by
Julien Faddoul
SPECIAL CITATION – MOST OVERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino’s nostalgic wasp nest of a movie has been by far the biggest thorn in my side throughout the cinematic year. It’s certainly an immaculately constructed film, with two excellent lead performances. But as I wrote in my original review, this is for me undoubtedly his weakest work, culminating in 162 minutes of smug Grand Statements on the deterioration of west-coast optimism and a disheartening dependence on thin, lazy narrative tropes, including inelegant exposition (through both narration and dialogue), protracted scenes of ersatz suspense and a re-writing of historical affairs. For some reason, despite a cool reception at the Cannes Film Festival in May, it received mostly consentient critical praise once it officially opened. But if someone out there knows of, or has themselves written, the piece that explains how this is anything but a particularly banal example of QT’s regurgitation of jukebox junk, I implore you to direct me to it.
SPECIAL CITATION – MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF THE YEAR
Ash is Purest White
A conspectus of Jia’s themes on the globalization of China and the different roles that both men and women are playing, saturated with impeccable use of sound and colour. Pulpier than his previous films, it gains immeasurably from an extraordinary performance by Zhao Tao, in three different time periods. It would be best for Jia to utilize a different narrative structure for his next film though, or he’ll risk becoming out of fashion.
SPECIAL CITATION – MOST PLEASANT SURPRISE OF THE YEAR
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Marielle Heller is the real deal, and I must admit that it took me a few days to fully assimilate how far high the plane of intelligence is that she’s working on. It is a compassionate, acutely observed study in love, betrayal and childhood disillusionment.
SPECIAL CITATION – BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR
Klaus
Splendid animation – utilizing volumetric lighting and texturing – can’t compensate for an uninvolving script, with predictable narrative beats and lame jokes. American animation is in a very bad place creatively at the moment, with the last truly original work being Inside Out (2015). The last five years have been a glut of feeble sequels and disappointingly conservative trinkets.
SPECIAL CITATION – MOST MISUNDERSTOOD FILM OF THE YEAR
Jojo Rabbit
Let’s get one thing clear: I found Taika Waititi's Nazi comedy to be persistently off-putting, soppily staged and embarrassingly unfunny. Nazism is seen through rose-tinted, Dadaist, infantile glasses, and it's indecisive in both tone and satirical viewpoint. But the onslaught of critiques and think-pieces that accused the film of back-door ratification really baffled me. It made want to go back in time to 1998 and say to all the hardcore fans of Life is Beautiful (1998) “Hey, if you think this was bad…”
SPECIAL CITATION – DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILM
Apollo 11
Essentially a brilliant feat of film editing: It consists solely of archival footage, including 65mm film that NASA previously kept unreleased to the public, and is devoid of narration or interviews, but rather has been synced together with likewise unmarked audio files, of which 11,000 hours had to be sorted through. The footage in the first half – consisting of ethnographic-like footage of the crews at both the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and Mission Control Centre in Houston TX, the launch site itself and the spectators who were present – is jaw-droppingly vivid; it’s so pristine and flawlessly digitized it’s as if it were shot yesterday. The footage in the second half – consisting mostly of the three crew members realising their mission – is less enticing, only because much of it has been more (for the most part) regularly available. But as a cinematic experiment, the whole is a breathtaking experience.
SPECIAL CITATION – VISUAL EFFECTS
Ad Astra
I made the decision to not do my usual list of honourees for Visual Effects this year, as I am consistently dejected by both the over-reliance and utter sluggishness of CG artistry throughout modern cinema, particularly Hollywood. Technology has become stagnant in regard to its creativity and contributive aspects, with the only desired goal apparently being flashy realism at all costs. Only one auteur for me this year used special effects in an interesting practice: Stunningly constructed in the manner typical of James Gray, the narrative essentially follows the same trajectory as Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness. I had problems with the film overall, but the visuals are arresting throughout.
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