The Week in Cinema: 22.07 -- 28.07

-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films watched this week --

Decalogue, “Dekalog: The Ten Commandments” (dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)

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Premiere: 10^thDecember, 1989

Written by: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz

Starring: Artur Barciś, Aleksander Bardini, Krystyna Janda, and others

Ten commandments. Ten episodes. Ten lives whose metropolitan stories are conceived out of a Krakow housing project – occasionally coinciding in doorways, lift shafts – whilst searching for greater purpose beyond their locality (even if, with time, they do return to their dwellings once again). Each episode is as fragile as the human lives they sculpt, glass-like objects whose value does not solely reside in transparency or sequence, but rather in their independence from one another; almost as if, alike to Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, each are to be murmured by wayward pilgrims, separately, on the course of some holy journey. Kieslowski orientates each episode around the breaking of a scriptural commandment. Over the course of the series, however, such examples of trespass are borrowed or gifted from one episode to another, each fragment aligning themselves to multiple rules, multiple voices. Interpretation is therefore fluid – Kieslowski has never openly discussed the recurring presence of the solemn onlooker, for example, a patient, pained witness to all that unfolds – with the intersection between sense and meaning once again vulnerable, as if the Decalogue itself might fall apart if viewed out of order. It is inevitable that what holds Kieslowski’s cycle together is in fact the people whose lives are observed, the men, women and children who are innocently watched by the camera – whether beautiful or unbeautiful, their faults are open to our judgement and inspection. Natural performances are guided by the naturalism of their lives, an aspect of its writing commended by Kubrick in a foreword to the published screenplay, remarking that “they [Kieslowski and Piesiewicz] have the very rare ability to dramatizetheir ideas rather than just talk about them.” Episodes 5 and 6 were later adapted into theatrical-length cuts – A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love – but, like with their eight counterparts, the series perfectly inhabits the short form allocated by television. Aside from the ordinariness and simplicity of each story, they closely engage with the nature of small-screen entertainment, neither too grand or verbose as cinema might demand, only small, precious, and measured works. Decalogue is undoubtedly Kieslowski’s magnum opus, the closest life could ever come to art without brushing flakes of its paint from its surface. Television everyone must watch in their lifetime.

Jurassic Park (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)

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Opening one of the most profitable franchises ever conceived, Jurassic Parkconfirmed the talents of its director, Steven Spielberg – who in the same year delivered Holocaust-drama Schindler’s List– whilst lifting a relatively standard script to unimaginable, ever-inspired heights. Spielberg himself inevitably resembles the billionaire philanthropist John Hamond (played by Richard Attenborough), whose dream island of dinosaurs is at once, for audience of the 90s and of today, “something real, something that wasn’t an illusion, something they could see and feel.” A breathtaking classic of 90’s blockbuster cinema.

The Dead Don’t Die (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2019)

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Jim Jarmusch delivers zombified opera with his latest picture, The Dead Don’t Die, flitting loosely between the oddball townsfolk of fictional US town ‘Centreville’ on the dawn of apocalypse. George A. Romero’s cult classic Night of the Living Deadis acutely remembered in Jarmusch’s addition to the genre, but also somewhat recast, and painfully so, as glacial storytelling dredges up well-used motifs to unoriginal effect. Zombies burst from the ground in the wake of a disturbance to the planetary axis – an act of environmental revolt, perhaps – stirring up the comfortable existence of a relatively bored community; in particular, that of the useless, laconic police squad (a triad played by Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny). Like their past selves, the Zombies gravitate to what they previously knew – whether sports activities, WIFI, or coffee (as witnessed by Iggy Pop’s corpse) – whilst feasting on the flesh of whosoever they come across. Jarmusch’s film is peppered with glorious moments, (the sight of Farmer Miller’s (Steve Buscemi) cows galloping into the distance, or Tilda Swinton’s morbid antics) but they are short and far between. Self-conscious irony becomes increasingly painful as scenes repeat, characters circle one another, and the infrequent and tedious allusion are made by Adam Driver to the fictitious narrative. An incredible ensemble cast is unable to resurrect a half-hearted effort.

Benjamin (dir. Simon Amstell, 2018)

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Simon Amstell writes and directs a bittersweet, measured story of faltering love affairs and toppling male youths. Colin Morgan (of Merlin, The Happy Prince) stars as Benjamin, a talented film director struggling to deliver his second feature, whose relationship with men on and off set complicates his own uncertainties and groundings in life. It is a film for and by contemporary masculinity, yet one that offers no solution to its own fallibilities and errors in judgment. Comedy is weighted against thoughtful dourness, a scale that doesn’t allow one quality to slip and overwhelm the other, at least not entirely. Benjaminfelt like a collection of scenes without any apparent cohesiveness, which is likely the desired effect, but ultimately does little to reward its slow viewing and half-way pretentious script.

The Great Hack (dir. Karim Amer, 2019)

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Another ambitious, Netflix-produced documentary is launched with The Great Hack, one that will undoubtedly generate Oscar buzz at the close of the year. Amer boldly confronts what is potentially the most considerable threat to 21^st-century democratic policy, the systematic harvest of online data – virtual residue of our online behaviour preyed upon by companies such as Cambridge Analytica, who also supply resources for political campaigns such as Leave.EU and Trump’s presidential team. The Great Hack is in many ways an unredemptive tale, even with its effort to expose the legal and moral corruption of Cambridge Analytica and others, its Orwellian visions all too real and all too repeatable for the next generation.

The Week in Cinema: 15.07 -- 21.07

-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films watched this week --

Too Old to Die Young (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, 2019)

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Premiere: June 14, 2019 (Amazon Video); episodes 4 & 5 at Cannes Film Festival, 2019

Created by: Nicolas Winding Refn, Ed Brubaker

Starring: Miles Teller, Augusto Aguilera, Cristina Rodio, and others

Too Old to Die Young is the latest offering from enfant terrible Nicolas Winding Refn, a ten-part canvas of ultraviolent, Trump-era opulence. Now a popular terrain for auteur directors (Campion, Scorsese, Lynch, to name a few), event television is once again used as a fertile ground for provocative entertainment. Each episode envisaged as a ‘chapter’ – of varying lengths, ranging between 30 to 90 minutes – a typical Refn picture is inflated to a thirteen-hour lumber, striking its audience dumb with its real-time unfolding. It is not difficult to find yourself intrigued, repulsed even, by its cinematic grammar: slow, minute-length shots; the occasional, tinsel-like flush of its electronic soundtrack; or the sculpted, ultra-masculine presences that occupy each scene … to name a few. Such visual humidity lends itself not only to stupefaction, but also to an exquisite, magic realism.

Stone-faced cop Martin Jones (played by Miles Teller) witnesses the murder of his partner whilst on patrol, exposing the long-planned design of a Mexico-American cartel, Jesus, who is seeking to avenge the death of his mother. As later revealed, Jesus and his equally dangerous brother, Miguel, broil over who is to succeed as figurehead of their family dynasty, whilst both captivated by nightly dreams of their dead mother. Jones, meanwhile, finds himself plummeting into a world of sadistic violence and pornography whilst instated at a new LA district, balancing the job and his role as boyfriend to a 17-year old model, Janey Carter, whose billionaire father exposes yet more toxic sexuality. Slowly, each world grazes the other in a style not dissimilar to planetary collisions – bruising, irreparable and protracted. 

Its title, moreover, seeks to ambiguate our understandings with its core paradox: a) are these characters beyond the time that ‘die[ing] young’ would have provided, ‘too old’ to be who they were in time past; b), are these figures attempting to salvage a form of protection (or glory) once found in youth, yet now endangered by their own age and knowledge; or finally c), could it refer to people who are at once aged and ageless, individuals who appear to belong to another time yet are made to suit their present.

Inspired by the ‘video-nasties’ so fundamental to Refn’s own creative expression – you only have to look to MUBI to find his #byNWR euro-porn restorations at hand – both he and co-screenwriter/co-creator Ed Brubaker sculpt a vision of America abandoned to its own corruption. Sexual and racial violence twin with Trump-era politics in a kind of double-helix model, an axis about which each episode revolves, again and again. A self-confessed narcissist – “I'm a pornographer. I make films about what arouses me. […] Very rarely to understand why I want to see it and I've learned not to become obsessed with that part of it" – Too Old to Die Young is soaked with such private indulgence, gratuity and style. If the allurement of television violence is what Refn seeks to illustrate, or, rather, the attraction we all feel towards witnessing suffering, then it somewhat succeeds as a self-reflective project. I suspect he might not entirely know exactly what he has delivered.

Voyage to the End of the World, “Ikarie XB 1” (dir. Jindrich Polák, 1963)

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Adapted from a novel by sci-fi philosopher Stanisław Lem – an author best known for his 1961 classic Solaris, later mastered by Tarkovsky – Ikarie XB-1 stages a spaceflight across the universe in search of life on the planets of Alpha Centauri (balls of cloud, mostly), with various misfortunes along the way. Serio-comic in mood, in particular, with its onboard love affairs, stately dinner parties, and all-male downstairs gymnasium, the film juxtaposes gravity with weightlessness, seriousness with levity. Polák buries his characters within its anamorphic format, the majority of scenes shot within extensive, tomb-like corridors, its walls filled with enough flashing buttons to compete with Fred M. Wilcox’s Forbidden Planet. A joyous precursor to Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sunshine.

The Clowns, “I Clowns” (dir. Federico Fellini, 1970)

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Inside the cinema of Federico Fellini, clowns are a familiar resident, often performing, often integral to some grand project. But Fellini isn’t interested in their profession, as such, rather their hidden mortality (often held in the face), as exposed by age, melancholy, or in the corner of the frame – white faces, like Gelsomina in La Strada, that emit a kind of emotional purity. I Clowns is a study of such faces, of Fellini’s own fascination with the art of clowns, inside a trifurcated narrative of childhood reflection, interviews, and a final requiem to a star of the stage. It is rare that a director brings new colour to a well-worn topic, but Fellini manages it, successfully, with beauty, tenderness and a reverence to the clowns themselves.

Apollo 11 (dir. Todd Douglas Miller, 2019)

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Composed out of never-before-seen, 70mm archive footage, Apollo 11 triumphantly restages the experience of the 1969 moon landing, almost as if they knew it would one day (50 years later, perhaps) be replayed on cinema screens. In many way, Miller has helped facilitate a document of social history, otherwise indisputable evidence of the past; viewed from 2019, it is such records that hold truthful against the modern storm of fake news. Similar to a current trend in documentary filmmaking, Apollo 11 features no voice-over narration, aside from material available at the time, a method that allows each image to breathe and engage purely from its visual standpoint. It is a highly accomplished piece of work, with no aspect of the work compromised or seemingly neglected. Inspirational and breath-taking in equal measure, Miller delivers an artful work of spectacular reach, a moment in time not to be forgotten, but instead celebrated as a totem of what collective passion can achieve.

The Week in Cinema: 08.07 -- 14.08

McQueen (dir. Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, 2018)

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A glimpse into the life and career of fashion maverick Lee Alexander McQueen, whose from-rags-to-riches tale is wrought into an intimate, celebrative portrait. For one who became disillusioned by the art world – untethered, by fame, from what he knew and loved – McQueen himself is grounded and fully realised by a remarkable number of voices, individuals whose lives he had enlightened, or, in some instances, severely damaged. Savage beauty is dared and trodden on the catwalks, a form of personal biography clothed within the macabre, sexuality and earthly reverence. Across chapters or “tapes” (as the documentary refers) named after his infamous collections, McQueen’s passage as artist is closely discerned, tripping between provocation, curiosity and inspired originality, before collapsing at his suicide in 2010.

Midsommar (dir. Ari Aster, 2019)

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Midsommar announces its director, Ari Aster, as one of the foremost innovators working in contemporary horror, even if the chrysalis of that genre has since hatched in the wake of his latest flight. It is a branch of cinema in process of change, an audacious forward movement – in almost every respect, intellectually and aesthetically – that dresses itself in tradition (“the clothes of a […] horror film”, as remarked Aster), whilst immersing you in a modern, sensory experience. Out of the opening blizzard does tragedy ensue for the family of Dani Ardor (played by Florence Pugh), a trauma carried into the wreckage of her failing relationship to Christian, and further, as the narrative unfolds, into the daylight luminance of Hälsingland, Sweden. Occupied in such an ancestral commune, the “midsummer” celebrations ingratiate the small group of visiting Americans – tourists, unknowingly, to a kind of quasi-pagan safari – beginning with dance, the taking of food and drink, and later in their violent, Bacchanal operatics. “It’s just like theatre,” their friend Pelle confesses, a premonition figured into the topsy-turvy world of its church, the familiar (eating, sleeping, sexual intercourse) made foreign by its performance, contorted (not unlike the countenance of their disabled, attic-bound Oracle, a product of such corruption). Events tumble into farce, whilst laying the tract for Ardor’s own, female rebirth, an awakening from grief into … well, something entirely fantastical. Aster looks to the rural spirituality of Ingmar Bergman, whilst, and more fixedly, seeking to channel the premise of Robin Hardy’s 1973-classic, The Wicker Man. In this translation does Midsommar harvest more than was perhaps intended, each film lulled into a protracted and relatively tedious exposition of day-to-day strangeness, amassing a curiosity-cabinet of oddities that work counter to its intended effect. If Hereditary found allure in choice and selection, Midsommar is an overly concentrated equivalent, gorging its audience with too much palate and colour. Ambitious and euphoric, the need to distress ultimately takes precedence over anything truly frightening, a nauseous gestation of sunlight, community and fairy-tale wickedness. In broad daylight, so are the worst horrors enacted – nobody is exempt of sight in this picture. Ari Aster is a filmmaker to watch closely, even if from a distance.

Liam Gallagher: As It Was (dir. Gavin Fitzgerald and Charlie Lightening, 2019)

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Pugilistic, brazen, self-important … but also forty-five years of age, family oriented, and with a growing sense of humility. Just a few reflections gleaned from ex-Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher, whose career since the turbulent breakup is honestly recounted – at first plummeting, but, with a few new initiatives, gathering momentum and success. Stylistic and Instagram-esque in cinematography, As It Was is largely one-on-one with Liam himself – a series of interviews and voiceovers, old and new – whilst live performances are usually abridged to highlight offstage vignettes. (In his Glastonbury 2017 performance, for example, only a few minutes of stage time are actually shown.) So much of what gives Liam Gallagher traction, however, is the ever-present memory of his brother, Noel, more sure-footed in his career, and whose life Liam appears to be defining/re-defining himself against. As It Was is a loud, boisterous jeer of self-validation, a musical act of reinvention.

Too Late Blues (dir. John Cassavetes, 1961)

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In a clip from A Personal Journey through American Movies, by Martin Scorsese, John Cassavetes emphasises the need “for […] characters to really analyse love, discuss it, kill it, destroy it, hurt each other, do all that stuff […] in that picture polemic of what life is.” To Cassavetes, the philosophy of love is the centre around which all should orbit. It is not unsurprising, therefore, that in Too Late Blues – Cassavetes first major Hollywood-produced picture – the object of love is what brings about the most damage. Idealistic Jazz leader “Ghost” Wakefield – whose career consists of playing outdoors, with no audience – meets the nobody singer Jess “Princess” Polanski at a party, inviting her to join the group. The two begin a relationship, but quickly find themselves engulfed by unhappiness. Opportunities are spoiled and wasted; the most infamous of which arises out of Jess’s declaration of love to Ghost, after being beaten to the floor by a drunkard, which he violently rejects. Cassavetes characters do not understand what love is, or, at least, they tell themselves they will never understand it. An American echo of Fellini’s I Vitelloni, Too Late Blues is a study of people who are wasted, emotionally and spiritually, left only to hurt one another and wander across the remains of the day. It is not surprising that Scorsese found inspiration in such scenes when making Mean Streets and Taxi Driver.

The Week in Cinema: 01.07 -- 07.07

-- a selection of short-form reviews of films watched this week --

There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

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One of the titans of 21st-century American cinema, There Will Be Blood is a modern exemplum of conflicting ideals, of a world that is at once tipping into a new century, with fresh horizons and new money, and one that dawns on collapse. Such frictions are embodied in the biblical duel of Daniel Plainview (a Kubrick-esque oil miner, played by Daniel Day Lewis) and the sanctimonious wizard Eli Sunday (played with fervour by Paul Dano), men whose realms intersect with the opening of a new drilling site in Southern California, intent as much on wounding the earth as drawing from it every morsel of opportunity. Oil flows throughout Anderson’s film as the imagined, ambrosial currency of future wealth – monetary or spiritual, or both – making monsters of men amidst the roots of capitalism. Plainview’s weakness is an adopted child, H.W., deafened by an erupted oil mine, whose childhood, abandonment and adulthood are witnessed against the polluting of his father’s soul, the paternal frontier otherwise an unconquerable realm. There Will Be Bloodis the triumph of Anderson’s career, a film against which other directors, other writers, will seek to compare themselves in future time. It is terrifying, bone-shuddering cinema.

Yesterday (dir. Danny Boyle, 2019)

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A world without the Beatles? Otherwise the “what if?” premise to Danny Boyle’s latest picture, penned by king-of-schmaltz Richard Curtis. Joyous characters and storytelling sustain a hokey, starry-eyed plot that just about manages to get away with its loose threads and naïve logic. After a twelve-second power cut leaves singer-songwriter Jack Malick hospitalised, he soon achieves fame and success after discovering that he is the only person in the world (or so he thinks …) that remembers the Beatles and their music. Uniquely, not every song is remembered, or at least some only partially – songs remembered in odd moments, often leaping between albums or lyrics. It is kinetic and highly entertaining filmmaking – I found myself laughing out loud more than once – even if the core idea is never probed beyond surface value. Why, I found myself asking, do ‘Coca-Cola’, ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Cigarettes’ also not exist in this world? Such mysterious are not answered, only fed into the global amnesia of the entire setup – we can only assume that if one is forgotten, then logically many other staples of modern culture must also be. Yesterday is a love story, and an infuriatingly conventional one at that. Impossible not to smile though, it is a perfect response to the recent surge of mediocre musical biopics.

dir. Danny Boyle – filmography rated (1994 – present)

13. A Life Less Ordinary (1997)

As the title of Danny Boyle’s third feature might imply, it is not an ‘ordinary’ film by any means, but, in fact, a ‘less [than] ordinary’ one, and considerably so. Undoubtedly the weakest film he has so far delivered, A Life Less Ordinary is a story of two angels sent to earth on a mission to recover a failing love affair, with explosive results. Tedious and overly contrived.

12. The Beach (2000)

Now almost pastiche for ‘gap-year’ adventures, Boyle’s adaptation of Alex Garland’s seminal novel is as intriguing as it is infuriating, a westerner’s experience of Asia for the modern times. Solid performances steady what is, for the most part, a muddled and self-conscious attempt at provocation. Leonardo DiCaprio is great, though. 

11. Trance (2013)

Trance is undeniably entertaining – glitzy, dazzling, mind-spinning work – only, and regrettably, too intelligent for its own good. The retrieval of a misplaced Goya painting, by way of hypnotherapy, plays into the central conceit; it is here that some of the film’s most curious scenes develop, James McAvoy driving or walking along imagined roads, seeking, in the depths of his troubled subconscious, to grasp the clue to the painting’s location. Peppered with technicolour radiance and brutal, macho violence, Boyle’s ingredients merge into a gloopy soup of incoherence. 

10. Millions (2004)

A suitcase filled with £265,000 drops from the sky in yet another “what if?” movie, only now looking to the traditional, family fable as its premise. Imaginative and warm-hearted, this entirely unpretentious film is worth revisiting.

9. Yesterday (2019)

Joyous characters and storytelling sustain a hokey, starry-eyed movie that just about manages to get away with loose threads and naïve logic. Boyle directs a Richard Curtis-penned script with typical zeal and enthusiasm – kinetic sequences appear aglow with their own euphoric glee – following the life of singer-songwriter Jack Malick, who finds fame and success after discovering he is the only person on earth (or so he thinks …) that remembers the Beatles and their music. I couldn’t help but feel that any band could have substituted into this narrative, but it works, nevertheless, as reminder of our shared, cultural heritage. Impossible not to smile through, even with a little help from its jukebox anthems.

8. Steve Jobs (2015)

I watched Steve Jobs on an aeroplane a few years ago, and loved it from start to finish. I admittedly came to it late, having missed its release in cinemas. Boyle directs a gargantuan script from Aaron Sorkin (Moneyball, The Social Network) with confidence and flair – tracking the Apple-megalomaniac’s career across a triad of product opening nights – with Michael Fassbender, Seth Rogan and Kate Winslet (who is particularly good) starring. A highly unusual biopic, but just a big saggy.

7. Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Loosely adapted from the novel Q & A by Indian author Vikas Swarup, Slumdog Millionaire marks another feel-good picture in his career, as well as a sleeper hit financially. Acclaimed in almost every category, the film was nominated for ten Academy awards, winning 8 – best director for Boyle, of course – despite controversies circulating around its portrayal of Indian society and treatment of young actors. I spent many years having only seen 100 minutes of its 120-minute runtime, despite it being a film of breathless, imaginative thrill. 

6. T2 Trainspotting (2017)

A long-awaited sequel to 1996’s Trainspotting, T2 continues twenty years after the events of the original, a sense of lateness conveyed in the age, damage and floundering of its heroin-marred characters. I had to watch this twice to properly enjoy it, and once I had, it struck me as one of the most inventive and emotional films of the year. A feast of nostalgia, with enough freshness to keep it buoyed afloat, T2 is a worthy companion to its timeless original.

5. 127 Hours (2010)

One of a few Danny Boyle films that I have watched four-or-five times, with numerous people, and still experience the same goose-bump excitement with each viewing. Produced in the wake of his Oscar-success, 127 Hours is a passion project about canyoneer Aron Ralston, who, after getting trapped by a boulder in an isolated slot canyon in Blue John Canyon, Utah, is forced to take extreme measures. Intimate as it is horrifying, the film descends into a type of dream diary – Ralston (played by James Franco) imagines being on a reality television show, debating with himself as to how he ended up between a rock and a hard place. Golden filmmaking.

4. Shallow Grave (1994)

The directorial debut of Danny Boyle – starring Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, and Ewan McGregor, also in his first role – draws inspiration from early Coen-brothers’ work, whilst also, and more importantly, standing on its own feet as a cinematic accomplishment. In a year of successful, cult movies, Shallow Grave still resonates today. It is an extraordinary and macabre study of how people deal with terrible situations and the terrible consequences that can unfold out of it. A small, rough-cut gem.

3. 28 Days Later … (2002)

Society collapses under the weight of a zombie apocalypse, Jim (Cillian Murphy) awaking in a hospital, alone – preserved from the outside in mirror-image of John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids – and left to wander an abandoned London, still, with the exception of “missing poster” flutters and drifting money. 28 Days Later … draws from, and ultimately exceeds, its ‘zombie-genre’ inspirations, engaging ideas of family and love within its digital-grain landscape. Featuring an unforgettable score from John Murphy (also the collaborator for Sunshine), as well as an ending unlike any other, it has bloomed into one of my favourite films of the 00’s. Meditative, gritty and terrifying.

2. Sunshine (2007)

Seated at a distance from Bladerunner, Planet of the Apes, and maybe glimpsed on the horizon of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sunshine is a story about one presence in space little noticed, or reflected upon by the medium, that of our sun (in this case, whose light is dying). Set in 2057, the film charts the expedition of an international crew aboard Icarus II, contracted with reigniting this solar body. En route, the original ship is discovered, since transformed into a kind of interstellar quasi-church for the evangelical Pinbacker, the devil of the outer heavens. Theology and science intersect in this zero-gravity environment – fantastically rendered by computer graphic imagery – in what looks to be a reflection on the human condition, our relation to a greater body that is ultimately beyond ourselves. Not dissimilar to 28 Days Later …, Sunshine holds a very nostalgic place in my heart. It’s concluding line is similarly engrained: “So if you wake up one morning, and it’s a particularly beautiful day, you’ll know we made it … okay, I’m signing out.’

1. Trainspotting (1996)

Edinburgh is a heroin-nest of small tragedies in Danny Boyle’s supercharged film, adapted from Irvine Welsh’s novel of the same name. Taking drugs is a preoccupation that, like participants of ‘trainspotting’ itself, makes absolute and perfect sense, but to onlookers appears somewhat pointless. It is such a rationale that inspires the cadence of Boyle’s film, a sequence of peaks and troughs, highs and lows that navigate opportunities, failures and descents into the abyss of squalor. Trainspotting, with its bedrock of pop-culture music, Scottish landmarks and youth subculture, channels a spirit of life exempt of glory or glamour, a portrait of the world ricocheting between living and dying. One of the most singular and unsettling British films ever directed, perhaps my favourite.

Top 12 films of 2019 so far, and 5 worst ... [midyear review]

Best of the year, so far:

1.   Sunset, trans. ‘Napszállta’ (dir. László Nemes, 2018)

Roots of nightmares, perfectly embodied.

2.   Burning, trans. ‘버닝’ (dir. Lee Chang-dong, 2018)

Hunger and masculinity in dazzling South-Korean masterpiece.

3.   High Life (dir. Claire Denis, 2018)

Terrifying cosmic disturbances.

4.   Eighth Grade (dir. Bo Burnham, 2018)

One of the best coming-of-age films of late.

5.   Border, trans. ‘Gräns’ (dir. Ali Abbasi)

Eco-magic pastoral.

6.    If Beale Street Could Talk (dir. Barry Jenkins, 2018)

7.    Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2019)

8.    The Sisters Brothers (dir. Jacques Audiard, 2018)

9.    Island of the Hungry Ghosts (dir. Gabrielle Brady, 2018)

10.  Destroyer (dir. Karyn Kusama, 2018)

11.  The Endless Film, trans. ‘La Pelicula Infinita’ (dir. Leandro Listorti, 2018)

12.  Madeline’s Madeline (dir. Josephine Decker, 2018)

Worst of the year, so far:

1.   Under the Silver Lake (dir. David Robert Mitchell, 2018)

Uncompromisingly dreadful. Mitchell serves up a 130–minute comic spree of jumbled, criss-crossed events that loosely connect to a mysterious disappearance (is it even relevant by the end?) Unlike It Follows – an otherwise mature, original standard of horror – UTSL is an incompetent, portentous and lazy tome that can at no point buoy itself up. It’s a shame the waters were never that deep to start with.

2.   All is True (dir. Kenneth Branagh, 2018)

Dull, stupid and Branagh-driven drivel.

3.   Dumbo (dir. Tim Burton, 2019)

Over-budgeted remake, with no magic.

4.   Fyre (dir. Chris Smith, 2019)

CNN-stylised, bland filmmaking about rich people that no one cares about.

5.   Jellyfish (dir. James Gardner, 2018)

            Seaside poverty indulgence.

The Week in Cinema: 24.06 -- 30.06

-- a selection of short-form reviews of films watched this week --

Moneyball (dir. Bennett Miller, 2011)

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What is an American movie? Or, rather, who is America in the movies? I don’t expect to have an immediate answer. American movies, particular that of American ‘sports movies’, tap into something of a national zeitgeist – a will, or willingness, to find success in a world that has no limit to anyone but the protagonist themselves. It is this concept of limitation that compels such figures to perform as they do, (or to be written as they are), often at their own peril, open to private loss, and often without the ability to turn around. To lose is to wake up alone and damaged, whereas to win is to rise as the hero of your own dream, to be loved, wanted and alive. There are losers due to the prior existence of such winners, and there are winners because American is a site of accomplishment and victory – sport is a muscle relief to a history of ‘greatness’, a reminder that the body is still capable of delivering anything. You do not need to be American to watch American movies, (it is the only viewpoint I have,) but the sense of myth and belief in the individual can be sourced by anyone with an understanding of film, or enjoyment of the screen. American sport, in cinema, is an imaginary game as much as it is a real one, played on grass or concrete. You look to see, and cinema simply fills in the rest. America is as bold as colour as any. Moneyball is an American movie – in every sense, in every scene – captivating from the start to finish by virtue of that very fact. Brad Pitt (starring as one-time child star, now coach of Oakland Athletics baseball team) and Jonah Hill (assistant GM Peter Brand), confronted by limited finances and growing pressures to compete with a rigged industry, employ a sabermetric approach – players assessed on a statistical, numerical-percentage basis – to guarantee future success. Success and defeat are felt on the pitch and at home, Beane aspiring to be a good father as far as he can be an adequate coach. Miller, as later satisfied with Foxcatcher, looks to this myth of America – a portrait of life as a business, with only winners and losers – and, alongside Zaillian and Sorkin’s script, elevates it to heroic levels. Moneyball is at once Greek tragedy and American sports, a tale of capitalism and a tale of the everyman.

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2018)

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Shakespeare’s Coriolanus finds a contemporary landscape in Ben Wheatley’s latest tragicomedy, a household farce slowly burning on familial dissent, loathness and unearthed sin. Colin (played by Utopia and Kill List’s Neil Maskell, a regular to Wheatley) gathers together his scattered family in a Dorset estate for New Year’s celebrations, only to find animosities restoked with the invitation, unbeknownst to him and others, of their estranged, playboy-brother, David. Such circumstances colour the occasion with an apocalyptic, theatrical shade – one that any audience member belonging to a family can grimace at, knowingly – and the “family as a body” motif, borrowed from Shakespeare, corrupted and dismembered throughout. Wheatley is a master of low-budget grandness, director, screenwriter and editor (the latter maybe the most impressive of all) in a glorious display of his talent. Far from the heights of Kill List, but brighter than his previous feature, Free Fire, Wheatley delivers another successful, fluid piece of cinematic art.

Anima (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2019)

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Thom Yorke falls in love on a Prague tramway, whilst cascading into a dreaming sleep, lurching between cinematic set pieces, chance encounters and Chaplin-esque landscapes. Filling the void since Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 release Phantom Thread, Anima works as a companion piece to Yorke’s newest album, an extended ‘dream video’ featuring a triad of songs from the collection: ‘Not the News’, ‘Traffic’ and ‘Dawn Chorus’. In search of a woman glimpsed on a train (played by his real-life partner, Dajana Roncione), Yorke comically slumbers from scene to scene, the piece reuniting him with dance choreographer Damien Jalet – who also worked on Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake last year. It is a tender darkness visited by this sleepwalking figure, as if freshly wounded from the slight contact at the onset. Yung’s anima finds transcendental expression as dance and film cohere uniquely to the breath of Yorke’s electronic soundscape, music in/to which you are lost, not unlike the majority of Radiohead’s output, a mood of repetition and sombre refrain. Anima (much like Wim Wenders’ Pina or Suspiria) demonstrates the ease and edge by which dance and cinema align themselves, the visual platform a stable in which to inhabit sense and memory.