2021 Over

It’s hard to comprehend the idea that another year has passed, although perception of time is now at head spinning speed, the amount of actual change that has occurred between this end of year and the last is tricky to discern. It doesn’t help that society at large has been necessarily sluggish in response to the ongoing life threatening global pandemic and this has in turn created fewer opportunities to experience something new, unless it happened to premiere on Disney+

The cinemas reopened cautiously but the choice on offer was carefully curated to maximise ticket sales and certainly not to offer a wide breadth of cinematic experience, meaning I only saw twenty or so movies at the cinema this year and they were pretty evenly split between comic book action movies and lowest common denominator horror movies. At home I didn’t watch a great deal of new movies either, preferring to kill solitude by digging into a huge backlog of purchased/stolen older movies instead. So instead of big end of year lists, here’s a bunch of little lists that reflect what I’ve been watching this year.

5 Best Films I Saw In The Cinema

Watching proper films is definitely getting trickier out there, there’s a clear reluctance on cinemas and studios to take even the slightest risk after the delays and losses occurred due to closures at the start of the year, and choice was often slight. There are plenty of great films out there, as shown by all the film festivals that still ran but to minimise risk I didn’t attend any this year, and so I found myself at the mercy of the multiplex and its aggressively marketed deluge of mediocre crowd pleasing fare. Though there were still a few sparkling gems to be had out on the big screen. 

5: Titane

Unlike any other film I saw this year. I could say the same about Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch which also vied for this spot, but Titane made my toes curl at points and The French Dispatch never did that.

4: The Night House

This years jump scare of the year. At least twice as good as any that came before it.

3: Spider-Man: No Way Home

The peak of a busy twelve months for Marvel was this flurry of fizzing excitement that was so impressive it was still a flurry of fizzing excitement on successive viewings as well.

2: In The Earth

Wheatley at his psychedelic best; disorientating, unsettling and soundtracked by buzzing synth dread. Ace.

1: Dune: Part One

For pure visionary spectacle though, nothing else this year came close to the grand majesties offered up by this utter epic. Part two now please.

5 Great Giallo Movies

I’ve watched a lot of these now and it amazes me that there’s still great giallo movies out there, for such a narrow genre of film there’s such a bounty to be had. Not that great means good, I don’t think that’s the point though they’re great because they’re trashy, lurid and always look absolutely fantastic. Here’s the five I enjoyed most this year.

5: Midnight Killer

Lamberto Bava is generally more miss than hit, but he manages to get it right here by lifting a bunch of good bits from other giallo movies and pasting them together as his own.

4: The Psychic

Far more coherent and polished than much of what Fulci would go on to make, also features the dumbest Psychic I’ve ever seen onscreen, but then you can’t have it all can you.

3: The Dead Are Alive

A perfect example of how a great giallo isn’t necessarily a good film, this thing’s bollocks but absolutely hilariously so.

2: Knife Of Ice

The only truly surprising killer reveal this year. Normally it’s ‘yeah, of course’ or ‘who the fuck is that?’ but this one was ‘oh, very good. Very good indeed.’

1: The Girl In Room 2A

The best of the year in giallo, primarily due to the costume that the killer is kitted out in. Do a google image search you’ll see what I mean.

5 Small Screen Discoveries

At home I watched all manner of trash, some of it recently made, most of it not. Although I didn’t watch any online film festival fare, there were two online Joefests, a large number of individual Joevid viewings and I managed to watch 31 horror films in the month of October because internet. A lot of the Joefest stuff was great, most of the October films weren’t and there was a speckling of excellent movies amongst those I watched through the rest of the year too. Here’s five favourites. 

5: Zack Snyder’s Justice League

A clear demonstration that Snyder knew exactly what he was doing, rendering the Whedon effort even more of an embarrassment than it already was.

4: Psycho Goreman

Essentially one long joke about a being of pure relentless evil being controlled by a child. But it was a good joke and worth making for ninety minutes.

3: Devil Fetus

The best of Joefest. Absolutely deranged.

2: Lake Mungo

Stood out a mile from the rest of the fodder I watched through October by properly pulling the rug from under me. A sneaky film.

1: Rigor Mortis

A jaw dropping display of crazed oriental vampire insanity that begins full throttle and then absolutely does not let up till the end. Awesome.

5 Shittest Films I Saw At The Cinema

I want to be clear, these are not the five worst films I watched this year. At home I sat through some absolute atrocity, most of it during October. I watched a lot of fucking awful films this year but given the small amount of cinema screen real estate out there, I thought I’d focus on those that wasted it so cruelly. Opportunities to bathe in big screen glow were fewer this year and this bunch of shit took up more than a quarter of them.

5: Malignant

Repellently stupid.

4: Last Night In Soho

Flashy and shallow, like a cinematic adaptation of a teaspoon of glitter. Levelled, not heaped.

3: Halloween Kills

Slasher movies generally struggle to hold a story for their full length, so I don’t know who the fuck thought it’d be a good idea to try and tell a Michael Myers story across three films because it’s a shit idea.

2: F9: The Fast Saga

The fast movies always did ride a fine line between fabulous shit and plain old shit but this one was nowhere near it.

1: Old

Shyamalan’s devastating ability to curl out cinematic turds would appear to be effortlessly going from strength to strength.

Another year behind. Another in front. Let’s go, I guess.