Liv Ullmann's
adaptation of Strindberg's play might initially seem a little too
stagebound to work as cinema. With just three actors and working
primarily in a handful of interior locations, she makes little
attempt to open up the play for the different medium. Instead, she
tightens her focus on these actors, she makes us feel a sense of
confinement, that we are trapped in here with this bickering trio,
watching as the simmering emotions reach boiling point. Ullmann
worked with Ingmar Bergman enough times to know the power of actors
is all you need to hold an audience spellbound, and she draws
astonishing work from Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton and especially Jessica
Chastain here, while the way she films these actors in relation to
each other speaks volumes about the class concerns and the shifting
power dynamics throughout the film.
Elisabeth Moss gave one
of the best performances of 2014 in Alex Ross Perry's Listen Up
Philip, and she is on astonishing form again in his latest film, as a
woman reeling from the breakup of a relationship and the death of her
father, who is trying to cling onto her crumbling sanity. Perry's directorial approach prompts a sense of unease that lingers
throughout the film, with almost every scene creating an unusual and
interesting tension, as Sean Price Williams' camera finds intrusive
close-ups and compelling compositions, and Keegan DeWitt's unnerving
score lingers in the background. Moss is an entrancing presence and Katherine Waterston is excellent in the less showy but vital role of
the woman watching her friend fall apart, while Patrick Fugit provides a nastily effective turn as a character with an uncanny ability to
get under Moss's skin. Alex Ross Perry's films aren't easy to watch
or like, but they are consistently fascinating and uncompromising,
and they leave a mark.
The title means volcano
and it is at the base of that volcano that we find the protagonists
of Jayro Bustamante's superbly crafted film. Teenager María and her
family live and work on a coffee plantation but María longs for a
different life, away from the marriage with a prosperous man that her
family has arranged for her; she wants to see what lies on the other
side of the mountain. Ixcanul is a film that sneaks up on the viewer.
Initially focusing on traditions and culture within the Guatemalan
Kaqchikel community, the film soon starts to exert a grip and the
second half unfolds with the urgency of a great thriller. It's a
powerful portrait of the way a lack of language and a lack of
understanding of the wider world allows people in communities like this to be
controlled and exploited. Bustamante makes great cinematic use of
the volcanic landscape, while finding a raw emotional force in the
maternal bond between the two excellent stars, María Mercedes Coroy
and María Telón.
The best animated film
of the year didn't emerge from the production line at Pixar, Ghibli,
DreamWorks or any other of the powerhouses in this field, but from a
small company based in Kilkenny. Cartoon Saloon's follow-up to their
Oscar-nominated 2009 film The Secret of Kells is a more ambitious,
polished and satisfying film on every level. Once again, Tomm Moore
and his team have made a film that is rooted in the Celtic traditions
of design and storytelling, and visually their work is like nothing
else, with the flat but expressive style allowing Moore to create a
fluid and beautiful spectacle, replete with imaginative touches. Song
of the Sea takes a simple but effective approach to characterisation
and storytelling too, skilfully creating a sibling rivalry between
its two young lead characters that hardens into understanding and
love by the end of the film, and successfully telling a story that is charming and accessible for audiences of all ages but doesn't lack for narrative tension. I can't wait
to see what Moore and his team does next.
Entertainment is a film
about a comedian but you may not find yourself laughing very often as
you watch. “Why does E.T. the Extraterrestrial love Reese’s Pieces
so much? Well, because they have the same flavour that cum does on
his home planet,” the awkward figure on the stage says, and the
half-hearted chuckles, tuts of disapproval and uncomfortable silences
that greet the comedian's gags may represent many viewers'
responses to this movie. Entertainment is a film about a stand-up
comic who hates what he does, hates the people he does it for, and
hates himself, and following him on tour through the Mojave Desert,
as his audiences dwindle, feels like being trapped in some sort of
comedy purgatory, but the conviction and formal boldness with which
Alverson attacks this material makes it a gripping journey, while the
widescreen compositions and imaginative lighting by Lorenzo Hagerman
contribute a great deal to the sometimes nightmarish atmosphere. As
well as bringing his Neil Hamburger character successfully to the big
screen, Gregg Turkington creates a haunting portrait of a man dying a
little inside every day, and there are brief but very memorable supporting
roles for Tye Sheridan, John C. Reilly and Amy Seimetz.
You've never seen
anything like Aaaaaaaah! I suppose the closest antecedent would be
the opening twenty minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Kubrick's
apes stopped short of dangling their testicles on each other's heads,
ripping each other's arms off, or ejaculating over photographs of British
royalty. Steve Oram's film has no dialogue, just an endless cacophony
of ape-like grunting as he and his very game cast (including familiar
faces such as Julian Rhind-Tutt, Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding and
Toyah Willcox) regress to a simian state and play out a story of
love, betrayal and revenge while throwing food at each other and
making incomprehensible noises. As a satire on the lack of human
progression from our primal urges, Aaaaaaaah! is clever and imaginative,
but the main reason it earns a place on this list is because it is
hysterically funny and an entirely unexpected and unique oddity to
emerge from a first-time British filmmaker.
It's always a worry
when a foreign filmmaker who has established a particularly
distinctive style makes the movie into English-language filmmaking
with a recognisable cast, but The Lobster is very much a Yorgos
Lanthimos film, with the same deadpan approach, and the same
exporation of human foibles through an enclosed society governed by
strict rules. The first half of The Lobster is prime Lanthimos, as he
achieves some surreal and very dark laughs (my favourite line: “There
is blood and biscuits everywhere!”) with this Buñuelian tale of a
society where single people must find a mate or risk being
transformed into an animal. However, the film shifts into new
territory in its second half with a love story that has moments of
genuine tenderness and affection, and while this change of direction
has alienated some viewers, I think it ultimately works. The Lobster
might not have the impact or feel quite as fully realised as
Dogtooth, but it's an interesting progression for Lanthimos and the
questions the film raises about contemporary relationships and
society continue to stick in my mind.
An outstanding companion
piece to his 2010 film Nostalgia for the Light, Patricio Guzmán's
The Pearl Button is an extraordinary display of intelligent and
poetic documentary filmmaking. What's remarkable about the film is
the way Guzmán begins by focusing on one small detail – a drop of
water, a button – and expands to give us a wide-ranging and
incisive view of Chilean history, moving fluidly from one story to
another and never feeling rushed or lectured to despite the film's
slender running time. The fate of Chile's indigenous people, the
atrocities commmitted under Pinochet, the length of the country's
coastline and its place under the stars – in Guzmán's wonderfully
fluid and moving film, everything is connected. At just 80 minutes long, this may be a slight
film on first glance, but it is still a major work from one of the world's
great documentarians.
Athina Rachel
Tsangari's feature debut Attenberg and her short film The Capsule
were both works built upon performance, movements, rituals and women. For
her latest film Chevalier, she is again exploring those same
interests but this time her gaze is focused entirely on a group of
men, and that gaze is withering. Chevalier is basically a
feature-length dick-measuring contest – literally, at one point –
as a group of men on a boating holiday become engaged in a contest to
see who is “the best in general”, awarding and deducting points
for various trivial activities and aspects of their behaviour. The
absurd comedy of this situation is carried off with deadpan aplomb by
the whole ensemble, although the film is comprehensively stolen by Makis Papadimitriou, while Tsangari takes a distanced but incisive view of
male group behaviour, ego and competitiveness. Chevalier is basically
Fragile Masculinity: The Movie, and it's bloody hilarious.
Chi-Raq is not a subtle
film, but I guess if you're coming to a Spike Lee-directed satire
based on an ancient Greek comedy looking for subtlety then you're
looking in the wrong place. This raucous updating of Lysistrata to
contemporary Chicago is Lee's attempt to confront America's
destructive obsession with guns, which he does through a combination
of sex, verse, music and farce. It doesn't all work, in fact some of
the choices Lee makes almost stop the film in its tracks, but this
unwieldy picture is frequently hilarious and constantly fascinating, and it develops an accumulative force. It is a film made from
the gut and it feels alive and vital in a way that few films in
recent years have felt. Bolstered by astounding performances from
Teyonah Parris, John Cusack, Angela Bassett and – particularly
moving given her family history – Jennifer Hudson, Chi-raq is a
combination of overblown theatricality and raw emotion that could
only have been made by Spike Lee, one of the few major American
directors still determined to use his art to speak to the masses.
This is Spike again telling the nation to “Wake Up!” and Chi-Raq
is a film that deserves to be seen and grappled with.
Necessity is the mother
of invention, and Jafar Panahi's inventiveness since he was banned
from making films in 2010 has been a marvel to behold. This is the
third film he has made since the ban was enforced, and this time
Panahi is out on the streets, masquerading as a taxi driver with
cameras affixed to his dashboard. Taxi Tehran primarily works as a
great human comedy, as Panahi picks up a number of eccentric
passengers from a DVD pirate (“I can get you the rushes of a film
that hasn't even finished shooting!” he boasts) to a pair of old
ladies carrying a goldfish, and his very talkative niece Hana. But
aside from the rich comedy in these encounters, Taxi Tehran also
paints a sobering picture of Iranian society with a moving
contribution from human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, and pushes
against the strictures faced by filmmakers in the country, with
aspiring director Hana questioning the ban on “sordid realism”.
Panahi's film is one of the year's best and funniest films, aside
from the fact that its very existence is an act of defiance.
Carol is a film of
looks and gestures, of touches and silences. These are the things
that stay with you after the film, gaining greater resonance in
retrospect than they had in the moment. Todd Haynes' exquisitely
crafted version of Patricia Highsmith's novel (expertly adapted by
Phyllis Nagy) is a film that doesn't have a frame out of place. Every
moment that these characters share develops our sense of them and
their relationships, and the performances that Haynes gets from his
actors couldn't be better, with Rooney Mara in particular delivering
one of the great depictions of the act of falling in love. If I'm not
ranking Carol quite as highly as some of my peers, that shouldn't be
taken as a slight against the film. I simply never felt the emotional
impact that I crave from a love story like this, and I always felt a
little on the outside looking in. Still, that's no hardship when the
film is such a lovely object to look at – Ed Lachman's
cinematoraphy is impeccable, and it's a pleasure simply to spend time
in this gorgeously created world.
12 - Brooklyn (directed by John Crowley)
Brooklyn is a very old-fashioned, straightforward and
sincere piece of filmmaking, and it’s all the better for that. John Crowley and
Nick Hornby’s elegant translation of Colm Tóibín’s novel to the screen gives us
a tangible sense of what homesickness feels like, and the experience of
finding oneself in a new city and stumbling before finding your feet. The whole
film is played with great warmth and humour by what might be the best ensemble
cast in any film this year, with every actor, even those in the smallest
supporting roles, being perfectly chosen, but the film belongs to two young
actors delivering career-best work. Saoirse Ronan’s casting as Eilis is the
perfect marriage of actor and role, and it’s wonderful to witness her growth
over the course of the film, while Emory Cohen radiates charm as the New Yorker
who she falls in love with. Brooklyn is nostalgic and romantic, sure, but it’s
also a film that’s keenly aware of what it takes to start a new life, and to
leave one behind.
Shot on an iPhone, on the streets of LA, with two leads
making their feature acting debut, Tangerine is a brilliant reminder of how
exhilarating and vital independent filmmaking can be. Sean Baker lets his two
stars dictate the rhythm of the film, with Kitana Rodriguez giving it an
explosive, screwball energy that is tempered by the more restrained and
pragmatic performance Mya Taylor. Sean Baker’s film invites us to experience
this world on the terms of those who inhabit it; his filmmaking is open and
free of judgement, and it feels reminiscent of directors such as Fassbinder,
Waters or Almodóvar in its freewheeling style and inclusive spirit. It’s also a fantastic
film to see on the big screen, with the oversaturated colours and effects
introduced by the decision to shoot the film on an adapted iPhone giving
Tangerine a singular vibrancy and impact that makes it feel like something
genuinely fresh, exciting and satisfying.
László Nemes’ Son of Saul follows its protagonist, played by
the excellent Géza Röhrig, as he moves through a concentration camp seeking the
means to give a dead child a proper burial. This narrative may stretch
credulity at times, but it is a means to an end, allowing Saul to be our guide,
and while we only see glimpses of what Saul sees around the edges of the square
frame, that fleeting sight and the magnificent sound design is enough to create
an incredibly convincing and powerful vision of everyday life in the camps. It’s
inevitable that Son of Saul’s distinctive approach to this subject will draw
criticism – arguments about how to depict the Holocaust have raged since
Rivette criticised Kapo’s tracking shot, and there is no right answer – but I
think this is a film that has been made with a clear sense of moral purpose and
integrity, and it is an astounding achievement by debut director Nemes and
cinematographer Mátyás Erdély.
The Look of Silence inevitably lacks the startling impact of Joshua
Oppenheimer’s audacious The Act of Killing, but in many ways it’s a deeper, sadder and
more complicated work. “You asked much deeper questions than Joshua ever did,”
one of the elderly militia members says as he is probed about the anti-Communist
purges that took place in Indonesia fifty years ago. The man asking the
questions on this occasion is Adi, an optician whose older brother Ramli was
one of the many victims of this genocide and who now meets the men responsible,
and sometimes their families, seeking answers and understanding. It’s a riveting,
enraging and deeply upsetting film that presents us with the smiling,
complacent faces of evil men who are still comfortably living among the
families of those they brutally murdered, while justice remains out of reach.
Taken together, Oppenheimer’s two films complement each other brilliantly, and
they constitute an incredible, essential achievement.
In 1909, a German scientist called Theodor Koch-Grunberg
travelled through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant. Three decades later,
another scientist made the same journey, and Ciro Guerra (director of the impressive 2009 film The Wind Journeys) uses these two
expeditions as the inspiration for his stunning Embrace of the Serpent. In the
film, both scientists are escorted by the same guide, Karamakate, and as he
tells these parallel stories, Guerra unfolds a portrait of the impact of
colonialism and makes the film a lament for all of the tribes and cultures that
have been lost. Embrace of the Serpent gets stranger and more engrossing the
further downriver it travels, with hallucinogenic and disturbing sequences
being blended with the immense beauty of the 35mm black-and-white images
captured by cinematographer David Gallego. Embrace of the Serpent is a vivid
and haunting odyssey.
We ask Hollywood to make adult and adventurous mainstream
films, and when something like Blackhat comes along it is roundly dismissed and
ignored. Perhaps we get the movies we deserve. With every viewing Blackhat
feels like a more impressive film; a slick and hugely entertaining thriller
that also allows Michael Mann to push his technical and narrative experimentation into
fresh areas. Mann has evolved into a different filmmaker since adopting digital
as his format of choice, pursuing the same themes and ideas that have been
consistent throughout his career while seeking an entirely new aesthetic.
Blackhat is full of dazzlingly original and impactful images – a skyscraper seen
through the eyes of a dying person; the climactic movement of bodies as a
prelude to violence; a romance built through physicality and gestures; and the moment that Chris
Hemsworth’s Hathaway takes to feel the wind on his skin as he is released from
incarceration. Will Blackhat’s failure curb opportunities for this great
filmmaker to work on the scale that his artistry merits? If so, it is a very
sad loss for us all.
Within its opening five minutes, The Mend grabs your
attention and it remains never less than wholly absorbing as it pursues its own
unusual narrative path. Josh Lucas – an underrated actor whose gifts have rarely been
exploited fully – is tremendous here as Mat, the wayward brother of the more settled
Alan (Stephen Plunkett). Making himself an uninvited guest at Alan house party,
Mat subsequently extends his stay, but instead of taking the obvious odd couple
route, The Mend keeps spinning off in unexpected directions, introducing
surprise elements and finding a unique rhythm. The film is the debut from
writer/director John Magary, who has directs with unabashed confidence,
utilising irises and slow zooms, while displaying a keen ear for acerbic dialogue.
The Mend is a film that takes the messy, complicated aspects of its characters
at face value and draws us into intimately into their conflicts, giving us a
film that is provocative, stimulating and hilarious, and immensely satisfying
without ever feeling neatly resolved.
A film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul looks like nobody else’s,
but more importantly his films feel like nobody else’s. As I watched Cemetery
of Splendour I felt transported, almost hypnotised, the film’s patient and
calming rhythm gradually seducing me until I felt totally lost in its world. It
seems incredible to me that this wasn’t considered worthy of being in
competition in Cannes as I think it’s a superior film to his Palme d'Or-winning
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; it’s richer, more elegant and
entrancing, and it gives a wonderful role to Joe’s favourite actress Jenjira
Pongpas, whose performance here is courageous and moving. Cemetery of Splendour
is a consideration of the past as something that is constantly lying just under
the present, with the ghosts of the past sometimes visiting in the typically
casual manner that they do in this director’s films. The use of light and sound
in the sleeping sickness sequences in particular create some of his most
mesmerising images. If this is, as he has suggested, the last film Apichatpong
Weerasethakul will make in Thailand for the foreseeable future, then he has
said goodbye with a masterpiece.
How good is Hou Hsiao-Hsien? In his new film The Assassin,
even the wind seems to be under his command, every element adhering to his
stunning overall vision. Unsurprisingly, Hou’s wuxia film is one defined by
stillness and patience rather than action, with the violence exploding out of
the narrative in brief, frenetic flurries (sometimes even occurring offscreen).
The film’s story of love, revenge and political intrigue might prompt
frustration at times with its expositional thinness and opacity, but Hou gives the
viewer enough to hold onto and it’s the formal brilliance that really hooks us.
The Assassin is a masterclass in cinematography, sound, editing, composition,
colour and movement. Every frame feels like Hou is offering us things we haven’t
seen or experienced before. I can understand why the film’s pacing might be
off-putting for some, but I was actually surprised when the film ended so
abruptly; I had completely lost all sense of time passing, so lost was I in the
experience. The Assassin is the work of a master filmmaker at the peak of his
powers.
“SQUID THEFT!” “ASWANG BANANA!” “FORCED TO WEAR A LEOTARD!”
These intertitles are the kind you only find in Guy Maddin films, and they are
merely the tip of The Forbidden Room’s insane iceberg. Maddin’s films have
usually worked by packing a lot of eccentricity into a relatively brief running
time, but this is his epic, with the remnants of 17 lost films into a feature
that pulls through one crazy story into another until we reach the point where
the film feels like it might never end. The Forbidden Room is designed to be
overwhelming but every moment of the film is so inventive, so original and so
surprising it’s the density of the film as much as the length that is astounding.
Frankly, I find it hard to resist any film that combines life-giving flapjacks and
sacrificial volcanoes, possessed bananas and moustaches, a whip-wielding
Geraldine Chaplin and a buttock-obsessed Udo Kier, not to mention crucial
advice on how to take a bath. The Forbidden Room is a visual feast, with Maddin
pushing his decaying celluloid aesthetic further than ever before, and it has a
thousand times more ideas than anything else made this year. Your mileage may
vary, but I loved getting lost in here.
Terence Davies had dreamed about adapting Lewis Grassic
Gibbon’s novel for decades, and now he has finally achieved that feat, he seems
liberated by it. While Davies has always been a very interior director, Sunset
Song feels like something new, with the gorgeous use of exterior shots – filmed
in 65mm – allowing his camera to roam further than ever before. It also feels
like new territory in terms of Davies’ engagement with sex and violence,
depicting Chris Guthrie’s emergence into womanhood and the tragic waste of life
that occurred on the battlefields of the First World War, but what hasn’t
changed is his deep empathy with his female heroine or his inimitable gift
for telling a story and suggesting the passage of time through the movement of
his camera. This is a beautiful film that succeeds as both a story of a young
woman’s resilience in the face of hardship and as a lament for communities torn
apart by war, with the emotional waves of the film building steadily until the
devastating final moments. "He could fair play, that piper. He tore at our
hearts."
The landscape of large-scale mainstream filmmaking has been a barren wasteland for so many years, the simple things that Mad Max: Fury Road achieves feel
like revelations. Staging and editing that respects spatial awareness? A story
that makes sense and is free of expositional clutter? Action that has genuine
stakes? Characters you care about? These things are the basic building blocks
of cinema, which is why I wasn’t surprised to hear George Miller constantly
referencing Kevin Brownlow’s The Parade’s Gone By in interviews for the film. I
saw the influence of Keaton, Murnau, Lang, Sjöström, Dreyer and others in Miller's direction, which gives us character and exposition through action and through the
camera. We don’t need to know how Furiosa lost her arm; we just need to look into Charlize Theron’s eyes and we instantly know we are seeing the birth of an
iconic heroine. It’s her story more than Max’s, and one of the surprising and
delightful things about the film is how skilfully Miller shifts the focus from
the title character to make this a story of women fighting men on equal terms. As
well as creating a masterpiece of action filmmaking, Miller has reminded us how
good auteur-driven cinema on this scale can be, and he has also exposed the
usual blockbuster offerings for the incoherent, soulless, cynical corporate
product that they are. Mad Max: Fury Road is a unique and brilliant creation, a
relentlessly intense film, full of grotesque and surreal imagery, in which the
expected protagonist is ultimately a sidekick, and it still seems incredible to
me that Warner Brothers gave an ageing director $150 million to make it.
They must have been mad.