Usual rules apply: stuff from 2018 that I saw in cinemas in 2019 may have snuck on, stuff from 2019 that I haven't seen yet may end up on next year's list.
10. Colette (dir.
Wash Westmoreland)
A true story about a trailblazing author denied her rightful
place in history? And it’s a period
piece with lots of sex? Quick, send up
the Knightley-Signal! Yes, of course
this turn-of-the-century (last century, erk) Paris tale stars Keira
Knightley. And of course she’s
excellent. As is the film as a whole.
She’s playing Sidonie-Gabrielle
Colette, who is married to a famed author known simply as Willy. It’s something of an open secret that Willy
is a sort of one-man publishing house, doing some writing himself but for the
most part hiring talented ghostwriters who are happy to be paid to be published
under his name. Seeing a gap in the market, he suggests that Colette
give it a whirl, and she complies with a story drawn from her life at a girl’s
school that becomes one of the first examples of what we’d see as a modern
publishing sensation – sold-out print runs, cheap merchandise, the works. But she gets increasingly restless that her Claudine novels aren’t being published
under her name, and trouble brews.
The film is
admittedly a bit piecemeal in places, partially the result of having to cover
several years in two hours. But it
always delivers thanks to its cast.
Knightley is dependably excellent in what’s become her default sort of
role, but Dominic West matches her in what is arguably the harder part – making
this man charming and likeable, but still an obstacle. The lovingly recreated early 1900s France is
a pleasure, and the movie subtly but cleverly makes its call for equality in a
rather delightful way – a couple of the supporting roles are filled by
transgender actors playing cisgender parts, something I only found out about
when reading up on the movie a few days after seeing it. And it also achieved what is surely its
ultimate goal – I now want to read the Claudine
books.
9. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (dirs. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman)
This is the fourth, count ‘em, individual take on Spidey in
seventeen years. In those seventeen
years we have had 3 Tobey Maguires, 2 Andrew Garfields, 2 Tom Hollands (or five
if you count the Avengers movies and Captain America 3), and a partridge in a
pear tree. And Venom. And now this. So how does Spider-Verse justify its existence?
How did it win the Best Animated Feature Oscar? More importantly, how did it end up on my top
ten list?
Spider-Verse kicks off with Peter Parker
(here voiced by Chris Pine) about ten years into his superheroing duties. He’s got very good at it, and he’s in the
midst of stopping the Kingpin’s latest plot to rip a dimensional hole open
under New York. Then – spoiler alert! –
he fails, and Kingpin kills him. Oh.
The actual
Spider-Man we’re following here is Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino kid voiced by Shameik
Moore. He’s also received a spider bite
and also been granted powers (albeit with a couple of twists, like the ability
to turn invisible). And as he witnesses
Classic Spidey’s demise, he takes up the mantle and attempts to stop the
Kingpin himself. With some training from
another Peter Parker (Jake Johnson) who was spat out by that dimensional
hole. Admittedly this Peter is
bellyflopping into middle-age, overweight and depressed, but it’ll be fine,
probably.
Spider-Verse works for multiple
reasons. First, by choosing a different
lead, it immediately feels fresher. An
important part of the story is that anyone can be a hero, and in making the
hero a minority twice over the point is made that much more effectively. (And it’s interesting to see a Spidey who has
not just a father figure but an actual father, one that’s alive and
everything.) Second, by making it
animated instead of live-action it allows the filmmakers to lean into something
that’s often lost in superhero movies – that comics in general, and Spider-Man
comics in particular, are often really,
really weird. Third, it’s frequently
hilarious (anything Nicolas Cage says, the bit with the bagel...). But fourth, and most importantly, it does new
things with animation. I love all
varieties of animation, but CGI has become increasingly staid in the last few
years, as the technology gets to the point where photorealism is possible. Spider-Verse
says nuts to that and embraces its comic roots with a remarkable visual style –
panels and lettering, deliberately jerky movement (technical term “animating on
twos”, look it up, it’s interesting if you’re a nerd like me) and more. It doesn’t always work – the weird effect
where out-of-focus background stuff is made to look like the “ink” isn’t quite
aligned just comes off like you’ve forgotten to put your 3D glasses on – but it
does most of the time. And it does it in
a movie with heart, wit and originality.
Oh, and a great soundtrack.
8. Stan & Ollie
(dir. Jon S. Baird)
One of those films that you can tell is going to be a safe
bet from a brief précis, Stan & Ollie
doesn’t wow with invention but it’s a delight.
Focusing in on Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Hardy (John C. Reilly) towards
the end of their careers, as they tour theatres in provincial England, it
offers a gentle, loving look at one of the greatest double-acts. Bar a quietly impressive one-take prologue in
the ‘30s, following them from their trailers to the set of Way Out West, it resists directorial grandstanding in favour of
foregrounding the performances. And what
performances – while Coogan’s great, it is frankly baffling how Reilly didn’t
end up with a wheelbarrow’s worth of awards.
And, much like Colette, I went
away wanting to watch all of Stan and Ollie’s back catalogue.
7. Zombieland: Double Tap (dir. Ruben Fleischer)
This is a neat example of how low expectations can
help. I went into Double Tap not really planning to be wowed. I loved the first Zombieland, but a ten-year gap between movies is pushing it,
surely? (All to do with multiple failed
attempts to turn it into a TV show, as I understand.) Then the first trailer looked pretty
terrible, but the second looked a little better. So I gave it a go, and loved it.
There’s barely a
plot, just an excuse for the returning cast (two of whom have become full-on
A-listers in the past decade) to goof about and splat zombies creatively. Its freewheeling feel papers over cracks –
there’s a hilariously half-arsed throwaway line about ten minutes in addressing
how some places still have electric power x number of years after the zombie
apocalypse – and while there is some reasonably well-rounded character stuff in
there, it knows it’s a turn-your-brain-off-and-enjoy movie and doesn’t try to
be anything else. There’s a very nice
oner hidden in the middle, which I always appreciate, and Rosario Dawson’s in
it so that’s an automatic extra five points.
Sometimes low expectations pay high dividends.
6. Toy Story 4 (dir. Josh Cooley)
The Toy Story
trilogy is The Thing That Should Not Be.
Three films, made separately at random intervals, all cast-iron
classics? And a reasonable argument to
be made that they improve as they go on?
(I’ve been trying to decide if 1
or 2 is the better film for twenty
years, I’ll never make my mind up.) So
making a fourth is surely a fool’s errand.
There have been several short films following 3, from five to thirty minutes, and they’ve all been great. But a full fourth feature?
Well, Toy Story 4 is the worst Toy Story movie. But as I said to a friend shortly after
seeing it, that’s like saying “a lesser Da Vinci”. It’s still incredible. The core idea of Woody not knowing what to do
with himself after his new kid, Bonnie, just isn’t that interested in playing
with him, is simple but perfect, and the idea that she creates a new toy by
gluing googly eyes on a spork that gains sentience is weird as all hell. But all the characters find it just as weird,
so it works.
As I said in my Spider-Verse review above, CG animation
tends to be a little unimaginative these days, but that doesn’t mean it can’t
wow. Toy
Story 4 looks incredible, and there are a couple of establishing shots
where for a moment my brain went, “Well, that’s a live-action shot.” The script’s great, the new additions to the cast
are excellent (especially Key and Peele as a pair of sewn-together cheap
carnival prizes with ideas above their station) and while it doesn’t get as
lump-in-the-throat as 3 it remains a
worthy coda to the series. Just...leave
it now, Pixar, yeah? You’ve got away
with it again somehow, let’s call it
good.
5. Rocketman (dir.
Dexter Fletcher)
Well, it’s hard not to draw parallels here. Dexter Fletcher, infamously, took over
uncredited on Bohemian Rhapsody after
original director Bryan Singer was given the push. A biopic of a flamboyant singer and pianist
who simultaneously managed to be very rock-and-roll and very English is a
description of both that movie and Rocketman. But the latter seems almost like a
riposte. Bohemian Rhapsody was a safe, sanitised movie that lived and died
on Rami Malek’s fantastic performance, but was otherwise very timid. Rocketman,
on the other hand, starts with Elton John (Taron Egerton, excellent) arriving
at rehab in full stage costume. When
introducing himself, he imagines his childhood self (Matthew Illesley) watching
him. But then he gets into an argument
with said imagining. And then they start
duetting “The Bitch is Back”. And then
Kid Elton drags the rest of the rehab group into 1950s suburbia, where the
neighbours are in the midst of an elaborate dance sequence.
It’s the music
biopic as music video, and it’s exhilarating.
While there are a few moments that I may have wished for a more
conservative approach (mainly because most of the story was unknown to me, and
I wanted to know when certain songs were actually written as opposed to when it
makes sense for the narrative to use them for dramatic emphasis), it’s hard to
argue with a film that chooses to dramatise the glorious “Saturday Night’s
Alright (For Fighting)” in a seeming one-shot take that sees teen Elton start
the song in a pub, sneak out, grow into adult Elton, lead a bunch of Teddy boys
on a dance round a funfair that disintegrates into a punch-up, then barrel back
into the pub to finish the song. And
after Bohemian Rhapsody’s primly
turning away from Freddie’s life in favour of a 12A certificate, Rocketman’s headfirst dive into piles of
drugs and sex (sometimes literally) is refreshing.
4. Avengers: Endgame
(dirs. Joe and Antony Russo)
Indeed. As I said
last year, my major issue with the MCU’s generally excellent output is that the
cross-pollination is to a point that each individual film feels homogenous,
like an episode of a TV show rather than a film in its own right. (Which I think
is the point Scorsese was making, but he phrased it spectacularly badly.) Infinity
War somehow avoided that, and Endgame
somehow continues by being a sequel to twenty-one other movies and working.
The fact that the
film’s an actual end to several plots and characters works very much in its
favour, giving a proper finality to events.
The time-travel aspect is an act of genius, making it a sort of victory
lap of a decade’s worth of movies that works differently depending on the
movie. So Avengers Assemble is improved by giving us a glimpse as to what the
team were up to inbetween other scenes, Guardians
of the Galaxy squeezes one more laugh by showing that the classic opening
sequence of Peter Quill dancing about to “Come and Get Your Love” looks really
stupid without the background music, and most impressively, Thor: the Dark World provides the
movie’s most heartfelt moment, as Thor gets a chance for one last conversation
with his mother before she’s destined to die.
And the sheer
amount of stuff going on means that a three-hour movie somehow whizzes by. The lack of half the cast is a bonus,
allowing for more character-driven stuff: somehow, Thor and Nebula, the
lunkheaded god and the generic bad girl, come out of this as the most
well-rounded characters. There are
stirring moments; silly moments; one of the comics’ most controversial recent
plotlines referenced in a way that’s hilarious, clever and satisfying; Paul
Rudd complimenting Chris Evans’ backside; Chris Evans complimenting Chris
Evans’ backside; the MCU acknowledging the many TV series for the first time ever via a cameo for James
D’Arcy...there’s a bit of everything, really.
The problem is that it did it too well and now I’m not that bothered
about the MCU in the future because this was such a satisfying conclusion.
3. Us (dir. Jordan
Peele)
Jordan Peele is a man who is going to provide a lot of
material for future dissertations. His
first film, the wickedly funny satire-horror Get Out, examined blackness in the United States in the last days
of Obama’s presidency, be it feared or fetishised. And now his second offering examines...well,
a lot, but mainly class. And it does it
through the medium of the home invasion movie.
Lupita N’yongo is
Adelaide, who reluctantly goes on holiday with her husband and two children. Reluctantly because the holiday house is
round the corner from a beach where she
had a traumatic experience as a child, one that left her temporarily mute. And indeed, spooky stuff occurs, and a
quartet of people break into the house one night. Except they’re doppelgangers of Adelaide and
her family, dressed in red boilersuits and carrying huge golden shears. Then it gets weird.
Whereas Get Out was frequently icily funny, Us plays it largely straighter and
stranger (it frequently feels like a feature-length Twilight Zone episode, probably not a coincidence since Peele is
the host of that venerable series’ latest incarnation). The bizarre concept doesn’t always stick
together, but it’s done with enough conviction and atmosphere to sell it. N’yongo must surely be award-laden for her
remarkable double-turn as Adelaide and her murderous counterpart Red, and there
are sufficient ideas and indelible images to power three lesser movies. Us
is a movie I’ve been turning round in my head since I saw it, and I suspect I
and many others will be doing it for a long time yet.
2. All is True
(dir. Kenneth Branagh)
Given how little is known about most of Shakespeare’s life,
it’s odd there aren’t more dramatisations of his last years. In the theatre, there’s Edward Bond’s play Bingo and Peter Whelan’s The Herbal Bed, and he doesn’t even
appear in the latter. Still, to this
small pool we can now add this excellent film.
Working loosely
off true events, most notably his daughter Susanna being accused of adultery
(which forms the backbone of The Herbal
Bed), this excellent movie focuses on Shakespeare (Branagh) as he returns
to Stratford from London, his life’s work in the theatre done and his last few
years to wind down. A frayed
relationship with his wife Anne (Judi Dench) – frayed because she hardly ever
sees him and doesn’t know what to do with him now he’s hanging round the house
– needs mending, his garden needs tending, and his daughter needs defending
from scurrilous rumour. It naturally
follows that the result is an elegiac film, and it’s one that’s beautifully
shot, excellently acted and largely well-written (a slightly unnecessary and
unfocused scene with his former patron/possible lover the Earl of Southampton,
seemingly tacked on so they could put Ian McKellen’s name on the poster,
aside). I’d argue that those wanting a
meaty dramatic telling of the Bard’s last days seek out a production of Bingo instead, but this remains a
wonderful ode to the greatest writer of all.
Ah, subjectivity. I
know full well this wasn’t the best film of 2019, but nothing made my heart
sing while sitting in the cinema more than this cheerfully daft sci-fi piece of
earnest hokum.
The story of Alita’s birth is actually more
interesting than the plot. Starting out
as a manga by Yukito Kishiro with the unwieldy name of Gunnm, the tale of an amnesiac cyborg was animated in the early
‘90s in the form of an OVA (Original Video Animation – a Japanese halfway house
between TV and film) given the catchier title of Battle Angel Alita.
Guillermo del Toro fell in love with the video and passed it to James
Cameron, who optioned it after finishing Titanic. While working on Avatar, Cameron also made copious notes and multiple screenplays
for a live-action Alita and
eventually, realising he’d never get round to making it himself because he’d
become convinced that what the world wanted was four Avatar sequels, passed the project on to Robert Rodriguez, who
actually made the thing. Phew.
Alita’s lengthy development process
lends the finished product something of a charmingly old-fashioned feel. It feels a little like a lost ‘90s
blockbuster, down to the fact that it actually has a tie-in single. Now, I love ‘90s blockbusters, so the film’s
already off to a good start.
Of course, being a 2019 production means
that the effects are a little more impressive.
The whole world is a joy to look at, from the nifty monocycles to Alita’s
intricately carved porcelain exoskeleton.
And that exoskeleton is the most impressive and most remarked-on bit of
work. In a brilliant visual touch, Alita’s
outsize eyes both pay homage to the graphic traditions of manga and make sense
in-universe – if real-life humanoid robots existed, an excellent way to skip
round the uncanny valley would be to purposely exaggerate some part of facial
anatomy. The resulting effect is initially
startling, but quickly becomes so natural it’s unnoticeable. (The casting of relative unknown Rosa Salazar
– who’s excellent in quite a hard role to pull off – may have helped here. The fact I wasn’t already familiar with her
sold me on the effect to the point that when I saw an interview with her a day
or two after watching the movie, she looked wrong to me with regular human-size
eyes.)
The fact that
Rodriguez eventually ended up in the director’s chair is a bonus, too. He, of course, is better known for work up
the higher end of the BBFC ratings, and the fact that most of the cast are
largely robot parts means he can get away with some scenes that push the limits
of a 12 certificate. His ever-abundant
energy thrums through the piece, most obviously in the hilariously stupid sport
of choice in Alita’s world, motorball
– a sort of rugby-meets-roller-derby-meets-basketball-meets-Speedball 2 on the Amiga. Although the bar fight comes a close second
there. And the cast are game for
everything, be it Christoph Waltz waving a rocket-powered sledgehammer about, Mahershala
Ali wearing sunglasses at all times because he’s a baddy, or Jeff Fahey
cameoing as a bounty hunter with a pack of robot dogs and a cowboy hat just
because.
Not the best movie
of the year. But my favourite movie of
the year.
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