Best Films of 2018

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

A Holfilm countdown of the top 20 films released in UK Cinemas during the previous year.

20. Widows

19. The Miseducation of Cameron Post

18. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

17. Cold War

16. Avengers: Infinity War

15. BlackKklansman

14. Mission Impossible: Fallout

13. The Square

12. First Reformed

11. Sorry To Bother You

 

10. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Coens’ anthology Western series plays out like a greatest hits package of all their previous back catalogue. It’s made up of five instalments, each one taking place in the rootin’ tootin’ Wild West but varying greatly in style and tone. Ranging from cartoonish Raising Arizona-esque wackiness, to weightier tales that have more of the thought-provoking solemnity of Inside Llweyn Davies or No Country For Old Men. There’s something for everyone here, with each differing vignette catering for a range of tastes. The most affecting is the fourth segment, The Gal Who Got Rattled, in which the Coens manage to utilise all of their best assets to make a short and bittersweet tale of love and loss that’s up there with the best of anything they’ve ever done.

 

9. Annihilation

An eerily beautiful sci-fi thriller that sees Natalie Portman lead an all-female scientific expedition into a strange quarantined zone known as ‘The Shimmer’. The Shimmer itself is a glowing iridescent region in which the team face all manner of surreal and bizarre encounters. The zone causes the cells of everything inside it to mutate, leading to shifting landscapes, time manipulation and haunting scenes involving mutated fauna such as alligators and a bear. The climax where Portman confronts a mysterious alien entity in a crater below a lighthouse is the highlight and one of the most original and memorable sci-fi encounters in recent years.

 

8. Lady Bird

An incredibly well directed, semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale from Greta Gerwig. It stars Saoirse Ronan as a strong-willed teenager growing up in Sacramento, California during the early 00’s. What separates Lady Bird from similar films in the genre is its fast-paced direction that manages to capture the unsentimental, fleeting nature of youth and create an authentic snapshot of a young woman during a particular time in her life. Snappy dialogue, great performances and genuine heart-felt emotion all come together perfectly to create an assured debut for Gerwig and a coming-of-age movie that’s here to stay.

 

7. Isle of Dogs

As with any Wes Anderson release, expectations were going to be sky-high, this was his return to stop-motion animation, his love letter to Japanese pop culture, his homage to directors like Miyazaki and Kurosawa and the return of a bundle of his incredible cast of contributing actors. Unsurprisingly, it delivered on every front, Isle of Dogs is packed full of charm, it looks incredible and has a heart-warming tale at its core, centring on Anderson-newcomer Bryan Cranston, on grisly form as hostile alpha-dog, Chief as he helps a young boy on his quest to find his pet dog.

 

6. Mandy

Mandy stars Nicolas Cage as a lumberjack whose girlfriend has been abducted and killed by a satanic biker gang. His quest for revenge has him forging his own axes, crushing skulls, fighting demons in chainsaw battles and snorting lumps of cocaine as big as a fist off of the armour of dead demons. The best thing about Mandy is that it’s even better than it sounds, with Panos Cosmatos turning the whole thing into a strange hallucinatory experience, eerily soundtracked by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, in what was to be his final score. Nick Cage is utilised brilliantly, he’s given the freedom to turn his unhinged performance all the way up to eleven and transcends it into a raw and primal masterclass of raging overacting.

 

5. Roma

A Netflix release that is absolutely crying out to be seen on the biggest screen possible. From the gorgeous opening shot of water being washed a set of stone tiles to the heart-breaking climax on the beach, Roma is a gorgeous watch and a mesmerising experience. To read the synopsis you’d think Roma was just a small-scale family drama, but in fact it is anything but. Stunning cinematography, emotional gut-punches, terrific performances, along with Alfonso Cuarón’s signature, grandiose, one-take tracking shots are what give Roma it’s majesty and significance. It’s hard to tell whether Roma will stand the test of time and will still be talked about for years to come, but it certainly has that feeling. A deeply personal and thoughtful film from a masterful director at the height of his powers.

 

4. Phantom Thread

If Phantom Thread is to be the film that gives powerhouse actor of a generation, Daniel Day-Lewis his final cinematic role before he enters retirement, then what a film to bow out on. Lewis is reunited with the incredibly talented auteur Paul-Thomas Anderson and stars as the brilliantly named Reynolds Woodcock, a highly-celebrated dressmaker in 1950’s London, as he falls for a young waitress by the name of Alma (Vicky Krieps). The film is as meticulously and gracefully crafted as one of Woodcock’s immaculate dresses, weaving together romantic tension and humour with razor-sharp dialogue and a ghostly, dark undercurrent that courses throughout the film. The film isn’t the Daniel Day-Lewis show you’d think it might be either, instead being a triple header of vibrant and spiky performances with both Krieps and Lesley Manville holding their own against the triple Oscar-winning method-acting colossus.

 

3. Zama

In Zama, Lucreida Martel gives us a solid indictment of imperialism centring on a pompous and pathetic 18^th century Corregidor confined to the arse-end of Spanish-colonised Argentina. Don Diego de Zama is a forlorn and broken man who wears the weight of the world on his gaunt face, we follow his attempts to maintain a shred of dignity as he desperately endeavours to be transferred back home to Buenos Aires to be with his family. Martel turns Zama’s purgatorial nightmare into a hazy hallucinatory descent into madness, with gorgeous cinematography and an eclectic soundscape that mixes ambience with Brazilian surf rock. A unique and mesmerising film that isn’t easily forgotten.

 

2. Hereditary

Following the likes of The Babadook, It Follows and The Witch, Hereditary is the latest in a batch of recent character-driven horror flicks that have aimed to transcend the genre by being more than just a barrage of jump scares and becoming great films in their own right. Hereditary is absolutely terrifying and most of the chills from the gripping, condensed family drama at films core as well as the incredible central performance from Toni Colette. The film opens on the funeral of the family’s grandmother with an imposing sense of menace that director Ari Aster manages to sustain and heighten throughout. The fear it manages to conjure is intense, unrelenting and completely sickening.  Watching it for the first time was one of the most nauseating and visceral experiences I have ever had in the cinema and I loved every second.

 

1. You Were Never Really Here

The most sensitive and tender-hearted portrayal of a ruthless hitman you’re ever likely to see. Adapted from a novel by Jonathon Ames, Lynn Ramsey really gets us under the skin of damaged, big-bearded, gun-for-hire Joe, experiencing every agonizing ounce of pain brought on through the bouts of violence he encounters along with his past emotional traumas. We are given fleeting insights into his past through momentary flashbacks, along with Jonny Greenwood’s throbbing score, they combine to create a truly, gripping heart-breaking and affecting character study. Joe is brilliantly brought to life by Joaquin Phoenix, who fills him out with a brutish physicality and a shattered vulnerability. The film is incredibly lean and unbearably tense, the short run-time means Ramsey cuts this thriller down to the bare bones with every second feeling necessary and utterly captivating.

Roma ★★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

Alfonso Cuarón is a director known for making technically spectacular films that are begging to be seen on the biggest screen possible. And if you’ve read anything about the release of his latest, Roma, you’ll know that anyone that’s seen it agrees; it’s a film that needs to be seen in a movie theatre. Prior to its release though, the film’s distribution rights were acquired by Netflix which has made seeing it in its desired format a difficult task with a very limited run in UK cinemas, with some areas having no screenings at all. This then meant that come opening weekend I, like many others desperate to see the film but couldn’t find a cinema showing it, had to bite the bullet and submit to watching it at home on my laptop via the online streaming behemoth.

Given that Roma is an intimate family drama on a much smaller-scale to his two previous films, you could be persuaded into thinking that it would be more suited to view on the smaller screen. But as it begins, you realise this is absolutely not the case and its more intimate setting doesn’t make it any less grandiose than his previous films like Gravity or Children of Men. From the tranquil opening shot of water washing over a set of monochrome tiles, you realise that Roma really is something special. The rich cinematography and the gorgeous gliding camerawork gives it an ethereal quality that transfixes you, it is the cinematic equivalent of eating a Galaxy Caramel.

Having since seen it on the big screen I can attest that this is definitely the best way to view it, but equally it wouldn’t have been funded if it weren’t for the Netflix dollar so Que será, será. Roma is a deeply personal black-and-white film made by an auteur director that resembles the more intimate aspects of his own upbringing, and in this respect, it shares a lot in common with Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War which was also released earlier this year. But rather than focus on the lives of his immediate family, Cuarón chooses to centre his story on a woman named Cleo, a character based on his own family’s housekeeper.

At first Cleo’s role within the narrative is rather passive, we begin by quietly observing the more dramatic elements of the plot through her watchful and considerate eyes. Be these the fickle arguments of the middle-class family she serves or a volatile street riot breaking out between rebels on the streets of Mexico City (the latter being one of a number of bold set-pieces that really showcase the film’s hefty production value). But first-time actress Yalitza Aparicio imbues her with real nuanced warmth and genuine charm and there’s never a point that it doesn’t feel like her story.

Her understated performance and the gradual pace are almost poetic, leading you into a subdued and tranquil state that then leave you fully exposed for the emotional sucker punches that are to come towards the film’s final act and believe me, when they hit they hit hard.  A series of traumatic events lead to a heart-breaking climax on a beach, the utterance of one line in particular being profoundly moving, reducing me to a complete bubbling wreck from which I still haven’t recovered.

It’s hard not to fall for Roma, it has a lot of the magical elements of classical Hollywood and also feels prescient and timeless. It’s an award-worthy film that is genuinely deserving of everything will undoubtedly win, beautiful to look at and a genuine cinematic spectacle.

Holfilm Top 6 Horror Films

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

As Halloween approaches, Holfilm presents the top 6 horror flicks:

 

6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

When it comes to immersive horror, there aren’t many films as purely visceral as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It opens with that classic horror premise, a group of unsuspecting teenagers stumbling upon a strange house in the rural outback. But it doesn’t take long before it begins its descent into hell. There have been multiple attempts to find deeper meaning in Director Tobe Hooper’s intentions with the film, but it works best as an unmediated cinematic embodiment of depraved, primal fear. The lack of any context as to who Leatherface and his family are is what makes them so terrifying, they become true monsters that would go onto inspire countless immoral horror villains for years to come.

 

5. Carrie

Carrie is the Brian de Palma-directed, Stephen King-adapted supernatural horror that is as equal parts tragic as it is terrifying. Sissy Spacek is hypnotic in the titular role, her gaunt, wide-eyed face perfectly capturing the horrors of the overwhelming nature of adolescence and the tragic loss of innocence that comes from the cruel bullying of her high-school peers. The pig’s blood-soaked prom night climax is masterful, but it’s the harrowing final shot of that hand grasping from the gravestone that really sticks in your mind and leaves you in cold sweats for weeks to come.

 

4. Suspiria

Dario Argento’s 1977 cult classic is a visually stunning gore-fest of vibrantly coloured excess. One of the defining films of the Italian giallo subgenre, Suspiria is the story of an American ballet dancer who makes her way to Germany to join a precarious dance school, the owners of which may or may not be 100-year-old witches. The film is soaked in as much blood as it is with the gaudy primary coloured lighting that drenches each frame. The craft that went into each shot is remarkable, from the garish set designs to the beautifully haunting cinematography, you can pause it any moment and be captivated by the striking and gorgeous imagery. It also has one of the greatest horror soundtracks ever recorded, courtesy of Italian prog-rock band Goblin which compliments the film perfectly.

 

3. The Wicker Man

The disturbing showdown between Edward Woodward’s puritanical policeman and the pagan inhabitants of remote Scottish island, Summerisle is a sinister slow-burner. We all know what’s coming, but the reason the macabre ending is so fearsome is because of how good the previous sixty minutes are in terms of entrancing and completely unsettling you. The freaky folk-inspired goings on at the island, the dubious naked worship rituals of the populace and their charming leader played by Christopher Lee are all eerily menacing in their absurdness as well as their familiarity.

 

2. Don’t Look Now

Venice has never looked more terrifying than in the late Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 film, starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as a haunted couple that move to the city following the grisly death of their young daughter. Roeg messes with the concept of time and uses the recurring motifs of red coats, water and reflections to create a cyclical narrative that enraptures and unsettles in equal measure. And the ending, where Sutherland’s John Baxter confronts the red-coated figure he’s been having premonitions of, is one of the most horrifying and unexpected jump scares ever put on film.

 

1. The Shining

The Daddy of all Horror Films. An obvious pick for the best horror movie ever made, but I’d also call it a contender for one of the best films of all-time. The haunting score, the unhinged central performances from Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall, the imposing set design of the Outlook Hotel and the even more disturbing behind-the-scenes tales of the gruelling shoot and Kubrick torturing his actors. Every aspect comes together perfectly to create a truly chilling and visually stunning film that is an absolute masterpiece of the gene and the king of horror cinema.

“You are the caretaker, you’ve always been the caretaker.”

Climax ★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

You know exactly what you’re signing up for going in to see a Gaspar Noe film: technically brilliant camerawork, a cast of thoroughly dislikeable characters and all manner of dark and vile subject manner skilfully engineered to leave an unbearably sour taste in your mouth. And in this regard Climax is standard Noe fair, in terms of shock-value, it features class A drug abuse, incest, self-mutilation, people being set on fire and children getting trapped in cupboards. But still, by Noe’s offensive standards, Climax manages to feel tame in comparison to his past works and it’s definitely his most accessible film to date.

This is helped by the subject manner and its simple premise, Climax is about a French dance troupe holed up in a remote snowy cabin during their final rehearsal before heading off to tour America. Early on we’re treated to one of their dance routines, this is soundtracked to a thumping remix of Supernature by Cerrone and breathtakingly directed by Noe, it really is pretty spectacular, and it’s so well directed you’ll wonder why Noe never turned his hand to filming dance choreography before.

It also opens with the classic Noe title sequence, where the credits roll before the film has even started and the title-card doesn’t appear until its finished. It’s all done very abrasively with the garish epilepsy-inducing names of the crew being blasted at the screen in the Futura type-face that’s now become his trademark, all backed up to some galvanising electro. All this, along with the accompanying documentary-style interviews with the cast, sets us up tantalisingly with a very provocative introduction to what is of course intended to be a very provocative film. We can then almost hear Noe’s giggles as the central premise is revealed, being that one of the dancers has only gone and spiked the communal punch-bowl with LSD!!

There’s a slight feeling of a whodunnit pot-boiler as we struggle to determine who the culprit is, but rather than go all Agatha Christie, Climax delves you straight into the delirious intensity of what turns out to be a pretty exceptionally wild night. His directorial traits are put to really good use here: the confrontational direction, the lurid lighting and the swirling topsy-turvy camerawork all serve a purpose to get you deep inside the dazed heads of the party-goers on this intense and hallucinatory bad trip.

Proceedings take the turn from bad to worse and to the utterly depraved pretty quickly, the camera ambivalently floating from one sordid event to the next, in a way that has you squirming in your seat but equally not being able to look away. Even taking all this into account, it somehow doesn’t seem to have the nastiness of a lot of his previous works. It’s all done so well that it loses a lot of the provocativeness you feel Noe was trying so desperately to instil. Or it could be that the foul unpleasantness or Enter The Void and Irreversible have now numbed me to such an extent that I’m now at a point where I can now just appreciate all the sparky technical vigour in what is clearly a very well made film.

Sofia Boutella is on striking form in what is a very committed lead role, exceling in a standout scene that has her writhing around expressionistically in a performance evoking all the intensity of Isabelle Adjani’s iconic scene in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. There are a number of scenes as dazzling as this in what’s a very bold and brazen film, but it’s Noe’s restraint and his directness that make Climax so enjoyable, an exciting and demented trip down a hedonistic rabbit hole.

BlacKkKlansman ★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

 

Spike Lee has always made films that have managed to perfectly capture the mood and the attitudes of the time that they’re released, so in the era of Trump’s America, it seemed an odd decision for the iconic director to go and make a buddy-cop thriller that’s set in the seventies. But being Spike Lee, there’s a lot more to it than that and despite it’s period setting; it still feels very urgent, politically charged and incredibly relevant.

BlacKkKlansman has been hailed as a return to form for Lee and has been eagerly awaited since it premiered at Cannes, where it was well received and took home the Grand Prix. It features the true story of two cops that managed to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan, which would make it sound all very Mississippi Burning, if it weren’t for the fact that one of these cops was black. The cop in question is undercover detective Ron Stallworth, played by John David Washington, who is then subsequently played by his white partner (Adam Driver), for obvious reasons, when he has his face-to-face meetings with the Klan. The two form a great pairing; Washington and Driver are really good at capturing the conflicted feelings about their jobs and their identity (Driver’s character is Jewish) and the duo have some great chemistry.

The first half of the film is a pretty straightforward and thoroughly entertaining cop drama; it’s gripping as well as being really funny and draws you in to an engaging story that you can’t believe was based on true events. Some of the characters are painted in very broad strokes like the very racist cop or the blundering members of the KKK, but their idiocy does help to highlight how dangerous it is when these idiots actually start to take some form of action.

Entering the second half, the film undertakes a radical change of tone during a scene that contrasts two meetings, one with the white supremacists and another with the local college’s black student union. The merged chants of both white power and black power are overlaid in a powerful scene that really contrasts the differing ideologies behind both political slogans. From there on in, you really start to feel the full force of Spike Lee’s anger and it feels as though he’s using the cop-drama as a platform to directly address Trump.

He isn’t one for subtlety when it comes to putting his message across and there are a few very on-the-nose references to the current president that aren’t so much as a wink to the audience as a jab to the sternum. Overt references to modern political climates in films set in the past can feel jarring and distracting, but in BlacKkKlansman, the parallels he manages to draw are frighteningly accurate which make them all the scarier. It’s a film that feels very important and the final shots that feature recent clips, from Charlottesville and Trump’s subsequent response, show how prescient these issues remain and seeing them in the context of this film makes them so much more affecting than they would otherwise be on the news.

Despite the very clear message, there are still several grey areas that Spike has left to provoke conversations and there are a lot of the contrasting opinions, reminiscent of Do The Right Thing. BlacKkKlansman is an incredibly stirring film that really shakes you and forces you to think about important issues and a solid buddy cop drama as well.

Best Films of 2017

A Holfilm countdown of the top 20 films released in UK Cinemas during the previous year.

20. Logan Lucky

19. The Killing of A Sacred Deer

18. Blade Runner 2049

17. The Death of Stalin

16. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

15. A Ghost Story

14. Toni Erdmann

13. Baby Driver

12. T2: Trainspotting

11. Raw

 

10. The Beguiled

Sofia Coppola’s steamy southern-gothic takes place in the midst of the civil war. It’s a tantalising affair centred on Colin Farrell’s wounded soldier. He’s managed to escape the drudgery of war and found himself held up in the comfort of a straight-laced all girls’ school in the heart of Virginia. The school isn’t short of a few attractive women that haven’t seen a man in a long time and what starts out as a dream come true for the corporal soon turns out be a lot more volatile than he first seemed. Farrell is brilliant, practically licking his lips as he lays on the charm as the fox-like soldier as are Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman, who all put in very complex performances and prove they’re not the prey he had them down for.

 

9. Get Out

A great modern horror, heavily influenced by classics of the genre like Rosemary’s Baby and The Invasion of The Body Snatchers, that stands up with the best of them. Get Out uses classic horror tropes to tell a story about very modern themes and moulds them in such a way that it feels timeless. It has only been out for a year and already feels like a classic that will be talked about for years to come. Not only a hit with the critics, but a huge commercial success and won first-time writer/director Jordan Peele an Oscar for best original screenplay. A great and really emotive central performance from Daniel Kaluuya anchors the film as he takes the horrifying trip to meet the parents from hell. ‘Give me the keys Rose’ will be giving everyone goose bumps for a long while to come.

 

8. The Handmaiden

A mysterious erotic thriller from Oldboy director, Park Chan-wook, The Handmaiden is a labyrinthine maze of a film, full of twists, turns, shocks and second-guesses. It is a story that has been adapted from a novel set in Victorian Britain, but the move to Korea under Japanese rule serves it nicely and the setting makes for some gorgeous architecture and costumes. The plot is as intricately detailed as the set designs, as are the performances, which hold their cards extremely close to their chests until the rugs are consistently pulled from under your feet.

 

7. Dunkirk

Only Christopher Nolan would have had the bonkers idea to try and mess with the idea of time distortion in a WW2 film. Dunkirk is a big budget war film that’s far from conventional and its all the better for it. We’re told three simultaneous stories at the same time: at land, at sea and in the sky, and each take place in different timeframes. Nolan is the master of making big, intelligent blockbusters and Dunkirk, with the help of Hans Zimmer’s pulsating score, creates a truly gripping edge-of-your-seat drama that’s more of a desperate escape film than it is about defeating the Germans.

 

6. Moonlight

The deserved 2017 Oscar winner that gave us a tender and sensitive portrayal of the type of character that isn’t usually afforded one on screen. It’s masterfully told in 3 parts, from when our protagonist is a skinny child, through to a thoughtful teenager and then finally as a big, muscular man. There’s a great scene early on where little Chiron gets taught how to swim by his father figure played by Mahershala Ali. Director, Barry Jenkins shoots the ocean beautifully and manages to retain this feeling of lulling waves throughout, making it a soothing and considered coming-of-age story that’s really well directed and has a great rhythmic flow.

 

5. Mother!

An absolutely mental film that defies any sort of genre classification, what starts off as a gripping family drama quickly tips into horror before descending into such chaotic ridiculousness that it borders on comedy. A very explicitly allegorical film about a woman (known only as Mother), her perfect house, her controlling husband and her soon to be born baby. Darren Aronofsky shoots the proceedings almost entirely from the point of view of the mother, he does so in a way that you can never tell what exactly is going on, or the scale in which things are escalating. Never have I seen a film before that’s managed to capture so well the feeling of a waking nightmare. It’s a film that you’ll either love or hate, but it grabs you by the skin of your neck and doesn’t stop shaking you for its 2 hour duration and then carries on doing so for the next month or so as well.

 

4. La La Land

A wonderfully uplifting musical that won the academy award for best film for all of about 2 seconds. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are perfectly cast as the wannabe jazz musician and actress couple trying to make it in the city of stars. La La Land uses huge extravagant musical numbers to explore very down to earth themes. The songs are great and somehow feel very natural and modern whilst also capturing the essence of the big Gene Kelly-esque musicals of the 50s. La La Land is a magical movie with a wonderful ending that completely leaves you floating away.

 

3. Call Me By Your Name

If you watch films for escapism, then Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s gorgeous Italian romance is the sun-drenched masterpiece you can’t help but fall in love with. It’s the 1980’s set account of Timothee Chalamet’s 17-year-old Elio and his love affair with an older man during a scorching-hot summer as they ride bikes, listen to music, swim in rivers and eat questionably sourced peaches. Every frame is like a work of art and it must have done wonders for Northern Italy’s tourist board. In his previous film, A Bigger Splash, Luca gifted us with the joy of seeing Ralph Fiennes dancing poolside to The Rolling Stones, but here he goes one better, in the form of the potent cinematic cocktail that is: Armie Hammer, a loose fitting blue shirt and The Psychedelic Furs.

 

2. The Florida Project

A bright pastel-coloured look through the eyes of a child living in a motel on the outskirts of Disneyland. The Florida Project, like Sean Baker’s previous film Tangerine, manages to offer a wonderfully intimate and sympathetic look at characters on the fringes of society. And like Tangerine, The Florida Project is a film that doesn’t seem to be about much and will then catch you off guard with a serious emotional sucker punch. Willem Dafoe is incredible as the motel’s weary manager, as is 7-year old Brooklyn Prince and her mother played by Bria Vinaite, who Baker cast from Instagram. Baker deals with very dark themes that are made all the more engaging given they’re told through a child’s perspective. The ending is one of the most heart-wrenchingly emotive climaxes of recent years, which had me blubbering like a child all the way through the credits.

 

1.  Good Time

An exhilarating white-knuckle ride through the streets of New York with Robert Pattinson’s small time crook, Connie Nikas, as he struggles to stay one step ahead of the law following a bank heist gone very badly wrong. Pattinson has the sparks flying in an exhilarating performance that channels the intensity of De Niro and Pacino in the muscular crime films of the seventies. Directors Josh & Benny Safdie use intimate shooting techniques to make us feel like we’re along for the ride, a neon-lit shot of adrenaline to the senses that puts you right in the passenger seat for Connie’s bulldozing getaway through the streets of Queens. The only thing that saddens me about the film is that I’ll never get to experience the pure thrill of watching it again for the first time. An electrifying film that is thoroughly exciting and has your heart racing and your fists clenched from start to finish.

Zama ★★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

 

The opening shot of Zama, which is also the one used on the film’s poster, is one of pure noble imperialist power. It depicts protagonist Don Diego De Zama, a Corregidor in 18^th century South America, looking out to sea dressed in full bureaucratic attire, complete with three-tipped hat and powdered wig. It’s a striking image that look’s like it’s come straight from a Baroque painting. But in the two hours that follow, director Lucredia Martel does everything she can to completely shatter this image, by completely breaking down our protagonist and the representation of colonialism he embodies.

Zama, brilliantly played Daniel Giménez Cacho, is experiencing an existential crisis during a continuous run of terrible luck. A desperately lonely, sexually frustrated and pathetic man, he is trapped in a trivial military position in remote Paraguay, miles away from his family that leaves him hopelessly clinging on to any shred of dignity he’s got left. He commands zero respect from his officer peers, the women he’s trying to have it off with, or any of the indigenous people he is supposed to be ruling and has an almost slapstick ridiculousness about him that plays a fine balance between tragedy and comedy. Everyone he comes across is mocking and undermining his authority, including the environment in which he lives, showcased in a brilliant scene where a llama walks into frame whilst he’s trying to look important during a meeting.

He’s been made countless promises from his superiors that he is to be transferred to Buenos Aires, where his wife and children reside, but as the on-going, brutally unfair events that happen to him progress, it becomes clearer and clearer that this is offer is firmly not on the cards. Each time he is knocked back, he sinks to lower depths as he is gradually chipped away and begins his descent into despairing madness.

The film has the feeling of one of those dreams you might have where however hard you try and do something, you’re met with consistent failure and disappointment. The cinematography and sound design help add to this dreamlike feeling, adding several surreal elements that give it a feeling of a lucid hallucination. The haunting soundscape is oddly contrasted with a Brazilian surf rock soundtrack, which somehow seems to fit perfectly and the lush wide-open vistas of the Paraguayan landscape are beautiful but only serve to unsettle you more and conjures up images of Vietnam war films.

Watching Zama is a hypnotic experience; it really gets you into his head and traps you in his state of purgatorial anxiety and paranoia. It looks and sounds amazing and has an ethereal quality that sticks with you for days after watching it. It’s a scathing indictment of colonialism, but it’s done with a light touch in a way that’s both haunting and a pleasure to watch.

Ant-Man & The Wasp ★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

Marvel have been on a really good run of late, the gargantuan movie studio has been releasing films thick and fast in recent years (AM&TW marks their third release in 2018) and their most recent output hasn’t just seen them garner their biggest commercial successes, but also their biggest hits with the critics as well. The original Ant-Man came out three years ago and visionary director Edgar Wright was famously fired during production, the film that was released was an incredibly middling and bang-average affair that looked more like it had been conceived in a board meeting. Since then, Marvel has been hiring more and more innovative directors and then actually allowing them to have more creative input. This has resulted in some the franchise’s best films, from Scott Derrickson’s mind-bending Doctor Strange, to Taika Waititi’s wacky space opera Thor: Ragnarok and Ryan Coogler’s afrofuturist smash-hit Black Panther.

The Big Daddy though came earlier this year, with the release of Avengers: Infinity War. This was the huge culmination of 18 films and 76 named characters that were all battling it out for a bit of screen time. It made over 2 billion dollars at the global box office and is currently the highest ever grossing superhero film and the fourth highest grossing film of all time. But aside from all this, it managed to beat the odds and astonishingly it managed to be good, and not in a good-for-a-marvel film kind of way either, but in a way that it was really, properly good. So how does the studio follow up the release of their biggest ever film? The answer it would seem is to make one of the smallest.

This isn’t a bad thing at all really and Ant-Man does benefit from the low-stakes and the more compact story lines away from the wider universe of alien raccoons and thunder gods. We begin with Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang on house arrest following the events of Civil War and there’s some sweet scenes with him trying to entertain his daughter whilst he’s stuck at home in his loft. Ant-Man’s USP is that his films are more all-out comedies and they deal with more human-sized problems on less of a grand scale. The extended scenes of Rudd improvising, usually with his mate Luiz (Michael Pena) were quite grating in the first film, but here they find a nice rhythm and they’re integrated better with the action stuff.

There’s also the addition of Evangeline Lily’s The Wasp, which marks the first time a female character has headlined a Marvel film and had their name appear in the title. This looked a bit like Marvel was making a quick grab for some diversity, to jump on the success of last year’s Wonder Woman and that they were just throwing in a female sidekick as a last minute rush to appear progressive. This isn’t the case though and The Wasp is a fully formed character who’s as interesting, funny and important to the story as her male partner.

Ant-Man and The Wasp don’t actually have any superpowers themselves but, like Iron Man or Batman, their powers come from their suits. Their insectile names tell us that they have the ability to shrink down to minuscule sizes, which can be quite limiting in terms of offering inventive action sequences. The pair also have the power to alter the size of other objects too, by zapping things and making them either really big or really small. This is the ability that has the power to inject more comedic potential and more creativity into proceedings and these are the scenes that utilise this are the most memorable. There’s a great sequence that puts these shrinking powers to use, during a car chase through the streets of San Francisco that plays out like Steve McQueen’s Bullitt by way of The Borrowers.

Ant-Man & The Wasp is perfectly fine, it uses what worked with the first one and plays to its strengths. The plot doesn’t manage to remain very coherent but it zips along just fine, clever action sequences and some enjoyable performances make it a fun and flashy, if a bit forgettable, romp.

Mission Impossible: Fallout ★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

1996’s Mission Impossible was never one of those films that was calling out for a multi-billion dollar franchise and 22 years ago, it would have been hard to predict that they’d still be popping out sequels in 2018. But here we are 6 movies in, the series is bigger than ever and it’s showing no signs of stopping. The key to its success has been fairly simple: Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise running about, Tom Cruise jumping off stuff and Tom Cruise hanging from big things that people don’t usually hang from.

The big objects that Tom hangs from are what sell these movies and because of this, they’re heavily publicised. They’re the focus of the trailers, the posters, they’re plastered on buses and billboards and it’s what he talks about on chat shows. In recent instalments the big set pieces have had him hanging off a plane and the Burj Khalifa, but in the case of Fallout, it’s a helicopter and a cliff-face that Tom’s using as precarious climbing frames. You’d think after being constantly bombarded with these images during the film’s promotion that they’d lose their effect on the big screen. This is absolutely not the case.

There’s a reason the Mission Impossible franchise has remained so big for so long and that’s because it’s so bloody reliable. When it comes to big stunts and impressive set pieces, it really delivers the goods and they’ve never been more stunning or more incessant than in Fallout. There’s a short segment at the start where our hero, Ethan Hunt, receives his mission statement that tells us all the general things we’re going to need to know about the plot. From thereon in it is just non-stop balls to the wall action. No sooner has he jumped out of a plane at 25,000 feet, he’s bombing it through the streets Paris on a motorbike without a helmet, then he’s free running over the rooftops of London (breaking his ankle in the process) before climbing up and subsequently piloting a helicopter whilst it’s flying in mid-air.

The action is relentless and the filmmakers are obviously very keen to show off the fact that all of the stunts are performed by Cruise himself. The guy’s an absolute nutter and any aversion you might have had towards him beforehand quickly evaporates as you can’t help but fall for his unyielding enthusiasm and his willingness to jump into all manner of dangerous stunts if he thinks the audience wants to see them. The technical brilliance of the action scenes is also amazing, if Tom is jumping out of a plane then the camera crew are jumping out first, there isn’t a green screen in sight and you can really tell, the action also manages to flow really well and this makes it all the more captivating.

Hunt is joined by his usual team of Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson et al, but this time there’s a new addition: the brilliantly named and expensively moustachioed, August Walker. Walker is played by Henry Cavill, whose recent outings as Superman have been more wooden than an oak-furnished dining room. But here he’s perfectly cast, his bulky frame is put to great use as the brutish counterpart to Hunt’s nimble and quick thinking secret agent (the pair are even contrasted in the film as the ‘hammer’ and the ‘scalpel’). An early scene cleverly tells us all we need to know about the pair’s differences through their contrasting fighting styles during a tense scrap in a nightclub bathroom.

There’s enough of a story to keep you engaged in the action and even though there aren’t too many surprises in the way of plot, it’s done in such a brilliant way that your jaw consistently remains glued to the floor. There’s also a really nice recurring theme about the moral dilemma of killing one person in order to save the lives of more, this is seen by some to be Hunt’s weakness and it’s explored in a really interesting way.

In terms of delivering the goods, Mission Impossible is that rarest of franchises that has actually managed to perfect their formula and improve with each one. The action sequences in Fallout are not only some of the best of the series, but some of the best ever put on film. It may just be Tom Cruise hanging off things that people don’t usually hang from, but nobody hangs off things better than Tom Cruise.

(TV) Better Call Saul Season 4 Episode 1: ‘Smoke’ Review ★★★★★

Words & Illustrations by Mark Holland

 

It’s a joy to see the Breaking Bad prequel back on Netflix this week and a welcome return to everyone’s favourite slippery lawyer, Jimmy McGill. The first few seasons have been a master class in slow burning storytelling and proof you could make a thoroughly engaging drama series despite knowing exactly where the characters are going to end up at the end of it. The writers on Better Call Saul have always used this to their advantage and introduced us not to Saul, the criminal lawyer we knew from Breaking Bad, but a completely different and almost unrecognisable man altogether. Watching his gradual transformation from the idealistic wannabe attorney trapped in his brother’s shadow to the crooked slime-ball we know he’s going to become is what makes the show so interesting as well as making it all the more tragic.

We’re entering the fourth season now and our protagonist is still a long way off Saul territory. We’ve seen sparks and we’ve witnessed his underlying desire to bend the rules, but for the most part the Jimmy we pick up with is still a relatively decent and honest man. The events of last season though may now mean that this finally starts to change. Where previous seasons have had the bitter rivalry between Jimmy and his brother Chuck at their core, it’s interesting to now see how the story is going to continue following Chuck’s death at the end of the last series.

His presence is still felt very strongly in ‘Smoke’ and his ghost looms ominously over Jimmy in every scene. He isn’t given a lot to say this episode as he plaintively processes his brother’s death, as well as the role that he may have played in it. Bob Odenkirk is brilliant at conveying his silent reflection, again proving there’s a lot more to him than the wisecracks and snappy one-liners. This is with the exception of one, it comes right at the very end of the episode, a fantastic razor-sharp quip directed at his brother’s ex-partner Howard that may serve as the biggest indicator yet that Jimmy is on the irreversible path towards Saul-hood.

The episode begins, as every season has, with a black and white look at post-Breaking Bad Jimmy, now managing a Cinnabun in Omaha and going under the name of Gene. These openers have always served as a cold reminder of the fate that awaits Mr McGill, a middling life on the run in the drudgery of the suburbia having to constantly look over his shoulder. This episode’s starter has our main man feeling more paranoid than ever, with the tension getting cranked up even more following a suspect encounter with a taxi driver. These short segments are powerful cues of what’s to come and contrast really well with the colourful optimism of past Jimmy in the early 00s.

Elsewhere in Albuquerque, we get to catch up with the power struggles beginning to emerge within the cartels and check in with Mike as he starts his new job as a ‘security consultant’ for Gus. It’s the cartel stuff that gives us the most interesting scenes this week though. Nacho’s bold plot to dismantle Hector as the head of the Salamanca family went as smoothly as planned, but he made the crucial mistake of underestimating Gustavo Fring. This will almost certainly serve as his downfall as we are reminded again of just how farsighted and ruthless The Chicken Man is. ‘Someone will move against the Salamancas, which brings war, which brings chaos, which brings the DEA’ is his chilling response to the demise of his greatest foe. Nacho’s fate is made all the more intriguing given his lack of appearance in Breaking Bad and given how dangerous the waters are he’s swimming in, his days are looking all the more numbered.

The writing on Better Call Saul is unparalleled; it manages to consistently offer engaging thrills whilst being patient enough to tell the story in a way that feels natural. The inclusion of recognisable characters isn’t done purely to satisfy fan service but to flesh them out and tell the back-stories we didn’t know we needed.