Director: Terrence Malick
Writers: Terrence Malick
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Michael Fassbender
Verdict: *insert snoring noise here*
“By the end I was just sitting there in this stupor, a catatonic mix between boredom and anger, I mean anger isn’t even the right word because that would suggest I somehow engaged with the film actively.”
Full review: https://boxd.it/EPnen
Director: Damien Chazelle
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone
Verdict: A Joy
Y’know just before going into this movie I was like “I had a load of horror films in my top list for 2016, wouldn’t it be funny if La La Land was my favourite of the year for 2017?”. I mean all the peices were in place, I loved Chazelle’s last film Whiplash, (my dad said, ‘a film about a jazz drummer, what was the point?’ would it be too obvious to say that’s kind of missing the point of it?), Ryan Gosling is one of my favourite actors working at the moment and I’ve always felt Emma Stone, (The Help, Easy A, Birdman) has had the potential to do great things, and I’ve been looking for a really great musical to fall in love with. I will say though, I saw this on the 8th at a preview screening, (I know how luxurious, little old me), 8 days into the year and I feel it’s pretty safe to say this might well be my favourite film of 2017. Then again I havn’t seen 20th Century Women, yet which just seems geared towards me.
La La Land is, at it’s core, a fairly standard romance, it’s essentially a twist on Singin’ in the Rain only, better, and less sexist. A lonesome jazz pianist meets a struggling actress and at first they hate eachother but, y’know what, very quickly the ice begins to melt. The premise may be conventional but how the story unfolds from then on is not, and the plot is really just an excuse to have dazzling set peices and musical numbers.
Not since I think Mad Max: Fury Road have I seen a film as dedicated to purely entertainng you as this one. It begins with one of the best cinematic traffic jams since Sicario, and one of a very different sort. Instead becomming one of the tensest shootouts I’ve seen for quite some time, it turns into one of the most dazzling, colourful, and best choreographed dance routines I’ve seen for quite some time. It’s all filmed in long takes to sell the routines, and the routines are great. No one fucks up, it’s all synchronised and just looks dazzling. The cinematography on display is truly astounding. It was done by Linus Sandgren, who most recently did Joy, which I recently reviewed, (here), and the cinematography was actually probably the best thing about that film. Actually to hear him talk about the difference in approach for those two films is very intersting.
The performances are lovely. Who knew how funny Ryan Gosling was? He’s turning into a proper Ryan Goose, but I feel like that joke’s been done to death at much earlier stages of his career but there aren’t many adult gosling puns you can make. He’s had three movies out in last year and this year; this film, The Nice Guys, and The Big Short. This role combines the wit of The Big Short, which was actually the film that made me stop and go ‘wow Ryan Gosling knows exactly how to do comedy on a technical level well done him’; with the physical comedy of The Nice Guys; with the melancholia of Drive. There’s a face that Ryan Gosling does at the end of that iconic lift scene in Drive of just utter sadness and longing and regret and it’s a great face, and he’s really good at it, and he does it a lot in this film. He is really, really good, and he sings and dances and plays the piano and it’s lovely. Emma Stone I have never before seen at this level of good. She has a way of talking that makes it sound like it’s coming out of an actual person. She looks like she’s improvising in the sense that it doesn’t look like she’s saying lines that she’s rehearsed, she looks like someone having a conversation in real life. She is such an individual screen presence that it’s almost incongruous but I’m really glad she’s there because I love that manner of acting and I wish more people were doing it.
If I was to nitpick I would say that it is a bit contrived, there’s one particular scene where Ryan Gosling makes a point about Emma Stone’s heels so she immediately gets tap shoes out of her bag and you go ‘oh right it’s this kind of musical’ but that’s not really representative of the rest of the film because in general, La La Land does make an effort to seem natural. Chazelle has talked in interviews about wanting to make it feel like you were ‘falling into’ the songs and for the most part I think he manages it.
If you go out onto the street and ask people to name a director, they’ll probably say, Steven Spielburg, (Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), Stanely Kubrick, (The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey), Martin Scorcese, (Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street), maybe George Lucas, (Star Wars), and probably Micheael Bay, (Transformers). If Damien Chazelle keeps this up, this already quite extraordinary winning streak after only two big films and co-writing credits on 10 Cloverfield Lane, he might well join that linneage. You see the poster and it’s incredible that any film could get that many five star reviews and they wouldn’t have to scrape the bottom of the barrel of publications to get them. I tell you now, if I did stars, they could have included me. It’s wonderful!
I’m kind of miffed with the amount of films I missed this year. When I tallied the 2016 films I’d seen vs missed, it came to 42 vs 48. Damn.
I was incredibly dissapointed to take a whole year to not see big 2016 Oscar contenders that I really wanted to see like Room, A Bigger Splash, Son of Saul, and Anomalisa. I have no excuses I know.
I think that photo aptly expressess my emotions at not having seen Anomalisa.
I somehow managed to see all the live action DC releases from this year but somehow managed to not see Batman: The Killing Joke and Captain America: Civil War, to be fair that Captain America: Civil War hype is really going down. It’s almost as if it was a pretty good movie that critics and fans latched onto in the middle of a summer of lacklustre summer blockbuster releases. Oh wait…
There were a whole pleathora of indie/indie spirited films I was so excited for that I know I would have just loved that I miss out on seeing and I may never forgive myself. These films include King Jack, Sing Street, Embrace of the Serpent, and Men & Chicken. Sing Street in particular. As well as this, there are a few such films coming out this Oscar season or in Oscar talks that embody what seems lost; lower/midbudget films, that aren’t horror films, that do actually OK. Such as; Swiss Army Man, American Honey, Hell or High Water, Captain Fantastic and the new Pedro Almodovar film Julietta.
Two films I was particularly cheezed off at missing, that look like I would have absolutely loved above most others on this list are Jane Austen adaptation Love & Friendship which just looks beautiful; and adult fairytale compilation Tale of Tales which looks like Pan’s Labyrinth for a new generation.
Four really interesting, unusual films that I’ve missed out on catching towards the end of the year, films that maybe you might not have seen that I’d be really intersted in giving voice to as I’ve tried to with films like I Am Not A Serial Killer, are; strippers vs zombies horror festival breakout Peelers that I wasn’t able to catch at the LIFF but have been in touch with the films PR people and they’re lovely. The film hasn’t gotten picked up for distribtion, home or cinema as far as I know and it’s shame because I really don’t know how I’m going to see it and I’m desperate to; Japanese gender-bending anime box office sensation Your Name, which it’s dissapointingly hard to see in UK although I nearly did before selling my ticket to a good friend of mine who forgot to actually buy a fucking ticket, because that’s how good a friend I am; I missed Raw at the LIFF as well because I was going home that weekend, which is a shame because any film that people pass out watching I want to see; also, coming of age comedy Edge of Seventeen which looks like Perks of Being A Wallflower for a new generation.
Other films I missed this year that I wanted to see include; Boulevard, I Am Belfast, Eye in the Sky, When Marnie Was There, Where To Invade Next, The Conjouring 2, The BFG, Nerve, The Shallows, Weiner-Dog, Lights Out, War Dogs, Morgan, Ouija: Origin of Evil, The Accountant, and A Streetcat Named Bob, because who doesn’t love a good bit of schmaltzy schmaltz.
Yeah I’m doing a top 12 suck it it’s my blog, LET’S COUNT IT DOWN
It doesn’t quite crack the top 10, and maybe although it doesn’t seem to herald the great blockbuster revolution we all hoped, this is still a taut and tense thriller/horror filled with great performances.
I seemed to be the only person laughing at the new Coen Brothers comedy, maybe because as a fan of theirs I’m in tune with their off beat rhytms. It’s also incredibly well shot, filled with wonderful musical numbers, and is put together with a love for the film itself, and film itself. It upsets the ‘George Clooney Is An Idiot’ trilogy they’d all been working on together, but if Douglas Adams can do it why can’t the Coen Brothers? I ask you…
This cerebral psycho-sexual noir western thriller is an incredible feat of narrative story telling and practical filmmaking, it’s well acted if for the most part a detactched, cold experience. You will think for a good few days after seeing this movie
I talked in my Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency review, (here), about my experience seeing this with my mother. If you ever think I’m somehow anti-blockbuster, somehow pretnetious, somehow anti-just-having-fun-in-a-cinema then just looked at how many full buckets of fun I had with this space adventure. It’s better than Rogue One!
I didn’t write a review of this film, mainly because with uni work I just left it too long to still be fresh, but this film is a love letter to Frank Turner’s music and also an investigation of Frank Turner as a person, and an investigation of what it means to consider yourself a punk musician. It’s also a great investigation into the writing process, it has a great sequences of building the song Josephine up from the vocals up and it really works in a cinematic way as well as a musical way. It’s, in a word, a joy. It’s gotten some really sniffy reviews but in a way Frank Turner is a supringly easy target because of just how much he puts himself out there and puts himself into the music he makes. A superior rock-doc, I actually left on the verge of tears.
Shane Black’s back with another neo noir comedy. Instead of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang which was very much a noir pastiche, this is very much a more mature, comedic thriller with a cereer best comedic performance from Ryan Gosling. A staunchly entertaining fiev star comedy that captures the period detail supremely.
Yeah bet your didn’t expect to see an animated family flick on this list did you! However, this funny, poignant, subversive, and colourful film has substance and humour for audience members of all ages.
Ok so this is my favourite non horror film of the year, I don’t know what it is or why or how but the top four are all, in one roundabout way or another, either horror films or in the vein of or inspired by them. However this is a great film, it made me cry, which seems to be simultaneously really easy and really hard for a movie, but this thriller sets Villeneuve up perfectly for Blade Runner 2049, even if the aspects that do that maybe aren’t perfect for this film, it still works really well.
Haters will be haters, this is a great fucking movie. It’s a trippy psychadelic horror thriller giallo surrealist head spinner that just gets better upon rewatches. I reviewed this right after Performance, another film that aims for a similarly surrealist acid trip with some kind of substantial point, and The Neon Demon just does it so much better.
I know I put this above I Am Not A Serial Killer in the end of the month list, but on reflection I think IANASK is better. That doesn’t mean though that Don’t Breathe isn’t absolutely fucking incredible because it is. It should have had more people singing it’s praises, if anything just from a filmmaking perspective because it is really deserved. This top 3 was incredibly, incredibly close.
This film starts of looking somewhat generic but it turns very quickly into somethig much more badass. It’s, really, really incredible; really powerful. I don’t want to spoil anything about it but it’s great, and it has the best performance from Christopher Lloyd maybe of his whole career.
In my review I voiced concerns with the ending but on consideration I take it all back, I need to watch it a few more times for it to certify itself but this might be a perfect film, something I bestow very, very rarely to a film. If it is, it’ll go right to my 3rd favourite film ever which would be some feat. Wish it luck!
The Hipster Llama 