What I've Loved
While those in Venice are lapping up some of the frontrunners for next year's academy awards, notably Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's highly anticipated Birdman, over here I'm still hung up on the winner of this year's Best Film, Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave. In an interview I watched with the director before seeing the film, he pointed out the startling travesty that more films had been made about Roman slavery than American, a wrong that he has certainly righted with this vividly haunting masterpiece that combines various extraordinary components to create one exceptional film.
Although I saw many sterling works after 12 Years - including Jonathan Glazer's beguilingly beautiful Under The Skin, John Michael McDonagh's poignantly powerful Calvary, and Wes Anderson's gloriously gratifying The Grand Budapest Hotel - I had convinced myself that no other film would affect me so strongly this year... until I sat down and watched Richard Linklater's ode to adolescence, Boyhood.
The indie director has long since been looked upon as an artist determined to push the boundaries of his art form, but even when set against those standards, Boyhood remains an astronomical achievement. Shot over 12 years with the same cast, it's a captivating bildungsroman of one young boy's journey from childhood to adulthood. Though helmed by a superbly naturalistic performance by newcomer Ellar Coltrane, it's without doubt the writer/director who impresses most here for creating an extensive time capsule of youth and, by extension, life.
What I've Loathed
Mark Kermode once said during one of his eminently entertaining blogs that he believes one of the key traits of a good film critic is the willingness to watch anything. Something that I have always abided by, having long been of the opinion that you'll never know if something is good or bad until you see it for yourself. It is with that in mind that I traveled to one of my local cinemas on the day of its release to see if Grace of Monaco was really deserving of universal panning it received. It took little more than 2 minutes to come to the conclusion that it had all been entirely justified. A "true" story firmly based within the realms of fiction, this relentlessly frustrating tale of how Grace Kelly saved Monaco from ruin was perfectly summed by Kelly's real son, Prince Albert II, as a "farce".
Of course, this isn't the only film to get my blood boiling; with Seth MacFarlane's churlish cowboy comedy A Million Ways To Die In The West, turbulent Liam Neeson vehicle Non-Stop, and ghastly girls-doing-it-for-themselves comedy The Other Woman all leaving me in an all-consuming haze of hatred. But the one that really made its mark, that frustrated & angered me the most in the cinema so far this year, was David Ayer's blood-splattering, brain-frying binge of testosterone Sabotage.
It wasn't enough that the plot seemed determined to transport you to the darkest pits of hell, or that every character was so unnecessarily aggressive that not only did you find yourself disliking them, you wanted to leave the cinema just to avoid their company. No, Ayer had to go one further by taking a tongue-in-cheek actor I've always had a guilty soft-spot for and turn him in to nothing more than dull driver of needless exposition. We've all seen our share of bad Arnold Schwarzenegger films, but even in those low moments, he's cheeky personality & natural charisma won through. Here he's saddled with the task of simply looking perpetually forlorn throughout and leaving you to simply wish he'd leave and never come back!
Whether any film I see between now and the end of the year will be able to matched the brilliance of Boyhood or staleness of Sabotage remains to be seen. Looking ahead, the films that particularly leap out at me are The Drop, A Most Wanted Man, The Imitation Game, and Fury. All I know at the moment, is that I can't wait to see them all!
While those in Venice are lapping up some of the frontrunners for next year's academy awards, notably Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's highly anticipated Birdman, over here I'm still hung up on the winner of this year's Best Film, Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave. In an interview I watched with the director before seeing the film, he pointed out the startling travesty that more films had been made about Roman slavery than American, a wrong that he has certainly righted with this vividly haunting masterpiece that combines various extraordinary components to create one exceptional film.
The indie director has long since been looked upon as an artist determined to push the boundaries of his art form, but even when set against those standards, Boyhood remains an astronomical achievement. Shot over 12 years with the same cast, it's a captivating bildungsroman of one young boy's journey from childhood to adulthood. Though helmed by a superbly naturalistic performance by newcomer Ellar Coltrane, it's without doubt the writer/director who impresses most here for creating an extensive time capsule of youth and, by extension, life.
What I've Loathed
Mark Kermode once said during one of his eminently entertaining blogs that he believes one of the key traits of a good film critic is the willingness to watch anything. Something that I have always abided by, having long been of the opinion that you'll never know if something is good or bad until you see it for yourself. It is with that in mind that I traveled to one of my local cinemas on the day of its release to see if Grace of Monaco was really deserving of universal panning it received. It took little more than 2 minutes to come to the conclusion that it had all been entirely justified. A "true" story firmly based within the realms of fiction, this relentlessly frustrating tale of how Grace Kelly saved Monaco from ruin was perfectly summed by Kelly's real son, Prince Albert II, as a "farce".
Of course, this isn't the only film to get my blood boiling; with Seth MacFarlane's churlish cowboy comedy A Million Ways To Die In The West, turbulent Liam Neeson vehicle Non-Stop, and ghastly girls-doing-it-for-themselves comedy The Other Woman all leaving me in an all-consuming haze of hatred. But the one that really made its mark, that frustrated & angered me the most in the cinema so far this year, was David Ayer's blood-splattering, brain-frying binge of testosterone Sabotage.
It wasn't enough that the plot seemed determined to transport you to the darkest pits of hell, or that every character was so unnecessarily aggressive that not only did you find yourself disliking them, you wanted to leave the cinema just to avoid their company. No, Ayer had to go one further by taking a tongue-in-cheek actor I've always had a guilty soft-spot for and turn him in to nothing more than dull driver of needless exposition. We've all seen our share of bad Arnold Schwarzenegger films, but even in those low moments, he's cheeky personality & natural charisma won through. Here he's saddled with the task of simply looking perpetually forlorn throughout and leaving you to simply wish he'd leave and never come back!
Whether any film I see between now and the end of the year will be able to matched the brilliance of Boyhood or staleness of Sabotage remains to be seen. Looking ahead, the films that particularly leap out at me are The Drop, A Most Wanted Man, The Imitation Game, and Fury. All I know at the moment, is that I can't wait to see them all!
Below are select reviews by James of the films mentioned above:
- Boyhood
- Calvary
- Non-Stop
- Sabotage
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