BIRDMAN : The first great movie of the year, with a cracker cast, a script interspersed with the writings of Raymond Carver, and the inherent message of don’t mistake admiration for love. Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu co-produced, co-wrote and directed the picture that went on to win in all three categories. Expect to see his new film kick off 2016 similarly.
INHERENT VICE : The seventh film written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson—and the very first film adaptation ever of Pynchon’s legendarily inventive, culturally kaleidoscopic work. A surf noir, the story dives headlong into the smoky haze and neon afterglow of the Americancounter-culture via a psychedelic spin on the classic detective yarn. Joaquin Phoenix plays the private eye with a Sixties sub culture with superb insouciance. As much, or more, of a who the fuck as a whodunnit.
WILD TALES : Wild Argentinian anthology of stories. Boasting an amazing pre-title sequence, especially in the light of the recent French Alps aviation tragedy, WILD TALES is an anthology work which has revenge as its thematic thread. The finale is set at a wedding where the happiest occasion turns to a post nuptial nightmare.
Rage and revenge can be avoided by respect, civility and politeness. In WILD TALES we have to be put in the dark to see the light.
MOMMY : What’s typical of great actors: they create characters, not performances. You betcha. And that’s what makes the movie, MOMMY, so damned good, a motherlode of mature, pure, crystalline characterisation from everyone, but especially the three central characters of this compulsively watchable film.Haunting, harrowing, hilarious, human, MOMMY is cinematic dynamite. Boom!
IRRATIONAL MAN : Joaquin Phoenix from INHERENT VICE coupling with Emma Stone from BIRDMAN, here is Woody Allen mulling and musing over the morality of murder, of how justifiable homicide can ever be really reconciled with rational behaviour. It seems that the film maker alternates between the frothy and frivolous and the more meaty with every other film he makes. Last year, we had the souffle confectionery of Magic in the Moonlight which was preceded by the more meaty Blue Jasmine which in turn followed the slight To Rome With Love. IRRATIONAL MAN is a return to the philosophical terrain of Crimes and Misdemeanors and Cassandra’s Dream.
FAR FROM MEN : Based on a story by Albert Camus, writer/director David Oelhoffen’s masterful, breathtakingly-shot drama bears all the hallmarks of a classic frontier western, yet carries strong contemporary resonances. FAR FROM MEN is a gripping tale of morality and friendship set during the Algerian War, against an unforgiving mountainous landscape.
DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL : A fine film about empowerment, a teen movie of substance, style, humour, honesty and heart. Minnie is not the typical sarcastic teenager which tend to permeate the predictable pubescent picture shows we are usually presented with, in all their their puerile shallowosity. Pure curiosity propels Minnie’s precocity, total earnestness, raw, and unfiltered. This is some diary and frank.
THE LOBSTER : Rachel Weisz heads a brilliant ensemble in a film resembling something of the sensibilities of Flann O’Brien. THE LOBSTER is for those who like a little off kilter to to their movie going experience, something that is as entertaining as it is unpredictable, engaging with a topic that’s very real but presented in a skewed reality.
WHILE WE’RE YOUNG : Noah Baumbach’s film begins with a quote from Henrik Ibsen’s The Master Builder. The film is a cross-generational comedy of manners about aging, ambition, and success, as well as a moving portrait of a marriage tested by the invading forces of youth. No film has better captured the weird, upended logic of urban sophisticates: the older ones embracing their iPads and Netflix, the young ones craving vinyl records and vintage VHS tapes.
YOUTH : Michael Caine and Harvey Keital are consummate in their portrayals, career crowning characterisations. Rachel Weisz as Lena, is as luminous as ever, and Jane Fonda channels Gloria Swanson in a devilishly delightful Diva turn as Brenda Morel. In Sunset Boulevard, Swanson as Norma Desmond says the pictures got smaller, whereas Brenda regales that cinema is dead and television is where the work is. In YOUTH, cinema wins!