Films Seen in 2013: May

Films I saw in May 2013. The format is: film title (English lang. and/or original language where required -- occasionally a film's alternative title, too); director(s) and year; whether it's a rewatch; numerical grade out of 10 (all grading is subject to change, of course, and intended as merely a personal indicator/reminder). Titles in bold indicate that the film is, by and large, a 2013 UK first release or is eligible for year-end inclusion. Films are listed seen chronologically (as viewed) from bottom to top.


East of Eden (Elia Kazan/1955) 8
A beautiful film about mournful, cruel, wonderful, desperate people. Faultless cast. Dean's alive, searching eyes are the key. (And the sheer exquisite craftsmanship of Elia Kazan's compositions.) Elia Kazan + Jo Van Fleet = sublime, fierce, soulful, harmonious (see also: Wild River). Wondrous first meeting between Dean and Van Fleet is at Eden's core: a mother-son relationship is defined, refined and glibly cemented in 10-or-so minutes. Dean as Cal: "You're a businesswoman, ain't ya?" Van Fleet as Kate: "One of the best, son." Innate connection via sass talk says far more than any 'sorry' or 'I love you'. Dean's best performance: all full-strength magnetism and playful looseness. More definitive than Rebel without a Cause. More open then Giant.  

Teddy Bear (Mads Matthiesen/2012) 6
It's all mum, muscles and emotional tussles. Subtly moving and unassuming. Doesn't reach great heights, but good performances and sensitive direction.

Frankenweenie (Tim Burton/2012) 6
A sweet film with some endearing horror nods (Shelley the turtle, Bride of Frankenstein poodle). Wonderful use of B&W photography. Burton to Nth degree.

The Hangover Part III (Todd Phillips/2013) 2
Gags shouldn't end in silent, flat, awkward ellipses... But the ones in this do. Practically all of 'em. It's actually quite baffling. There's no boom mic gaffes, but you can see a producer's hand in each shot waving a document with 'Contractual Obligation' on it. It isn't quite as bad as Part II, but then that's like saying a puke sandwich isn't quite as bad as a shit sandwich. OK, there are 7 funny words over 100 minutes of script. Also: 15 yawns, 6 eye-rolls and 27 time-checks. (But that was just me.)

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (Ben Shapiro/2012) 6
A few nice insights into GC's methods, if a dash perfunctory in its execution. Great to see his process.

Neighbouring Sounds

Neighbouring Sounds / O som ao redor (Kleber Mendonça Filho/2012) 8
Sounds of social spaces. Crisply composed, allusive as all hell and suffused with an eerie calm. Bold, riveting filmmaking. Reckon it's one of the best films of the year so far. Still early days, but it might even currently snag the top spot. Also, the sparsely used music was fantastic. Particularly this: Setúbal by DJ Dolores.

Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon/2012) 7
A charming, warm-hearted mini marvel. Coasts along in fine, refreshing style. One of the year's most pleasurable films so far. Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson are endearing, unaffected and smart as the leads.

The Moth Diaries (Mary Harron/2012) 4
It gets by on the barest minimum of scenes. Has Olympic level leaps and jumps in narrative. No one seems to care. Oh, Harron. Lily Cole sports caterpillar-like eyebrows (which, incidentally, give the best performance). Unfortunately they don't turn into moths. There's such a dearth of learning and so many "mysterious accidents" at the school in The Moth Diaries that it'd be fucked in an Ofsted visit. DISCLAIMER: no actual moths wrote no actual diaries in the making of this film.

Dragon / Wu Axia (Peter Chan/2011) 6
Lively plot, slick direction. It gets to it in style. Crafted with a sense of mirth. Handful of solid fight scenes are swift, kinetic delights. Takeshi Kaneshiro works it like a sad and sexy Poirot and Donnie Yen creates a world of wonders with a sly smirk and a lack of gravity.

McCullin (David Morris, Jacqui Morris/2012) 7
Expertly crafted war photography documentary. The man himself is an amiable oasis of insight. Nicely shot; sharp use of imagery and sources. Riveting.

Premium Rush (David Koepp/2012) 5
Totally vapid yet just enough fun. Plot's a no-show, but no matter: zippy bike hijinks make the time pass in amusing fashion. Like BMX Bandits for the cool city courier set. Michael Shannon was all levels of ridiculous as Bad Wired Cop; Joseph Gordon-Levitt was atypically personality-free as the lead. Enjoyed roaming NY streets.

The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann/2013) 5 Full review

To Rome with Love (Woody Allen/2012) 2
A dull, overlong mess. Awful. Woody, it's time to give up these tourist board romance doodles and have a break of your own. It has maybe three gags? The rest is leftovers. Botched editing, a slipshod tone and directionless actors make it hard, tiring work. Parts were smug, others egregious. But mostly it was baffling, strained and repetitive. One of Woody's absolute worst, sadly.

Mud (Jeff Nichols/2012) 6 Full review
Conjures a wistful tone with a near tangible sense of place. Grime and regret are evoked well, but the plot peters out. Solidly shot and acted.

Top of the Lake

Top of the Lake (Jane Campion, Garth Davis/2013) 8
Top of the Lake properly put through the wringer. Brilliant, compulsive storytelling. Grim, gripping, smart. Jane Campion's (along with co-director Garth Davis and co-writer Gerard Lee) deft handling of the plot maximised character, tension, mystery. Over its 5¾ hours there's an abundance of solidly written female characters; all of them are fascinating in a multitude of ways. Elisabeth Moss is spectacular in the lead. One of the best performances I've seen this year. Great to see Geneviève Lemon (Sweetie) back working with Campion again too. I'd probably rank Top of the Lake up there with Bright Star, Sweetie and An Angel At My Table as one of Campion's best.

Shadow Dancer (James Marsh/2012) 5
Full of simmering tension and restraint, but oddly slight. Admirable, but rarely fierce or gripping. Riseborough is very good. The very best thing about it, though, is DP Rob Hardy. Amazing work; no surprise, he did Boy A, Whistle and I'll Come to You and Red Riding 1974.

Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J. Abrams/2013) 6
A fun barrage of charm, shiny surfaces and ballistic action. Rapidly put together and well played. I think, at this early stage, I may have enjoyed it more than the 2009 film. Orally, Cumberbatch was amazing. He has one of the most captivating, watchable mouths in film; his diction and delivery were splendid. He was the all-round standout in the cast; I was mesmerised watching his scenes. Rest of cast were good, all working to their strengths. Lens flare overload in 3D does play havoc with your eyebags, however. Restraint, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams! Less is more!

Price Check (Michael Walker/2012) 7
Decent drama; even better comedy. Parker Posey does career best work. She fully nails every manic aspect. It's her Young Adult. (Seeing Parker Posey rule here points to just how wrong the makers of Superman Returns were for not casting her as Lois Lane. And she was right there in the cast already.)

House at the End of the Street (Mark Tonderai/2012) 3
Starts well enough, but collapses into iffy plotting, baffling character motivation and tried and tested ideas. Yawn. It really required a plot revamp. Too much familiarity; same-old set-up and scares. Tonderai did more with less on debut Hush.

The Statue of Liberty (Ken Burns/1985) 6
The Statue of Liberty as art, symbol, icon, joke, gift, idea. A concise, yet thorough, and fascinating documentary. Ken Burns has the goods.

A Bag of Hammers (Brian Crano/2011) 8
Amiable, very funny and with some incredibly moving moments. Made with a great perception of life. It's a real heartfelt gem. The assured subtlety of the filmmaking is a joy. Great performances from all the cast.

Shark Week (Christopher Ray/2012) 3
I'm glad I watched it, mainly so I can use it as a Quality Movie Barometer from this day hence (in that anything else is of a higher quality). The actors in were amazing at... looking a little bit sad and fed up at ill-defined CGI fish shapes just out of shot.

Iron Man Three (Shane Black/2013) 6
I quite enjoyed TONY STARK'S WORLD OF EXPLODY-THINGS 3. Certainly the most entertaining Iron Man film: briskly paced, fun set-pieces, lack of fuss. Smug tone was in effect and some stuff was annoying (I wasn't quite as enamoured with Kingsley as many were, though I liked the novelty aspect inherent in his performance), but the good outweighed the iffy. It's a blockbuster that works well. I kind of wished Whedon were involved in the script, as he can write good female characters (Black can't — well, with the exception of 50% of Geena Davis' character, the Charly Baltimore half, in The Long Kiss Goodnight) and it missed what made Avengers Assemble so great. On the whole, and by a process of elimination, it's probably the most ridiculously enjoyable thing Shane Black's produced so far.

Note (with SPOILERS!): the film wasted Rebecca Hall as Maya Hansen. She was a surprise second-/third-tier villain, of sorts, as it turned out. But when things started to get a bit more interesting for her character, she was killed off — by the eventual top-tier villain, Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian. Why not switch it up further — further than with the false villainy of Kingsley's Mandarin — by having Hall suddenly kill Pearce instead? Wouldn't that have made for a bigger and better surprise and more intriguing last act? Especially as there was scope — particularly in regard to Paltrow's resulting superpowers (that the film squandered, then dismissed too readily; she deserved more than her meagre allowance of action scenes) — for extending the film's overarching concern of what constituted a villain and why and how Tony Stark figured into it? What Pearce did in the last act wasn't anything that Hall couldn't have done. The character traits given to Killian could easily have been attributed to Hansen, with a tweak here and there, thus rendering Killian a superfluous character. (Hansen had potential to be a n all-round stronger, more fascinating character; Killian was the same-old vengeful wannabe.) But I guess it's strictly Iron-man-on-Iron-man fisticuffs that reap rewards in Shane Black's eyes.

Wild River

Wild River (Elia Kazan/1960) 9
People and place wonderfully captured by Kazan. Photography, score, whole tone infused with melancholic undertow. A beautifully made gem. Montgomery Clift (charming, humble), Lee Remick (poignant, bright) and Jo Van Fleet (staunch, heartbreaking) give amazing performances.

Salvage (Laurence Gough/2009) 6
She Beast in Brookside close, basically. Cheap but resourceful. A few iffy turns, but jumps, gore and sense of isolation work well.

Photographic Memory (Ross McElwee/2011) 7
It examines memory, family and history in a heartfelt and humble way. A sheer joy to see where McElwee takes his camera.

John Dies at the End (Don Coscarelli/2012) 5
In-built cultishness was slightly lost on me, but its unpredictability was a treat. It became more fun as it went on.

Gayby (Jonathan Lisecki/2012) 6
An easy watch. Good comic timing, breezy editing and a likeable cast make it a treat. Plot's a cinch; it's the actors that make it work. Gayby shares a general tone — and a few cast members — with Girls. Also: talented, atypical female lead who does the rom and the com with ease.

Five best new (2013) films:

Top of the Lake
Neighbouring Sounds
Gimme the Loot
McCullin
Dragon

Four best older (non-2013) films:

Wild River
Photographic Memory
A Bag of Hammers
The Statue of Liberty
East of Eden

The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann/2013)

Per his familiar dazzle-fuelled plot template Baz Luhrmann starts The Great Gatsby with an anachronistic whiz-bang — all rejigged Jay-Z jazz steps and twenties décor in an MTV Cribs style — but then lets it agreeably coast with only intermittent party-popper bursts of liveliness, before it eventually fizzles out, halting to its crestfallen finish. It’s 143 variable minutes that contain some pep and pockets of emotion, but is weighed down by a handful of taxing plot turns that only amount to part-time fun part of the time. It’s Luhrmann’s way. He again offers his signature plot trajectory, as with William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge! and Australia — though he missed out all the fun bits in that last one.

Gatsby’s front-loaded with a trio of stars: Leonardo DiCaprio (as Jay Gatsby), Carey Mulligan (as Old Sport) and Tobey Maguire (as Old Sport). DiCaprio is suitable casting as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s young pretender. He brings a dash of his Howard Hughes twitchiness from The Aviator, a few love-blind blinks from Revolutionary Road and, at several points, the soaked-through shiver of his Shutter Island dupe. Mulligan occasionally puts the flap in flapper, but only when she’s not out-demuring herself in the demurest-of-them-all stakes. Maguire employs the smugly bemused expression he wore during his awkward Spider-Man 3 dance sequence for the duration — only slightly dulled by the fact that he appears unsure whether he’s playing Carraway as the gooseberry or not. I could have done with a hike in screen time for Isla Fisher’s Old Sport (think Betty Boop-meets-Lil-from-Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me), but a 30% reduction of the clammy, cardboard characteristics of Joel Edgerton’s Old Sport.

The film works best when it focuses on what’s strictly happening in its more self-contained scenes than when it’s hastily careering through sequences in an attempt to cram in every snazzy edit and camera somersault this side of Man with a Movie Camera. The chaste date between Daisy and Jay in Carraway’s house, full-to-overflowing with pastel-perfect flowers and tinged with light farce, succeeded in being a singular moment of lively delight. And the juicy social awkwardness of the Plaza hotel scene adds some shimmery gristle to the latter part of the film. (This is where all the characters present — everyone, that is, apart from one female hanger-on who spends the entirety of the film either chaise longue-slouching in the background or teeing off in flashbacks — get hot under the collar and go ‘full Jeremy Kyle’ by revealing their petty flings and lifelong jealousies to one another in a hysterical display of verbal tennis.)

For all the new 3D visual eccentricity Luhrmann thrusts upon Fitz’s classic, it perhaps clings a bit too close to literary fidelity and succumbs to narrative fatigue after the early, headier highs. I did wonder if it could have been made in another, more daring or daft mode: a full-blown comedy (National Lampoon’s F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby!), a low-key silent/not-silent movie à la Tabu (2012) or even in a Todd Haynes’ Superstar style with everyone played by dolls toing and froing on intricately-fashioned mini sets — and still in 3D! Or, why not let’s have a different Fitzgerald story: the man wrote a stack of short gems (perhaps his best 43 stories were gathered in the 1989 collection The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald); each one has just as much glorious cinematic potential as Gatsby. David Fincher tried something different with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, based on Fitzgerald's novella, and showed an audacity more venturesome than Baz does here. But Gatsby 2013 is certainly slick and stylish, with editing akin to a speedy flick through a bumper edition of Vogue, and is immaculately designed to within an inch of its beautiful existence. But, like Gatsby himself, it’s all a bit soggy in the end.

Mud (Jeff Nichols/2012)

It’s clear from the first images of Mud that we’re in for a heady swill of hardened Southern not-quite-gothic drama and coming of age tale. Arkansas tides ebb, trees sway, youths venture out on rickety row boats; everything is lightly unsettled, a gritty life lesson is imminent. There’s an apparent literary influence in Mud — more pronounced than in either of director Jeff Nichols’ prior features Shotgun Stories or Take Shelter — and a helping of emotive substance that goes into well-grounded melodrama, albeit one with the potential for ill deeds, nicely alluded to in both Adam Stone’s sombre photography and David Wingo’s spare score.

It feels very much like a Flannery O’Connor short story set a few states over and peopled with the descendants of Mark Twain characters. It’s a Boys' Own adventure story loosely invaded by the spirit of Robert Mitchum’s Harry Powell. Mud’s aura may not chime in strict geographic accordance with either Twain or O’Connor — there are minor hints toward Carson McCullers and William Faulkner too — but thematically it contemporarily evokes a humid and almost solitary tone familiar to those writers’ worlds. It acknowledges the grand, grimy sweep of renowned Southern writing, doffs its hat, nods and goes about its business with a knowing charm.

What it’s about is: two teenage boys Ellis and Neckbone (Tye Sheridan, from The Tree of Life, and newcomer Jacob Lofland, both very good), who spend their days lolling around a down-at-heel backwater town, chance upon a friendly yet mysterious stranger, actually a fugitive criminal called Mud (Matthew McConaughey, building well on a recent gold streak), on a nearby depopulated island whilst scoping out a recently stranded boat – which now functions as both tree-house home and possible getaway vehicle for Mud. McConaughey’s earthy interloper enlists the boys into helping him repair the boat and to assist in his rekindling of past love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon, nailing broken dejection with ease). There’s a gangster element on the horizon, parental problems and the usual pains of growing up. The autumn days don’t exactly get easier.

Mud is an engaging yet drawn-out film. It ekes out its slim plot nearly to the point of labour but allows for some poignantly choice moments of introspection. A slow sense of impending dread, of sure incoming calamity, infuses everything with an ominous pull of the most laid back variety: bad things will happen, but there's a long wait before you get there. (At 130 minutes Mud wades along with a casual swagger.) As hardscrabble and heavy-hearted as it is, instances of light humour play well: Michael Shannon’s (as Neckbone’s slobbish lothario uncle) retooling of his diver’s helmet with better search lights that makes him look like a discount store Iron Man; the running gag of McConaughey seemingly only scoffing on one particular brand of stolen tinned beans.

Mud is mostly men, most of the time. The three key female characters aren’t as expansively drawn as the menfolk. Witherspoon’s Juniper is the trailer trash Eve to McConaughey’s anti-heroic Adam (snake imagery is rife, too), but her scenes are essentially limited to being saved from a beating, some motel room moping and a light shop for ‘bits’ at the local Piggly Wiggly. Sarah Paulson makes a soft impression as Ellis’s mother, though isn’t afforded quite the screen time or characterisation allotted to Ellis’ father, played by Ray McKinnon, and she’s given short shrift in the final stretch where McKinnon isn’t. And Bonnie Sturdivant as local girl May Pearl courts Ellis’ attention and then quickly besotted by another lad, in an unfortunate bit of prescriptive scripting that suggests women shouldn’t perhaps always be trusted (Mud seems to counteract this, but only late on in the film and all too briefly.)

It’s a shame that Nichols’ female characters don’t receive the same attention as the male characters, as some balance would’ve certainly expanded the central theme of how boys become men and how men become fathers into something with both socially and emotionally complex layers. Women are primarily the cause of sadness and disruption here. In Elia Kazan’s Wild River (1960) Montgomery Clift didn’t satisfactorily solve his moral quandary without the complicated affection and existence of Lee Remick. And the time Stacy Keach spent meaningfully cosying up to Susan Tyrell in John Huston’s Fat City (1972), only to be separated later on, could be detected sadly slouched across his face in the final shot. Nichols sidelines the crucial impact of women even when they’re essentially the film's motoring force.

Nichols conjures a wistful tone with a near tangible sense of place. Being an Arkansas native he surely knows the habits and rhythms of the people and their ways of life. He supplies an authenticity, free of typical establishing shots and over-familiar music cues, to the way the story eases forward. A dirt-choked melancholy air permeates Mud; grime and regret are evoked easily and stand as signifying anchors. But the plot peters out roughly around two-thirds in: where events should build with fascination and then converge with accumulative resonance, they actually chug through a series of hasty scenarios, including one or two odd late resolutions that feel slightly shoehorned in as if Nichols is making deliberate moves into full mainstream territory. There’s a sliver of the supernatural to Mud that begged for expansion: when we first see McConaughey he literally emerges from out of nowhere; is he something “other” than a mere man? This tantalising aspect could’ve been further expanded in an enigmatic way.

Without revealing late key plot points, a stronger and more, well, untidy final stretch may have more fully complemented the power of its earlier convictions to show its teenaged protagonist that the path to adulthood is as strange as it is full of hope, yet still strewn with tough complications. But it is a strongly shot, acted and photographed film. Nichols is an extremely talented and estimable filmmaker who so far confidently mines his own highly atmospheric groove yet isn’t afraid to acknowledge influence as he does so. His camera tracks his characters with fond scrutiny and justified care. His everyday folk bleakly, quietly toiling through their often mundane, sometimes grand experiences have a broad, congenial appeal. They often come with an unwritten but observable backstory of the kind that good short Southern fiction dictates. Before you know it, you’re wrapped up in the lives of his lost people living their agreeably solemn lives.

Films Seen in 2013: April

Films I've seen in 2013 for April. The format is: film title (English lang. and/or original language where required -- occasionally a film's alternative title, too); director(s) and year; whether it's a rewatch; starred grade out of 5; numerical grade out of 10 (all grading is subject to change, of course, and intended as merely a personal indicator/reminder). Titles in bold indicate that the film is a 2013 UK first release. Films are listed seen chronologically (as viewed) from bottom to top.

The Verdict (Sidney Lumet/1982) ***½ / 7
Rich, somber filmmaking. Lumet's poised exploration of injustice is entirely enthralling. Newman slowly, quietly sets it alight.

The Lady Eve

The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges/1941) *** / 6
Fonda adds the kindling; Stanwyck adds the spark. Cracking dialogue. Supporting cast supplement greatly. Very funny, but it meanders. 

Contact (Alan Clarke/1985) *** / 6
Military manoeuvres at a remove. Clarke's skilful direction explores the intensity between exterior action and interior pause.

Life Without Principle (Johnnie To/2011) ***½ / 7
Money matters. Trio of plot strands mostly gel. Makes acute points on financial crisis. A more understated To movie. Sound and edit of a pen furiously crossing out a name (of a failed sale) to flicking notes on a money counter is genius.

Excision (Richard Bates Jr./2012) *** / 6
Very spiky, and has some provoking things to say about conformity. Nicely filmed, too, with some great performances (Lords esp good). After Dark Horse yesterday, it appears that Bates Jr. has made a better Todd Solondz film than Todd Solondz.

Dark Horse (Todd Solondz/2011) *½ / 3
Hate to do the old 'did they see the same film as me?', but having read near unanimous praise for Solondz's film, I'm guessing so. It doesn't seem to have a clear point. Solondz listlessly attacks his same-old concerns (*again*). It descends into weary disarray. Casting Christopher Walken and Mia Farrow in your film and frittering their talents on bland scenes and bare-shell characters is a waste. I didn't grasp any real critique or satire. What's the point of 85 minutes of dour characters going through the motions just, ya know, coz. Donna Murphy was very good, however.

The Paperboy (Lee Daniels/2011) *** / 6
A hotbed of mania. Scene after scene infused with cracked abandon. Enjoyably disjointed; cultishness beckons. Ripe as old fruit. It veers all over the place: score opts for melodrama; its shape, tone suggest noir; rest is up for debate. There's fun to be had. Great to see this cast unabashedly take hold of such material. All interact solidly; perfs. are confident. It's never boring. Love that genuinely odd/untidy commercial fare can still get through in a time of Tran$former$ and King's Speech-y awards bait.

World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries (Michael Bartlett, Kevin Gates/2011) *½ / 3
Not so much 'world', more 'a few fields and an outhouse'. Cheap, wobbly-cam, awful chars, same old...

The Heroic Trio

The Heroic Trio (Johnnie To/1992) ***½ / 7
Yeoh, Cheung, Mui. Air combat. Magic sewer worlds. Invisible cloaks. Swords. Motor stunts. Flying. Fighting. It's all good.

Evil Dead (Fede Alvarez/2013) **½ / 5
It grossly ambled by. A few icky high points, but it lacked any character (or good characters). Not great, but not hashed. Unsure why new it's gained more esteem? scrutiny? than other horror remakes. It's the same old thing, all told. Passable but prosaic.

The Place Beyond the Pines (Derek Cianfrance/2012) **** / 8
Crime and corruption circle the years. A broody melodrama with many peaks, a few flaws. Great direction, solid cast. Also, wonderful photography (all dour, inky), score (used well in choice scenes) and use of dissolves to urge the story forward.

Men in Black 3 (Barry Sonnenfeld/2012) **½ / 5
Diverting fun, mostly due to the general Jemaine Clement verbal daftness. Enjoyed the FX work on the aliens too.

Road (Alan Clarke/1987) ****½ / 9
Beer, bitterness, Be-Bop-A-Lula. '80s Britain conveyed as wry, angry street theatre. The characters are like end-of-the-world strays. Clarke's deft genius with his camera draws out the requisite spite and substance of Jim Cartwright's words. Performances are captivating. Scene in a derelict pub (with fire-breather, dancing, jugglers and sad glances) set to the entirety of Mel & Kim's Respectable is amazing. No one's doing now what Clarke did then, whether due to drive, funding, opportunity... His work deserves a comprehensive DVD release.

Extraterrestrial (Nacho Vigalondo/2011) **½ / 5
Very nicely directed and with fun perfs. It meanders here and there, but has a charming low-key vibe. Might've been better as a short.

Rise of the Zombies (Nick Lyon/2012) ** / 4
Cheap as chips and with a script that scrapes rock bottom. But if I said I was bored I'd be lying. Tinny, groan-worthy fun.

One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later

One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later (James Benning/1977/2005) ****½ / 9
Windows on Milwaukee. Benning's 2 hours of 60-second "still" shots is some of his most fun, surreal and best work.

Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie/1969) ***½ / 7
Does fame warp absolutely? Detached as hell and persuasive for it. Redford's stillness works wonders. Editing scores highly.

ParaNorman (Chris Butler, Sam Fell/2012) ***½ / 7
Nicely made and a joy to watch. It gleefully shows its love of horror history and rallies a big cheer for the put upon and different.

Dark Skies (Scott Stewart/2013) ** / 4
Another 'someone's in my house' effort. Efficiently made but as rote as day. Has the most depressive aura. Snores over scares.

Exiled (Johnnie To/2006) ****½ / 9
Bullets, regrets, beautifully-directed action. To turns Macau into the most strange, kinetic and moving Spaghetti Western yet made.

Storage 24 (Johannes Roberts/2012) *** / 6
Follows a well-worn path, but enjoyable all the same. Larfs were stingy, but well delivered when they came. Nice alien FX work.

Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine/2012) *½ / 3
Skirts satire, nudges toward parody, embraces... boredom. About as subversive as a pair of slippers. Not sure if it works. "A neon riot!" "A nightmare masterpiece!" "A kinetic thrill-ride!" -- I've had pins and needles that were more electrifying. Intentional parody or not, the voiceovers were dull and draining on the ear. In fact, the tannoy announcements at my local branch of Tesco were more interesting than the voiceovers in Spring Breakers. 

District 13: Ultimatum (Patrick Alessandrin/2009) *** / 6
The plot's bobbins, but the copious jumping up/across buildings and witty stunts work wonders on the thrill temples.

Vengeance (Johnnie To/2009) **** / 8
An exploration of the complicated patterns of revenge. Epic absurdity amid the grand gunplay. To on wonderful, wayward form. He uses glorious pause to create finesse in his shootouts. One, played to the rhythm of clouds passing across the moon, is grand; another, set in a windswept junkyard, with characters heaving cubed stacks of recycled paper along as barriers, is sheer astounding.

Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski/2012) ***½ / 7
Review here

To the Wonder

To the Wonder (Terence Malick/2012) **** / 8
Malick scribbling the brightest, most heart-rending love doodles. All staccato stitching & piecemeal impressions. Fine work. (I say this as someone who wasn't esp. taken with The Tree of Life: that looked back, away; To the Wonder looks to now and more closely at people.) Lack of "performance" wasn't an issue. I took a lot from who these people were from what was given in Tezzer's slight slices. Scenes with Bardem were perhaps most affecting. Visual rhyming in the editing was splendid. Lubezki's photography was terrific as per usual.

In Another Country (Hong Sang-soo/2012) *** / 6
Film as a playful reverie. Hong Sang-soo and Huppert go all out on the awkward/funny. Delightful, but gets a bit wisplike.

Who's Minding the Store? (Frank Tashlin/1963) *** / 6
Poodles, vacuum cleaners, golf balls. Hapless Lewis goodness. Pratfalls, gags and snappy asides all projected with joy.

The Players (Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lellouche, Emmanuelle Bercot, Fred Cavayé, Alexandre Courtès, Michel Hazanavicius, Eric Lartigau/2012) * / 2
A tonal mess. It's a haystack; any comedy whatsoever = a needle. Indulgent, charmless, dull as teeth. Last segment was pitiful.

Prometheus (Ridley Scott/2012/rewatch) **** / 8

Sister (Ursula Meier/2012) ***½ / 7
Fine, polished work all round. Stark but emotive and visually very fresh. Slightly baggy at times, but Meier has a solid directorial voice. Standout photography - no surprise as it was shot by Claire Denis regular Agnès Godard. Shades of The Kid with a Bike and Breathing to the plot.

Mad Detective (Johnnie To/2007) ***½ / 7
As wilfully playful as it is absurd. The control To and Ka-Fai exert is guided by the joy of a genre they've ably twisted here.

28 Hotel Rooms (Matt Ross/2012) * / 2
Review here

Trance (Danny Boyle/2013) *½ / 3
A coiled mess that drifts in and out of dullness. Cranky angles, uninspired performances and 'porn' lighting help no one. A bumbling misfire. Review/notes here

Laurence Anyways

Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan/2012) **** / 8
This is why I give a director a third (or fourth, fifth...) shot. I Killed My Mother and Heartbeats did zero for me, but this is sublime drama. The weaving of moving character study and romance is often remarkable. Put me in mind of the likes of Head-On, Rust and Bone. The overflow of style worked wonders and was backed up with rounded, fascinating characters. Poupaud and Clément were marvelous. Wondered initially if at 161m it was a touch overlong, but it couldn't have done with any scenes featuring either lead trimmed.

The Mission (Johnnie To/1999) **** / 8
Fluent crime games. Streamlined plot maxed to the hilt with wonderfully showy shootouts. To's compositions made me beam.  

The Road: A Story of Life & Death (Marc Isaacs/2012) *** / 6
Very moving, socially pertinent and made with fuss-free care.

Bad 25 (Spike Lee/2012) *** / 6
Thorough, diverting look at album's process. Snappy talking head stories add enthusiasm, flavour. As with many Lee films, a bit overlong. Re NY filmmakers: both Lee's & Scorsese's recent docs are often more fascinating than their recent features. Maybe Woody Allen should do one.  

Five best new (2013) films:

Oblivion
To the Wonder
The Place beyond the Pines
In Another Country
The Paperboy

Five best older (non-2013) films:

One Way Boogie Woogie / 27 Years Later
Exiled
Vengeance
Road
Laurence Anyways

Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski/2013)

Tom Cruise is one of our premium movie stars. He lends his premiere star status this week to Oblivion, Joseph Kosinski’s follow-up to TRON: Legacy. Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise through and through here. Movie star Tom Cruise who headlines big action blockbusters like War of the Worlds and the Mission: Impossible quartet, not the once-in-a-while movie actor of Magnolia, Collateral, Rain Man. Oblivion doesn’t require a Cruise performance, as such; it needs a strutting, panicked Cruise action presence. He gives good combat and freak-out, that’s plenty enough. He plays his reliable go-to guy: the blue-collar worker type – called Jack of course – facing insurmountable odds. Jack likes unfussy, simple things: books, baseball, rustic cabins, Conway Twitty records. But he has to kick it into top gear to overcome feats of futuristic peril.

Jack and his co-worker/bed-sharer Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) operate a maintenance outpost on a destroyed and depopulated post-invasion earth. It’s a stunning home-owner’s wet dream of an outpost, however: austere on stilts in the sky, full of billowy curtains, glass surfaces, topped with a top-end technical finish. (It’s a dwelling so impossibly, stylishly open-plan with the potential for threat that I was expecting Diamonds Are Forever's Bambi and Thumper to jump out on Cruise at any given moment.)

The pair answer to Mission Control Sally’s (Melissa Leo) orders; linked via a screen, she tasks them from Titan, a planet off Saturn, with clearing earth, saving its resources and repairing flying robot maintenance drones in between avoiding the hostile ‘Scavengers’ – all whilst readying themselves for a return ‘home’. Because the pair are nearing the end of their shift (“only two weeks left, Jack!”), of course something goes awry: a droid mysteriously goes missing and Jack discovers a strange woman (Olga Kurylenko) jettisoned to earth from a space shuttle. Who is she? Why does Jack feel he’s seen her before? Who’s got the droid? Has Cruise cracked a smile yet?

The plot from here on out becomes rather convoluted. Although it’s fun to play catch up with and, ultimately, it coheres better than first assumed. But it’s the creatively imagined world that astonishes most vividly. Vast, seemingly endless lush and/or ruined vistas – many of which are the very same Icelandic wasteland locations seen in Prometheus – full of expanse, substance and digital elegance are an visual treat. The effects are exemplary and integrated with seamless skill; eyeballs are dipped in unusual reconfigurations of slickly photographed known landmarks and inhospitable crevices. Credit to production designer Darren Gilford, cinematographer Claudio Miranda and, well, the whole technical crew for evoking sublime alienating earth landscapes. The score, by Anthony Gonzalez of M83 and Joseph Trapanese, a Daft Punk collaborator, thuds and fizzes with an electronic orchestration that aptly suits the visual splendour and compatibly meshes with the impressive sound design.

Cruise is on and off spaceships, bikes, buildings, peaks; he’s in and out of cavernous ruins, pools and hot zones. He applies the same level of manful adventurousness on screen as he most likely does in his leisurely pursuits on his days off. Oblivion being a top-tier Cruise vehicle – like, say, Jack Reacher, The Last Samurai, Knight & Day – it’s inevitably all about him and what feats of kinetic endurance he can master. And he’s still up to the task. He may not display a knack for characterisation in films such as this often, but he does bring star power and the guarantee of a hefty budget – via which burgeoning talents like Kosinski can project their long-gestated dream ideas with luxurious ease. (Oblivion was based on a graphic novel concept he first drew up in 2005.)

A fine supporting cast has been assembled too, however inconsistently deployed: Kurylenko is given a lot of elusive emotion to carry yet not the character to hold its weight; Nikolaj Coster-Waldau looks sturdy on the sidelines with a muck-smeared face; Morgan Freeman teeters on the comical side even though his role suggests otherwise; Melissa Leo is a ghost in the machine. It’s the ever-excellent Riseborough who stands out, however. She gives Victoria much measured poise and poignancy – and the most memorable performance of the film. The big shame, though, is that Zoe Bell is in the cast and isn’t given any big action scenes or stunts.

As with various recent grand-scale sci-fi cinema – Star Trek, Prometheus, Total Recall, Avengers Assemble, Cloud Atlas – Oblivion ponders big ideas alongside its sleek action scenes. To add some intricate flavour, Kosinski follows sci-fi law by peppering his futuristic environments with inventively realised state-of-the-art gizmos and gadgetry (the dragonfly-like pod ships, the spherical droids, the large polyhedron space ‘Tet’, Victoria’s iPad-style operational desk). Many of its ample thrills derive from the pleasure these tokens of design offer to viewers who like to embrace the sci-fi genre regardless of what hiccups or highs the story attains.

Oblivion is interstellar entertainment made with due craft and attention to detail, even if some elements feel over familiar. It’s the thrill of seeing spectacle writ large – particularly if seen on an IMAX screen – that provides the most enjoyment. Luxuriating in giddy genre joys is not always something that gets taken into consideration when, for some, the fun seems to revolve around the discovery of faults and numerous references instead of simply allowing the good times to play out in front of them. Sometimes giving the deeper fouls of plotting some respite and focusing on the wow yields more enjoyment. Oblivion isn’t Great Art, and it surely doesn’t ask for that label, but its apparent artistry meant I was willing to let it get away with a few ills so I could take in its glorious sites of extinction.

7+ Notes on Trance

*Very mild spoilers below*

Familiarity begets familiarity. Trance is, in variable ways, most reminiscent of the likes of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting within Boyle’s filmography. Mainly in that it features his favourite protagonist plot position: the man in over his head in a situation beyond his control (also see: Slumdog Millionaire, The Beach, 28 Days Later... , Sunshine, A Life Less Ordinary, 127 Hours). The plot (an outline of which you can read here or here) has an immediate hook, an upfront showiness prescribed by a cool poster/promotion campaign (left) and, most likely, the word-of-mouth factor; the kind of things via which Trainspotting and Shallow Grave gained momentum in the nineties. We’re in typically characteristic Boyle territory. But really, what’s moved on? Haven’t we had this (kind of) film from him before? Familiar tropes and tricks and approach to narrative. The endpoint differs, but the journey remains the same.

Many directors reconfigure ideas previously ploughed in one way or another. Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarantino, Tarkovsky, pick one – pretty much every director repeats motifs, ideas, approaches. An auteur is an auteur is an auteur. But there’s a large gap between concrete auteurism and cyclical self-reference (and, perhaps, lazy repetition). Trance doesn’t feel like either an artistic or thematic progression in the way that some of Boyle’s other films have. It feels like a digression, or a time-filler, or at least a moment of treading water – a reminder that he’s a film director as well as the guy who ‘directed the Olympics’. For all its edgy showmanship it’s just a set of safe, self-same themes and reinstated narrative turns given a jolly polish. There was little here that was surprising, vital, entrancing. Boyle, along with his most notable peer Michael Winterbottom, is one of the UK’s most intrepid directors (look at where his films go in the world), but Trance is stuck in perpetual turnaround on home turf already ploughed. Boyle and Winterbottom are both venturesome filmmakers, but of the two Winterbottom is perhaps slightly more adept at self-reinvention.

28 hours later... and I can’t recall anything noteworthy about the three main performances. A day or so after seeing it I had trouble recalling anything any of the main trio said or did. I don’t blame the actors. James McAvoy, Vincent Cassel and Rosario Dawson are capable performers who have given good performances elsewhere – Cassel in particular can be an electric presence. I blame the tricksy, blitz-you-into-bafflement structure. Trance’s plot is generally easy enough to follow, in a fashion, and the editor does a commendable job of ordering everything to get the best narrative sense out of the thing (whilst retaining its important ‘upending expectations’ vibe). But it was what I sensed to be Boyle’s need to make an essentially straightforward story inordinately kinetic that stunted any coherence in the performances for me.

There’s not that much to it, all told. The way in which Boyle and his writers Joe Ahearne and John Hodge set up and have shaped their plot creates an awkward discord and fogs how the cast perform, and largely curdling any filmmaking clarity. The cast get a handful of scenes to outline and explore their characters – their inner selves, their shady dealings, their emotional withdrawals, their manipulative switches – but the results are diced and dotted about, each one less creatively dovetailing into the next, smothered by another tricky piece of the narrative puzzle. Trance feels like an attempt by Boyle to take back the Bestest Coolest British Director crown passed over to Christopher Nolan circa Memento. The Inceptionising process of Trance zapped any fluency from the script.

The Usual Suspects didn’t have a problem juggling a multi-faceted plot with seven main characters. Its Chinese-finger-trap narrative pushed and pulled right up to the last scene before it signed off with cohesive realisation. I always knew what kind of woman Laura Dern was, out of the trio she played, as I watched all of them cascade down Inland Empire’s knotty rabbit holes. Terence Malick’s sense of geographical and temporal place was shunted six ways to Sunday for 99% of The Tree of Life, but I still felt grounded by the people drifting through the film however much he made them appear as elusive signifiers. But the threesome’s actions here battered me into boredom. What’s a decent idea (HEIST WITH A DIFFERENCE!*) if the characters who interpret it appear to be thoroughly subsumed by it?

There’s an abundance of cranky, canted angles to infer mental displacement. Boyle’s neverplace London is a muted kaleidoscope of anonymous and/or expensive interiors viewed askew as if to strengthen illogic and reinforce dislocation. The directorial approach chimes with its thematic content, but is it just a lot of illusory cup-shuffling, all visual swagger masking an echoing core? Tom Hooper recently cranked and canted his Les Misérables cityscapes into submission and was roundly mocked by critics for it. But the much more respected Boyle’s skew-whiff camera trickery will likely pass unmentioned. Why is one risible and one passable? And exactly how many ‘cool points’ does one lose for marginally preferring the former’s use (it necessitates its characters’ desperation, however heavy-handed) over the latter‘s (it idly makes the action appear much more intense, urgent than it actually is)?

Trance trail. Boyle himself has mentioned Nicolas Roeg as an influence (perhaps due to the wired perspectives and the oddball sexual pull), and this makes sense. I also saw a smidgen of Guy Ritchie, most notably Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and RockNRolla. Also, to a greater or lesser degree, Eastern Promises (not only for the presence of Cassel), The Crying Game (no, not in the way you’re thinking), Shopping (largely forgotten 1994 Jude Law ram-raiding movie), Stormy Monday (Mike Figgis’ Brit-noir, his debut) and Layer Cake (which had better supporting parts and some humour). There’s a weird kinship with Steven Soderbergh’s latest, Side Effects, too (I think, whatever the intentions, both directors’ female characters are more convenient ciphers than actual fully-realised people).

A few further thoughts/questions:

If Rosario Dawson were to nonchalantly tear a page out of one of my favourite art books/plot MacGuffins, for little-to-no reason, I’d be livid. And I wouldn’t then do an ill-conceived impression of the caped figure in Goya's Witches in the Air (left) to appease her like McAvoy does.

If Boyle had, say, taken his name off the credits – for some kind of Dogme95 style larf – or if, for some ridiculous reason, people went to see Trance not knowing that it was a Danny Boyle film, do you think they might wonder why it hadn’t gone straight to DVD?

Boyle recently mentioned the need for better female characters, so why is the sole significant female character in Trance twice introduced in a given scene via a pan across/tilt up her naked body displaying her shaven vagina (for nefariously explained plot reasons)?**

Whether via Anthony Dod Mantle’s vividly retro cinematography, giving everything a slick yet businesslike sheen, the score by Rick Smith (from the band Underworld), with its reversive techno lilt, or the general throwback feel of Trance, there appeared to be definable zeitgeist-like hankering for late-eighties/early-nineties nostalgia. I’d rather see Boyle and co. move forward.

*Maybe Boyle wanted to “heist” some art himself. Maybe it’s a comment: “steal” a film (Trance was based on a 2001 TV movie of the same name written and directed by Ahearne), make a replica, and then display it in a different light. If this was the case, then surely he could’ve taken his own lead and – in reference to the stolen Rembrandt painting The Storm on the Sea of Galilee shown and discussed in the film – flashed us a subliminal cameo shot where he’s breaking the fourth wall with a glance – a Trance glance...

 **A different nod to Winterbottom here: he did a very similar thing in both 9 Songs (with Margot Stilley) and Code 46 (with Samantha Morton).

Broken Mirrors x2

Broken psyche: Mad Detective/San Taam (Johnnie To, Ka-Fai Wai/2007)

Broken face: Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams/2012)

28 Hotel Rooms (Matt Ross/2012)

Never has nearly a month’s worth of illicit fucks been as dull as door mats. The riskiest thing here is a naughty rooftop drink binge, the most spontaneous thing the painting of toenails. Two strangers act up and make out in a random selection of hotels. He’s (Chris Messina, doing what Chris Messina usually does) a successful writer experiencing an unsuccessful second book; she’s (Marin Ireland, channelling Marion Cotillard by way of Sarah Polley) a married corporate accountant who “just pushes numbers around”. They’re both a bit unhappy; both seem to want to put the puzzle pieces of life together, mainly by repeatedly talking at length about how they don't know who the other person truly is. They continually meet up and occasionally have sex. But their post-coital conversations dry out the bed sheets and cool any adulterous ardour. Nothing much is ever truly said. Mostly they just mope deeply into each other’s faces. Director-writer Matt Ross should, but doesn’t, interpret his characters’ woes and desires. Glimpses of who they really are – through choice, telling snippets of dialogue or, say, some exploratory direction – are thin on the ground. (When there are just two people and four walls on offer the direction needs to wring the most pertinent interactions out of the situation.) Their personalities and past experiences, things that would make the drama flourish, are hemmed in as much as the outside world is shut out.

Over the course of these trysts she gets married, he divorced; she has a child, he has a breakdown, of sorts. They both have another bath or ten. But no emotional progress outside disagreeable mumbling and looking forlornly at beautifully blurry shots of cities through high-rise windows is made. Each chapter is divided up into the randomly-selected rooms they frequent. Room 609. Room 1205. Room 527. 308. 615. 1009. And so on – totalling the titular 28. By the twelfth inter-title I was hoping that the next room they booked would be 237 at The Overlook – let them feel the scary shag pile there and see what dramatic events emerge. (The whole thing needed something, anything, to give it some vital pep.)

Ireland better convinces as a more believable character than Messina. She often lets a suggestive glance or smirk tell us more than a verbal outpouring could. He likes to shout at people from hotel balconies. She messily gets out of the bath like she needs to find the nearest towel, as you do. He coyly gets out of the bath like he’s being filmed by a camera crew. Intimate hotel-room-set drama The Center of the World (2001) managed a similar feat of tedium, though with a few supporting characters to stem the dullness; so too did the similarly-themed 9 Songs (2004, review here), just with an, um, abundance of cum shots and music cues. Many people bemoaned Last Night (2010, review here) – in which a married couple experienced an eroticised evening apart, with other people – for being flat and lifeless, but it had more fervour and vibrancy in five minutes than this does over its entirety. 28 Hotel Rooms is innumerable sighs and twice as many eye-rolls over 82 arduous minutes. Hotel hook-ups shouldn't be as dreary as this.

Films Seen in 2013: January - March

Films I've seen in 2013, the first three months in one post; all other months from here on out will have their own individual posts. The format is: film title (English lang. and/or original language where required - occasionally a film's alternative title, too); director(s) and year; whether it's a rewatch; starred grade, out of 5; numerical grade, out of 10 (all grading is subject to change, of course, and intended as merely a personal indicator/reminder). Titles in bold indicate that the film is a 2013 UK first release. Films are listed seen chronologically from bottom to top.

Triad Election

Triad Election (Johnnie To/2006) **** / 8
Bachelorette (Leslye Headland/2012) * / 2
The Comedy (Rick Alverson/2012) **½ / 5
Insidious (James Wan/2010/rewatch) ***½ / 7
Your Sister's Sister (Lynn Shelton/2011) *** / 6
A Letter to Elia (Martin Scorsese, Kent Jones/2010) **** / 8
District B13 (Pierre Morel/2004) ***½ / 7
Election (Johnnie To/2005) **** / 8
Hypothermia (James Felix McKenney/2010) * / 2
Oz: The Great and Powerful (Sam Raimi/2013) *** / 6
The Day of the Triffids (Steve Sekely, Freddie Francis/1962) **½ / 5
Identity Thief (Seth Gordon/2012) ** / 4
Stolen (Simon West/2012) * / 2
Repeaters (Carl Bessai/2010) ** / 4
Serenity (Joss Whedon/2005/rewatch) ***½ / 7
Sleep Tight (Jaume Balagueró/2011) **** / 8
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (Don Scardino/2013) **½ / 5
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene/1920) ***½ / 7
Grabbers (Jon Wright/2012) *** / 6
Immortals (Tarsem Singh/2011) **½ / 5

House by the River

House by the River (Fritz Lang/1950) ***½ / 7
Side Effects (Steven Soderbergh/2012) *½ / 3
The End of the World (August Blom/1916) ***½ / 7
This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb/2011) ***½ / 7
Deadfall (Stefan Ruzowitzky/2012) ** / 4
The Land Unknown (Virgil W. Vogel/1957) *** / 6
American Mary (Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska/2012) *** / 6
Invisible Invaders (Edward L. Cahn/1959) *** / 6
Keep the Lights On (Ira Sachs/2012) **½ / 5
It! The Terror from Beyond Space (Edward L. Cahn/1958) *** / 6
Mama (Andrés Muschietti/2013) *½ / 3
Argo (Ben Affleck/2012) **½ / 5
Stoker (Chan-wook Park/2013) ***½ / 7
Blood Creek (Joel Schumacher/2009) *½ / 3
War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg/2005/rewatch) ***½ / 7
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (John Hyams/2009) *** / 6
The Man Who Wasn't There (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen/2001/rewatch) ***½ / 7
Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski/2012) **** / 8
Follow Me Quietly (Richard Fleischer/1959) ***½ / 7
Hollow (Michael Axelgaard/2011) *½ / 3
Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley/1992) ***½ / 7

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (John Hyams/2012) **** / 8
Sound of My Voice (Zal Batmanglij/2011) ***½ / 7
Sleepwalk with Me (Mike Birbiglia, Seth Barrish/2012) *** / 6
Sector 7 (Ji-hoon Kim/2011) ***½ / 7
Side by Side (Christopher Kenneally/2012) *** / 6
Grave Encounters 2 (John Poliquin/2012) ** / 4
Catacombs (Tomm Coker, David Elliot/2007) *½ / 3
This Is 40 (Judd Apatow/2012) ½ / 1
Un Flic (Jean-Pierre Melville/1972) **½ / 5
The Oregonian (Calvin Reeder/2011) ** / 4
Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow/2012) ***½ / 7
Choose (Marcus Graves/2010) ** / 4
Rammbock (Marvin Kren/2010) *** / 6
Compliance (Craig Zobel/2012) ***½ / 7
Warm Bodies (Jonathan Levine/2013) **½ / 5
Juan of the Dead (Alejandro Brugués/2011) *** / 6
Wreckage (John Asher/2010) ** / 4
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Biglelow/2012) ***½ / 7
Gone (Heitor Dhalia/2012) ** / 4
Lincoln (Steven Spielberg/2012) *** / 6
Area 407 (Dale Fabrigar, Everette Wallin/2012) *½ / 3
Citizen Ruth (Alexander Payne/1996) ***½ / 7

The Giant Mechanical Man

The Giant Mechanical Man (Lee Kirk/2012) *** / 6
Running Fence (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin/1977) **½ / 5
The One (James Wong/2001) *½ / 3
V/H/S (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, David Bruckner, Tyler Gillett, Justin Martinez, Glenn McQuaid, Radio Silence, Joe Swanberg, Chad Villella, Ti West, Adam Wingrad/2012) **½ / 5
Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino/2012) **** / 8
Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene/1966) **** / 8
The Reeds (Nick Cohen/2010) ** / 4
The Rig (Peter Atencio/2010) ** / 4
Les Misérables (Tom Hooper/2012) **½ / 5
Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 (Stevan Riley/2012) ** / 4
Uninhabited (Bill Bennett/2010) ** / 4
The Impossible (Juan Antonio Bayona/2012) *** / 6
Fear Island (Michael Storey/2009) **/ 4

 5 best new releases:

Django Unchained
Stoker
Universal soldier: Day of Reckoning
Cloud Atlas
Sleep Tight

5 best non-2013 new releases:

Election / Triad Election
A Letter to Elia
Black Girl
House by the River
Citizen Ruth

Best Male Performances 2012

Here are the 10 selections (plus another 10 honourable mentions) that make up what I thought were the very best male performances of 2012.

01.
 Matthias Schoenaerts
 Rust and Bone

For: the unflinching and half-hidden damage of the role, all knotted up within a man adrift from the social norm. Ali's someone who hasn't found his way in the world the way most people do. Ali ram-raids both the characters’ lives and the film itself. He’s someone who has never been a slave to society’s rules. He’s a complex bulk of muscle and mistakes, a near impenetrable hard-case but with a weak spot glimpsed every so often. Schoenaerts treads effortlessly across the divide between guarded emotion and innate brutality. It’s a performance for the ages, I reckon.

02. 
Michael Fassbender 
Prometheus 

For: the control, the suaveness, the composure and the beautifully expressed physical strictures of the performance. Fassbender let the inherent maliciousness simmer just enough below David’s sheen of courtesy. He was a charming yet ominous act of barely concealed disdain for humanity and curiosity about humankind – deftly conveyed with the politeness of poison. A blink, a head tilt, a raised eyebrow or two, a playful nod to another David, Lean. Fassbender made a fascinating automated "man".

03. 
James Gandolfini 
Killing Them Softly 

For: appropriately appearing to slouch through it in a booze-lashed fug, and for convincing with every pitiful lazy-eyed glance in Pitt’s direction, every resigned sigh (Mickey’s a man who deep down knows his lack of worth) and each bitterly slurred syllable – he growls his regrets like a sore-headed relic. Gandolfini successfully distils the very essence of sourness into one failed man’s personality and provided an unfortunate lifetime’s worth of oily perspiration in a mere two scenes.

04. 
Luis Tosar 
Even the Rain 

For: the sheer triumph of going from being one kind of man to entirely another through a series of tricky events, both political and personal. His Costa, a film producer who doesn’t do things the easy way, swerves cliché and arouses poignancy both by accident and design – particularly toward the end when his character selflessly comes into his own in innumerable crucial ways.

05. 
Denis Lavant 
Holy Motors 

For: adding an uncanny theatrical sting to the grab bag of identities he ‘tried on’. The games he plays here – and his performances are games – are ridiculous, cruel, affecting and playfully unfathomable. Oscar was an experimental vessel, best not treated with too much logic. The beauty of watching Lavant here is seeing an actor go anywhere – and never being able to for one moment assume the subsequent directions. It’s the kind of performance that attempts to make novice film-watchers of us all.

06. 
Robert Pattinson 
Cosmopolis 

For: up-ending expectations as the bored-as-fuck billionaire playboy manipulating the world around him – and fighting back against the world manipulating him – from a slow-rolling tomb. And for slyly proving a wan (yet sparkly) vampire was just a launch pad, only one lucrative strand in his gradually expanding skill set. Pattinson overcame limitations that I – and likely many others – prematurely thought were insuperable for him. I enjoyed being wrong, tested and surprised every minute he was on screen in Cosmopolis.

07. 
Matthew Macfadyen 
Anna Karenina 

For: pilfering the film right from under everyone else’s noses. Macfadyen was the best thing in it (not counting the inventive set design and eye-delighting period threads). His Oblonsky was jaunty, daft, the most alive presence in the film. He loosened the film’s collar and lubricated its starched atmosphere. His crackpot charm was entirely winning; he worked both his lines and his moustache like a seasoned Tolstoy regular. I want an Oblonsky spin-off project, post haste!

08. 
Thomas Schubert 
Breathing 

For: achieving the right level of insouciant blankness and harm befitting a young man penalised, wronged (and as a doer of wrong) and plagued by nagging questions all his life. Schubert’s Roman Kogler could almost be a lost Dardennes drifter – and the manner of his performance does recall the Belgian brothers’ work. He modifies his surly angst as the film goes on, turns it wholly into palpable expectation. It’s a small marvel of a performance.

09. 
Jack Black 
Bernie

For: sly silliness well refined with acute skill. He had one eye on the daft side – as is Black’s wont – and the other on shifting our perception, just a jolt, of him as a straightforward comedy actor. He played Bernie with delicious abandon, ditching just enough of the usual Blackisms to make it reach further, somewhere new, but keeping the knack for fine ad lib firmly intact. The absurdly funny opening embalming scene was a particular highlight.

10. 
Channing Tatum 
Magic Mike

For: the casual charm, unfazed amiability and pitch-perfect dance moves. Tatum utilised some of his most readily-drawn-upon talents – and he used them incredibly well; he flipped and rippled his body quicker than a flag in the wind. Tatum knows how to swagger for the camera and you can almost discern a knowing smirk in each scene – but he holds it in check whilst making a merry display of body and personality.  

11-20, or Honourable Mentions:

Thomas Doret The Kid with a Bike / Scoot McNairy Killing Them Softly / Paul Rudd Wanderlust / Brad Pitt Killing Them Softly / Theodór Júlíusson Volcano / Willem Dafoe The Hunter / Mark Ruffalo Avengers Assemble / Patton Oswalt Young Adult Iko Uwais The Raid / Fran Kranz The Cabin in the Woods