DECEMBER 28 — I feel like I hadn’t seen that many new films this year, or at least not as many as I had in the last few years, owing to a combination of factors like spending more time watching TV series, or watching older movies on Blu-ray or DVD, just to keep up with my ever-increasing collection of films old and new on physical media.
Missing another edition of the Singapore International Film Festival also meant that I wasn’t able to catch up on the kind of festival titles I usually gorge on, meaning that hot titles from this year’s edition of major festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Locarno and Venice will most definitely not be on my watch list this year as well.
But still, there are always plenty of new discoveries and delights to be made, especially with films from last year’s festival circuit that are finally getting distributed/shown this year, and I’ve got quite a few of those on this list, alongside my usual favourite genres like horror, action and even some slapstick comedy.
Hope you’ll find a fair few here that you’d love to explore for yourself as well!
La Chimera
“There are movies, and then there is cinema.” This is a quote often attributed to Martin Scorsese, and I can hardly disagree with his sentiments here, even though I can find enjoyment in both “movies” and “cinema.”
La Chimera, the fourth film from Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher, is without any doubt, a glorious piece of cinema.
One of the most singular filmmakers working today, a quick description of the basic plot of the film, about an Englishman with a preternatural gift for locating ancient tombs leading a bunch of grave-robbers in Italy, does not do justice to the highly sensitive and sensual way that Rohrwacher goes about telling this story.
What might play like a horror movie in the hands of other directors becomes something truly magical and transcendental in her hands here.
Eureka
In any other year, if there isn’t a La Chimera around, this would’ve been my favourite film of the year.
Argentine director Lisandro Alonso’s latest film is a triptych that explores the effects of colonialism and the meaning of home, and is so shape shifting and full of ideas that the transition between its opening half hour, which plays like a classic Euro Western and stars Viggo Mortensen (who also starred in the director’s previous film, the stunning Jauja), and the second part of its story, will take your breath away.
Totally unlike most films out there, you will find plenty of eureka moments in this one, provided you’re willing to go along with the film’s fully liberated ways of telling a story.
The Substance
One of the most exhilarating films of the year is also a supreme example of the kind of brilliance that can come out of a fearless combination of high and low taste, and director Coralie Fargeat does this effortlessly in The Substance, which not only won the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, but is also a clear and obvious love letter to titans of B-grade body horror movies Brian Yuzna and Stuart Gordon.
If you don’t believe me, go and watch Yuzna’s 1989 shocker Society or Gordon’s 1986 classic From Beyond, and tell me if you don’t see some resemblance here.
The Promised Land
Could it be that it’s the Europeans who are better at making historical epics than Hollywood nowadays?
With Edward Berger already showing Hollywood how it’s done with All Quiet On The Western Front and this year’s Conclave, this argument gains further traction with the arrival of Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s new film The Promised Land, a handsomely mounted, hugely entertaining, highly emotional and ferociously acted Western starring Mads Mikkelsen, who plays a nobody who rises through the ranks to become a captain in the Army and who then dreams of developing a piece of land in the Jutland heath, which has been deemed untameable.
Emotionally gripping from start to end, this is mainstream filmmaking of the highest order.
Hundreds of Beavers
If you love silent movies, slapstick comedies and vintage black-and-white cartoons, you will not be able to resist the crazy charm of this low budget, silent black-and-white movie from writer-director-editor-visual effects artist Mike Cheslik.
It tells the simple story of a trapper named Jean Kayak who’s trying to make a living on an icy mountain area by trapping and selling beaver pelts to a merchant, who happens to have a daughter that our hero is intending to marry.
Around this simple plot is where Cheslik hangs multiple slapstick set-pieces involving our hero and the hundreds, maybe even thousands of beavers that he’s trying to trap, which are simply wondrous to behold.
Anora
As a pretty early supporter of director Sean Baker, from as far back as his films Starlet and Take Out, it’s really satisfying to see him snag the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with his latest film Anora, which is every bit as funny, touching and fearless as any of the last few films that really made his name like Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket.
Again telling a story involving a sex worker (which he has also done in his previous four films), the film follows an exotic dancer named Anora (Mikey Madison giving one of the best performances of the year) as she falls in love with and marries the son of a Russian oligarch.
Baker takes the audience on a pretty wild and often hilarious ride, but his compassion for his characters will catch you off guard, and it’s this that makes this one such a special film.
Black Storm
When a Chinese web movie landed on my favourite genre films list last year, I shouldn’t be surprised that another one of them would make the cut this year.
Not only does another one make the cut this year, but I’ve also stumbled upon a new favourite genre director this year, courtesy of the Chinese streaming platform iQIYI.
That director is Qin Pengfei, who has four films released on iQIYI this year, with this one being the best of the lot.
One of those “big city cop back in a small rural town to stop a sadistic bad guy” movies, Black Storm rises above the competition by virtue of its blistering, well-choreographed and well-shot fight scenes.
Forget The Shadow Strays or Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, this is the fight flick to beat this year.
Transformers One
As an 80s kid, I am and will always be a sucker for a Transformers movie, but this year’s Transformers One is truly something special.
An origin story, showing us how Optimus Prime and Megatron came to be who we know them to be, the film explores their early years in Cybertron, when they went by their original names Orion Pax and D-16.
Director Josh Cooley (of Toy Story 4 fame) delivers a film that’s so earnest, funny and refreshing that it’s now comfortably my second favourite Transformers movie ever, and I suspect a few more viewings after I get my hands on the Blu-ray might even elevate it to the number one spot in the near future!
Caddo Lake
M. Night Shyamalan might have a new film released this year, but it’s his proteges Logan George and Celine Held (who worked on three episodes of the Shyamalan-produced Servant) who have come up with the better film with Caddo Lake.
Very much playing within the Shyamalan playbook of twisty thrillers, Caddo Lake is an emotional family drama that involves elements of time travel, and contains a fair few pieces of narrative gamesmanship in the form of twists and turns in its plot, but it’s the beautiful way it all ties up together that will make this film live long in your memory.
Carry-On
For years now, I’ve been making a case for director Jaume Collet-Serra to be recognised as a master of the mid-budget Hollywood thriller.
Films like The Commuter, The Shallows and Run All Night are proof of his effortless and artful skill at constructing a well-made thriller.
After a few years of almost getting lost in the big budget Hollywood machine with Jungle Cruise and Black Adam, he’s finally back where he belongs making mid-budget Hollywood thrillers, and it looks like that place nowadays is with streaming platforms, which in this particular case is Netflix.
He’s made movies set on a train, on a plane, and even on a rock, and now he’s made one set in an airport, in which the hero has to stop the villain from detonating a bomb.
It’s got everything that made his movies so engrossing before this, and I’m so glad that he’s back in his usual playing field.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
