller has created the new millennium's second definitive action epic (Tarantino's KILL BILL -- another with feminist overtones -- being the first, for mine). I love that, in Miller and cinematographer Seale, two 70-year old Australians created such a powerfully immediate, modern work, one captured in bracingly vivid visual tones that seem to echo not what MAD MAX and THE ROAD WARRIOR were like, but what it felt like to watch them for the first time, three decades ago. Fourth entries in film series are not meant to be any good. In fact, they're almost uniformly terrible. But, in echoing but not aping, linking but not continuing, honouring but not seeking to recapture the initial trilogy, George Miller has made The Exception That Proves The Rule: A fourth film that shows that sequels don't have to be repetitive, that blockbusters can be thematically interesting, that broad emotional strokes don't have to be reductive, that action can be physical and awe-inspiring, and that mega-budget cinematic entertainments, when entrusted to true artists equipped to paint on a grand canvas, don't have to suck. They can be inspiring. They can push the form forward. They can inspire the next generation of filmmakers. Thank you for reading this year's countdown, hope you enjoyed it! To check out the 100 films I saw that were eligible for this countdown, click here: http://letterboxd.com/cinemaviscera/list/my-best-to-worst-new-releases-of-2015/
Please let us know your favourites of the year in the comments below, and we'll see you in 2016, for our most exciting year yet, where Cinema Viscera will dip our collective toe into the big screen universe! Cheers -- and vive le cinema! Paul Anthony Nelson Melbourne, Australia December 30th, 2015 What fresh hell is this?A semi-regular blog exploring films, popular culture, current or future projects and (more often) year-end wrap-up and opinions from CINEMA VISCERA's co-chief, Paul Anthony Nelson. Archives
December 2023
Categories |
Cinema Viscera acknowledges that its offices are on stolen Wurundjeri land of the Kulin Nation, and we pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty was never ceded. Cinema Viscera is contributing to the ‘Pay The Rent’ campaign and we encourage others to consider paying the rent with us: https://paytherent.net.au/
|
Proudly powered by Weebly
|