These ten-best lists were submitted to the excellent Australian website, Senses of Cinema. I've left all the lists as I submitted them, no tinkering to add films I discovered at a later date. I've also left in any comments, including those on vintage films I'd seen for the first time that year. The films are not listed in order of preference - Senses likes everything done alphabetically.
In no particular order:
Solaris
Crimson Gold
Spirited Away
Master and Commander
To Be and To Have
Touching The Void (Kevin MacDonald, 2003)
The Son
Adaptation
Dark Water (Nakata Hideo, 2002)
The Skywalk Has Gone (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003)
Spirited Away was the hands-down best film of the year. Adaptation and The Son demonstrated some of the most exhilarating cinema in the last decade...until about halfway through when they both lost momentum.
All in all, I felt it was a lacklustre year for cinema with many films - In The Cut (Jane Campion, 2003), Lost In Translation, Lucas Belvaux's Trilogy (2002) - being ridiculously overrated.
The most welcome surprises of the year were Soderbergh's triumphant remake of Solaris; Peter Weir (perennially damned with faint praise) transforming an adventure blockbuster into an engrossing study of men at war; and Tsai Ming-liang's wonderful short The Skywalk Has Gone.
1. Before Sunset
2. Uzak
3. Nobody Knows
4. The World
5. Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano, 2003)
6. Tropical Malady
7. Triple Agent
8. The Company
9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
10. Fahrenheit 9/11 (Michael Moore, 2004) - for being there
Honourable mentions to: Basque Ball: Skin Against Stone (Julio Medem, 2003), The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin, 2003) and Olivier Assayas's much-maligned Demonlover (2002).
Guilty pleasure: Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004) - great fun!
Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu)
L’Enfant (The Dardennes Brothers)
Miami Vice (Michael Mann)
Munich (Steven Spielberg)
Offside (Jafar Panahi)
The Proposition (John Hillcoat)
Still Life (Jia Zhangke)
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
Many of these appeared in 2005, but such are the vagaries of the UK distribution system. All are masterpieces.
The surprise of the year was The Proposition, an outstanding new contribution to the ongoing lore of the Western.
The problem film of the year was Munich, which I casually dismissed on first viewing, but which subsequently haunted me for weeks and kept coming back to me in conversations with friends until I realised that, like many critics, I had been blinded by the prejudice attached to a Spielberg film and that its simple clarity was actually a virtue, not a constraint.
In a great year for film, there were many worthy runners-up to my top ten:
Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (a little overrated but still great)
A Scanner Darkly (a little underrated but still great)
Keane (a masterclass in acting if a little betrayed by its pat ending)
Red Road (a masterclass in mood and tension if a little betrayed by its atrocious ending)
Deep Water (an intelligent documentary on the voyage of Donald Crowhurst, one of the great stories of the 20th century)
And two guilty pleasures:
Nacho Libre and Borat (the backlash against the latter is, in my view, far more suspect than the film itself – and at least Borat is funny).
Disappointments of the year:
Match Point (Woody still hasn’t got his mojo back)
Brick/Princess Raccoon (sensory overload)
The Queen (Fascinating – if you’re English, I suspect – but not in any way controversial, in fact, deeply conservative)
Babel – Mutton dressed up as lamb, or, in other words, a soap opera masquerading as social commentary
Little Children – a text for A-Level (high school) students to study in Sociology class (“Now, children, what’s the significance of Madame Bovary here?”)
Bamako – The most distressing let-down of the year – a brilliant idea compromised by indecisive execution
Major personal discoveries from cinema’s back catalogue:
This Land is Mine/The Southerner – Renoir’s American period is grossly underrated
Out 1/L’amour Par Terre – Seeing the first in its totality was THE experience of the year
Ride in the Whirlwind – As good as The Shooting.
Millions Like Us – British wartime propaganda is the great neglected “school” of world cinema
Kiki’s Delivery Service/Nausicaa – Miyazaki is the king of animators.
L’Armée des ombres/The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On – These last two have blown all my previous ideas on film to the wind. The latter is essential viewing for the student of documentary.
Intimate Lighting – A little beauty from the Czech New Wave.
Queimada! – The equal of The Battle of Algiers.
Distant Voices, Still Lives - At the London Film Festival premiere of a restored print, Terence Davies argued for more films expressing the poetry of the ordinary people, a poetry “they’re entitled to”. I would suggest the ten films I’ve chosen as the best this year show that poetry is alive and well across the world.
Despite the claims made by many critics that this was a fantastic year for movies, I couldn’t help thinking the opposite. Here were the only six films released in the UK in 2007 that really got me excited:
Le voyage du ballon rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2007)
Wu Yong (Useless, Jia Zhangke, 2007)
This is England (Shane Meadows, 2006)
Die grobe Stille (Into Great Silence, Philip Gröning, 2005)
Blade Runner: The Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 1982/2007)
300 (Zack Snyder, 2007)
The last was the year’s greatest – and most surprising – guilty pleasure. It’s a 14-year-old boy’s adolescent wet dream of sex’n’violence for sure, but it’s also a striking move for mainstream Hollywood cinema into the world of myth and self-conscious artifice. Think of it as a CGI Perceval le Gallois (Eric Rohmer, 1978) – a strange appropriation of the techniques of pantomime and epic simile for a modern genre movie.
But overall, there was a sense that the latest films were not up to the standard of those belatedly receiving a release after festival success in 2006: Sang Sattawat (Syndromes and a Century, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006), Iklimler (Climates, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2006) and El laberinto del Fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006) – three of the best films of the decade so far, in my view.
However, it was a great year for personal discoveries from cinema’s back catalogue, largely thanks to some stunning retrospectives at the recharged BFI Southbank (ex-National Film Theatre) and the UK’s two outstanding DVD labels, Masters of Cinema and Second Run. As a sample, I’d like to mention, in the style of Sight and Sound’s 75 Hidden Gems, five movies that are often overlooked but are worthy of a place in anyone’s canon.
The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Luis Bunuel, 1952) – Not just a charming and definitive version of the story, but one of Bunuel’s greatest – and most humane – achievements.
Ninjo Kamifusen (Humanity and Paper Balloons, Sadao Yamanaka, 1937) – If this isn’t as well known as say La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir, 1939), that’s not due to any demonstrable difference in quality but more likely to the vicissitudes of film critical history. Put simply, it is one of the great Japanese movies and comparable to anything produced by Mizoguchi.
Sud Sanaeha (Blissfully Yours, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2002) – A film in love with nature, skin, sensuality and people. Like a long extended summer daydream.
Léon Morin Prêtre (Leon Morin, Priest, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961) – Last year, everyone (re)discovered Melville’s L’armée des ombres (Army of Shadows, 1969), but this film, also set during the Occupation, is his greatest achievement – an examination of faith as searing and rigorous as the works of Bresson. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva were never better.
Marketa Lazarová (Frantisek Vlácil, 1967) – This extraordinary epic is best summed up as…well, it’s hard to say. A brilliant recreation of the medieval world? A moving, sometimes frightening, saga of lust and betrayal? Or a playful inversion of narrative strategies and points of view? Every time you think you’ve grasped it, it just slips out of reach. There’s nothing quite like it – totally sui generis, totally unique.
Bellamy (Claude Chabrol, 2009)
Helen (Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy, 2008)
Lat den ratte komma in (Let The Right One In, Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Jal aljido mothamyeonseo (Like You Know It All, Hong Sang-soo, 2009)
Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)
Shirin (Abbas Kiarostami, 2008)
35 rhums (35 Shots of Rum, Claire Denis, 2008)
Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008)
Tie for 10th: In The Loop (Armando Iannucci, 2009) / Tulpan (Sergei Dvortsevoy, 2008) / Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2009)
Two of the most riveting films of the year - for very different reasons - were Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009) and A Religiosa Portuguesa/La Religieuse portugaise (The Portuguese Nun, Eugene Green, 2009) but I don't include them in my top ten because, for all their directorial flair, they represent for me an ideological and formal dead end for cinema.
Guilty pleasures included Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee (Shane Meadows, 2009) and the ubiquitous Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, 2007), while the best "new" films I saw all year were three I'd already seen in 2008 (a much richer year for film): Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, 2007), La vie moderne (Modern Life, Raymond Depardon, 2008) and Aruitemo aruitemo (Still Walking, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2008).
A great year for (re)discoveries, though. Here's a Top 15: After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985); Akarui mirai (Bright Future, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2003); BBC - The Voice of Britain (Stuart Legg, 1935); The Bed Sitting Room (Richard Lester, 1969); Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988); Contes immoraux (Immoral Tales, Walerian Borowczyk, 1974); Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher, 1957); Il grido (The Cry, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1957); Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975); The London Nobody Knows (Norman Cohen, 1967); M (Joseph Losey, 1951); Mayis sikintisi (Clouds of May, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 1999); Nihon no yoru to kiri (Night and Fog in Japan, Nagisa Oshima, 1960); Le Silence de la mer (The Silence of the Sea, Jean-Pierre Melville, 1949); Subida al cielo (Ascent To Heaven/Mexican Bus Ride, Luis Bunuel, 1951)
Archipelago (Joanna Hogg, 2010)
Copie Conforme (Certified Copy, Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
Gake no ue no Ponyo (Ponyo, Miyazaki Hayao, 2008)
The Ghost (Roman Polanski, 2010)
Hahaha (Sang-Soo Hong, 2010)/Lost In The Mountains (Sang-Soo Hong, 2009)/Ok-hui-ui yeonghwa (Oki's Movie, Sang-Soo Hong, 2010)
Hai shang chuan qi (I Wish I Knew, Zhang Ke Jia, 2010)
Loong Boonmee raleuk chat (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)
No Greater Love (Michael Whyte, 2009)
Shi (Poetry, Chang-dong Lee, 2010)
Survival of the Dead (George Romero, 2009)
Though I enjoyed the above, I got more pleasure from discovering these films, all of which remain neglected or underrated...
Anchoress (Chris Newby, 1993)
Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi (A Scene At The Sea, Takeshi Kitano, 1991)
Billy The Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (Alan Clarke, 1987)
Bronson (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2008)
Comrades (Bill Douglas, 1986)
Dekigokoro (Passing Fancy, Ozu Yasujiro, 1933)
The Final Programme (Robert Fuest, 1973)
La fleur du mal (The Flower of Evil, Claude Chabrol, 2003)
Ghosts of Mars (John Carpenter, 2001)
Juggernaut (Richard Lester, 1974)
Martin (George Romero, 1977)
The Moon and Sixpence (Albert Lewin, 1942)
Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001)
Unrelated (Joanna Hogg, 2007)
Waterloo Road (Sidney Gilliat, 1945)
and almost the whole back catalogue of Sang-Soo Hong
And it was wonderful to re-discover...
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cleo from 5 to 7, Agnès Varda, 1961)
The Damned (Joseph Losey, 1963)
Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian (A Brighter Summer Day, Edward Yang, 1991)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)
The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn, 1976)
Sayat Nova (The Colour of Pomegranates, Sergei Parajanov, 1968)
Most overrated films of the year
Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, 2009)
The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
Barbe Bleue (Bluebeard, Catherine Breillat, 2009)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)
In film nist (This Is Not A Film, Jafar Panahi, 2010)
Jusan-nin no shikaku (13 Assassins, Takashi Miike, 2010)
Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2010)
Schlafkrankheit (Sleeping Sickness, Ulrich Kohler, 2011)
Sweetgrass (Lucien Castaing-Taylor/Ilisa Barbash, 2009)
Two Years At Sea (Ben Rivers, 2011)
Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, 2011- despite all its faults)
Best personal discoveries of the year:
Les Bords de le Tamise d'Oxford a Windsor (Eclectic-Films, 1914) - The projection of this short film in the open air in Bologna's Piazza Maggiore at the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival was my personal highlight of the year. A journey down the Thames caught in beautiful compositions and bathed in the eerie glow of an early colour process, Peter Von Bagh was right to introduce it as a masterpiece. (Almost equally magical was the open-air showing of the newly-restored Les Enfants du Paradis (Marcel Carne, 1945), when a storm broke out at exactly the same time as it started raining on screen, and for five brief minutes, life imitated art. The sight of a hundred people huddled under the porticoes craning their heads round to follow the film definitely made up for the discomfort.)
City Girl (Friedrich Murnau, 1930) - This knocked me sideways. I'd expected a poor man's Sunrise (Murnau, 1927). Instead, I discovered what may be Murnau's finest achievement, and one of the truly great silent films.
Cria Cuervos (Carlos Saura, 1976) - A masterpiece. Both it and its director deserve wider acclaim.
Devi (Satyajit Ray, 1960)
Kong bu fen zi (The Terrorisers, Edward Yang, 1986)
Limelight (Charles Chaplin, 1952)
Il Posto (Ermanno Olmi, 1961)
O Sangue (Pedro Costa, 1989)
Shura (Pandemonium, Toshio Matsumoto, 1971) - The fact that an extraordinary masterpiece like this can go unnoticed for so long just shows how unfathomably rich Japanese cinema is.
Welt am Draht (World On A Wire, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973)
Wind Across The Everglades (Nicholas Ray, 1958)
It was also great to catch up again with Providence (Alain Resnais, 1977).
DVD Highlights: It was wonderful to finally see the release of Campanadas a medianoche (Falstaff/Chimes At Midnight, Orson Welles, 1965), Sayat Nova (The Colour of Pomegranates, Sergei Parajanov, 1968) and, best of all, the BFI Flipside version of Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970), beautifully restored and as fresh and spiky as on the day it was first released.
A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, 2011)/Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg, 2012)
Aquele Querido Mes de Agosto (Our Beloved Month of August, Miguel Gomes, 2008)/Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)
Bir Zamanla Anadolu'da (Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)
Book chon bang hyang (The Day He Arrives, Hong Sang-Soo, 2011)/Da-reun na-ra-e-suh (In Another Country, Hong Sang-Soo, 2012)
Le gamin au velo (The Kid with a Bike, Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2011)
Kill List (Ben Wheatley, 2011)
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)
O som ao redor (Neighbouring Sounds, Kleber Mendonca Filho, 2012)
A Torinoi lo (The Turin Horse, Bela Tarr, 2011)
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)
And some sparkling runners-up...
Kari-gurashi no Arrietti (Arrietty, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2010)
La princesse de Montpensier (The Princess of Montpensier, Bertrand Tavernier, 2010)
The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, 2011)
Guilty Pleasures
My Amityville Horror (Eric Walter, 2012)
Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012)
Most disappointing or massively overrated:
Museum Hours (Jem Cohen, 2012)
Mekong Hotel (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012)
Sightseers (Ben Wheatley, 2012)
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
Two beautiful restorations:
La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
Mahanagar (Satyajit Ray, 1964)
Two best discoveries from the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna:
Man's Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)
How A Mosquito Operates (Winsor McCay, 1912)
Three best re-discoveries from the ever-excellent Masters of Cinema:
Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang, 1924)
Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock, 1944)
Jigokumon (Gate of Hell, Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
Aurora (Cristi Puiu, 2010)
Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
Exhibition (Joanna Hogg, 2013)
Historia de la meva mort (Story of My Death, Albert Serra, 2013)
Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)
Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan (Norte, the End of History, Lav Diaz, 2013)
Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon (Nobody's Daughter Haewon, Hong Sang-Soo, 2013)/U ri Sunhi (Our Sunhi, Hong Sang-Soo, 2013)
Soshite chichu ni naru (Like Father Like Son, Koreeda Hirokazu, 2013)
To The Wonder (Terrence Malick, 2012)
I'm still processing Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, 2012) and can't decide whether it's a tidal wave of genius or a wet weekend in Margate.
Strong runners-up included:
Apres Mai (Something In The Air, Olivier Assayas, 2012)
Faust (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2011)
A Field In England (Ben Wheatley, 2013)
Most overrated film of the year:
Upstream Colour (Shane Carruth, 2013)
Most cruelly disappointing:
Tian zhu ding (A Touch of Sin, Jia Zhangke, 2013)
(or Leviathan depending on how things work out)
The Borderlands (Elliot Goldner, 2013)
Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
Ja-yu-eui eon-deok (Hill Of Freedom, Hong Sang-Soo, 2014)
Kis uykusu (Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2014)
Maps To The Stars (David Cronenberg, 2014)
Mula sa kung ano ang noon (From What Is Before, Lav Diaz, 2014)
National Gallery (Frederick Wiseman, 2014)
Silence (Pat Collins, 2012)
Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
Worthy Runners-up
(I found the following titles just as stimulating and entertaining as the ones above, but, for some reason, they haven't lingered as powerfully in my memory)
Calvary (John Michael McDonagh, 2014)
L'image manquante (The Missing Picture, Rithy Panh, 2013)
L'inconnu du lac (Stranger By The Lake, Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
Independencia (Raya Martin, 2009)
Jauja (Lisandro Alonso, 2014)
Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises, Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)
Locke (Steven Knight, 2013)
Most Ludicrously Overrated Films of the Year
Deux jours, un nuit (Two Days, One Night, Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2014)
Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014)
Three Highly Rated Films That Left Me Stone Cold
Cavalo Dinheiro (Horse Money, Pedro Costa, 2014)
Trudno byt bogom (Hard To Be A God, Alexei German, 2013)
La Sapienza (Eugene Green, 2014)
Best Things To Happen This Year
Arrow Films' superb Blu-Ray box set of Walerian Borowczyk's early films
The publication of The Essential Raymond Durgnat (edited by Henry K Miller)
The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones, 2014)
It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)
Jiao you (Stray Dogs, Tsai Ming-Liang, 2013)
Ji-geum-eun-mat-go-geu-ddae-neun-teul-li-da (Right Now, Wrong Then, Hong Sang-Soo, 2015)
Kaguyahime no monogatari (The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya, Isao Takahata, 2013)
Manakamana (Stephanie Spray/Pacho Velez, 2013)
Das Merkwurdige Katzchen (The Strange Little Cat, Ramon Zurcher, 2013)
Rak ti Khon Kaen (Cemetery of Splendour, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
Shan he gu ren (Mountains May Depart, Jia Zhangke, 2015)
A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness (Ben Rivers/Ben Russell, 2013)
Lots of honourable mentions
Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)
The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, 2014)
Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2014)
Haganenet (The Kindergarten Teacher, Nadav Lapid, 2014)
Maidan (Sergei Loznitsa, 2014)
Muisteja: Pieni elokuva 1950-luvun Oulusta (Remembrance – A Small Film About Oulu In The 1950s, Peter von Bagh, 2013)
Spring (Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead, 2014)
Guilty pleasures
Blackhat (Michael Mann, 2015)
Oculus (Mike Flanagan, 2013)
This Year's Award For The Film Everyone Liked But Me
A tie.
As Mil e Uma Noites (Arabian Nights, Miguel Gomes, 2015)
The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
This Year's Award For Most Eagerly Anticipated Film Which I Just Couldn't Connect With*
Another tie.
Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)
Nie yin niang (The Assassin, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2015)
*But will definitely watch again.
Aquarius (Kleber Mendonca Filho, 2016)
Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2016)
Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015)
45 Years (Andrew Haigh, 2015)
Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick, 2015)
The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2016)
Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)
Umi yori mo mada Fukaku (After The Storm, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2016)
Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-Soo, 2016)
Honourable mentions
Aferim! (Radu Jude, 2015)
Bai ri yan huo (Black Coal Thin Ice, Yi'nan Diao, 2014)
The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
Meru (Jimmy Chin/Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, 2015)
A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016)
The Salvation (Kristian Levring, 2014)
Slow West (John Maclean, 2015)
La tortue rouge (The Red Turtle, Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)
Un etaj mai jos (One Floor Below, Radu Muntean, 2015)
A great year for female performances – Sonia Braga in Aquarius, Isabelle Huppert in Elle, Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, Sandra Huller in Toni Erdmann, Kirin Kiki in After The Storm, Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle in A Quiet Passion.
It was great to see the return of humanist cinema – tackling universal themes and the human condition – with a sense of humour. Sieranevada, Elle, Aferim!, After The Storm, Toni Erdmann...
And there was the return of the intelligent mainstream sci-fi movie – Ex Machina.
And – glory be! - the return of the classic, non-postmodern, non-ironised western – Slow West and The Salvation.
Throw in a terrific mountain climbing doc (Meru) – why not? - and two magnificent indulgences from auteurs not giving a toss and being all the better off for it – Knight of Cups and The Neon Demon – and you had not a bad year after all.
Biggest Disappointments of the Year
La mort de Louis XIV (The Death of Louis XIV, Albert Serra, 2016)
Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2016)
The saddest spectacle of the year was witnessing all those critics who had previously been sniffy about Serra warm to him because he made something more obvious and stuck a Nouvelle Vague “legend” in it. Not a bad film for sure, but, oh, Albert, where's that puckish spirit gone?
As for Personal Shopper, not sure what was happening there. Olivier on a rare off day.
Most Gargantuanly Overrated Films of the Year
Adieu au langage (Goodbye To Language, Jean-Luc Godard, 2014)
High-Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015)
American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016)
Bamui haebyun-eoseo honja (On The Beach At Night Alone (Sang-soo Hong, 2017)/Geu-hu (The Day After, Sang-soo Hong, 2017)
Gok-seong (The Wailing, Hong-jin Na, 2016)
Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016)
Jeune Femme (Montparnasse Bienvenue, Leonor Serraille, 2017)
Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)
Valley Of Love (Guillaume Nicloux, 2015)
Western (Valeska Grisebach, 2017)
Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)
Honourable Mentions
L'avenir (Things To Come, Mia Hansen-Love, 2016)
Bei xi mo shou (Behemoth, Liang Zhao, 2015)
Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson, 2016)
Ouija – Origin of Evil (Mike Flanagan, 2016)
Under The Shadow (Babak Anvari, 2016)
Fascinating Efforts Which I'm Still Not Sure About
Good Time (Ben and Josh Safdie, 2017)
24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami, 2017)
This Year's Award For Outstanding Craftsmanship Let Down By Dreary Endings
Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler, 2015)
Kuripi: Itsuwari no rinjin (Creepy, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2016)
Most Overrated Films of the Year
Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016)
Un beau soleil interieur (Let The Sunshine In, Claire Denis, 2017)
The Love Witch (Anna Biller, 2016)
Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
A big shoutout to two fan films based on 2000AD comic strips – Judge Minty (Steven Sterlacchini, 2013) and Search/Destroy (Steven Sterlacchini, 2016) – which show more invention in 12 minutes than most blockbusters in two hours plus.
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S Craig Zahler, 2017)
La Camera de Claire (Claire's Camera, Hong Sang-soo, 2017)/Gangbyeon hotel (Hotel By The River, Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
Free Solo (Jimmy Chin/Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, 2018)
Jiang hu er nv (Ash Is Purest White, Jia Zhangke, 2018)
Manbiki Kazoku (Shoplifters, Koreeda Hirokazu, 2018)
Natemo sametemo (Asako I + II, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2018)
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)
Roma (Alfonso Cuaron, 2018)
Voyage a travers la cinema francais (A Journey Through French Cinema, Bertrand Tavernier, 2016)
Wo bu shi Pan Jin Lian (I Am Not Madame Bovary, Feng Xiaogang, 2016)
Special Mention
Ahlat Agaci (The Wild Pear Tree, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)
Doubles Vies (Double Lives/Non-Fiction, Olivier Assayas, 2018)
Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018) – for its first hour at least
Most disappointing and/or overrated films of the year
Beoning (Burning, Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
Di qiu zui hou de ye wan (Long Day's Journey Into Night, Bi Gan, 2018)
A Quiet Place (John Krasinski, 2018)
The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)
Columbus (Kogonada, 2017)
Da xiang xi di zuo (An Elephant Sitting Still, Hu Bo, 2018)*
First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
Grass (Hong Sang-Soo, 2018)
In My Room (Ulrich Kohler, 2018)
The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)
The Mule (Clint Eastwood, 2018)
Sandome no satsujin (The Third Murder, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2017)
The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)
Wonder Wheel (Woody Allen, 2017)
* My nomination for film of the decade
Runners-Up
Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) – for annoying so many of the right people
November (Rainer Sarnet, 2017)
Song of Granite (Pat Collins, 2017)
Biggest Disappointments...
..and you can almost take this list as a roll-call of the most overrated turnips of the decade
Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019)
The Endless (Justin Benson/Aaron Moorhead, 2017)
High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)
The Other Side (Roberto Minervini, 2015)
Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
The Jury's Still Out
Bacurau (Juliano Dornelles/Kleber Mendonca Filho, 2019)
Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017)
The works of great directors, clearly, but aren't they the doodles or idle sketches of a master capable of producing a timeless painting?
Ten Best Recent Films Seen In 2020 For The First Time
Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019)
Arimura Kasumi no Satsukyu – Episode 1 (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2020)
Di jiu tianchang (So Long, My Son, Xiaoshuai Wang, 2019)
Domangchin yeoja (The Woman Who Ran, Sang-Soo Hong, 2020)
Gisaengchung (Parasite, Bong Joon Ho, 2019)
Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska/Ljubomir Stefanov, 2019)
In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018 – first half only) *
Lahi, hayop (Genus Pan, Lav Diaz, 2020 – first half only)*
Napszallta (Sunset, Laszlo Nemes, 2018)
Ray + Liz (Richard Billingham, 2018)
* The first half of both these films represented some of the most enjoyable new cinema I saw all year. The less said about the second halves the better. In each case, it felt like a new director had been smuggled in, to offer a much coarser mirror image of the earlier half.
The Koreeda is the first episode of a TV series, but is a self-contained little gem.
Three Great Discoveries From The Last Decade
Happi Awa (Happy Hour, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2015)
Saul fia (Son Of Saul, Laszlo Nemes, 2015)
Toata lumea din familia noastra (Everybody In Our Family, Radu Jude, 2012)
Covid Watching
I streamed films from three festivals this year: Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato, the London Film Festival and London's Korean Film Festival. In each case, the amount of titles was understandably limited, but I must admit I was disappointed with the narrow range of titles on offer from Cinema Ritrovato – whole sidebars were omitted. One of their representatives told me that some organisations had been unwilling to share copyright. Nevertheless, the streaming worked without a hitch, and I applaud all the festivals for setting this service up under extremely difficult conditions. If I complain about Bologna, it's only because I love the festival so much.
For my own lockdown watching, I binged on:
The complete Cronenberg
The complete Dreyer
All of Roger Corman's Poe films
All of Laurel and Hardy's shorts
Eric Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs
The complete Classic Series of Dr Who 1963-1989 (OK, I started that last year)
Major discoveries made in lockdown (thank you, DVD and Blu-Ray providers):
Brotherhood of the Bell (Paul Wendkos, 1970)
Bungalow/Montag kommen die Fenster (Bungalow/Windows On Monday, Ulrich Kohler, 2002/2006)
Champagne Charlie (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1944)
Holubice (The White Dove, Frantisek Vlacil, 1960)
Khrustalyov, mashinu! (Khrustalyov, My Car!, Aleksey German, 1998)
Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929)
Minato no nihonmusume (Japanese Girls At The Harbour, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933)
September (Woody Allen, 1987)
Ten best new-ish films seen for the first time in 2021
Aniara (Pella Kagerman/Hugo Lilja, 2018)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021)
Caniba (Lucien Castaing-Taylor/Verena Paravel, 2017)
Dangsin-eolgul-apeseo (In Front Of Your Face, Sang-soo Hong, 2021)
Guzen to sozo (Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)*
Liberte (Albert Serra, 2019)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)**
The Souvenir: Part II (Joanna Hogg, 2021)
La verite (The Truth, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2019)
Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa, 2019)
* Doraibu mai ka (Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021) was also pretty damn good as well.
** With some reservations.
Most overrated balderdash of the year
Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn,
Radu Jude, 2021)
Lazzaro felice (Happy as Lazzaro, Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos, 2018)
Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019)
Reflections on Covid: Part II
I only streamed from one film festival this year: Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Like last year, the selection of films was limited but well presented. For me, the most important discoveries were:
De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen (The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short,
Andre Delvaux, 1965)
Esa pareja feliz (Juan Antonio Bardem/Luis Garcia Berlanga, 1953)
Kummatty (Govindan Arivindan, 1979)
The London Film Festival and London's Korea film festival were back in theatres, and marked the first time I'd been back in a cinema since this whole sorry saga started. And it was bliss. The BFI's delayed Japanese cinema season has also thrown up some long-lost gems:
Shitoyakana kedamono (Elegant Beast, Yuzo Kawashima, 1962)
Yoru no tsuzumi (Night Drum, Tadashi Imai, 1958)
Shout out to the independent DVD/Blu-Ray companies who have kept going and provided us with the most pleasure at this time. I'd particularly like to single out Second Run in the UK, whose devotion to reviving the classics of Czech cinema is quite beautiful. Check out Juraj Herz's adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, among many others.
I also kept myself going with the mahoosive Criterion Bergman box set, the BFI's BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas box set, and some Peckinpah. Strange times.
Ten best new-ish films seen for the first time in 2022
Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg, 2022)
Czech Mate: In Search of Jiri Menzel (Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, 2018)
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019)
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019)
Inteurodeoksyeon (Introduction, Hong Sang-Soo, 2021)
Le jeune Ahmed (Young Ahmed, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2019)/Tori et Lokita (Tori and Lokita, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2022)
Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, 2019)
Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)
The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022)
Pacifiction (Albert Serra, 2022)
And I must mention the entertaining BBC TV series, The North Water (Andrew Haigh, 2021)
Most overrated balderdash of the year
The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021)
Disappointing Misfires from Good Directors
Benediction (Terence Davies, 2021)
The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg, 2022)
Ten best films, young and old, I saw this year for the first time at the cinema or through their rediscovery on DVD/Blu-Ray:
Alias Nick Beal (John Farrow, 1949)
Baxter, Vera Baxter (Marguerite Duras, 1977)
Beurokeo (Broker, Koreeda Hirokazu, 2022)
El Mar La Mar (Joshua Bonnetta/JP Sniadecki, 2017)
Herzog Blaubarts Burg (Bluebeard's Castle, Michael Powell, 1963)
In The Earth (Ben Wheatley, 2021)
Mademoiselle (Tony Richardson, 1966)
The Rider (Chloe Zhao, 2017)
So-seol-ga-ui yeong-hwa (The Novelist's Film, Hong Sang-Soo, 2022)/
Tab (Walk Up, Hong Sang-Soo, 2022)
Taifu kurabu (Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai, 1985)
I don't care how old some of these films are; seeing them for the first time, they're as fresh to me as any new release and so feel thoroughly contemporary.
As for this year's roster of the ludricrous and the overrated, I give you three UK releases:
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022)
Living (Oliver Hermanus, 2022)
Men (Alex Garland, 2022)
Ten Best Films Of The Year
All Of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh, 2023)
Cerrar los ojos (Close Your Eyes, Victor Erice, 2023)
Eureka (Lisandro Alonso, 2023)
Kaibutsu (Monster, Koreeda Hirokazu, 2023)
Khers nist (No Bears, Jafar Panahi, 2022)
Kimitachi wa do ikiru ka (The Boy and the Heron, Hiyao Miyazaki, 2023)
The Plains (David Easteal, 2022)
That They May Face The Rising Sun (Pat Collins, 2023)
Yeohaengjaui pilyo (A Traveller's Needs, Hong Sang-soo, 2024)
The Zone Of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)
Due to the vagaries of the British distribution system, this reads more like a “Best of 2023”, but there you go.
*Soon after I'd submitted this list, I got round to watching Kuru Otlar Ustune (About Dry Grasses, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2023), which would certainly have made the list if I'd seen it in time.
Recent Blasts From The Past
The Alpinist (Peter Mortimer/Nick Rosen, 2021)
Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu, 2020)
Only caught up with these for the first time this year, and they didn't disappoint.
Major Disappointments
Feng liu yi dai (Caught By The Tides, Jia Zhangke, 2024)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller, 2024)
Late Night With The Devil (Cameron Cairnes/Colin Cairnes, 2023)
Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt? (What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?, Alexandre Koberidze, 2021)
Single Greatest Film Experience Of The Year
Finally catching up with Jacques Rivette's L'Amour Fou (1969) for the first time, thanks to Radiance Films' excellent Blu-Ray release.