Worst of 2016 - End of Year Report

Here we go with the dregs. Actually, that's a bit harsh. Some of these aren't as rubs as recent years.

1. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
A boring, muddled mess with too much going on and a typically over-egged, twitchy performance from Jesse Eisenberg. What a cock he is.

2. Grimsby (2016)
One giggle and lots of eye rolls. More expected from Sacha Baron Cohen. He can do, and has done, better.

3. Suicide Squad (2016)
Like many of the films in this list, it could have been better. Star power in Will Smith, sauce in Margot Robbie, interesting (though dated) concept. But it fell on its arse.

4. Dragon Blade (2015)
Bollocks nonsense from Jackie Chan, attempting to be earnest again. In its favour, it has Adrien Brody heavy-hamming through his make-up. To its detriment, it has John Cusack playing straight through his.

5. Man of Steel (2013)
Back of the net! That's a hat-trick for DC films. A hat-trick of shite. Admittedly, for me, this is slightly better than the two above but not by much. Henry Cavill could put me to sleep, even if he was miming massaging a dolphin with mayonnaise while dressed as Yoda.

6. Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008)
Dull Vincent Cassel vehicle about a realy-lifey French crim. Formulaic and unnecessary.

7. Kill List (2011)
Odd having films by the same director in my best AND worst list, but hats off to the polarising oeuvre of Ben Wheatley. This was surprisingly lauded in some critical circles. Buggered if I know why.

8. The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
Another unnecessary and boring film. If the best thing to be said of a film is it had a great gnu stampede, you're clutching a bit.

9. Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)
Aside from a winning performance from Hugh Grant, this didn't have much going for it. It wasn't terrible, I just couldn't give a monkey's about any of the characters. Jog on, you rich bastards.

10. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
Not all Japanese anime is good. Lesson learnt.

Best of 2016 - End of Year Report

Once again, time for the ten best films I saw, for the first time, in 2016. Not the best selection, to be fair, but I'm sure I missed some belters.

1. Slow West (2015)
As the title says, slow. But somehow, immensely watchable with some great images and memorable characters.

2. A Bigger Splash (2015)
Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton are near-perfect in this. I haven't seen Fiennes give a better performance. This is an odd film that kept popping back into my mind months after I'd seen it.

3. Suburra (2015)
Glistening, strobing, throbbing. And that's only one scene. Italian mafia tale with added gloss and raunch.

4. High-Rise (2015)
Bonkers stab at social strata with Hiddleston in a role suited to his talents.

5. The Revenant (2015)
Gruelling and old-fashioned revenge western. Di Caprio earned his biscuits here.

6. Marshland (2014)
Spanish murder mystery set in the swamps of Andalucia.
A tense and well-paced little gem.

7. Arrival (2016)
Smart, thoughtful and well directed 'Time-Fi' by Denis Villeneuve.

8. The Nice Guys (2016)
Great fun. Nice to see the funny side of Crowe.

9. Doctor Strange (2016)
Just pipped it's bigger brother in the MCU. I think the cast in particular raise the Doctor just above the more crowd-pleasing effort below.

10. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Marvel's tent-pole for 2016 was assured and exciting, setting up some tasty Infinity Wars in the future.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Jan 1st 2017. Rogue One. First film of the new year. This was great fun but very morbid. Shakespeare would have been happy with the litany of corpses thrown up here. It made me think of this from Hamlet:

O proud death,
What feast is toward in thine eternal cell,
That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast, struck?

Yeah, OK, fair enough - I looked it up on t'internet but I think it applies. 

The new band of 'misfits' was excellent casting, especially Riz Ahmed and Donnie Yen (below, channeling Zatoichi). Forest Whitaker had a slight whiff of ham about him, though. The oddest 'performances' were from the CGI characters, Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia. The VFX tech isn't quite out of the Uncanny Valley yet. The droid, K-2S0, had all the best lines, many apparently ad-libbed by the man under the suit, Alan Tudyk (him outa Firefly).

The writers nicely sidestepped most links to the main Star Wars series, even going so far as to cut a line off from the aforementioned wit-bot: "I've got a bad feeling abou....." "Quiet!" But they did need some nod-backs and it was nice to see Vader, especially at the end doing some high level Vadering with sabre and force magic shit.

I read somewhere that Jyn Erso's character arc is pretty unbelievable. When asked if she can live with Imperial flags flying across the galaxy, she says, "It's not a problem if you don't look up." Admittedly, it doesn't take much to change her from this Solo-esque bystander (Finn in The Force Awakens flirts with this ethos too) into a wannabe martyr. I didn't have a problem with the mood swing - I think Mads Mikkelsen as her father plays a vital part in her transformation. Incidentally, I'm not sure if her arc was a battle cry for the anti-Drumpf, anti-Brexit, anti-any shit-stain right-winger scummage (Murdoch, Abbot, Dutton, Hanson, Bolt, Jones, etc) that has floated to society's surface, but I kind of hope it was. 

Back to the film. The build up to the destruction of Jedha (above) was one of the best first acts of recent years, in any kind of film. And the final sortie at Scarif was very well-juggled and brisk, though ultimately bleak. Kudos to the writers/director for pulling it off. I'll end with Gareth Edwards explaining the process to Empire magazine:

I think there was an early version [where they didn’t die] in the screenplay. And it was just assumed by us that we couldn't do that, they're not going to let us [kill everyone], so let's try and figure out how this ends where that doesn't happen. And then everyone read that and there was just this feeling of, “they've got to die, right? Can we?” And Kathy (Kennedy) and everyone at Disney were like, “yeah, it makes sense. I guess they have to, because they're not in A New Hope”. And so from that point on, we had the license. And I kept waiting for someone to go, “you know what, could we just film an extra scene where we see Jyn and Cassian, they're okay and they're on another planet”, and la la la. And [it] never ever came, no one ever gave us that note, and so we got to do it.