LUMINOUS PROCURESS

 Clearly aimed, if aimed at anyone, then at a 'midnight matinee' audience turned on by experimental erotica, "Luminous Procuress", like "Pink Narcissus" which came out the same year, came and went in the blink of an eye only to be rediscovered decades later and heralded as something of a cult classic.

Plotless, dialogue free, except for some 'spoken' gibberish, and impossible to describe, this is a partly engaging though, more often than not, mostly boring piece of pop art that makes no real sense and, like so many films of its kind, is also highly pretentious; a home-movie accessible only to those involved and yet, in its wildly over-the-top fashion, it is also difficult to dismiss. Visually it's often remarkable and in the end, like other similar experimental pieces, perhaps best seen as an installation in a gallery rather than in a cinema.

RYE LANE

 When the opening credits of a film announce 'a BBC film and/or B.F.I presents' I still get a frisson of pleasure because I know from past experience the film is likely to be pretty good and "Rye Lane" is certainly no exception, even if the opening scene just might make you cringe which, of course, it's meant to do.

Debut director Raine Allen-Miller has fashioned a genuinely sweet romantic comedy about a couple of strangers who meet in, of all places, a unisex toilet and spend a day together in South London, getting to know each other and basically falling in love.

It's a small film with a very big heart and leads David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah are superbly cast; they don't seem to be acting at all, just being themselves which works perfectly in a film like this. At times it might look like a series of sketches but it also looks great, makes terrific use of its London locations, is funny, charming and inventive and of how many films can you say that these days. I loved it.

FREMONT

 Jim Jarmusch and Aki Kaurismaki would be proud. Babak Julali's gorgeous "Fremont" is minimalism gone wild. So little happens over the ninety or so minute running time you might (just) be forgiven if you drift off. Donya, (newcomer Anaita Wall Zada), is an Afghan who worked as a translator for the US military and who now lives in Fremont, working in a fortune cookie factory in San Francisco. Desperately lonely and unable to sleep she cheats her way into seeing a psychiatrist, (a wonderfully deadpan Gregg Turkington), who just wants to read Jack London's "White Fang" to her.

One day Donya slips a message into one of the fortune cookies giving her name and phone number and waits for the result, hoping it will lead to romance or at least a blind date like the ones her friend and colleague Joanne, (Hilda Schmelling), goes on. What happens next is as sweet and unexpected as you will find in any rom-com for, in its quiet, unassuming way, that's what "Fremont" surely is. Beautifully photographed in black and white by Laura Valladao and superbly acted by the entire cast this is an out-of-nowhere gem that really shouldn't be missed.

THE TEACHER'S LOUNGE

 Nominated for Best International Film at this year's Oscars "The Teacher's Lounge" is a genuinely disquieting thriller and one that is all the more chilling since it involves children. It begins with an investigation into a number of thefts at the school with a child the prime suspect, (he is also the child of immigrants), but the child's teacher, (a superb Leonie Benesch), has considerable reservations about the way the school authorities are conducting their investigations. As she pursues her own line of enquiry what she discovers makes her question where she stands in her relationships both with the students and her fellow staff members.

The fact that Ilker Catak's film only once, and then briefly, leaves the confines of the school adds to its claustrophobic effect and the heightening tension. What begins as perhaps a small problem becomes a powder keg about to explode. Here is a thriller filmed with an almost documentary-like zeal and it's brilliantly played by the entire cast, adult and child alike. It's definitely a movie to put knots in your stomach and yet one that is ultimately deeply moving. Hitchcock himself would be proud.

CARRIE

 A camp horror classic and one of the most enjoyable horror films ever made, "Carrie" was the film that really launched Brian De Palma and Sissy Spacek into the big time. Based on Stephen King's novel it's about the high school ugly duckling with telekinetic powers who is the victim of a truly cruel 'prank' at her school prom and who then uses her powers to take revenge on the perpetrators.

As Carrie, Spacek is simply magnificent and Piper Laurie, in her first film role in 15 years, is scene-stealingly brilliant as Carrie's mad-as-a-hatter mother. As somewhat over-aged students John Travolta, William Katt, Amy Irving and Nancy Allen work wonders with their formulaic roles. It's also, as you might expect from its director, ultra-stylish while the bloody prom climax and final shock ending have already passed into film folklore Almost 50 years on it still stands up and in 2010 was voted the greatest horror film ever made by the Guardian newspaper.

OTHELLO

Trimmed to a sharp ninety or so minutes and 'told' in flashback, (Othello's dead, Iago's a prisoner), Welles' version of "Othello" is naturally more Wellsian than Shakespearean and is none the worse for it, (no written credits; they are spoken by Welles and it's visually stunning despite, or perhaps because of, the five credited DoP's).

It had a troubled production and was filmed over a period of three years so it's not just remarkable that it's as good as it is but that it exists at all. It's not perfect and purists may hate it but if it seems less than great Shakespeare, it's certainly great Welles. He's a wonderful Othello yet even he is upstaged by Micheal MacLiammoir's Iago. Suzzane Cloutier's Desdemona is a weak link as is Michael Laurence's Cassio but when everything else is so good that's a small price to pay. It's also a hundred times better than Welles' disastrous version of "Macbeth".

THE BALLAD OF TAM LIN

 Probably no period in the last one hundred plus years has dated as badly as 'the swinging sixties'. Looked at today the fashions, music and behaviors in general of that decade now seem as remote as Ancient Greece though Roddy McDowall's sole effort as a director, "The Ballad of Tam Lin" made in 1971 but clearly a product of the sixties, tries to circumvent that by making a 'Wicker Man' style piece of folk-horror.

Ava Gardner is the undeniably beautiful, 'ageless' but ageing Earth Mother who seems to keep her youth, not in a box at the bottom of the bed as the old joke goes, but by surrounding herself with beautiful young things, chief of whom is current lover Ian McShane but when McShane sets his sights on vicar Cyril Cusack's daughter Stephanie Beacham, (yes, she too was young once), Ava doesn't take too kindly to it.

Nicely shot by Billy Williams around the Scottish borders and actually rather well played by Gardner, Beacham and a surprisingly good Richard Wattis in a rare dramatic role as Ava's sinister secretary this is a lot better than its reputation would suggest, (a commercial flop, it disappeared and is now considered something of a cult movie). It may not work as a 'horror' film, (it's really rather silly), and yet McDowall handles it all with considerable brio. It's certainly stylish and suggests McDowall could have had a future as a director. Good music, too, from the folk group Pentangle.

 

MY HONORS FOR FILMS SEEN BETWEEN 1ST JANUARY 2023 AND 31ST DECEMBER 2023

 

Best Film: KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Scorsese)

Runner-up: Past Lives (Song)

 

Best Director: AKI KAURISMAKI for FALLEN LEAVES

Runner-up: Celine Song for Past Lives 

 

Best Actor: BRADLEY COOPER for MAESTRO

Runner-up: Bill Nighy for Living

 

Best Actress: SAOIRSE RONAN for FOE

Runner-up: Carey Mulligan for Maestro

 

Best Supporting Actor: ROBERT DE NIRO for KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Runner-up: Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer 

 

Best Supporting Actress: CATALINA SAAVEDRA for ROTTING IN THE SUN

Runner-Up: Julianne Moore in May December

 

Best Original Screenplay: DAVID HEMINGSON for THE HOLDOVERS

Runner-Up: Celine Song for Past Lives.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: ERIC ROTH and MARTIN SCORSESE for KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Runner-Up: Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer 

 

Best Cinematography: MATTHEW LIBATIQUE for MAESTRO

Runner-Up: Rodrigo Prieto for Killers of the Flower Moon

 

Best Production Design: SARAH GREENWOOD for BARBIE

Best Costume Design: JACQUELINE DURAN for BARBIE

Best Film Editing: JENNIFER LAME for OPPENHEIMER

Best Sound Recording: OPPENHEIMER

Best Special Effects: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

 

Best Music Score: OLIVER COATES, PARK JIHA and AGNES OBEL for FOE

Runner-Up: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Killer 

 

Most Promising Director: CELINE SONG for PAST LIVES

Most Promising Actor: EDEN DAMBRINE for CLOSE

Most Promising Actress: LILY GLADSTONE for KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON 

 

Best Comedy: SICK OF MYSELF

Best Thriller: HOLY SPIDER

Best Musical: MAESTRO

Best Western: KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Best Horror Film: THE MENU

Best War Film: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Best Documentary: ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED and NAVALNY (tie)

Best Animated Film: CRYPTOZOO

Best Action Film: BULLET TRAIN

Best Entertainment: THE KILLER

Most Imaginative Film: BEAU IS AFRAID 

 

Most Disappointing Film: ASTEROID CITY

Most Overrated Film: ANATOMY OF A FALL

Most Underrated Films: BEAU IS AFRAID and FOE

Most Neglected Film: FOE

 

Best Classics seen for the first time: BATAILLE DU RAIL and THE SAGA OF ANATAHAN 

 

Best Re-Issues: BLOW UP, CLUNY BROWN, THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, THE NIGHTS OF CABIRIA and REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT

 

And Six Turkeys: A HAUNTING IN VENICE, A VIGILANTE, ENYS MEN, FAYA DAYI, MARLOWE and PLEASE BABY PLEASE.

 

MY TEN BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR.

 

1) KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Scorsese)

2) PAST LIVES (Song)

3) FALLEN LEAVES (Kaurismaki)

4) OPPENHEIMER (Nolan)

5) CLOSE (Dhont)

6) BROKER (Kor-eda)

7) THE HOLDOVERS (Payne)

FOE (Davis)

9) NAVALNY (Roher)

10) MEMORIA (Weerasethakul)

THE HOLDOVERS

 Christmas movies I tend to avoid; Alexander Payne movies I race to see and all the better if Paul Giamatti is in there somewhere. In "The Holdovers", (a Christmas classic and certainly the best you will see this season), Giamatti isn't just in there, he's right at the centre and giving an Oscar-worthy performance. 'The holdovers' of the title are boarding school boys who don't get to go home for the holidays and Giamatti is the housemaster whose job it is to hold them over and ensure they have a good Christmas; the trouble is, he's a curmudgeon.

Of course, Payne may have put a curmudgeon up front but he makes sweet movies; sweet and funny with perhaps a slightly bitter edge to them and ten minutes in I'm sure you'll see the ghost of "Dead Poet's Society" standing in the wings just as you know Payne will never pull out the sentimental stops that that movie did and that's still in the sure and certain knowledge that nobody can play a curmudgeon as well as Paul Giamatti.

But there is someone else being 'held over' during the holidays, too; the school's kitchen manager, cook and general dogsbody with a heart twice the size of her ample figure, no husband and a dead son and you know if anyone can melt Giamatti's cold, cold heart it'll be her and she's underplayed superbly by Da'Vine Joy Randolph almost certainly on her way to the Best Supporting Actress Oscar but then all the performances are superb with newcomer Dominic Sessa outstanding. Yes, this is a Christmas movie to melt the hardest of hearts and one of the best films of 2023.

SALTBURN

 If you think "Brideshead Revisited" by way of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" you will certainly be on the right road to "Saltburn" which is the title of Emerald Fennell's very dark comedy...and therein lies the problem; we have been here before though to be fair to Fennell perhaps not quite as perversely as this. It is the story of Oliver, seemingly from a broken home and fresh up at Oxford on a scholarship, who casts his eyes over the unapproachably gorgeous Felix, (Jacob Elordi, soon to be seen as Elvis in "Priscilla"), and says to himself, 'I want him' or at least, 'I want what he's got'. When he tells Felix he can't face going home for the summer Felix invites him to spend it with his obnoxiously eccentric family at Saltburn.

So far, so familiar but all isn't as it seems with Oliver, played magnificently by Barry Keoghan and cast at last as the main actor. For starters, there's another house guest at Saltburn, (Archie Madekwe as Farleigh, a petulant little snob who has it in for Oliver), but then Oliver isn't quite as backward as he lets on to be. Mooching nicely between satirical dark comedy and outright thriller material "Saltburn" looks, for about three quarters of its length, like it mightn't be going anywhere special; just another movie redeemed by Keoghan's acting but then Fennell gives us and the film that ninety degree turn we have been waiting for but didn't see coming so the final half hour is one nasty, brilliant hoot.

Not only that, but the film's actual ending is the best I've seen this year and ten out of ten to both Fennell and Keoghan for pulling it off. If only we could have had more of this earlier on. All the performances are fine, of course. Fennell, being an actress herself, clearly knows how to bring out the best in her cast. Elordi hasn't just got the looks but the acting chops to go with them. As ever Rosamund Pike as the superficial sweetness and light mother steals all her scenes and there's a terrific cameo from Carey Mulligan as another house guest but again it's Keoghan's film from first to last; he might just be the best actor of his generation.

RANCHO NOTORIOUS

 Fritz Lang's superlative western teeters dangerously on the edge of camp, (it's that infernal 'Legend of Chuck-a-Luck' ballad pounding away on the soundtrack, continually reminding us that this is a tale of 'hate ... murder and revenge'). Then, of course, there is that great gay icon Marlene Dietrich, looking extraordinary at fifty one as Altar Keane, boss of the outlaw hideout Chuck-a-Luck where Arthur Kennedy comes seeking the man who killed his girl in a robbery. In many respects the film is a perfect companion to Nicholas Ray's not dissimilar "Johnny Guitar", made around the same time and both featuring dominant women and weaker men and both dealing explicitly with 'hate, murder and revenge'.

This is a very tight piece of work, thematically dense and psychologically astute and directed by Lang in a truly classical style. It affords all the pleasures that a really good western should while still falling perfectly within a milieu recognizable from many of Lang's American works. "Johnny Guitar's" veiled lesbianism together with Nicholas Ray's growing reputation may have given it the edge but this, too, is a remarkable film, an essential work by one of the cinema's greatest directors.