Museum Hours

The usual end of year countdown focusing on films that I saw this year which are on their first release: so some of these were in festivals and have yet to open in the UK including my number 1 which is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Period.  I have been slightly perverse by including two films at 9 and 10 to which I actually gave slightly lower scores than a couple of films that don't quite make the cut ( The Souvenir and For Sama ) but which I felt on reflection had an audacity and a promise that made them worthy of inclusion. Also bubbling under were Booksmart, Can You Ever Forgive Me, The Irishman, The Nightingale and Bait . So here goes .... 10. Zombi Child  : An audacious high wire juxtaposition of physical enslavement and unrequited love, both states of being half alive and half dead, given an additional twist through the intercession of Haitian voodoo and contextualised through colonial power relationships. Oh, and it’s also droll, sill

The final episode of this extraordinary series included one of the single most audacious and hermetic  pieces of choreography that one could ever hope to see in a tale of violent redemption among the yakuza.  Or indeed in most other contexts. At the climactic point at which multiple plot strands have plaited together, including through a butterfly effect from the other side of the world, in perfect union on a London rooftop with a motley array of hardened types facing off and a teenager poised - literally - between life and death one might legitimately expect either another blood soaked confrontation or a deus ex machina intervention.  Instead what takes place would not have been out of place in high opera or ballet.  The scene fades slightly to monochrome, the movement becomes formalised, more characters appear and everyone becomes quite literally a choreographed version of themselves. They  move together and apart, they cling for a moment, they face each other.