Films in 2018.

The films that resonated with me the most this year... thank you for your continued readership.

LEAN ON PETE: A boy walks with his horse. A towering achievement in graceful, grandiose, introspective, empathic melancholy that does not rely on trauma or evil to create drama - just the sad reality of the aloneness we will all one day have to contemplate. Echoes of Bela Tarr, Bergman even. Just about the saddest movie I've ever seen and absolutely heartbreakingly brilliant. 

HAGAZUSSA: A HEATHEN'S CURSE: A Witch ekes out a life in 15th century Europe. Immersive psychedelic horror of the highest quality. A slow motion bad trip; brave for its dwelling on the depraved depths of darkness. An extremely impressive debut from Lukas Feigelfeld. Makes every other 'horror' film this year look like child's play.

COMING HOME BOWE BERGDAHL VS THE UNITED STATES: Disinformation, Patriotism, the psychology of captivity, introspection, torture & madness are deftly explored in this thought-provoking, multi-facetted, very disturbing documentary. The interview with Bowe is astounding. Without a doubt the best, most important and woefully underseen documentary of the year.

PATERNO: The methodological inner workings of self delusion are deftly explored with masterful nuance by Al Pacino. In modern times rarely do we come across a case of institutionalized evil of this caliber; here astutely recognized, studied & fortuitously rendered by the filmmakers. Patriarchal power unveiled. (Barry Levinson has been on a roll lately by taking on modern current events and getting the finest actors of our time to do some of their best work ever. Check out his and Pacino's other recent collaboration, You Don't Know Jack and his film with Robert De Niro, The Wizard Of Lies).

ANNIHILATION: The microscopic destroys the macrocosm as refracting cells divide identity and matter; the Endtimes arrive as corrosion of form. A haunting and deeply trippy film. The best Sci-fi film in eons. 

HOSTILES: On the frontier of the American West in 1892 patriot soldiers are broken by genocidal revenge. A complex, intense film about man’s ability to remain human when imbued with savagery. Christian Bale is incredible. Another amazing film from Scott Cooper.

MANDY: An masterfully impressionistic visionary skillset is on display in Panos Cosmatos’ second headtrip. Have peacecreep hippie weirdos ever been so accurately portrayed on film before? Definetely not in this century. A wild, intelligent, insane and deeply psychedelic movie. Bravo.

FIRST REFORMED: An astute study of what it means to die for a cause and the motivations and approaches available; in this case environmentalism. It also brings into modern times themes similar to Bergman's Winter Light: crisis of spirit, sacrifice and the existence of God.

SUNSET: Utilizing the film language developed in his debut masterpiece Son Of Saul, Laszlo Nemes returns with an immersive, labyrinthine tale of discovery in turn of the century Budapest.

ACTIVE MEASURES: Makes the case that the American president is a comprised Kremlin asset laundering Russian kleptocrat and mob money through Trump Towers. Very well done and quite alarming. Democracy corrupted; we are living in historic times. Excellent documentary.

Films in 2017

Ten movies that resonated with me this year. Thank you for reading. 

LOVELESS: Andrey Zvyagintsev brings us another searing indictment of humanity; a tragically relevant portrait of narcissism within a disintegrating family. It's an intimate, dour film largely told through colors and atmosphere - a poignant and powerful work as always from arguably the finest filmmaker working today.

VOYAGE OF TIME: A profound, all encompassing, pagan masterpiece that tracks the evolution of Earth from before time until it's end. This is a bravado, ridiculously ambitious big picture from the singular Terrence Mallick. The confounding beauty of the images seamlessly integrating the macrocosmic and microscopic were unutterably sublime – but it was the narration that I found even more astoundingly poetic. While watching the film I assumed it was sourced from holy texts from throughout history, I was amazed to find out Mallick had written it all.  “Oh Mother, abyss of light, all beholding...”

I, DANIEL BLAKE: Ken Loach and Paul Laverty savagely attack the corporatization of public services and the maddening banality of hostile bureaucracies. It makes sense that this simple, direct call to action - with such a powerful ending - caps off the most important and radical filmography to ever emerge from the United Kingdom. Thank you Ken.

TWIN PEAKS THE RETURN: Beyond film; an 18 hour journey into Samsara, where time is looping and the immaterial prevails along further explorations into impermanent non-self reality; so subtly  illuminated in the physical realm by the atomic bomb motif – as above so below, atom to star. The final episode with the two characters driving through the night together was as a magnificent distillation of Lynch's inner world realized that I have come across. David pulls out all the stops and transcends limits in what may be the culmination of his vision.

PERSONAL SHOPPER: An extremely rare movie: a ghost story that is actually sort of realistic and also at times genuinely scary. If you smoke weed, watch it stoned. Kristen Stewart is amazing.

ONE MORE TIME WITH FEELING: I shed a couple tears during this portrait of Nick Cave in mourning by Andrew Dominick. Some of the looks on his face as he is trying to elucidate his feelings on the death of his son will be with me for a very long time. It was also cool to see Warren Ellis working in the studio. Powerful stuff.

BLADE RUNNER 2049: In sure form once again, Denis Villeneuve utilizes his control of cinematic language to create a visceral psychedelic darkness that flows effortlessly throughout a subversive story of a slave awakening.

THELMA: A Qigong witch explores the potentials of consciousness in this visionary tale for a New Age from Norway's finest dramatist, Joachim Trier. It starts slow but evolves into a unique, trippy thought provoking work.

THE SUNSHINE MAKERS: "Those that say, don't know; those that dont know, say." This mantra of the psychedelic underground is apparently no longer relevant for a certain generation. I never thought I'd find out who was making our acid all those years but here we have a straight forward look at the once secret world of LSD manufacturing - in particular, chemists Nick Sand and Tim Scully, two heroes that profoundly changed world consciousness. It's done in the standard, unremarkable, talking-head style documentary format but the topic is an important one. It's difficult to truly fathom the number of lives these men enhanced.

WHITNEY CAN I BE ME: A tragic, human portrait handled with class by Nick Broomfield.

THE MEMORY OF JUSTICE: The best film I saw this year was actually from 1976 - an epic documentary from marcel Marcel Ophuls that has been beautifully restored by HBO. It's a brilliant, profound, complex, 5.5 hour deep dive into the Nuremberg trials and an examination of the bureaucratic excuses the Nazi scum attempted to hide behind. If you haven't seen Ophuls' other films they are well worth seeking out, especially A Sense Of Loss (on the ground in Belfast, 1972) and Hotel Terminus (Klaus Barbie and CIA activity after WWII).

Addendum: Just caught up with a few movies from last year that are as good or better than the ones above: the very entertaining art-word satire THE SQUARE, dystopian horror IT COMES AT NIGHT and the ultra-heavy documentary on emotional healing work in a prison THE WORK FOUR DAYS TO REDEMPTION which will probably stay with me longer than all the other films mentioned. 

John Cage & David Tudor, 1963.

An incredible film of Cage and Tudor shattering notions of what music can be:




...and this Q&A from after a performance of Empty Words in 1978 is full of inspired wisdom:


John Cage 1978 from Larson Associates on Vimeo.