2019 Over

The year of quite good. Saw a lot of quite good movies this year, not great but y'know, quite good. Even a lot of the bad movies were, y'know, alright I guess. Clearly a lot of effort is being put in to raise the game of cinema, although in all of this people seem to have forgotten to sprinkle a few more future classics about. There's still some greats and this years ten stands next to any other in the decade, but they were fewer and far between and even sometimes struggled to get onto cinema screens which strikes me as erroneous. Maybe the dual shadow cast by Star Wars and Marvel this year eclipsed creatvity in some way but I think that's probably a pub conversation that no pub has the opening hours to cater for and ultimately, with one exception, this year's output from these two behemoths was no more than... quite good. Here's ten that weren't.


10 Favourite New Films That I Saw On A Cinema Screen

10: Fast & Furious: Hobbs And Shaw

Absolutely not a Fast & Furious movie. Definitely is an intelligence shredding amalgam of all the most glorious stupidity from Rock movies and all the finest moronicism from Statham movies. The only Fast was the speed with which I gleefully accepted every moment of plot lunacy and the only Furious was Vin Diesel at his utter redundancy as the franchise barrels onward without him.

9: Us

Second film in and Jordan Peele continues to use layered allegory and clever narrative devices to confuse and unsettle hooting audiences as he fools them into thinking they're just watching basic mainstream horror movies.

8: Avengers: Endgame

A crowning achievement that provides a finale to a remarkable 22 film arc reinforcing a bunch of 'quite good' filler movies in the process and yet also very much its own array of grand spectacle that will make you involuntarily belch forth a 'fuck yeah!' at least twice. Probably more.

7: Jojo Rabbit

I always have admiration for films that can make you laugh at stuff that shouldn't be laughed at, this one does that and manages to smack you hard in the feels at the same time, quite remarkable.

6: The House That Jack Built

Like any Von Trier this trades on extreme shock and provocation featuring some of his spiciest moments which brought on facial winces that can last for weeks. Like any Von Trier this also features a deep exploration of cinema, artistic creation and existential malady. So business as usual for Von Trier, and what a business it is.

5: The Dead Don't Die

To have films question and comment on themselves as they occur is nothing new, though to see it done with such a deadpan could-not-give-a-single-shit shrug is. Adam Driver and Bill Murray discussing who has read the script is a highlight of the year all in itself.

4: Why Don't You Just Die

The best of this years Frightfest stood far apart from the rest (a lot of which was *ahem* quite good) and featured an entire Spaghetti Western taking place in a tiny Russian apartment. The kind of thing Tarantino promised with Reservoir Dogs and then never got round to because he was too busy up his own ass.

3: The Irishman

A true master is always looking for new ways to tell familiar stories because they recognise that all our stories are familiar to some degree and it's only by finding ways to explore them deeper that they can be made to stand out. This stands out.

2: The Lighthouse

Pages of archaic dialogue delivered with full salt, constantly bleak and unsettling imagery and a bewildering descent into oppression, madness, wanking and tentacles. Difficult to fault.

1: Midsommar

The most savage break-up movie you will ever watch that prickles with unnatural terror and fills you with the dread of night despite not having a single suggestion of the supernatural and being set mostly during daylight. Also features a better bear gag than any I've seen which in turn leads to one of the most 'what the fuck did I just watch?' endings that I've ever watched. A phenomenal movie.


5 Favourite Films That I Saw On A Little Screen

This year I didn't watch a lot of new movies outside of the cinema, and of the older films I watched it wasn't the good ones that stood out. Which makes for a strange list this year as these films would all struggle to be described as good but yet they're definitely the ones that stood out as they brought on a confusion of astonishment, incredulity and hoots of laughter as I watched. Often simultaneously.

5: Cat In The Brain

Cynical in its recycling of other films but because it's only recycling all the gooey violence of other films it makes for an intense viewing that insists all sanity be left at the door when you enter.

4: Hellboy

Neil Marshall knew he would never be allowed to do this again, so instead of concentrating on making a good film he instead concentrated on just how much jaw dropping insanity he could squash into it all. What a move.

3: Iguana With A Tongue Of Fire

A good example of Italian film making whereby a number of unusual cost cutting decisions collide rendering the result as nothing but pure lunacy albeit with enough of the story in sight to see what everybody was trying to do, ushering in even higher heights of hilarity.

2: Contamination

What Iguana above does for the Giallo, this does for Sci-Fi providing what may well be the best bad movie I've ever seen.

1: Thriller: A Cruel Picture

At the top because really can anything beat a good finger up the bum?


10 Shittest films I sat through

With all the middling, average stuff out there this year, there is a part of me that feels this is worse than a year with a multitude of diamonds at one end of the spectrum with the other being battles between abhorrencies trying to get on this list. Still as beige as things were this year it still wasn't that much of a struggle to find ten proper crap films to swear about, avoid these.

10: Terminator: Dark Fate
An incessant mangling of something that should probably now just be left to fend for itself.

9: Alita: Battle Angel
Three half baked movies crammed into one shit one.

8: It: Chapter Two
Three hours of the worst of modern cinema when ninety minutes would have been more than enough to be just as bollocks.

7: Sister Of Ursula
In Giallo world it's a very fine line drawn between a good movie and a bad one, so sometimes it's worth watching the crap to make the better ones shine. And they're all better than this one.

6: Wounds
Hopelessly miscast and stultifyingly shit.

5: Godzilla: King Of Monsters
Ignores fighting Gods in favour of over dramatising moments like trying to get a door open that's stuck. Fucking awful.

4: X-Men: Dark Phoenix
An atrocity on all levels demonstrating only that Kinsberg might be able to write an X-Men movie but when he directs one the end result is comparable to a bucket of piss.

3: Burial Ground
Another Italian turd. Why single out this one? Well, mainly because it's remarkably bad but also because I wanted to be able to declare Crawl as worse than watching a man with dwarfism playing a child tryng to shag its mother.

2: Crawl
Utter shit that despite having plenty of budget thrown at it is still some how worse than watching a man with dwarfism playing a child trying to shag its mother.

1: Men In Black: International
So bad it actually caused physical pain. Also unfortunately gives free reign to murderers because surely if anybody were to be killed whilst watching this then it would be passed off as a mercy killing.

More? Ok, more.

The Room

Expected atrocity is an atrocity.

My Dear Killer [Mio caro assassino]

Swings gracefully from being a brutally violent episode of Midsomer Murders to being a wonderfully trashy episode of Midsomer Murders.

The Spanish Chainsaw Massacre [Carnívoros]

An attempt to plumb the depths of bad taste on what is clearly a very tight budget, so tight they could only afford 50 minutes of movie thus offering up the only redeeming feature of this mess.

The Holiday

This is what you get when you let a seventeen year old girl pick the Christmas movie. There was only one fucking christmas tree in the entire thing and then it appeared very briefly in the background of two joyless hours of people vacantly gazing at each other like life support patients who have just been unplugged.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas [2D]

I’m quite fond of this stoner buddy duo, only in this one they’re not friends and one of them doesn’t smoke weed any more which is absolutely not what I signed up for and no amount of shit cgi objects floating in the centre of frame is going to change that.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker [IMAX 3D]

Often overcrowded, often rushed, often uses simplistic plot choices, often apologises for a film it need not apologise for, often stubbornly pulls threads from Force Awakens that need not be pulled, often a cliche, often pandering, often pulls shit out of nowhere just for the hell of it, often half baked, often weak. And yet I still found it to be a very likeable effort, how very Star Wars.

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle

I took a break from rewatching The Saga In The Order Lucas Intended to catch this in case an opportunity to watch the sequel presented itself. It was far more enjoyable than it really has any right to be, however an opportunity to watch the sequel never presented itself because I was too busy rewatching The Saga. In The Order Lucas Intended.