For as long as I can remember I’ve always ended the year with a “10 Best & Worst” list. But that was back when I was a film critic and rabid about seeing as many movies as possible during the course of the year. I just don’t give a shit anymore. And there are just some movies I know I’ll hate and life is way too short. I couldn’t even come up with “10 Best” this year so I just gave up. Well, “spoiler alert”- this is not coming from the New York Critic’s Circle that’s for sure. It’s just a few movies that really pleased me during the year (I would have put Saint Omer on, which I saw and loved at the NY Film Festival, but it opens next year). And Rian Johnson‘s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery tied neck and neck with The Menu as one of the most sinfully enjoyable treats I saw on screen this year, so it’s a toss up. Plus, the fact that Dario Argento has a new movie out (Dark Glasses) fills me with unreasonable joy. Anyway, here goes nothing.
Peter von Kant (Francois Ozon). Still the best movie I saw all year. Francois Ozon’s daring film is “freely adapted” from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and it’s a brilliant, sardonic, audacious triumph. And a wonderful love letter to Fassbinder. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, claustrophobically set in a stylish apartment and concerning the complicated S & M relationship between a tyrannical fashion designer (Margit Carstensen) and her silent, abused assistant (Irm Hermann). In Peter von Kant, Ozon gender-switches. The lead is now a successful director (played with ferocious intensity by Denis Menochet) and most of the film transpires in his apartment where he hurls orders at his masochistic, mute assistant Karl (beautifully played by Stefan Crepon). An actress he made famous on screen- Sidone (sensationally played by Isabelle Adjani) dramatically arrives with a handsome young man named Amir (Khalil Ben Gharbia), and Peter takes one look at the tousle-haired, pouty-lipped beauty and is immediately smitten. Karl may not ever speak but one can read volumes in his expressive eyes as he silently surveys (from afar) as the relationship between Peter and Amir implodes. Unfortunately, the devastating effects of the broken love affair results in Peter cruelly lashing out at his daughter Gabrielle (Aminthe Audiard) and elderly mother (played by long-time Fassbinder collaborator, glorious Hanna Schygulla). What Ozon achieves here is different from Fassbinder’s cool, austere approach to the material. There is an ironic lightness but also real tenderness in Peter von Kant.
Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg) “Surgery is the new sex,” is the mantra is director David Cronenberg’s glorious return to body horror. Set in a dystopian future of “accelerated evolution syndrome” where people have been developing unexplained new organs in their bodies. Viggo Mortensen plays Saul Tenser, who is a legend for producing a myriad of weird new inner body anomalies. He turns it all into performance art, along with his beautiful partner Caprice (exquisite Lea Seydoux), where adoring fans watch them surgically remove the mutant organs. His discomfort afterwards forces him to sleep in a pulsating, organic contraption with tubes and moving desiccated arms to help ease his suffering. There is also a renegade faction of revolutionaries led by Lang (Scott Speedman), who have reconfigured their bodies in order to consume plastic and the government wants Saul to infiltrate this subversive group. One has to register these creepy new organs with the National Organ Registry led by Wippet (wonderful Don McKellar) and his skittishly weird assistant Timlin (Kristen Stewart)- who becomes erotically fascinated with Saul watching the automated blades cut into his body during his performance pieces. Cronenberg visually creates a moss green, rusted-over, nightmare landscape and the movie’s strange tone echoes other Cronenberg films like Videodrome, Rabid, eXistenZ and especially Crash when Saul and Caprice ecstatically entwine naked in a monstrous automated machine that slices into their skin.
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras) Searing and poignant documentary by the director of Citizenfour about acclaimed, transgressive photographer Nan Goldin’s battle with the Sackler family, a family that donated much money to museums but who greedily profited from OxyContin, which addicted and killed thousands. Taking a big page from the Act-Up activist playbook, Goldin and her P.A.I.N. posse held demonstrations in galleries and museums all over the globe pointing accusatory fingers at the culpability of the Sacklers. And, hell, it worked. The film also chronicles Goldin’s complicated past, harrowing childhood and the death of her sister which helped mold her as a person and artist. Goldin created a colorfully perverse family unit of her own, along with best friend, and photographer, David Armstrong. Their lives and friendships with likeminded artists and offbeat characters in Provincetown and New York is colorfully chronicled, with all the tragedy that ensued from drugs and A.I.D.s. It’s a brilliantly edited gem of a film, painting a portrait of Goldin as an artist and an activist, but, like her unforgettable photographs- about so much more.
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh) Colin Farrell gives one of the best performances of his career in this heartbreakingly funny and tragically touching new film. Farrell plays Padraic, a milk farmer who lives on a remote island off the coast of Ireland in 1923. You can occasionally hear shells going off on the mainland from fighting skirmishes during their Civil War. But life is fairly simple on the island. Padraic lives with his book-smart sister Siobhan (luminous Kerry Condon) and his pet donkey in a small cottage. His one constant is stopping by to pick up his best friend Colm (Brendan Gleeson) and going to the local pub for a few drinks. But one day Colm decides he doesn’t want to be friends with Padraic anymore. And it destroys Padraic. He can’t understand why. Is something he did or said? No, Colm says. He just finds his company boring, and would prefer to spend his time composing songs for his fiddle.It’s not as if this occurs in a teeming city. This island is miniscule and the only other person Padraic can talk to about this besides his sister is dim-witted Dominic (scene-stealing Barry Keoghan), who lives with his brutish cop father, who beats him constantly. So Padraic keeps desperately trying to mend this impasse with his oldest friend until the exasperated Colm threatens to start cutting off a finger at a time every time Padraic bothers him. What’s so beautiful about Farrell and Gleeson’s chemistry (much like they had in McDonagh’s brilliant In Bruges) is that it elevates this simple drama of someone being “unfriended” into an almost apocalyptic drama. Cinematographer Ben Davis (who has worked with the director in the past) beautifully captures the windswept, rocky beauty and desolation of this island. And McDonagh’s screenplay bristles with sardonic bursts of dark humor and also heart-rending pathos. But Farrell anchors the film with his great, soulful performance.
X (Ti West) Director West’s ferociously fun film is set in 1979 Texas, where a van filled with a porn movie crew is headed to a place they have rented to film “The Farmer’s Daughters.” It’s a bunkhouse set back from the main farmhouse where a doddering old man and his ancient wife live. Wayne (Martin Henderson), blustery in a big cowboy hat is the producer. His girlfriend, the coke-snorting Maxine (Mia Goth) is playing one of the daughters and fiercely dreams of superstardom. Along is the male stud performer Jackson (Kid Cudi), X-rated sexpot Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow), long-haired, movie-obsessed, cinematographer RJ (Owen Campbell), who has brought along his shy, quiet mouse of a girlfriend Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) to run the boom mike. They have carefully kept their real purpose from the farmer and his wife and sneak scenes out in the barn for dirty authenticity. But the old couple have their own secrets and the frizzy, white-haired old woman can be seen spying on the young crew from windows and behind trees. At first you assume the elderly woman is suffering from some form of dementia. Trust me, it’s a whole different kind of dementia, and things turn bloody and nightmarish fast. What’s so great about the film is the mix of sardonic humor with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like shocks. What also is striking is the perverse subtext exploring age, sexuality and frustrated desire. West turned out two great films this year- he also did a prequel to X that was genuinely unsettling too, also starring Mia Goth, called Pearl. That film was lensed like it was a bright Technicolor musical like Oklahoma! and was wonderfully demented. Mia Goth infuses her character with such heartbreaking and frightening intensity that it blew my mind. It was one of the most naked and raw performances I’ve seen in years.
Nope (Jordan Peele) In the original movie version of The Thing, about a malevolent being from another world, the final warning is to “keep watching the skies.” In Jordan Peele’s masterful, nightmarish and exhilarating Nope there is definitely a fearsome other-worldly presence in the sky but it’s a better idea not to look up. Daniel Kaluuya and the astonishing Keke Palmer play siblings that run a horse ranch providing animals for Hollywood films. But they become obsessed with capturing evidence of UFOs seen in the sky, roping in a tech kid from an electronics store (scene-stealing Brandon Perea), and an old-time cinematographer (Michael Wincott). It’s worth the price of admission to hear gravel-voiced Wincott (in hilarious deadpan) recite the lyrics to Purple People Eater. Steven Yeun plays the neighboring owner of a theme park, a former child star who witnessed a horrifying tragedy when he was a boy. All of those monkey flashbacks are so disturbing it helps keep you unsettled throughout the entire movie. I was just blown away by Nope. With his two previous films, I am only more convinced of how great and original a filmmaker Peele is.
The Menu (Mark Mylod) A fiendishly enjoyable dark comedy and topped with a fabulously sardonic performance by Ralph Fiennes.The plot concerns a group of well-heeled epicureans, arriving by boat to a small, self-sustained island housing an exclusive restaurant where they will spend four hours eating complex, deconstructed food created by the world-famous Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes).Nicholas Hoult plays an insufferable foodie named Tyler, whose date for the evening dropped out so he has replaced her with Margot (sensational Anya Taylor-Joy) who is not impressed with the exclusivity and fussiness of the menu. (Her presence also alarms the Chef and crew since she is not “on the list.”) Other diners include John Leguizamo as a washed-up movie star accompanied by his long-suffering assistant (Aimee Carrero); a haughty food critic (Janet McTeer), whose rave reviews put the Chef on the map, and a wealthy couple who have dined at the island before (Reed Birney & Judith Light). But this is not going to be just any tasting menu. And before long the guests realize, to their horror, that something is very, very wrong. And class and privilege is not going to protect them.This is such diabolical fun to watch, and Fiennes adds so much haughty severity and menace that, when he claps his hands and his staff shouts out, “Yes, Chef!” you jump in your seat right along with the increasingly wary dining guests
Bones and All (Luca Guadagnino) Surprisingly romantic young “cannibals in love” movie from the director of Call Me by Your Name. Based on a novel by Camille DeAngelis, it stars the charismatic Taylor Russell as Maren, whose father has deserted her because of her “affliction” of cannibalism, which she had been able to keep under control until recently. She is heading along the highways by bus and during a stopover she meets a creepy, older man- Sully (Mark Rylance), who instructs her that people of “their” kind can smell each other out. She gets majorly weirded out by him and hops another bus out of town. (Rylance hilariously chews the scenery and when he utters “Nothing dully with Sully,” you just die). Down the road, she sniffs out another of her kind- Lee (Timothee Chalamet) and they tentatively bond and head down the road in a stolen truck together. Chalamet is perfect young wet dream material- scruffy, with hennaed hair and incredibly ripped jeans, he the kind of damaged soul that is irresistible and he accompanies Maren on her mission to reconnect with the mother she never knew. This kind of loony romanticism mixed with blood is usually found in vampire films like Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark or Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive. But there is real tenderness and crackpot poetry to these bloodthirsty lovers’ journey. Never has the phrase “eat me” seemed more like a kiss.
(Special thanks to photographer Chad Hunt for being such a great friend)
So glad you included “X” and had a good mention for Pearl! Both are stand out horror movies.