Film Shapes

The Favourite  is a film set in the reign of Queen Anne of Great Britain sometime around the start of the 18th Century. It's directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek director of  Dogtooth  and  The Lobster , among others, and stars Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Nicholas Hoult. All of these talented bastards hit the back of the net but the writers - Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara - and the cinematographer - Robbie Ryan - are the unsung water-carriers here. The script is crackling, especially the dialogue between Stone's Abigail and Hoult's Harley, a prime example of which below: Favour is a breeze that shifts direction all the time. Then in a instant you're back sleeping with a bunch of scabrous whores wondering whose finger's in your arse. But it's not only the dialogue that scores. The pacing of the scenes, unlike many period dramas, snaps along and the action travels nicely around the mansion, making the location a character in itself (Ab...

So Merv and I caught  Vice  at the Luna last week and I was chuffed to hear it was showing in the 'new' screens just up Oxford street. (Bonus review - mostly fine, smallish theatre but the seats didn't allow for any spreading, very narrow at the knee area). So, the film. Right after it I think I was riding on a wave of anti-neo-con sentiment, happy to sneer at all the U.S. Republican shithousery. But isolating the film itself took a bit longer and I realised that, aside from its politics and its prosthetics, it's not very good. It's timeline seemed scattershot rather than inventively fractured. The comedic side dishes mostly fell flat. The central idea that Cheney was the real, insidious power behind a raft of evil deeds is not really news and adding in the Unitary Executive Theory angle was perhaps a stretch, considering Nixon had probably tried fiddling this years before. Christian Bale as Cheney is immense, helped in no small part by the amazing prosthet...

Now this has been quite painful. A couple of real turd pickles in this list. Stay clean people. 10.  Ready Player One  (2018) From the book by Spielberg sycophant, Ernest Cline, this is a thousand island dressing of a film, sitting near the top of the nostalgiabation genre. Functional at best. 9.  The Shape of Water  (2017) Ticking almost every 'worthy' box but sadly avoiding the 'original story' one, del Toro dangled his bait and awards committees around the world devoured it. Disappointing shite. 8.  Bright  (2017) Alien Nation  rip off with Big Willy unconvincingly going through the motions. Nice ideas but badly executed. 7.  Kingsman: The Golden Circle  (2017) Way too pleased with itself. Nonsense masquerading as cool. 6.  Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom  (2018) Boring and derivative. This series would need to set up a love triangle involving the two leads and an Ankylosaurus for me to stay interested. 5.  J...

Here are the best 10 films that I saw in 2018. Some may have been released earlier and repeat viewings aren't included. I hope you passionately concur or violently disagree. Or somewhere in between. Soap up your end? (Oh, and I'm controversially trying a 'scroll down to the top' style this year. Wish me luck!) 10.  In the Fade  (2017) Gripping German terrorism drama starring the mesmerising Diane Kruger. This one makes it primarily for her performance but it's a solid film nonetheless. 9.  Deadpool 2  (2018) I reckon this is better than the first one, more assured and funnier too. 'Fridging' aside, it's full of shits and giggles. The X-force mission is a peach. 8.  You Were Never Really Here  (2017) Joaquin Phoenix knocks the bollocks off this one. In a landscape of superheroes, he pares it all back to the grim reality of violence and humanity's wreckage. And his hammer gets bloodier than Thor's. 7.  Get Out  (2017) Social drama mee...

We got along to the Luna a few nights back to see Sorry to Bother You, a swingeing satire on capitalism and consumerism with at least two levels dedicated to how the modern day workforce is not far off the slavery of old. When I say two levels, I mean it sets out its primary proxy in a pretty standard way, that being a company called WorryFree that offers (unpaid) jobs for life. But then, around the start of the third act, it turns into full blown Cronenbergian body-horror. This is where the second level kicks in, and for fear of spoilers, we'll save that chat for the podcast below. This is the first film by director Boots Riley, a musician, and his different background shows a bit in the style, with rougher takes, different edit touches here and there. This bloke has a lot of stuff to get off his chest and he does so in an absurdist, mostly witty way. There are plenty of films where the lead pretends to be someone they're not, for various reasons. In Sorry to Bother You...