365 Films in 365 Days- December!

Posted on January 24, 2018 by highhatfilmreview

Inspired by the Doug Benson Movie Challenge, I attempt to watch 365 movies over the calendar year of 2017. Any genre of film is eligible, including documentaries and Netflix originals, as long as it’s something I haven’t seen before (you’ll have to trust me on that). The hope is I can cross off some films I’ve been dying to see for ages but have never gotten round to, as well as discover some gems I might never have come across otherwise.

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

I entered the final month off the back of 95 films in October and November, so cautiously optimistic, but with 49 films still to watch over what would be a busy festive period, also knowing there was still plenty of work to be done. So for the final time, settle in, it’s going to be a long month.

December List

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (dir. Griffin Dunne, 2017)
The Parent Trap (dir. David Swift, 1961)
The Violin Player (dir. Bauddhayan Mukherji, 2016)
Bad Santa 2 (dir. Mark Waters, 2016)
Limelight (dir. Charles Chaplin, 1952)
Kill Baby, Kill! (dir. Mario Bava, 1966)
Snow Trail (dir. Senkichi Taniguchi, 1947)
Scanners (dir. David Cronenberg, 1981)
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
Better Watch Out (dir. Chris Peckover, 2016)
Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees, 2017)
Good Time (dir. Benny & Josh Safdie, 2017)
High School Musical (dir. Kenny Ortega, 2006)
Ingrid Goes West (dir. Matt Spicer, 2017)
Hurricane Bianca (dir. Matt Kugelman, 2016)
Point Break (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 1991)
Fitzcarraldo (dir. Werner Herzog, 1982)
Masaan (dir. Neeraj Ghaywan, 2015)
I Don’t Want To Be A Man (dir. Ernest Lubitsch, 1918)
Dirty Dancing (dir. Emile Ardolino, 1987)
Burden of Dreams (dir. Les Blank, 1982)
My Neighbour Totoro (dir Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
Ten (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)
Goldfinger (dir. Guy Hamilton, 1964)
The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo Del Toro, 2017)
The Disaster Artist (dir. James Franco, 2017)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
It Takes Two (dir. Andy Tennant, 1995)
Cat People (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
Howard the Duck (dir. Willard Huyck, 1986)
The Music Room (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1958)
Spite Marriage (dir. Edward Sedgwick & Buster Keaton, 1929)
Hugo and Josephine (dir. Kjell Grede, 1967)
Coco (dir. Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina, 2017)
The Handmaiden (dir. Park Chan-Wook, 2016)
The Golem (dir. Carl Boese & Paul Wegener, 1920)
Quadrille (dir. Sacha Guitry, 1938)
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (dir. Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001)
Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2013)
Red Beard (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1965)
The Virgin Spring (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1960)
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (dir. Jake Kasdan, 2017)
Midnight Run (dir. Martin Brest, 1988)
Ratcatcher (dir. Lynne Ramsay, 1999)
The Villainess (dir. Byung-gil Yung, 2017)
Broken Blossoms (dir. D.W. Griffith, 1919)
The Lost City of Z (dir. James Gray, 2016)
Confidentially Yours (dir. Francois Truffaut, 1983)
Naked (dir. Mike Leigh, 1993)

Highlights & Standouts

One of the real highlights of the month was the realisation that I could still be surprised, wowed, and left in awe of films, even after a long year and an especially punishing couple of months. At the worst of times I’ve had to jump from film to film, barely having time to fully digest or comprehend what I had just seen before moving onto the next one. But this month there were films that staggered me (Fitzcarraldo, The Handmaiden), outraged me (The Virgin Spring, Fruitvale Station), and left me picking my jaw off the floor (The Villainess). At times throughout the year I’ve worried that going through so many film so quickly would leave me numb to the experience. December was not one of those times.

Low Points & Disappointments

Well I must say I didn’t think much of the original Parent Trap, and after supplementing it later in the month with the Olson Twins’ It Takes Two, it’s safe to say I’ve had my fill of twin-based, mistaken identity comedies.

Unpopular opinion time; I’m sick of Pixar films that feature unlikely friends going on an adventure, encountering a popular folk-hero, then realising they have a dark side. So in that respect, I was a little let down by Coco. That being said it is still visually stunning, the music is toe-tapping fun, and it definitely made me cry, so back off everyone, it’s still good. Just shows that Pixar can still make thought-provoking movies of worth, even if their playbook needs some freshening up.

Performance of the Month

It’s hard to see past David Thewlis, who stands out on this monthly list in the same manner he dominates Mike Leigh’s poisonous drama Naked, that is to say obnoxiously bludgeoning you with insults until you have to pay attention to him. He fully embodies the odorous character of rapist Johnny; watching him is liking watching in Smell-O-Vision, as if you can inhale his 5-day-old stench through your screen. It is a fascinating character, one that is dominating and manipulative, yet completely out of control and barely able to conceal his rage.

Volatile doesn’t quite do justice to Thewlis here. Every kind offer thrown his way is met with contempt, any attempt at a normal conversation is met with patronising sarcasm, every borderline compliment is met with a vicious put down. His insults are almost Shakespearean. He will go down as one of cinema’s great anti-heroes, as he doesn’t get any heroic moment of redemption. For all the hardships that befall him he doesn’t come close to eliciting sympathy. If you’re being generous, you might pity him, but even that comes at a stretch.

Top 5 Films of the Months (in no particular order)

The Villainess: The opening sequence contains some of the most relentless, jaw-dropping, action based visuals I’ve ever seen, as our titular villainess- unseen through the filming choice of first person perspective- goes on a seven minute rampage of dismemberment, disembowlment and general martial arts badassary. So impactful is this opening that you would be forgiven for thinking the rest of the film could never live up to it’s first chapter, and yet what is so impressive about The Villainess, is that after this chaos comes a film of surprising depth, drama and emotion. I guess you really can have it all.

Fitzcarraldo: a mad director drags a boat over a mountain in a jungle in order to make a film about a mad music lover who drags a boat over a mountain in a jungle. How very Herzog. But there’s more to the film than just the bizarre technical achievements. Like the best jungle movies it feels like it has been made under intense suffering of cast and crew, with backstage emotions lending a desperate, trapped quality to the performances on screen. I hope everyone attached to the project can take solace in the fact that they did not suffer in vain.

The Music Room: A cautionary tale about pride and decadence, as an ageing Indian landowner obviously looks past his familial and financial difficulties in the favour of hosting lavish parties in his crumbling empire. A timeless, powerful story, as well as a showcase for the traditional Bengali music and dance, captured in such loving detail, you almost see the old fool’s point.

The Handmaiden: For straight up visuals, this may be the most beautiful film I’ve seen this year, and I do not say that lightly. It is also an example of clinical filmmaking of the highest, most satisfying, order.

The Virgin Spring: a film that does not offer any easy answers or happy resolutions. Bergman is brutal in his message; the world is a cruel, hard place, with religion offering comfort in theory, but not so helpful when the wolves are at your door.

The Year in Full…

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 165

2000’s- 33

1990’s- 24

1980’s- 21

1970’s- 28

1960’s- 31

1950’s- 15

1940’s- 15

1930’s- 13

1920’s- 11

1910’s- 3

Days to film ratio

1:1 on the dot. Unless I miscounted…

Total time of film watching

The final time clocks in at a smidgen over 37,000 minutes of film watching, with the final total being 37,009 minutes, making it 616.81 hours, nearly 26 days of film watching fun.

Films by the Nations

USA	200
UK	74
France	43
Japan	27
Germany	21
Canada	12
Italy	10
Hong Kong	9
Sweden	9
Belgium	8
Spain	8
India	8
South Korea	6
Mexico	5
New Zealand	5
China	5
Australia	5
Netherlands	4
Denmark	3
Luxemburg	3
Taiwan	3
Ireland	3
Greece	3
Switzerland	3
Iran	3
Norway	2
Cambodia	2
Chile	2
Soviet Union	2
UAE	2
Senegal	2
Austria	1
Brazil	1
Romania	1
Argentina	1
Hungary	1
Jordan	1
Qatar	1
Tunisia	1
Finland	1
Israel	1
Indonesia	1
Czech Rep.	1
Poland	1
Czechoslovakia	1
Bulgaria	1
Jamaica	1
Peru	1
West Germany	1

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Recurring Directors

Luis Bunuel- 4 (Los Olvidados, L’Age d’Or, Belle de Jour, Viridiana)

Akira Kurosawa- 4 (I Live in Fear, High and Low, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail, Red Beard)

Alexander Mackendrick- 3 (The Ladykillers, Whisky Galore, The Man in the White Suit)

Powell & Pressburger- 3 (A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp)

Hayao Miyazaki- 3 (Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro)

Abbas Kiarostami-3 (Certified Copy, Close-Up, Ten)

Alfred Hitchcock- 3 (Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog)

Ingmar Bergman- 3 (Persona, The Seventh Seal, The Virgin Spring)

Charles Chaplain- 3 (The Great Dictator, Modern Times, Limelight)

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

Mike Mills- 2 (Beginners, 20th Century Women)

Ridley Scott- 2 (Thelma & Louise, Alien: Covenant)

Mike Birbiglia- 2 (Don’t Think Twice, Sleepwalk with Me)

Richard Fleischer- 2 (10 Rillington Place, Fantastic Voyage)

Terence Davis- 2 (Distant Voices, Still Lives; Sunset Song)

Garth Jennings- 2 (Sing, Son of Rambow)

John Hamburg- 2 (I Love You, Man & Why Him?)

Blake Edwards- 2 (Return of the Pink Panther, The Pink Panther)

Taika Waititi- 2 (Thor: Ragnarok, Boy)

John Ford- 2 (Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine)

Carl Theodor Dreyer- 2 (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr)

Victor Sjostrom- 2 (The Phantom Carriage, A Man There Was)

Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor- 2 (Safety Last!, Dr. Jack)

Garry Marshall- 2 (The Princess Diaries 1 & 2)

Dee Rees- 2 (Pariah, Mudbound)

Satyajit Ray- 2 (Devi, The Music Room)

David Cronenberg- 2 (Dead Ringers, Scanners)

Ernest B. Schoedsack- 2 (The Most Dangerous Game, King Kong)

Ryan Coogler- 2 (Creed, Fruitvale Station)

Francois Truffaut- 2 (The 400 Blows, Confidentially Yours)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****
The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)
Super Fly” (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1972)
Foxy Brown” (dir. Jack Hill, 1974)
Black Belt Jones” (dir. Robert Clouse, 1974)
Blacula” (dir. William Crain, 1972)
Three the Hard Way” (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1974)
The Mack” (dir. Michael Campus, 1973)
Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002)
Dragon (dir. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 2011)
The Love Witch (dir. Anna Biller, 2016)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davis, 1988)
Headhunters (dir. Morten Tyldum, 2011)
Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
Love is Colder Than Death (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
La Promesse (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1996)
Lion (dir. Garth Davis, 2016)
To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Fences (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)
Theeb (dir. Naji Abu Nowar, 2014)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger & Carl Koch, 1926)
Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot & Raymond Burlet, 1998)
Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2005)
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)
20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016)
The Fate of the Furious (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2017)
Free Fire (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2016)
Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
Room 237 (dir. Rodney Ascher, 2012)
Mifune: the Last Samurai (dir. Steven Okazaki, 2015)
Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939)
The Assassin (dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2015)
Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (dir. David Gelb, 2011)
Grey Gardens (dir. Albert & David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, Ellen Hovde, 1975)
The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (dir. Anika Iltis, Timothy Anthony Kane, 2014)
The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978)
Where You’re Meant To Be (dir. Paul Fegan, 2016)
We Were Here (dir. David Weissman, Bill Weber, 2011)
The Look of Silence (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014)
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake Roberts (dir. Steve Yu, 2015)
Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (dir. James Gunn, 2017)
Chicken Run (dir. Peter Lord, Nick Park, 2000)
Meek’s Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Mindhorn (dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
Commando (dir. Mark L. Lester, 1985)
Sabotage (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
The Levelling (dir. Hope Dickson Leach, 2016)
The Red Turtle (dir. Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (dir. David Mirkin, 1997)
Alien: Covenant (dir. Ridley Scott, 2017)
A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Belle de Jour (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967)
Gregory’s Girl (dir. Bill Forsyth, 1980)
The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Tarzan (dir. Chris Buck & Kevin Lima, 1999)
Brassed Off (dir. Mark Herman, 1996)
Eddie- Strongman (dir. Matt Bell, 2015)
The Spirit of the Beehive (dir. Victor Erice, 1973)
Raw (dir. Julia Docournau, 2016)
Catfight (dir. Onur Tukel, 2016)
The Great Dictator (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1940)
Don’t Think Twice (dir. Mike Birbiglia, 2016)
The LEGO Batman Movie (dir. Chris McKay, 2017)
Beauty and the Beast (dir. Bill Condon, 2017)
Batman: The Movie (dir. Leslie H. Martinson, 1966)
The Break Up (dir. Peyton Reed, 2006)
The Return of the Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1975)
Sing (dir. Christophe Lourdelet & Garth Jennings, 2016)
Casa de mi Padre (dir. Matt Piedmont, 2012)
The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (dir. James Foley, 2017)
Sleepwalk with Me (dir. Mike Birbiglia & Seth Barrish, 2012)
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (dir. Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone, 2016)
The Little Death (dir. Josh Lawson, 2014)
Okja (dir. Bong Joon Ho, 2017)
Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Prevenge (dir. Alice Lowe, 2016)
Daddy’s Home (dir. Sean Anders, 2015)
The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter, 2017)
Man Bites Dog (dir. Remy Belvaux, Benoit Poelvoorde & Andre Bonzel, 1992)
Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2016)
Modern Times (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1936)
The Princess Diaries (dir. Garry Marshall, 2001)
Hausu (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Baby Driver (dir. Edgar Wright, 2017)
Onibaba (dir. Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (dir. Jon Watts, 2017)
The Imposter (dir. Bart Layton, 2012)
Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966)
Gremlins (dir. Joe Dante, 1984)
Shaolin Soccer (dir. Stephen Chow, 2001)
Pink (dir. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, 2016)
Sunset Song (dir. Terence Davis, 2015)
Quiz Show (dir. Robert Redford, 1994)
Even the Rain (dir. Iciar Bollain, 2010)
Zombeavers (dir. Jordan Rubin, 2014)
Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (dir. Chiemi Karasawa, 2013)
Filth (dir. Jon S. Baird, 2013)
High and Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Sexy Beast (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee, 1989)
Westworld (dir. Michael Crichton, 1973)
In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Monster House (dir. Gil Kenan, 2006)
Suspiria (dir. Dario Argento, 1977)
Tampopo (dir. Juzo Itami, 1985)
Baywatch (dir. Seth Gordon, 2017)
It (dir. Andy Muchietti, 2017)
The Ladykillers (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
Whisky Galore (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)
The Lavender Hill Mob (dir. Charles Crichton, 1951)
Went the Day Well? (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)
Passport to Pimlico (dir. Henry Cornelius, 1949)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (dir. Robert Hamer, 1949)
The Man in the White Suit (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)
American Splendor (dir. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2003)
mother! (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2017)
A Silent Voice (dir. Naoko Yamada, 2016)
Goon (dir. Michael Dowse, 2011)
Son of Rambow (dir. Garth Jennings, 2007)
The Secret Life of Bees (dir. Gina Prince-Blythewood, 2008)
My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin, 2007)
Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
Charlie’s Country (dir. Rolf de Heer, 2013)
Safety Last! (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)
The Most Dangerous Game (dir. Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1932)
The Phantom Carriage (dir. Victor Sjostrom, 1921)
Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins, 2017)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
Raiders!: the Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (dir. Jeremy Coon & Tim Skousen, 2015)
Before Midnight (dir. Richard Linklater, 2013)
Happy Together (dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 1997)
Weekend (dir. Andrew Haigh, 2011)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott, 1994)
Pariah (dir. Dee Rees, 2011)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
Tomboy (dir. Celina Sciamma, 2011)
A Jihad for Love (dir. Parvez Sharma, 2007)
Victim (dir. Basil Dearden, 1961)
Pontypool (dir. Bruce McDonald, 2008)
I Love You, Man (dir. John Hamburg, 2009)
Sex and the City (dir. Michael Patrick King, 2008)
The Overnighters (dir. Jesse Moss, 2014)
My Life as a Courgette (dir. Claude Barras, 2016)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (dir. Joachim Ronning & Espen Sandberg, 2017)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1945)
The Haunted Strangler (dir. Robert Day, 1958)
The Survivalist (dir. Stephen Fingleton, 2015)
The Secret Life of Pets (dir. Chris Renaud & Yarrow Cheney, 2016)
Why Him? (dir. John Hamburg, 2016)
Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Vileneuve, 2017)
Viridiana (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1961)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)
Loving Vincent (dir. Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman, 2017)
King Kong (dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)
Second Coming (dir. Debbie Tucker Green, 2014)
Fantastic Planet (dir. Rene Laloux, 1973)
Sleeping With Other People (dir. Leslye Headland, 2015)
The Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1963)
The Devil Wears Prada (dir. David Finkel, 2006)
Grandma (dir. Paul Weitz, 2015)
Assault on Precinct 13 (dir. John Carpenter, 1976)
Friday Night Lights (dir. Peter Berg, 2004)
Bobby Fischer Against the World (dir. Liz Garbus, 2011)
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (dir. Cody Cameron & Kris Pearn, 2013)
5 Card Stud (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1968)
The Death of Stalin (dir. Armando Iannucci, 2017)
Dark Horse (dir. Louise Osmond, 2015)
The Expendables 3 (dir. Patrick Hughes, 2014)
Weiner (dir. Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg, 2016)
My Darling Clementine (dir. John Ford, 1946)
The Wailing (dir.Hong-jin Na, 2016)
The Help (dir. Tate Taylor, 2011)
Creed (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2015)
Most Beautiful Island (dir. Ana Asensio, 2017)
House on Haunted Hill (dir. William Castle & Rosemary Horvath, 1959)
Thor: Ragnarok (dir. Taika Waititi, 2017)
Over the Top (dir. Menahem Golan, 1987)
Delicatessen (dir. Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991)
Vampyr (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
The Finances of the Grand Duke (dir. F.W. Murau, 1924)
Gate of Hell (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Ornamental Hairpin (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (dir. Chad Stahelski, 2017)
The Holiday (dir. Nancy Meyers, 2006)
The Lady in the Van (dir. Nicholas Hytner, 2015)
Playtime (dir. Jacques Tati, 1967)
The Legend of the Drunken Master (dir. Chian-Liang Liu, 1994)
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (dir. Nicholas Meyer, 1982)
A Man There Was (dir. Victor Sjostrom, 1917)
Close-Up (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Bad Moms (dir. Jon Lucas & Scott Moore, 2016)
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (dir. Djibril Diop Mambety, 1999)
Come and See (dir. Elem Klimov, 1985)
Eraserhead (dir. David Lynch, 1977)
The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker, 2017)
Ponyo (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2008)
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (dir. Garry Marshall, 2004)
Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1936)
What Did The Lady Forget? (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1937)
Dark Alibi (dir. Phil Karlson, 1946)
Devi (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1960)
Jackie (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2016)
A Colt Is My Passport (dir. Takashi Nomura, 1967)
Dangal (dir. Nitesh Tiwari, 2016)
Lady Macbeth (dir. William Oldroyd, 2016)
Boy (dir. Taika Waititi, 2010)
Fever Pitch (dir. Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 2005)
Dr. No (dir. Terence Young, 1962)
Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989)
Creep (dir. Patrick Brice, 2014)
Dr. Jack (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1922)
Lady Snowblood (dir. Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
Chafed Elbows (dir. Robert Downey Snr., 1965)
Kes (dir. Ken Loach, 1969)
Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond- Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (dir. Chris Smith, 2017)
Justice League (dir. Zack Snyder, 2017)
Howl’s Moving Castle (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
Madea Goes To Jail (dir. Tyler Perry, 2009)
The 400 Blows (dir. Francois Truffaut, 1959)
Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2017)
The Wedding Date (dir. Clare Kilner, 2005)
Skiptrace (dir. Renny Harlin, 2016)
Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (dir. Griffin Dunne, 2017)
The Parent Trap (dir. David Swift, 1961)
The Violin Player (dir. Bauddhayan Mukherji, 2016)
Bad Santa 2 (dir. Mark Waters, 2016)
Limelight (dir. Charles Chaplin, 1952)
Kill Baby, Kill! (dir. Mario Bava, 1966)
Snow Trail (dir. Senkichi Taniguchi, 1947)
Scanners (dir. David Cronenberg, 1981)
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
Better Watch Out (dir. Chris Peckover, 2016)
Mudbound (dir. Dee Rees, 2017)
Good Time (dir. Benny & Josh Safdie, 2017)
High School Musical (dir. Kenny Ortega, 2006)
Ingrid Goes West (dir. Matt Spicer, 2017)
Hurricane Bianca (dir. Matt Kugelman, 2016)
Point Break (dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 1991)
Fitzcarraldo (dir. Werner Herzog, 1982)
Masaan (dir. Neeraj Ghaywan, 2015)
I Don’t Want To Be A Man (dir. Ernest Lubitsch, 1918)
Dirty Dancing (dir. Emile Ardolino, 1987)
Burden of Dreams (dir. Les Blank, 1982)
My Neighbour Totoro (dir Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
Ten (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)
Goldfinger (dir. Guy Hamilton, 1964)
The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo Del Toro, 2017)
The Disaster Artist (dir. James Franco, 2017)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
It Takes Two (dir. Andy Tennant, 1995)
Cat People (dir. Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
Howard the Duck (dir. Willard Huyck, 1986)
The Music Room (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1958)
Spite Marriage (dir. Edward Sedgwick & Buster Keaton, 1929)
Hugo and Josephine (dir. Kjell Grede, 1967)
Coco (dir. Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina, 2017)
The Handmaiden (dir. Park Chan-Wook, 2016)
The Golem (dir. Carl Boese & Paul Wegener, 1920)
Quadrille (dir. Sacha Guitry, 1938)
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (dir. Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001)
Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2013)
Red Beard (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1965)
The Virgin Spring (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1960)
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (dir. Jake Kasdan, 2017)
Midnight Run (dir. Martin Brest, 1988)
Ratcatcher (dir. Lynne Ramsay, 1999)
The Villainess (dir. Byung-gil Yung, 2017)
Broken Blossoms (dir. D.W. Griffith, 1919)
The Lost City of Z (dir. James Gray, 2016)
Confidentially Yours (dir. Francois Truffaut, 1983)
Naked (dir. Mike Leigh, 1993)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

^ Wifey’s Choice Week

“Blaxploitation Week

Animation Week

Documentary Week

1960’s Week

Netflix Watchlist Week

Ealing Studio’s Week

LGBTQ+ Week

Blind Netflix Choice

That’s it for December, and for the year as a whole. I will be posting my definitive favourite 20, as well as writing up a final summary of the year shortly, along with some fun statistics and links to spreadsheets (cause who doesn’t love a spreadsheet?). But until them, I think I’ll go for a walk outside.

365 Films, 365 Days- October & November

Posted on December 18, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

The last two months have been a bit of a mad, frantic blur, as I blindly fumble for any wayward DVD kicking around my messy living room, cramming it into my player without even looking at the label, squinting at the tv screen as I try to remember what daylight looks like, or what fresh air feels like in my lungs. But progress has been made…

October List

Raiders!: the Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (dir. Jeremy Coon & Tim Skousen, 2015)
Before Midnight (dir. Richard Linklater, 2013)
Happy Together (dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 1997)
Weekend (dir. Andrew Haigh, 2011)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott, 1994)
Pariah (dir. Dee Rees, 2011)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
Tomboy (dir. Celina Sciamma, 2011)
A Jihad for Love (dir. Parvez Sharma, 2007)
Victim (dir. Basil Dearden, 1961)
Pontypool (dir. Bruce McDonald, 2008)
I Love You, Man (dir. John Hamburg, 2009)
Sex and the City (dir. Michael Patrick King, 2008)
The Overnighters (dir. Jesse Moss, 2014)
My Life as a Courgette (dir. Claude Barras, 2016)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (dir. Joachim Ronning & Espen Sandberg, 2017)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1945)
The Haunted Strangler (dir. Robert Day, 1958)
The Survivalist (dir. Stephen Fingleton, 2015)
The Secret Life of Pets (dir. Chris Renaud & Yarrow Cheney, 2016)
Why Him? (dir. John Hamburg, 2016)
Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Vileneuve, 2017)
Viridiana (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1961)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)
Loving Vincent (dir. Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman, 2017)
King Kong (dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)
Second Coming (dir. Debbie Tucker Green, 2014)
Fantastic Planet (dir. Rene Laloux, 1973)
Sleeping With Other People (dir. Leslye Headland, 2015)
The Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1963)
The Devil Wears Prada (dir. David Finkel, 2006)
Grandma (dir. Paul Weitz, 2015)
Assault on Precinct 13 (dir. John Carpenter, 1976)
Friday Night Lights (dir. Peter Berg, 2004)
Bobby Fischer Against the World (dir. Liz Garbus, 2011)
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (dir. Cody Cameron & Kris Pearn, 2013)
5 Card Stud (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1968)
The Death of Stalin (dir. Armando Iannucci, 2017)
Dark Horse (dir. Louise Osmond, 2015)

LGBTQ+ Cinema Week

November List

The Expendables 3 (dir. Patrick Hughes, 2014)
Weiner (dir. Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg, 2016)
My Darling Clementine (dir. John Ford, 1946)
The Wailing (dir.Hong-jin Na, 2016)
The Help (dir. Tate Taylor, 2011)
Creed (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2015)
Most Beautiful Island (dir. Ana Asensio, 2017)
House on Haunted Hill (dir. William Castle & Rosemary Horvath, 1959)
Thor: Ragnarok (dir. Taika Waititi, 2017)
Over the Top (dir. Menahem Golan, 1987)
Delicatessen (dir. Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991)
Vampyr (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
The Finances of the Grand Duke (dir. F.W. Murau, 1924)
Gate of Hell (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Ornamental Hairpin (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (dir. Chad Stahelski, 2017)
The Holiday (dir. Nancy Meyers, 2006)
The Lady in the Van (dir. Nicholas Hytner, 2015)
Playtime (dir. Jacques Tati, 1967)
The Legend of the Drunken Master (dir. Chian-Liang Liu, 1994)
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (dir. Nicholas Meyer, 1982)
A Man There Was (dir. Victor Sjostrom, 1917)
Close-Up (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Bad Moms (dir. Jon Lucas & Scott Moore, 2016)
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (dir. Djibril Diop Mambety, 1999)
Come and See (dir. Elem Klimov, 1985)
Eraserhead (dir. David Lynch, 1977)
The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker, 2017)
Ponyo (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2008)
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (dir. Garry Marshall, 2004)
Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1936)
What Did The Lady Forget? (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1937)
Dark Alibi (dir. Phil Karlson, 1946)
Devi (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1960)
Jackie (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2016)
A Colt Is My Passport (dir. Takashi Nomura, 1967)
Dangal (dir. Nitesh Tiwari, 2016)
Lady Macbeth (dir. William Oldroyd, 2016)
Boy (dir. Taika Waititi, 2010)
Fever Pitch (dir. Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 2005)
Dr. No (dir. Terence Young, 1962)
Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989)
Creep (dir. Patrick Brice, 2014)
Dr. Jack (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1922)
Lady Snowblood (dir. Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
Chafed Elbows (dir. Robert Downey Snr., 1965)
Kes (dir. Ken Loach, 1969)
Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond- Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (dir. Chris Smith, 2017)
Justice League (dir. Zack Snyder, 2017)
Howl’s Moving Castle (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
Madea Goes To Jail (dir. Tyler Perry, 2009)
The 400 Blows (dir. Francois Truffaut, 1959)
Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2017)
The Wedding Date (dir. Calre Kilner, 2005)
Skiptrace (dir. Renny Harlin, 2016)

Highlights & Standouts

Too much to mention, not enough remembered. I was a little alarmed at the low number of Bollywood films on the list so far and have attempted to rectify this over October and November (continued into December), and while two isn’t exactly a huge amount, both Devi and Dangal are well worth a watch.

It feels like a long time ago, but LGBTQ+ week was eye-opening. I attempt to see a wide variety of films focusing on different perspectives, all of them are very worthy in different ways.

And finally, Mica Levi’s score for Jackie was a highlight, because Mica Levi is grand.

Low Points & Disappointments

October and November have been successful with regards to closing the gap, not that I can take it easy in December, but everything feels a lot more manageable. One of the truly sad things about watching 95 films in 61 days is that I have no doubt I’ve seen some bonafide gems in this period, but going at the rate I am (and have to go) means I have next to know time to process or appreciate them. I’ll definitely have to go back to a couple for a second viewing next year (after a significant break of course).

Performance(s) of the Month(s)

Again, where do you even begin, the following people make their films worth watching for their performances alone;

Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth; cold, bewitching, captivating.

Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird; she’s just great in everything.

James Rolleston in Boy; the heart and soul of the film.

Tom Cullen and Chris New in Weekend; great chemistry.

The ensemble in The Death of Stalin; because if there’s something Iannucci can do really well it’s a tragically, hilarious ensemble.

Ana Asensio in Most Beautiful Island; the perfect balance of strength and vulnerability.

Mark Duplass in Creep; the film really stands and falls on his performance.

Everyone in The Florida Project; because you could have told me it was a documentary and I would have bought it (if Willem Dafoe hadn’t been there).

Jim Carrey in Jim & Andy; because even though it was a documentary, he is giving a performance that is out of this world bonkers.

Top 10 Films of the Months (in no particular order)

Two months worth of films, so lets make it a Top 10.

Loving Vincent; “Van Gogh’s works come to life in the first fully painted animated film, it works wonderfully well, it’s pretty special”

Viridiana; “leery & lustful with a total downer of an ending. Bunuel shows us why it’s not worth bothering with charitable acts.”

The Florida Project; “terrific performances, it says a lot about growing up and poverty without worrying about plot and entirely likeable characters. Really enjoyed it”

Weekend; “amazing performances from the two leads; its bold and important while also intimate and personal. Terrifically well-rounded”

The Death of Stalin; “it sometimes feels wrong to be laughing so hard at the jet black satire, Iannucci at his biting best”

Lady Snowblood; “the reddest blood in cinema, and it spurts with gusto. Fucking cool without even trying.”

Playtime; “an absolute delight. The way every single frame is constructed and bursting to the brim with life. It rivals Modern Times, Rear Window, The Raid for best use of settings”

Lady Bird; “Ronan is marvellous, as is Metcalf, as is the script, which is punchy, bitey and snappy. A bloody good show all round”

Devi; “haven’t watched a Satyajit Ray movie in about a decade but thought this was wonderful. A strong story about the power of faith, both as a means to inspire & heal, as well as delude”

A Colt Is My Passport: “stylish Japanese gangster film, has a lot of fun, terrific soundtrack and bold camera movement. Loved it!”

The Year So Far

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 149

2000’s- 21

1990’s- 31

1980’s- 14

1970’s- 28

1960’s- 26

1950’s- 13

1940’s- 12

1930’s- 12

1920’s- 8

1910’s- 1

Days to film ratio

316 films watched, meaning there’s still 49 films to watch in the last 31 days. Not great, but I’m in a lot better standing than I was at the beginning of October.

Total time of film watching

31,722 minutes! Over 528 hours!!! Just a smidgen over 22 days!!! That’s quite the waste of time.

Films by the Nations

USA	176
UK	69
France	38
Japan	22
Germany	19
Canada	10
Italy	9
Hong Kong	9
Spain	8
Belgium	8
Sweden	7
Mexico	5
New Zealand	5
China	5
India	4
Australia	4
Netherlands	4
South Korea	4
Denmark	3
Luxemburg	3
Taiwan	3
Ireland	3
Greece	3
Switzerland	3
Norway	2
Cambodia	2
Chile	2
Soviet Union	2
UAE	2
Senegal	2
Iran	2
Austria	1
Brazil	1
Romania	1
Argentina	1
Hungary	1
Jordan	1
Qatar	1
Tunisia	1
Finland	1
Israel	1
Indonesia	1
Czech Rep.	1
Poland	1
Czechoslovakia	1
Bulgaria	1
Jamaica	1

Recurring Directors

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Luis Bunuel- 4 (Los Olvidados, L’Age d’Or, Belle de Jour, Viridiana)

Alexander Mackendrick- 3 (The Ladykillers, Whisky Galore, The Man in the White Suit)

Akira Kurosawa- 3 (I Live in Fear, High and Low, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail)

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

Powell & Pressburger- 2 (A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes)

Mike Mills- 2 (Beginners, 20th Century Women)

Ridley Scott- 2 (Thelma & Louise, Alien: Covenant)

Ingmar Bergman- 2 (Persona, The Seventh Seal)

Charles Chaplain- 2 (The Great Dictator, Modern Times)

Mike Birbiglia- 2 (Don’t Think Twice, Sleepwalk with Me)

Richard Fleischer- 2 (10 Rillington Place, Fantastic Voyage)

Terence Davis- 2 (Distant Voices, Still Lives; Sunset Song)

Garth Jennings- 2 (Sing, Son of Rambow)

John Hamburg- 2 (I Love You, Man & Why Him?)

Alfred Hitchcock- 2 (Sabotage, The Man Who Knew Too Much)

Blake Edwards- 2 (Return of the Pink Panther, The Pink Panther)

Hayao Miyazaki- 2 (Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle)

Taika Waititi- 2 (Thor: Ragnarok, Boy)

John Ford- 2 (Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine)

Abbas Kiarostami-2 (Certified Copy, Close-Up)

Carl Theodor Dreyer- 2 (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr)

Victor Sjostrom- 2 (The Phantom Carriage, A Man There Was)

Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor- 2 (Safety Last!, Dr. Jack)

Garry Marshall- 2 (The Princess Diaries 1 & 2)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****
The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)
Super Fly” (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1972)
Foxy Brown” (dir. Jack Hill, 1974)
Black Belt Jones” (dir. Robert Clouse, 1974)
Blacula” (dir. William Crain, 1972)
Three the Hard Way” (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1974)
The Mack” (dir. Michael Campus, 1973)
Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002)
Dragon (dir. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 2011)
The Love Witch (dir. Anna Biller, 2016)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davis, 1988)
Headhunters (dir. Morten Tyldum, 2011)
Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
Love is Colder Than Death (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
La Promesse (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1996)
Lion (dir. Garth Davis, 2016)
To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Fences (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)
Theeb (dir. Naji Abu Nowar, 2014)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger & Carl Koch, 1926)
Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot & Raymond Burlet, 1998)
Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2005)
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)
20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016)
The Fate of the Furious (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2017)
Free Fire (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2016)
Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
Room 237 (dir. Rodney Ascher, 2012)
Mifune: the Last Samurai (dir. Steven Okazaki, 2015)
Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939)
The Assassin (dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2015)
Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (dir. David Gelb, 2011)
Grey Gardens (dir. Albert & David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, Ellen Hovde, 1975)
The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (dir. Anika Iltis, Timothy Anthony Kane, 2014)
The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978)
Where You’re Meant To Be (dir. Paul Fegan, 2016)
We Were Here (dir. David Weissman, Bill Weber, 2011)
The Look of Silence (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014)
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake Roberts (dir. Steve Yu, 2015)
Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (dir. James Gunn, 2017)
Chicken Run (dir. Peter Lord, Nick Park, 2000)
Meek’s Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Mindhorn (dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
Commando (dir. Mark L. Lester, 1985)
Sabotage (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
The Levelling (dir. Hope Dickson Leach, 2016)
The Red Turtle (dir. Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (dir. David Mirkin, 1997)
Alien: Covenant (dir. Ridley Scott, 2017)
A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Belle de Jour (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967)
Gregory’s Girl (dir. Bill Forsyth, 1980)
The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Tarzan (dir. Chris Buck & Kevin Lima, 1999)
Brassed Off (dir. Mark Herman, 1996)
Eddie- Strongman (dir. Matt Bell, 2015)
The Spirit of the Beehive (dir. Victor Erice, 1973)
Raw (dir. Julia Docournau, 2016)
Catfight (dir. Onur Tukel, 2016)
The Great Dictator (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1940)
Don’t Think Twice (dir. Mike Birbiglia, 2016)
The LEGO Batman Movie (dir. Chris McKay, 2017)
Beauty and the Beast (dir. Bill Condon, 2017)
Batman: The Movie (dir. Leslie H. Martinson, 1966)
The Break Up (dir. Peyton Reed, 2006)
The Return of the Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1975)
Sing (dir. Christophe Lourdelet & Garth Jennings, 2016)
Casa de mi Padre (dir. Matt Piedmont, 2012)
The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (dir. James Foley, 2017)
Sleepwalk with Me (dir. Mike Birbiglia & Seth Barrish, 2012)
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (dir. Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone, 2016)
The Little Death (dir. Josh Lawson, 2014)
Okja (dir. Bong Joon Ho, 2017)
Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Prevenge (dir. Alice Lowe, 2016)
Daddy’s Home (dir. Sean Anders, 2015)
The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter, 2017)
Man Bites Dog (dir. Remy Belvaux, Benoit Poelvoorde & Andre Bonzel, 1992)
Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2016)
Modern Times (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1936)
The Princess Diaries (dir. Garry Marshall, 2001)
Hausu (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Baby Driver (dir. Edgar Wright, 2017)
Onibaba (dir. Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (dir. Jon Watts, 2017)
The Imposter (dir. Bart Layton, 2012)
Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966)
Gremlins (dir. Joe Dante, 1984)
Shaolin Soccer (dir. Stephen Chow, 2001)
Pink (dir. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, 2016)
Sunset Song (dir. Terence Davis, 2015)
Quiz Show (dir. Robert Redford, 1994)
Even the Rain (dir. Iciar Bollain, 2010)
Zombeavers (dir. Jordan Rubin, 2014)
Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (dir. Chiemi Karasawa, 2013)
Filth (dir. Jon S. Baird, 2013)
High and Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Sexy Beast (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee, 1989)
Westworld (dir. Michael Crichton, 1973)
In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Monster House (dir. Gil Kenan, 2006)
Suspiria (dir. Dario Argento, 1977)
Tampopo (dir. Juzo Itami, 1985)
Baywatch (dir. Seth Gordon, 2017)
It (dir. Andy Muchietti, 2017)
The Ladykillers (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
Whisky Galore (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)
The Lavender Hill Mob (dir. Charles Crichton, 1951)
Went the Day Well? (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)
Passport to Pimlico (dir. Henry Cornelius, 1949)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (dir. Robert Hamer, 1949)
The Man in the White Suit (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)
American Splendor (dir. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2003)
mother! (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2017)
A Silent Voice (dir. Naoko Yamada, 2016)
Goon (dir. Michael Dowse, 2011)
Son of Rambow (dir. Garth Jennings, 2007)
The Secret Life of Bees (dir. Gina Prince-Blythewood, 2008)
My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin, 2007)
Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
Charlie’s Country (dir. Rolf de Heer, 2013)
Safety Last! (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)
The Most Dangerous Game (dir. Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1932)
The Phantom Carriage (dir. Victor Sjostrom, 1921)
Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins, 2017)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
Raiders!: the Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (dir. Jeremy Coon & Tim Skousen, 2015)
Before Midnight (dir. Richard Linklater, 2013)
Happy Together (dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 1997)
Weekend (dir. Andrew Haigh, 2011)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott, 1994)
Pariah (dir. Dee Rees, 2011)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (dir. John Cameron Mitchell, 2001)
Tomboy (dir. Celina Sciamma, 2011)
A Jihad for Love (dir. Parvez Sharma, 2007)
Victim (dir. Basil Dearden, 1961)
Pontypool (dir. Bruce McDonald, 2008)
I Love You, Man (dir. John Hamburg, 2009)
Sex and the City (dir. Michael Patrick King, 2008)
The Overnighters (dir. Jesse Moss, 2014)
My Life as a Courgette (dir. Claude Barras, 2016)
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (dir. Joachim Ronning & Espen Sandberg, 2017)
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1945)
The Haunted Strangler (dir. Robert Day, 1958)
The Survivalist (dir. Stephen Fingleton, 2015)
The Secret Life of Pets (dir. Chris Renaud & Yarrow Cheney, 2016)
Why Him? (dir. John Hamburg, 2016)
Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Vileneuve, 2017)
Viridiana (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1961)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)
Loving Vincent (dir. Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman, 2017)
King Kong (dir. Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)
Second Coming (dir. Debbie Tucker Green, 2014)
Fantastic Planet (dir. Rene Laloux, 1973)
Sleeping With Other People (dir. Leslye Headland, 2015)
The Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1963)
The Devil Wears Prada (dir. David Finkel, 2006)
Grandma (dir. Paul Weitz, 2015)
Assault on Precinct 13 (dir. John Carpenter, 1976)
Friday Night Lights (dir. Peter Berg, 2004)
Bobby Fischer Against the World (dir. Liz Garbus, 2011)
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (dir. Cody Cameron & Kris Pearn, 2013)
5 Card Stud (dir. Henry Hathaway, 1968)
The Death of Stalin (dir. Armando Iannucci, 2017)
Dark Horse (dir. Louise Osmond, 2015)
The Expendables 3 (dir. Patrick Hughes, 2014)
Weiner (dir. Josh Kriegman & Elyse Steinberg, 2016)
My Darling Clementine (dir. John Ford, 1946)
The Wailing (dir.Hong-jin Na, 2016)
The Help (dir. Tate Taylor, 2011)
Creed (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2015)
Most Beautiful Island (dir. Ana Asensio, 2017)
House on Haunted Hill (dir. William Castle & Rosemary Horvath, 1959)
Thor: Ragnarok (dir. Taika Waititi, 2017)
Over the Top (dir. Menahem Golan, 1987)
Delicatessen (dir. Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1991)
Vampyr (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
The Finances of the Grand Duke (dir. F.W. Murau, 1924)
Gate of Hell (dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Ornamental Hairpin (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (dir. Chad Stahelski, 2017)
The Holiday (dir. Nancy Meyers, 2006)
The Lady in the Van (dir. Nicholas Hytner, 2015)
Playtime (dir. Jacques Tati, 1967)
The Legend of the Drunken Master (dir. Chian-Liang Liu, 1994)
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan (dir. Nicholas Meyer, 1982)
A Man There Was (dir. Victor Sjostrom, 1917)
Close-Up (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
Bad Moms (dir. Jon Lucas & Scott Moore, 2016)
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (dir. Djibril Diop Mambety, 1999)
Come and See (dir. Elem Klimov, 1985)
Eraserhead (dir. David Lynch, 1977)
The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker, 2017)
Ponyo (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2008)
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (dir. Garry Marshall, 2004)
Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (dir. Michael Curtiz, 1936)
What Did The Lady Forget? (dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1937)
Dark Alibi (dir. Phil Karlson, 1946)
Devi (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1960)
Jackie (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2016)
A Colt Is My Passport (dir. Takashi Nomura, 1967)
Dangal (dir. Nitesh Tiwari, 2016)
Lady Macbeth (dir. William Oldroyd, 2016)
Boy (dir. Taika Waititi, 2010)
Fever Pitch (dir. Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 2005)
Dr. No (dir. Terence Young, 1962)
Field of Dreams (dir. Phil Alden Robinson, 1989)
Creep (dir. Patrick Brice, 2014)
Dr. Jack (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1922)
Lady Snowblood (dir. Toshiya Fujita, 1973)
Chafed Elbows (dir. Robert Downey Snr., 1965)
Kes (dir. Ken Loach, 1969)
Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond- Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton (dir. Chris Smith, 2017)
Justice League (dir. Zack Snyder, 2017)
Howl’s Moving Castle (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)
Madea Goes To Jail (dir. Tyler Perry, 2009)
The 400 Blows (dir. Francois Truffaut, 1959)
Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2017)
The Wedding Date (dir. Clare Kilner, 2005)
Skiptrace (dir. Renny Harlin, 2016)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

^ Wifey’s Choice Week

“Blaxploitation Week

Animation Week

Documentary Week

1960’s Week

Netflix Watchlist Week

Ealing Studio’s Week

LGBTQ+ Week

Twenty Best of the Year So Far…

Now that I’m over 200 films in, trying to narrow it down to just 10 films seems a bit perverse. So here’s my 20 favourite (in no particular order), along with my 140 characters or less Twitter reviews.

Your Name: “gorgeous animation. Takes the traditional body swap narrative and makes it poetic and poignant. Beautiful in every way”

The Great Dictator: “Utterly relevant, utterly charming, utterly marvellous”

Persona: “Mesmerising and bewildering. I couldn’t take my eyes off the whole thing and I’m still not entirely sure why.”

The Devils: “a superb, operatic orgy. A real forgotten masterpiece”

Train to Busan: “as relentless and knuckle-chewingly tense as Rec, but with better characters and subtext”

I Live in Fear: “devastating family drama set under the cloud of nuclear threat. Great to see Mifune in a non samurai role”

Los Olvidados: “savage social commentary, trippy dream sequences and ahead of it’s time camera techniques. Pretty damn amazing”

El Topo: “bloody & bonkers spaghetti western mixed with Don Quixote and a splash of Monty Python”

In the Heat of the Night: “grim film noir combined with sweltering racial tension with a terrific soundtrack”

Get Out: “oh man, this is a game changer in a lot of ways. Creepy & tense but impossible to shoehorn into a single category.”

Le Samourai: “a stylish cocktail of classic Hollywood noir & 1960’s French culture”

High and Low: “whether confined to 4 walls or a city wide search, Kurosawa delivers the most detailed, in-depth investigation narrative”

Onibaba: “splendid atmosphere, pacing and tone, merged together to create a massively satisfying/horrifying conclusion”

mother!: “it starts by bludgeoning you over the head with metaphor, and ends by bludgeoning you with images. But I found it remarkable”

Certified Copy: “mesmerizing performances, a blink-and-you-miss-it drama about love & regret. I loved it & really need to watch it again”

A Matter of Life and Death: “somehow manages to be prim & proper, and grand & fantastical all at once. A remarkable achievement”

The Phantom Carriage: “I’ve shied away from the term masterpiece during this year, but it feels appropriate here. It’s wonderful”

The Fits: “Should really be shown alongside The Falling. Bold performances and camarawork. Understated tale on power of peer pressure”

Viridiana: “leery & lustful with a total downer of an ending. Bunuel shows us why it’s not worth bothering with charitable acts.”

Sunset Song: “Terence Davies has a knack of making movies that will stun you with their beauty while at the same time break your heart”

Right that’s your lot for this month, you can track my progress on Twitter @clancyhighhat. Let’s not pop the champagne just yet, we’ve still got a long way to go.

365 Films, 365 Days- September

Posted on October 14, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

After the barren months of summer comes the fresh Autumnal hope…lets do this shit.

September

This Month’s List

Spider-Man: Homecoming (dir. Jon Watts, 2017)
The Imposter (dir. Bart Layton, 2012)
Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966)
Gremlins (dir. Joe Dante, 1984)
Shaolin Soccer (dir. Stephen Chow, 2001)
Pink (dir. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, 2016)
Sunset Song (dir. Terence Davis, 2015)
Quiz Show (dir. Robert Redford, 1994)
Even the Rain (dir. Iciar Bollain, 2010)
Zombeavers (dir. Jordan Rubin, 2014)
Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (dir. Chiemi Karasawa, 2013)
Filth (dir. Jon S. Baird, 2013)
High and Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Sexy Beast (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee, 1989)
Westworld (dir. Michael Crichton, 1973)
In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Monster House (dir. Gil Kenan, 2006)
Suspiria (dir. Dario Argento, 1977)
Tampopo (dir. Juzo Itami, 1985)
Baywatch (dir. Seth Gordon, 2017)
It (dir. Andy Muchietti, 2017)
The Ladykillers (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
Whisky Galore (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)
The Lavender Hill Mob (dir. Charles Crichton, 1951)
Went the Day Well? (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)
Passport to Pimlico (dir. Henry Cornelius, 1949)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (dir. Robert Hamer, 1949)
The Man in the White Suit (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)
American Splendor (dir. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2003)
mother! (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2017)
A Silent Voice (dir. Naoko Yamada, 2016)
Goon (dir. Michael Dowse, 2011)
Son of Rambow (dir. Garth Jennings, 2007)
The Secret Life of Bees (dir. Gina Prince-Blythewood, 2008)
My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin, 2007)
Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
Charlie’s Country (dir. Rolf de Heer, 2013)
Safety Last! (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)
The Most Dangerous Game (dir. Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1932)
The Phantom Carriage (dir. Victor Sjostrom, 1921)
Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins, 2017)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)

Netflix Watchlist Week

Ealing Studios Week

Highlights & Standouts

Lots of good stuff this month, I was taken on a trip into the human body in Fantastic Voyage, disgusted by sexual double standards in Bollywood courtroom drama Pink, and given a sizeable amount of vertigo in Harold Lloyd’s delightful Safety Last!. I very much enjoyed my week watching the best that Ealing Studios has to offer (not least because most of the films clocked in around the 90 minute mark), with the whimsical Whisky Galore! probably being my favourite of the bunch, but it was also great to see the range of Alec Guinness.

As a fun little wrinkle, and because I didn’t feel like I was stretching myself enough with this challenge, I made the decision this month that I wanted to see at least one film from every year from the last 100 years. A quick look over my list so far revealed I was missing about 33 years from 1917 until this year, so this influenced my choices of films to watch towards the end of the month. Some might say that considering I am already so far behind on the initial challenge I should probably focus on the task at hand, but adding this sub-challenge led me to Safety Last!, The Most Dangerous Game, The Phantom Carriage, and The Passion of Joan of Arc, so it’s already paying off. Plus it gave me an excuse to make another spreadsheet to track my films by year, and so help me, I do enjoy a spreadsheet.

Low Points & Disappointments

Baywatch managed to be pretty devoid of life, it’s not like expectations were high, but it fell short of producing any laughs or any standout action sequences, pretty unforgivable for a comedy starring Dwayne Johnson.

With the regards to other 2017 releases, Spider-Man: Homecoming, It and Wonder Woman were all perfectly watchable in their own way, but having heard lots of positives about all of them, including seeing them on a couple of best of the year lists, none of them lived up to the hype surrounding them.

Performance of the Month

Agyness Deyn- Sunset Song

September has been a fantastic month for strong, fascinating female characters. From the heroic trio seeking justice in an unfair patriarchal legal system in Pink, to Jennifer Lawrence’s bewildering and beguiling turn in mother!, to Juliette Binoche who is spellbinding in Certified Copy. But it is Agyness Deyn who stood out the most in a month of standout performances, in Terence Davies’ magnificent Sunset Song, a coming-of-age story about Scottish farm girl Chris, at the turn of the 20th century.

It is a transformative performance, Deyn skillfully depicts Chris at numerous stages of her life (similar to James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life), growing from timid, put upon daughter to proud matriarch of the farm. It is a heartbreaking journey along the way, with Deyn carrying the film with strength, vulnerability and poise.

Top 5 of the Month (in no particular order)

Sunset Song: Terence Davies sure knows how to make a disaster look beautiful. This adaptation of the Lewis Grassic Gibbon novel is both dreek and warming, his investment in character makes you fall in love, ensuring the oncoming heartbreak is all the more painful. Also its got Peter Mullan in it so you know it is well worth your time.

High and Low: one of the most in-depth police movies I’ve ever seen, Kurosawa’s attention to detail in this crime thriller is exceptional. He spends the first half of the film almost entirely in a single house, the second half takes places across a whole city, he is a master of getting maximum tension out of any setting.

mother!: it has unsurprisingly split audience opinion, but it is a film that captivated me from the beginning and was a masterful achievement in camerawork and pacing. Subtlety is not its strong suit but sometimes it does a person good to be clobbered over the head by a film. I was thinking about it for days afterwards so for me it 100% worked.

Certified Copy: Like mother!, its a film where decades seem to pass in the blink of the eye, and every interaction is crucial. It’s spiralling, thought provoking, and demanding of your attention. With picturesque settings and terrific performances, it’s another film that leaves a lasting impression. I don’t have time to go back and watch it again this year, although I very much wanted to as soon as I’d finished it, but it will be one of the first to get a re-visit at the turn of the year.

The Phantom Carriage: so ahead of it’s time in terms of special effects and narrative structure, it’s almost 100 years old but its influence is still seen in films today. I thought it was remarkable.

The Year So Far

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 110

2000’s- 17

1990’s- 15

1980’s- 10

1970’s- 24

1960’s- 16

1950’s- 9

1940’s- 8

1930’s- 6

1920’s- 6

Days to film ratio

221 films in 273 days. September was the most films watched in a single month, with 44, but that number only stopped me from falling further behind rather than catching me up. I will have to average around 48 films a month for the last three months if I’m to be in with shout.

Total time of film watching

22,422 minutes, 373.7 hours, 15.5 days.

Films by the Nations

USA	122
UK	55
France	25
Germany	13
Japan	12
Belgium	8
Italy	8
Spain	7
Canada	6
Sweden	6
Netherlands	4
Australia	4
Mexico	4
New Zealand	4
China	4
Hong Kong	4
Denmark	3
Luxemburg	3
Taiwan	3
Ireland	3
Norway	2
Greece	2
South Korea	2
Brazil	1
Austria	1
Switzerland	1
Romania	1
Argentina	1
Chile	1
Soviet Union	1
Cambodia	1
Hungary	1
Jordan	1
UAE	1
Qatar	1
Tunisia	1
Senegal	1
Finland	1
Israel	1
Indonesia	1
Czech Rep.	1
Iran	1
India	1

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Recurring Directors

Luis Bunuel- 3 (Los Olvidados, L’Age d’Or, Belle de Jour)

Alexander Mackendrick- 3 (The Ladykillers, Whisky Galore, The Man in the White Suit)

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

Powell & Pressburger- 2 (A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes)

Mike Mills- 2 (Beginners, 20th Century Women)

Ridley Scott- 2 (Thelma & Louise, Alien: Covenant)

Ingmar Bergman- 2 (Persona, The Seventh Seal)

Charles Chaplain- 2 (The Great Dictator, Modern Times)

Mike Birbiglia- 2 (Don’t Think Twice, Sleepwalk with Me)

Akira Kurosawa- 2 (I Live in Fear, High and Low)

Richard Fleischer- 2 (10 Rillington Place, Fantastic Voyage)

Terence Davis- 2 (Distant Voices, Still Lives; Sunset Song)

Garth Jennings- 2 (Sing, Son of Rambow)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****
The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)
Super Fly” (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1972)
Foxy Brown” (dir. Jack Hill, 1974)
Black Belt Jones” (dir. Robert Clouse, 1974)
Blacula” (dir. William Crain, 1972)
Three the Hard Way” (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1974)
The Mack” (dir. Michael Campus, 1973)
Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002)
Dragon (dir. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 2011)
The Love Witch (dir. Anna Biller, 2016)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davis, 1988)
Headhunters (dir. Morten Tyldum, 2011)
Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
Love is Colder Than Death (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
La Promesse (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1996)
Lion (dir. Garth Davis, 2016)
To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Fences (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)
Theeb (dir. Naji Abu Nowar, 2014)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger & Carl Koch, 1926)
Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot & Raymond Burlet, 1998)
Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2005)
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)
20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016)
The Fate of the Furious (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2017)
Free Fire (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2016)
Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
Room 237 (dir. Rodney Ascher, 2012)
Mifune: the Last Samurai (dir. Steven Okazaki, 2015)
Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939)
The Assassin (dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2015)
Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (dir. David Gelb, 2011)
Grey Gardens (dir. Albert & David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, Ellen Hovde, 1975)
The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (dir. Anika Iltis, Timothy Anthony Kane, 2014)
The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978)
Where You’re Meant To Be (dir. Paul Fegan, 2016)
We Were Here (dir. David Weissman, Bill Weber, 2011)
The Look of Silence (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014)
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake Roberts (dir. Steve Yu, 2015)
Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (dir. James Gunn, 2017)
Chicken Run (dir. Peter Lord, Nick Park, 2000)
Meek’s Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Mindhorn (dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
Commando (dir. Mark L. Lester, 1985)
Sabotage (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
The Levelling (dir. Hope Dickson Leach, 2016)
The Red Turtle (dir. Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (dir. David Mirkin, 1997)
Alien: Covenant (dir. Ridley Scott, 2017)
A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Belle de Jour (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967)
Gregory’s Girl (dir. Bill Forsyth, 1980)
The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Tarzan (dir. Chris Buck & Kevin Lima, 1999)
Brassed Off (dir. Mark Herman, 1996)
Eddie- Strongman (dir. Matt Bell, 2015)
The Spirit of the Beehive (dir. Victor Erice, 1973)
Raw (dir. Julia Docournau, 2016)
Catfight (dir. Onur Tukel, 2016)
The Great Dictator (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1940)
Don’t Think Twice (dir. Mike Birbiglia, 2016)
The LEGO Batman Movie (dir. Chris McKay, 2017)
Beauty and the Beast (dir. Bill Condon, 2017)
Batman: The Movie (dir. Leslie H. Martinson, 1966)
The Break Up (dir. Peyton Reed, 2006)
The Return of the Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1975)
Sing (dir. Christophe Lourdelet & Garth Jennings, 2016)
Casa de mi Padre (dir. Matt Piedmont, 2012)
The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (dir. James Foley, 2017)
Sleepwalk with Me (dir. Mike Birbiglia & Seth Barrish, 2012)
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (dir. Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone, 2016)
The Little Death (dir. Josh Lawson, 2014)
Okja (dir. Bong Joon Ho, 2017)
Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Prevenge (dir. Alice Lowe, 2016)
Daddy’s Home (dir. Sean Anders, 2015)
The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter, 2017)
Man Bites Dog (dir. Remy Belvaux, Benoit Poelvoorde & Andre Bonzel, 1992)
Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2016)
Modern Times (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1936)
The Princess Diaries (dir. Garry Marshall, 2001)
Hausu (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Baby Driver (dir. Edgar Wright, 2017)
Onibaba (dir. Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
Spider-Man: Homecoming (dir. Jon Watts, 2017)
The Imposter (dir. Bart Layton, 2012)
Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1966)
Gremlins (dir. Joe Dante, 1984)
Shaolin Soccer (dir. Stephen Chow, 2001)
Pink (dir. Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, 2016)
Sunset Song (dir. Terence Davis, 2015)
Quiz Show (dir. Robert Redford, 1994)
Even the Rain (dir. Iciar Bollain, 2010)
Zombeavers (dir. Jordan Rubin, 2014)
High and Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me (dir. Chiemi Karasawa, 2013)
Filth (dir. Jon S. Baird, 2013)
Sexy Beast (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee, 1989)
Westworld (dir. Michael Crichton, 1973)
In a Lonely Place (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Monster House (dir. Gil Kenan, 2006)
Suspiria (dir. Dario Argento, 1977)
Tampopo (dir. Juzo Itami, 1985)
Baywatch (dir. Seth Gordon, 2017)
It (dir. Andy Muchietti, 2017)
The Ladykillers (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
Whisky Galore (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1949)
The Lavender Hill Mob (dir. Charles Crichton, 1951)
Went the Day Well? (dir. Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)
Passport to Pimlico (dir. Henry Cornelius, 1949)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (dir. Robert Hamer, 1949)
The Man in the White Suit (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese, 2016)
American Splendor (dir. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini, 2003)
mother! (dir. Darren Aronofsky, 2017)
A Silent Voice (dir. Naoko Yamada, 2016)
Goon (dir. Michael Dowse, 2011)
Son of Rambow (dir. Garth Jennings, 2007)
The Secret Life of Bees (dir. Gina Prince-Blythewood, 2008)
My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin, 2007)
Certified Copy (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
Charlie’s Country (dir. Rolf de Heer, 2013)
Safety Last! (dir. Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)
The Most Dangerous Game (dir. Irving Pichel & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1932)
The Phantom Carriage (dir. Victor Sjostrom, 1921)
Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins, 2017)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

^ Wifey’s Choice Week

“Blaxploitation Week

Animation Week

Documentary Week

1960’s Week

Netflix Watchlist Week

Ealing Studio’s Week

Twenty Best of the Year So Far…

Your Name: “gorgeous animation. Takes the traditional body swap narrative and makes it poetic and poignant. Beautiful in every way”

The Great Dictator: “Utterly relevant, utterly charming, utterly marvellous”

Persona: “Mesmerising and bewildering. I couldn’t take my eyes off the whole thing and I’m still not entirely sure why.”

The Devils: “a superb, operatic orgy. A real forgotten masterpiece”

Train to Busan: “as relentless and knuckle-chewingly tense as Rec, but with better characters and subtext”

I Live in Fear: “devastating family drama set under the cloud of nuclear threat. Great to see Mifune in a non samurai role”

Los Olvidados: “savage social commentary, trippy dream sequences and ahead of it’s time camera techniques. Pretty damn amazing”

El Topo: “bloody & bonkers spaghetti western mixed with Don Quixote and a splash of Monty Python”

In the Heat of the Night: “grim film noir combined with sweltering racial tension with a terrific soundtrack”

Get Out: “oh man, this is a game changer in a lot of ways. Creepy & tense but impossible to shoehorn into a single category.”

Le Samourai: “a stylish cocktail of classic Hollywood noir & 1960’s French culture”

High and Low: “whether confined to 4 walls or a city wide search, Kurosawa delivers the most detailed, in-depth investigation narrative”

Onibaba: “splendid atmosphere, pacing and tone, merged together to create a massively satisfying/horrifying conclusion”

mother!: “it starts by bludgeoning you over the head with metaphor, and ends by bludgeoning you with images. But I found it remarkable”

Certified Copy: “mesmerizing performances, a blink-and-you-miss-it drama about love & regret. I loved it & really need to watch it again”

A Matter of Life and Death: “somehow manages to be prim & proper, and grand & fantastical all at once. A remarkable achievement”

The Phantom Carriage: “I’ve shied away from the term masterpiece during this year, but it feels appropriate here. It’s wonderful”

The Fits: “Should really be shown alongside The Falling. Bold performances and camarawork. Understated tale on power of peer pressure”

The Red Turtle: “minimal dialogue, simplistic (but beautiful) animation, maximum feels”

Sunset Song: “Terence Davies has a knack of making movies that will stun you with their beauty while at the same time break your heart”

Right that’s your lot for this month, you can track my progress on Twitter @clancyhighhat. Now leave me in peace, I’ve got a lot of work to do.

365 Films, 365 Days- June/July/August

Posted on September 6, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

It’s been a dismal summer, here’s what went wrong…

June/July/August

It’s been a disastrous three months. Working 6 days a week, 13 hours a day, I always knew these would be barren months, but I didn’t even get close to my modest viewing goal of a film every three days, meaning everyday counts from here on out. The quantity wasn’t up to much, but there was certainly a fair amount of quality, so with that in mind lets press on…

These Months’ List

Gregory’s Girl (dir. Bill Forsyth, 1980)
The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Tarzan (dir. Chris Buck & Kevin Lima, 1999)
Brassed Off (dir. Mark Herman, 1996)
Eddie- Strongman (dir. Matt Bell, 2015)
The Spirit of the Beehive (dir. Victor Erice, 1973)
Raw (dir. Julia Docournau, 2016)
Catfight (dir. Onur Tukel, 2016)
The Great Dictator (dir. Charles Chaplin, 1940)
Don’t Think Twice (dir. Mike Birbiglia, 2016)
The LEGO Batman Movie (dir. Chris McKay, 2017)
Beauty and the Beast (dir. Bill Condon, 2017)
Batman: The Movie (dir. Leslie H. Martinson, 1966)
The Break Up (dir. Peyton Reed, 2006)
The Return of the Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1975)
Sing (dir. Christophe Lourdelet & Garth Jennings, 2016)
Casa de mi Padre (dir. Matt Piedmont, 2012)
The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (dir. James Foley, 2017)
Sleepwalk with Me (dir. Mike Birbiglia & Seth Barrish, 2012)
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (dir. Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone, 2016)
The Little Death (dir. Josh Lawson, 2014)
Okja (dir. Bong Joon Ho, 2017)
Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Prevenge (dir. Alice Lowe, 2016)
Daddy’s Home (dir. Sean Anders, 2015)
The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter, 2017)
Man Bites Dog (dir. Remy Belvaux, Benoit Poelvoorde & Andre Bonzel, 1992)
Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2016)
Modern Times (dir. Charles Chaplin, 1936)
The Princess Diaries (dir. Garry Marshall, 2001)
Hausu (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Baby Driver (dir. Edgar Wright, 2017)
Onibaba (dir. Kaneto Shindo, 1964)

Highlights & Standouts

This was probably the hardest month(s) to narrow it down a top 5. The fact that Modern Times, Okja, The Big Sick, Baby Driver, Personal Shopper, The Little Death and Hausu all missed out is testament to the films viewed this month.

I really want to single out The Little Death in particular, as it is a film that really deserves a bigger audience. Using multi-strand narrative, the film looks at how various fetishes effect different couples. It’s got a wicked line of jet-black humour running all the way through it, think a perverse, Australian, Love, Actually, and you’re somewhere in the ball park.

Low Points & Disappointments

The Break Up was a turgid affair from start to finish. A witless, charmless anti-romcom with unlikeable and unsympathetic leads. A criminal runtime at 1hr 46mins managed to make it feel like twice as a long again. I sincerely hope this is the nadir of the year.

It feels almost perverse to mention Dunkirk in the same breath as The Break Up, but it was a victim of impossibly high expectations, and for me it did not live up to the hype. That is not to say that it is not a magnificent technical achievement, and I thoroughly admired how Nolan seamlessly weaved the different timelines together, but I struggled to connect with any of the characters and was so wowed by the visuals that any semblance of tension passed me by.

Fifty Shades Darker was dreadful, and not even in a car crash, fun kind of way. But is that really a surprise to anyone?

Performance of the Month

I mean the correct is answer is of course Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, probably closely followed by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. The man was a master, every scene he is in is planned out to perfection. He is never anything but a joy to behold onscreen. The Great Dictator is the first time I’ve actually heard his voice, and his words from his closing speech still ring in my ears.

chaplin

Benoit Poelvoorde deserves an honourable mention for his portrayal of serial killer Ben in Man Bites Dog. It is a charismatic and dangerous performance, a fascinating subject for the faux documentary crew to have stumbled upon. He rattles off his dialogue like machine-gun fire, turning from threatening, to funny, to offensive to insightful, all in the space of a single paragraph. He is the reason the film works so well.

Top 5 of the Month (in no particular order)

Raw– a vegetarian student begins veterinary school and develops a taste for meat. What could have been a shlocky-gorefest is in fact an fantastically artistic, immaculately performed, wince-inducing film that straddles multiple genres and is never predictable.

The Great Dictator- Chaplin’s a genius, and the film makes points still frighteningly relevant today. What more can be said?

The Seventh Seal- A slice of Quixotic existentialism from Ingmar Bergman. It’s beautiful, at times daft, but always fascinating.

Man Bites Dog- Provides the blue print for how to make a marvellous mockumentary/found footage film while at the same time makes it completely unnecessary to ever try to do so again.

Onibaba- Masterful tone and setting, you don’t even realise you’re watching a horror film until about 3/4 of the way through. The pacing is absolutely spot on, builds to a satisfying/horrifying climax.

Onibaba

The Year So Far

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 93

2000’s- 10

1990’s- 14

1980’s- 7

1970’s- 22

1960’s- 14

1950’s- 5

1940’s- 4

1930’s- 5

1920’s- 3

Days to film ratio

177 films watched in 243 days, meaning I still have 188 films to watch in 122 days. From here on out I will need to watch 1.54 films a day to finish on time. A total nightmare scenario to find myself in.

Total minutes of film watching

17,861 minutes of film watching, that’s over 297 hours, 12.4 days. Seems like a lot, and yet I’m so far behind.

Films by the Nations

USA- 100

UK- 42

France- 21

Germany- 11

Japan- 9

Belgium- 6

Spain- 5

Italy- 4

Netherlands- 4

Sweden- 4

Denmark- 3

Canada- 3

New Zealand- 3

Ireland- 3

Australia- 3

China- 2

Hong Kong- 2

Mexico- 2

Luxemburg- 2

Taiwan- 2

Norway- 2

South Korea- 2

Greece- 2

Brazil- 1

Austria- 1

Switzerland- 1

Romania- 1

Argentina- 1

Chile- 1

Soviet Union- 1

Cambodia- 1

Hungary- 1

Tunisia- 1

Jordan- 1

UAE- 1

Qatar- 1

Senegal- 1

Finland- 1

Indonesia- 1

Israel- 1

Czech Republic- 1

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Recurring Directors

Luis Bunuel- 3 (Los Olvidados, L’Age d’Or, Belle de Jour)

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

Powell & Pressburger- 2 (A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes)

Mike Mills- 2 (Beginners, 20th Century Women)

Ridley Scott- 2 (Thelma & Louise, Alien: Covenant)

Ingmar Bergman- 2 (Persona, The Seventh Seal)

Charles Chaplain- 2 (The Great Dictator, Modern Times)

Mike Birbiglia- 2 (Don’t Think Twice, Sleepwalk with Me)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****
The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)
Super Fly (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1972)
Foxy Brown (dir. Jack Hill, 1974)
Black Belt Jones (dir. Robert Clouse, 1974)
Blacula (dir. William Crain, 1972)
Three the Hard Way (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1974)
The Mack (dir. Michael Campus, 1973)
Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002)
Dragon (dir. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 2011)
The Love Witch (dir. Anna Biller, 2016)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davis, 1988)
Headhunters (dir. Morten Tyldum, 2011)
Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
Love is Colder Than Death (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
La Promesse (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1996)
Lion (dir. Garth Davis, 2016)
To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Fences (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)
Theeb (dir. Naji Abu Nowar, 2014)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger & Carl Koch, 1926)
Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot & Raymond Burlet, 1998)
Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2005)
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)
20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016)
The Fate of the Furious (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2017)
Free Fire (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2016)
Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
Room 237 (dir. Rodney Ascher, 2012)
Mifune: the Last Samurai (dir. Steven Okazaki, 2015)
Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939)
The Assassin (dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2015)
Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (dir. David Gelb, 2011)
Grey Gardens (dir. Albert & David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, Ellen Hovde, 1975)
The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (dir. Anika Iltis, Timothy Anthony Kane, 2014)
The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978)
Where You’re Meant To Be (dir. Paul Fegan, 2016)
We Were Here (dir. David Weissman, Bill Weber, 2011)
The Look of Silence (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014)
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake Roberts (dir. Steve Yu, 2015)
Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (dir. James Gunn, 2017)
Chicken Run (dir. Peter Lord, Nick Park, 2000)
Meek’s Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Mindhorn (dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
Commando (dir. Mark L. Lester, 1985)
Sabotage (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
The Levelling (dir. Hope Dickson Leach, 2016)
The Red Turtle (dir. Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (dir. David Mirkin, 1997)
Alien: Covenant (dir. Ridley Scott, 2017)
A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Belle de Jour (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967)
Gregory’s Girl (dir. Bill Forsyth, 1980)
The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Tarzan (dir. Chris Buck & Kevin Lima, 1999)
Brassed Off (dir. Mark Herman, 1996)
Eddie- Strongman (dir. Matt Bell, 2015)
The Spirit of the Beehive (dir. Victor Erice, 1973)
Raw (dir. Julia Docournau, 2016)
Catfight (dir. Onur Tukel, 2016)
The Great Dictator (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1940)
Don’t Think Twice (dir. Mike Birbiglia, 2016)
The LEGO Batman Movie (dir. Chris McKay, 2017)
Beauty and the Beast (dir. Bill Condon, 2017)
Batman: The Movie (dir. Leslie H. Martinson, 1966)
The Break Up (dir. Peyton Reed, 2006)
The Return of the Pink Panther (dir. Blake Edwards, 1975)
Sing (dir. Christophe Lourdelet & Garth Jennings, 2016)
Casa de mi Padre (dir. Matt Piedmont, 2012)
The Lobster (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
Fifty Shades Darker (dir. James Foley, 2017)
Sleepwalk with Me (dir. Mike Birbiglia & Seth Barrish, 2012)
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (dir. Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone, 2016)
The Little Death (dir. Josh Lawson, 2014)
Okja (dir. Bong Joon Ho, 2017)
Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2017)
Prevenge (dir. Alice Lowe, 2016)
Daddy’s Home (dir. Sean Anders, 2015)
The Big Sick (dir. Michael Showalter, 2017)
Man Bites Dog (dir. Remy Belvaux, Benoit Poelvoorde & Andre Bonzel, 1992)
Personal Shopper (dir. Olivier Assayas, 2016)
Modern Times (dir. Charles Chaplain, 1936)
The Princess Diaries (dir. Garry Marshall, 2001)
Hausu (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Baby Driver (dir. Edgar Wright, 2017)
Onibaba (dir. Kaneto Shindo, 1964)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

^ Wifey’s Choice Week

Blaxploitation Week

Animation Week

Documentary Week

1960’s Week

Ten Best of the Year So Far…

Your Name

The Great Dictator

Persona

The Devils

Train to Busan

I Live in Fear

Los Olvidados

El Topo

In the Heat of the Night

Get Out

Right that’s your lot for this month, you can track my progress on Twitter @clancyhighhat. Now leave me in peace, I’ve got a lot of work to do.

365 Films, 365 Days- May

Posted on June 9, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

May

This Month’s List

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (dir. David Gelb, 2011)
Grey Gardens (dir. Albert & David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, Ellen Hovde, 1975)
The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (dir. Anika Iltis, Timothy Anthony Kane, 2014)
The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978)
Where You’re Meant To Be (dir. Paul Fegan, 2016)
We Were Here (dir. David Weissman, Bill Weber, 2011)
The Look of Silence (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014)
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake Roberts (dir. Steve Yu, 2015)
Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (dir. James Gunn, 2017)
Chicken Run (dir. Peter Lord, Nick Park, 2000)
Meek’s Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Mindhorn (dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
Commando (dir. Mark L. Lester, 1985)
Sabotage (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
The Levelling (dir. Hope Dickson Leach, 2016)
The Red Turtle (dir. Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (dir. David Mirkin, 1997)
Alien: Covenant (dir. Ridley Scott, 2017)
A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Belle de Jour (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1967)
Bonnie & Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967)

Documentary Week

1960’s Week

Week 1- Documentary Week

This week was a lot of fun. Like with any theme week I aimed for a fair amount of variety, and this was easy to do in regards to release period, country of origin, subject matter and tone. Jiro Dreams of Sushi took a fairly light-hearted look at an expensive sushi restaurant and managed to tell a story that is more about the quest for perfection and the difficulty of living in your father’s shadow than a movie about how to prepare raw fish.

In Grey Gardens, the Maysles stumbled on documentary gold with the Beale’s as an eccentric subject matter, but their ramblings wore on me by the end, and the film ultimately revealed a lot less than the likes of Salesmen.

The Last Waltz and Where You’re Meant to Be, both music documentaries, with the former celebrating the end of an iconic group (goes great when you turn it up real loud and watch it with a glass of Jura), while the latter was about the preservation and rejuvenation of a form of music (Scottish folk), that is at risk of being lost forever.

And then there was The Look of Silence. Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow up to the startling The Act of Killing, returning again to the subject of horrific genocide in Indonesia, stripping back the theatrics of his first film but still delivering appalling testimonies of the atrocities. The pair together make essential viewing.

Week 2 & 3

It was a mixed bagged for a couple of weeks as I struggled just to keep my head above water. Despite high expectations Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, managed to deliver an unapologetically fun and exciting comic book adaptation. I may have enjoyed even more than the first one.

I finally saw Commando. So now everyone can get off my case about it (it was good ok, what do you want from me?).

Mindhorn was good value for money, and was delighted it went to US Netflix at practically the same time as its UK cinematic release. I always prefer Julian Barratt over Noel Fielding in The Mighty Boosh lineup, and it was good to see him shine in this. It lacked the out and out laughs of the Boosh, or the even better Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, but it was good fun from start to finish.

The Red Turtle was another real plus of the month. A triumph of simplistic storytelling that really hits home. The animation is restrained, the dialogue minimal, but it still manages to tug at the heart strings in a way few other films have managed this year.

And for the record Alien: Covenant is ok. Yes everyone in it’s an idiot, and the actual alien gets dispatched rather easily at the end, but I have seen a lot worse this year alone. Its biggest problem is that it carries the wait of being an Alien franchise film. With some minor retooling you could remove the alien, keep the twisted android antics, and have a film people are far more accepting of.

Week 4- 1960’s Week

Another fun week, although I didn’t see as many as I’d hoped. A Fistful of Dollars is perfectly good, without ever getting near the genius of Yojimbo.

Breathless went a long way to getting Godard back into my good graces after being forced to watch all of Weekend in a film class ten years ago. I like him a lot better when he follows a narrative and the film shares a lot of the same DNA as Fassbinder’s Love is Colder Than Death.

Persona was the highlight of the week (and one of the best of the year so far). Still trying to wrap my head round the whole thing, but will most definitely be watching more of Bergman’s work this year.

Highlights

A good month in general, the two theme weeks brought me to some awesome films I hadn’t even heard of before I started researching titles to watch. I’ve been singing the songs from Where You’re Meant to Be since I watched it, and the film brought a tear or two to my eye out of homesickness. The Barkley Marathon was also an awesome watch, a fun documentary about an insane race in the mountains of Tennessee and it’s masochistic founder. Highly enjoyable.

Low Points

My low point for the month is a film that I could not even add to my list, as I wasn’t able to complete the whole film; Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This film might be my White Whale for this process. I rented it for three weeks and never found the time to sit down and actually watch the thing. The one time I did finally clear some time aside to watch the blasted thing, I fell asleep after about 45 minutes. It felt a lot longer than that. The parts I was conscious for was pretty dreary, the Harry Potter movie offerings were a mixed bag at best, but this seemed to be lacking the spark that they all possessed. I doubt I will go back for another attempt this year.

Performance of the Month

Despite being very different performances, I can’t choose between Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman in Persona. Ullman is near mute for the entire film, while Andersson barely stops talking to draw a breath, but together they cast a mesmerising spell over the film that makes it hard to look away. For a film that is essentially one person talking and one person listening, if one of them isn’t on point the whole film collapses, but they make it work and the film is unforgettable because of it.

960

Top 5 of the Month (in no particular order)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2

Where You’re Meant to Be

Persona

The Red Turtle

The Levelling

The Year So Far

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 73

2000’s- 8

1990’s- 11

1980’s- 6

1970’s- 19

1960’s- 12

1950’s- 4

1940’s- 3

1930’s- 4

1920’s- 3

Days to film ratio

150 days gone by, 143 films watched. It’s not going to improve any time soon.

Total minutes of film watching

14,507 minutes logged, I have officially passed the 10 day mark for film watching. And I’m only about a third of the way through.

Films by the Nations

USA- 78

UK- 34

France- 17

Germany- 10

Japan- 7

Spain- 4

Belgium- 4

Italy- 3

Canada- 3

New Zealand- 3

Sweden- 3

China- 2

Hong Kong- 2

Ireland- 2

Mexico- 2

Luxemburg- 2

Australia- 2

Taiwan- 2

Netherlands- 2

Norway- 2

Denmark- 2

South Korea- 1

Greece- 1

Brazil- 1

Austria- 1

Switzerland- 1

Romania- 1

Argentina- 1

Chile- 1

Soviet Union- 1

Cambodia- 1

Hungary- 1

Tunisia- 1

Jordan- 1

UAE- 1

Qatar- 1

Senegal- 1

Finland- 1

Indonesia- 1

Israel- 1

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Recurring Directors

Luis Bunuel- 3 (Los Olvidados, L’Age d’Or, Belle de Jour)

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

Powell & Pressburger- 2 (A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes)

Mike Mills- 2 (Beginners, 20th Century Women)

Ridley Scott- 2 (Thelma & Louise, Alien: Covenant)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****
The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)
Super Fly (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1972)
Foxy Brown (dir. Jack Hill, 1974)
Black Belt Jones (dir. Robert Clouse, 1974)
Blacula (dir. William Crain, 1972)
Three the Hard Way (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1974)
The Mack (dir. Michael Campus, 1973)
Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002)
Dragon (dir. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 2011)
The Love Witch (dir. Anna Biller, 2016)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davis, 1988)
Headhunters (dir. Morten Tyldum, 2011)
Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
Love is Colder Than Death (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
La Promesse (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1996)
Lion (dir. Garth Davis, 2016)
To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Fences (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)
Theeb (dir. Naji Abu Nowar, 2014)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger & Carl Koch, 1926)
Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot & Raymond Burlet, 1998)
Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2005)
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)
20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016)
The Fate of the Furious (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2017)
Free Fire (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2016)
Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
Room 237 (dir. Rodney Ascher, 2012)
Mifune: the Last Samurai (dir. Steven Okazaki, 2015)
Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939)
The Assassin (dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2015)
Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)
Jiro Dreams of Sushi (dir. David Gelb, 2011)
Grey Gardens (dir. Albert & David Maysles, Muffie Meyer, Ellen Hovde, 1975)
The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young (dir. Anika Iltis, Timothy Anthony Kane, 2014)
The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1978)
Where You’re Meant To Be (dir. Paul Fegan, 2016)
We Were Here (dir. David Weissman, Bill Weber, 2011)
The Look of Silence (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2014)
The Resurrection of Jake the Snake Roberts (dir. Steve Yu, 2015)
Guardians of the Galaxy vol.2 (dir. James Gunn, 2017)
Chicken Run (dir. Peter Lord, Nick Park, 2000)
Meek’s Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Mindhorn (dir. Sean Foley, 2016)
Commando (dir. Mark L. Lester, 1985)
Sabotage (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
The Levelling (dir. Hope Dickson Leach, 2016)
The Red Turtle (dir. Michael Dudok de Wit, 2016)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (dir. David Mirkin, 1997)
Alien: Covenant (dir. Ridley Scott, 2017)
A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone, 1964)
Breathless (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1960)
Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Belle de Jour (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn, 1967)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

^ Wifey’s Choice Week

Blaxploitation Week

Animation Week

Documentary Week

1960’s Week

Ten Best of the Year So Far…

Your Name

The Fits

Persona

The Devils

Train to Busan

I Live in Fear

Los Olvidados

El Topo

In the Heat of the Night

Get Out

That’ll do it for this month, I’m going to get some sunlight.

Can’t wait a month to see how I’m getting on? You can follow my progress film-by-film on Twitter, @clancyhighhat.

365 Films, 365 Days- April

Posted on May 4, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

Here we go, let’s make April our bitch!

April

This Month’s List

Super Fly (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1972)
Foxy Brown (dir. Jack Hill, 1974)
Black Belt Jones (dir. Robert Clouse, 1974)
Blacula (dir. William Crain, 1972)
Three the Hard Way (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1974)
The Mack (dir. Michael Campus, 1973)
Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002)
Dragon (dir. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 2011)
The Love Witch (dir. Anna Biller, 2016)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davis, 1988)
Headhunters (dir. Morten Tyldum, 2011)
Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
Love is Colder Than Death (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
La Promesse (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1996)
Lion (dir. Garth Davis, 2016)
To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Fences (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)
Theeb (dir. Naji Abu Nowar, 2014)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger & Carl Koch, 1926)
Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot & Raymond Burlet, 1998)
Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2005)
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)
20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016)
The Fate of the Furious (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2017)
Free Fire (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2016)
Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
Room 237 (dir. Rodney Ascher, 2012)
Mifune: the Last Samurai (dir. Steven Okazaki, 2015)
Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939)
The Assassin (dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2015)
Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)

Week 1- Blaxploitation Week

My knowledge of blaxploitation cinema doesn’t stretch much beyond the Shaft trilogy, so was excited by this theme selection to learn a little more about a genre I knew very little about. Of course, six films are only going to give you so wide a scope, but in between my hectic film watching schedule I was able to read up a little more about the creation of this often misunderstood genre. For sure the production values are lacking compared to other classics of the period, but there was something to treasure from all the titles I watched; be it Curtis Mayfield’s iconic soundtrack in Super Fly, the undeniably nasty direction taken in Foxy Brown, some genuinely scary and inventive shots in Blacula or the just joyful, ludicrous bombast of Three the Hard Way‘s conclusion. It was a highly enjoyable, eye opening week.

Blacula is…actually pretty damn good.

Week 2

I made a real effort to avoid USA movies from this decade this week, and took advantage of a bank holiday to try and catch up a little. In doing so I was also able to wipe a few long standing films from my Netflix watchlist, with Whale Rider, Dragon, Headhunters and To Kill a Mockingbird all proving to be worth the wait. Dragon was probably the highlight of the week, a martial arts film mixed with Cronenberg’s A History of Violence and the BBC’s version of Sherlock, I had so much fun watching that film. I also lost my Fassbinder virginity with Love is Colder Than Death; minimalistic and nihilistic, the filmmaker certainly lived up to expectations.

Week 3- Animation Week

This week took some planning, having seen all of Pixar’s offerings, and knowing that Studio Ghibli has it’s own category that will come later this year, my goal was to ingest a wide a variety of animation as possible. The Adventures of Prince Achmed was certainly a left field choice to kick the week off. A dialogue free animated German film from the 1920’s was not the obvious choice, but really holds up in terms of imaginative animation, and honest-to-goodness adventure story-telling. Shaun the Sheep proved to be the delight we’ve all come to expect from Aardman Animations, made with love, and with a knowing nod to classic silent cinema, it appeals to the very youngest and oldest of us. Ghost in the Shell similarly lived up to it’s reputation as a wonderfully creative, thoughtful and shockingly violent pleasure I have come to expect from Manga movies. No remake needed there that’s for sure.

Week 4

A week off work proved to be a busy week for this project, which is fast becoming my 2nd, albeit non-paying, job (although I am open to sponsorship). I peaked at five films in a day in this period, but managed to close the gap between days past and films watched that opened up during March. This was a mix of cinema trips , Red Box movies, the BFI Player, and a couple of welcome new additions to Netflix. Free Fire was the standout of the week (and probably the month), a 90 minute gun fight that is constantly shifting tone from the comical to uncomfortable, with a terrific cast and expert direction. It is probably Ben Wheatley’s most watchable, crowd-pleasing film to date. I decided I didn’t want to wait for Documentary week to watch Room 237 and Mifune: the Last Samuari. The former is a real joy for cinema loving conspiracy theorists, while the latter has all but guaranteed that there will be a lot more Akira Kurosawa films on the list this time next month.

Highlights

Both the theme weeks proved to be something of an education, one learning about a genre I knew very little about, the other allowing me to dig deeper on a style of cinema I have been watching since I was little. Both were very much in the spirit of why I’m doing this experiment in the first place.

Low Points

Again no real stinkers, this process has been so arduous that I’m intentionally steering away from films I’m pretty sure I won’t like (perhaps I will push myself more in May), but there were a few that did not live up to expectations, without being all out bad. I had heard great things about The Love Witch, but ultimately felt it was more style than substance, Dead Ringers turned out pretty near the bottom of my list of Cronenberg films, and The Assassin just didn’t grab me in the way I was hoping it would. Along with those, I was a little let down by The Fate of the Furious. Again not that it’s bad, but having unashamedly loved the previous two outings, this one felt like the fun had been sucked out of it slightly, and there was a real feeling that they were going through the motions.

Performance of the Month

The youngsters stood out again this month, with Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat in Theeb, Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider and Sunny Pawar in Lion all putting in terrific performances well beyond their years. The entire cast of Free Fire also deserve recognition, a fine example of how a well selected ensemble can elevate your title (Sharlto Copley and Armie Hammer were particularly excellent).

But it is hard to see past Pam Grier in Foxy Brown. Even with a bizarre plot and at times questionable dialogue, her star quality shines through the moment she appears on screen. She is strong, fierce, effortlessly cool, and not afraid to be vulnerable. Well played.

Pam Grier is cold as ice as Foxy Brown.

Top 5 of the Month (in no particular order)

Theeb

Free Fire

Foxy Brown

Dragon

Eyes Without a Face

The Year So Far

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 61

2000’s- 7

1990’s- 10

1980’s- 5

1970’s- 17

1960’s- 7

1950’s- 4

1940’s- 3

1930’s- 3

1920’s- 3

Days to film ratio

120 days gone, 120 films watched. Glad to be back on track, but come June I’m going to be working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, so going to have to get even further ahead before then.

Total minutes of film watching

12,323 minutes of strenuous, silver-screen surveying. 205 hours of frantic, film feasting. Over eight and a half days of move watching mania.

Films by the Nations

USA- 64

UK- 27

France- 12

Germany- 8

Japan- 6

Spain- 3

Belgium- 3

Ireland- 2

Mexico- 2

Canada- 2

New Zealand- 2

China- 2

Hong Kong- 2

Luxemburg- 2

South Korea- 1

Greece- 1

Brazil- 1

Netherlands- 1

Austria- 1

Switzerland- 1

Romania- 1

Argentina- 1

Chile- 1

Soviet Union- 1

Cambodia- 1

Hungary- 1

Sweden- 1

Norway- 1

Denmark- 1

Tunisia- 1

Australia- 1

Jordan- 1

UAE- 1

Qatar- 1

Italy- 1

Taiwan- 1

Senegal- 1

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Recurring Directors

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

Luis Bunuel- 2 (Los Olvidados, L’Age d’Or)

Powell & Pressburger (A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes)

Mike Mills (Beginners, 20th Century Women)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****
The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)
Super Fly (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1972)
Foxy Brown (dir. Jack Hill, 1974)
Black Belt Jones (dir. Robert Clouse, 1974)
Blacula (dir. William Crain, 1972)
Three the Hard Way (dir. Gordon Parks Jnr., 1974)
The Mack (dir. Michael Campus, 1973)
Whale Rider (dir. Niki Caro, 2002)
Dragon (dir. Peter Ho-Sun Chan, 2011)
The Love Witch (dir. Anna Biller, 2016)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (dir. Terence Davis, 1988)
Headhunters (dir. Morten Tyldum, 2011)
Dead Ringers (dir. David Cronenberg, 1988)
Love is Colder Than Death (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969)
The Red Shoes (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
La Promesse (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, 1996)
Lion (dir. Garth Davis, 2016)
To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan, 1962)
Fences (dir. Denzel Washington, 2016)
Theeb (dir. Naji Abu Nowar, 2014)
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (dir. Lotte Reiniger & Carl Koch, 1926)
Shaun the Sheep (dir. Mark Burton & Richard Starzak, 2015)
Kirikou and the Sorceress (dir. Michel Ocelot & Raymond Burlet, 1998)
Ghost in the Shell (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
Corpse Bride (dir. Tim Burton, 2005)
The Iron Giant (dir. Brad Bird, 1999)
20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016)
The Fate of the Furious (dir. F. Gary Gray, 2017)
Free Fire (dir. Ben Wheatley, 2016)
Eyes Without a Face (dir. Georges Franju, 1960)
Room 237 (dir. Rodney Ascher, 2012)
Mifune: the Last Samurai (dir. Steven Okazaki, 2015)
Paterson (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
Stagecoach (dir. John Ford, 1939)
The Assassin (dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou, 2015)
Black Girl (dir. Ousmane Sembene, 1966)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

^ Wifey’s Choice Week

Blaxploitation Week

Animation Week

Ten Best of the Year So Far…

Your Name

The Fits

Le Samourai

The Devils

Train to Busan

I Live in Fear

Los Olvidados

El Topo

In the Heat of the Night

Get Out

This month was always going to be more about quantity over quality, that’s not to say I didn’t see some excellent features, or that I saw many turkey’s, but it’s telling that none of the films watched this month cracked the top 10 of the year, despite this being the most productive month in terms of volume of films watched.

That’ll do it for this month, I need to go check to make sure my wife hasn’t left me yet…

Can’t wait a month to see how I’m getting on? You can follow my progress film-by-film on Twitter, @clancyhighhat.

365 Films, 365 Days- March

Posted on April 4, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

We all know the rules by now, let’s get into March…

March

This Month’s List

The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)

Week 1- Latin American Cinema Week (continued)

Kicked off the month by wrapping up the Latin American Cinema week I began at the end of February. It turned out to be a great end to the theme week/beginning of March, as two of the three films ended up in my top 5 of the month. Luis Bunuel’s Los Olvidados was a magnificent look at young people growing up in the slums of Mexico City. The film is hard hitting social commentary, and a million miles removed from the next film I watched, El Topo. Written, directed and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky, the film is bonkers, with Jodorowsky’s title character wandering the desert like a blood thirsty Don Quixote, it’s bloody wonderful!

El Topo is just…ridiculous.

Week 2

The second week of the month was busy as I crammed in a couple of movie trips and some lazy days trying to close the gap which is worryingly getting bigger and bigger. 10 movies in the week certainly helped, with some very decent films being added to the list. The February stats showed that American films from this decade are very much in the majority, so I am making a conscious effort to avoid films with one or both of these characteristics. That being said, the best film of this week was indeed from the USA, and is a strong contender for my favourite film of 2017. Jordan Peele’s Get Out has gained a lot of positive buzz over the past month, all of which is completely deserved. Rife with racial tension and excruciatingly funny/awkward, the film manages to straddle several different genres delivering a truly unique cinematic experience that will live long in the memory.

Week 3- Wifey’s Choice Week

The power was well in truly in the hands of my good lady wife this week (as it is every other week I suppose), as she got to pick what films I watched. God bless her, she does not share my passion for films, but her picks did allow me to fill some gaps in my cinematic knowledge with some popular classics such as Sleepless in Seattle and Sixteen Candles, both of which were perfectly enjoyable without being earth shattering. Moana takes it’s place right in the middle of the most recent Disney Princess offerings, just a smidgen below Tangled, and a couple of levels above Frozen, the soundtrack has been stuck in my head for the past couple of weeks. Like Crazy is a film I’ve been avoiding since it was released in 2011 as it looked like weepy, Indie nonsense. I was left pleasantly surprised as what it actually is, is a really well judged and performed drama about the perils of the long distant relationship and a reminder of what a promising young talent Anton Yelchin was.

Week 4

Another random blitz of whatever was convenient, I tried to avoid movies from the USA from this decade, but it proved tricky at times; it may become a set rule for a week in April just to vary things up a little. The BFI+ Player came in handy again, with I Live in Fear being a standout of the week. A Japanese family drama, showing the terror of living in constant fear of nuclear annihilation, it’s not one of Kurosawa’s more celebrated pieces which is a shame because it bears all his usual trappings and is a real heart breaker.

Highlights

Some really awesome films watched this month, including a couple of very decent trips to the cinema; Logan provided a much needed break from the typical big budget, uber-explosiony fare of traditional superhero films. Kong: Skull Island was good fun, but a meh script mostly wasted a talented cast (except the great John C. Reilly of course). Writer James Baldwin was the focus of blistering documentary I am Not Your Negro, blending his words from the 1970’s with current events which highlights both the skill of director Raoul Peck, and the sad state of affairs we are living in today.

But the real highlight for the month was not so much a specific film, but rather the discovery of the BFI+ Player, a very decent streaming service. This discovery alone allowed me to watch L’Age d’Or, Battleship Potemkin, Love & Death on Long Island, the original Godzilla, A Matter of Life and Death, Pink Narcissus, The Devil Rides Out, and I Live in Fear. A very wise investment indeed.

Low Points

Again, no real stinkers for the month, although Sausage Party tested the patience at times, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets is only really worth your time to watch Nicholas Cage pretend to be a normal person. The real low point came from the fatigue that is starting to set in with this experiment, at time making me feel like I haven’t seen the sun in days. A couple of well timed hikes have certainly helped, but self care is going to be important going forward.

Performance of the Month

Many excellent performances I could go for, but it’s got to be Toshiro Mifune in I Live in Fear, for showing me another layer to his sizable talent. It was great seeing him in a non-samurai warrior role. Here he plays the patriarch of a large family who is desperate to escape what he believes is certain nuclear destruction, by relocating them to Brazil. His trademark gravel voice and outburst of rage are still on display, but there is a quiet panic to his anger that unravels as the film progresses. It’s a performance of great depth that really elevates the drama of the whole film.

mifune

Top 5 of the Month (in no particular order)

El Topo

Los Ovidados

Get Out

I Live in Fear

A Matter of Life and Death

The Year So Far

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 47

2000’s- 5

1990’s- 6

1980’s- 3

1970’s- 11

1960’s- 3

1950’s- 4

1940’s- 2

1930’s- 2

1920’s- 2

Days to film ratio

90 days, 85 films, the gaps widening…must do better.

Total minutes of film watching

8867 minutes of movie watching, nearly 150 hour, just over 6 days of film watching.

Films by the Nations

USA- 47

UK- 19

Japan- 4

France- 4

Germany- 3

Spain- 3

Ireland- 2

Mexico- 2

South Korea- 1

Greece- 1

Brazil- 1

Netherlands- 1

Austria- 1

Switzerland- 1

Romania- 1

Argentina- 1

New Zealand- 1

Belgium- 1

Chile- 1

Soviet Union- 1

Cambodia- 1

Canada- 1

Hungary- 1

Sweden- 1

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Recurring Directors

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

Luis Bunuel- 2 (Los Olvidados, L’Age d’Or)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****
The Club**** (dir. Pablo Larrain, 2015)
Los Olvidados**** (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1950)
El Topo **** (dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele, 2017)
Wrinkles (dir. Ignacio Ferreras, 2011)
Logan (dir. James Mangold, 2017)
The Taking of Pelham 123 (dir. Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Laura (dir. Otto Preminger, 1944)
L’Age d’Or (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1930)
Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Sausage Party (dir. Greg Tiernan & Conrad Vernon, 2016)
Love and Death on Long Island (dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1997)
Moana ^(dir. Ron Clements, Chris Williams, Don Hall, John Musker, 2016)
Sleepless in Seattle^ (dir. Nora Ephron, 1993)
Paris is Burning^ (dir. Jennie Livingstone, 1990)
Sixteen Candles^ (dir. John Hughes, 1984)
National Treasure: Book of Secrets^ (dir. Jon Turteltaub, 2007)
Like Crazy^ (dir. Drake Doremus, 2011)
Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)
I am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016)
Beginners (dir. Mike Mills, 2010)
Godzilla (dir. Ishiro Honda, 1954)
Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
A Matter of Life and Death (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
Pink Narcissus (dir. James Bidgood, 1971)
The Devil Rides Out (dir. Terence Fisher, 1968)
Somm (dir. Jason Wise, 2012)
I Live in Fear (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1955)
White God (dir. Kornel, Mundruczo, 2014)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

^ Wifey’s Choice Week

Ten Best of the Year So Far…

Your Name

The Fits

Le Samourai

The Devils

Train to Busan

I Live in Fear

Los Olvidados

El Topo

In the Heat of the Night

Get Out

That’ll do it for this month, with the nicer weather finally arriving, I’m going to watch as many films as possible outside to get my quota of fresh air, until then, ta ta for now.

Can’t wait a month to see how I’m getting on? You can follow my progress film-by-film on Twitter, @clancyhighhat.

365 Films, 365 Days- February

Posted on March 6, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

Now that you’re all up to speed, let’s move on to round 2…

February

This Month’s List

Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca Filho, 2016)****

***John Hurt Week

**** Latin American Cinema Week

Week 1

February got off to a slow start, with just three films watched in the first week of the month. Spa Night was interesting enough, but some 28 days later I’m struggling to remember much about it. Julieta is one of Pedro Almodovar’s more straight-faced efforts, while still bearing a lot of his classic hallmarks, very powerful stuff. Fish Tanks was a great piece of modern British social drama. Michael Fassbender’s star quality was obvious to see even in this early role.

Week 2- John Hurt Week

Was delighted for this category to be drawn at random, as I’ve always been a massive fan of John Hurt. He has a voice you just want to hear read you a story as you fall asleep and I was deeply sadden to learn he had passed away. I kicked things off with 1984, probably his biggest role that I hadn’t already seen. The times being what they are, the film still feels frighteningly relevant, and it was nice to see Hurt playing something a little more restrained than I’m use to. 10 Rillington Place, is a pretty fantastic and unsettling thriller, although Richard Attenborough has to take most of the credit for this. 44 Inch Chest is pretty rubbish, with an inexplicably anticlimatic conclusion, but Hurt is probably the best thing in this, his repressed, explosive Old Man Peanut turns swearing into an art form. Would have liked to have seen more than four films in this week, but sadly life got in the way, putting me further behind and in need of a catch up week…

Week 3

Ah bless the long haul flight, coming to the rescue for the second month in a row. The variety of options wasn’t quite as strong but it was nice to catch up on some light fluff like The Magnificent Seven remake (a million more bullets than the original, a fraction of the charm), and Florence Foster Jenkins (feel good but forgettable). I also targeted shorter films in an effort to close the gap quicker, which led me to the quite excellent The Fits on Amazon Prime Video: a unique twist on the coming of age story, an examination on the power of peer pressure, and tremendous performances and camerawork. Not bad for 72 minutes. On the opposite end of the spectrum we have Toni Erdmann, an excruciatingly cringe-worthy, nearly three hour German comedy that had no business in working but totally did.

Week 4- Latin American Cinema Week

Will continue into March, but got off to a strong start with Guatamala’s Ixcanul and Brazilian effort Aquarius. Ixcanul has an interesting dynamic of traditional, folk stories versus the harsh realities of the modern world, it plays out like a tragicomedy but the drama is never undercut. Aquarius shares DNA strands with Toni Erdmann, an aging, larger-than-life protagonist struggling to adapt to the harsh realities of living in the real world. It plays it straight faced as opposed to Erdmann’s excrutiating comedy, but it is just as compelling.

Highlights

Lots and lots of great stuff; The Secret of the Kells boasts some of the most delightful, intricate animation- Cartoon Saloon is a real standout animation studio- and encorporating traditional Irish folktales really works for it. I took a group of teenagers to see Hidden Figures, and it was a real treat to see them get the story in all the right ways. I was also lucky enough to catch T2: Trainspotting in the homeland, and while the film doesn’t quite capture the ferucious energy of the first film, I really liked that the characters felt like they had aged in the twenty years they’ve been offscreen.

Low Points

As much as I’ve enjoyed the work of Ricky Gervais in the past, David Brent: Life on the Road really is the pits. A pointless, mirthless follow up to the excellent The Office which recaptures none of the magic from the series. Gervais’ regular writing partner Stephen Merchant did not collaborate on this project and boy oh boy was his presence missed.

I found Manhattan to be a particularly tough watch. I’ve enjoyed a lot of Woody Allen’s work prior to this, but it’s very tough to root for Woody as he spends most of the film trying to convince his friends (and presumably his audience) that it’s ok he’s dating a 17 year old. Could just about be forgiven if not for Allen’s dodgy, real-life antics, but nah mate, not having that.

John Hurt week feels a little bit like a missed opportunity, admittedly I’d already seen his most famous roles, but other than 10 Rillington Place, nothing really stood out. Would have liked to have delved deeper with his films, but time got the better of me.

Performance(s) of the Month

Too many to nail down just one, but it was a stellar month for the younger performers. Katie Jarvis brings an aggressive fragility in Fish Tank, it is a perfect balance for a role that divides audience’s sympathies. Sennia Nanua delivers a similarly divisive performance in The Girl With All the Gifts, her infected Melanie is relentlessly chirpy and eager to help, with an underlying malevolence the-fits . The marvellously named Royalty Hightower may just top these two performances with her very physical performance in The Fits. With limited dialogue, Hightower manages to relay a great depth of emotion through movement and facial expressions, a very mature performance from a promising young talent.

Not to be upstaged by the youngsters, there were plenty of great performances from the grown ups. Pretty much the entire cast of Hidden Figures deserve credit for telling a story that is historically important and interesting, but never feels overly weighty. Sonia Braga is quite wonderful in Aquarius, as fierce and fearless as any celluloid heroine. And the month would not be complete without mention of Richard Attenborough’s chilling portrayal of real life serial killer Charlie in 10 Rillington Place. Slimey, calculating, and manipulative, he manages to upstage John Hurt (no easy feat) and elevates the thriller from decent to excellent.

Richard Attenborough is a right bastard in 10 Rillington Place.

Top 5 of the Month (in no particular order)

The Fits

Julieta

10 Rillington Place

Toni Erdmann

Aquarius

The Year So Far

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 34

2000’s- 4

1990’s- 3

1980’s- 2

1970’s- 8

1960’s- 2

1950’s- 1

1940’s- 0

1930’s- 1

1920’s- 1

Days to film ratio

59 days gone and 56 films watched so far, this month showed if nothing else how easy it is to fall behind if you’re not on top of things. Will have to close the gap in March.

Total minutes of film watching

6063 minutes of film watching in two months, that’s over 100 hours, slightly over 4 days spent on this…feels like a lot when you see it written down.

Films by the Nations

USA- 30

UK- 16

France- 4

Japan- 2

Ireland- 2

Germany- 2

Spain- 2

Brazil- 2

South Korea- 1

Greece- 1

Netherlands- 1

Austria- 1

Switzerland- 1

Romania- 1

Argentina- 1

New Zealand- 1

Belgium- 1

Guatemala- 1

Some films are co-produced by multiple nations, which explains why the numbers may not add up.

Recurring Directors

Danny Boyle- 2 (Steve Jobs, T2: Trainspotting)

The complete list so far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)
Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodovar, 2016)
Fish Tank (dir. Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn, 2016)
1984 (dir. Michael Radford, 1984)***
10 Rillington Place (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1971)***
44 Inch Chest (dir. Malcolm Venville, 2009)***
Watership Down (dir. Martin Rosen, 1978)***
Thelma and Louise (dir. Ridley Scott, 1991)
David Brent: Life on the Road (dir. Ricky Gervais, 2016)
The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
The Magnificent Seven (dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)
Hello, My Name is Doris (dir. Michael Showalter, 2016)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade, 2016)
Manhattan (dir. Woody Allen, 1979)
The Clan (dir. Pablo Trapero, 2015)
Black Sheep (dir. Jonathan King, 2016)
T2: Trainspotting (dir. Danny Boyle, 2017)
Florence Foster Jenkins (dir. Stephen Frears, 2016)
Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (dir. Kihachi Okamoto, 1970)
The Girl with All the Gifts (dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016)
Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi, 2016)
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil (dir. Eli Craig, 2010)
The Secret of the Kells (dir. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)
Ixcanul (dir. Jayro Bustamante, 2015)****
Aquarius (dir. Kleber Mendonca, 2016)****

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

***John Hurt Week

****Latin American Cinema Week

That’ll do it for this month, got some catching up to do in March, the last thing I want is for that gap to increase even further. Better get back to it…

Can’t wait a month to see how I’m getting on? You can follow my progress film-by-film on Twitter, @clancyhighhat.

365 Films, 365 Days- January

Posted on February 1, 2017 by highhatfilmreview

Inspired by the Doug Benson Movie Challenge, I attempt to watch 365 movies over the calendar year of 2017. Any genre of film is eligible, including documentaries and Netflix originals, as long as it’s something I haven’t seen before (you’ll have to trust me on that). The hope is I can cross off some films I’ve been dying to see for ages but have never gotten round too, as well as discover some gems I might never have come across otherwise.

As a fun little twist, every couple of weeks I will be drawing a random genre/category of film to focus on for the week’s viewing. This should hopefully keep things fresh.

With the rules out of the way, on with the show…

January

The List So Far…

The Good Dinosaur (dir. Peter Sohn, 2015)
Your Name (dir. Makoto Shinkai, 2016)
Star Trek Beyond (dir. Justin Lin, 2016)
Notes on Blindness (dir. Pete Middleton, 2016)
Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
I am Not a Serial Killer (dir. Billy O’Brien, 2016)
Bridget Jones’s Diary (dir. Sharon Maguire, 2001)
Keanu (dir. Peter Atencio, 2016)
La La Land (dir. Damien Chazelle, 2016)
Train to Busan* (dir. Sang-ho Yeon, 2016)
Don’t Breathe* (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2016)
Nosferatu* (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1922)
Carrie* (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976)
Re-Animator* (dir. Stuart Gordon, 1985)
Jack Frost* (dir. Michael Coon, 1997)
Blair Witch* (dir. Adam Wingard, 2016)
What We Did on Our Holiday (dir. Andy Hamilton & Guy Jenkin, 2014)
The Devils (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher, 2016)
Chef (dir. Jon Favreau, 2014)
The One I Love (dir. Charlie McDowell, 2014)
Steve Jobs (dir. Danny Boyle, 2015)
Manchester By The Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
The Killing (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1956)
In the Heat of the Night** (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967)
Shakespeare in Love** (dir. John Madden, 1998)
The Sting** (dir. George Roy Hill, 1973)
Mutiny on the Bounty** (dir. Frank Lloyd, 1935)
Patton** (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970)
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (dir. Gareth Edwards, 2016)
Little Men (dir. Ira Sachs, 2016)

*=Horror Week

**Best Picture Oscar Winners Week

Week 1

I wanted the first month of the year to be used as an excuse to catch up on all the films I missed from the year before, which is why there were 6 films from 2016 in my first week alone. A long haul flight allowed me to get a couple of days ahead of the curve, as well as gave me a chance to watch a film I had wanted to see for months, Makoto Shinkai’s spectacular Your Name. Even on a 10-inch screen the film’s beauty shone through, taking the traditional body-swap genre and turning it into something poetic, combined with gorgeous animation. Nothing else this week came close to matching it’s beauty, although La La Land was undeniably toe-tapping fun. A real treat if somewhat hollow.

Your Name

Week 2- Horror Week

Another mix of catching up with some of the bigger horror titles from 2016, mixed in with some classics. Horror is a broad enough category to allow me to explore around the sub-genres, sampling a mix of zombies, vampires, found footage and even some low budget nonsense. Times change, and predictably the older films don’t quite hold up when it comes to out and out scares, but things like Nosferatu (framing), Carrie (studied in repressed teenage-angst) and Re-Animator (remarkable practical special effects) all had something to offer. Train to Busan was the highlight of the week. A relentless bloodbath of close-quarter rampaging zombies that still managed to include strong characters, subtext, and even a little heart.

Week 3

Back to a random mix, mostly selected for their watchable nature. What We Did On Our Holiday, Eddie the Eagle, and The One I Love were all enjoyable enough, but it’s unlikely I’ll remember any of them by the end of the 365 films. In contrast The Devils, Manchester By The Sea, and The Killing could all be in the ‘best of’ list at the end of the year.

Week 4- Best Picture Oscar Winners

This turned out to be tougher than expected. A quick Wiki search after the draw was made revealed I had already seen most of the Best Picture Films that were of interest to me. Shakespeare in Love was pretty much the most recent winner that I had not seen already and seemed like an easy enough choice (I’m not desperate enough to tackle A Beautiful Mind- not yet at least, and Chicago can wait until I draw the musicals category). The rest of the weeks viewings consisted of out and out classics; In the Heat of the Night deserved its nod for such a frank look at race relations in the south in the 1960’s, all the while touting the classic tropes of great film noir. The Sting is unashamedly good fun, although I’m shocked by how closely grifter movies have stuck to its template in the four decades that followed.

Highlights

By and large it’s been a great month; Your Name, Notes on Blindness, Train to Busan, La La Land and Manchester By The Sea all rank amongst the best of 2016. Le Samourai, In the Heat of the Night and The Killing represent three equally brilliant but very different crime thrillers, while The Devils was a blissful orgy of sinful decadence and religious hypocrisy.

Notes on Blindness

Low Points

Nothing too disastrous thus far. Jack Frost and Bridget Jones’s Diary weren’t my cup of tea, but delivered exactly what I was expecting from them. Keanu was a fun enough watch, but failed to produce any substantial laughs and so has to be classed a failure. As does Don’t Breathe, which I had high hopes for and was impeccably directed by Fede Alvarez, but disappointingly never got me to the edge of my seat. The curse of high(ish) expectations strikes for the first (and presumably not last) time this year.

Performance of the Month

Many standouts once again, Charles Laughton is irresistibly despicable as Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, a performance that renders his grotesque make-up work redundant. Pretty much everyone in Manchester By The Sea deserves praise for managing to carry the weigh of grief and mourning present in the film while still managing to breathe life and even fragments of humour into proceedings. But there is one performance than stands head and shoulders above the rest; Oliver Reed’s lung bursting, scenery munching, put-upon Clergyman Urbain Grandier. The entire film is operatic decadence of the highest order, thanks in no small part to his powerhouse performance.

diables-the-devils-ken-russell-1971-l-qmldmm

Oliver Reed’s Urbain Grandier takes a break from chewing the scenery to take confession in The Devils

Top 5 of the Month (in no particular order)

Your Name

Le Samourai

Train to Busan

The Devils

In the Heat of the Night

Breakdown by Decade

2010’s- 18

2000’s- 1

1990’s- 2

1980’s- 1

1970’s- 4

1960’s- 2

1950’s- 1

1940’s- 0

1930’s- 1

1920’s- 1

Days to Film Ratio

Pretty much 1:1 so far which I can’t complain about, although I was hoping to open up a bit of a head start in the first month while I’m still fresh. Come May I will be working much longer hours until the end of August so it will be important to get ahead of the schedule by then to give me a fighting chance of finishing the year at 365.

That’ll do for this month, tune in same time at the end of February.

You can also track my progress in (almost) realtime over on Twitter. Be sure to send me any suggestions for films you think I might like.

Cheers

Review – ‘Anomalisa’

Posted on March 3, 2016 by highhatfilmreview

The Telstar Film Review

Release date: 11 March 2016
Certifaction: 15
Running time: 90 mins
Starring: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan

In 2008, acclaimed screenwriter Charlie Kaufman made his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York, a baffling piece which saw Philip Seymour Hoffman’s theatre director disappear down a rabbit hole of ambitious projects, as he attempted to create a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse. Kaufman’s follow up Anomalisa has a sense of art imitating life imitating art; the director spent three years painstakingly creating this moving and effective stop-motion drama. With over one thousand costumes and props meticulously constructed, everything in this world is built with the specific purpose of telling and intimate story about mental illness, loneliness, and 21st century malaise.

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