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Top Ten (and Worst Five) Films of 2017




Some reflections on last year at the cinema including five absolute turkeys to be avoided at all costs.

First the best ....

1. Zama : A simply wondrous existential fever dream of disappointment and dashed hopes with a stunning walk on llama adding further bathos.

2. Personal Shopper : Grief and loneliness have rarely been as fascinating. The contemporary world expands the opportunities for communication whilst enhancing the resonance of the insight that you can be most lonely in a crowd. Coming to terms with loss involves psychologically either believing that what has been lost is in fact still there or the fact that it truly has gone. The account of that process in this film is a tour de force.

3. Toni Erdmann :' He's less a dentist; more an architect'. Side splitting, disquieting and moving and brilliantly performed and directed.

4. Columbus : The quiet comforts of modernist architecture and dumb phones. Wonderful to behold.

5. The Killing Of A Sacred Deer : Revelatory marrying of medium and material with affectless delivery perfect for the Absurd but also ancient inexorable fate being encountered. Stiff drinks required after viewing.

6. Aquarius : A mesmeric central performance by Sonia Braga and a meditation on life, death and property development.

7. Montparnasse Bienvenue : An absolute powerhouse of a performance by Laetitia Dosch cast adrift in the Paris precariat and nostalgic for things she never had.

8. The Son Of Joseph : None more droll. From the deliberate stately Baroque staging and the beautifully delivered lines to the wonderfully beatific Natacha Regnier this is an absolute delight. And careful reading of the credits delivers some final amusement.

9. A Quiet Passion : Riveting, literate, enraged, bitter, humane and with a simply astonishing rhapsodic sequence to the accompaniment of The First I Ever Saw Your Face.

10. La La Land : This is for the fools who dream.


And now the worst in descending order with the bottom one in the inner ring of the Inferno ...

5. The Lost City Of Z : Dullsville, Amazonia.

4. Marguerite et Julien : 'We must never meet again'. That may be a problem for the main characters but certainly not for the viewer who is unlikely ever to wish to see this wildly misconceived turkey a second time.

3. The Girl On The Train : Interminable; dull enough, indeed, to drive one to drink.

2. Elle : Manages to be both exhaustingly dull and deeply reprehensible and has a by the numbers Isabelle Hupert performance that is now becoming worryingly familiar: icy, detached, clipped and boring.

1. Good Time : I did actually run screaming silently from the cinema after seeing this. If being shut in a room for an hour and three quarters with people for whom you have zero empathy or interest, the most annoying soundtrack on the planet (unless you're reliving your Tangerine Dream days) and some of the most pretentious direction imaginable then by all means go and see this totally empty, dispiriting pile of crap. Otherwise do yourself a favour and avoid like the proverbial plague.









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