Films I loved in February 2019

Eva Melander as Tina in Border

The blending of fairytale, horror and social realism in Border results in a wonderfully uneasy film about a Swedish customs officer whose animalistic characteristics become further heightened when she mets another like her. At times romantically and erotically charged, and at other times confronting and disturbing when it delves into humanity at its worst, it’s an intriguing mix of tones and textures that works as both a compelling mystery and a sinister allegory into the nature of social tribalism.

Steve Coogan as Stan Laurel and John C Reilly as Oliver Hardy in Stan & Ollie

The extremely endearing Stan & Ollie follows the legendary Classical Hollywood comedy duo Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C Reilly) as they embark on a live stage tour of Britain towards the end of their careers.  A gentle and bittersweet drama about friendship, fame and performance, the film portrays the various pressures that familiarity, ageing and professional disagreements placed on their relationship, while ultimately celebrating the bond between them and their comedic talents.

Jakob Cedergren as Asger Holm in The Guilty

Set in an emergency-services call centre with the focus almost entirely on a police officer responding to a call about a kidnapping, The Guilty is a superb example of creating cinematic tension by withholding narrative information. As the officer juggles making and responding to calls, and his frustration at his relative powerlessness intensifies, the film drops bombshells about the nature of the case that takes the film further and further into dark and devastating territory.

The Rape of Recy Taylor

Screening on SBS On Demand, The Rape of Recy Taylor is a powerful documentary about an African American women who was raped in 1944 by six white men, and her pursuit for justice. By incorporating footage from films by black filmmakers, which were traditionally the only films to acknowledge sexual violence against black women by white men, filmmaker Nancy Buirski explores broader issues of race crimes and sexual abuse, and looks at the power of media and culture to shape attitudes.

Thomas Caldwell, 2019

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Favourite Films of 2018

My favourite 10 films that were released in Melbourne, Australia, in 2018 (including films released directly to streaming services or home entertainment):

1. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018)
Released August

2. Custody (Jusqu’à la garde, Xavier Legrand, 2017)
Released September

3. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)
Released August

4. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)
Released December

5. Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)
Released March

6. Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton, 2017)
Released January

7. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)
Released April

8. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
Released February

9. I, Tonya (Craig Gillespie, 2017)
Released January

10. A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018)
Released April

Honourable mentions

Twenty more films I loved this year, listed alphabetically:

Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2018)
Released April

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard, 2018)
Released October

Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S Craig Zahler, 2017)
Released January

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, 2018)
Released December

Cargo (Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke, 2017)
Released May

Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018)
Released December

The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017)
Released March

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Gus Van Sant, 2018)
Released September

A Fantastic Woman (Una mujer fantástica, Sebastián Lelio, 2017)
Released February

First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018)
Released October

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
Released December

Ghosthunter (Ben Lawrence, 2018)
Released September

Gurrumul (Paul Damien Williams, 2017)
Released April

I Kill Giants (Anders Walter, 2017)
Released May

The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery, 2018)
Released November

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
Released February

The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)
Released January

Shoplifters (Manbiki kazoku, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)
Released November

A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018)
Released October

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2017)
Released September

Favourite films not given a full release locally

Many of the films I saw this year that left a big impression on me are films that only screened to Melbourne audiences at various festivals. Some of those films have local distribution and will more than likely be released next year, so I’ll include them on my 2019 list, but the ones that don’t currently have local distribution (to the best of my knowledge) that I’d like to mention are the following:

Blaze (Ethan Hawke, 2018)

The Green Fog (Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin, 2017)

Holiday (Isabella Eklöf, 2018)

Pig (Khook, Mani Haghighi, 2018)

The Rape of Recy Taylor (Nancy Buirski, 2017)

Red Cow (Para Aduma, Tsivia Barkai Yacov, 2018)

Relaxer (Joel Potrykus, 2018)

Shock Waves: Diary of My Mind (Ondes de choc – Journal de ma tête, Ursula Meier, 2018)

Winter Brothers (Vinterbrødre, Hlynur Palmason, 2017)

Yours in Sisterhood (Irene Lusztig, 2018)

This list was compiled for the upcoming Senses of Cinema 2018 World Poll

Thank you to everybody who read my micro-reviews throughout 2018. Next year will be much the same as this year: I’ll continue to share my cinematic highlights here and on Facebook and Twitter, and hopefully I’ll continue to pop up on 3RRR 102.7FM and ABC Radio National whenever I can. I won’t pretend I’ll get around to giving this blog the long overdue redesign it desperately needs, but you never know.

Thomas Caldwell 2018

 

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Films I loved in December 2018

Roma

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is a brilliant fusion of personal storytelling with broader observations on race, class and gender with it’s stunningly photographed story of a maid working for a middle-class family in Mexico City in the early 1970s. It’s a slow burn drama that invites the audience into the inner world of the characters, making its ability later in the film to quietly devastate, all the more profound. A film of both sensitivity and unflinching honesty, it left me trembling long after the final credits rolled.

Climax

Climax delivers what audiences have come to expect from a Gaspar Noé film with its large offerings of drug fuelled transgressions, as a party for a troupe of contemporary dancers becomes increasingly nightmarish thanks to the LSD-spiked punch. It’s also the film where Noé displays the closest he has come to restraint, so that rather than being simply grim, the film’s hallucinogenic descent into hell is an exhilarating rush of black humour, astonishing dance choreography and gleefully vicarious nastiness.

Melissa McCarthy as Lee Israel and Richard E Grant as Jack Hock in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Can You Ever Forgive Me? could have been a lighthearted it’s-funny-because-it’s-true film about the literary hoax committed by author Lee Israel (Melissa McCarthy) in New York in the early 1990s, but instead it’s a sweetly melancholic tale about failure, ostracisation and disappointment. While the stakes aren’t as high as they are in Midnight Cowboy, it has much in common with that 1969 classic, as it’s similarly a beautifully acted, heartfelt drama about how a friendship against the odds helped endure hardship.

Ethan Hawke as Ernst Toller in First Reformed

Ethan Hawke is outstanding as a priest spiralling into destructive despair in First Reformed, the enticingly intense new film by writer/director Paul Schrader who has long explored the psyches of damaged and disturbed men. The starkness and existentialism evoke the early 1960s spiritual films of Ingmar Bergman, but this is nevertheless a distinctively contemporary and American work that captures the palpable dread of losing faith in the 21st century. Released in Australia on home entertainment.

Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in The Favourite

The Favourite is a sort of All About Eve for contemporary audiences, but set in 1708 and loosely based on the love/power triangle between Anne, Queen of Great Britain (Olivia Colman), and two women who competed for her affection. While a lot more grounded than director Yorgos Lanthimos’s previous films, there is still a sense of heightened absurdity brought to the style and narrative, which effectively enhances the film’s wicked sense of humour and biting social satire about political power and the patriarchy.

Joanna Kulig as Zula and Tomasz Kot as Wiktor in Cold War

Cold War is a classic story of an impossible love affair that plays across four decades of 20th century Europe, where two lovers are continually thwarted by the dehumanising and long-lingering effects of war, but are still continually drawn together, often through the overwhelming power of music. Based on the experiences of writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski’s actual parents, this is a bittersweet personal reflection on the recent past that is romantic and bleak, nostalgic and sobering.

Thomas Caldwell, 2018

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