Now I'm an officially published film critic mere moments away from my first invitation to Sundance, it would be remiss of me not to cast an appraising eye over the films I've watched in the year just past. All in all it's been a pretty good year, although that's not saying much: since I'm incredibly busy and important I tend not to watch things I'm fairly certain I'll despise, so that narrows the field quite a bit. But hey, maybe I'm being unfair to Pixels.
Just to make things even easier (and to strengthen my aloof indie credentials) I've decided to exclude all sequels, remakes, reboots, and extensions of existing franchises from this overview. Lord knows there have been enough of those. Let's not even begin to think about how many people have already spooged over The Force Awakens. Given that and the fact that no matter what anyone says it'll still make all the money in the world, throwing in my two cents ("it was all right") might seem even more pointless than the rest of this.
Far and away the best film I saw this year was The Lobster, the English-language debut from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, perhaps best known for his surreal, hauntingly visceral satire Dogtooth (you'll never look at a dumbbell the same way again, I'm telling you). Boasting probably the most impressive cast I've seen since The Grand Budapest Hotel (at least until Hail Caesar! comes along), The Lobster is an equally deadpan pitch-black comedy in which single citizens of a dystopian future are shipped off to a hotel resort and given 45 days to find a partner, failing which they are turned into an animal of their choice. It really is refreshing to see a satire on society's obsession with relationships, but maybe that's just because I'm bitter and lonely. Despite, or perhaps because of, all the characters speaking in quasi-autistic monotone, the humour is spot-on, yet the romance that develops between Colin Farrell and Rachael Weisz's characters is still convincing, leading to an incredibly hard to watch final act. Best viewed with a large group of people - ideally a cinema-ful of people collectively squirming in discomfort and nauseating tension during the last ten minutes. An absolute gem.
Noah Baumbach has had a busy year - he's had two films out to meet the year's intellectual-New-Yorkers-exchanging-witty-dialogue quota. After 2013's Frances Ha we can now add While We're Young and Mistress America to that list. The former is perhaps slightly more accessible to those not familiar with Baumbach's style (although I would still suggest The Squid and the Whale as a starting point) - it's a pretty straightforward comedy-drama in which a modern-minded couple (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) meets a younger, hipstery couple (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). Generational hilarity ensues, with a lot of commentary on what constitutes a documentary in a world where everything is filmed. Mistress America is a more contemplative screwball comedy about idolism, the pitfalls of university and post-university life, and how to make apple bongs. Quirky! Mind you, Greta Gerwig is fantastic in this, and her relationship with her sister-to-be Tracy (Lola Kirke) leads to some of Baumbach's best quick-fire riffing.
A couple of thrillers worth checking out - Ex-Machina, from Alex Garland (of 28 Days Later fame) explores the nature of AI by way of the Turing test - but things are not all they seem. Its Star Wars credentials are pretty strong, with Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac filling the main roles and Alicia Vikander (who's had a very good year) as the alluring, enigmatic android under scrutiny. It relies more on ideas than traditional sci-fi thriller tropes, though there's still plenty of suspense to go round. Elsewhere, It Follows sees the triumphant screen debut (as far as I know) of the STD - Sexually Transmitted Demon. I'm not the first to make that joke, nor will I be the last, but stay with me, there's more to this. The film follows a group of teenagers being pursued by a murderous, shape-shifting demon that can only be escaped by sleeping with a new victim and passing the demon on to them. It's very rare to see film classed as a horror be as effective as It Follows, but it really is. It's not particularly scary by most standards, but it certainly has its moments and builds its tension extremely well, certainly better than the bajillion Paranormal Activities and Insidiouses out there. Aside from that it's a very clever story with a fantastic retro-style Carpenter-esque soundtrack that gives the film a sense of timelessness and a slightly off, unnerving tone.
Now if I were doing some kind of mock-award ceremony for this year I would create an entirely new category based on this next film, to go alongside "The Gummo Award for Most Eclectic Soundtrack" and "The Whiplash Award for Least Necessary Romantic Subplot". I'd call it "The Meadowland Award for Most Unremittingly Grim Drama". Seriously, there is not an ounce of levity to be found in this one. It should be prescribed to curb excess serotonin levels. That said, Luke Wilson and Olivia Wilde are both fantastic in this as two grieving parents coping with their son's disappearance, and it will certainly deliver an emotional high of sorts.
Next, as dictated by the unwritten code of the burgeoning film critic, the obligatory section on foreign language films. The Dance of Reality introduced me Alejandro Jodorowsky, one of the most surrealist filmmakers of all time. Didn't have a bloody clue what was going on (one of the characters opera-singing every one of her lines didn't help) but visually it's very impressive, which I understand is a signature of Jodorowsky's. Certainly an interesting experience, although overall it was too impenetrable for my philistinian mind. Maybe I'll have more luck with El Topo. Probably not, though. I had more luck with The Tribe, despite the fact that it's all in unsubtitled Ukranian sign language. The story, set at a school for the deaf, has to be interpreted entirely visually, although some of the more explicit scenes need little explanation. Worth seeing just for its uniqueness (at least silent films had intertitles).
Right, just to wrap up a few others:
The Falling - Arya Stark faints a lot.
Slow West - Michael Fassbender kicks ass and takes names in the Wild West.
Turbo Kid - Mad Max on bikes.
What We Do In The Shadows - Flight of the Conchords make a vampire mockumentary.
Phew. Well done if you've got all the way through. Traffic figures mean a lot to me.
My New Year's Resolution is to spend my time a lot more productively. Maybe I'll get a job and everything. Who knows?
