For films released this year, I am applying my usual 4 criteria:
a – did the film do what it set out to do?
b – did it use its resources to its best ability? A £250,000 film is not going to have as good explosions as a £25,000,000 film, or it shouldn’t, and if it does, there’s something wrong with the £25,000,000 film. Basically, it's a technical merit score.
c – Intellectual satisfaction – does the film’s plot pull some really stupid move at the last moment? Does the plot rely on characters being more stupid than they are?
d – Does this work as a whole? Did it work for me? I am aware that this is the most subjective of subjective criteria!
I saw 13 films this year, 12 in the cinema and one on a plane, because the cinema-to-plane turnaround time is ridiculous nowadays. The bottom 3, which didn't make the top 10, can all be missed quite happily.
Of the 10 here, I can find something to recommend in everything down to 9, while I'd say the top 4 are actively good and Kalki 2898 AD is intriguing but that might be my lack of knowledge.
1 - Monkey Man - If we could give Dev Patel all the money he wants to make any film he wants, I would be so grateful. This was marvellous. Fills my need for arthouse violence exactly.
2 - Kneecap - I am going to caveat this one. How do you feel about about swearing, drink and drugs? If any of the above are not your thing, please skip. The politics is also ... intriguing (let's be honest, they go with 'Band banned by the UK gov' for a reason). (The politics is a whole section of the full review, a long section.)
On the other hand, other than 'oh heck, Fassbender is old enough to be playing parents', this was good. Openly, 'our story as told by a drunk', in the best sense, and DJ Provai can act (the other two, not so much but not worse than many pro-actors).
3 - The Beekeeper - Kurt Wimmer is a member of the Garth Marenghi school of writing, where subtext is for cowards. His style really works for me. The Beekeeper is a very straightforward story of good guys, bad guys, necessary bad guys and a lot of violence. They fill this out by casting a bunch of British actors in random roles (and have Josh Hutcherson being the sleaziest sleaze ever).
Catnip for me.
4 - The Count of Monte Cristo - It needed to be a mini-series. But I enjoyed what there was. Pierre Niney was excellent, I did not expect to fall for Andrea Calcavetti quite that hard and loved how they did Dantes acting as the Count.
5 - Kalki 2898 AD - The full story of how I ended up watching this will wait until the write up. Safe to say it was longer than expected, and could have done with some judicious cutting. On the other hand it felt very fresh, although how much of that is me not knowing the Mahabharata, I do not know. (It is a gap I am planning on fixing eventually)
I do find it interesting that 4 out of my top 5 are not English as their main language. Monkey Man and Kneecap (and the Count, to an extent) are also good at the way people who use more than language use their languages and flow between them.
6 - Furiosa - It wasn't as good as Fury Road (but that's a very high bar), and it did make Furiosa far too nice and cut-out how she was supporting Immortan Joe. But the images were still awesome and it does interesting things with revenge.
7 - Dune 2 - I am the problem with this. I acknowledge this. But there are three scenes I demand in any adaptation of this part of the book, and it whiffs all of them. I grant there's reasons for one of them - can I recommend SelenaK's review here - https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1573791.html? - but I still want those scenes.
8 - Argylle - It has problems. For spoilery reasons, Bryce Dallas Howard is mildly miscast, but she's not miscast for the more important part. I would have re-edited several of the scenes that ran too long. But it's pleasingly silly, and does some fun things.
9 - The Fall Guy - This is probably better than Argylle, I just do not vibe with Ryan Gosling. The parts that are David Leitch's love letter to stunt guys, and any part that features Winston Duke, are absolute love, mind you.
10 - Venom 3
Everything above 10 has some redeeming feature. Films 10-13 have almost none of these. Venom 3 comes the top of them because while it is a pointless sequel (like film 11), I enjoyed it more than 11. Unlike film 12, I didn't consider that it might have been written by AI, because AI would be more evenly-toned. Unlike film 13, it didn't make me drunkenly rant at L, because it's just so wrong.
Also, it did have Venom Horse and Mrs Chen.
And Venom Penguin!
