#playing with the idea of both past and present astra being in the same space lately for funsies

[astraveil]

where do you see yourself

[brendanmoviedate]

Yer fond of me lobster ain’t ye?

Another year, another broken promise that I’d write more often. I’m not going to fool myself going forward and expect I’ll be able to keep up with reviewing every movie I see. However, I’ll continue to write my year-end movie review and perhaps a couple here and there when I feel inspired. 

Looking back to last year’s post, I wouldn’t make too many changes, though I would certainly move Into the Spider-verse slightly higher up. I would also consider adding Upgrade to the list for how brazen it is.

Most of the films I called out as ones to watch for 2019 ended up being either on my list or in the composite image, which goes to show that it’s worth getting excited for new films more often than not.

Vancouver being the way that it is, sometimes we don’t get timely releases of films when other cities do. As a result, I haven’t had a chance to see 1917 and Uncut Gems yet. The latter of which I’ve been dying to see for months and would probably feature on this list. 

Here’s the 10 best films I’ve seen from 2019:

10. John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum

Whereas John Wick: Chapter 2 was the perfect escalation of its pared down predecessor, Chapter 3 is merely an excellent continuation of the newly minted franchise. However, while not bringing anything entirely new to the world of John Wick, it is still an intensely entertaining film. The first 20 minutes is some of the best fight choreography in the series to date and enough to secure a spot on this list.

9. Long Day’s Journey into Night

From director Bi Gan, Long Day’s Journey into Night is a noirish drama about a man (Huang Jue) returning to his hometown following the death of his father to track down his lost love (Tang Wei). The film is a slow burn that jumps between past and present before descending into a surreal 60 minute single take shot filmed in 3D. Regretfully, the only screening I could attend was entirely 2D, but nonetheless, the sequence was still enthralling. This is the type of film that proves that spectacle doesn’t necessarily need to be tied to tentpole movies.

8.  Booksmart

Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut suggests she has an effortless understanding of comedy. Written by a quartet of female writers, Booksmart feels like Superbad for a new generation (I can’t believe that film came out 12 years ago). Interestingly, Jonah Hill’s sister, Beanie Feldstein stars, alongside Kaitlyn Dever (daughter of the guy that voiced Barney the Purple Dinosaur). While it would be easy to say it’s “the female Superbad,” Booksmart is in fact much more than that. Replacing the misfits trying to get laid story with one about a pair of overachievers realizing almost too late that there’s more to life than good grades lets the film be looser and allows the comedy to happen more naturally. 

7. Midsommar

Ari Aster’s follow-up to 2018′s Hereditary began filming almost immediately after wrapping post-production on his previous film. As a result, Midsommar has that extra layer of a director exhausting himself by putting everything on the screen. Midsommar is a much more mature work than Hereditary and one that took a while to grow on me. My initial reaction was less enthusiastic than it is now, but it’s one of the films from 2019 that has stuck with me the most. I imagine a second watch or the extended director’s cut might raise my appreciation of it even more. 

Florence Pugh gives a knockout performance that when combined with her roles in Little Women and last year’s Little Drummer Girl prove that she’ll be a star in no time.

6. Knives Out

Rian Johnson’s first post-Star Wars film sees him reinvigorated and working with a bigger name cast than he has in the past. Essentially a whodunnit along the lines of Agatha Christie, Knives Out follows Daniel Craig’s southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc as he investigates the murder of a wealthy publisher (Christopher Plummer). In addition to playing with a few plot twists, Johnson includes a couple of structure twists as well that turn the film on its head. 

In addition to Craig’s hammy performance, other standouts include Ana de Armas and Chris Evans as the publisher’s caregiver and grandson, respectively. 

Johnson has hinted at the possibility of more Benoit Blanc mysteries, and as long as Daniel Craig is onboard, I’ll gladly watch them.

5. The Lighthouse

In Robert Eggers’ followup to The Witch, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson play a pair of lighthouse keepers in isolation. As would be expected, The Lighthouse is a paranoia-fuelled chamber piece, with Dafoe’s gruff experienced lighthouse keeper getting on the nerves of the younger Pattinson. And while this setup allows the two leads a chance to really dig into the 19th century dialects, the film takes the occasional departure into the eldritch for a very unsettling film. 

As with Black Philip in The Witch, there’s a standout animal character in The Lighthouse - fittingly, a seagull.

4. Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s presumably penultimate film is perhaps his most mature work, ruminating on the idea of legacy and the film industry as a whole. Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood is almost a Tarantino hangout movie reminiscent of parts of Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. A lot of time is spent on scenes that don’t necessarily lead to the film’s climax, but allow the characters room to breathe and feel real. Other than the historical event hinted at throughout the movie, the film doesn’t seem to have a particular direction, which allows you to live in the lives of these characters more than if it was purely plot driven.

The main cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margo Robbie is great, but it’s Pitt who puts in a career best performance. There’s a quietness and a sadness to his character that brings some added depth to an otherwise bold cast.

3. Ad Astra

Brad Pitt’s other great performance this year is in James Gray’s Ad Astra. Having seen Gray’s The Lost City of Z and purposefully avoiding trailers and reviews, my expectation for this film was a reflective voyage centred around the ideas of obsession, loss, and family. All of these ideas were present in Ad Astra, but the real surprise was how seamlessly a space opera was added into the story. I never thought I’d see a lunar shuttle chase, but I’m glad I did.

The amount of casual sci-fi world building in the film is staggering, with entire premises treated as banal. We get to see Pitt’s Clifford McBride travel from Earth to the Moon mundanely on a commercial flight. Most films would take the opportunity to spoon feed to the audience why this is odd, but Ad Astra treats it as normal as the characters do, making it all the more fascinating.

2. The Farewell

Starring Awkwafina, who has quickly shot to stardom after featuring in Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell gives the actress the chance to stretch her dramatic muscles playing Billi, who returns to China to visit with her grandmother who has cancer. Billi’s family insists on keeping the grandmother’s illness a secret from her so she can live out her life in happiness, while Billi struggles with the morals of lying to her grandmother. This premise allows for not only the comedy of misunderstanding, a staple in comedy, but also emotional tension and the devastation of preparing to send off a loved one. 

The comedy-drama balance is handled expertly by director Lulu Wang, making The Farewell the movie I both cried at and laughed at the most this year.

1. Parasite

Had you told me a couple of months ago that my picking Parasite as the best movie of the year could be considered a safe choice, I would have scoffed. Yet here we are, and Parasite has widely been hailed as the best film of the year. I suppose in hindsight it’s not hard to see why. It’s both a crowd-pleasing film and a film that’s deeply disturbing and thrilling.

After having seen Bong Joon-ho’s last five movies, one would be forgiven for expecting a linearity in Parasite. Most of his films tend to have a point A to point B element with an expected (though often subverted) outcome. Heck, Snowpiercer is about a group of people moving from the back of the train to the front, one car at a time. Yet Parasite is different. The film sets up a premise you only find out about as it happens and is quickly overturned once you’re comfortable with it.

I saw this movie the same day I saw Joker and the difference in how the subject matter of class is treated is stark. Whereas Joker wanted to go all dark and Taxi Driver with the theme, Parasite had fun with it and let the elements of drama, comedy, and horror slide along the theme of class.

Like Bong’s Memories of Murder, Parasite will be one of those films I endlessly revisit.

Honourable Mentions

Films that almost cracked the Top 10 that I wanted to shout out here are Us and Doctor Sleep for being really solid, exciting, horror-thrillers. As well as The Irishman for being a classic Scorcese film that gives De Niro and Pacino ample time to with each other. Finally, I wanted to applaud Avengers: Endgame for not only managing to pull off such an ambitious finale, but to make it so goddamned fun.

2020

This year I’m looking forward to new blockbusters from two of my favourite directors, Christoper Nolan and Denis Villeneuve - Tenet and Dune, respectively. 

Despite the stumble with Spectre, I’m extremely excited for Daniel Craig’s last outing as Bond with No Time to Die, by auteur Cary Fukunaga. I can’t wait to see how his style meshes with the Bond template. 

Also of great interest are the new films from David Fincher and Edgar Wright - Mank and Last Night in Soho.

[luci-yabs]

The Way Out - Review

Synopsis: A ship becalmed in space needs repairs. Fortunately, a nearby watch station offers refuge… Surely nothing can go wrong for the crew of the Fortune's Favour?

Plot: This is a fairly good one, definitely the best of Warhammer Horror I’ve come across so far. In many ways the setup is a classical horror and scifi trope which serves it well. A group of spacefarers come across an eerie station and board it...then things start to go bad.

Have you ever watched Event Horizon? In many ways there are similarities between the plots. You have some sort of spacecraft, a spacestation in this case named most ironically Refuge, a group of unlucky victims board it and begin to experience an escalating series of horror phenomena linked to their own personal experiences.

The horror aspect is executed excellently in this one, throughout, playing to the subtle, personal rather than the visceral or gory. The horror strikes at the things the cast regret or feel guilt for, or whatever personal foible they have, dragging it out before them and forcing them to face it. Even till the end there isn’t much in the way of mindless action scenes and the horror remains largely subtle which I enjoy a lot.

In what, I feel, will become a repetitive section when discussing Warhammer Horror is that the ending is once more completely bleak and hopeless. I know Horror loves this as a genre but in my opinion the best horror stories don’t just use the hopeless ending. Regardless though the ending is lacklustre to me the overall plot is still good, develops well and has several good moments. 

Characters: This is one of the most successful juggling of a large cast I have ever seen in a Warhammer audio drama. I’m honestly impressed. Most audio dramas can manage a single protagonist and a single antagonist if they are good, with other characters being very exogenous, but this story manages 5! The character dynamics and interactions are strong here, working together well, in many ways like Corsair: Face of the Void, which also has a very good character interaction web.

Our characters are the command crew of the vessel; Captain Karina, Security Officer Halitz, Techpriestess Sumer (my love) and Navigator Dhovar.

Sumer is my favourite character of the story and is lovingly portrayed. She is by far the greatest source of comedy and such a ray of proverbial sunshine that, although she has no depth to her, she helps prevent the story from lapsing into the common ‘overly dark’ tone by giving it some levity. She’s clearly a character mostly serving the role of tension breaker with no real arc or depth to her but she has a vibrant personality and, most importantly, is simply an immensely likeable character.

Dhovar, obvious bad guy, is the obvious bad guy. For most of the audio drama he is a weak character simply written as the obvious problem. He’s arrogant, likes no-one, constantly hears voices whispering to him and decides he wants to follow the mysterious voices (surely not a bad idea at all!) and tell no-one about them. I’d overall say he’s just a stock bad villain except...the final moments of the story do redeem him somewhat. They give a very personal, human, motive to his recklessness which, though not saving him from being the stock idiot of a horror story who reads the necronomicon, does make him easier to understand.

Halitz is honestly an interesting character. But there is a...a soured aspect to it. You see in many ways Halitz is clearly the stealth protagonist, not Karina. Although the story begins presenting Karina as the protagonist much of the mid and end focuses purely on Halitz and his dark past fighting Tyranids as a member of the Astra Militarum. Halitz has a nuanced depiction; initially a generic military tough guy but then as we see into his mind he’s actually a deeply damaged man, grappling guilt and PTSD and who suffers from the well-fleshed out character flaw that he simply cannot take responsibility for himself, he always, always, needs to find a way to shift his actions, the consequences of them, on to someone else. All this makes for an interesting character who highlights human weaknesses well but...at the expense of very much turning this from a story about Captain Karina’s experience into a story of Halitz’s weaknesses. Part of the problem, I fear, is that as a horror story it needs a character who can feel fear and be affected by the horror inside but Karina is, mostly, depicted as so impossible to scare or intimidate that she doesn’t serve well as a viewpoint character once the horror begins. Still it leaves a bad taste in my mouth as Halitz largely becomes the protagonist and Karina ends up shunted aside.

Karina herself is a fun and engaging character who’s only weakness is that, inside a horror story, she is perhaps to unflappable, able to simply bulldoze her way through the horror with apparent ease, the only member of the core cast who isn’t overcome by some manifestation of her own weaknesses. Atlhough this makes her very fun and enjoyable the result is that I feel the narrative never spends to much time on her since it wants to focus on the other characters who are affected by the horror. I’m already beginning to fear these Warhammer Horror stories will have a trend of female ‘badass’ characters who are ‘important’ and do complete actions in the plot but end up having little substance or agency as Captain Brandon is somewhat similar in Perdition’s Flame. 

Beyond this there is then also Kosch, a lone survivour found aboard the station. There is little to say of Kosch. She does an adequate job of providing exposition in an organic manner, conveying the fear of the horror before it becomes persistent, but she has little character beyond that to discuss. 

Sound Design: The sound work on this one is very good! Sumer’s voice, in particular, I want to praise as conveying both a distinctly human and emotive voice with synthetic and mechanical aspects interwoven which make it actually really pleasant to listen too.

Beyond that the use of accompanying background noises are used well, the voice acting is good for the most part...though I’d note Black Library’s somewhat limited pool of Voice Actors and Actresses is noticeable in a production with a large cast like this because Crewwoman Kosch sounds almost identical to Captain Brandon from Perdition’s Flame. 

A small complaint though: like Perdition’s Flame the ‘supernatural’ voices used are very much of the ‘deep and rumbling’ variety that echo. This isn’t on its own bad or concerning but...if every single ‘spooky’ voice ends up being this same deep, bass, rumble it will soon move from ‘intimidating’ to just boring. I hope we get more range on the spooky voices in the future.

Themes: The story’s focus is rather obviously on the weaknesses of people, things which motivate them. Every member of the core cast has a weakness which rears itself in the story:

Halitz is wracked with guilt over his treatment of a comrade in the past, this manifests in a seemingly compulsive inability to ever accept the consequences for his own actions as part of an extended denial, Sumer is consumed with curiosity and the need to understand the unknown even when she places herself in danger to do so, Dhovar’s issue is the crux of the story so I shan’t go into it in detail, save to say that he misses his home and would do anything to get back there and Karina exemplifies hurting people you care for when they are threatening you and others through their actions. Of all of these only Karina ‘overcomes’ her foible, confronts it and owns it, not as something she must repent for, but as something she accepts about herself. Halitz falls into complete denial, so desperate to never accept blame that he will do anything to escape it, Sumer risks herself to satiate her curiosity and Dhovar makes a terrible bargain even knowing he shouldn’t before he finally sacrifices himself at the end to undo his mistake. 

Conclusion: The best of Warhammer Horror by far yet and honestly just an enjoyable little piece of work. I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to get into Warhammer Horror as I don’t think it holds much for someone looking for a normal Warhammer adventure.