What a pleasant surprise The Jungle Book was. It looked gorgeous in a I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter-real! sort of way, and had the feel of Apocalypto for kids, with some light humour thrown in and some light maiming and human sacrifice thrown out. This is one of those children's movie that's fun for adults too that's actually fun for adults too! The Jungle Book was a delight from start to finish. A cinematic treat easily beating The Legend of Tarzanto the award for best jungle-based movie. The latter may feature the son of Stellan Skarsgård, the man who plays Prof. Lambeau in Good Will Hunting and who I have an irrational love for (I know how you feel, jealous T.A). But I will not let that love - or Margot Robbie - cloud my judgment. The Legend of Tarzan was a disaster of colonial proportions.
Most Disappointing Film
Any chance there's a script up there?"
There are very few films I have had the real urge to walk out on. As bad as some of the films I've seen this year have been, it never crossed my mind to leave the cinema early. As I said in my introduction to these awards, a bad film in the cinema is still a film in the cinema. But there was about a ten minute stretch during Knight of Cupswhen I wrestled with the thought. Those who dislike Malick's films sometimes criticise them for resembling two hour perfume adverts. I wasn't having any of that, not even for To the Wonder. But there is perhaps no better way to describe Knight of Cups. This is self-indulgent, up-its-own-arse film making that moved me only to disappointment. In his review of The Tree of Life, Xan Brooks writes that he does not believe in God, but he does believe in Terrence Malick. Well I do believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Terrence Malick. Has his latest blockbuster caused me to lose faith? Not quite. For all its many faults, it has a great line: "You don't want love. You want a love experience." There's a criticism to cut the modern individual to the heart. The only problem is that it's not much fun watching Christian Bale having half a dozen love experiences in a couple of hours. I think I need to come to terms with the reality that it won't get any better than The Tree of Life. But it surely doesn't have to be as bad as this. The good thing is that the newly-prolific Malick has a couple of movies coming out soon. Like a Premier League team with a midweek fixture after a heavy defeat, he has a chance to right some of the wrongs and get Knight of Cups out of my system. Over to you, unnamed project starring half the actors in Hollywood.
The Joseph Fletcher Award for Services to Situation Ethics
Governments have a lot of difficult decisions to make. For example, do we accept the $13 billion that is legally owed to us, or do we refuse it? Or, in the case of Eye in the Sky, do we murder an innocent child or do we not? Eye in the Sky is as close to a piece of propaganda for liberal democracy that you're likely to get. It shows all sorts of fine people wrestling with what we're supposed to believe is the central moral dilemma. There's an old joke that says Catholics can do what they want as long as they go to confession, and Protestants can do what they want as long as they feel bad about it. If there's any truth to this, then Eye in the Sky is a deeply Protestant film. There's lots of politicians and soldiers who feel bad about doing what seems to be a necessary evil, but the final message of the film is: don't judge us from your comfortable armchair; we sacrificed our lives so that you could have the freedom to sit in this cinema munching on popcorn and Minstrels and watching important movies like Zoolander 2. In other words, only those who have had to decide whether or not to murder a child are in a position to criticise governmental action. London Has Fallen made no secret of its sadism, no attempt to rationalise or justify its brutality. Eye in the Sky is an evil film precisely because of these attempts. And the worst of it is, it's not even telling us the really brutal truth. Now, imagine a country deciding that London Has Fallen and Eye in the Sky are the only two nominees for the Best Picture Oscar.
The country you have imagined is Fuckheadica.
Best Biopic
If you want to learn the truth about someone's life, it's probably best to avoid their biopic. The best you can usually hope for in these films are half-truths. And you can be fairly certain that these half-truths will add up to a story of redemption. This was the formula for last year's Steve Jobs and it was the formula for this year's Miles Ahead. I didn't much about Miles Davis before I saw this film, save for the fact that he was a famous jazz musician. Having seen the film I now know that he was a famous jazz musician with a drug problem. This is a strange movie. It follows Davis around in the wilderness years of his career, when he apparently spent his time getting into hilarious jams while chasing his next fix. In the flashbacks we witness a younger Davis in his pomp, playing his trumpet in smokey jazz venues and occasionally beating his wife. It's not an exaggeration to say that these two timelines don't mix very well. Davis is presented to us as a flawed genius who loses his way, though the flaws are severely underplayed (what's a little violence towards women when you can play a mean trumpet?). Don Cheadle is very good in the lead role, but there is something soulless about the whole project.
Best Comedy
I love a good buddy comedy, and The Nice Guysis a a perfectly good buddy comedy from the master of the genre. Russell Crowe plays Russell Crowe, an aging, surly man with a short temper. He's the straight guy to Ryan Gosling's clumsy, flamboyant P.I.. It's an old formula but it works. Gosling in particular demonstrates some good comedy acting chops. The jokes come thick and fast (some work, some don't, but who's counting?), making this a worthy addition to the buddy comedy canon. That it did so badly at the box office while The Avengers' Civil War 2: Thor vs Black Widow and Hawkeye's Revenge made 17 trillion dollars is why we now have Brexit and Trump.*
Best Film Featuring a Member of the Skarsgård Family
If the son of Stellan Skarsgård cannot save a film then can Stellan Skarsgård himself? This is the pressing question of our age, and the answer is...sort of. Our Kind of Traitor taps into the popularity of British author John le Carré. I've never read a le Carré novel, but if this film is anything to go by then the book on which it is based was probably churned out by le Carré one rainy afternoon while he was waiting for the roast chicken to finish. That is not to say that this is a bad film (or that it must be a bad book). It's just not a very thrilling espionage thriller, and I like my espionage thrillers thrilling.
In the fifth season of The Wire (the worst of the five by general consensus, but also the most underrated), David Simon finally tackles head on the institution which is closest to his heart: print journalism. The Wire gives us good journalists and bad ones, with the former suffering because of idiotic decisions made at corporate level and the latter prospering. It's a fairly bleak depiction of the industry, though hardly surprising given Simon's own experiences as a journalist, as well as his singular drive towards what he calls "the audacity of despair." In The Wire, the failure of the journalists (even the good ones) is their remarkable ability to miss the stories that matter. The city of Baltimore is teeming with interesting characters who we have been following for several years. Yet when these characters die, for example, the story of their deaths is buried in some small section of the newspaper. The point Simon is making here - a point which not only applies to journalists, but to police, politicians etc - is that people are ignorant of their own cities. And not only that, but trapped in an ignorance that is self-perpetuating because it is willed. As Detective McNulty says of a former CI, he “saw the street like we wish we could.” In Spotlight, we are given a more hopeful depiction of print media - though not without a final mea culpa. The "street" in this instance is Boston, with the story centering around the sexual abuse suffered at the hands of clergy throughout the city, as well as the institutional cover-up. Indeed, it's perhaps even more the latter than the former. The film shows us good journalists doing good work - interviewing victims, gathering evidence, spotting corrupt practices, facing up to the powers that be. Though a sensational story, the film is not given to sensationalism. It is subdued and matter-of-fact almost to a fault. That said, the "fact" in question is sufficient of itself to evoke heartbreak and fury. How could something not only so horrific, but so widespread, so systematic, so known, have happened? Spotlight's line is that it takes a village (a city) to abuse a child. There is no one with clean hands, though some certainly have dirtier hands than others.
Best Sequel to a Movie That Was Quoted to Death During My Teenage Years
You know what I like about rich Dublin kids? Nothin’! My first exposure to Zoolander was at a Christian summer camp, where a bunch of my dorm mates [?] quoted it to each other ad nauseam. That’s never a good way to endear one to a film. The same thing happened with Napoleon Dynamite and Anchorman. When I eventually got around to watching these films, there was nothing left to enjoy. We've been spared a Napoleon Dynamite 2 (with Jon Heder's miserable career to thank for that), but we have had no such luck with the others. Anchorman 2 is a singularly humourless comedy, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise. But Zoolander 2 is not far behind. It got one cheap laugh out of me, but one cheap laugh does not a comedy make (that goes for you as well, David Brent: Life on the Road, but we'll talk later). The if-in-doubt-load-your-comedy-up-with-celebrity-appearances formula just isn't working. Who knew? It's time for Hollywood to take a long hard look at itself and figure out what's funny again. The era of the Frat Pack is over. Time of death: The Internship. They had a good run. The question is, where to next? It's hard to know, but don't be surprised to see Bongwater 2 hitting your local cinema this time next year while Hollywood comes up with a more acceptable answer.
Best Poor Man’s Heat
"Remind me why agreed to do this movie?"
Films about a crew of thieves taking one last score in a big city will inevitably be compared to Michael Mann’s Heat. By me. But the wait for one of these films to step out of its shadow goes on. The Town failed to do it, losing its way near the beginning and ending up with a final minute which looked like a cut scene from Miley Cyrus vehicle The Last Song. The bad news for Triple 9 is that it doesn’t even reach the heights of The Town. Or The Last Song, for that matter. This is, unfortunately, a case of Casey Affleck saying to big brother Ben, “Anything you can do, I can do slightly worse.” An A-list cast is given precious little to work with, with the characters and the story going nowhere interesting. Instantly forgettable, but for the fact that it could have been so much better. And for the fact that Kate Winslett plays a Russian mobster.
Best Neologism
GB: "Get out of this franchise while you still can, Aaron! I'll cover for ya." AE: "But how are you gonna get out?" GB: "....."
A trip to Frankie and Bennie’s followed by London Has Fallen is surely a contender for worst evening ever, but that's a blog post for another time. It was bad taste all around, with this Gerard Butler-led action romp being perhaps the fittingest film for 2016. If Air Force One is the Democrat’s version of a president-based action movie, then London Has Fallen is the Trump version. It wears its xenophobia on its sleeve, and makes no apologies for its knife-a-bad-guy-to-death-and-ask-questions-later approach to conflict. But it wins this award for giving us what should have been the Oxford word of the year: Fuckheadistan. Gerard Butler throws in this beauty as he taunts one of the terrorists over a walkie-talkie, telling him and his terrorist friends to go back to “Fuckheadistan” or wherever it is they came from. Zing! Forget your post-truth, forget your Brexit: the English word of the year is Fuckheadistan. It’s not the word we need, but it’s the word we deserve. It's also kinda fun to apply the same zinger to other countries. For example, instead of "America" you can say "Fuckheadica". That might not actually be a bad idea, at least in the short term. It may sound like an over the top gesture, but I am becoming increasingly convinced this is the only way to make Fuckheadica great again.
Best Horror
I am about as much an authority on horror films as David Cameron on Aston Villa. So take this award with a pinch of salt. The Witch is more or less the only horror movie I've ever seen. And truth be told, it's not a quintessential horror movie. There are no real jumps to be had, no moments of impending fright, other than when you discover that Finchy is playing the lead role. This is a film that builds slowly and menacingly to a dramatic finale. The story is simple: a family in 17th century New England is banished from their Puritan plantation, and set up home near the woods. What follows is the unraveling of all certitudes, and the exposure of and to the evil which they have heard about with their ears (it is learned from the great Confessions) but which they now see with their eyes. This was a contender for my film of the year. It is certainly the only flawless film I've seen in the past twelve months. Once you've seen it, it is impossible to shake it off. It exposes you to a darkness you would rather not contemplate, but which you are forced into contemplating (fair to say it's more a Lenten film than a Christmas film, though Herod's massacre might suggest otherwise). As Evgeny Morozov once remarked, evil was not eradicated with the invention of the iPhone. That said, for better or worse those who lived before the iPhone were perhaps more aware of it. Does that mean that the iPhone is the devil's greatest trick? Possibly, but what is certain is that you would be missing a devil's trick if you don't see this movie. Highly recommended, as it used to say in the RTE guide.
Least Worst Comic Book Film
There are no longer any "best" comic book films. Only comic films which aren't quite as bad as other comic book films. After the double whammy of The Avengers and Man of Steel I made a solemn oath never to see a comic book movie in the cinema again. For a couple of years I was true to my word. But possessing an Unlimited card makes a man do things he can never undo. One of those things was my trip to see Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. My expectations were rock bottom, yet still I was disappointed (though mostly I was just bored and angry). The first quarter of the film flirts with intelligence. It tries to deal with the fact that these films almost inevitably end up in mass destruction which goes unaccounted for. In this case, the Superman of Man of Steel (played with all the charisma of a cardboard box by Henry Cavill) is shown to have paid no regard to the fortune of Bruce Wayne as he and Zod knocked lumps out of each other. Wayne is pissed, and he's looking for any excuse to take down Supes.
There's even some mildly interesting political commentary on Superman vs Liberal Democracy, But all of that goes out the window once Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor gets going. Coincidence? I think not. There is an attempt at a kind of pseudo-Nietzschean theme, as well as an attempt at theodicy (can Superman be omnibenevolent and omnipotent?). To put on my theologian's hat for a second, the problem with these attempts is that, contrary to the view of popular atheists (Ireland's friendly racist Ian O'Doherty, for example), God is not thought to be something like an alien (as Terry Eagleton puts it, God plus the universe does not make two). And for Christians, God becomes man, not Übermensch. But all of this is rather beside the point. The real problem with this film is that it's not actually a film at all. It is a two and a half hour advertisement for future films/advertisements. If there are any god-like figures at work here, it's the studio executives intent on creating a cinematic universe, or rather, the Mammon which has them grovelling at its feet and willing to do anything to appease it. 2019's Plastic Man may end up being the film of the decade. But I'll be damned before I go to see it.
A metaphor: Oscar Isaac is comic book movies, Jennifer Lawrence is the film industry
With all this in mind, the award for least worst comic book film goes to X-men: Apocalypse. Yes, it's bad. Really bad. Stupidly bad. But it has two things going for it. First, it has Michael Fassbender, the most beautiful man in Ireland. (Aside: nothing makes me prouder to be Irish than the fact that an Irishman is dating Alicia Vikander. It's as if we're all dating her.) Second, it feels like the end of one of these franchises rather than a set-up. That in itself is worth celebrating. I mean, surely there's nowhere to go after an apocalypse. Right?
Let's be clear. 2016 was not a particularly vintage year at the cinema. That being said, I must also confess: I chose poorly. There were potentially great films on offer which for one reason or another I didn't get to see: Hail, Caesar!, American Honey, Son of Saul, Midnight Special, I, Daniel Blake, Nocturnal Animals, Sing Street, Mother's Day. I could blame Cineworld and its reluctance to show anything that isn't guaranteed to earn three billions pounds in its opening weekend. I could also point to the happy fact that my cinema going days all but ended in October (at least for the time being). But truth be told, this one is on me. My rationale is, most of those potentially great movies which I neglected can be watched at home without much loss of appreciation. The cinema, however, is for films that are guaranteed to earn three billion pounds in their opening weekend. And so I trudged along to some unimaginable crap over the last twelve months. You name/ridicule it, I saw it, my only consolation being the fact that, thanks [?] to my Cineworld Unlimited card, it wasn't costing me anything extra to see if Now You See Me 2 or London Has Fallen could live up to the originals (they couldn't, which says a lot).
But it wasn't all bad. I saw a few truly great films this year, films that will live long in the memory, films that I can't wait to see again. And even a bad film at the cinema is still a film at the cinema, and thus an excuse to indulge in my new vice: Galaxy Minstrels (or Counters, though the Minstrels come in bigger bags) mixed with salt & sweet popcorn. So without further delay, here are my awards for the Films of 2016.
Best Film Featuring a Man Sleeping Inside a Horse
Alejandro Iñárritu is so hot right now. The Revenant was the first film I saw in 2016, and none since has matched it for sheer spectacle. From the fairly tight confines of his previous film Birdman, Iñárritu drags his audience out into the vast expanses of the North American wilderness, this time to track Leonardo DiCaprio as he crawls from one misfortune to another. The Revenant covers an enormous amount of space, displaying all the beauty and brutality of Nature. Yet precisely because of this the human story gets sort of swallowed up, or should I say, chewed up and spat out (quite literally). Perhaps that is simply part of the narrative, a sort of critique of Enlightenment anthropocentrism and its attendant colonialism. In the battle between Man and Nature, the lesson of The Revenant is that Nature will not be subdued without cost. What then of the battle between Man and (Tom Hardy’s unnecessarily unintelligible) Man? The Revenant certainly has politico-theological aspirations, aiming to say something about loyalty and violence and revenge, but these remained slightly obscure and unconvincing to me. There are flashbacks and visions that didn’t make a whole lot of sense at the time, though perhaps they would become clear with a second viewing. But watching The Revenant on anything other than a giant cinema screen seems a waste of its talent. This is a made-for-cinema film. In short, I ain’t inclined to watch it anymore. I’ve done it already.
Room isn’t the first film to use 'The Mighty Rio Grande' (it cropped up in 2011’s Moneyball). But it’s definitely the best. I didn’t know what I was walking into when I walked into Room, and after ten minutes I felt like walking out. But this turned out to be a quite brilliant film, weaving philosophical reflection (think Plato’s cave allegory) into a well-told story of human suffering, struggle, and hope. It is as if we are getting a first-hand insight into what it might be like for a child to go from womb (room?) to world: the terror, the disbelief, the wonder. It may or may not be a stretch to call this a pro-life film, but it is undoubtedly life-affirming in the most pregnant sense of that term. That is not to say that Room is an easy watch. It most certainly is not. But this is a carefully crafted and beautifully acted film that deserves to be watched. A definite highlight of 2016. (If you care to see the scene with 'The Mighty Rio Grande' again, here it is.)
Best Film Featuring an Actor with the Same Name as a Basketball Legend
“Where’s Wallace at?” you ask? He’s only starring in one of the most enjoyable movies of 2016, is where he’s at! Michael (B.) Jordan is not yet a household name in the acting world, but it is surely only a matter of time. He oozes charisma and likability, and carries Creed on his considerable torso (it's a long time since that oversized jacket in the low rises). There is enough of an ode to the old Rocky films to keep this attached to the original series, but it doesn’t allow itself to get bogged down by nostalgia or sentiment. This is a film which stands on its own
two feet. It doesn’t exactly break any new ground, but it effortlessly retains boxing’s status as the sport which makes for the best movies. And I hate boxing.
Best Financial Crash Comedy-Drama
It may have missed a trick by not having Kevin Hargaden explaining sub primes while doing calf stretches on an exercise ball, but The Big Short does a fine job of turning the financial crash of 2008 into an intelligent and entertaining film (consider a companion piece to the more solemn Margin Call.) There is too much bravado and machismo on display (Like The Wolf of Wall Street, it seems to assume that its audience is exclusively male, hence Margot Robbie in a hot tub.) But this is a film with good actors giving good performances, and it tells a story so few really understand (in part, at least, because of the technocratic obscurity which surrounds the crash) in a way that helps us to understand it. Do I now know what a sub prime is? I won't pretend that I do. But when I bump into Margot Robbie at the next Society for the Study of Theology conference I will at the very least know to ask her.
Best Actor
Dalton Trumbo is not a communist. He may be a liar, a screenwriter, and a communist, but he is not a porn star. Trumbo may not be the best film of 2016. But given what has happened in the western world since its release, it may well be one of the most significant. It tells a history I knew absolutely nothing about: the blacklisting of Hollywood screenwriters (The Hollywood Ten) who were accused of being communists, and therefore traitors in America's war against Russia - a war which would not be resolved until Rocky IV. Trumbo (who wrote the Oscar winning screenplay to the wonderful Roman Holiday, but couldn't receive credit for it because of the blacklist) is played by Bryan Cranston, perhaps one of the funniest actors in Hollywood at the moment. He gives a sharp and compelling performance, helping to bring an important but neglected moment in American history to life. As a friend recently remarked, there is no real Left in America any more. This film explains at least in part why that might be the case. And as much as Hollywood today likes to think of itself as a strange bastion of something that might be called 'leftist values'...well, watch this videoand weep. Workers Film lovers of the world, unite! (by watching this movie over Christmas).
Governments have a lot of difficult decisions to make. For example, do we accept the $13 billion that is legally owed to us, or do we refuse it? Or, in the case of Eye in the Sky, do we murder an innocent child or do we not? Eye in the Sky is as close to a piece of propaganda for liberal democracy that you're likely to get. It shows all sorts of fine people wrestling with what we're supposed to believe is the central moral dilemma. There's an old joke that says Catholics can do what they want as long as they go to confession, and Protestants can do what they want as long as they feel bad about it. If there's any truth to this, then Eye in the Sky is a deeply Protestant film. There's lots of politicians and soldiers who feel bad about doing what seems to be a necessary evil, but the final message of the film is: don't judge us from your comfortable armchair; we sacrificed our lives so that you could have the freedom to sit in this cinema munching on popcorn and Minstrels and watching important movies like Zoolander 2. In other words, only those who have had to decide whether or not to murder a child are in a position to criticise governmental action. London Has Fallen made no secret of its sadism, no attempt to rationalise or justify its brutality. Eye in the Sky is an evil film precisely because of these attempts. And the worst of it is, it's not even telling us the really brutal truth. Now, imagine a country deciding that London Has Fallen and Eye in the Sky are the only two nominees for the Best Picture Oscar.
