[A Pleasurable Headache] so far, so Neeson
I am sending this one out slightly earlier then usual. I will only forget in the post Christmas haze. So here it is. Enjoy!
There are not too many links this week as I mostly spend this time of year either venturing to see various relatives or watching the movies I missed out on the first time around. The former is, obviously, severely limited in its scope this year (as last year), so it’s mostly been a whole lot of movies (and to a lesser extent this year TV).
At the time of writing, here are the movies I enjoyed the most this year (all were released in some form this year, either via cinema or streaming) in the tried and tested Top 10 format. I’ve been fairly spoiler-free in my thoughts one each movie so I haven’t been able to go in depth on some of them as I’d like.
10. Copshop
After a few years where he was in vogue as the next big thing after his debut Narc, Carnahan has returned to the kind of oddball crime-infused flicks he began with Smokin’ Aces. This year his other effort, Boss Level debuted on Hulu. Whilst that film has its moments, I’m not sure I can forgive it for having Mel Gibson as the villain spouting the line “Don’t make this about race”, and hoping it will play for laughs.
Copshop, on the other hand, is Gibson-free, sporting Frank Grillo and Gerard Butler as the headliners. The film is fairly simple in its setup. A criminal fixer gets himself arrested to lie low from the hitman sent by the extremely unethical people he used to work for. The hitman follows suit, being put into the same cell block. Wackiness ensues. There is a definite ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ vibe going on throughout. However, instead of the foreboding sparseness of Assault we get a building positively bursting with characters.
The aforementioned Grillo and Butler are both great here, but the real stars are Alexis Louder and Toby Huss. Louder plays a rookie cop who has to keep her head when chaos descends on the station. She gives the character a real steeliness and charm. The chaos in the movie is mostly in the form of Huss playing another hitman, Lamb. Huss has an absolute ball with his character and dialogue, exuding a manic energy belied by a lived in ‘beige uncle’ quality.
I can see the appeal of huge blockbusters, be it Marvel, DC or films based on previous IP. But it’s movies like Copshop that stick around in my brain pan long after the razzle dazzle. Carnahan clearly loves making these quirky, mid-budget crime flicks. I hope he gets to make more of them.
9. In The Earth
In the Earth is the latest film from genre stalwart, Ben Wheatley. Like Carnahan, Wheatley has recently toyed with mainstream movies, putting out a Rebecca remake for Netflix before lensing In The Earth during the first wave of the Covid pandemic. The movie leans into that, with its main character, Lowery, attending an isolated research base during a deadly pandemic. When he arrives at the site, the staff are masked up and testing/quarantine procedures are being observed. It all seems very familiar.
Later, Lowery sets off into the forest with park scout Alma. It’s here that the film’s excellent sound design takes centre stage. There were moments during the first lockdown where everybody seemed to be ‘rediscovering’ the outdoors and nature as a means of escape and relaxation. In the Earth treads familiar ground with this initial foray into the forest, bathing us in animal sounds, the crunch of earth underfoot, or a mild breeze moving through the trees.
At times it feels like Lowery and Alma are the only two humans left alive, deep in this ancient woodland surrounded by an environment that remains unmoved and unchanged by the virus ravaging the cities and towns. It’s telling that things begin to go sideways when they meet another person in the woods, played by the ever excellent Reece Shearsmith.
From here on in, the film spirals into something else, giving the natural surroundings a more sinister edge. I won’t spoil the movie, but again the sound design is key here as the environment becomes more hostile and the characters try to decipher just what is going on and what is causing it.
8. Malignant
Malignant follows Madison (Annabelle Wallis) as she begins to experience visions of murder, before eventually realising these visions are in fact reality. As the bodies pile up she has to reach back into her own past to uncover the connection between her visions and the grisly crime spree.
In what seems to be a theme so far in this list, James Wan broke out of his usual genre fare (save for Furious 7) a few years ago with Aquaman, one of the better (if not the best) DC movies. Malignant marks a return to the genre that made him before he ramps up production on the second Aquaman movie. There is a sense Wan is trying to get a lot out of his system before he returns to the DCU as Malignant is absolutely bananas in the best possible way.
There are shades of the first two Conjuring movies here, with shadow cloaked environments and tense swathes of dread and foreboding. There are visual nods to Giallo movies with neon-soaked murder sequences and elaborate set pieces. There are even nods to the Universal monster movies when we discover the villain’s lair. To say more would be to spoil much of Malignant‘s charm and effect. Go in cold, read as little as you can. Embrace the crazy.
7. Censor
This movies plays a lot with nostalgia. Not in the way something like Ghostbusters: Afterlife does, but more to do with a time and place. In this case Prano Bailey-Bond’s Censor takes place during the ‘Video Nasties’ boom of the 1980s. For those not in Britain, this was a phase where movies were becoming widely available for the first time for home viewing. This included horror fare such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Exorcist and others which had previously only been seen on the big screen.
This sudden access to such movies, as well as the increased chances of a young person seeing them, lead to a moral crusade by many in the British establishment to ban such movies from sale or rental. These films then became almost mythical physical objects that a friend of a friend had managed to obtain. It also meant such films were given much more scrutiny before they were released. In Censor, the main character is Enid, who works for a certification board. Her job is to suggest cuts and edits to such films, ‘guarding’ the public from depravity and terror.
That Enid takes pride in her work is evident when we first meet her. She is competent and efficient, admired if not liked by her colleagues. It isn’t long though before we begin to see what has been left on the cutting room floor, the ‘missing pieces’ that tell us there is more to Enid than meets the eye. There is a tragic backstory, a sister gone missing and whole lot of guilt weighing down on Enid’s shoulders. That she cannot recall what happened to her sister (more left on the cutting room floor) makes the situation even more tragic.
So when Enid spies her sister in a movie she is reviewing things get weird very quickly. As Enid descends into the murky world of cheap, nasty horror movies we get the sense what she is seeking has just left the frame, is just out of reach. The darkness, previously contained to a movie screen, now begins to creep in at the edge of the frame as Enid continues her quest. There have been a few films recently that have used fairy tale imagery and tropes to evoke a sense of the mythical or uncanny. It’s not always successful, but Censor pulls it off without even really meaning to. As Enid, scared and alone, descends into the dark forest to complete her quest it becomes evident where much of the film’s power comes from, evoking classic, primal images in a new framework.
Fairy tales though are just stories, the things we tell ourselves to get through, to cope, to move on, to learn, to exist. When we tamper with them, what do we unleash?
6. Come True
Looking for an escape from her recurring nightmares, 18-year-old Sarah submits to a university sleep study, but soon realizes she’s become the conduit to a frightening new discovery.
From that simple premise comes a whole lot of disturbing and beautiful imagery in Anthony Scott Burns’ Come True. Julia Sarah Stone is fantastic in the lead role, giving Sarah a waifish quality shot through with guts and an air of defiance born of hardship. Come True plays with imagery from dreams and nightmares, bathed in a lo-fi aesthetic. The study she takes part in claims to be able to visualise what the subject is seeing in their dreams on a nearby monitor. This gives way to some truly creepy moments where shadows and shapes take on lives of their own, where we aren’t quite sure what we are seeing until it coalesces before our eyes.
The film is also interspersed with these tiny vignettes that are kind of a visual ‘descent’ into the nightmare/dream space. Dark figures with piercing white eyes stare back at us, shadowy forms stand at the edge of the frame, floating forms hang limp under blinking lights, and strange structures loom out of the darkness at us as we (and Sarah) try to piece it all together. The imagery here treads that fine line by being alluring and horrifying at the same time.
I wholly admit this movie will not work for everyone. The ending is very divisive and some argue the movie is style over substance. I can forgive it those things though because the imagery here (especially a sequence towards the end of the movie) has still not left me since I watched it.
Oh, and the soundtrack is great.
5. No Time To Die
A lot of my thoughts about this movie are in this edition of the newsletter from around a month ago.
4. Shadow in the Cloud
I watched this movie at the very beginning of this year. Despite that it has fought off all comers to retain its place in the Top 10. This is similar to Malignant where an initial veneer of seriousness is suddenly cast aside and the movie fully leans into the absurdity of its premise and runs with it.
The movie starts as a tense WW2 flick with Chloe Grace Moretz’s character delivering a secret cargo aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress. Early in the film the gender politics of the day get aired, with Moretz’s character being objectified within earshot, ridiculed and her role and abilities questioned at every turn. We’ve come so far, haven’t we?
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that things soon hit the fan and the stakes are raised considerably. As the crew’s situation worsens, Moretz’s character steps up, shedding her demeanor and her patience for the inept, screaming and weeping men around her. It is an absolute blast to watch.
3. Lucky
At this point the slasher sub-genre is a well worn path in horror. It takes a lot to weave together something new, but Natasha Kermani and Brea Grant have succeeded with this movie to produce something timely and terrifying.
As well as writing the movie, Grant also stars as main character May, a self-help author. One night a masked man enters her house. She ends up killing him. The police arrive and things seem settled. Then, the following night, the same masked man returns once more. No matter what May does, or how many times she kills the masked intruder, he keeps on returning. When this is brought to her husband’s attention he reacts as if this is all natural, that the masked man is something that just happens, like the weather.
The police are no different, acting incredibly blase about this traumatic event and the impact it is having on May. As May investigates she discovers she isn’t the only one who is subject to these nightly visits.
Lucky plays heavily with the tropes of the slasher genre and twists it in such a way to explore gender politics, patriarchy and power. Like Come True there are images at play here that are forever playing over and over in my mind.
2. The Green Knight
A lot of words have been written about this movie by people more eloquent than I. Needless to say this film is a visual treat and the best Arthurian flick since Boorman’s Excalibur.
Patel is great in the main role, switching from a brash, arrogant upstart to a youth old before his time, beaten down by guilt, fame and expectation come the movie’s end. He is ably supported by an excellent cast with Sean Harris and Kate Dickie in particular standing out as an Arthur and Guinevere whose glory days have long since vanished. Now they sit on their respective thrones like pontificating husks, waiting for the inevitable end that awaits them.
Director David Lowery and DP Andrew Droz Palermo give us a kingdom full of contradiction. As Gawain travels further away from home, the scenery becomes shrouded in mist or covered by dense shadows and forest. It is a kingdom where animals can talk, spirits are vengeful and giants roam, but also a place where you can be robbed by desperate thieves and left to rot on the cold forest floor.
1. Riders of Justice
“Markus, a deployed military man, has to go home to his teenage daughter, Mathilde, when his wife dies in a tragic train accident. It seems to be plain bad luck - but it turns out that it might have been a carefully orchestrated assassination, which his wife ended up being a random casualty of.”
So far, so Neeson, right? The plot seems cut from the same cloth as a slew of ‘old guy gets revenge’ flicks. I promise you Riders is not that movie. It uses some of the same tropes - Mads Mikkelsen’s Markus is a soldier with a certain set of skills, there are shootouts, criminal gangs in the thick of things and so on. But this movie asks questions not even glanced at by such movies.
It asks if vengeance is ultimately worth it, or does it just perpetuate cycles of violence that are not easily broken? It shows us the ways we, as individuals, can touch each others lives for both better and worse. One good act today can set of a chain of events that impact greatly on the lives of others. It touches on the ways in which we are all interconnected, but also the ways in which life can also just throw random events at us that have no causal chain, no logic to them. It warns us that, unfortunately, we have to be ready for both.
It explores themes of masculinity, both toxic and healthy, showing us how groups of men can spur each other on to commit acts of senseless violence and mayhem. Unchecked grief and rage are things that can remain tamped down, things to fester and grow into something monstrous. But Riders tells us that those same emotions can unite us, acting as a clarion call to those similarly afflicted. If willing, men can listen to each others pain, help each other through it, instead of starting the cycle anew.
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Honourable Mention: Hell Hath No Fury. This one just missed out on the Top 10, but it’s such a low budget, hidden gem I feel compelled to give it a shout out. The director Jesse V. Johnson is best known for directing a whole bunch of Scott Adkins action movies. With this movie, however, he has crafted a pretty compelling WW2 set thriller in the Peckinpah tradition.
The main character here is Marie, a french woman shorn of all her hair for ‘fraternising’ with a high ranking Nazi officer. She is rescued by a group of American soldiers. Said rescue, however, was conditional. Marie must lead them to a cache of hidden Nazi gold that has been secreted in an isolated graveyard. Not only do Marie and the Americans have to find the gold, but they also have to find it before the Nazis arrive to claim it for themselves.
There is a hell of a lot more to the movie than the broad strokes above, including a whole sub-plot involving the Nazi officer Marie was close to, the French resistance movement and so on. It’s a wonderfully crafted one location thriller with a set of compelling characters ricocheting off each other as the tension is ratcheted higher and higher. Seek if out if you can.
Links
‘Help! I’ve been spotted!’ Terry Pratchett on Thief, his favourite video game
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/dec/09/terry-pratchett-thief-video-game-forum
An incredibly wholesome story about Terry Pratchett’s love for the Thief video game franchise, specifically the second game in the series. The article also touches on Pratchett frequenting the Usenet groups focused on the game and his discussions with other fans of the series. It harks back to an age where celebrity interaction online was minimal, but what was there was a very different experience than we have today.
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This Videogame Is Killing the Planet
https://artreview.com/this-videogame-is-killing-the-planet-battlefield-2042/
Lewis Gordon at Art Review on the latest installment in the Battlefield franchise, Battlefield 2042. The game itself is centered around a very distinct possibility for our future, climate driven conflict. However, Gordon points out that the game’s systems, UI and the overall experience never draw the player in to actually interrogating any real meaning from the game. Instead, the player is thrust into match after match, with no room for pause or nuanced thought.
“The game could, theoretically, never end, because Battlefield 2042 starts a fresh map mere seconds after you’ve finished another. This means that there is never any pause – no quiet moment to reflect on the virtual bodies left to smoulder in the desert, or the climate crisis within which this symbolic violence takes place. “
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Why Tokyo Works
https://metropolisjapan.com/why-tokyo-works/
A wonderful post on the titular city, its transport infrastructure and how incredibly easy it is to traverse the city, despite its dense patchwork of buildings and thoroughfares. It argues there is no real ‘centre’ to the city, ensuring that smaller, more localized centres rise in its place, ensuring a sense of community in the vast metropolis.
The article couples nicely with this interview over at CrimeReads with the translators of Keigo Higashino’s work. The interview mostly concentrates on the changing face of Tokyo and how important it is to Higashino’s work and the sense of place he imbues it with.
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I am off to peruse a million ‘Best of 2021’ lists to see what I missed. See you in two!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year all :)