It's the end of the year, what did you expect?
JOKER
Todd Phillips' revisionist take on one of pop culture's most iconic villains surprised the shit out of me: not because I thought the idea of a Joker origin film was an inherently bad one (although I did, tbf), but because it was a good Todd Phillips film. The argument over whether it was right to transform Gotham's cackling symbol of chaos into an actual human being with a backstory still rages, and we wouldn't be having that argument if the film had been a flat out failure so it must have done something right. That something was essentially casting Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, an avatar for the disenfranchised, the disillusioned and the disadvantaged of both the film’s 1981 setting and the present day. The Scorsese tributes were delicious and appropriate, the boundaries of taste were shoved around a bit and the whole experiment was as disturbing and thought-provoking as its subject deserved.
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER
As with
The Last Jedi, the essence of Star Wars carried Episode IX through its disappointments. I could have done without an hour of interminable MacGuffin-chasing, and the shameless lifts from
Return Of The Jedi were much harder to forgive than
The Force Awakens' echoes of
A New Hope, but if you're going to wrap up these characters' stories this way (and it's hard to imagine how else to have done it) at least JJ Abrams pulled it off in true Star Warsy style. The fan service was off the scale here but it was done with genuine love; nothing felt forced (sorry) and the most affecting moments felt like they'd been put there just for me. I'll get over the quibbles in time (the biggest being Abrams wilfully ignoring much of Rian Johnson's most intriguing setups), but it's probably a good idea to put the brakes on this franchise for the time being.
SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME
The funniest (and most fun) member of the MCU returned to provide the sticky toffee pudding after the carb-heavy meatfest of
Endgame, proving once and for all that we're currently living in a golden age of movie Spider-Men. Tom Holland is the comic genius Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield wish they were, and
Far From Home showed he didn't need Robert Downey Jr to hold his hand through the best bits. It might have been lacking a little in the way of actual Spider-Man action, but the character work between Peter Parker, MJ, Ned and the gang is just as welcome. And all hail the return of the King Of Fake News (not Mysterio; the other guy. You know. The one at the end).
BAIT
Nothing this year provided as big a breath of fresh, salty sea air as this admittedly slight but intensely hypnotic tale of the loss of community and identity in rural Britain. Gentrification and the shifting sands of industry are the bad guys, personified by prosecco-wielding, Waitrose-dwelling, "prancing Lycra cunts" with zero appreciation for how their middle class meals end up on their middle class plates. Director Mark Jenkin's editing proved the real star here, pushing an already hallucinatory aesthetic (4:3, monochrome, hand-processed 16mm film) into the kind of expressionist fantasy world that small coastal villages generally evoke to urban, landlocked visitors. The message is clear from the start and maybe a little overcooked (the line "winner stays on" is repeated for good reason), but the atmosphere is everything. We need more films like this.
ONE CUT OF THE DEAD
Showcasing the clever, fun and sweet side of limb-lopping horror, this barkingly meta romp - the
Inception of zom-coms; a Russian doll of rug-pulls - knowingly ran the entire spectrum of genre ideas, from the most yawningly clichéd to the most gobsmackingly original. Low-budget filmmaking has rarely been celebrated this ingeniously, where art butts heads with necessity and teamwork triumphs over adversity. You really did need to stick with it despite what you might have thought of the first half hour, because the true awesome nature of its creative genius was only fully revealed in the last act - and then topped under the credits. A carnival of setups and payoffs that loved its characters as much as its own mind-boggling formal virtuosity,
One Cut Of The Dead proved there's life in the rotting corpse of horror comedy yet.
IN FABRIC
Peter Strickland would struggle to do wrong in this dusty corner of the internet, so while his fourth feature certainly isn't perfect - it's overlong and awkwardly structured - it's still among the most surprising, original and exciting things to spurt across a cinema screen this year. A horror-comedy of sorts (although it's neither especially scary nor funny),
In Fabric was a truly unique and bewildering experience: an ASMR-inspired dreamcoat of wild imagery and engulfing sound design that reinforces Strickland's position as one of Britain’s most vital, fascinating directors.
MIDSOMMAR
I was quite aware going in to
Midsommar that it wasn't going to be a barrel of laughs; what I didn't expect was extreme levels of soul-gnawing anxiety that left me with a knot in my stomach for the best part of a week. Surprisingly sun-drenched and beautiful for a dread-laden study of grief,
Midsommar distracted me with bright colours and pretty things while it burrowed into the self-destructive nature of toxic relationships with surgical precision and skill. Incredibly powerful filmmaking, but fuck me I never want to see a frame of it again.
THE IRISHMAN
It took two viewings (i.e. SEVEN HOURS) to convince me, but Martin Scorsese doesn't make disposable, single-use movies. This long and deep dive into late twentieth century American organised crime is a film to get lost in; like a great museum, you can sit and soak up the details for literally hours. At its heart is a void where an actual heart should be, but Robert De Niro's Frank Sheeran gets by fine without it - or at least he thinks he does. His empty legacy is
The Irishman's devastating kicker, but the film itself only enriches the canon of work Scorsese has gifted the world. It carries all the weight of a final masterpiece; we can only hope that's not what it is.
AVENGERS: ENDGAME
My relationship with the MCU over the last ten years has essentially been a steady wearing-down of my indifference, from the couldn't-give-a-shit of
Iron Man in 2008 to the must-get-opening-day-tickets of
Endgame. And while I liked this year's super-orgy well enough first time, I crumpled under the weight of its wonder with repeated viewings. Everything about it screams "epic" in bold, massive-font capitals, from the weighty mood of its early scenes to the final, celebratory half-hour, which contains more air-punching, tear-jerking, spine-prickling moments of brilliance than the rest of the franchise combined. You win, Avengers. I love you 2,999.
US
More scissor-sharp sociopolitical savagery from Jordan Peele, making his point a little more obliquely than in
Get Out but with no less bite. An America-centric
Funny Games,
Us had something to say about the privilege of the wealthy middle classes, and how capitalism and consumerism keep them (us) focused on grabbing a little bit more, thus keeping us distracted from those who have so much less. Of course Swiftian satire only works if what's above the surface is good enough, and
Us delivered good old-fashioned home invasion horror with sophisticated wit and a total understanding of audience button-pushing. Lupita Nyong'o sealed her rep as a cultural treasure and Peele joined the very short list of directors whose future films I cannot miss under any circumstances.
Disclaimer: I have not yet seen
Cats.
Further listicles:
Couldn't whittle it down to ten, sorry
Sorry if you already have, don't @ me to call me a patronising wanker
