THE TURIN HORSE

2011; directed by Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky; written by László Krasznahorkai and Béla Tarr; 148 mins

We’re in the badlands. The apex of arthouse. Hungarian master of misery, Béla Tarr, directing alongside regular collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, tells a tale with no beginning or end. It’s basically just the middle. Of nowhere and nothing. It is a film by someone who is done with the world. Every prejudice you’ve got in your head about arthouse filmmaking – Eastern European, slow, nothing happening, black & white, depressing – it’s all all here and like Tarr’s previous work, it’s brilliant.

A HIDDEN LIFE

2019; written and directed by Terrence Malick; 174 mins

Like most people, I tuned out of Terrence Malick’s work after The Tree of Life. I managed the first ten minutes of To the Wonder and realised that was enough for me. To be honest, though, I was never a huge fan. I love Days of Heaven and The New World but they’re the only ones I thought masterpieces. Otherwise, I can’t remember much of Badlands and The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life were great in places but stretched the patience in others. As far as A Hidden Life is concerned, it’s not perfect but it is the best he’s done in a long time.

LITTLE WOMEN

2019; adapted and directed by Greta Gerwig; 135 mins

There is an emergent trend of sanctimonious criticism which taints good movies. With Little Women, the star ratings could not be ignored but I deliberately avoided reading reviews because I feared a gushing torrent of superlatives describing a film of utterly world-changing piety. It’s the same old hype thing but nowadays accompanied by an unbearable holier-than-thou attitude which the film itself doesn’t have. Little Women is one such movie and I hope it doesn’t suffer by association, now or in the future.

TRANCE

2013; directed by Danny Boyle; adapted by Joe Ahearne and John Hodge; 97 mins

When Trance came out, it seemed to garner mediocre reviews, which was a surprise in light of the ongoing Danny Boyle love tsunami that had started with Slumdog Millionaire and continued on through 127 Hours and that incredible Olympic opening ceremony. I love this movie! Not only that but this is my favourite of Boyle’s movies from the last decade*, alongside T2 Trainspotting. It’s just enormous fun! It’s proper, naughty, violent, sexy, twisty, turn-y entertainment for grown-ups and what’s wrong with that?

SORRY WE MISSED YOU

2019; directed by Ken Loach; written by Paul Laverty; 100 mins

It’s both wonderful and sad that Ken Loach‘s work has taken on a new, reinvigorated, popular oomph. He started the decade slightly wobbly with Route Irish but has gone from strength to strength, culminating in his second Palme d’Or win for I, Daniel Blake which really made a splash on the public consciousness, certainly in Britain if not around the world. Whilst Sorry We Missed You hasn’t taken off quite so much at the box office, it’s every bit as great a slice of filmmaking (perhaps even a little better).

1917

2019; directed by Sam Mendes; written by Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns; 119 mins

When I reviewed The Revenant four years ago, I was very reticent about being the contrarian but the fact of the matter was, I didn’t like that movie. I thought it was massively overrated and didn’t tell me very much beyond its director’s lust for glory. Whilst Sam Mendes doesn’t have the overriding ego of Alejandro González Iñárritu, 1917 is very much the same case. It’s not all that, sadly.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD

2018; directed by Ben Wheatley; written by Ben Wheatley and cast; 95 mins

A new year, a new Ben Wheatley movie! A family disaster movie with as many allegorical avenues as mother! but more jokes. If you’re English and you don’t see anything of yourself in any character herein, you must live a very cosy, self-deluded life. Happy New Year, Colin Burstead allows you to laugh at twats acting like the twats that twats inevitably act like but also puts you through the wringer of your own guilt and mistakes and believe me, certain passages certainly hit where they were meant to.

THE BREADWINNER

2017; directed by Nora Twomey; adapted by Anita Doron and Deborah Ellis; 93 mins

[Mild spoilers]

Admittedly, I held off on this because some rather earnest critics were head over heels for it but having woken up early this morning and needing to fill up time without waking up the other half, in lieu of being constructive, I ticked off The Breadwinner. From Irish animation studio, Cartoon Saloon, often touted as a new Studio Ghibli, the film started good but perhaps nothing mind-blowing and by the end, culminated in a very fine piece of epic and heartbreaking cartoon storytelling. Bear in mind, I don’t use the word ‘cartoon’ in any disparaging way, it’s meant in the proper way.

MANDY

2018; directed by Panos Cosmatos; written by Panos Cosmatos and Aaron Stewart-Ahn; 116 mins

The Bad Lieutenant, Face/Off, Wild at Heart… every few years, Nicholas Cage makes a classic which means he can also make a wealth of cack in his bizarre, ongoing career. Watching Mandy, it becomes apparent that, to make a great Nicholas Cage movie, it has to be as mad as the man himself. If not more so. Many think they are but they fall way short of the mark. Thankfully, here’s Panos Cosmatos to engulf him and us in a misty pond of magenta, peering up at the surface like baffled, blood-stained frogs, wondering what hazy Hell is out there.

BEST MOVIES OF 2018

Blah, blah, blah – movies take ages to get here – blah, blah, blah – do the top 10 a year later. Got it? Good. 2018 was not a vintage year according to some critics but what’s new? Come the end of the year, though, I was kind of in agreement. I hadn’t seen an awful lot that had really blown my socks off. There did seem to be a lot of pretentious, middlebrow stuff getting praised to the hilt for not doing very much. It’s really only this year as the smaller independent and foreign films have trickled through that my impression of 2018 has gone up and I’ve seen new perspectives or really well-crafted films that didn’t force an agenda down my throat but allowed me to find the agenda and treated me like a grown-up.