Skip to main content

Top 10 Films of 2016

It's that time of year again so here are my favourite films seen in the cinema this calendar year:




Julieta : the latest Almodovar is stunning and intensely moving. If this tale of a lost daughter is inspired by the myth of Demeter and Persephone, you can see the pomegranate seeds of guilt and loss in each generation.




Embrace of the Serpent : I can report that my serpent was, so to speak, fully embraced. Bracing, evocative, heart rending, psychedelic and beautifully photographed and directed.




Arrival : It was remarkably  emotional watching a film about the empathy of the alien in a dark and depressing week in which a narcissistic sociopath was elected to be the next President of the US. Forget the plot holes, this is a tour de force; Amy Adams is stupendous and the film gives us a faint glimmer of hope for humanity.




Manchester By The Sea (which hasn't opened in the UK yet) : the third great film by Kenneth Lonergan (after You Can Count On Me and Margaret - the latter probably one of my all time favourite films). A study of misery and guilt which packs a huge emotional punch.




Paterson : 'A bus driver who likes Emily Dickinson. Cool.' The quiet poetry in the everyday. Even more amazing, the usually monumentally annoying Adam Driver is absolutely brilliant in this wonderfully understated film.




Victoria : One of the most heart-poundingly intense films I've ever seen and one that reinforces the old adage that you should never underestimate someone who can play a note perfect version of the Mephisto Waltz at 5 in the morning after a night out clubbing.



Summertime : I really loved this: the dynamics that are explored in terms of gender, class, urban and rural culture, sexual orientation and age are familiar but this is a very engaging treatment with stellar acting all round. It's heart warming and heart breaking in the best manner.




Tale of Tales : Wonderfully realised. These are folk tales 'curated' in the early17th century with all of the weird, unsettling, shape shifting quality of a different time, their own often violent logic and delight in grotesques, a focus on bringing into the light things that lurk in the dark both of the imagination and human conduct. As with most fairy tales and folk tales they are deeply psychological. I loved it.




Things To Come : another Isabelle Hupert acting masterclass. It's never too early, or too late, for philosophy. The director Mia Hansen-Love bang back on form after the disappointment (to my mind) of 'Eden'.



Mustang : it may have elements of a fairy story but it is also bitingly realist in tone and completely absorbing.


Bubbling under the top 10 were:

Childhood of a Leader

A Bigger Splash

Baden Baden







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Best (and Worst) Films of 2023

  One of the most joyful rediscoveries this year was Percy Adlon's  Bagdad Cafe  which in a wonderfully surreal manner captures the magic, literal and figurative, that a most unlikely outsider brings to the moribund, allowing them to realise what they have been missing through their obsessive introspection and to grow through the recognition of the value in difference. Could there possibly be a message in there? In the 'they do still make'em like that' category the outstanding example was the  The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan  which was pure pleasure from the tip of its épée to the handle of its poignard, running full tilt with the ridiculousness of the plot half way round France and back across the Channel without pausing for breath. Hats are worn with an angle of jaunt worthy of an Expressionist noir, swords are barely ever in a scabbard, panelling is chewed liberally and Eva Green's use of her belle poitrine auditions it for separate billing in the cast list.
Post a Comment
Read more

There are worse things than cows on the line

A new explanation for the delay to my train this afternoon: cows on the line. This did, however, provide some time to reflect on other rather more serious characteristics of modern life than the inconvenience occasioned by the peregrinations of the odd Friesan.  So here are six which seem to me to be particularly pernicious aspects of our current situation.  1.  Libertarianism : otherwise known as letting me do whatever I want and a plague on everyone else. Such a convenient doctrine for the already powerful and utterly malign as a philosophy for the common good with a resolution to remove everything that might be a constraint or require a contribution to the commonweal. This is wholly distinct from liberalism and indeed individualism which are both important and positive. The basic issues that libertarianism always avoid are that a free for all never serves those without agency. The deep structural imbalances in society that fuel inequality have to be collectively addressed
4 comments
Read more

Museum Hours

A new blog which fittingly has a first post about the  film  which provided the inspiration; a quite wonderful, wry look at a few days in the life of a museum attendant in Vienna. There have presumably been easier pitches in the history of cinema but we should be deeply grateful that this gently subversive piece made it through. For this is a film that shouts quietly. About the way that we all too easily jump to conclusions about people based on what they look like and what they do; indeed how in a gallery we ignore or look down on the watchers without reflecting that they may be rather more acute in their observation of us. Our attendant relatively early lets slip that he spent much of his former life on the road with rock groups and in one particularly droll moment slightly hesitantly announces to an amused Mary Margaret O'Hara that he does still like heavy metal whilst looking as though he would be considerably more likely to put on a CD of Mantovani. About the way that w
3 comments
Read more