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grigori77 · 4 years

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2019 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30. GLASS – back in 2000, I went from liking the work of The Sixth Sense’s writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to becoming a genuine FAN thanks to his sneakily revisionist deconstruction of superhero tropes, Unbreakable. It’s STILL my favourite film of his to date, and one of my Top Ten superhero movies EVER, not just a fascinating examination of the mechanics of the genre but also a very satisfying screen origin story – needless to say I’m one of MANY fans who’ve spent nearly two decades holding out hope for a sequel. Flash forward to 2016 and Shyamalan’s long-overdue return-to-form sleeper hit, Split, which not only finally put his career back on course but also dropped a particularly killer end twist by actually being that very sequel. Needless to say 2019 was the year we FINALLY got our PROPER reward for all our patience – Glass is the TRUE continuation of the Unbreakable universe and the closer of a long-intended trilogy. Turns out, though, that it’s also his most CONTROVERSIAL film for YEARS, dividing audiences and critics alike with its unapologetically polarizing plot and execution – I guess that, after a decade of MCU and a powerhouse trilogy of Batman movies from Chris Nolan, we were expecting an epic, explosive action-fest to close things out, but that means we forgot exactly what it is about Shyamalan we got to love so much, namely his unerring ability to subvert and deconstruct whatever genre he’s playing around in. And he really doesn’t DO spectacle, does he? That said, this film is still a surprisingly BIG, sprawling piece of work, even if it the action is, for the most part, MUCH more internalised than most superhero movies. Not wanting to drop any major spoilers on the few who still haven’t seen it, I won’t give away any major plot points, suffice to say that ALL the major players from both Unbreakable and Split have returned – former security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has spent the past nineteen years exploring his super-strength and near-invulnerability while keeping Philadelphia marginally safer as hooded vigilante the Overseer, and the latest target of his crime-fighting crusade is Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), the vessel of 24 split personalities collectively known as the Horde, who’s continuing his cannibalistic serial-murder spree through the streets. Both are being hunted by the police, as well as Dr. Ellie Staple (series newcomer Sarah Paulson), a clinical psychiatrist specialising in treating individuals who suffer the delusional belief that they’re superheroes, her project also encompassing David’s former mentor-turned-nemesis Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), the eponymous Mr. Glass, whose life-long suffering from a crippling bone disease that makes his body dangerously fragile has done nothing to blunt the genius-level intellect that’s made him a ruthlessly accomplished criminal mastermind. How these remarkable individuals are brought together makes for fascinating viewing, and while it may be a good deal slower and talkier than some might have preferred, this is still VERY MUCH the Shyamalan we first came to admire – fiendishly inventive, slow-burn suspenseful and absolutely DRIPPING with cool earworm dialogue, his characteristically mischievous sense of humour still present and correct, and he’s retained that unswerving ability to wrong-foot us at every turn, right up to one of his most surprising twist endings to date. The cast are, as ever, on fire, the returning hands all superb while those new to the universe easily measure up to the quality of talent on display – Willis and Jackson are, as you’d expect, PERFECT throughout, brilliantly building on the incredibly solid groundwork laid in Unbreakable, while it’s a huge pleasure to see Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark (a fine actor we don’t see NEARLY enough of, in my opinion) and Charlayne Woodard get MUCH bigger, more prominent roles this time out, while Paulson delivers an understated but frequently mesmerising turn as the ultimate unshakable sceptic. As with Split, however, the film is comprehensively stolen by McAvoy, whose truly chameleonic performance actually manages to eclipse its predecessor in its levels of sheer genius. Altogether this is another sure-footed step in the right direction for a director who’s finally regained his singular auteur prowess – say what you will about that ending, but it certainly is a game-changer, as boldly revisionist as anything that’s preceded it and therefore, in my opinion, exactly how it SHOULD have gone. If nothing else, this is a film that should be applauded for its BALLS …

29. THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON – quite possibly the year’s most adorable indie, this dramatic feature debut from documentarian writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz largely snuck in under the radar on release, but has gone on to garner some well-deserved critical appreciation and sleeper hit success. The lion’s share of the film’s success must surely go to the inspired casting, particularly in the central trio who drive the action – Nilson and Schwartz devised the film with Zack Gotsagen, an exceptionally talented young actor with Down’s Syndrome, specifically in mind for the role of Zak, a wrestling obsessive languishing in a North Carolina retirement home who dreams of escaping his stifling confines and going to the training camp of his hero, the Saltwater Redneck (Thomas Haden Church), where he can learn to become a pro wrestler; after slipping free, Zak enlists the initially wary help of down-at-heel criminal fisherman Tyler (Shia LaBaouf) in reaching his intended destination, while the pair are pursued by Zak’s primary caregiver, Eleanor (Dakota Johnson). Needless to say the unlikely pair bond on the road, and when Eleanor is reluctantly forced to tag along with them, a surrogate family is formed … yeah, the plot is so predictable you can see every twist signposted from miles back, but that familiarity is never a problem because these characters are so lovingly written and beautifully played that you’ve fallen for them within five minutes of meeting them, so you’re effortlessly swept along for the ride. The three leads are pure gold – this is the most laid back and cuddly Shia’s been for years, but his lackadaisical charm is pleasingly tempered with affecting pathos driven by a tragic loss in Tyler’s recent past, while Johnson is sensible, sweet and likeably grounded, even when Eleanor’s at her most exasperated, but Gotsagen is the real surprise, delivering an endearingly unpredictable, livewire performance that blazes with true, honest purity and total defiance in the face of any potential difficulties society may try to throw at Zak – while there��s excellent support from Church in a charmingly awkward late-film turn that goes a long way to reminding us just what an acting treasure he is, as well as John Hawkes and rapper Yelawolf as a pair of lowlife crab-fishermen hunting for Tyler, intending to wreak (not entirely undeserved) revenge on him for an ill-judged professional slight. Enjoying a gentle sense of humour and absolutely CRAMMED with heartfelt emotional heft, this really was one of the most downright LOVEABLE films of 2019.

28. PET SEMATARY – first off, let me say that I never saw the 1989 feature adaptation of Stephen King’s story, so I have no comparative frame of reference there – I WILL say, however, that the original novel is, in my opinion, one of the strongest offerings from America’s undisputed master of literary horror, so any attempt made to bring it to the big screen had better be a good one. Thankfully, this version more than delivers in that capacity, proving to be one of the more impressive of his cinematic outings in recent years (not quite up to the standard of The Mist or It Chapter 1, perhaps, but certainly on a par with the criminally overlooked 1408), as well as one of the year’s top horror offerings. This may be the feature debut of directing double-act Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, but they both display a wealth of natural talent here, wrangling bone-chilling scares and a pervading atmosphere of oppressive dread to deliver a top-notch screen fright-fest that works its way under your skin and stays put for days after. Jason Clarke is a classic King everyman hero as Boston doctor Louis Creed, displaced to the small Maine town of Ludlow as he trades the ER for a quiet clinic practice so he can spent more time with his family – Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color, Stranger Things), excellent throughout as his haunted, emotionally fragile wife Rachel, toddler son Gage (twins Hugo and Lucas Lavole), and daughter Ellie (newcomer Jeté Laurence, BY FAR the film’s biggest revelation, delivering to the highest degree even when her role becomes particularly intense). Their new home seems idyllic, the only blots being the main road at the end of their drive which experiences heavy traffic from speeding trucks, and the children’s pet cemetery in the woods at the back of their garden, which has become something of a local landmark. But there’s something far darker in the deeper places beyond, an ancient place of terrible power Louis is introduced to by their well-meaning but ultimately fallible elderly neighbour Jud (one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from screen legend John Lithgow) when his daughter’s beloved cat Church is run over. The cat genuinely comes back, but he’s irrevocably changed, the once gentle and lovable furball now transformed into a menacingly mangy little psychopath, and his resurrection sets off a chain of horrific events destined to devour the entire family … this is supernatural horror at its most inherently unnerving, mercilessly twisting the screws throughout its slow-burn build to the inevitable third act bloodbath and reaching a bleak, soul-crushing climax that comes close to rivalling the still unparalleled sucker-punch of The Mist – the adaptation skews significantly from King’s original at the mid-point, but even purists will be hard-pressed to deny that this is still VERY MUCH in keeping with the spirit of the book right up to its harrowing closing shot. The King of Horror has been well served once again – fans can rest assured that his dark imagination continues to inspire some truly great cinematic scares …

27. THE REPORT – the CIA’s notorious use of torture to acquire information from detainees in Guantanamo Bay and various other sites around the world in the wake of September 11, 2001, has been a particularly spiky political subject for years now, one which has gained particular traction with cinema-goers over the years thanks to films like Rendition and, of course, controversial Oscar-troubler Zero Dark Thirty. It’s also a particular bugbear of screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, Contagion, Side Effects) – his parents are both psychologists, and he found it particularly offensive that a profession he knows was created to help people could have been turned into such a damaging weapon against the human psyche, inexorably leading him to taking up this passion project, championed by its producer, and Burns’ long-time friend and collaborator, Steven Soderbergh. It tells the true story of Senate staffer Daniel Jones’ five-year battle to bring his damning 6,300-page study of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program, commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee, into the light of day in the face of increasingly intense and frequently underhanded resistance from the Agency and various high-ranking officials within the US Government whose careers could be harmed should their own collusion be revealed. In lesser hands this could have been a clunky, unappetisingly dense excuse for a slow-burn political thriller that drowned in its own exposition, but Burns handles the admittedly heavyweight material with deft skill and makes each increasingly alarming revelation breathlessly compelling while he ratchets up the tension by showing just what a seemingly impossible task Jones and his small but driven team faced. The film would have been nought, however, without a strong cast, and this one has a killer – taking a break from maintaining his muscle-mass for Star Wars, Adam Driver provides a suitably robust narrative focus as Jones, an initially understated workman who slowly transforms into an incensed moral crusader as he grows increasingly filled with righteous indignation by the vile subject matter he’s repeatedly faced with, and he’s provided with sterling support from the likes of Annette Bening, delivering her best performance in years as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Jones’ staunchest supporter, the ever-wonderful Ted Levine as oily CIA director John O. Brennan, Tim Blake Nelson as a physician contracted by the CIA to assist with interrogations who became genuinely disgusted by the horrors he witnessed, and Matthew Rhys as an unnamed New York Times reporter Jones considers leaking the report to when it looks like it might never be released. This is powerful stuff, and while it may only mark Burns’ second directorial feature (after his obscure debut Pu-239), he handles the gig like a seasoned pro, milking the material for every drop of dramatic tension while keeping the narrative as honest, forthright and straightforward as possible, and the end result makes for sobering, distressing and thoroughly engrossing viewing. Definitely one of the most important films not only of 2019, but of the decade itself, and one that NEEDS to be seen.

26. DARK PHOENIX – wow, this really has been a year for mistreated sequels, hasn’t it? There’s a seriously stinky cloud of controversy surrounding what is now, in light of recent developments between Disney and Twentieth Century Fox, the last true Singer-era X-Men movie, a film which saw two mooted release dates (first November 2018 then the following February, before finally limping onto screens with very little fanfare in June 2019, almost as if Fox wanted to bury it. Certainly rumours of its compromise were rife, particularly regarding supposed rushed reshoots because of clashing similarities with Marvel’s major tent-pole release Captain Marvel (and given the all-conquering nature of the MCU there was no way they were having that, was there?), so like many I was expecting a clunky mess, maybe even a true stinker to rival X-Men Origins: Wolverine. In truth, while it’s not perfect, the end result is nothing like the turd we all feared – the final film is, in fact, largely a success, worthy of favourable comparison with its stronger predecessors. It certainly makes much needed amends for the disappointing mismanagement of the source comics’ legendary Dark Phoenix saga in 2006’s decidedly compromised original X-Men trilogy capper The Last Stand, this time treating the story with the due reverence and respect it deserves as well as serving as a suitably powerful send-off for more than one beloved key character. Following the “rebooted” path of the post-Days of Future Past timeline, it’s now 1992, and after the world-changing events of Apocalypse the X-Men have become a respected superhero team with legions of fans and their own personal line to the White House, while mutants at large have mostly become accepted by the regular humans around them. Then a hastily planned mission into space takes a turn for the worst and Jean Grey (Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner) winds up absorbing an immensely powerful, thoroughly inexplicable cosmic force that makes her powers go haywire while also knocking loose repressed childhood traumas Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) would rather had stayed buried, sending her on a dangerous spiral out of control which leads to a destructive confrontation and the inadvertent death of a teammate. Needless to say, the situation soon becomes desperate as Jean goes on the run and the world starts to turn against them all once again … all in all, then, it’s business as usual for the cast and crew of one of Fox’s flagship franchises, and it SHOULD have gone off without a hitch. When Bryan Singer opted not to return this time around (instead setting his sights on Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody), key series writer Simon Kinberg stepped into the breach for his directorial debut, and it turns out he’s got a real talent for it, giving us just the kind of robust, pacy, thrilling action-packed epic his compatriot would have delivered, filled with the same thumping great set-pieces (the final act’s stirring, protracted train battle is the unequivocal highlight here), well-observed character beats and emotional resonance we’ve come to expect from the series as a whole (then again, he does know these movies back to frond having at least co-written his fair share). The cast, similarly, are all on top form – McAvoy and Michael Fassbender (as fan favourite Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto) know their roles so well now they can do this stuff in their sleep, but we still get to see them explore interesting new facets of their characters (particularly McAvoy, who gets to reveal an intriguing dark side to the Professor we’ve only ever seen hinted at before now), while Turner finally gets to really breathe in a role which felt a little stiff and underexplored in her series debut in Apocalypse (she EASILY forges the requisite connective tissue to Famke Janssen’s more mature and assured take in the earlier films); conversely Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), Alexandra Shipp (Storm), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler) and Evan Peters (Quicksilver) get somewhat short shrift but nonetheless do A LOT with what little they have, and at least Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult still get to do plenty of dramatic heavy lifting as the last of Xavier’s original class, Raven (Mystique) and Hank McCoy (Beast); the only real weak link in the cast is the villain, Vuk, a shape-shifting alien whose quest to seize the power Jean’s appropriated is murkily defined at best, but at least Jessica Chastain manages to invest her with enough icy menace to keep things from getting boring. All in all, then, this is very much a case of business as usual, Kinberg and co keeping the action thundering along at a suitably cracking pace throughout (powered by a typically epic score from Hans Zimmer), and the film only really comes off the rails in its final moments, when that aforementioned train finally comes off its tracks and the reported reshoots must surely kick in – as a result this is, to me, most reminiscent of previous X-flick The Wolverine, which was a rousing success for the majority of its runtime, only coming apart in its finale thanks to that bloody ridiculous robot samurai. The climax is, therefore, a disappointment, too clunky and sudden and overly neat in its denouement (we really could have done with a proper examination of the larger social impact of these events), but it’s little enough that it doesn’t spoil what came before … which just makes the film’s mismanagement and resulting failure, as well as its subsequent treatment from critics and fans alike, all the more frustrating. This film deserved much better, but ultimately looks set to be disowned and glossed over by most of the fanbase as the property as a whole goes through the inevitable overhaul now that Disney/Marvel owns Fox and plans to bring the X-Men and their fellow mutants into the MCU fold. I feel genuinely sorry for the one remaining X-film, The New Mutants, which is surely destined for spectacular failure after its similarly shoddy round of reschedules finally comes to an end this summer …

25. IT CHAPTER 2 – back in 2017, Mama director Andy Muschietti delivered the first half of his ambitious two-film adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most popular and personal novels, which had long been considered un-filmable (the 90s miniseries had a stab, but while it deserves its cult favourite status it certainly fell short in several places) until Muschietti and screenwriters Cary Joji Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman seemingly did the impossible, and the end result was the top horror hit of the year. Ultimately, then, it was gonna be a tough act to follow, and there was MAJOR conjecture whether they could repeat that success with this second half. Would lightning strike twice? Well, the simple answer is … mostly. 2017’s Chapter 1 was a stone-cold masterpiece, and one of the strongest elements in its favour was the extremely game young cast of newcomers and relative unknown child actors who brought the already much beloved Loser’s Club to perfectly-cast life, a seven-strong gang of gawky pre-teen underdogs you couldn’t help loving, which made it oh-so-easy to root for them as they faced off against that nightmarish shape-shifting child-eating monster, Pennywise the Dancing Clown. It was primal, it was terrifying, and it was BURSTING with childhood nostalgia that thoroughly resonated with an audience hungry for more 80s-set coming-of-age genre fare after the runaway success of Stranger Things. Bringing the story into the present day with the Losers now returning to their childhood home of Derry, Maine as forty-something adults, Chapter 2 was NEVER going to achieve the same pulse-quickening electric charge the first film pulled off, was it? Thankfully, with the same director and (mostly) the same writing crew on hand (Fukunaga jumped ship but Dauberman was there to finish up with the help of Jason Fuchs and an uncredited Jeffrey Jurgensen) there’s still plenty of that old magic left over, so while it’s not quite the same second time round, this still feels very much like the same adventure, just older, wiser and a bit more cynical. Here’s a more relevant reality check, mind – those who didn’t approve of the first film’s major changes from the book are going to be even more incensed by this, but the differences here are at least organic and in keeping with the groundwork laid in Chapter 1, and indeed this film in particular is a VERY different beast from the source material, but these differences are actually kind of a strength here, Muschietti and co. delivering something that works MUCH better cinematically than a more faithful take would have. Anyway, the Loser’s Club are back, all grown up and (for the most part) wildly successful living FAR AWAY from Derry with dream careers and seemingly perfect lives. Only Mike Hanlon has remained behind to hold vigil over the town and its monstrous secret, and when a new spree of disappearances and grisly murders begins he calls his old friends back home to fulfil the pact they all swore to uphold years ago – stop Pennywise once and for all. The new cast are just as excellent as their youthful counterparts – Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy are, of course, the big leads here as grown up Beverley Marsh and Bill Denbrough, bringing every watt of star power they can muster, but the others hold more interest, with Bill Hader perfectly cast (both director and child actor’s personal first choice) as smart-mouth Richie Tozier, Isaiah Mustafah (best known as the Old Spice guy from those hilarious commercials) playing VERY MUCH against type as Mike, Jay Ryan (successful on the small screen in Top of the Lake and Beauty & the Beast, but very much getting his cinematic big break here) as a slimmed-down and seriously buffed-out Ben Hanscom, James Ransone (Sinister) as neurotic hypochondriac Eddie Kaspbrak, and Andy Bean (Power, the recent Swamp Thing series) as ever-rational Stan Uris – but we still get to hang out with the original kids too in new flashbacks that (understandably) make for some of the film’s best scenes, while Bill Skarsgard is as terrifying as ever as he brings new ferocity, insidious creepiness and even a touch of curious back-story to Pennywise. I am happy to report this new one IS just as scary as its predecessor, a skin-crawling, spine-tingling, pants-wetting cold sweat of a horror-fest that works its way in throughout its substantial running time and, as before, sticks with you LONG after the credits have rolled, but it’s also got the same amount of heart, emotional heft and pathos, nostalgic charm (albeit more grown-up and sullied) and playful, sometimes decidedly mischievous geeky humour, so that as soon as you’re settled in it really does feel like you’ve come home. It’s also fiendishly inventive, the final act in particular skewing in some VERY surprising new directions that there’s NO WAY you’ll see coming, and the climax also, interestingly, redresses one particularly frustrating imbalance that always bugged me about the book, making for an especially moving, heartbreaking denouement. Interestingly, there’s a running joke in the film that pokes fun at a perceived view from some quarters that Stephen King’s endings often disappoint – there’s no such fault with THIS particular adaptation. For me, this was altogether JUST the concluding half I was hoping for, so while it’s not as good as the first, it should leave you satisfied all the same.

24. MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN – it’s taken Edward Norton twenty years to get his passion project adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s novel to the big screen, but the final film was certainly worth the wait, a cool-as-ice noir thriller in which its writer-director also, of course, stars as one of the most unusual ‘tecs around. Lionel Essrog suffers from Tourette syndrome, prone to uncontrollable ticks and vocal outbursts as well as obsessive-compulsive spirals that can really ruin his day, but he’s also got a genius-level intellect and a photographic memory, which means he’s the perfect fit for the detective agency of accomplished, highly successful New York gumshoe Frank Minna (Bruce Willis). But when their latest case goes horribly wrong and Frank dies in a back-alley gunfight, the remaining members of the agency are left to pick up the pieces and try to find out what went wrong, Lionel battling his own personal, mental and physical demons as he tries to unravel an increasingly labyrinthine tangle of lies, deceit, corporate corruption and criminal enterprise that reaches to the highest levels of the city’s government. Those familiar with the original novel will know that it’s set in roughly the present day, but Norton felt many aspects of the story lent themselves much better to the early 1950s, and it really was a good choice – Lionel is a man very much out his time, a very odd fit in an age of stuffy morals and repression, while the themes of racial upheaval, rampant urban renewal and massive, unchecked corporate greed feel very much of the period. Besides, there’s few things as seductive than a good noir thriller, and Norton has crafted a real GEM right here. The pace can be a little glacial at times, but this simply gives the unfolding plot and extremely rich collection of characters plenty of room to grow, while the jazzy score (from up-and-comer Daniel Pemberton, composer on Steve Jobs, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) provides a surprising complimentary accompaniment to the rather free-form narrative style and Lionel’s own scattershot, bebop style. Norton is exceptional in the lead, landing his best role in years with an exquisitely un-self-conscious ease that makes for thoroughly compelling viewing (surely more than one nod will be due come awards-season), but he doesn’t hog ALL the limelight, letting his uniformly stellar supporting cast shine bright as well – Willis doesn’t get a huge amount of screen time, but delivers a typically strong, nuanced performance that makes his absence throughout the rest of the film keenly felt, Gugu Mbatha-Raw continues to build an impressive run of work as Laura, the seemingly unimportant woman Lionel befriends, who could actually be the key to the whole case, Alec Baldwin is coolly menacing as power-hungry property magnate and heavyweight city official Moses Randolph, the film’s nominal big-bad, Willem Dafoe is absolutely electrifying as his down-at-heel, insignificant genius brother Lou, and Boardwalk Empire’s Michael K. Williams is quietly outstanding as mysterious jazz musician Trumpet Man, while Bobby Canavale, Ethan Suplee and Dallas Roberts are all excellent as the other hands in Minna’s detective agency. It’s a chilled-out affair, happy to hang back and let its slow-burn plot simmer while Lionel tries to navigate his job and life in general while battling his many personal difficulties, but due to the incredible calibre of the talent on offer, the incredibly rich dialogue and obligatory hardboiled gumshoe voiceover, compelling story and frequently achingly beautiful visuals, this is about as compulsively rewarding as cinema gets. Norton’s crafted a film noir worthy of comparison with the likes of L.A. Confidential and Chinatown, proving that he’s a triple-threat cinematic talent to be reckoned with.

23. PROSPECT – I love a good cinematic underdog, there’s always some dynamite indies and sleepers that just about slip through the cracks that I end up championing every year, and one of 2019’s favourites was a minor sensation at 2018’s South By Southwest film festival, a singularly original ultra-low-budget sci-fi adventure that made a genuine virtue of its miniscule budget. Riffing on classic eco-minded space flicks like Silent Running, it introduces a father-and-daughter prospecting team who land a potentially DEEPLY lucrative contract mining for an incredibly rare element on a toxic jungle moon – widower Damon (Transparent’s Jay Duplass), who’s downtrodden and world-weary but still a dreamer, and teenager Cee (relative newcomer Sophie Thatcher), an introverted bookworm with hidden reserves of ingenuity and fortitude. The job starts well, Damon setting his sights on a rumoured “queen’s layer” that could make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, but when they meet smooth-talking scavenger Ezra (Narcos’ Pedro Pascal), things take a turn for the worse – Damon is killed and Cee is forced to team up with Ezra to have any hope for survival on this hostile, unforgiving moon. Thatcher is an understated joy throughout, her seemingly detached manner belying hidden depths of intense feeling, while Pascal, far from playing a straight villain, turns Ezra into something of a tragic, charismatic antihero we eventually start to sympathise with, and the complex relationship that develops between them is a powerful, mercurial thing, the constantly shifting dynamic providing a powerful driving force for the film. Debuting writer-directors Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell have crafted a wonderfully introspective, multi-layered tone poem of aching beauty, using subtle visual effects and a steamy, glow-heavy colour palette to make the lush forest environs into something nonetheless eerie and inhospitable, while the various weird and colourful denizens of this deadly little world prove that Ezra may be the LEAST of the dangers Cee faces in her quest for escape. Inventive, intriguing and a veritable feast for the eyes and intellect, this is top-notch indie sci-fi and a sign of great things to come from its creators, thoroughly deserving of major cult recognition in the future.

22. DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE – S. Craig Zahler is a writer-director who’s become a major fixture on my ones-to-watch list in recent years, instantly winning me over with his dynamite debut feature Bone Tomahawk before cementing that status with awesome follow-up Brawl On Cell Block 99. His latest is another undeniable hit that starts deceptively simply before snowballing into a sprawling urban crime epic as it follows its main protagonists – disgraced Bulwark City cops Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Tony Lurasetti (BOCB99’s Vince Vaughn), on unpaid suspension after their latest bust leads to a PR nightmare – on a descent into a hellish criminal underworld as they set out to “seek compensation” for their situation by ripping off the score from a bank robbery spearheaded by ruthlessly efficient professional thief Lorentz Vogelmann (Thomas Kretschmann). In lesser hands, this two-hour-forty-minute feature might have felt like a painfully padded effort that would have passed far better chopped down to a breezy 90-minutes, but Zahler is such a compellingly rich and resourceful writer that every scene is essential viewing, overflowing with exquisitely drawn characters spouting endlessly quotable, gold-plated dialogue, and the constantly shifting narrative focus brings such consistent freshness that the increasingly complex plot remains rewarding right to the end. The two leads are both typically excellent – Vaughn gets to let loose with a far more showy, garrulous turn here than his more reserved character in his first collaboration with Zahler, while this is EASILY the best performance I’ve seen Gibson deliver in YEARS, the grizzled veteran clearly having a fine old time getting his teeth into a particularly meaty role that very much plays to his strengths – and they’re brilliantly bolstered by an excellent supporting cast – Get Rich Or Die Tryin’s Tory Kittles easily matches them in his equally weighty scenes as Henry Johns, a newly-released ex-con also out to improve his family’s situation with a major score, while Kretschmann is at his most chilling as the brutal killer who executes his plans with cold-blooded precision, and there are wonderful scene-stealing offerings from Jennifer Carpenter, Udo Kier, Don Johnson (three more Zahler regulars, each featured with Vaughn on BOCB99), Michael Jai White, Laurie Holden and newcomer Miles Truitt. This is a proper meaty film, dark, intense, gritty and unflinching in its portrayal of honest, unglamorous violence and its messy aftermath, but fans of grown-up filmmaking will find PLENTY to enjoy here, Zahler crafting a crime epic comparable to the heady best of Scorsese and Tarantino. Another sure-fire winner from one of the best new filmmakers around.

21. FAST COLOR – intriguingly, the most INTERESTING superhero movie of the year was NOT a major franchise property, or even a comic book adapted to the screen at all, but a wholly original indie which snuck in very much under the radar on its release but is surely destined for cult greatness in the future, not least due to some much-deserved critical acclaim. Set in an unspecified future where it hasn’t rained for years, a homeless vagabond named Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is making her aimless way across a desolate American Midwest, tormented by violent seizures which cause strange localised earthquakes, and hunted by Bill (Argo’s Christopher Denham), a rogue scientist who wants to capture her so he can study her abilities. Ultimately she’s left with no other recourse than to run home, sheltering with her mother Bo (Middle of Nowhere and Orange is the New Black’s Lorraine Toussaint), and her young daughter Lila (The Passage’s Saniyya Sidney), both of whom also have weird and wondrous powers of their own. As the estranged family reconnect, Ruth finally learns to control her powers as she’s forced to confront her own troubled past, but as Bill closes in it looks like their idyll might be short-lived … this might only be the second feature of writer-director Julie Hart (who cut her teeth penning well-regarded indie western The Keeping Room before making her own debut helming South By Southwest Film Festival hit Miss Stevens), but it’s a blinding statement of intent for the future, a deceptively understated thing of beauty that eschews classic superhero cinema conventions of big spectacle and rousing action in favour of a quiet, introspective character-driven story where the unveiling and exploration of Ruth and her kin’s abilities are secondary to the examination of how their familial dynamics work (or often DON’T), while Hart and cinematographer Michael Fimognari (probably best known for his frequent work for Mike Flanagan) bring a ruined but bleakly beautiful future to life through inventively understated production design and sweeping, dramatic vistas largely devoid of visual effects. Subtlety is the watchword, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t fireworks here, it’s just that they’re generally performance-based – awards-darling Mbatha-Raw (Belle) gives a raw, heartfelt performance, painting Ruth in vivid shades of grey, while Toussaint is restrained but powerfully memorable and Sidney builds on her already memorable work to deliver what might be her best turn to date, and there are strong supporting turns from Denham (who makes his nominal villain surprisingly sympathetic) and Hollywood great David Strathairn as gentle small town sheriff Ellis. Leisurely paced and understated it may be, but this is still an incendiary piece of work, sure to become a breakout sleeper hit for a filmmaking talent from whom I expect GREAT THINGS in the future, and since the story’s been picked up for expansion into a TV series with Hart in charge that looks like a no-brainer. And it most assuredly IS a bona fide superhero movie, despite appearances to the contrary …

#glass #glass movie #the peanut butter falcon #pet sematary #the report #dark phoenix #it chapter 2 #motherless brooklyn #prospect #prospect movie #dragged across concrete #fast color #2019 in movies

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theeverlastingshade · 5 years

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Disintegration- The Cure: 30th Anniversary

It’s rare for an album that’s widely regarded as the go to touchstone of a specific sound, scene, and time to hold up remarkably decades after its release. Thirty years after its release The Cure’s landmark 8th LP Disintegration still sounds like a revelation. The Cure spent the last few years beforehand moving in a poppier, more approachable direction while still managing to retain the idiosyncrasies that they made their name on. This granted them an immense level of popularity that would have seemed unfathomably at any point from their debut, Three Imaginary Boys, up through their fourth record, Pornography. Robert Smith, the band’s vocalist and primary songwriter, became dissatisfied with their popularity which began to manifest in severe depression that led to him coping with perpetual LSD use, which strongly informed the sound of Disintegration. Wider in scope, more emotionally intense, and far more lush in sound than anything the band has done before or since, Disintegration is an astonishing creative breakthrough, one that finds the band operating by sheer dream logic, caught in stasis between surreal fever dreams and a plane of existence beyond human comprehension.

After having established themselves as pioneers of gothic rock with well-received, singular records like Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography, Smith became increasingly frustrated with being pigeonholed with such a narrowly perceived sound. In 1984 The Cure released The Top, which was the first record of theirs to significantly incorporate elements of pop music into the fold. While not one of their better records, it’s one of the more important records within the evolution of their sound. The Head on the Door and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me followed suit, the former crystallizing their fusion of a heightened melodicism within the larger framework of their bleak soundscapes while the latter was a double album that blew their sound open by seamlessly balancing post-punk, new wave, r&b, funk, and synth-pop across 18 songs, many of which still remain their finest to date. Approaching 30 when it was time to record a follow-up to their enormous creative and commercial behemoth KMKMKM, Smith began longing for a return to the dark, signature sound that the band had made their name on with a desire to expand on it with a record that would stand the test of time.

Although clearly built upon the foundation established by the trilogy of records Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography, Disintegration is a markedly different sounding record than anything else that they had previously attempted. Their previous output generally adhered the conventions of proper songwriting, containing verse-chorus-verse structures, standard rock instrumentation, and vocals that lead the arrangements expectedly, even while bending these conventions to their own singular devices. None of the songs on Disintegration operate as you’d expect them to. They aren’t concise rock or pop songs; each is a dense web of foreboding sound that luxuriates in a deep vat of emotional intensity, slowly but surely seeping tension for as long as they need to before dissipating into the intoxicating haze of rich guitars and synths only for a new equally amorphous horizon to emerge. The songs bleed together so beautifully that even choosing standouts is difficult. Everything here can stand incredibly on its own, but nothing comes close to sounding as good when not played in sequence. All the elements that made The Cure so distinct (the gloomy atmospheres, rich texture, emotional urgency, and Smith’s remarkably expressive voice) all congealed stronger than ever here, with songs that stretched the band’s sensibilities to their logical endpoint.

Listening to Disintegration, it makes perfect sense that its sound was so informed by Smith’s descent into severe LSD usage. There’s a dreamlike current that runs through each of the songs here that erodes their edges, and makes it seem as if each could go on far longer and had to be trimmed down by the band to fit onto a marketable record. The songs that make up Disintegration are more similar to one another than on any other record of theirs. Each song begins stirring to life with a dense procession of dreamy guitars and synths before Smith’s forlorn vocals enter a few minutes in, and after building up tension for several minutes everything dissipates back into the fog. If it wasn’t for the clear fadeouts it would be easy to lose track of where one song ended and the next began. The sameness of the compositions can make choosing initial standouts difficult, but it adds to the allure and the cohesion of the album as a whole. You could never mistake a song on Disintegration for a song on any other record of theirs. A record with songs that are this grand, and that unfold this patiently demands your attention, but it rewards it several times over with a spellbinding suite of music far more rich and evocative than you could reasonably expect from a band that had just previously first cracked the Billboard top 40.

Disintegration is an emotionally overwhelming listen from start to finish, and it finds Smith at his most vulnerable and endearing. Though generally gloomy from a purely sonic perspective, the record isn’t as consistently melancholic thematically as it may sound. Although considered by Smith to be the record’s weakest song, due to how straightforward and unabashed it is, “Lovesong” is a gorgeous ode to his wife that provides some of his most thoughtful and succinct writing to date “However far away/I will always love you/However long I stay/I will always love you/Whatever words I say/I will always love you”. While the imagery on “Prayers for Rain” plays into The Cure’s penchant for flirting with melodramatic gestures “You fracture me/Your hands on me/A touch so plain, so stale it kills/You strangle me/Entangle me in hopelessness and prayers for rain” the song still functions as a belief that life can and will get better, despite all evidence to the contrary. “Fascination Street” finds the band out of their element as they explore the unfamiliar nightlife of New Orleans “Because I feel it all fading and paling, and I’m begging/To drag you down with me to kick the last nail in” while “Lullaby” was inspired by the horrific bedtime stories that Smith’s uncle would tell him before he went to sleep “And I know that in the morning/I will wake up in the shivering cold/And the spiderman is always hungry”. Disintegration is loaded with a vast array of emotional states with the only constant being just how vivid and well-realized each is.

Although discerning highlights seems ill-advised given how beside the point it is on a record as thoroughly engaging from start to finish as Disintegration, there are a few songs here that really elevate the record. Opening cut “Plainsong” is an all-time classic album opener, perfectly setting the tone for what’s to come with a stirring concoction of brooding bass, desolate guitar, and hypnotizing synth showers. When Smith’s tender voice emerges over two and a half minutes into the song the overwhelming catharsis that this record is capable of really begins to come into view. “Pictures of You” follows suit with Smith still standing in the rain, gazing at old pictures of his wife from their adolescent days together while basking in the nostalgia. Smith’s voice contains an almost unbearable level of affection here, and coupled with the sugary guitar melody it renders “Pictures of You” one of the best romantic songs ever written. The first two songs set a sharp course correction from what anybody could have reasonably anticipated The Cure doing at this point in time. After the first two songs it becomes undeniable just how much stronger and stranger The Cure had become in just under two years.

“Lovesong” is the only song here that clocks in under four minutes, and it packs in quite a bit of gorgeous string and synth arrangements alongside one of the records most infectious basslines within its comparably short burst, while the record’s longest song, “The Same Deep Water as You”, is just under nine and a half minutes and doesn’t waste a second within its glorious, life-affirming build. The title track contains some of the most impressive and forceful arrangements here, and while coming closest to breaking the dream spell the juxtaposition still works wonders within the context of the record. While nothing here disappoints, Disintegration is at its absolute best on the haunting “Prayers for Rain” where the sharp melodicism of the previous couple of records fuses seamlessly with the desolate sensibilities that define The Cure at their core. The brooding low-end creep and triumphant orchestral undercurrents almost overwhelm in their intensity. It’s here where The Cure really own their singularity, and sound like a band at the peak of their powers who sound like no one else, and who one easily suspects will never sound like anyone after them.

Thirty years after its initial release, Disintegration still holds up remarkably well as a beautiful synthesis of everything that the band had attempted leading up to it while sounding wholly unlike any other record that they, or anyone else, has ever made. The Cure ended up releasing five more records following Disintegration, beginning with 1992’s Wish through 2008’s 4:13 Dream. While most of these records are fairly decent, including, most surprisingly, 4:13 Dream, The Cure never again came close to reaching the heights of Disintegration. They didn’t even really try. All of the records that came in the wake of Disintegration either consist of the band safely mining the dreamy alternative rock sound that the band explored throughout the albums leading up to Disintegration or found the band trying their hand at a return to form of sorts to their formative records without the grandeur or scope of Disintegration. It seems unlikely that they’ll ever release another great record, and no one should expect them to. The first eight records of theirs exist as one of the most remarkable album stretches in all of music. Their sound remains ubiquitous, and their influence undeniable. From The Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails through acts like Interpol and Zola Jesus you can hear the melancholic sweep of The Cure’s sound. Regardless of what The Cure do from here on out, we’ll always have Disintegration for whatever we need it for. I don’t suspect the intense catharsis that it evokes will diminish in its potency any time soon.

Essentials: “Prayers for Rain”, “Disintegration”, “Plainsong”

#The Cure #disintegration #fiction records

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entergamingxp · 4 years

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29 years on, has Final Fantasy broken the spell of Active Time Battle? • Eurogamer.net

Final Fantasy was once a game in thrall to tradition; in the past 20 years, it has become an on-going revolution. Final Fantasy 9 was the last mainline instalment to make use of the Active Time Battle system, which had carried Square’s flagship series for no less than six games across two console generations. Since then, no numbered Final Fantasy has given us the same battle system twice. Each entry has been an experiment, obliged by changing audience expectations and company dynamics such as the promotion or loss of key staff. All have sought to stand apart, but much as Active Time Battle isn’t a clean departure from the turn-based systems that preceded it, so most Final Fantasies circle back to ATB in some way, striving to rebottle the lightning.

We see this, of course, in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, an exquisite but flawed attempt to blend the rhythms of the old FF7 battle system with the action movie choreography that has long hypnotised the likes of Motomu Toriyama, FF7R’s co-director. Where battle in Final Fantasy on PS1 resembles a quaint theatre production, with characters lining up against painted backdrops (FF9’s intro actually concludes with a brawl on-stage), battle in FF7R is a sprawling, hyperactive mess of flying limbs and blades, streaking projectiles and screen-whiting detonations.

A truly comprehensive overview of Final Fantasy’s battle systems would take several books. In this piece I explore a particular aspect – time. Among the things I neglect is the impact of systems and situations outside combat, such as the fatigue too often created by the old random battles. How characters improve obviously has a huge impact on how you handle them in the fray – in FF2, characters enhanced their skills by using appropriate weapons, while in FF8, you’d draw magic from enemies to power up character stats. I also don’t talk about the influence of Final Fantasy’s stablemates, notably Chrono Trigger, which offered its own interpretation of ATB, and Dragon Quest, which has undergone evolutions of its own, but generally cleaves closer to the systems and spirit of 90s RPGs.

Open a menu, however, and you can plunge the proceedings into slow motion, which is both a tactical aid and a window back through history upon the stately pantomimes of Final Fantasies gone by. The gorgeously dragged-out motions of the remake’s cast echo the long-winded combat animations that gave Final Fantasy on PS1 so much of its charm – the camera swooping around the active character as they channel magic or prepare to swing. In the remake’s Classic mode, your involvement is restricted to that window of slow-mo – outside of it, characters move and act by themselves. FF7R’s curious hybrid approach isn’t, for me, a patch on the old school, but I’ve always been fascinated by Square Enix’s attempts to move beyond the battle systems of the classic games without losing touch with them entirely. Specifically, I’m fascinated by the way all these implementations of combat serve as reworkings of the concept of time.

Let’s step away from Final Fantasy for a second and think about what time is, or used to be. Western metaphysics has seen enormous alteration over the last hundred years, the primary culprit there being one Isaac Einstein. According to the classical Newtonian worldview that prevailed up till around the 19th century, time is a constant, linear progression that sweeps everything else along with it, a river flowing from past through present into future. Today, we know that time is far more nebulous, at once entwined with space such that larger masses actually slow down time nearby, and at least partly the product of our brains, external methods of timekeeping and various social conventions. We might revert to the linear notion of time in everyday speech for convenience’s sake – I’ve done so in this very paragraph. But we understand that time is to some degree a fiction, continually invented by those ostensibly “caught in its flow”, and in particular by artists such as the creators of videogames.

Take the turn-based battle system used by the original Final Fantasy, way back in 1987. Its modelling of time may only reflect the computing capability of its era, but there’s something magical about it, something later games have lost. A fundamental point about turn-based battle is that time isn’t measured in seconds, but actions. Time does not simply pass during such clashes; rather, it passes when a character does something. There is no steady onward movement in the Newtonian sense – your party members and their opponents must make choices in order for the present to become past. Time is, in fact, a collaboration between these warring parties, necessarily predicated on an exchange of blows.

The player, naturally, sits outside this representation of time, which makes combat both less and, in a way, more overwhelming. It means that we’re able to lean back and consider our strategies, however close-fought the encounter. But it also allows us to spend eternities inside the instant before a killing blow, a miraculous escape. Towards the end of a gruelling boss fight, when both your tank and your healer character are running on fumes, time feels less like being swept along by a river as hopping between boulders above a roaring waterfall. These intervals are intriguingly reminiscent of accounts of near-death experiences, where survivors talk about time “slowing down”. When you’re conscious of danger, your amygdala – a part of the brain that processes emotions and some aspects of recollection – becomes more active, laying down additional memories as though stacking attack commands. Thus, in hindsight you might feel as though your brain had gone into overdrive, packing more detail into every second.

The critical inspiration for turn-based battle in Final Fantasy wasn’t a near-death experience, however. It was another type of game. According to Hiroyuki Ito – the legendary debugger turned project director who dreamt up Active Time Battle – the system owes a debt to American football, with its symmetrical team formations and pre-planned plays. Time is managed very carefully in American football: there are elaborate rules about starting and stopping the play clock, and exploiting those rules – running down the clock when you’re ahead, for example – may be the key to winning. The tyranny of the clock is also a source of tension and excitement for audiences; it lends the exercise of slamming helmets together a potent narrative structure. Think of those bits in sport movies where the underdog team has a handful of seconds to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Such crescendos are typically preceded by a “time-out”, used in real-life matches to break the momentum, giving players a chance to confer and psyche themselves up for that last-ditch comeback. You could argue that turn-based battle is essentially a series of time-outs. They’re opportunities to strategise, yes. But they also create a distinct and engaging dramatic tempo.

So how does time as the taking of turns compare to “active time”? For the mold-breaking Final Fantasy 4, Ito looked to another kind of sport, Formula One racing. A basic principle of racing is that while you are in competition, you’re seldom in direct contact. Each participant is essentially alone against the clock, though you are travelling in parallel. Under Active Time Battle, time still unfolds according to the interactions between characters, but each character or enemy has their own looping “internal clock”, typically determined by that character’s initiative or speed stat, which decides how often they can act.

Those clocks tick away independently of other characters, unless you meddle with them using spells like Haste, and the result is that time is no longer woven together by the opposing parties, but presented as a set of loosely harmonised solo melodies. When playing in Action mode, the clocks don’t even stop when you’re navigating menus, which means that an enemy might sneak in a fatal blow while you dither over the options. It’s still very laidback next to what we call “real-time” combat, in which time is portrayed as passing of its own accord, but it’s fluid and relentless in a way that is both more stressful and harder to put down. Another integral ATB feature, fleshed-out over the course of the SNES era, is that actions have different durations based on their tactical impact. Thus, casting a doomsday spell might cost you the fight if an enemy is able to sneak in a quick knife blow while your wizard is warming up.

Formula One aside, ATB sprang from a desire for greater authenticity, as detailed in a 1992 patent which doubles as a pretty comprehensive bodying of turn-based battle systems. “[A game] in which action takes place in turns is a static game and lacks realism,” it witheringly notes. In a game using ATB, by contrast, there is no “interruption in the flow of time of the game”. Appeals to realism always ring hollow to me, even in games where you can’t conjure fire demons from thin air, and you could argue that, in reverting to the metaphysical model of a singular “flow”, ATB dilutes the interest of time in Final Fantasy. It is, however, undeniably more exciting to play, and it has broader implications for the series’ handling of characters.

Where the series’ older turn-based battling had you thinking of your party as a block, ATB obliges you to think of party members as individuals, dancing to their own beats. This was an appropriate development, given the increasing elaborateness of Final Fantasy’s writing. In FF1, you guide the anonymous, featureless Warriors of Light, hunks of marble that are sculpted through confrontation. In Final Fantasy 4, the first game to employ ATB, party members have names, biographies and preset combat classes. The shift to 3D character models on PS1, together with Square’s mounting Hollywood aspirations, saw Final Fantasy dispensing with explicit class labels in favour of defining playstyles through personalities. Final Fantasy 7’s Aerith may resemble a White Mage, but her strengths and weaknesses are extensions of her behaviour outside of battle. They reflect who, rather than what she is. Final Fantasy 9, meanwhile, has a lot of fun evoking the old class labels in order to subvert them: Steiner, the game’s knight in shining armour, is a hapless buffoon.

The intriguing thing about the single player Final Fantasies after FF9 is that they pull away from this emphasis on individuals, moving deeper and deeper into real-time combat territory in an apparent quest for ever-greater fluidity. The odd one out is Final Fantasy 10, a transition game which essentially gives you ATB with the heat turned down. Characters still have different clock speeds, but those differences are represented via frequency of turns rather than the ATB gauge – each character’s portrait joining a queue on the right to indicate when they can act. Actions still have different durations, and in a pleasing flourish, you can preview the effects of this by moving the cursor between commands, which shuffles portraits up and down the queue. It’s an elegant marriage of new and old, and as such, more satisfying than it is exhilarating.

Final Fantasy 12, by contrast, is a brilliant eccentric. One of this troubled project’s key aims was doing away with the series’ infamous randomly occurring battles and moving to more of an MMO template, with enemies visible in the field. This desire to avoid interruptions also describes the battle system itself, which lets you configure party member AI as a set of stacked if/then commands or “Gambits”. While you can open a menu to issue commands while exploring the game’s MMO-ish open world, pausing each character’s ATB clock, the safer approach is to set up Gambits so that characters take care of all the decision-making for you. You might program your party’s mage to cast AOE spells when there are more than three foes in view, but only if nobody needs healing first.

While engrossing, this system creates a feeling of growing displacement from FF12’s otherwise lovable cast of urchins, princesses and disgraced knights. The more effective your Gambits, the more you are removed from the cut-and-thrust, and the fewer the breaks in the rhythm created by overlapping ATB bars. The mark of ultimate success is that the player – the greatest constraint upon the unfolding of the game’s time – becomes disposable. Go make a cup of tea, why don’t you? Though sumptuous visual presences enlivened by crunchy olde worlde writing, FF12’s characters also come to seem interchangeable because you can tinker with their clockwork so extensively – a feeling reinforced by the game’s formless License Board customisation system, which in its original guise, allowed every character to master every skill.

Final Fantasy 13 also distances you from the people in your charge, but it restores something like the ambience and tempo of a classic Final Fantasy brawl, with combat occurring in separately loaded arenas. As in FF12, you directly control one character at once while the AI handles the rest, but your control over AI states is more immediate, closer to FF10-2’s sensational wardrobe changes than fiddling with Gambits. Your only way of altering the abilities and tactics available to other party members is to switch “paradigms”, which are unlockable, whole-party bundles of AI routines and abilities.

This spares you the stop-start micromanagement of a turn-based or ATB battle – rather than telling a support character like Vanille to patch everybody up individually, you can switch to the Medic paradigm and she’ll take care of the details – but brings back a little of the agency perhaps sacrificed by FF12. FF13 also gave us the deceptively simple Stagger mechanic, the genius of which is that it is essentially a fast-forward button. Pile on the right kind of punishment – lightning-based attacks for robots, for example – and you’ll eventually stun the target and multiply the damage they receive. Given some elementary thought, this lets you accelerate the downfall of enemies who might otherwise take tens of minutes to kill.

Final Fantasy 13 received something of a pasting at release, and not without reason: it takes you 20 hours to really get into the meat of the battle system, and the less said about Hope, the better. But it looms large in the rear-view mirror. The game would spawn two spin-offs and inform the direction of both Final Fantasy 15 – originally a parallel “Versus” project – and FF7R. I’ve not played enough of FF15 to really assess its battle system (though I’ve written about its AI), but FF7R, for me, is a blunter piece of work. It’s a feast for the senses without doubt, but it founders on that awkward split between real-time, button-mashy combat and an arsenal of spells and abilities that are better targeted using menus. The game’s slow-mo menu selection feels more like an attempt to paper over the divide, than a seamless joining of the modern and the “Classic”. Still, I’ve relished playing the remake both for the liberties it takes with one of Square’s truly sacred stories, and for the thrill of seeing Final Fantasy reinvent time, once again.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/29-years-on-has-final-fantasy-broken-the-spell-of-active-time-battle-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=29-years-on-has-final-fantasy-broken-the-spell-of-active-time-battle-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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grandwitchcollection-blog · 6 years

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Boy21 Through Matthew Quick-- Reviews, Conversation, Bookclubs, Lists.

T opportunities - a characteristic I liked when I was actually more youthful, today much less therefore. In position, this holds true with Skagboys, and also I would assume no less. Edward was actually fast soaking up a significant quantity of biographical info about the most famous males and females of his time, as well as he was actually putting together a compilation from sign letters that the papers had made renowned throughout the country. A teen lady named Style, who was violated, yet nobody thinks her and a teen kid called Ian, who is actually best friends with Zac, the This manual was actually enabling and fascinating. Young boy and Arturo's marriage happens promptly (as well as not without some issues) and also they have a little girl named Bird. At an earlier courthouse hearing in July the kid accepted accountability for unlawfully eliminating Maguire, but stopped short from confessing he had actually killed her. One escort, for example, narrated of a client who wished nothing at all much more than to masturbate while viewing the rental payment child split No. 2 pencils on his very own backside. In 1950's biased United States, the light-skinned dark Whitmans have actually attempted their hardest to pass as a white household, erupting dark coloured child Clara, and encouraging Young boy to carry out the very same along with Bird. The book is actually partitioned 3 components: in the 1st as well as the 3rd Kid is the narrator, and also in the second Bird and Snow inform their tale through a set of letters. Anybody that is actually ever provided successful support companies for men will certainly inform you that the idea that 'men do not chat' is a misconception. The story that Boys sought to capitalise from merely exuded a little bit too much self-absorption. If most feminist teams had the beliefs you carry out, I assume very most men would certainly be wild not to fully sustain them. His comprehensive evaluation from data from throughout the world showed no proof that single-sex universities were constantly exceptional. http://healthywalks.info , by Zimbardo as well as his co-author Nikita D Coulombe, is about why boys don't man up as previous eras of males seemingly did. Alternate real estate, crucial to ensuring the kids leave their damaging way of lives, is actually frequently non-existent. Because we relocated to the United States when I was 13 years of ages, the only people to seek to drench me along with water on Easter Monday have been my siblings. The Coen brothers typically aren't stopping there-- they are actually currently editing Shed After Reading along with Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, as well as Frances McDormand in Ultimate Decrease Pro 6.0. There is actually more to Jess and also Blake than meets the eye, and also in the two from them uncovering that about each other, we acquired a wonderful passion. You get a chapter free of cost, to test how the game focuses on your gadget (its graphic clout suggests relatively effective Android devices are actually recommended); a singular IAP unlocks the remainder. New Boy pays attention to these celebrations at the expenditure of tough charact New Boy, by Julian Houston, deals with familiar area in young adult myth, as well as along with good factor. This was actually appealing, later on, when Bok took place to obtain the perspective from the employer, to find out that, inevitably, these same lamenting boys were those who, coming from the employer's perspective, were either significantly overpaid approximately entirely pointless about be actually noted for very early decapitation. So he had his _ Encyclopaedia _- its own reliability currently established in his mind through General Garfield's letter-and began to study the lives of successful men and women. In your manual when George told his mommy he seemed like a female, she couldn't approve this. Mommies are actually meant to adore you whatever, even if you aren't what they wished you would certainly be. When I dealt with that I recognized when George's mama didn't allow him, he form of stopped and ended up being inhibited. Of course any type of social guy, regardless of just how big his correspondence, is pleased to acquire an earnest letter off an information-seeking boy. He likes his family, yet really isn't quite Guy and Young boy by Tony Parsons is actually the account of how a guy comes to be a father brown to his boy, as well as a kid to a father. Men relate stories differently compared to women do, or even though he's gay, I definitely would not anticipate him to essentially offer a comprehensive model of events-it's only not sensible of his personality. The young boy was so appreciative that the lion did certainly not want to consume him, that he gladly grabbed his knapsack which lay on the ground, and also held up some bread as well as a bottle from wine. These detail that the bay between girls as well as males is an item from attributes, not nourish. Because they might own smaller automobiles or possess a bag that they utilize to lug points about is merely plan stupid, I assume mentioning that Guy are actually becoming more like girls. Men are actually provided less sympathy than ladies, few guys yet that is actually still a substantial concern for all males typically. I desired to rise as well as cheer considering that below was actually an 8-year aged boy-past the age when young boys start to stop emotionally-who, hoping to preserve good partnerships, wished to discuss feelings. One boy I recognized, with an appetite for graffiti, took a series of spray cans to his room and also en-suite shower room (and also furnishings) when bored one afternoon, while yet another thrilled in that he possessed his mommy's imposingly sizable vibrator and also 'love eggs' hidden at the back of his cupboard. And also the managing boy is interesting: he was running away off the school bus, held no publications and also used no shoes. These are fairly identical since This reveals a journal or even a lifestyle concerning a boy who is actually lifestyle is ridiculous as well as despites many factors that make both young boys gloomy as well as possess a dog's life. That possesses a similarly essential message for those of us who in the chaos of a busy world are actually straining to attain, in many occasions without any sight beyond the desire to deliver as greatest our company could for the well being from our own selves and our households. At one aspect, the movie even swerves into a trip where Kyuta asks the different elders from the creature world about the attribute of durability as well as is actually astounded (and thrilled) due to the several responses he receives. On the other hand, so that the newspapers could be properly supplied with thistles for their shafts, he published an entire amount of his magazine created by the children from renowned men. The only trait I am actually finding is a lot of melodrama and labels that bring in the characters seem like horses. My favored easily is actually the seeker ensemble generally because Kid mentions, Robin Hoooooooood!" in an amusing voice. For some time, I could possibly have given Samantha in Sex And also The City a run for her amount of money, marching along with a set from pleasant younger guys (the youngest was actually 24) - as well as I can not refute what an awesome increase this was actually to my assurance at a time when I believed I was moving towards spinsterhood. IMO that is actually the main reason guys commit suicide in such file amounts, it is actually the leading cause for guys under FIFTY.

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jdketchwrites · 7 years

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Coming Out of the Broom Closet

With all of the turmoil and division in our country lately. Between the election, the violence in Charleston, and now the tragedy in Houston. I’ve noticed an increased amount of discussion surrounding religion. This has traditionally been a sensitive subject for me as I've only just recently been able to be open and honest about my beliefs within the past 10 years or so.

Surprisingly, I've found that by being open and honest about my own beliefs, I’ve seen them begin to change in a very organic way to a place where I am the most comfortable with my practice and faith than I ever have in the past. I am, however, concerned by own continued temptation to explain or justify said practices to anyone who feels differently or is on a similar but different path. For anyone reading, I apologize, as I'm being intentionally obtuse here, I will get to some specifics in a moment. One of my core beliefs when it comes to religion is that there is no 'one size fits all' solution. Everyone finds their own way to peace and enlightenment. Be it through the bible and Jesus, the Torah and Yahweh, or a Book of Shadows and Gaia.

For years I bristled against Christians of all stripes. Primarily because of my resistance to rules and dogma, but also because of a significant amount of negative experiences with various churches in my youth. It would take me another decade and a half before I would meet anyone of the Christian persuasion that I didn't feel like they wanted to crucify me or burn me at the stake for daring to not adhere to their beliefs. That was when I went to a Jesuit university to finish my bachelors in English and was required to take a theology course taught by the wonderful Jean Weber. She was a Sister of Ignatius and one of the top Bible scholars in the world. When we were asked to go around the room and discuss some of our feelings on faith, I took a chance and came out of the broom closet, so to speak. At that time, I was still identifying as Wiccan. Dr. Weber's response to my honesty was so remarkable that It stuck with me forever. Here's this dyed in the wool member of the Catholic church, and here's this thirty something non-traditional student in a night course declaring that he's a witch in front of a class of theology students and her response is,"That's fantastic, I don't have a lot of experience there but I'd love to learn more from you." This has been my own go to response to anyone of a faith I'm not familiar with ever since. I've responded this way to everyone from Mormons to LaVeyan Satanists, and have found that this response garners me more respect than scorn.

But as I've stated in the beginning, my openness to talk about my particular belief and religious leanings have allowed me to examine it and allow it to evolve. When I was asked in that class almost 10 years ago, I was still identifying as Wiccan. I had been identifying as Wiccan since college as at a time when I needed spiritual help the most in my life, I was met with not Christians offering to help, but a group of novice Witches, who embraced me with no judgement, and were willing to answer any questions I had, yet did not seem adamant on recruiting me. It would be several years later that I would self-identify as a witch myself. In my time since meeting that group of Wiccans in college, and adopting the practice myself, to coming out openly as a Witch in my 30's on a Jesuit campus, I've picked up a significant amount of study in the area and have adopted an eclectic and singular practice and ideas on faith and belief. I no longer call myself Wiccan. I know many Wiccans and I respect their practices and their structures. However, those practices and structures do not work for me spiritually any longer. If I'm being honest, I don't think they ever did. However, at the time that I was finding myself magickly and spiritually, I lacked the confidence, and the vocabulary to identify as anything else. The way in which I identify currently is simply Pagan. Being neither Christian nor Jewish belief and adhering to a pre-Christian polytheistic mindset. Even that is an incomplete description of my beliefs. Though Pagan is the easiest way I have to answer the question, "What is your Religion?" If I were to be more specific I would state that I am a Fictionalist Chaote Weirdsmith. If some of those words sound made-up to you, you're correct. At a certain point, my spiritual ideas and identity reached a point in which I had to find new ways to identify it. I'll break it down one by one.

Fictionalist: This one, above the other two, is probably the core of my beliefs. So much so, that much of what informs my belief in this instance supercedes and even contradicts the other parts of my own spiritual identity. I refer to myself as a fictionalist because, I feel all fiction, that being the classification for any story or setting that is derived from imagination, to be sacred. To better illustrate my feelings here, let me use a quote from Neil Gaiman in his book American Gods.

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.

In my own words:

Fiction is the story of how we see ourselves, told without the constraints of empeirical evidence or plausibility. Our turest selves, without the burdens or banality of experience. Fiction is the experience of life with the boring bits edited out. Fiction demands empathy as you expeirence life though another's eyes. Just because something is fictional, doesn't mean it isn't true. Just because it never happened, doesn't mean it's not real.

Often, Christians will bristle when I state that I believe the Bible to be a work of fiction. What they don't understand is that, for me, that is stating it is sacred. Whether or not the people and places depicted in the book really existed as living breathing people is not as important as the story they tell or the lessons they teach. I also believe that one can learn as much from Tolkien, Jane Eyre, Douglas Adams, Jane Austen, and any other work of literature as you can from the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah. To me, all fiction is Sacred. When I describe myself to others as Pagan, they will sometimes ask if I believe in other gods. I will say I do, I believe in all gods. Does that mean that I believe God or gods exist? No, not empirically, I believe that a deity is a fictional construct that we humans create in order to interact with the world beyond comprehension. That leads me to the second part of my spiritual designation.

Chaote: an easy definition of Chaote is one who practices Chaos Magick. The Wikipedia description of Chaos Magick is

A contemporary magical practice which emphasizes the pragmatic use of belief systems and the creation of new and unorthodox methods.

Which I find fairly accurate. I ran across the concept of Chaos Magick when I was first learning my way around Pagan beliefs. I had a few friends who had dabbled in Discordianism for a time. Finding that to be insufferable, I slowly discovered that my own magickal practice veered away from much of the ritual and methods of traditional witchcraft and Wicca. Still adhering to the basic tenant of Do No Harm, I began experimenting with my own instinctual methods and settled in on a practice that is singular to me, simple, and unorthodox. In my research of Chaos Magick, I learned Sigil Magick from the magician and author Grant Morrison. I came across cartomancy on my own, through exploring my own fascination with playing cards and stage magic. I combined the two and began recording my findings in my own book of Shadows. I understand that there may be a lot of jargon there and what I've just typed may not be exactly informative. Though I hope the bit about fictionalism is at least straightforward enough to be intriguing. The Chaote bit is a bit messy by design. It is chaos after all. Finally, Weirdsmith: This is a term I made up for myself as an identifier that sums up the other two combined. It is also a reminder to myself that whether I regularly practice anything else, be it magick or prayer or anything. I could give all of that up, and as long as I continue to contribute to the general weirdness of the world, I'm still being true to myself. The purpose of this little missive isn't to sway anyone to my side of the fence or anything. I have had a number of inquiries into my particular belief structure, and I also feel that describing something in writing is a good way to explore and study it. And in my experience, beliefs need to be studied and explored, and ultimately questioned on a regular basis, if they are to be trusted at all. So, whatever your belief, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, or something else entirely, I find it fascinating and hope to learn more from you.

#religion #magick #chaote #fictionalism #weirdsmith

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grigori77 · 5 years

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Movies of 2019 - My Pre-Summer Favourites (Part 2)

The Top Ten:

10. GLASS – back in 2000, I went from liking the work of The Sixth Sense’s writer-director M. Night Shyamalan to becoming a genuine FAN thanks to his sneakily revisionist deconstruction of superhero tropes, Unbreakable. It’s STILL my favourite film of his to date, and one of my Top Ten superhero movies EVER, not just a fascinating examination of the mechanics of the genre but also a very satisfying screen origin story – needless to say I’m one of MANY fans who’ve spent nearly two decades holding out hope for a sequel. Flash forward to 2016 and Shyamalan’s long-overdue return-to-form sleeper hit, Split, which not only finally put his career back on course but also dropped a particularly killer end twist by actually being that very sequel. Needless to say 2019 was the year we FINALLY got our PROPER reward for all our patience – Glass is the TRUE continuation of the Unbreakable universe and the closer of a long-intended trilogy. Turns out, though, that it’s also his most CONTROVERSIAL film for YEARS, dividing audiences and critics alike with its unapologetically polarizing plot and execution – I guess that, after a decade of MCU and a powerhouse trilogy of Batman movies from Chris Nolan, we were expecting an epic, explosive action-fest to close things out, but that means we forgot exactly what it is about Shyamalan we got to love so much, namely his unerring ability to subvert and deconstruct whatever genre he’s playing around in. And he really doesn’t DO spectacle, does he? That said, this film is still a surprisingly BIG, sprawling piece of work, even if it the action is, for the most part, MUCH more internalised than most superhero movies. Not wanting to drop any major spoilers on the few who still haven’t seen it, I won’t give away any major plot points, suffice to say that ALL the major players from both Unbreakable and Split have returned – former security guard David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has spent the past nineteen years exploring his super-strength and near-invulnerability while keeping Philadelphia marginally safer as hooded vigilante the Overseer, and the latest target of his crime-fighting crusade is Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), the vessel of 24 split personalities collectively known as the Horde, who’s continuing his cannibalistic serial-murder spree through the streets. Both are being hunted by the police, as well as Dr. Ellie Staple (series newcomer Sarah Paulson), a clinical psychiatrist specialising in treating individuals who suffer the delusional belief that they’re superheroes, her project also encompassing David’s former mentor-turned-nemesis Elijah Price, the eponymous Mr. Glass, whose life-long suffering from a crippling bone disease that makes his body dangerously fragile has done nothing to blunt the genius-level intellect that’s made him a ruthlessly accomplished criminal mastermind. How these remarkable individuals are brought together makes for fascinating viewing, and while it may be a good deal slower and talkier than some might have preferred, this is still VERY MUCH the Shyamalan we first came to admire – fiendishly inventive, slow-burn suspenseful and absolutely DRIPPING with cool, earworm dialogue, his characteristically mischievous sense of humour still present and correct, and he’s still retained that unswerving ability to wrong-foot us at every turn, right up to one of his most surprising twist endings to date. The cast are, as ever, on fire, the returning hands all superb while those new to the universe easily measure up to the quality of talent on display – Willis and Jackson are, as you’d expect, PERFECT throughout, brilliantly building on the incredibly solid groundwork laid in Unbreakable, while it’s a huge pleasure to see Anya Taylor-Joy, Spencer Treat Clark (a fine actor we don’t see NEARLY enough of, in my opinion) and Charlayne Woodard get MUCH bigger, more prominent roles this time out, while Paulson delivers an understated but frequently mesmerising turn as the ultimate unshakable sceptic. As with Split, however, the film is once again comprehensively stolen by McAvoy, whose truly chameleonic performance actually manages to eclipse its predecessor in its levels of sheer genius. Altogether this is another sure-footed step in the right direction for a director who’s finally regained his singular auteur prowess – say what you will about that ending, but it certainly is a game-changer, as boldly revisionist as anything that’s preceded it and therefore, in my opinion, exactly how it SHOULD have gone. If nothing else, this is a film that should be applauded for its BALLS …

9. PET SEMATARY – first off, let me say that I never saw the 1989 feature adaptation of Stephen King’s story, so I have no comparative frame of reference there – I WILL say, however, that the original novel is, in my opinion, easily one of the strongest offerings from America’s undisputed master of literary horror, so any attempt made to bring it to the big screen had better be a good one. Thankfully, this version more than delivers in that capacity, proving to be one of the more impressive of his cinematic outings in recent years (not quite up to the standard of The Mist, perhaps, but about on a par with It: Chapter One or the criminally overlooked 1408), as well as one of this year’s best horror offerings by far (at least for now). This may be the feature debut of directing double-act Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, but they both display a wealth of natural talent here, wrangling bone-chilling scares and a pervading atmosphere of oppressive dread to deliver a top-notch screen fright-fest that works its way under your skin and stays put for days after. Jason Clarke is a classic King everyman hero as Boston doctor Louis Creed, displaced to the small Maine town of Ludlow as he trades the ER for a quiet clinic practice so he can spent more time with his family – Amy Seimetz (Upstream Color, Stranger Things), excellent throughout as his haunted, emotionally fragile wife Rachel, toddler son Gage (twins Hugo and Lucas Lavole), and daughter Ellie (newcomer Jeté Laurence, BY FAR the film’s biggest revelation, delivering to the highest degree even when her role becomes particularly intense). Their new home seems idyllic, the only blots being the main road at the end of their drive which experiences heavy traffic from speeding trucks, and the children’s pet cemetery in the woods at the back of their garden, which has become something of a local landmark. But there’s something far darker in the deeper places beyond, an ancient place of terrible power Louis is introduced to by their well-meaning but ultimately fallible elderly neighbour Jud (one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from screen legend John Lithgow) when his daughter’s beloved cat Church is run over. The cat genuinely comes back, but he’s irrevocably changed, the once sweet and lovable furball now transformed into a menacingly mangy little four-legged psychopath, and his resurrection sets off a chain of horrific events destined to devour the entire family … this is supernatural horror at its most inherently unnerving, mercilessly twisting the screws throughout its slow-burn build to the inevitable third act bloodbath and reaching a bleak, soul-crushing climax that comes close to rivalling the still unparalleled sucker-punch of The Mist – the adaptation skews significantly from King’s original at the mid-point, but even purists will be hard-pressed to deny that this is still VERY MUCH in keeping with the spirit of the book right up to its harrowing closing shot. The King of Horror has been well served once again – it’s may well be ousted when It: Chapter 2 arrives in September, but fans can rest assured that his dark imagination continues to inspire some truly great cinematic scares …

8. PROSPECT – I love a good cinematic underdog, there’s always some dynamite indies and sleepers that just about slip through the cracks that I end up championing every year, and 2019’s current favourite was a minor sensation at 2018’s South By Southwest film festival, a singularly original ultra-low-budget sci-fi adventure that made a genuine virtue of its miniscule budget. Riffing on classic eco-minded space flicks like Silent Running, it introduces a father-and-daughter prospecting team who land a potentially DEEPLY lucrative contract mining for an incredibly rare element on a toxic jungle moon – widower Damon (Transparent’s Jay Duplass), who’s downtrodden and world-weary but still a dreamer, and teenager Cee (relative newcomer Sophie Thatcher), an introverted bookworm with hidden reserves of ingenuity and fortitude. The job starts well, Damon setting his sights on a rumoured “queen’s layer” that could make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, but when they meet smooth-talking scavenger Ezra (Narcos’ Pedro Pascal), things take a turn for the worse – Damon is killed and Cee is forced to team up with Ezra to have any hope of survival on this hostile, unforgiving moon. Thatcher is an understated joy throughout, her seemingly detached manner belying hidden depths of intense feeling, while Pascal, far from playing a straight villain, turns Ezra into something of a tragic, charismatic antihero we eventually start to sympathise with, and the complex relationship that develops between them is a powerful, mercurial thing, the constantly shifting dynamic providing a powerful driving force for the film. Debuting writer-directors Zeek Earl and Chris Caldwell have crafted a wonderfully introspective, multi-layered tone poem of aching beauty, using subtle visual effects and a steamy, glow-heavy colour palette to make the lush forest environs into something nonetheless eerie and inhospitable, while the various weird and colourful denizens of this deadly little world prove that Ezra may be the LEAST of the dangers Cee faces in her hunt for escape. Inventive, intriguing and a veritable feast for the eyes and intellect, this is top-notch indie sci-fi and a sign of great things to come from its creators, thoroughly deserving of some major cult recognition in the future.

7. DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE – S. Craig Zahler is a writer-director who’s become a major fixture on my ones-to-watch list in recent years, instantly winning me over with his dynamite debut feature Bone Tomahawk before cementing that status with awesome follow-up Brawl On Cell Block 99. His latest is another undeniable hit that starts deceptively simply before snowballing into a sprawling urban crime epic as it follows its main protagonists – disgraced Bulwark City cops Brett Ridgeman (Mel Gibson) and Tony Lurasetti (Cell Block 99’s Vince Vaughn), on unpaid suspension after their latest bust leads to a PR nightmare – on a descent into a hellish criminal underworld as they set out to “seek compensation” for their situation by ripping off the score from a bank robbery spearheaded by ruthlessly efficient professional thief Lorentz Vogelmann (Thomas Kretschmann). In lesser hands, this two-hour-forty-minute feature might have felt like a painfully padded effort that would have passed far better chopped down to a breezy 90-minutes, but Zahler is such a compellingly rich and resourceful writer that every scene is essential viewing, overflowing with exquisitely drawn characters spouting endlessly quotable, gold-plated dialogue, and the constantly shifting narrative focus brings such consistent freshness that the increasingly complex plot remains rewarding right to the end. The two leads are both typically excellent – Vaughn gets to let loose with a far more showy, garrulous turn here than his more reserved character in his first collaboration with Zahler, while this is EASILY the best performance I’ve seen Gibson deliver in YEARS, the grizzled veteran clearly having a fine old time getting his teeth into a particularly meaty role that very much plays to his strengths – and they’re brilliantly bolstered by an excellent supporting cast – Get Rich Or Die Tryin’s Tory Kittles easily matches them in his equally weighty scenes as Henry Johns, a newly-released ex-con also out to improve his family’s situation with a major score, while Kretschmann is at his most chilling as the brutal killer who executes his plans with cold-blooded precision, and there are wonderful scene-stealing offerings from Jennifer Carpenter, Udo Kier, Don Johnson (three more Zahler regulars, each having worked with Vaughn on Cell Block 99), Michael Jai White, Laurie Holden and newcomer Miles Truitt. This is a really meaty film, dark, intense, gritty and unflinching in its portrayal of honest, unglamorous violence and its messy aftermath, but fans of grown-up filmmaking will find PLENTY to enjoy here, Zahler crafting a crime epic comparable to the heady best of Scorsese and Tarantino. Another sure-fire winner from one of the best new filmmakers around.

6. SHAZAM! – there are actually THREE movies featuring Captain Marvel out this year, but this offering from the hit-and-miss DCEU cinematic franchise is a very different beast from his MCU-based namesake, and besides, THIS Cap long ago ditched said monicker for the far more catchy (albeit rather more oddball) title that graces Warner Bros’ latest step back on the right track for their superhero Universe following December’s equally enjoyable Aquaman and franchise high-point Wonder Woman. Although he’s never actually referred to in the film by this name, Shazam (Chuck’s Zachary Levy) is the magically-powered alternate persona bestowed upon wayward fifteen year-old foster kid Billy Batson (Andi Mack’s Asher Angel) by an ancient wizard (Djimon Hounsou) seeking one pure soul to battle Dr. Thaddeus Sivana (Mark Strong), a morally corrupt physicist who turns into a monstrous supervillain after becoming the vessel for the spiritual essences of the Seven Deadly Sins (yup, that thoroughly batshit setup is just the tip of the iceberg of bonkersness on offer in this movie). Yes, this IS set in the DC Extended Universe, Shazam sharing his world with Superman, Batman, the Flash et al, and there are numerous references (both overt and sly) to this fact throughout (especially in the cheeky animated closing title sequence), but it’s never laboured, and the film largely exists in its own comfortably enclosed narrative bubble, allowing us to focus on Billy, his alter ego and in particular his clunky (but oh so much fun) bonding experiences with his new foster family, headed by former foster kid couple Victor and Rosa Vazquez (The Walking Dead’s Cooper Andrews and Marta Milans) – the most enjoyably portions of the film, however, are when Billy explores the mechanics and limits of his newfound superpowers with his new foster brother Freddy Freeman (It: Chapter One’s Jack Dylan Glazer), a consistently hilarious riot of bad behaviour, wanton (often accidental) destruction and perfectly-observed character development, the blissful culmination of a gleefully anarchic sense of humour that, until recently, has been rather lacking in the DCEU but which is writ large in bright, wacky primary colours right through this film. Sure, there are darker moments, particularly when Sivana sets loose his fantastic icky brood of semi-incorporeal monsters, and these scenes are handled with seasoned skill by director David F. Sandberg, who cut his teeth on ingenious little horror gem Lights Out (following up with Annabelle: Creation, but we don’t have to dwell on that), but for the most part the film is played for laughs, thrills and pure, unadulterated FUN, almost never taking itself too seriously, essentially intended to do for the DCEU what Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man did for the MCU, and a huge part of its resounding success must of course be attributed to the universally willing cast. Levy’s so ridiculously pumped-up he almost looks like a special effect all on his own, but he’s lost none of his razor-sharp comic ability, perfectly encapsulating a teenage boy in a grown man’s body, while his chemistry with genuine little comedic dynamo Glazer is simply exquisite, a flawless balance shared with Angel, who similarly excels at the humour but also delivers quality goods in some far more serious moments too, while the rest of Billy’s newfound family are all brilliant, particularly ridiculously adorable newcomer Faithe Herman as precocious little motor-mouth Darla; Djimon Hounsou, meanwhile, adds significant class and gravitas to what could have been a cartoonish Gandalf spoof, and Mark Strong, as usual, gives great bad guy as Sivana, providing just the right amount of malevolent swagger and self-important smirk to proceedings without ever losing sight of the deeper darkness within. All round, this is EXACTLY the kind of expertly crafted superhero package we’ve come to appreciate in the genre, another definite shot in the arm for the DCEU that holds great hope for the future of the franchise, and some of the biggest fun I’ve had at the cinema so far this year. Granted, it’s still not a patch on the MCU, but the quality gap does finally look to be closing …

5. ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL – y’know, there was a time when James Cameron was quite a prolific director, who could be counted upon to provide THE big event pic of the blockbuster season. These days, we’re lucky to hear from him once a decade, and now we don’t even seem to be getting that – the dream project Cameron’s been trying to make since the end of the 90s, a big live action adaptation of one of my favourite mangas of all time, Gunnm (or Battle Angel Alita to use its more well-known sobriquet) by Yukito Kishiro, has FINALLY arrived, but it isn’t the big man behind the camera here since he’s still messing around with his intended FIVE MOVIE Avatar arc. That said, he made a damn good choice of proxy to bring his vision to fruition – Robert Rodriguez is, of course a fellow master of action cinema, albeit one with a much more quirky style, and this adap is child’s play to him, the creator of the El Mariachi trilogy and co-director of Frank Miller’s Sin City effortlessly capturing the dark, edgy life-and-death danger and brutal wonder of Kishiro’s world in moving pictures. 300 years after the Earth was decimated in a massive war with URM (the United Republics of Mars) known as “the Fall”, only one bastion of civilization remains – Iron City, a sprawling, makeshift community of scavengers that lies in the shadow of the floating city of Zalem, home of Earth’s remaining aristocracy. Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) runs a clinic in Iron City customising and repairing the bodies of its cyborg citizens, from the mercenary “hunter killers” to the fast-living players of Motorball (a kind of supercharged mixture of Rollerball and Death Race), one day discovering the wrecked remains of a female ‘borg in the junkyard of scrap accumulated beneath Zalem. Finding her human brain is still alive, he gives her a new chassis and christens her Alita, raising her as best he can as she attempts to piece together her mysterious, missing past, only for them both to discover that the truth of her origins has the potential to tear their fragile little world apart forever. The Maze Runner trilogy’s Rosa Salazar is the heart and soul of the film as Alita (originally Gally in the comics), perfectly bringing her (literal) wide-eyed innocence and irrepressible spirit to life, as well as proving every inch the diminutive badass fans have been expecting – while her overly anime-styled look might have seemed a potentially jarring distraction in the trailers, Salazar’s mocap performance is SO strong you’ve forgotten all about it within the first five minutes, convinced she’s a real, flesh-and-metal character – and she’s well supported by an exceptional ensemble cast both new and well-established. Waltz is the most kind and sympathetic he’s been since Django Unchained, instilling Ido with a worldly warmth and gentility that makes him a perfect mentor/father-figure, while Spooksville star Keean Johnson makes a VERY impressive big screen breakthrough as Hugo, the streetwise young dreamer with a dark secret that Alita falls for in a big way, Jennifer Connelly is icily classy as Ido’s ex-wife Chiren, Mahershala Ali is enjoyably suave and mysterious as the film’s nominal villain, Vector, an influential but seriously shady local entrepreneur with a major hidden agenda, and a selection of actors shine through the CGI in various strong mocap performances, such as Deadpool’s Ed Skrein, Derek Mears, From Dusk Til Dawn’s Eiza Gonzalez and a thoroughly unrecognisable but typically awesome Jackie Earle Haley. As you’d expect from Rodriguez, the film delivers BIG TIME on the action front, unleashing a series of spectacular set-pieces that peak with Alita’s pulse-pounding Motorball debut, but there’s a pleasingly robust story under all the thrills and wow-factor, riffing on BIG THEMES and providing plenty of emotional power, especially in the heartbreaking character-driven climax – Cameron, meanwhile, has clearly maintained strict control over the project throughout, his eye and voice writ large across every scene as we’re thrust headfirst into a fully-immersive post-apocalyptic, rusty cyberpunk world as thoroughly fleshed-out as Avatar’s Pandora, but most importantly he’s still done exactly what he set out to do, paying the utmost respect to a cracking character as he brings her to vital, vivid life on the big screen. Don’t believe the detractors – this is a MAGNIFICENT piece of work that deserves all the recognition it can muster, perfectly set up for a sequel that I fear we may never get to see. Oh well, at least it’s renewed my flagging hopes for a return to Pandora …

4. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD – while I love Disney and Pixar as much as the next movie nut, since the Millennium my loyalty has been slowly but effectively usurped by the consistently impressive (but sometimes frustratingly underappreciated) output of Dreamworks Animation Studios, and in recent years in particular they really have come to rival the House of Mouse in both the astounding quality of their work and their increasing box office reliability. But none of their own franchises (not even Shrek or Kung Fu Panda) have come CLOSE to equalling the sheer, unbridled AWESOMENESS of How to Train Your Dragon, which started off as a fairly loose adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s popular series of children’s stories but quickly developed a very sharp mind of its own – the first two films were undisputable MASTERPIECES, and this third and definitively FINAL chapter in the trilogy matches them to perfection, as well as capping the story off with all the style, flair and raw emotional power we’ve come to expect. The time has come to say goodbye to diminutive Viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, as effortlessly endearing as ever) and his adorable Night Fury mount/best friend Toothless, fiancée Astrid (America Ferrera, still tough, sassy and WAY too good for him), mother Valka (Cate Blanchett, classy, wise and still sporting a pretty flawless Scottish accent) and all the other Dragon Riders of the tiny, inhospitable island kingdom of Berk – their home has become overpopulated with scaly, fire-breathing denizens, while a trapper fleet led by the fiendish Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham delivering a wonderfully soft-spoken, subtly chilling master villain) is beginning to draw close, prompting Hiccup to take up his late father Stoick (Gerard Butler returning with a gentle turn that EASILY prompts tears and throat-lumps) the Vast’s dream of finding the fabled “Hidden World”, a mysterious safe haven for dragon-kind where they can be safe from those who seek to do them harm. But there’s a wrinkle – Grimmel has a new piece of bait, a female Night Fury (or rather, a “Light Fury”), a major distraction that gets Toothless all hot and bothered … returning witer-director Dean DeBlois has rounded things off beautifully with this closer, giving loyal fans everything they could ever want while also introducing fresh elements such as intriguing new environments, characters and species of dragons to further enrich what is already a powerful, intoxicating world for viewers young and old (I particularly love Craig Ferguson’s ever-reliable comic relief veteran Viking Gobber’s brilliant overreactions to a certain adorably grotesque little new arrival), and like its predecessors this film is just as full of wry, broad and sometimes slightly (or not so slightly) absurd humour and deep down gut-twisting FEELS as it is of stirring, pulse-quickening action sequences and sheer, jaw-dropping WONDER, so it’s as nourishing to our soul as it is to our senses. From the perfectly-pitched, cheekily irreverent opening to the truly devastating, heartbreaking close, this is EXACTLY the final chapter we’ve always dreamed of, even if it does hurt to see this most beloved of screen franchises go. It’s been a wild ride, and one that I think really does CEMENT Dreamworks’ status as one of the true giants of the genre …

3. US – back in 2017, Jordan Peele made the transition from racially-charged TV and stand-up comedy to astounding cinemagoers with stunning ease through his writer-director feature debut Get Out, a sharply observed jet black comedy horror with SERIOUS themes that was INSANELY well-received by audiences and horror fans alike. Peele instantly became ONE TO WATCH in the genre, so his follow-up feature had A LOT riding on it, but this equally biting, deeply satirical existential mind-bender is EASILY the equal of its predecessor, possibly even its better … giving away too much plot detail would do great disservice to the many intriguing, shocking twists on offer as middle class parents Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Black Panther alumni Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) take their children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), to Santa Cruz on vacation, only to step into a nightmare as a night-time visitation by a family of murderous doppelgangers signals the start of a terrifying supernatural revolution with potential nationwide consequences. The idea at the heart of this film is ASTOUNDINGLY original, quite an achievement in a genre where just about everything has been tried at least once, but it’s also DEEPLY subversive, as challenging and thought-provoking as the themes visited in Get Out, but also potentially even more wide-reaching. It’s also THOROUGHLY fascinating and absolutely TERRIFYING, a peerless exercise in slow-burn tension and acid-drip discomfort, liberally soaked in an oppressive atmosphere so thick you could choke on it if you’re not careful, such a perfect horror master-class it’s amazing that this is only Peele’s second FEATURE, never mind his sophomore offering IN THE GENRE. The incredibly game cast really help, too – the four leads are all EXCEPTIONAL, each delivering fascinatingly nuanced performances in startlingly oppositional dual roles as both the besieged family AND their monstrous doubles, a feat brilliantly mimicked by Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker and teen twins Cali and Noelle Sheldon as the Wilsons’ friends, the Tylers, and their similarly psychotic mimics. The film is DOMINATED, however, by Oscar-troubler Nyong’o, effortlessly holding our attention throughout the film with yet another raw, intense, masterful turn that keeps up glued to the screen from start to finish, even as the twists get weirder and more full-on brain-mashy. Of course, while this really is scary as hell, it’s also often HILARIOUSLY funny, Peele again poking HUGE fun at both his target audience AND his allegorical targets, proving that scares often work best when twinned with humour. BY FAR the best thing in horror so far this year, Us shows just what a master of the genre Jordan Peele is – let’s hope he’s here to stay …

2. CAPTAIN MARVEL – before the first real main event of not only the year’s blockbusters but also, more importantly, 2019’s big screen MCU roster, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and co dropped a powerful opening salvo with what, it turns out, was the TRUE inception point of the Avengers Initiative and all its accompanying baggage (not Captain America: the First Avenger, as we were originally led to believe). For me, this is simply the MCU movie I have MOST been looking forward to essentially since the beginning – the onscreen introduction of my favourite Avenger, former US Air Force Captain Carol Danvers, the TRUE Captain Marvel (no matter what the DC purists might say), who was hinted at in the post credits sting of Avengers: Endgame but never actually seen. Not only is she the most powerful Avenger (sorry Thor, but it’s true), but for me she’s also the most badass – she’s an unstoppable force of (cosmically enhanced) nature, with near GODLIKE powers (she can even fly through space without needing a suit!), but the thing that REALLY makes her so full-on EPIC is her sheer, unbreakable WILL, the fact that no matter what’s thrown at her, no matter how often or how hard she gets knocked down, she KEEPS GETTING BACK UP. She is, without a doubt, the MOST AWESOME woman in the entire Marvel Universe, both on the comic page AND up on the big screen. Needless to say, such a special character needs an equally special actor to portray her, and we’re thoroughly blessed in the inspired casting choice of Brie Larson (Room, Kong: Skull Island), who might as well have been purpose-engineered exclusively for this very role – she’s Carol Danvers stepped right out of the primary-coloured panels, as steely cool, unswervingly determined and strikingly statuesque as she’s always been drawn and scripted, with just the right amount of twinkle-eyed, knowing smirk and sassy humour to complete the package. Needless to say she’s the heart and soul of the film, a pure joy to watch throughout, but there’s so much more to enjoy here that this is VERY NEARLY the most enjoyable cinematic experience I’ve had so far this year … writer-director double-act Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck may only be known for smart, humble indies like Half Nelson and Mississippi Grind, but they’ve taken to the big budget, all-action blockbuster game like ducks to water, co-scripting with Geneva Robertson-Dworet (writer of the Tomb Raider reboot movie and the incoming third Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movie) to craft yet another pitch-perfect MCU origin story, playing a sneakily multilayered, misleading game of perception-versus-truth as we’re told how Carol got her powers and became the unstoppable badass supposedly destined to turn the tide in a certain Endgame … slyly rolling the clock back to the mid-90s, we’re presented with a skilfully realised “period” culture clash adventure as Carol, an super-powered warrior fighting for the Kree Empire against the encroaching threat of the shape-shifting Skrulls, crash-lands in California and winds up uncovering the hidden truth behind her origins, with the help of a particular SHIELD agent, before he wound up with an eye-patch and a more cynical point-of-view – yup, it’s a younger, fresher Nick Fury (the incomparable Samuel L. Jackson, digitally de-aged with such skill it’s really just a pure, flesh-and-blood performance). There’s action, thrills, spectacle and (as always with the MCU) pure, skilfully observed, wry humour by the bucket-load, but one of the biggest strengths of the film is the perfectly natural chemistry between the two leads, Larson and Jackson playing off each other BEAUTIFULLY, no hint of romantic tension, just a playfully prickly, banter-rich odd couple vibe that belies a deep, honest respect building between both the characters and, clearly, the actors themselves. There’s also sterling support from Jude Law as Kree warrior Yon-Rogg, Carol’s commander and mentor, Ben Mendelsohn, slick, sly and surprisingly seductive (despite a whole lot of make-up) as Skrull leader Talos, returning MCU-faces Clark Gregg and Lee Pace as rookie SHIELD agent Phil Coulson (another wildly successful de-aging job) and Kree Accuser Ronan, Annette Bening as a mysterious face from Carol’s past and, in particular, Lashana Lynch (Still Star-Crossed, soon to be seen in the next Bond) as Carol’s one-time best friend and fellow Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau, along with the impossible adorable Akira Akbar as her precocious daughter Monica … that said, the film is frequently stolen by a quartet of ginger tabbies who perfectly capture fan-favourite Goose the “cat” (better known to comics fans as Chewie). This is about as great as the MCU standalone films get – for me it’s up there with the Russo’s Captain America films and Black Panther, perfectly pitched and SO MUCH FUN, but with a multilayered, monofilament-sharp intelligence that makes it a more cerebrally satisfying ride than most blockbusters, throwing us a slew of skilfully choreographed twists and narrative curveballs we almost never see coming, and finishing it off with a bucket-load of swaggering style and pure, raw emotional power (the film kicks right off with an incredibly touching, heartfelt tear-jerking tribute to Marvel master Stan Lee). Forget Steve Rogers – THIS is the Captain us MCU fans need AND deserve, and I am SO CHUFFED they got my favourite Avenger so totally, perfectly RIGHT. I can die happy now, I guess …

1. AVENGERS: ENDGAME – the stars have aligned and everything is right with the world – the second half of the ridiculously vast, epic, nerve-shredding and gut-punching MCU saga that began with last year’s Avengers: Infinity War has FINALLY arrived and it’s JUST AS GOOD as its predecessor … maybe even a little bit better, simply by virtue of the fact that (just about) all the soul-crushing loss and upheaval of the first film is resolved here. Opening shortly after the universally cataclysmic repercussions of “the Snap”, the world at large and the surviving Avengers in particular are VERY MUCH on the back foot as they desperately search for a means to reverse the damage wrought by brutally single-minded cosmic megalomaniac Thanos and his Infinity Stone-powered gauntlet – revealing much more dumps so many spoilers it’s criminal to continue, so I’ll simply say that their immediate plan really DOESN’T work out, leaving them worse off than ever. Fast-forward five years and the universe is a very different place, mourning what it’s lost and torn apart by grief-fuelled outbursts, while our heroes in particular are in various, sometimes better, but often much worse places – Bruce Banner/the Hulk (Mark Ruffallo) has found a kind of peace that’s always eluded him before, but Thor (Chris Hemsworth) really is a MESS, while Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has gone to a VERY dark place indeed. Then Ant-Man Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) finds a way back from his forced sojourn in the Quantum Realm, and brings with him a potential solution of a very temporal nature … star directors the Russo Brothers, along with returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, have once again crafted a stunning cinematic masterpiece, taking what could have been a bloated, overloaded and simply RIDICULOUS narrative mess and weaving it into a compelling, rich and thoroughly rewarding ride that, despite its THREE HOURS PLUS RUNNING TIME, stays fresh and interesting from start to finish, building on the solid foundations of Infinity War while also forging new ground (narratively speaking, at least) incorporating a wonderfully fresh take on time-travel that pokes gleeful fun at the decidedly clichéd tropes inherent in this particular little sub-genre. In fact this is frequently a simply HILARIOUS film in its own right, largely pulling away from the darker tone of its predecessor by injecting a very strong vein of chaotic humour into proceedings, perfectly tempering the more dramatic turns and epic feels that inevitably crop up, particularly as the stakes continue to rise. Needless to say the entire cast get to shine throughout, particularly those veterans whose own tours of duty in the franchise are coming to a close, and as with Infinity War even the minor characters get at least a few choice moments in the spotlight, especially in the vast, operatic climax where pretty much the ENTIRE MCU cast return for the inevitable final showdown. It’s a masterful affair, handled with skill and deep, earnest respect but also enough irreverence to keep it fun, although in the end it really comes down to those big, fat, heart-crushing emotional FEELS, as we say goodbye to some favourites and see others reach crossroads in their own arcs that send them off in new, interesting directions. Seriously guys, take a lot of tissues, you really will need them. If this were the very last MCU film ever, I’d say it’s a PERFECT piece to go out on – thankfully it’s not, and while it is the end of an era the franchise looks set to go on as strong as ever, safe in the knowledge that there’s plenty more cracking movies on the way so long as Kevin Feige and co continue to employ top-notch talent like this to make their films. Ten years and twenty-two films down, then – here’s to ten and twenty-two more, I say …

#movies 2019 #glass #glass movie #pet sematary #prospect #prospect movie #dragged across concrete #shazam!#alita battle angel #how to train your dragon the hidden world #us #us movie #Captain Marvel #avengers endgame #awesome sauce

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