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grimoireweavers · 4 years ago

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{ closed starter for @ofcharredbones ;; Sebastian and Johnny }

♞—-» Sebastian’s world changed so rapidly over the course of several years. He fell in love with his partner, had to go through getting a new partner because he wanted to pursue a relationship with his original partner, got married, and had a daughter. All massive life changes, true, but ordinary things, right? Most 30-something year old men settled down and had a family, right? Perhaps not, but it seemed like the normal thing for an average person to go through.

And while balancing family life and a professional life with the KCPD was a stress all on its own, Sebastian was happy. He would have sworn that up and down for years.

At least, he had been until the accident. The fire that killed his daughter and ripped apart his entire life. He developed a drinking problem to cope. His wife became so obsessed with the idea that Lily’s death wasn’t an accident that she simply wouldn’t let the wound settle and heal. Then her obsession turned into a belief that Lily was alive, but she just sounded... insane. Sebastian tried to reason with her, tried to listen to her, but she was just making the healing process so much more difficult.

Myra disappeared. Everyone blamed him, saying he either drove her away with his drinking, or suspecting him of actually doing something to her himself. His world spiraled out of control, he’d hit rock bottom and he somehow managed to push through that hard rock and spiral even lower.

Then Mobius took him and inject him into STEM.

STEM was sort of a blessing disguised as a curse. For all the trauma he suffered within that devil contraption, he found a lot of blessings in it as well. A newfound strength and desire to not only survive but live again. Yes, he’d lost so much of himself in the last few years, but after coming so close to deaths too horrific to put to paper, he realized just how much he wanted to cling to life, how much he still wanted to be alive and thrive... It gave him a new respect for not throwing his life away, made him reevaluate a lot of his self-destructive decisions, and even gave him new purpose.

Perhaps, above all else, though, he found Johnny.

Their story wasn’t exactly the most romantic of stories. Johnny and Sebastian met in one of the worst places imaginable and ended up relying on one another when they had no one else to rely on or turn to. Desperation and spite brought and kept them together inside STEM, but what bloomed outside, in the real world, was beautiful. Not always easy, not by a long shot, especially when Seb still questioned what was real and what wasn’t, and had to come to some pretty terrifying realizations that monsters and demons were real and his boyfriend was one such monster hunting down even worse creatures. The types of things Sebastian would have believed nothing but stories or fantasies were now very real. Things he faced inside of STEM, nightmares that couldn’t possibly exist outside of someone’s head, were very much real.

But Sebastian processed this new information, and with Johnny’s help, he learned to cope and accept what could not be changed and adapt to survive in this new world that was still the same as it always was.

Turning, though...

Fuck, that’d been the hardest thing of all, hadn’t it? Learning of the existence of the supernatural was one thing, accepting it and living with it and even joining his boyfriend on hunts was another thing, but actually becoming part of it? In a way that he had no actual control over? In a way that tore out his humanity and left him with a memory of who and what he had been, but changed him into something so different... He’d never expected that to happen, never expected it to be possible, and sometimes, when looking in the mirror, it was hard to believe. As long as he was well-fed, he looked more or less the same, able to blend in with those around him just as he always had. Even his own mother couldn’t really tell the difference, though she did expect something was off about him.

Staying well-fed, though, was the tricky part. He could eat as much food as he wanted and never feel full. No sustenance or nutrition came from it. Eating souls took some getting used to and Sebastian had some really difficult times convincing himself to do so. There was a certain air of injustice or immorality that made such an act feel impossible, even when he purposefully went out of his way to find the worst people he really could, people he was probably doing a service to the rest of humanity for taking them out of the realm of existence.

Johnny spent a lot of time coaxing Sebastian into doing what he needed to in order to survive and not wither away under the influence of this transformation and Sebastian still didn’t like it, but at least he wasn’t starving himself.

With his insatiable hunger for the unimaginable, though, Sebastian did develop quite a few abilities that he couldn’t really control, didn’t entirely understand, and allowed him to do some pretty extraordinary things. While fearful of his newfound powers, he also found himself eager to learn and develop them. Look at all of the good he could do with what most would view as a curse! That’s how Sebastian had to look at it, anyway, to keep himself sane. Weaker men than him would have gone mad with power or crazy with the monstrosity they became.

The worst of it, though, was watching just how guilty Johnny was over Seb’s transformation. He blamed himself, it was very obvious. Every time Seb showed signs of struggling with adapting to this new life, Johnny’s guilt only amplified, and none of Sebastian’s reassurances seemed to have much impact on the Rider. Johnny knew he shouldn’t have pulled Sebastian into the lifestyle that he lived, that it was too dangerous for a common human, even one as determined, stubborn, and skilled as Sebastian.

Nothing Sebastian could say would ever alleviate Johnny’s guilt completely, but that just made Sebastian more determined to adjust to his new self, so he didn’t have to struggle in front of his fiancé anymore.

One such developing ability, however, left Sebastian feeling particularly unsettled. He first noticed it with Johnny and his mother, this... inherent ability to feel them even when they were not around him. It was like a personal tracker of sorts, allowing him to sense their general location, if they were in danger, and even, to a certain extent, what they were feeling at the time. It seemed to be the strongest with Johnny, which made sense since they lived together and spent the most time with one another, but as the weeks turned to months, more and more people started popping up on his radar.

Even people like Abraham, for the love of whatever higher power actually existed... Not that he’d tell Johnny about that, he was already salty for how often Abraham tried to steal Sebastian away and spend “quality time” with him.

Someone he never expected to feel eventually found her way to him, though. At first, he thought that it might have been Myra. Wherever she was, she was trapped, confused, and afraid. Sebastian couldn’t make out many details, in truth. Everything around her was dark, foggy, and as if she wasn’t entirely aware of her own surroundings. Why would he be thinking about Myra, though? There was no reason for Myra to hold any real place in his heart anymore, not after all the turmoil she’d put him through, not after finding a better partner in Johnny.

Then it dawned on him. Well, more like infected his dreams, really. Sitting bolt upright, Sebastian had broken out into a cold sweat in the middle of the night. Gwen moved from the end of the bed to crawl up into his lap and greet him, a tiny, concerned ‘mew’ leaving her as one paw came up to bat at his bare, damp chest.

Lily...

He dreamt about Lily, holed up somewhere dark, where she couldn’t see anything. Fuck, it felt like she wasn’t even processing what was going on around her at all, but she’d been right there, in front of him. He reached out for her, only to be stopped by some sort of invisible forcefield that existed between them, something that kept him from being able to touch her, to wrap his arms around her, and hug her like a father who never thought he’d see his baby again ought to.

Normally, he would have just written that off as a bad dream. He had plenty of them after losing Lily, after Myra abandoned him, and especially after STEM, but the feeling lingered, and for a moment, he swore he could picture her in real time, not just as a memory, but as someone who was alive and breathing and lost.

Nudging Gwen off of him, Sebastian pushed himself out of bed, as quietly as possible so as not to rustle the man beside him, though Johnny was likely already coming too from Seb violently sitting upright. Still, he made his way into the bathroom attached to their bedroom and closed the door behind him. Standing in the dark, he splashed a bit of cold water from the sink onto his face and gently patted a damp cloth across his neck and shoulders in an attempt to ground himself.

Could it be true, though? Could Lily be alive?

“That’s crazy,” Seb murmured to himself, staring at himself in the mirror. The lights were off, but his eyes easily adjusted to the dark, so he could see perfectly well. Making out every single detail of himself proved a simple task and he looked... Well, not nearly as tired as he should have been considering he hadn’t slept for very long and was woken in such a violent fashion.

After a few minutes to calm down and process what he’d been dealing with, Seb finally came back into the bedroom. Johnny was awake, sitting upright in his bed, a worried expression painting his features.

“Something odd’s happened,” Sebastian admitted before Johnny could even ask. “I can’t explain it, but I think...” Okay, he could explain it. Even though he had a hard time understanding these new and developing skills, he could talk to Johnny or Abraham or someone of a like mind who understood what it meant to be something other than human and they would likely understand what he meant, what he was talking about, what he was experiencing, and how to figure it out. “I think Lily might be alive, Johnny,” he murmured, and even as the words left him, he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“I can feel her—"

#( sebastian ; muse ) when did i lose sight of what's real #( sebastian ; in character )#( sebastian ; verse ) monster is just a term #( character ) johnny blaze #ofcharredbones #( ship ) sebastian x johnny

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briangroth27 · 6 years ago

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Bumblebee Review

Bumblebee is a genuinely fun, kind-hearted family film and it’s very likely the best of the Transformers franchise. I still enjoy the first Transformers, didn’t like the second or third, and never bothered seeing the fourth or fifth, so I can’t be a true judge, but based on what I’ve read about the latter two I’m not planning on catching up. I also wasn’t expecting much from this film given how the franchise has gone, but I came away pleasantly surprised! Bumblebee tells a refreshingly focused and simple story about the friendship forged between the titular Autobot and Charlie Watson (Hailee Steinfeld).

Full Spoilers…

The movie starts off with a bombastic and frantic escape staged by the Autobot rebellion back on Cybertron, and while the action here (and throughout the movie) is cleanly and clearly shot—as I’ve seen noted elsewhere online, a nice change of pace from the other films in the franchise—I can’t say that I’m invested in the Autobot/Decepticon war at all. I’m all for a good ol’ “overthrow the fascist, freedom-oppressing evil empire” story, but this particular conflict just doesn’t hit the right notes for me for some reason. I don’t really know how the movies can fix that at this point (maybe more focus on showing, not telling?). Likewise, the movies haven’t made me a fan of any of the Transformer characters besides Bumblebee (Dylan O’Brien). Maybe that’s because of a lack of nostalgic recognition on my part—I’ve seen a handful of the original series episodes and the animated movie—but my main (and favorite) Transformers point of reference is the Beast Wars CGI cartoon from the 90s (Transformers Prime was also good, but didn’t stick with me in the way Beast Wars has). I think my lack of connection with most of the Transformers is also definitely due to the fact that Bee is the one who gets to bond with the humans most in the films, so I’m much more attached to him than Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) or the others. I know a lot of fans have argued that the humans take up too much focus in these films, but Charlie and Bee (and Sam and Bee in the first one) bonding goes a long way towards humanizing and endearing these aliens. Besides, even in the vast majority of the cartoons, humans played a role.

In Bumblebee, I wish Bee got a chance to show more personality before he lost his voice. B-127 is certainly noble and heroic, but that seemed to be all there was to him at first. The more sheepish, injured version of Bee displays many more volumes of character (maybe because that’s when he gets to interact with Charlie?). I don’t believe for a second that trauma or tragedy makes characters inherently deeper or more interesting/engaging than happy/heroic ones , but because of what little we see of Bee before his voice box is (horrifically) ripped out, the temporary removal of his heroic veneer does a lot to expose other aspects of his character. In any case, Bee’s arc back to his ability to communicate and to reclaim his heroic mantle is solid and his recovery story was very well-told (pairing nicely with Charlie’s own recovery from loss). I also like that this film franchise, if nothing else, has never fallen for the idea that the most popular character (Bumblebee) needs to also be the leader of the Transformers. Not only is that a unique position, but in a way it puts him on the level of the kids he most closely bonds with. They aren’t the “leaders” in their lives either (that would be their parents/authority figures).

Charlie Watson was very likable and Steinfeld did a great job carrying the human side of the movie, perfectly balancing Charlie’s urge to get out and live her life vs. her resistance to change in her family and the dark cloud hanging over her. Her being a mechanic played well with a robot alien and also formed a strong connection to her dad (Tim Martin Gleason), whose loss is the source of her turmoil. That gave her and Bee a stronger bond than Bee playing wingman to Sam in the first film. I also liked that Charlie becoming Bee’s protector, healer, and disciplinarian made for a cool twist on losing her father, instead of Bee becoming her new father figure. While there’s a certain cliché connotation to making a girl into a mother figure in media (especially when there’s only one girl), while I think their relationship forces Charlie to grow up and accept more responsibility I don’t think it goes as far as saying that being a mother is her only destiny. Knowing Bee also gets Charlie to take more chances and move forward with her life, which had come to a stop in terms of fixing her dad’s car and getting back into diving, and I thought that worked pretty well. The car metaphor (Charlie needs to literally work on and repair her feelings about her dad’s heart attack via the Corvette they were working on together) is perfect, but the diving stuff is introduced a little awkwardly. It seemed like the school bully/popular jock Tripp (Ricardo Hoyos) existed almost solely to goad Charlie into jumping off a rock at a beach day hangout. That’s fine—he was barely a presence in the movie, so he truly does solely exist to challenge/further Charlie’s journey—but that scene also being the first big instance of her reluctance to take up diving again made things feel a little off or sudden/slightly random in some way. Still, the loss of her ability to dive is a neat connection to Bee’s loss of his voice; I just wish what it meant to her was a little more fleshed-out. Tripp’s girlfriend Tina (Grace Dzienny) being a mean girl made Charlie an outsider among her peers, which was a pretty good connection to Bumblebee among the humans. I’m glad that Charlie and her neighbor Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) didn’t end up together (even if she said “not yet”). The chemistry between Charlie and Bee was much stronger than between her and Memo (even though both relationships were platonic), and she never seemed to have a glimmer of romantic interest in him. And that’s totally fine! Healthy, platonic friendships between girls and guys are something we should see more of in movies and TV. Along these same lines, it was refreshing that they didn’t film Charlie with a male gaze. Charlie’s problems with her family (Pamela Adlon, Jason Drucker) moving on with her mom’s new boyfriend (Stephen Schneider) were well-developed and fit with her inability to move on from her dad’s death, but I wish that they’d been given a bigger moment where that family coalesced into a new family unit. The moment where it happens (in the middle of a car chase) is certainly dramatic, but it also felt too quick.

The villains, both human and Decepticon, were used well. Burns (John Cena) made for a good soldier stuck in a bad situation with orders he disagreed with (he’s the only one to point out their name is a big red flag), even if he still mostly follows his orders until the end. I was very happy that the “comedy” of Section 7 from the original Transformers films was largely dropped here, as that was always one of the weaker parts of those films to me. The Decepticons (Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux, David Sobolov) were suitably evil and imposing, if one-dimensional. I don’t need all villains to have a relatable motivation (sometimes evil is just evil), but the fascistic element of the Decepticons could’ve been played up in their dialogue and interactions with Bumblebee.

The effects were well done and I liked the use of the 80s here. The Decepticons gifting the humans the internet (to use it for their own nefarious purposes) was a nice tie back to the first movie’s comment that so much of our technology was reverse-engineered from studying the All Spark and Megatron. The songs they chose were still popular and recognizable, but not necessarily the songs that almost always accompany a trip to the 80s, which was nice. There’s one cliché and overdone bashing of “Never Gonna Give You Up,” but otherwise this was a refreshing change of pace music-wise.

I really wish we could get more adventures with Charlie and Bumblebee teaming up, but they go their separate ways at the end. It feels a little like the filmmakers felt they had to wrap everything up here instead of hoping they’d get a sequel (which is not at all a bad thing!), but closed the loop to the first film a little too tightly. Maybe there’s still a way for Bee and Charlie to meet up again in the future. Either way, this was a very enjoyable flick in the “80s kids meet an alien” vein and I definitely recommend it!

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

#bumblebee #transformers #charlie watson #autobots #decepticons #haliee steinfeld

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cherry-valentine · 6 years ago

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Spring 2019 Anime Season

Here’s what I’m watching: Gunjou no Magmel is definitely my favorite new show of the season. It has a fun setup that lends itself well to lots of different stories: a mysterious new continent suddenly appears one day, full of new animal and plant life and inspiring people across the globe to explore it. Of course, the place is incredibly dangerous, which is why many people work as professional “rescuers” hired to go and retrieve those who have been lost or trapped in the new continent. The protagonists of the series are a pair of rescuers: the highly skilled and unflappable Inyou and his tech genius sidekick Zero (who doesn’t physically go to the continent but instead controls a drone). Right away the series provokes a feeling of adventure that reminded me somewhat of One Piece. The new continent, known as Magmel, is beautiful and teeming with life. The series wisely presents it in a neutral light. There are dangerous creatures there, definitely, with some seriously horrific body horror imagery (much of it veering into nightmare fuel territory), but the series is quite clear about the fact that these creatures are just behaving naturally. There’s no malice there. In fact, the only truly malicious and cruel actions are performed by the humans who go to Magmel to take advantage of the creatures there for their own profit. Inyou understands this, and is generally sympathetic to the animal and plant life, while still prioritizing the preservation of human life. It’s an interesting balance. It’s also interesting that a show with the above mentioned body horror and nightmare fuel is presented with bright, cheerful, cartoony art and peppy, upbeat music. This is an adventure series, not horror, and sometimes there’s even a degree of beauty in the terrors seen in the mostly standalone episodes. The two leads, Inyou and Zero, are entertaining and have a fun dynamic between them. They act more like family than anything else, with no romantic tension at all so far (and I hope it stays that way). Currently sitting at the top of my watch list.

Ace of the Diamond Act 2 is the sequel series I’ve been looking forward to. The original series was a favorite of mine, with a fairly realistic portrayal of baseball and a team of fun, quirky characters, including Miyuki, the only character that springs to mind when I think of the term, “husbando”. He’s a fan-favorite and incredibly popular for a reason. He’s sharp-witted, the most skilled player on the team, and also has a rather twisted sense of humor (he’s the kind of guy who, upon realizing a new member of the team doesn’t like him, is totally delighted and thinks of how fun that’s going to be). Miyuki gushing aside, the show has great art that rarely goes off-model and somewhat smooth animation. The music so far is okay, nothing special (the opening and ending themes were hit and miss in the original series as well). Main character Sawamura is still annoying (like Asta in Black Clover, he tends to scream rather than speak) but his underdog status and genuine love of the sport and his team make him endearing enough to overlook his negative traits. My only real gripe with the show is its tendency to recap that last several minutes of the previous episode in each new episode, making you wait quite a while to get to the new content. This would be a much bigger deal in marathon viewing, but on a weekly basis, I can deal with it.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaruseikatsu is a cute series about cute girls doing cute things. This is a genre I’m generally not fond of, mainly because the girls in these types of shows tend to be sexualized in a creepy way and their “cute antics” tend to be banal and annoying. In this show, however, neither of those two problems are present. In fact, if the show had a male love interest, it would feel very shoujo to me. The focus of the story is on a shy girl with severe social anxiety trying to make friends in her new school. She’s a bit awkward but cute and earnest, so watching her attempt to talk to strangers is funny but also heartwarming. The small circle of friends that begins to form around her is made up of equally cute and funny girls, each of whom have distinct personalities and character designs. Surprisingly, considering this is based on a manga aimed at male readers, none of the girls seem specifically designed to appeal to a male audience. They come across as genuine, well developed characters. The art and music are cute, but not very notable. My only complaint is the subplot involving a young teacher who takes one look at the blonde, tanned Nako and immediately judges her as a juvenile delinquent and is thus afraid of her. It’s meant to be funny, I suppose, but I find it annoying that a teacher would be so judgmental, especially considering Nako is a quiet, well-behaved student who gives absolutely no indication that she’s a delinquent. Ah well, it’s a relatively minor subplot so I can overlook it.

Bungo Stray Dogs Season 3 was hotly anticipated after a strong season two and the amazing Dead Apple movie. Following a group of supernaturally “gifted” members of a detective agency and their conflicts with other “gifted” groups (including the ruthless Port Mafia), this show is one of the best series of the past several years. It has a bit of Durarara!!’s cool vibe and style, but with a more straightforward story. This is a series that handles all of its various story elements very well, from the action scenes to the heartfelt moments to the comedy, and looks great doing it. I still prefer the comedy and characterization of season one, but only because they were done SO well. The more serious, plot-driven arcs of late are still fantastic. The music is great too, with my favorite opening theme of the season (and there were some outstanding ones this season, so that’s saying something).

Kimetsu no Yaiba might just be my second favorite new series. Every season has a new show that gets a lot of hype, and in my experience around half of those shows actually live up to that hype. This show is definitely in that good half. With fluid animation, excellent music, and an interesting setup (a young boy’s family is slaughtered by demons, leaving only one sister behind who has become a demon herself, so he trains to become a demon slayer and find a way to turn her back into a human), this series seems primed to become a hit. The protagonist, Tanjirou, is a fairly standard kind-hearted hero training to join a group and accomplish his goal. The series doesn’t tread a lot of new ground in that respect, but it does everything so well that it’s easy to forgive it for not being the most original story. The most interesting aspect is the sister, Nezuko, who instead of being a delicate young flower for him to constantly protect is a demon herself who, in an early scene, literally kicks another demon’s head clean off. She’s a powerful ally in battle, which is refreshing. The other characters haven’t had much screen time yet, but seem fun so far. Overall, it’s a very well-done, if somewhat unoriginal, show. Highly entertaining and high on my watch list.

Midnight Occult Civil Servants is much better than it seems at first glance. Protagonist Arata joins a particular group of civil servants that deal with mythological creatures called “Anothers”. They range from fairies to gods to Japanese-based creatures like Tengu (this mishmash of mythology actually reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei). Arata quickly realizes that he’s the only member of the team who can understand the languages used by the Anothers, and so he becomes a valuable tool when dealing with them. The show presents a variety of creatures with a variety of behaviors. Some Anothers are friendly to humans and mean no harm, while others are outright malicious. Others still are just indifferent. At first, it seems like the show is going to be about Arata clearing up misunderstandings that his fellow team members have about the Anothers, but then the show lets us know that not all Anothers are friendly, and being able to understand their words doesn’t mean Arata can understand their motivations or can do much to stop them from doing bad things. The episodes are often inspired by real life urban legends, and overall has an air of mystery. The art is fine, with interesting, varied character designs but animation that’s just okay. The music is above average though, with my favorite ending theme of the season. It’s not my favorite new show, but it has a secure spot on my watch list.

Attack on Titan Season 3 Part 2 really doesn’t need much of a write-up, since it’s just a continuation of a season that was delayed (and that I already wrote about). I’ll just keep it brief and say it’s still great, is finally getting into one of my favorite arcs from the manga, and has a gorgeous opening theme.

Mobile Suit Gundam Origin is the tv series version of an OVA that details the origins of one of the Gundam franchise’s most popular characters (and one of my all-time favorites): Char Aznable. I never watched the OVA (despite intending to for the longest time) so this is all new content for me. What I find most interesting is the visual style, which looks very much like the classic Gundam art style of the original late 70‘s tv series but with more modern, smooth animation and some CGI mixed in. There’s a strange awkwardness to the art style that feels oddly natural. It was present in the old tv series and it’s present here. It’s kind of hard to explain if you haven’t seen it yourself though. Art aside, the story is definitely interesting. While Char’s basic history had already been revealed years ago, we didn’t really know the details. Char is a complicated character, which explains his popularity several decades after his debut. He was ruthless, cold, and calculating even as a child, but he loved his family very deeply and was surprisingly emotional. There are also badass lady characters to enjoy (who also appeared in the original series - I’ve always found it interesting that a show made in 1979 had more complex, strong, and generally well-written female characters than more modern Gundam series like Wing, Seed/Seed Destiny, and Iron Blooded Orphans). The music is fantastic here, and it’s overall a very solid show. Now I wish they’d remake the original series with this kind of animation (and cut out some of the filler).

Shoumetsu Toshi is, honestly, at the bottom of my list. The animation quality is just okay, with questionable character design choices (for the first few episodes, there were two unrelated female characters with such strikingly similar designs that it was very confusing). The story is a bit of a muddled mess. It mostly follows a young girl who survived a bizarre event where a whole city full of people suddenly vanished (later dubbed “The Lost”), and the young man who has been hired to help her return after she receives a message from her father, who was one of the people that vanished, telling her to come back. The setup is actually very interesting and mysterious. The problem is that the series throws too many concepts and ideas at us way too quickly, and explains none of it. It might be because the show is based on a video game, and the writers assumed people watching the anime would be familiar with the game and its various elements. Already in the show we have time travel, undefined magical powers, totally different powers that allow people to summon the souls of the vanished victims to fight for them like Persona, shadowy organizations doing human experiments, fancy artifacts that grant even more abilities, phantom thieves, idol groups, hackers, detective agencies, and double agents that have infiltrated the police. There’s just way too much going on, and as a result, the core plot that was actually interesting gets crowded out and choked. I’m still watching because the show is still entertaining in a strange way, but it’s a shame that it wasted a lot of its potential.

Carry Over Shows From Previous Seasons: Black Clover

Best of Season: Best New Show: Gunjou no Magmel Best Opening Theme: Bungo Stray Dogs Season 3 Best Ending Theme: Midnight Occult Civil Servants Best New Male Character: Inyou (Gunjou no Magmel) Best New Female Character: Nako (Hitoribocchi no Marumaruseikatsu)

#Anime #Anime Reviews #Seasonal Anime #Anime Recommendations #Text #Spring 2019 Anime

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barrykeoghans · 7 years ago

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Barry Keoghan Can Do It All

Barry Keoghan returns from the bathroom of a “members only” club on the Lower East Side in New York City and plops down a handful of Dubble Bubble in front of me and his girlfriend, Shona Guerin. “Here’s some gum,” the 25-year-old Irishman says. I grab one—not because I necessarily want any, but because Keoghan seems to be presenting the Dubble Bubble as some kind of ice breaker, and it’d be rude not to join in. But as I start to untwist the wrapper, he quickly interjects: “The question is, do you trust me?”

It’s a pretty fucked up thing to say, considering Keoghan knows I’ve just seen The Killing of a Sacred Deer. In the film, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, Dogtooth) and costarring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman, Keoghan plays a teenage boy named Martin who forces the surgeon who accidentally killed his father (Farrell) to make a dreadful compromise: sacrifice an immediate family member, or else watch each of them go paralyzed, bleed from their eyes, and then slowly die. How Martin is able to set off this agonizing chain of events is never explained; Keoghan plays him with an eerie matter-of-factness, blankly reciting the horrific rules to Farrell’s Steven Murphy like they’re lines from a book report. He uses a similar intonation to suggest that he’s poisoned the Dubble Bubble, clearly relishing the layer of wickedness that starring in Sacred Deer has added to his bright-eyed, innocent-seeming persona.

I put the gum down on the table.

Keoghan has had a remarkable few months: Before Sacred Deer, he played George, a naive, pure-hearted teen in a sweater vest, in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster World War II epic Dunkirk. It was a small role with a basic function and only a handful of lines, but Keoghan managed to capture a sense of idealism in the character—to the point that his sudden death is genuinely and tragically sad. “I always said, I want to work with good indie filmmakers, and if a blockbuster comes up and the filmmaker is great, I’ll do that,” Keoghan says. “And then I get the best of all that! It’s Chris Nolan! The best director who also makes big films.”

Still, Keoghan’s performance in Dunkirk hardly compares to his turn as the Sacred Deer’s grim reaper in blue jeans and a backpack. Sacred Deer is a movie about responsibility, consequences, and comeuppance, and Keoghan’s Martin is the center of gravity around which all of those themes revolve. Lanthimos, as always when it comes to his films, is the one who crafted the seemingly alternate, near-human universe of Sacred Deer—at once sick and sickly humorous—but Keoghan is his mouthpiece, morphing from a simple, sympathetic kid into a merciless but magnetic exactor of justice over the course of two hours. “His face, his physicality, his whole presence,” Lanthimos tells me, when I ask why he decided to cast Keoghan. “He’s just an interesting human being to watch. It would’ve been easy to create this one-dimensional evil kid, but his mere presence conveys many different things at the same time.”

“To get to play those two roles within the space of a few months, to show my range, that’s a dream,” Keoghan says. “I want people to go, ‘Fuck, that’s him? He’s completely different.’”

Keoghan was born in one of the grittier neighborhoods of Dublin, Ireland. He’s from the north side of the River Liffey, which bisects the city and acts as a socioeconomic dividing line between the underprivileged north and the more affluent south. His mother, who was addicted to heroin, died when he was 5 years old, and he was sent to live in foster care. It’s the only segment of Keoghan’s life he won’t talk about; when I ask him about his childhood he responds, “You’ve probably done your research, haven’t you?” as if to say, “The information’s out there, so let’s move on.” When he was 11, his grandmother took him in. He’s more than happy to tell stories from his adolescence, painting a picture of himself to be just as sneakily sinister as some of the characters he’s played. He got kicked out of his all-boys high school because “they weren’t having my games anymore. The last thing I done was, I threw a coin and it hit a teacher in the head. That was the last straw for them.” He tells the story bashfully, staring down at his feet and suppressing a smile.

It was around that time that Keoghan started acting. “I seen this note in a window that said this small Irish movie Between the Canals, they were looking for actors.” Keoghan, who had never acted before, saw an opportunity. “I took the number down on the sly, because I knew that my friends would take the piss out of me, and I rang it when I went home.”

“Acting? I don’t know—I just see money,” Keoghan says when I ask what made him audition for the movie, an admission that feels honest and understandable. Actors are especially known for treating their profession like a craft they were drawn to by Dionysus himself; to hear one flatly admit that it’s a job is both jarring and refreshing. For much of the beginning of his career, Keoghan played characters similar to the side role he landed in Between the Canals: troubled kids from the streets. In 2013, he appeared in six episodes of the fourth season of Love/Hate, an Irish television series about Dublin’s criminal underbelly; he played a homeless youth in 2016’s Mammal. They weren’t splashy parts (Mammal screened at Sundance), but they were enough to get Keoghan noticed.

As Lanthimos says, Keoghan just has one of those faces. It somehow seems to be in constant flux; one second he looks like a Dior model, the next he looks like if Cillian Murphy got hit with a shovel. Sitting in front of me in a white tee and gray, Superdry sweats, he looks kind, innocent, and young—much younger than 25—but his expression can quickly flip, either because the light hit the scar under his right eye in a funny way or because he wants to tease you about poisoning your food. It’s his greatest weapon, and he knows how to use it.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer is full of disturbingly memorable scenes, but one stands out: About two-thirds through the film, Stephen Murphy’s wife, played by Kidman, confronts Martin in his home and begs him to lift the curse. Martin’s in his boxers and in the middle of eating a plate of spaghetti, which reminds him of a story about his father. As a kid, Martin remembers, he used to marvel at the way his dad ate pasta: so efficient, so brilliant. He demonstrates, twirling some of the pasta around his fork and eating it in one big mouthful. Still chewing, and with sauce covering his face, he continues the story, blankly recalling how devastating it was to grow up and one day realize that the way his father ate pasta is the way everyone eats pasta. The discovery made him feel betrayed, Martin says; as if the man whom he revered so much barely even existed. Meanwhile, Kidman’s character sits across from Martin dumbfounded, realizing how deep the boy’s scars go and perhaps coming to grips with the fact that the person who holds her life and her children’s lives in the balance is a teenager covered in marinara sauce.

It’s an outrageous scene, this kid shoveling spaghetti into his face while spouting an allegory about coming to realize your own insignificance—and Keoghan is unflinching, turning each forkful into a work of art. “You know, sitting in front of Nicole Kidman in your boxers is not an easy thing to do,” Keoghan tells me, hardly interested in talking about his performance or how he’s able to simultaneously capture pain, loss, and bald evil in one fell swoop. “I was just constantly like, ‘Can she see up there?’”

On the day we meet, Keoghan’s particularly giddy because Aaron Paul tweeted about how good he was in Sacred Deer. After six years of toiling away in mostly Irish productions, Keoghan’s performance as Martin has put him in a position where he can not only think about the future of his career, but the next five or 10 years of his life in general. Keoghan says, “It’s all a plan.” When he first signed with his talent agency, WME, this plan was already partially formulated: He had written down a list of directors he wanted to work with. Christopher Nolan and Yorgos Lanthimos were both on it. “I write everything down,” he says. “Directors, movies I want to do, that I want to produce, direct, start my own company, start my own boxing club.” Keoghan takes his roles in Dunkirk and Sacred Deer as proof that the first step to achieving a goal is putting it down on paper (or in his iPhone Notes). “I’m a big fan of the law of attraction,” he proudly states. He won’t show anyone the obsessively curated and growing list, but everything on it can be boiled down to one simple goal: “Have a successful, good career.”

Keoghan seems to know that, at 25, after two prominent roles in the films of two high-profile directors, his plan is coming together. He has two upcoming projects on his slate—an Irish movie starring Hugo Weaving and Jim Broadbent called Black 47, and American Animals, costarring Blake Jenner and Evan Peters—but he wants to ride this momentum even more. “I’m lookin’ for that script,” he says, leaning into the recorder, graveling his voice to sound tougher. “I’m lookin’ for that script!”

His personal life shows a different side of him, one that’s less scrappy and not so firmly tuned to survival mode. You might even call him a romantic. He met his girlfriend, Shona, at a bar she worked in in Kerry. He asked her out on the spot, but not to dinner or anything like that: He suggested they drive out to Dingle, a picturesque peninsula on the west coast of Ireland. “Luckily she had a car. I had no way to get to Dingle,” Keoghan notes. Two weeks later, he returned to Kerry with suitcases. They’ve been living with Shona’s mom since.

“He doesn’t put a lot of thought into things,” Shona tells me, with more admiration than admonishment. “But he’s very caring. He can feel when he’s done something wrong. It hurts him.”

Now Keoghan and Shona want to move to the United States. They don’t know where exactly—he prefers New York City, she prefers L.A.—but the idea of turning ex-pat is thrilling to them. “And we’re looking to get our own dog,” Keoghan adds. “A rescue one. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I just love them, don’t I? They just listen.”

“I have to try to be in the moment,” Keoghan says at the end of our interview. “Because these moments we’ve been having lately are great. Everyone is looking at you, and it’s like, you’re totally in control of everything. It’s something that you need to enjoy.”

I pick up the gum again, and Keoghan’s eyes follow me as I put it in my coat pocket. He says nothing this time. Walking away from the table, I pull out the gum and decide to eat it.

By Andrew Gruttadaro

#barry keoghan #the ringer #2017

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mosylufanfic · 7 years ago

Note

Omg #2 (childhood best friends au) for Killervibe please!!! Thx so much :)

I’ve Got a Crush on You

Caitlin staggered into the closet, knocked off balance by the hands shoving at her upper back. Cisco crashed into her from behind and then the closet door snapped shut, plunging them both into darkness.

She almost fell into the coats before her best friend's hands caught her shoulders and steadied her. "Thanks. I swear she rigged that."

"Of course she rigged that." Cisco's hands disappeared. "You know Iris. She's been talking about what a cute couple we'd make since freshman year."

Caitlin rolled her eyes in the dark. "Is there a light in here? I left my phone next to the vodka."

"Yeah, but the switch is outside, and you know she isn't going to turn it on. That would ruin the game. I've got mine, it's okay." Cloth rustled.

"I haven't played Seven Minutes in Heaven since Hunt -”

“Ah!”

She rolled her eyes. “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named's thirteenth birthday party. Honestly, he was my horrific boyfriend. Why are you the one who refuses to hear his name?”

“As your best friend, I’m contractually obligated to loathe his name forever. I don’t make the rules.”

She rolled her eyes again, this time at him, and returned to what she’d been saying. “I can't believe she got everyone to go along with it."

"They're probably in on her nefarious plan." The cool blue light of a phone screen lit up the interior of the closet. Cisco made a wry face at her. "Well, it's only seven minutes. We'll hang out and then tell her nice try, but her Cupid gambit failed."

"Exactly," she said. She glanced down at their feet and kicked a few sets of winter boots aside to clear a spot on the carpeted floor. "Seat?"

"Don't mind if I do."

They made themselves comfortable, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, leaning against the back of the closet "Why do you think Iris is so fixated on us hooking up?" Caitlin asked.

The light of the screen dimmed slightly, throwing shadows up his face and chest as he shrugged. "I dunno. Neatness? She hates to see anyone single? She's genuinely convinced that we've been covertly lusting after each other for the past sixteen years? Who knows."

She nudged him. "You could never keep that from me. I know you too well."

The screen shut off, and dropped them into darkness.

"Wellllll . . ." he said.

"What?"

"In the interest of full disclosure, I did kind of have a crush on you at one point."

She felt her mouth fall open. "What? When?"

"When we first met."

"In Mrs. Simpson's class?"

"You didn't know? Wow, I was better at hiding than I thought."

"Or maybe I was just oblivious," she said. "Also, way to be be precocious. We were, what, eight?" Oh my god, that really had been sixteen years ago. She'd been friends with this boy next to her - this man next to her - for two-thirds of her life.

"Come on! You were a pretty girl who was willing to talk to me. Of course I crushed on you."

"When did that end?"

"When we got to be friends."

"Oh, wow, thanks."

"Nooo," he laughed. "You dork. I meant, I got to know you as a person and not just as the angel with the pretty hair who sat in front of me. Kid crushes are more about fantasy than reality."

"Mmm," she said, wondering if she should ask him to turn the phone on again. She decided against it, given what she was about to say. "Well, since you were honest with me . . . "

"Caitlin Esther Snow, you didn't."

"Not in second grade, I didn't! But I did crush on you for a short time in high school."

"When?"

"Sophomore year. About the time you started dating Michael."

"Michael," he said. "Wow. I haven't thought of him in years. He hated you."

"Oh, I noticed."

"You really had a thing for me back then?"

"Well - yes. But I was too scared to say anything, because I was pretty sure you didn't feel the same way, what with you being in a relationship and all. I'd've lost the crush and I might've lost you as a friend."

"I'd've still been your friend," he objected.

"But it would have been weird and you know it." She shook her head, even though he couldn't see it in the dark. "No, I'm glad I didn't say anything."

He made a humming noise in his throat. "These words are going to physically pain me, but this means Michael was right."

She went hot and cold all over. "Michael knew?"

"He said things a few times, but I sort of dismissed them because he was jealous of every girl I ever talked to, and he especially had a hate-on for you. He seemed to think that you'd seduce me in twenty seconds flat if he let me hang out with you alone even once."

"Is that why you dropped me?"

"I'm not proud. And you always knew it was because of Michael."

"Right, but I thought it was because I didn't watch the right TV shows and he wanted you paying attention to him 24/7."

"Well, there was that. So when did this thing of yours end?"

"I was mad at you for the aforementioned droppage. And then you were so miserable. I'd've been a monster if I'd hit on you right after Michael dumped you."

"Did I ever thank you for that? Turning up on my doorstep with a gallon of Rocky Road and The Princess Bride when I texted you? Considering I hadn't said anything more in-depth than 'what'd you get for number eight' to you in like two months, that's sainthood material right there."

"What are best friends for?" She toyed with the hem of her shirt. "Did you ever, um, think about it again?"

He shifted. "There was this one time. You remember how we were going to go to senior prom together?"

She gasped. "Wait, I thought we were going as friends!"

"Yes, as friends! I just kind of started thinking about the dance and dinner and to be perfectly honest, it was getting a little Sixteen Candles in my head - without the racist stereotype comic relief, obvs."

“Clearly.””But I wasn't pining or anything. I was just like, hey, what would happen if we maybe kissed or something? Just sort of curious."

"And then Ronnie asked me," she said. "And I went with him instead. I'm sorry."

His arm came around her shoulders. "Nothing to be sorry about. I knew you really wanted a big, romantic prom experience, and there was the boy of your dreams asking you out. I wasn't gonna hold you to our goofy plans."

"You did wear the powder-blue tux."

"I did. And we had a really good time."

"We really did! Ronnie was so nice to join our group."

"Was that really what you wanted? I mean, really."

"Yes! I told you that then, and I was telling the truth. Even if you weren't my date, I'd been looking forward to hanging out with you at prom. I was so worried we were going to drift apart when we went to college."

"We didn't," he reminded her.

"Yes, but I was worried we would."

He hugged her close. They hadn't always stayed as close during college. Being at different schools meant they had to make the effort to stay in touch. She would retreat when she was stressed academically. He would retreat when he was hurting about something. They'd both been good and bad by turns at keeping their friendship up.

But when they saw each other, it was always like no time had gone by at all - except for how much they had to catch each other up on.

She said softly, "What do you think would've happened? If I'd gone to prom with you? If we'd slow-danced and kissed?"

From the way he drew in his breath and let it out, she knew he was thinking about that. "I don't know," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe we would have decided to date. But I kind of have the feeling it wouldn't have lasted. We were both so ready to get out of there."

"And we wouldn't have visited each other at school like we did," she said. "Going to see your best friend is perfectly reasonable. Going to see your ex - not so much."

"Yeah. It's like my kid crush, or your thing for me sophomore year. The timing was wrong. And if we'd ever, like, gotten drunk at some party together, and fallen into bed - "

"That wouldn't have lasted either." She sighed. "I'm glad we stayed friends. I don't ever want to lose you."

"Me too. If we were to ever get together, I'd want to make sure it was forever."

She swallowed, her scalp prickling. She felt like she was blushing beet-red, and was glad of the dark. Her voice trembled a little as she said, "How long have we been in here?"

He turned his phone on again. "About . . . six minutes or so? Not much longer."

Cuddled as close as they were, she could pick out the shadows of each individual eyelash, the curve of his mouth and the angle of his chin.

I'd want to make sure it was forever.

It was uncanny how he'd echoed the way she'd thought about it for the past few years.

He turned his head to look at her, his face cut into strange portions by the light from the phone screen, and she wondered if he'd just been saying that. Or if he'd meant he wanted to be friends forever, because something romantic wouldn't last.

His eyes dropped to her mouth, then lifted again to lock onto hers. Her heart hammered in her throat.

The screen dimmed.

She leaned forward, and maybe he did too, because their noses bumped. She overcorrected and got his cheek, smooth and smelling lightly of his aftershave. They both laughed a little, and his hand settled on her cheek, and finally, finally their lips touched -

Breathed -

Pressed together.

The blue light of the phone disappeared, leaving them in the dark, their lips moving together. His hand slipped down her back, pulling her closer. She hooked one arm around his neck and pressed against him - warm and solid, strong.

What if this was the moment that the timing was actually right?

"Caitlin," he whispered.

She panted, feeling the warmth of his breath whispering over her lips. "Yes?"

"You wanna do this?"

He meant more than kissing in the dark during a silly party game. A lot more.

Forever wasn't guaranteed for anybody. But when you both knew that was what you wanted and you were both willing to work for it - didn't you have a better chance of getting it?

"Yes," she sighed. "You?"

"Oh, god, yeah."

She smiled and pulled his head down to hers again.

A few moments later, the overhead light snapped on, and Iris's voice caroled, "Seven minutes is up!"

They pulled apart and yelled in unison, "Go away!"

A chorus of raucous laughter met their twin bellow, and the light snapped off again. In the middle of the riot of glee, Iris yelled, "Pay up, Allen! I told you so!"

FINIS

#Cisco Ramon #Caitlin Snow #Killervibe #fanfiction #mosylufanfic lives up to her damn name #fluff #childhood friends AU #AU prompt party #the flash #shasta627

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jezfletcher · 6 years ago

Text

The Oscars 2019

This is two years in a row now that I've seen every single Oscar-nominated feature film, and I have a fear that the completist in me now sees this as something I need to justify doing every year going forward. But I've only managed it the past few years because I've happened to have been in the United States in the period leading up to the Oscars. And honestly, that's not something I necessarily want to keep doing. So, enjoy it while it lasts, is I guess what I'm saying. This has not been a good year for the Oscars, themselves, obviously—what with all of the stupid things they've been trying to do to make the awards ceremony more relevant to people who don't travel to another country to watch all of the nominated films. Obviously, I'm going to keep watching anyway. However, I've found that the films this year have all been of a reasonably good standard. Sure, there have been some which lean too heavily on the formula, and some which fall pretty flat. But there's only one film I think this year that I actively hated, and usually there's at least a handful. So good work in screening out most of the absolute dross, Academy voters. By the same token, while there were some excellent films this year, many of, say, my top 10 are not films that I would say I completely loved either. In previous years, I've had 10 or more films that have absolutely filled me with joy. Anyway, let's get to the count down. As usual, I'm going from top to bottom, because my bottom films tend to be more fun to write (and, I believe, to read). But be aware, as I said above, there are fewer films than usual that are worthy of a proper shellacking.

1. Free Solo

Directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin

My top film this year is an honestly brilliant, monumental piece of film-making. It catalogues the first solo ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite done without safety ropes, which is enough of an achievement that a fairly dry account would still be fairly compelling. But the filmmakers really manage to make this something profoundly more as a piece of cinema. We follow Alex Honnold, a professional rock climber, as he prepares for the ascent, and we get a deep sense of the danger involved in such an endeavour, and the mindset required of a person to even attempt something so monumental. More interestingly, the filmmakers delve into what makes up the man, with a particular focus on his burgeoning relationship with his girlfriend Sanni McCandless—what we discover is probably his first real romantic relationship. This adds such another level of interest to the film; it provides the human connection we need to not only see Honnold as more than a machine. But it also provides the stakes to make the danger of the ascent resonate with us. By the time we actually see the ascent——we not only understand the risks involved, but the consequences for characters that we care about were things to go wrong. It makes for absolutely scintillating viewing. And there's another level (I know, does it need more?). The filmmakers themselves make the choice to insert themselves into the story as well—it's a ploy that often massively backfires for me (as it did last year with Icarus), but in this case, it's a masterful stroke. It allows the introspection of the makers to explore how complicit they are in something potentially horrific. Is the presence of cameras pushing Honnold beyond his limits? Is this something he would attempt were there not a documentary film crew following him? How do they feel about capturing on film the death of someone they consider a friend, knowing full well before they start the cameras rolling that this might be how it ends up? What if their mere presence in filming him causes him to make a mistake? These are all questions which are well-explored in the film itself. In the end, watching the footage of the actual ascent is magnified a hundred-fold due to the groundwork in the storytelling. This is why this film ends up being much much more than a technically-proficient documentation of an incredible human feat. It becomes a masterful achievement in itself.

2. First Reformed

Directed by Paul Schrader

I honestly knew almost nothing about this film before sitting down to watching it, apart from that it was nominated for Best Original Screenplay. The film tells of a protestant priest, Ernst Toller (Hawke), who is now the chaplain of the First Reformed church, a historical chapel now mostly serving as a tourist attraction, but which is now mostly run by the local megachurch. To say much about the plot is to give away vital points, which are better left to unravel at their own pace on screen. But it manages to do so gently while building into a huge emotional impact. It's in no small part to Ethan Hawke, who is utterly compelling as the complex Toller. It's just a beautifully constructed film, well-shot in winter bleakness, and capturing the themes that the screenplay demands of it. It touches on deep issues of many kinds: faith, environmentalism, the legacy you consider as you face death. And each is woven into a tapestry that as a whole is nothing short of sublime. Yes, it's a very fine film, and one which I recommend even as I know it will not be to everyone's tastes as it is to mine. I think it's a(nother) testament to the fact that I often find the films on the Screenplay nominations to be the source of hidden gems that don't turn up otherwise.

3. Roma

Directed by Alfonso Cuarón

There's certainly a bit of momentum behind this one to take out Best Picture, and while I obviously liked it (sitting as it is here high in my rankings), it's an unexpected film to be the frontrunner. It's released by Netflix, it's a foreign-language film, in black and white. It's also not the crowd-pleasing story you often see in a front-runner. But maybe that's a sign that the Academy is actually doing its fucking job for once. But this is indeed a brilliant film. It's a film really made with care and craft. Everything is beautifully done—the cinematography is astonishing (I saw it at the cinema, which amplified it, but I'm sure much of it still resonates on a smaller screen), the production design is crystal perfect in setting up this world of two worlds between the upper and lower classes in a Mexico City household. But it's not just a technical film, it's one crafted with love, and a story which resonates with emotional impact. The craft just allows us to better immerse ourselves in the story and its human participants. It feels like a labour of love for Cuarón, and he has all the skills required to make it compelling on screen. If this wins Best Picture, I'll be cheering, even though it's the outcome that everyone expects. I think this winning the award will show that the Academy is really now genuinely awarding excellence in filmmaking.

4. Black Panther

Directed by Ryan Coogler

I honestly feel as though Marvel Studios is going to take the wrong message out of Black Panther, one of its obviously biggest hits, and, honestly, probably the best superhero film ever made. This film was great not because it had the best action sequences, the best characterisation, the best super powers, or because they've perfected digital eyelash rendering. It was brilliant because they got the stakes right, and they managed to make them connect to the audience. This, I believe, is squarely the doing of Ryan Coogler, who had previously managed to do something similar with the Rocky series in Creed. But credit to Marvel for giving him the creative freedom to do just that. The film works so well because we see the resonances of Wakanda in our world—it's relevant right now, right this minute when you walk out of the cinema. It's not merely a piece of escapism, despite the fact that there are technically good action sequences and visual effects. Moreover, it manages to avoid the ever-escalating tropes of superhero films which seem to think that you need to make them more exciting by increasing the size of the destruction were our heroes to fail. Let's be honest——to me, the destruction of my home & family, the destruction of my city, my planet, or the universe pretty much work out to the same net outcome. But Black Panther really grapples with the legacy of the choices of history—and it ties them to the modern day in a subtle but very powerful way. So sure, go for the special effects, but you'll likely get more out of it than a well-made superhero film. That's the reason why this sits so high on my list. I just hope that Marvel sees it the same way, and that they have a willingness to explore this kind of filmmaking in the future. Given the success of Black Panther, I hope they will.

5. The Favourite

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

I was so waiting for this film by Lanthimos. I've loved what he's done back to Dogtooth, but in every film he'd done to this point there was a certain kind of similarity——it was as though he had taken the basic structure of Dogtooth and was replaying it in different ways and in different scenarios. Breaking out of the mould by working with a script not written by the director himself seems to have been a good move, because we get to see Lanthimos's skills in another domain. And I'm very happy about that. The story revolves around a love triangle between three women, Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), and Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), and the various political machinations surrounding the war in France. It's interesting enough as a historical drama, but the focus and the success of the film both are in the exploration of the relationships. Olivia Colman is utterly brilliant as Queen Anne, and I believe is the front-runner to take out the award, thereby denying Lady Gaga her own kind of fairytale. She manages to balance so many elements to her performance——the power, the insecurity, the vulnerability, the strength. She is at times both compelling and repellent. It's the kind of performance that comes around once in a career for an actor, and it requires such skill on the part of the performer and the people surrounding her to get it so pitch-perfect. It's a really engaging film all up, and one which is unusual in all the ways you want Yorgos Lanthimos's films to be. But it's also so different from his oeuvre to date that I feel like it's adding something more to the repertoire than any of his films had done since Dogtooth. That's high praise from me.

6. First Man

Directed by Damien Chazelle

I was quite concerned about this film. Having loved Whiplash and having abhorred La La Land, I wasn't quite sure where I'd land on Damien Chazelle's latest. But it's the kind of story I really love (and honestly, intrinsically an excellent story), and it sounded different enough to La La Land that I was willing to give it a shot. And honestly, it was kind of brilliant. I know, I still had a bit of a La La Land hangover, but I found it a really surprisingly believable portrait of Neil Armstrong, and an utterly engaging tale of the race to put a man on the moon. Ryan Gosling shakes off his last role with Chazelle, and returns to his laconic best self as the notably reserved Armstrong, and while that's something of a blank canvas, it's also a strong central performance for a film like this. More surprisingly, perhaps, is that the directorial touches in this are actually one of the strongest elements, which shows that Chazelle perhaps has something more in his arsenal than banality. There's a reserved quality to the filmmaking which matches its subject, and gives the film at time an impressionistic feel. Surprisingly it works. More than that, the somewhat dreamlike quality of parts of the production means that the elements of action, in particular the Gemini 8 mission, become stronger and more forceful by comparison. I really thought this was a very good film indeed, and one which definitely fell off the radar after it was released many months back. But I think it's one that's going to stand up over time. In a way that La La Land certainly will not.

7. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

This is a true anthology film. Six short films set in the Old West, which share some similar themes and mood, but are otherwise disconnected from one another. Am I surprised that it's this high? Maybe, but it does have the Coen brothers at the helm, and a surprisingly strong cast. Why this film is so successful though is because each of the stories holds up on its own, perhaps with the exception of the eponymous tale, which serves more as a way to introduce the rest of the tales, in any case. But all the rest grabbed my attention. In particular, I found The Gal Who Got Rattled and All Gold Canyon genuinely enjoyable to watch, and Meal Ticket was a story with a strong emotional impact. But it's a film that rides on the success of its individual pieces, and it's truly quite exceptional that each of the pieces manages to be strong enough to stand up on its own. As a collection, I found them a very entertaining way to spend my time.

8. Never Look Away

Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

One of the fine crop of foreign language Oscars this year, this film (titled "Work Without Author" in German) follows the life of a young artist as he tries to find a path in the contemporary art world while processing the resonances of his childhood, in particular the death of his beloved Aunt at the hands of the Nazis. It's a brilliantly constructed film, and one which allows its meaning to become fully realised piece by piece. At the same time, the director carefully balances the revelations with a sense of dramatic irony, allowing us to see things slightly before the characters themselves discover them. It's a fine balance to do this well enough to keep the film captivating. I also found the film to be quite a compelling portrait (haha) of the mid-century modern art movement. Although it's something I don't know much about, it's presented in such a way that it feels like it's providing insights into the movement. It shows the way in which even the most abstract of forms can find scope for political and social commentary. In some senses that puts it two steps adrift of making actual political commentary itself, but expounding the value of art is to some extent a purely political position nowadays. Anyway, I enjoyed this film a great deal, and I honestly think it's a film with even more value than I probably ascribed it myself. It's a strong Foreign Language Oscar field this year, but in another year, I could definitely see this being a winner.

9. The Wife

Directed by Björn Runge

I honestly found this film captivating. Lead by strong performances from Glenn Close (an actress I always love), and Jonathan Pryce, it tells the tale of a husband and wife, as the husband travels to Stockholm to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature. The film, however, also focuses on their early relationship through flashbacks, as we see the cracks in their facade start to become more noticeable. Thematically, there's a strong feminist element to the story, and it makes for a suitably ascerbic lens for the tale. What could be overplayed as melodrama has a cutting satire at its core, which helps make the film deeper and more resonant than it might otherwise have been. Helping this is Glenn Close's restrained, but certainly brilliant, performance, which has rightly earned her a nod for Best Actress. Interestingly, it's the only nomination for this film: perhaps in other years this would have seen more acclaim in other categories, but I do feel that there was a trend against more traditional filmmaking—and to some extent, this does follow a certain type of film-making formula. But at the same time, when the formula is put on screen as well as it is here, I can't help but enjoy myself with it.

10. Mary Poppins Returns

Directed by Rob Marshall

I remember very much enjoying Mary Poppins as a child, even though it's a film that I'd not seen for many years when I watched the (very long-in-coming) sequel. But the film very much manages to capture the spirit of the original, while also updating enough to be palatable to a modern audience. This is quite a feat, and I'll admit that I'm surprised Rob Marshall was the one to pull it off. One of the most brilliant things that this film managed to do is to make me see the original a different way. As a child, it's easy to accept all of the magical happenings in the presence of Mary Poppins at face value, but this film makes you look at them through the lens of adulthood, as Jane & Michael Banks look back on their childhood and question their own memories. It's a striking thing to do, and it makes both the original and this one seem deeper films as a result. It's also true that to some extent this film is trying to recapture some of the iconic sequences of the original, and has mixed success——the animated sequence is just about as delightful in this one as in the original, but the lamplighters' big dance number doesn't quite capture the magic and energy of the chimney sweeps dancing on the rooftops. All up though, I found this quite a magical experience, and that probably means its utterly successful in its goals. Despite some reservations, I was able to embrace it in the way that it wanted me to. And I had a great time doing it.

11. BlacKkKlansman

Directed by Spike Lee

Outside of the top ten, I'm going to be a bit briefer in my write-ups, for the sake of time (mine and yours), and will probably limit my writeups in the central section to just a paragraph each. Starting with BlacKkKlansmanm, a surprisingly fun film about a black police officer who goes undercover (in a manner) to infiltrate the KKK. Based on a true story, it's a lot of fun, and one which really tried to pound home its message about the perils of accepting white supremacy in the mainstream. It's an unsubtle film when it comes to its politics, but we're in an era that doesn't respect subtlety any more.

12. Mary Queen of Scots

Directed by Josie Rourke

I really enjoyed this film, although I'll admit that it's a film that plays to my particular traits. Historical drama starring Saoirse Ronan is always going to be in my wheelhouse. And this is a lush production, well served by its two nominations for Costume Design and Makeup & Hairstyling. It's an interesting take on the story two, focusing mostly on the tension between Mary of Scotland and Queen Elizabeth's desire for familial closeness despite the underlying political tension. It's an interesting framing, albeit one which many critics have pooh-poohed for having little historical basis. But I still liked it. I'll keep seeing films like this, in the same way that everyone else will keep going to see the latest Marvel film.

13. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman

This was a really engaging detour from the regular superhero fare. As an animated film, it has a leeway to do something quite different, and this film chose to do so in a way which accentuates the comic book form on which it is based. It's a decent, if fairly convoluted story, but it adds something to the Spiderman ethos which I think is warranted. It's an enjoyable film, and one which I liked a lot more than many of its ilk.

14. At Eternity's Gate

Directed by Julian Schnabel

Willem Dafoe is in his golden era, quite clearly. Here, he provides a startling portrait of Vincent Van Gogh, a man who had little success in his life, and suffered a great deal because of it. This film manages to both explicate why this may have been the case, and also to illustrate to a great extent why there genuinely is brilliance to Van Gogh's work. Director Julian Schnabel (best known for directing The Diving Bell & The Butterfly is an artist himself, and he puts a distinctly impressionistic form on the film, which is a perfect touch, especially when you have such a powerhouse in the lead role to ground it in humanistic reality. It isn't a really easy film to watch, but there is brilliance within it.

15. If Beale Street Could Talk

Directed by Barry Jenkins

An adaptation of James Baldwin's novel of the same name, this is a fine film with a good deal of resonance in the modern world. It follows a non-linear storyline following Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James), as they explore life as young lovers, as well as dealing with the aftermath of Fonny's arrest years later. It deals a great deal with the injustices of the time, but strongly resonates in a time when the same injustices survive in much the same form. It's also quite a literary film, with Tish's narration coming straight from Baldwin's, which is rich in poetry. It provides a juxtaposition with the naturalistic dialogue of the scenes, which at time jars, but it allows more of Baldwin's intended work onto the screen. And that's a good thing.

16. Solo: A Star Wars Story

Directed by Ron Howard

I seem to be largely alone in liking this film. Beset as it was with production difficulties, it's really quite something that it managed to come out as well as it did. And honestly, I think it came out pretty damn well. It's the kind of film that I think Lucasfilm really wanted to be making to expand the Star Wars universe. It doesn't need to really push the main storyline of the various wars, but it can have a bit of fun along the way. The set pieces are inventive and engaging, and well produced in such a way that you can feel and follow along with the action, and the cast of characters are well drawn and entertaining. Hell, even Alden Ehrenreich is quite good at channelling the cool of young Harrison Ford. So, despite everything, I think this managed to be successful in just about every way you might have expected it to be. I don't know what everyone else is complaining about.

17. Ralph Breaks The Internet

Directed by Rich Moor & Phil Johnston

I was a big fan of the first Wreck-It Ralph film, which managed to beautifully capture its subject matter, while also providing a snide commentary on it. So it's no surprise that I enjoyed the sequel as well. Admittedly, though, this isn't as good as the original, largely due to lacking the freshness of the concept of the original. What replaces it is satirisation of internet culture, some of which is successful (like Ralph's series of viral videos), and some which is less so, in particularly the personification of certain aspects of internet infrastructure. The new realm also gives the filmmakers license to shoe-horn in a whole stack more pop-culture references, and these feel sloppy to a large extent. But overall, there's enough charisma in the characters, and in the concepts that they're playing with that the film is still successful. It's just less successful than the original.

18. Cold War

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Another good foreign language film from this year, it tells the story of a teacher and student who develop a passionate, destructive relationship around the time of the segregation of Germany. Forced to pursue propaganda in communist Poland, the film follows the destruction of the characters after one decides to flee to West Germany. It's a beautifully shot film, and one with a lot of artistic merit. However, I found the story to be a little bit tired at times, and it lacked the emotional resonance that another similar film might have had—perhaps due to the fact that both of the main characters are at times rather unpleasant. It's still a good film, but there's a reason it's in 18th place rather than rubbing shoulders with Roma and Never Look Away.

19. Shoplifters

Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda

Speaking of foreign language films that don't quite make the cut, here we have the latest from Koreeda Hirokazu, who I honestly think of as one of the finest filmmakers currently working in the world today. What is it that made this film resonate with me less than his previous work? Honestly, I'm trying to figure that out myself, because on the surface this bears much similarity to some of his previous films that I've loved, in particular Nobody Knows. This film tells the tale of a man and a woman living in poverty, and teaching their children to steal. I think I've just really enjoyed the subdued nature of some of his previous works, and this one is genuinely more plot-driven, and never necessarily in a way that you expect. I think that I could watch this at a different time and a different place, and probably have quite a different reaction to it. That's maybe just a cheating way of getting out of working out why it didn't work for me this time. But I'm still going to be following Koreeda's work in the future.

20. A Star Is Born

Directed by Bradley Cooper

I was deeply skeptical of this film when it came out. Why on earth did Bradley Cooper (of all people) feel the need (or the right) to remake A Star Is Born (again). But I was surprised as many people were when it turns out this is genuinely very good. In fact, having watched some of the previous adaptations, I can honestly believe that this is the best adaptation yet made of the story. Lady Gaga is, indeed, something of a revelation in a dramatic role, and Bradley Cooper is serviceable in front of the camera and behind it (although he does put himself in front of the camera much more than is warranted). Moreover, there is genuine thought in the musical numbers, including Shallow, up for Best Original Song, which I'll admit is the only of the nominees that I can still hum along to after the film. All up, it's a film that has its limits, but it's a perfectly serviceable adaptation.

21. Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Directed by Marielle Heller

An interesting and somewhat unexpected film, about author Lee Israel, who faces a decline in her success and turns to forging letters from celebrities in order to make a living. It's an odd premise for a film, but it's put together with a lot of heart, and pulled off through strong performances from Melissa McCarthy as Israel, and Richard E. Grant as a miscreant who she befriends. It's played without a lot of sympathy for any of its characters, despite the way it's structured—intrinsically there is something that puts you at arms length. It feels like a delibrate decision by the director, but at the same time it did limit my enjoyment somewhat.

22. Incredibles 2

Directed by Brad Bird

The Incredibles was another of those animated films which really managed to break out of its mould to some extent, and provide a concept that had its tongue in its cheek to the extent that an otherwise straightforward story would seem transgressive in some form. But as a result, like Wreck It Ralph 2: The Ralphening above, this is less than the original film. Since the conceit of the first is now not novel, we're left with just revisiting the characters in a different scenario. I think it does help that the film focuses this time largely on Elastigirl, who is curiously but enjoyably performed by Holly Hunter (who, I'll note, doesn't get top billing, despite being clearly the main character in this film). But there's only so much impact that these characters can have the second time around, when the world is already established. This is perhaps the first film on this list that I can say the world probably could have done without. Despite my enjoyment of it.

23. Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Directed by RaMell Ross

A very impressionistic documentary, this film takes snippets of life from the inhabitants of Hale County in Alabama, focusing on tiny pieces of vignettes (calling them vignettes themselves is overselling them), it manages to fuse the pieces together into the semblance of greater meaning. While it's up to you how you interpret them, it's hard to deny that there's something to the pieces. It's also beautifully shot, and RaMell Ross takes great joy in expressing the beauty in the mundane——a particularly poignant sequence shows light streaming through fog in jagged shards, while the director talks off screen about the beauty of the scene to someone asking why he's set up a camera on this street in this part of town. It's a film that's perhaps too ephemeral to grasp at times, but it's still an artistic construction.

24. Minding the Gap

Directed by Bing Liu

An interesting documentary from first-time director Bing Liu, who returns to his hometown of Rockford, Illinois, and chronicles the lives of his friends who he was connected with through skateboarding. He explores where life has taken them since adulthood has been thrust upon them, and examines themes of poverty, especially its cyclic nature. It doesn't shy away from tough questions and themes either, and the filmmaker is quite skillful in managing to make it as autobiographical as it is, while also seeming to be hands-off in its filming. I didn't like it, overall, as much as many of the films above it here, obviously, but that's not to detract from it as a piece of cinema. M

25. Isle of Dogs

Directed by Wes Anderson

I honestly thought this was going to end up lower on my list. I was honestly pretty skeptical about this from a conceptual point of view, and it seemed like an odd choice for Anderson to take on, unless he'd had a particularly good time making The Fantastic Mr. Fox. But it's not a bad film. It's a bit formulaic, but it's made up for in excess of Wes Anderson's stylistic embellishments. I honestly just kind of hope that they're put to better use in the next film he makes.

26. RBG

Directed by Betsy West & Julie Cohen

This is a perfectly serviceable documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The subject matter is very interesting, and watching this portrait of the supreme court justice is entertaining just intrinsically. It's not an inventive or exemplary exercise in artistic filmmaking though, and that's why it's below some of the other documentaries, even those which I might have found less intrinsically interesting.

27. Mirai

Directed by Mamoru Hosoda

Ah, there's a good tradition in rounding out the Best Animated Feature category with an anime film, and this year's is Mirai No Mirai (Mirai of the Future), a film which explores the changes in a family from the perspective of a young boy who has recently gained a new baby sister, Mirai. Through a sequence of fantastical episodes, he interacts with both his sister from the future, the personification of their dog (who misses the time before any children, when he was the prince of the household), and other characters rounding out their family history. It ties the past to the future, and explores family in an interesting way, wresting pathos from its story at many points. My only reticence in really embracing this is that it feels extremely slow, and the episodic nature of the film really restricts it from feeling as though it can build up any kind of momentum. Over and over again, it feels like we're just resetting in the present. Only at the end does it manage to tie everything together, and to be honest, I was a bit over it by then.

28. Border

Directed by Ali Abbasi

I found this a pretty unpleasant film, but it's hard to deny that it's a pretty singular one as well. It follows Tine (Eva Melander), who works as a border guard for the ferry between Sweden and Denmark, and who has the ability to sniff out people hiding contraband. She meets a man who resembles her strange facial structure, when he tries to cross the border, and the two strike up an unusual friendship, as he helps her discover her real self. The concept behind the film is honestly pretty unusual, and the way that it plays out actively kind of alienates the audience. But it's hard to deny the impact.

29. Of Fathers And Sons

Directed by Talal Derki

This is a documentary that honestly has a fascinating story behind it. It follows a family helmed by an extremist in the al-Nusra Front in Syria, and his influence in forcing his children along the same path. It's notable for the almost unfettered access that the filmmaker Talal Derki has to these people, and the fact that it tells a story that would otherwise be lost. It's an achievement that it was created at all. But honestly, I found it a pretty indifferent film. Narratively speaking, it doesn't really capture the attention of the audience, unless you already have an ingrained interest in the subject matter. By necessity, it's shot with largely handheld digital camera work, which further alienates the subject and the audience. As a result, I found there were always barriers between me and the film, and I didn't really engage with it in the way it wanted me to. Not a film I disliked, but certainly one that sits at the lower end of my list.

30. A Quiet Place

Directed by John Krasinski

Another film that is conceptually pretty good, but really let down by its execution. I honestly had so many problems with this film, from the obvious "oh god these characters are too stupid to live", to some of the directorial choices, including the mind-boggling decision to ruin moments of silent tension with non-diagetic music. For a film that's based around the idea that noises can kill you, it effectively ruins any tension that comes from the concept. It's a shame, because honestly, this was one of the more interesting ideas for a film in some years, and I really wanted it to be good, and before I saw it, people had told me it was good. I found this to be a real disappointment though.

31. Capernaum

Directed by Nadine Labaki

I'll admit it: this film is so low mostly because I found it such a struggle to watch. It's a deeply, deeply depressing film, not an intrinsically bad one. It focuses on a young boy, Zain, living on the streets of Lebanon. Opening with him suing his parents for giving birth to him, it then delves deeply into the kind of horrors that could result in such a statement. It's a genuinely unpleasant film, and one which feels, at times, obscene for its (undoubtedly realistic) depiction of severe poverty. It's a powerful film for this reason, but I honestly found it excruciating: in particular a sequence where Zain is left to care for a baby on his own when the baby's mother is arrested. It does have a very vaguely positive suggestion towards the end of the film, but by the end it's almost too late to save the film, and I was already to deep to see any sense of optimism.

32. Bohemian Rhapsody

Directed by Bryan Singer & Dexter Fletcher

Alright, I have things to say about this film, so I'll probably write a couple of paragraphs. First up: this just isn't that good a film. At best, it follows the formula of the musical biopic really closely, to the extent that it almost starts to feel like a parody of itself——or at best it feels like a tired cliche. (Someone, not me, pointed out that it was basically Walk Hard, which is such a funny and insightful observation). But worse than this, it's just not very well made. The dialogue is, at times, cringe-worthy. It's clunky, it's unnatural, or it stinks up the joint with trying to seem profound, and bombing terribly. It's shot in a really quite pedestrian way, and doesn't manage to capture to any great extent the spectacle of one of the century's greatest rock bands. To his credit, Rami Malek does his utmost with the material he's given, and tracks out a fairly compelling figure as Freddy Mercury. I found him honestly pretty engaging on screen, and certainly quite a sympathetic character. Overall, indeed, it paints a fairly rosy portrait of the band (a band I like a good deal), especially Brian May and Roger Taylor. And their music being such a large part of the film gives it a certain intrinsic enjoyment. But to be honest, the quality of the music actually made me angrier about the film as a whole: Queen deserves a better biopic than this one, and I'm really disappointed that this is what they got. It doesn't help that it was thrown into production chaos, no doubt, and that seems like it mostly rests on the shoulders of Bryan Singer—by all accounts a pretty unpleasant dude. For his sake, I hope this doesn't get any accolades. But to be honest, it doesn't really deserve any in any case.

33. Green Book

Directed by Peter Farrelly

You may notice that to some extent, the films that end up near the bottom of this list are those which are not intrinsically bad in the traditional sense, but merely those which too rigidly follow an ascribed formula. Green Book is definitely one of the biggest offenders this year, and this crime is compounded by the fact that apparently there is significant license taken with the reality of the story in order to make it more rigidly adhere to the formula. There's something to be said for Maharshala Ali's laconic portrayal of Don Shirley, and Viggo Mortenson provides the classic foil as his Italian-American driver-slash-bodyguard. But apart from the chemistry of the leads, there's almost nothing in this film that we haven't seen hundreds of times before. It's a predictable clash-of-cultures film that doesn't even manage to eke out the cultural and social messages you might want from a film a black man travelling in the deep south——outside the most mundane and pedestrian. "Wow, racism is bad isn't it?" it seems to scream at every turn, while never once really engaging with the subject matter at a deeper level. Really, we've gone beyond that point in cinema now right? Hell, Black Panther had far, far more engaging points than this film. So yeah, this film really struggled to survive after you cracked through its wafer-thin shell. It honestly didn't have a lot to say in any really deep way, and while you might enjoy the story on the surface, it's hard to really take it seriously when you take a deeper look.

34. Vice

Directed by Adam McKay

Look, this just wasn't a great film. I thought there'd be a certain amount of fun from the portrayals from Christian Bale as Dick Cheney, and Sam Rockwell as George Dubya, but while Christian Bale is serviceable, after a while it starts to feel a little like a caricature (which fits with the overall irreverent feel of the film from the somewhat odious Adam McKay). And Sam Rockwell is fun, but he gets very little screen time. Overall though, this fails because of the same stylistic choices Adam McKay made in The Big Short, a film I found equally vacuous. There's some commentary to be made later in the film——suggesting that it was the Bush/Cheney administration (and in particular Dick Cheney), which led to the current state of American politics. It's probably a good point to make, but this wasn't the right film to make it. It's a shame.

35. Christopher Robin

Directed by Marc Forster

This was, conceptually, a real mess. The idea is that Christopher Robin, best friend of Winnie-The-Pooh, has grown up, and no longer visits the Hundred Acre Wood. Instead, he has a menial job and a family to support. Pooh goes looking for him one day and causes havoc in the real world. It professes to have things to say about lost childhood—and indeed, I could see a better film based around the same kind of concept. But this is only so good. Fortunately, this is only up for Best Visual Effects, and there is something to that, with the compositing of the characters being relatively well done—indeed, there is an achievement in so well blending the cartoonish qualities of the animals with the real world, and not letting either feel misplaced. But that's a technical achievement in a film that had some fundamental cinematic flaws. And let's face it: Paddington and Paddington 2 had the same technical achievements, and used them in far, far superior films.

36. Avengers: Infinity War

Directed by Anthony & Joe Russo

Eh... I don't even really know what to say about this aside from the things I've already made mention of in the better superhero films ahead of this. My problems with this are twofold: firstly, as I mentioned above, the stakes in this film are so high as to be meaningless. I don't care about Thanos having the power to destroy the universe——it's at a level that has no personal resonance. And I honestly can't see anyone in the audience on the edge of their seat going "oh no, what happens if Thanos gets the last Infinity Stone??". Secondly, and this is a problem with all of the Avengers films to date: the cast is so large that the screen time of any one character is limited, and the ability to give anyone a convincing personal storyline even more so. That doesn't stop the Russos from trying though, and to their minor credit, things are helped somewhat by splitting the Avengers into distinct sub-plots which we jump between. But that only helps a certain amount. Overall, this felt like a pretty underwhelming, and slightly cynical entry in the Marvel money machine.

37. Ready Player One

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Do you remember when Steven Spielberg was a good director? I don't even mean, like, a visionary director: creator of blockbusters, classics like E.T. and Indiana Jones. I just mean good. Solid filmmaking with a good conceit and laudable subject matter. Because fuck me if it isn't a long, long time since we've seen that man. The latest in a string of stink-bombs from Spielberg is Ready Player One, and let's be fair to him, this is a stink-bomb intrinsically. All Spielberg does is put it up on screen, perhaps, you might even say, competently. Because the entire conceit of this film is straight up balls. Spielberg just either lacks the insight or the will to turn it into something, anything, slightly better. Story-wise, it's plain and simple wish-fulfillment for every single incel dude on the internet who dreams of a time when their encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture is the one thing that can save the world. That was how Ernest Cline's book was described to me, and that's how this film plays out as well. It's absolutely a concept that we do not need, in any case, but specifically, there's also this weird jarring inconsistency with the vague semblance of plot, and the pop culture references, which are honestly crowbarred in in such a way that they're actively, continuously distracting. And when they're distracting, rather than intrinsic to the film, you just realise how much of a rotting pustule the concept is. And there's some straight up trash in the story too. Plot concepts that are laughable, characterisations that are moronic, or cut-out caricatures, dialogue that made me actively cringe, or (occasionally) actually moan out loud in pain. And let's not talk about the whole "utterly conventionally attractive woman says 'oh, no one could ever love me because I'm hideous and deformed' so our protagonist shows her she's beautiful", oh god I guess I just talked about it so excuse me while I go and vomit for a few seconds. In many ways, I'm grateful that this film came around at the Oscars this year. If it weren't for Ready Player One, Avengers: Infinity War would have taken out the bottom spot. And it didn't deserve this. Few films, in fact, deserve the bottom spot in the way Ready Player One does. It's the kind of film that I really hope at some point people stop making—it actively, I believe, makes the world a worse place, by reinforcing and fortifying a particular type of toxic attitude. There are much better uses that you could put a competent director to. Shame on Spielberg. Alright, now that I've had my moment of catharsis. You might have noticed above that I said I'd watched all of the "feature films", not all of the nominees. The reason why I've not seen all of the nominees is two-fold this year. For one, one of the Animated Shorts seems not to be available by any legitimate means this year. And secondly, I honestly just ran out of time to watch all of the Documentary Short Subject nominees, although if today goes well, I'll watch some this afternoon and evening before the Oscars telecast. If so I'll update this list. The Live Action Shorts tend to dominate this year, because they were brutal and unforgiving, and had more emotional power than just about any of the long form films this year. They were honestly exceptional pieces of filmmaking. I'd say you need to watch them, but in truth there's things in there I wouldn't inflict on the unwilling. The exception is my top film, which manages an emotional punch without the side of existential horror. Here's my ordering, anyway.

Marguerite (live action)

Detainment (live action)

Skin (live action)

One Small Step (animated)

Mother (live action)

A Night At The Garden (documentary)

Fauve (live action)

Bao (animated)

Weekends (animated)

Animal Behaviour (animated)

Let's fill in the Oscars Ballot. As always, this is how I would vote given the nominees. There are other nominees I might like to consider, and films that didn't get recognised at all (did no one go and see Disobedience for instance?). But I've limited myself to just the 3-5 candidates in each category: Best Picture: Roma Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) Best Actress: Olivia Colman (The Favourite) Best Actor: Willem Dafoe (At Eternity's Gate) Best Supporting Actress: Regina Kind (If Beale Street Could Talk) Best Supporting Actor: Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) Best Original Screenplay: First Reformed Best Adapted Screenplay: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Best Animated Feature: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Best Foreign Language Film: Roma (with apologies to Never Look Away) Best Documentary Feature: Free Solo Best Documentary Short: A Night at the Garden Best Live Action Short: Marguerite Best Animated Short: One Small Step Best Original Score: Mary Poppins Returns Best Original Song: "Shallow" from A Star Is Born Best Sound Editing: First Man Best Sound Mixing: First Man Best Production Design: Roma Best Cinematography: Roma Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Border Best Costume Design: Black Panther Best Film Editing: The Favourite Best Visual Effects: Solo: A Star Wars Story Until next year, then, folks, when I should really try to break my streak of seeing all the films. Otherwise, this is going to become a chore.

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spryfilm · 8 years ago

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“The Fly – Ultimate Collection” (1958 – 1989)

Horror/Science Fiction

One of my favorite series of films was introduced to me by television, specifically the old ‘Sunday Night Horrors’ time slot on TV2, where the original “The Fly” (1958) aired regularly. It was not until I was older that I finally watch the two sequels that were made to cash in on the heady days of cold war science fiction films. Its extremely difficult not to like the first two movies, they both feature the legendary Vincent Price who was so cool and charming that he effectively stole both films from the horror they contained. The third film which was produced after a delay was made as an exercise in the genre, but ultimately did not amount to much of a success and was shown as part of a creature feature double bill in the US.

Then in 1986 David Cronenberg reinvented the series with the groundbreaking modern re-make of “The Fly” (1986), which was produced by legendary comedian Mel Brooks. This used cutting edge make up effects to make it one of the more shocking horrors of its day. Chris Walas who was a well-known creature effects artist awarded an Oscar for make up and creature effects. In fact, Walas came back three years later to direct the follow up, the underwhelming “The Fly II” (1989, which ostensibly killed the franchise at the time.

Now comes a box set of all five films collected on eight discs, and I must say it is worth the purchase, in effect all five films have repeat watchability.

“The Fly” (1958)

Written by: James Clavel

Directed by: Kurt Neumann

Featuring: David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price and Herbert Marshall

Andre Delambre: [about the cat killed by the transporter] “She disintegrated perfectly, but never reappeared.”

Helene Delambre: “Where’s she gone?”

Andre Delambre: “Into space… a stream of cat atoms…” [sighs]

Andre Delambre: “It’d be funny if life weren’t so sacred.”

Scientist Andre Delambre (David Hedison) is found dead with his head and arm crushed in a hydraulic press. Although his wife Helene (Patricia Owens) confesses to the crime, she refuses to provide a motive, and begins acting strangely. In particular, she is obsessed with flies, including a supposedly white-headed fly. Andre’s brother, Francois (Vincent Price), lies and says he caught the white-headed fly; and, thinking he knows the truth, Helene explains the circumstances surrounding Andre’s death.

In flashback, Andre has been working on a matter transporter device called the disintegrator-integrator. He initially tests it only on small inanimate objects, but he eventually proceeds to living creatures, including the family’s pet cat (which fails to reintegrate, but can be heard meowing somewhere), a guinea pig, and a newspaper. After he is satisfied that these tests are succeeding, he builds a man-sized pair of chambers. One day, Helene, worried because Andre has not come up from the basement lab for a couple of days, goes down to find Andre with a black cloth over his head and a strange deformity on his left hand. Communicating with typed notes only, Andre tells Helene that he tried to transport himself but that a fly was caught in the chamber with him, which resulted in the mixing of their atoms.

This first film plays like a melodrama spliced with a thriller as well as a touch of cold war paranoia and sci-fi that balances its elements expertly. The film has an interesting plot which of course is the horror/science-fiction aspect, however the narrative is structured in almost complete flashback which is a novelty and it also feeds into the feeling of the unknown as well as creating a kind of tension that stays with the viewer even as the closing credits roll.

Great care was taken by the director Kurt Neumann who had to make us believe in a kind of science but not reducing the story to a B movie that it easily could have been – like its later sequels. Interestingly Neumann was a German emigre to the US, he became famous for directing many B movies as well science fiction films, this however would seem to be his most famous and most successful film.

“Return Of The Fly” (1959)

Written & Directed by: Edward Bernds

Featuring: Vincent Price, Brett Halsey, David Frankham, Danielle De Metz, John Sutton, Dan Seymour and Jack Daly

Francois Delambre: [voice over] “Here passes from this earth Helene Delambre, widow of my brother, Andre, whom I loved deeply, hopelessly. She was destroyed in the end by dreadful memories, a recollection of horrors that did not dim as the years went on, but instead grew monstrously, and left her mind shocked and unsteady, so that death, when it came, was a blessed release.”

Now an adult, Phillipe Delambre (Brett Halsey) is determined to vindicate his father by successfully completing the experiment he had worked on. His Uncle Francois (Vincent Price) refuses to help. Phillipe hires Alan Hines from Delambre Frere and uses his own finances, but the funds run out before the equipment is complete. When Phillipe threatens to sell his half of Delambre Frere, Francois relents and funds the completion. After some adjustments, they use the transporter to “store” and later re-materialize test animals.

This sequel attempted to maintain the horror/science fiction from the first film, but also introduced a spy element no doubt to expand the story as well as painting corporations as evil and out to make profits at any cost – something that remains today and there are hints of this in the remakes of the 1980s.

Vincent Price makes a welcome return as Uncle Francois the level headed patriarch who can see the downfall of anyone that toys with his late brothers invention – he seems to be the only one who learnt a lesson from the first film. Why will people not listen to him. As with most movies Vincent Price appeared in he steals the show and its an entirely better film when he is on screen.

This film is a step down in quality from the original, without the fantastic David Hedison, the protagonist from the original this one lacks an actor of real quality to show the driven scientist who will stop at nothing to prove himself to the world.

This is defiantly worth watching as well as being integral to the legacy of this series.

“Curse Of The Fly”(1965)

Written by: Harry Spalding

Directed by: Don Sharp

Featuring: Brian Donlevy, George Baker, Carole Gray, Burt Kwouk, Yvette Rees, Michael Graham, Mary Manson, Charles Carson, Jeremy Wilkins and Rachel Kempson

At the end of the closing credits: “Is this the end?”

Martin Delambre (Baker) is driving to Montreal one night when he sees a young girl by the name of Patricia Stanley (Gray) running in her underwear. They fall in love and are soon married. However, they both hold secrets: she has recently escaped from a mental asylum; he and his father Henri (Donlevy) are engaged in radical experiments in teleportation, and they have already had horrific consequences. Martin also suffers recessive fly genes which cause him to age rapidly and he needs a serum to keep him young.

The aptly named “Curse of the Fly” (1965) deals with all the shenanigans of the first two films while at the same time re-booting the franchise a little. This film may seem confusing to some who have just watch the first two as the timings and ages of the characters seem a little “off”, but if you go with it you will enjoy a nice short B film which was part of a double bill in the US in 1965.

“The Fly – 20th Anniversary Special Edition” (1986)

Written & Directed by: David Cronenberg

Featuring: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz

Ronnie: I don’t know what you’re trying to say.

Seth Brundle: I’m saying… I’m saying I – I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake.

Ronnie: No. no, Seth…

Seth Brundle: I’m saying… I’ll hurt you if you stay.

Seth Brundle, a brilliant yet eccentric scientist, meets Veronica Quaife, a science journalist, at a press event. He takes her back to his warehouse that serves both as his home and laboratory and shows her his invention: a set of “Telepods” that allows instantaneous teleportation from one pod to another. Brundle convinces Veronica to keep the invention a secret in exchange for exclusive rights to the story, and she begins to document his work. Although the telepods can transport inanimate objects, they mutilate living flesh, as is demonstrated when a baboon is turned inside-out during an experiment.

Seth and Veronica soon begin a relationship. Their first sexual encounter inspires Brundle to reprogram the Telepod computer to cope with living flesh, and he successfully teleports a second baboon with no apparent harm. Veronica departs before they can celebrate, and Seth worries that she is rekindling her romantic relationship with her editor, Stathis Borans; in reality, Veronica has left to confront Stathis about a veiled threat, spurred by his jealousy of Brundle, to publish the Telepod story without her consent. In a fit of drunken jealousy, Brundle decides to teleport himself alone, unaware that a common housefly has slipped inside the transmitter pod with him. After the teleportation, he emerges from the receiving pod, seemingly normal.

The first huge US success for Canadian director David Cronenberg see this update of the classic film given a modern (at the time) makeover with a huge dose of gore as well as the existential questions being asked when a man is merged with a fly at a sub atomic level.

The film offers great performances from the three main actors, Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz, as well as stunning make up effects from the master Chris Walas with an understanding of how this film needed to shock people, from producer Mel Brooks. In fact Chris Wales received an Oscar for his work, the only Cronenberg film to ever receive one.

This is undoubtedly the best film in the series with a director making his move to Hollywood and making one of the biggest hits of that year.

“The Fly II” (1989)

Written by: James Clavel

Directed by: Chris Walas

Featuring: Eric Stoltz and Daphne Zuniga

Martin Brundle: “Something odd is happening to me and I don’t know what it is.”

Several months after the events of The Fly, Veronica Quaife delivers Seth Brundle’s child. After giving birth to a squirming larval sac, she dies from shock. The sac then splits open to reveal a seemingly normal baby boy. The child, named Martin Brundle, is raised by Anton Bartok, who is the owner of the company which financed Brundle’s teleportation experiments and fully aware of the accident which genetically merged Seth Brundle with a housefly. Martin grows up in a clinical environment. His physical and mental maturity is highly accelerated, and he possesses a genius-level intellect, incredible reflexes, and no need for sleep. He knows he is aging faster than a normal human, but is unaware of the true cause, having been told his father died from the same rapid aging disease.

This film, directed by Chris Walas who had received an Oscar for make-up for the first film takes a stab at following up one of the great horror movies of the 1980s, and succeeds somewhat but is let down by budget restraints and miscast actors. Also the fact that Geena Davis would not return for this sequel speaks volumes for the material that was on offer.

This film is on a par with “The Curse of the Fly” as it offers little in the way of an intimate story with the audience not really identifying with Eric Stoltz in the lead and Daphne Zuniga as a lifeless love interest for him to care about.

DVD review: “The Fly – Ultimate Collection” (1958 – 1989) "The Fly - Ultimate Collection" (1958 - 1989) Horror/Science Fiction One of my favorite series of films was introduced to me by television, specifically the old 'Sunday Night Horrors' time slot on TV2, where the original “The Fly” (1958) aired regularly.

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