A couple of weekends ago I had the pleasure of seeing all three Bill & Ted films, back to back, on the big screen. Auckland’s Academy Cinemas are pretty good at rolling out the occasional double- or triple-bill. Last year, they played the BACK TO THE FUTURE trilogy on a Sunday afternoon; this year it was the turn of Bill & Ted. And these opportunities come around so rarely, you have to jump at the chance of seeing them. In fact, due to the film coming out on streaming at the height of the COVID pandemic, I think this might have been the first public screening of the third film, BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC, in New Zealand.
The first film, BILL & TED’S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE, is pure class and holds a special place in my heart. It works so well because it’s such a simple premise – school kids travel back in time to find historical figures to help with their history report – and avoids the messy over-plotting of its sequels. This soundtrack score, by David Newman, is a nice addition to the loud and raucous needle-drops that take centre-stage throughout the film.
I didn’t like the second film, BILL & TED’S BOGUS JOURNEY, back in 1991, and I still don’t like it. I was initially unimpressed with the third film when it came out during lockdown in 2020, but upon seeing them back to back it’s clear that the second film is the weakest of the bunch. Sure, there are great moments, but it’s just trying to do too much, something that really jars after the simple, straightforward premise of the first film. It also doesn’t help that BOGUS JOURNEY simply isn’t as funny as the first film. The stuff with Death is great, but they really don’t get going with him until halfway through the film. Structurally, the writing is weak, and usually with comedies, the jokes can paper over some of those cracks, but not here.
I was unimpressed with FACE THE MUSIC when it came out in 2020, one of the first big films forced to come out on streaming when you really got a sense that it belonged in the cinema.
Four years later, getting to see it on the big screen was a real treat, and it was nice to measure up to those films without a thirty year gap.
It’s clear now that this third film is the strongest film after the sequel. It almost gets lost in its overplotting, but nowhere near as overcooked as the second film, and the comedy in this is much better than that film too – particularly in the storyline following Bill and Ted. The scene with them when they go to see Death and ask him to join the band – full of jokes around non-amicable band splits – is absolute gold.
Even though it was a lift of the events of the first film, I really enjoyed the sub-plot with the two daughters although maybe that storyline could have been its own film. They’re very good at aping their on-screen dads, particularly Brigette Lundy-Painel playing Ted’s daughter – who does a perfect 1989 Keanu Reeves impression.
It was also great to see Erinn Hayes as Ted’s wife; I’m a huge fan of her work on things like MEDICAL POLICE (and it doesn’t hurt that she’s a knockout). There’s a joke in that series about silent discos that I think about daily and chuckle to myself.
What a glorious film this is, something I’ve not seen since my overplayed VHS copy in the late ‘90s. I’ve never seen it in the big screen before, and have never seen it on DVD or Blu-Ray, so seeing this projected thanks to the Hollywood Avondale a couple of weeks ago was a dream come true. I’ve never seen it look – and sound! – so good.
A low-key masterpiece, this is a lean, wild thrill ride. A Western if ever I’ve seen one, with nothing wasted on unnecessary story beats or superfluous characters.
Some of the acting leave a bit to be desired, particularly Nancy Loomis (who would go on to do sterling work for Carpenter) and Tony Burton (Apollo Creed’s trainer from the ROCKY films) who perhaps doesn’t quite have the chops for this role at this stage of his career, but everybody else is superb. I really enjoyed Darwin Joston’s performance as the convict Napoleon, who steals the film with every line of dialogue he has.
What a film. What a score. Man, has ever a synth score sounded so sparse yet so direct as this? I could listen to this all day and never get bored. In fact, not even the synths, just pop that drum beat into my heart and I’ll be good. That’ll keep my ticker going.
Blown away.
One of the all-time Friday night screenings at the Hollywood Avondale.
A soundtrack in my collection that I spin often for the obvious reason that it’s objectively brilliant, but a film I’ve only seen once or twice before. Seeing this a couple of weeks ago at Academy Cinemas was a dream come true though. What a glorious film. That’s it, that’s the review.
The soundtrack that gave birth to a billion beer commercials, Ry Cooder’s work here is absolutely stellar, with his slide guitar sounding plaintive or epic one minute, and like a box of angry bees the next.
PARIS, TEXAS is a film that deserves to be seen on the big screen. It looks absolutely stellar, and would work as a silent film with that soundtrack score. Just Harry Dean Stanton walking through the Mohave Desert in a black suit jacket and red cap. Red rocks and slide guitar.
But when we get to the main meat of the film, it helps that the dialogue is pitch-perfect too. The review soundbite that they’ve used in a newish trailer refers to it as ‘A desert flower of a film that invented Americana’, and it’s hard not to agree with that. It’s a film that appears to both exist in the past – Gram Parsons and the Joshua Tree in the early ‘70s – and due to its influence, you can see it in everything that came afterwards.
It’s a super sad film, of course, and I see a lot of the melancholy here echo through queer cinema of the last couple of decades – BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, ALL OF US STRANGERS, CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, OF AN AGE. It wouldn’t surprise me if the directors of those films had the emotional heft of this in their head as an influence, but then again wouldn’t any director worth their salt in the last forty years? The perfect film about longing and loss.
It’s been a great couple of weeks getting to see all four of Jonathan Glazer’s films (plus one of his shorts) on the big screen. While I saw his debut masterpiece SEXY BEAST at the cinema back in 2000 – and once again a couple of years ago – I only caught BIRTH (not a fan) and UNDER THE SKIN at home, so it was great to finally see these projected. And of course, the event that has prompted the Hollywood Avondale to run a season of Glazer’s films was the release of his latest masterpiece THE ZONE OF INTEREST.
But what of UNDER THE SKIN some ten years after it was released? It’s just as uncomfortable, watching Scarlett Johansson scour the streets of Glasgow looking for prey (interestingly making use of static hidden cameras which he would return to with THE ZONE OF INTEREST), and luring unsuspecting men to their doom. That said, I would walk into black sludge for Scarlett any day of the week. Where do I sign up?
Mica Levi’s eerie score fits the film perfectly, lending itself to Glazer’s music video aesthetic during the scenes depicting the void. I wasn’t such a fan of her work on THE ZONE OF INTEREST, which I thought was unnecessary (following on from her work on his 2019 short THE FALL), but here the audio matches the visuals like a glove.
I had forgotten the scene with the family and the young baby on the beach, and this hit me like a tonne of bricks on this watch, possibly the film’s hardest-hitting sequence. And I had to laugh when Scarlett got swept up into entering a nightclub with a group of ladies on a night out. Imagine coming light years across the galaxy and ending up on a hen’s night in Glasgow; what must intelligent life think of us?
My Glazer ranking is pretty straightforward – his masterpieces SEXY BEAST and THE ZONE OF INTEREST at #1 and #2 respectively, then UNDER THE SKIN at #3 and the disappointing BIRTH at #4. I think UNDER THE SKIN is perhaps his most intriguing film though, the one that leaves the most questions unanswered, and motives ambiguous. What an odd bunch of films he’s given us; every one a universe away from the last.
Around this time every year, I list my picks for the Best Picture nominees (see these links for the awards celebrating the films of 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022). This year, for the 96th Academy Awards, I had already seen eight of the ten Best Picture nominees by the time they were announced, with tickets to my ninth (THE ZONE OF INTEREST) booked for a couple of days later. There’s always one or two that don’t make it to New Zealand in time, and this year it was AMERICAN FICTION, which I had to wait a couple of weeks to see.
It’s been on the cards for a couple of years now, but 2023 definitely feels like the year that cinema came back to full health, and mostly due to Greta Gerwig’s BARBIE, Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER, and a jokey hashtag that got way out of hand when somebody realised two radically different films were releasing on the same weekend. Neither of those films were anywhere near my favourite, but it’s impossible to ignore the contribution they made to the year.
Cinema returned to such an extent that my local film festival, the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF), returned with a full programme for the first time since the COVID pandemic. It was so good to be back at the festival I’ve patronised since 2008, and as always, it was great to get a first look at some of the year’s best films months ahead of their official release.
Many of the year’s Best Picture nominations went to – mostly – established, big-name directors. Scorsese, Nolan, Lanthimos, Glazer, Payne, Gerwig and Cooper all feel like names that should belong there based on their standing in Hollywood, but it’s the newcomers Cord Jefferson (AMERICAN FICTION), Justine Triet (ANATOMY OF A FALL), and Celine Song (PAST LIVES) that showed that there’s always new blood coming over the horizon.
A recent news headline suggests we’re getting a new category – Best Achievement In Casting – which will first be awarded in 2026 for the best films of 2025. It’s a good idea for a new category – much better than that stupid Fan Favourite thing that got hijacked by Zack Snyder stans a couple of years ago. It’s hard not to look at this year’s eligible films and ponder what might be winning a casting Oscar this year – a two-horse race between OPPENHEIMER and ASTEROID CITY perhaps?
I do wonder, while we’re on the subject of categories, whether it’s time to move the three shorts categories (Best Animated Short, Best Live Action Short, Best Documentary Short) out of the main awards into its own thing? I think they’re a great showcase for (mostly) up and coming filmmakers, but the disparity between those categories and the feature-length ones that just doesn’t make sense. You can’t even see find the short films to watch in most cases. I say take those out – maybe give them their own ceremony a day earlier with a fleshed out selection of other categories – an replace with some other craft categories for the feature-length films.
2023 marked another great year for my podcast, MY MOVIE DNA, with a brace of great episodes and interesting guests including John Hughes’ legendary music supervisor Tarquin Gotch. My non-annual Oscars round-up episode with Daíbhid MacCann can be found here.
Before we get to my pick of the year’s honourable mentions, here’s my ranking of the Best Picture nominees, from worst to best:
As a spin-off to Bradley Cooper’s character in WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER, this didn’t work for me. They didn’t even show him doing Zoot Suit.
Easily the most Oscar-baity movie of the year, it’s getting painfully obvious that Cooper wants an Oscar so much after being so close in the past. Including this year’s awards, he’s now been nominated for twelve Oscars (five for acting, five for producing, two for writing) and so it only feels like a matter of time. Although, go and ask Peter O’Toole and Glenn Close (both zero for eight) about that…
MAESTRO felt so aimed at awards season, it might as well have been sponsored by the Academy. I’m getting more and more annoyed with these kinds of films as the years go on, and welcome any move away from them. There usually seems to be two or three of these Oscar bait films that pick up Best Picture nominations, so maybe the fact that there’s only one obvious one this year is an indication that things are starting to change. We can only hope.
With the awards season wins so far, it seems highly unlikely that Bradly Cooper will take away Best Actor for this film, with that looking like a two-horse race between Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti. Altogether the film has attracted seven nominations: Picture, Actor (Cooper), Actress (Carey Mulligan), Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Makeup & Hairstyling and Sound – but it feels destined to walk away empty-handed.
Not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, and man, did it absolutely blow in terms of jokes. Everything that was vaguely funny appeared in the trailers. Yes, that 2001 sequence looks and sounds amazing projected, but once you’ve seen it in the trailer it loses its novelty. Saving that for the film’s release would have been awesome.
I love Greta Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach, and admire all of their films made together or apart, but with BARBIE it feels like they’ve turned something in that doesn’t feel like their work. Knowing both of their filmographies intimately, I expected a lot more. It just felt like it could have come from any filmmaker.
And what’s with that missed opportunity for a Chinese whispers gag? Come on…
Not only that, but given that the climax of the film was only reached via the grubbiness of voter distraction – which the GOP absolutely love, of course – maybe make something out of this given the current political climate. It all just felt very run of the mill. And it’s not like we’ve not seen toys getting to know themselves and the world around them before…
Pink and shiny, and not a whole lot under the surface. My least favourite half of the #BARBENHEIMER double-bill.
The fact that Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera picked up nominations but Margot Robbie and Gerwig didn’t is unfortunate, but welcome to Hollywood. In fact, I’m surprised it got nominated for anything except the Billie Eilish song.
BARBIE generated eight nominations: Picture, Supporting Actor (Gosling), Supporting Actress (Ferrera), Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Costume Design, and two for Best Song (I’m Just Ken and What Was I Made For?). Regardless of the controversy around who was nominated and who wasn’t, as least we can all look forward to Ryan Gosling performing I’m Just Ken as part of the ceremony on the night.
Like all Lanthimos films, I loved aspects of this but the general oomph of it just left me cold. I much preferred the main body of the film, from the cruise onwards, but that first section of the film where Bella is more childlike reminded me of William Peter Blatty’s THE NINTH CONFIGURATION, where you have actors lining up to say ‘Look at this whacky thing!’, ‘No, look at this whacky thing!’, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
That said, for the most part Emma Stone’s performance was very good, if extremely on the nose, and Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe were both superb.
It looked beautiful too, specially the whole Jean-Pierre Jeunet-esque production design, and the cinematography switching being beautiful black and white, and a fish-eyed menagerie of colour was stunning.
The film had majorly been spoiled for me though by all the Emma Stone stans on the internet. And I don’t mean spoiled as in narratively spoiled; that all, thankfully, stayed under wraps. I was just sickened by the blind fanaticism with Stone’s performance, with people declaring that this is the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen (after seeing a few stills and a teaser trailer). Wind it in, people. She’s not Brando. Although, to be fair, she does look like a shoe-in to pick up Best Actress.
Having seeing all of Lanthimos’ films before – except KINETTA, which has avoided me so far – I had hoped that POOR THINGS would be as inaccessible as something like DOGTOOTH, thereby returning the director to his experimental European roots for the rest of his career, but after his critical success with THE FAVOURITE (2018), it seems unlikely he’ll ever be allowed to escape Hollywood again.
In total, POOR THINGS received eleven nominations: Picture, Director, Actress (Stone), Supporting Actor (Ruffalo), Adapted Screenplay, Score, Production Design, Cinematography, Makeup & Hairstyling, Costume Design and Editing.
I loved a lot about KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. The acting was off the chart, the story was unique (and took us somewhere else entirely from THERE WILL BE BLOOD, which the trailer reminded me of), the script was great, the editing was as perfect as you’d expect from Thelma Schoonmaker, and the soundtrack score by the recently departed Robbie Robertson was relentlessly brilliant.
So, why was I disappointed?
The running time.
It’s just needlessly long. There’s a cracking 5-star 2-hour film hidden in here, but you have to wade through a further 90 minutes of story to get to it. And this is coming from somebody who loves long films.
But THE IRISHMAN and now this show a director who has too much control – the ‘you can do whatever you want’ allure of having your film financed by a streaming service. I liked the old Marty, the one with a major studio behind him that might be nudging him to bring a film in under 180 minutes, or <GASP> under 150.
It wasn’t too long ago when I saw his GOODFELLAS on the big screen, and that feels effortlessly long in a way this his two most recent films haven’t. Similarly, I rewatched Michael Mann’s HEAT on the big screen this year, another meaty epic that feels much shorter than it is.
Around the same time I saw KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, I also caught Sion Sono’s LOVE EXPOSURE (2008) on the big screen. I first saw it at NZIFF in 2008. That’s an even longer film, hugely enjoyable in parts, but almost offensively leaden in others with huge swathes of running time seemingly dedicated to getting the film up to its eventual 4-hour running time. I don’t think Scorsese ever gets close to being that loose in his storytelling, but there’s still an unchecked element to his two last films that doesn’t feel right. It’s perfectly acceptable to criticise this, by the way. If not, where would the line be? Would the thought of a 6-hour Scorsese film still be acceptable?
DiCaprio and De Niro do their best DiCaprio and De Niro – although DiCaprio’s permanent scowl makes him look like he’s doing a bargain basement De Niro impression, a la Tom Hiddleston – but it’s the third lead Lily Gladstone, who I first saw in Kelly Reichardt’s CERTAIN WOMEN (2016), who steals the show.
Also, everybody should read this eloquent piece on the film by Auckland filmmaker Tom Augustine, which nails the subtext of the film so definitively, it almost changed my view of it.
In total, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON received ten nominations: Picture, Director, Actress (Gladstone), Supporting Actor (De Niro), Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Score, and Song (Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)).
I was looking forward to this more intriguing half of the #BARBENHEIMER double-bill, but ultimately I found it disappointing.
Dialogue-wise, it reminded me of Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE, with swirling, overlapping lines recited by the stellar ensemble cast, which was fine once you finally tuned your ears to it all. The way Nolan was putting across information during that first hour felt like a trailer – with lines of dialogue flying in all over the place.
That rhythm continued until Matt Damon’s Army General turned up to give the narrative a bit of structure. I really enjoyed the middle hour, as they built and tested the bomb, but then as soon as all that was over – and Matt Damon’s presence got further and further away – it just became a patchwork quilt of dialogue again, only not as interesting as that first hour which was at least heading towards something.
Above everything, that first experience of the film on IMAX was such a delight to see so much of Florence Pugh on such a large screen. 👀
I rewatched the film recently, with some distance now from its #BARBENHEIMER hashtag, although if anything the film has grown in stature ever since – the most successful biopic of all time, the third highest grossing film of the year (after BARBIE and THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE), and an outright awards contender.
I’m still quite lukewarm on the film though, just as much as I was back when it was first released. There’s nothing close to what we would identify as a real life conversation in all of this, just characters pushing statements and information out of their mouths.
A great example is when Kitty, in a fit of what we’d refer to now as post-natal depression, turns her back on their infant son, Peter. This leads Oppenheimer to take him to the house of friend and colleague Chevalier. In a very short interchange, Chevalier says ‘Robert, you see beyond the world we live in. There’s a price to be paid for that. Of course we’ll help.’ Now, of course we should applaud Nolan as screenwriter for being economical with his screenplay; for managing to put across a key piece of characterisation – “Robert, you see beyond the world we live in” – in the middle of a ‘conversation’ around domestic arrangements, but it also highlights Nolan’s age-old coldness and lack of humanity or soul in his dialogue (coincidentally, this time in a film where the lead character is wrestling with his humanity).
Watching the film a second time, I’m still highly relieved when Matt Damon’s Army General turns up to tell us what’s going to happen. I understand the context-setting of the first hour, and enjoyed the actual ‘doing something’ of the second hour, but I’m very cold on that third hour. I’m usually a fan of courtroom dramas, but here there are just too many names flying around and a lack of general clarity on what everybody’s motives are. I’m terrible with names at the best of times, but even more so when there’s so many names to remember. Somebody should manufacture a little ‘Oppenheimer For Dummies’ guidebook, that has everybody’s name – and their motives – listed next to a photo of them.
I do wonder, given the film’s wild success, how many people were introduced to Nolan though this. I’m sure many younger viewers, attracted by the #BARBENHEIMER hype, might have been unfamiliar with him, but I’d expect some older viewers, perhaps uninterested in his earlier superhero and sci-fi work, would have been new to him too. Imagine not being familiar with Nolan’s style, and being presented with this as your first experience of him – and then having things like INCEPTION, INTERSTELLAR, THE PRESTIGE and THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY to go and digest.
My favourite tweet about the film last year simply read “What the fuck did you say to Einstein? His hat blew off his head!”
And speaking of hats, there’s a strange thing that’s happening with the wearing of hats in the film. If you consider that the film is mainly set from the late 1930s, through to the 1950s, a period of time when all men wore hats, it’s almost unbelievable that nobody wears one except Oppenheimer and Einstein. Remember also that a large portion of this films takes place in Los Alamos, where they’re walking around in the desert in broad daylight, a prime opportunity to wear a hat. And Einstein’s hat gets blown off (thanks to the piece of fishing wire attached to it you can spot in behind the scenes photographs), so there’s definitely something happening, some metaphor that isn’t – again – quite as clear as perhaps it should be. Is it only the geniuses that wear hats?
OPPENHEIMER’s also a film that seems to have tangibly existed for me longer than most people. After the initial announcement, when social media declared it the whitest cast ever assembled, and we went into the usual period of radio-silence when they’re making the film before the marketing for the release starts up, I was getting on-location updates from a friend who works at the Institute Of Advanced Study. This is still a functioning institute and so it’s great that they were able to film there. My updates would consist of photographs of yellow taxicabs from the 1940s, long-distance videos of Robert Downey Jr. walking across the grounds (who looks more like THE GODFATHER-era Al Pacino to me), and another clip of him dancing around out of boredom under an umbrella while he – presumably – waits for the rain to clear before filming the scene of him walking out to meet Oppenheimer and Einstein.
The embarrassing things about this whole batch of messages is that when she sent the first video, my friend captioned it ‘This is Robert D’, and with only having had a cursory glance at the ensemble cast, I took this to mean Robert De Niro. We had a very confusing conversation before she put me right.
I still love the soundtrack score by Ludwig Göransson – still my favourite aspect of the film – and while it’s superb, with just the right balance of nuance and bombast, I can’t help but imagine what a Hans Zimmer score would have been like. There’s something almost indefinable in Zimmer’s scores for Nolan – on INCEPTION and INTERSTELLAR in particular – which may have produced more gold here.
In terms of casting, it has to be the best ensemble cast of the year, even beating out Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY, which was similarly star-studded. I specifically enjoyed a couple of casting choices l hadn’t been aware of going in to the film, namely Macon Blair, Casey Affleck and Jason Clarke.
Everybody was just superb though. In particular, it was nice to see: Alden Ehrenreich, the senate aide who delivers the final ‘Fuck you’ to Robert Downey Jr.’s character (the last time I saw Ehrenreich was as Han Solo in the 2018 SOLO film); Alex Wolff as the physicist Alvarez (who I last saw as the son ascending the fateful treehouse in HEREDITARY); Tom Conte as Einstein (a prior Nolan alumni having played one of Bruce Wayne’s fellow prisoners in THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, and the father of one of my favourite comedians, ventriloquist Nina Conte); and Benny Safdie as the physicist Teller, who, after this and his performance in the Safdie Brothers’ film GOOD TIME, puts him towards the top of my list of favourite actors (and acting looks like something he might get to do more of as the brothers have just dissolved their working relationship).
And it’s still such a delight to see so much of Florence Pugh (👀) on such a large screen, even though my 65” TV is no match for an IMAX screen. After seeing Emma Stone in the buff for so much of Yorgos Lanthimos’ POOR THINGS, I hope this is a return to A-list actors having a more liberal approach to nudity. This isn’t completely out of being a dirty old pervert – although there’s that too – but it felt like more of an accepted thing in films from the ‘60s and ‘70s.
One final disappointment that sticks with me – and this is a slight spoiler, I guess – is that the two final reveals in the last ten minutes feel really forced. Through Ehrenreich, we see Downey Jr. put in his place when he suggests to him that maybe Oppenheimer and Einstein “weren’t talking about you”, and then we find out the subject of that conversation (to paraphrase, “we thought that the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion might destroy the world, but in a way it already has”). I can’t help but think ‘Is that it?’ All that screen time that Nolan has been working to, and it feels like an anti-climax.
In total, OPPENHEIMER received thirteen nominations: Picture, Director, Actor (Murphy), Supporting Actor (Downey Jr.), Supporting Actress (Emily Blunt), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing, Costume Design, Production Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Sound, and Score.
This year’s NZIFF opener – and no less than the 2023 Palme d’Or winner – ANATOMY OF A FALL is a tense courtroom drama, paced extremely well, about the unexplained death of a man, and the subsequent court trial to discover whether his wife is guilty of his murder.
It feels very literary, and the lack of breathing space created by its perpetually high pace creates a feeling of claustrophobia that is usually lacking from American films of a similar nature.
I love Sandra Hüller, who I first saw in eternal favourite TONI ERDMANN (2016), and she’s also one of the leads in another of this year’s Best Picture nominees, THE ZONE OF INTEREST, so this was a very easy watch with such a fine actress. Surely it’s only a matter of time for her to secure an Oscar, especially as many people think she should have been nominated for TONI ERDMANN.
I don’t think the film stuck the landing though, which didn’t feel as resolved as I was hoping. Its extended running time (150 minutes) suggested something a little more revelatory, or maybe that’s just the expectations from my Hollywood diet talking…
It was fascinating to see how a French court operates (compared to what I’m used to in the English-speaking world). It was more like a conversation, rather than the rigid process of witnessed being questioned by the defence and then the prosecution in turn. I’d love to see how a real court case would take place in such a setting.
In total, ANATOMY OF A FALL received five nominations: Picture, Director, Actress (Hüller), Original Screenplay and Editing.
Hugely enjoyable comedy – a good Best Picture nominee double-bill with THE HOLDOVERS in that respect – in this tale of a struggling writer finding his jokey pseudonym-written novel of urban life becoming commercially successful.
I wasn’t expecting this to be so funny, and of course Jeffrey Wright is superb in the nominated lead role of Thelonius ‘Monk’ Ellison, caught in a lie. Wright’s always good value, and gives a wonderful performance here.
Sterling K. Brown has also been nominated – for Best Supporting Actor – for the role of Monk’s estranged brother Cliff. Brown isn’t on screen a great deal – I wonder what his screen time is compared to, say, Judi Dench in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE – but he provides a great deal of the humour.
There was one particular line, about Cliff ‘taking a lover’ that really made me chuckle – something I’ve always found amusing ever since that same awful line was used, without any self-awareness, in Ken Loach’s LOOKING FOR ERIC. I still can’t believe that adult humans would ever utter that line in real life. If anybody uses it within earshot, I might die from laughing.
A great cast, great screenplay (also nominated), and just a lovely commentary of modern cultural consumption alongside some heartbreaking family and relationship drama.
In total, AMERICAN FICTION received five nominations: Picture, Actor (Wright), Supporting Actor (Brown), Adapted Screenplay and Original Score.
Quietly awesome, and the best Christmas film I’ve seen in such a long time.
Also contains some of the funniest one-liners I’ve heard in ages – particularly the clerk in the liquor store addressing Mr. Hunham as ‘Killer’.
And that Labi Siffre needle-drop? Oh man. In fact, the whole soundtrack is superb. Definitely one to try and track down.
To be honest though, I’m surprised this film got any Oscar attention at all. It all feels too low-key, too off-to-the-side – but in a good way – for the Academy to even notice. Films this good usually get overlooked, and I guess its (American) release in the run-up to the New Year made sense because it’s a Christmas movie, but I didn’t even consider that it was a premium time to open a film for awards season. I have to mention that only the American release lined up like this; in the UK and here in New Zealand, the film was released in the middle of January. I know the studios can be pretty stupid from time to time, but releasing a Christmas film in the middle of January feels like one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a long time.
I was never a huge fan of Payne’s previous collaboration with Paul Giamatti, SIDEWAYS, so I was expecting to be similarly disappointed by this. How wrong I was. While I don’t think it’s as strong as Payne’s second film, the biting political satire, ELECTION, it’s by far the film of his I’ve enjoyed the most since.
The cast are all great in this, and while it’s great to see Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph pick up awards attention, I thought newcomer Dominic Sessa – in his feature debut – was just as good. He definitely has a bright future ahead of him.
THE HOLDOVERS received five nominations: Picture, Actor (Giamatti), Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Original Screenplay and Editing.
Wow, what an achievement this is. I’ve been a fan of Jonathan Glazer’s work ever since SEXY BEAST in 2000 – a film that holds a very dear place in my heart – and while his two films in between, 2004’s BIRTH and 2013’s UNDER THE SKIN, didn’t completely work for me, they were still absolutely captivating and intriguing in a way that most other directors can’t even come close to.
And so we have 2023’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST, another left-turn in a career that doesn’t just aim to avoid repeating its own footsteps, but changes dimensions, with every film seemingly operating on a different plane of existence altogether. It’s been oft-commented that the filmmaker Glazer most closely resembles in terms of output is Stanley Kubrick, and there’s a lot of milage in this comparison, not least in their slow and measured output: Glazer has directed just 4 films in 23 years, one year shy of the 24 years Kubrick’s final 4 films took to make. Terence Malick’s second wind in the 2010s looks positively breezy in contrast.
The Holocaust has been a familiar subject for Oscar-nominated films in the past, most notably 1993’s SCHINDLER’S LIST and 1997’s LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL, but more recently with SON OF SAUL, the Best International Feature winner of 2015. It’s important to note that SCHINDLER’S LIST’s win at the 1994 awards seemed to open the floodgates for a raft of Best Documentary winners dealing with the Holocaust directly, or its aftershocks, for the next six years: ANNE FRANK REMEMBERED (1995), THE LONG WAY HOME (1997), THE LAST DAYS (1998), ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER (1999) and INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS: STORIES OF THE KINDERTRANSPORT (2000). Only Leon Gast’s wonderfully uplifting WHEN WE WERE KINGS (1996) broke this run.
So walking along such a well-worn path, what else can we learn from the Holocaust? SON OF SAUL enabled us to look over the shoulder of one if its active participants, a trusted Sonderkommando, tasked with the dreadful hands-on job of preparing and clearing the gas chambers, its locked-in frame showing very little outside of Saul’s immediate gaze. As such, it leaves a fair amount to the viewer’s imagination. We know what’s happening outside of that frame, but we can’t immediately see it, and Saul is so numbed to the horror of what’s going on around him, he doesn’t stray too far from his current objective – finding a Rabbi to perform a funeral ritual on a young Jewish boy. Still, we’re horrified at what we can glimpse on the edges of that frame and terrified of what lies beyond it.
Glazer’s film takes that same device – leaving the atrocities of the Holocaust to the viewer’s imagination – and dials it up to eleven. The film opens on a bucolic scene of a family picnic next to a picturesque river, before trailing back to the house where its residents, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and wife Hewig, live with their five children. We never see inside the camp, a barbed-wired wall away from the plush surroundings of the house, but we hear it at every juncture. Johnnie Burn’s incredible sound design adds so much to the films, and consistently pokes the viewers imagination. We don’t need to see the atrocities over the wall, but the constant thrum of heavy machinery, occasional screams and the warm pops of distant gunfire keep reminding us of what’s happening outside of gaze of Glazer’s cameras.
The film’s cinematography deserves mention too, although this hasn’t been nominated (admittedly in a very tough field). While some of the film is an absolute piece of art in terms of composition and framing – the juxtaposition of a children’s water slide against a backdrop of a chimney stack spewing black smoke being the most horrifying, or the glimpse of train steam in the background bringing more ‘yield’ – much of the film is viewed through static, concealed cameras, giving the film an even more passive feel. Glazer joking describes this as “like Big Brother in the Nazi house”, and it’s difficult to shake this comparison once you hear it.
I’m not sure what I thought about Mica Levi’s sparse soundtrack score – the film could probably have done without its needless signposting of foreboding – and there were a few things that didn’t quite work for me (the fade to red at one point, and the two night vision scenes which detracted from the focus on the Höss household) but I was just blown away by its portrayal of absolute evil incarnate.
I doubt I’ll throw this film on very often, if at all ever again, but it’s a masterpiece of modern cinema. I can’t wait to see what Glazer does next. Roll on 2033.
I empathise with both men in this film; I’m in love with Greta Lee too.
A superb drama about souls finding each other…or maybe not.
This is the quintessential film that sticks with you after watching it. At first, I thought it was a solid 4-star film but it played on my mind so much I knocked it up to 5-stars. Startlingly good.
Everything felt refreshingly real. Hae Sung’s plotline felt a little bit like INCEL: THE MOVIE at times, but the more I think about it, it really did feel like the sort of thing that would happen in real life. No well worn Hollywood narrative tropes here. I’ve had similarly platonic relationships with the opposite sex before, many of which might have led romantically to something else had fate, and circumstance, allowed. It can be heartbreaking when you think about it, but then again everybody’s lives are filled with ‘what-if’s. What if I hadn’t gone out that night when I met my wife? What if I’d done this or done that? What if I hadn’t murdered that man in a multi-story car park in 2011?
The soundtrack score was wonderful – and had since been added to my collection – filled with perfectly aimless (in a good way!) music, representing the up-in-the-air quality of the relationship between Nora and Hae Sung.
It was great to see John Magaro again, after enjoying his performance as Cookie in Kelly Reichardt’s FIRST COW. Here he plays what is essentially the third wheel to the South Korean non-romance, but he plays it so delicately, it further added to the realism of the story. There was a great tweet I saw the other day, commenting on the fact that while his wife’s out possibly rekindling her romance with her childhood sweetheart, he’s at home playing video games. That’s Grade-A realism right there!
I loved the wonderful final shot too, with the concept of inyeon represented by the multiple bridges running parallel with each other in the background, as Hae Sung’s Uber takes him along one of them. Beautiful.
What a stunning debut by Celine Song. Based on the fact that CODA won Best Picture two years ago, seemingly out of nowhere, I wonder if this is another sleeper hit that might go the distance…
PAST LIVES received just two nominations: Picture and Original Screenplay.
Honourable Mentions
Here are my other favourite (eligible) films from the year (in alphabetical order):
AFIRE (Christian Petzold, 2023) – At once desperately intriguing and frustratingly oblique, this story of a writer and his photography student friend visiting a beach house to find it occupied by a family friend had a really nice vibe to it. There’s humour there too, although it’s buried under the sand dunes for the most part. Wonderful performances from all involved, nice, laid-back unobtrusive cinematography and, though sparse, some nice needle-drops.
AMERICAN SYMPHONY (Matthew Heineman, 2023) – Really interesting dichotomy between Jon Batiste winning every award under the sun – and seemingly rightly so – and his wife suffering from recurring leukaemia. The film itself is all over the place but fittingly so, I think, as a metaphor for the swirling success and tragedy he finds himself in. I love any documentaries with long drone shots of cityscapes, which essentially means all documentaries since 2015, and this has several. There’s even a lovely drone shot in the middle of a load of geese flying; just beautiful. AMERICAN SYMPHONY could easily sit in a double-bill with AMERICAN FICTION, another of this year’s Oscar contenders, where fame and success is at odds with personal and familial challenges.
BEAU IS AFRAID (2023, Ari Aster) – ARI ASTER: ROID CITY. Woah, did Ari Aster just lose a parent or something? I loved the first hour of this; a supremely well-done Coen Brothers-style tragicomedy about the pressures of modern life. And then it lost me. For a film that started off very real – or at least a heightened version of reality – the dreamlike subconscious of its second hour left me apathetic. Still, at least it all felt original, unlike the ‘This is just THE WICKER MAN’-ness of MIDSOMMAR.
BOBI WINE: THE PEOPLE’S PRESIDENT (2022, Christopher Sharp & Moses Bwayo) – Harrowing and heartbreaking Oscar nominated documentary from Uganda about a ‘power to the people’ presidential candidate and his struggle to campaign against the incumbent military dictator currently in power. This is horrible stuff and you have to wonder why foreign powers can’t get involved – the U.N. even – when sitting governments are clearly using dirty tactics (turning off the internet, arresting and detaining the opposition candidate’s campaign team, etc). It’s an achievement this got made at all given how Bobi Wine and those close to him put theirselves in danger on a daily basis, and the proximity of this film’s camera crew to them.
THE CREATOR (2023, Gareth Edwards) – The best-looking sci-fi film I’ve seen in a long time, possibly since BLADE RUNNER 2049, which it shares some of its DNA with (and quite proudly, on its sleeve). I wasn’t enamoured by John David Washington’s character though – or the child. I don’t think there was anything wrong with their performance; I just think the characters themselves were poorly written for what should have been the emotional hook of the film. Last year, I found myself in a room where the Oscar nominated VFX for this film were being worked on, right here in little old Auckland – you can hear my conversation with VFX artist Sofia Diaz here.
DREAM SCENARIO (2023, Kristoffer Borgli) – One for them, one for me. One for them, one for me… Enjoyed this immensely. A weirdly grounded fantasy, like Kubrick, but closer in tone to Kauffman; a satire of celebrity and cancel culture. I especially liked the recurring through-line of academic snobbery. It’d make a great double-bill with Gondry’s THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP, or any number of Kauffman movies – BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION (obviously), SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK. Bonus points to the production department for putting Nic Cage’s character in a hotel room with a turntable and a copy of Todd Terje’s IT’S ALBUM TIME.
DUMB MONEY (2023, Craig Gillespie) – Enjoyable narrative comedy-drama about the GameStop stock market war of 2021. I heard about this at the time but wasn’t quite over the details. I thought this film explained everything pretty well – but I could maybe have done with one or two more animated infographics to really over-explain everything to dummies like me. Great cast and great performances all round, and I like the pandemic setting of it all. It feels like there may only be a handful of genuine pandemic-set films, telling the story of something that happened within the confines of the pandemic, and this is one of them.
EILEEN (2023, William Oldroyd) – Loved the look and feel to this: groovy old school studio idents, actual authentic period production design, rather than the usual ‘brand new cars / brand new clothes’ look that we see in period films. The look of it reminded me of the Coen’s INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, not just the production design, but the ever-present cold. A lovely bit of grain on the print too, which doesn’t hurt. And that freeze frame on the end credits? Right out of my childhood. The only thing missing is Bill Bixby walking away from camera, holding out his thumb. A lovely mournful jazz score by Richard Reed Parry, reminiscent of Nicholas Britell’s work on IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK. Cast-wise, all three leads were superb. Thomasin McKenzie has been doing sterling work for the past decade now, and she only gets better and better with each film. Shea Wigham too has been one to watch, bursting out of TV into films. And while I’m not the biggest fan of Anne Hathaway, she’s extremely good in this. A dazzling film. Loved it.
EL CONDE (2023, Pablo Larraín) – Two of this year’s Oscar nominated films from Chile – THE ETERNAL MEMORY, nominated for Best Documentary Feature, and this, EL CONDE, nominated for Best Cinematography – revolve around dictator Augusto Pinochet, but in completely different way. In THE ETERNAL MEMORY, Pinochet exists purely as a background character, the journalistic target in the lifetime’s work of the film’s main character. In EL CONDE, directed by Pablo Larrain (JACKIE, SPENCER), he takes centre stage as a 250-year-old blood-sucking vampire. It’s as crazy as it sounds, yet played straight as an arrow. Wonderful. I particularly enjoyed the choice of narrator. Very well done. I am suspicious of films in black and white getting nods for Best Cinematography though. Everything looks so good, and it looks effortlessly stylish – although I’m sure just as much work goes into framing and composition as a colour film. It just feels like cheating… Elements of this reminded me of BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS – not least the central theme of a country dealing with its past, but also the beautiful sight of a central character learning to fly. Loved this in the end. I thought it was too crazy for its own good, and almost wrote it off twenty minutes in, but it slowly convinced me of its brilliance and ended up being right up my street. One of the great vampire movies. I look forward to revisiting this, outside the fog of awards season.
EVIL DEAD RISE (2023, Lee Cronin) – I remember being in a meeting with some vacuous marketing types once, and somebody’s phone went off; Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit rang out. The offending person grabbed her phone from her handbag, turned it off and said ‘I am *such* a rock chick!’ I rolled my eyes so far back, I could see my brain. And that’s the kind of people the makers of this film had in mind when they wrote these two lead characters. They’re like what Dave Grohl and his friends used to call ‘Quincy Punks’ when they were in their teens: a broad-stroke, TV-friendly stereotype of said subculture, with all the rough edges hewn off. Characters aside, this was a strong entry into the EVIL DEAD films – far stronger than that soulless 2013 remake / reboot. I can’t remember the last time a horror sequel did something interesting with some dusty old IP. David Gordon Green’s HALLOWEEN films definitely didn’t, neither did his new EXORCIST movie, and those two recent SCREAM films didn’t either. This feels like a solid answer to the question of ‘can we move the previously locked-down geography of these films’ settings?’ And yes. Yes they can!
THE FLASH (2023, Andy Muschietti) – I know it’s not fashionable to say so, but I really enjoyed this – despite its faults, of which there are many. It feels like an eternity since we had a superhero movie that was a ball of fun rather than something that takes itself too seriously. And weirdly, despite all its production troubles – not least the ongoing concern that is Ezra Miller – I found it to be an absolute blast of a superhero film. We’ve all found those DCEU films to be incredibly dour and po-faced – except THE SUICIDE SQUAD – but this one made me laugh out loud several times, and that’s a massive compliment from me. It usually takes something very funny indeed to provoke physical laughter. Yes, quite a bit of the CGI looked very cartoony – reminiscent of THE MATRIX RELOADED and REVOLUTIONS – and some of the childhood stuff came across as overly sentimental, but the humour and the action all made up for it. And speaking of THE MATRIX, Benjamin Wallfisch’s soundtrack score sounded mighty similar to Don Davis’ work for the Wachowskis at certain points, if not in melody but definitely in orchestration and arrangement. Ezra was very good in this; I’m glad they didn’t replace him with Christopher Plummer in the end…
GODZILLA MINUS ONE (2023, Takashi Yamazaki) – This was an absolute wallop, far more immediate than all the Hollywood Godzilla films I’ve seen in the last ten years or so. I didn’t love all of it, the weak acting left a lot to be desired, but the overall impact of it all – the VFX, the score, the sound design and just the generally bleak look of the picture – was amazing. Still not quite happy with the head-to-body ratio of Godzilla. His thighs were thick as in this, but his head didn’t seem to be as shrunken as it has been in his recent Hollywood outings. Awesome to see this on Auckland’s IMAX screen with Godzilla-botherer numero uno, Jasher Drake from Podzilla.
INFINITY POOL (2023, Brandon Cronenberg) – Is everybody right about Mia Goth being a force of nature? I find her lack of eyebrows still a bit alarming, but she was much better here than in X, and she’s superb in PEARL. INFINITY POOL is definitely rough around the edges, but that’s what I liked about POSSESSOR. It covers a bit of the same ground as last year’s excellent SPEAK NO EVIL, and yet again Brandon Cronenberg shows that he’s the Cronenberg to watch from now on. The credits to this are more interesting than all of CRIMES OF THE FUTURE.
INSIDE (2023, Vasilis Katsoupis) – Quite enjoyed the quiet absurdity of this; the idea that a high-end apartment would be so impenetrable that somebody could get locked inside. In a world without health and safety or building permits maybe… The obvious one-hander survival movie comparisons would be to Robert Zemeckis’ CASTAWAY from 2000 and J. C. Chandor’s ALL IS LOST from 2013. In Chandor’s film, we saw Robert Redford give a performance as a man solo-sailing around the world, using his wits to overcome problem after problem, in much the same way as we have Willem Dafoe here, stuck inside the hell of an apartment he was trying to burgle. Of course, Tom Hanks’ character, Redford’s character and Dafoe’s character all have different motivations and reasons for how they’ve ended up in their respective predicaments, but they both serve the same narrative purpose. They’re all desperate, reduced to their base instincts to survive. Similarly, we as the viewer, are silent observers as we watch them – mostly wordlessly – seek escape. I have a soft spot for this sub-genre of films. There should be more of them.
THE IRON CLAW (2023, Sean Durkin) – A cinematic journey through terrible Texas haircuts. I’m not sure what’s more off putting – Zac Efron’s muscles, his haircut, or his increasingly obvious plastic surgery. I quite enjoyed THE IRON CLAW. I was very much into wrestling in the early ‘90s, but really only WWF and so the Von Erichs don’t mean that much to me. Or so I thought, until so realised in one pretty impressive reveal that one of them was the Texas Tornado. I was always quite impressed that that particular physical attribute of his was fairly well concealed to audiences. I wouldn’t necessarily put any of the acting up for awards, but I thought the screenplay was very good – if a little cliched from time to time. The overbearing parent trope is so well-worn, and while I understand it is a key part of the narrative here, it still comes across a little hokey and over-familiar. It is strange how the film was set up to be an awards contender but then received zero Oscar nominations. I feel a bit sorry for the cast in that respect, as you can tell from their red carpet promotion that they clearly thought the film was going places. And why wouldn’t they?
THE KILLER (2023, David Fincher) – We’re out of Cornflakes, F.U. Loved this. It doesn’t have the emotion heft of Fincher classics like SE7EN, FIGHT CLUB or ZODIAC, but then it doesn’t try to. It’s one of the most linear thrillers from a big name director I’ve seen in a long time, the exact opposite of Scorsese’s long and lyrical slow-burn of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON. Loved the Reznor / Ross score, as always, despite it straying into THE SOCIAL NETWORK territory in one particular moment during the Dominican Republic sequence. <SPOILER ALERT> The scene in THE KILLER where Michael Fassbender’s character accidentally shoots a sex worker after he’s been telling us for twenty minutes how good he is, was one of the year’s funniest scenes. Absolutely killer.
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND (2023, Sam Esmail) – Really enjoyed this. Visually quite stunning, if a little too glossy and computer generated in its fancier transitions and camera work. Pretty weighty mid-film lull though. Definitely more intriguing and more three dimensional than some of Shyamalan’s last couple of films. Very well written. Great ending (that seems to have dumbfounded a lot of people).
MAY DECEMBER (2023, Todd Haynes) – Enjoyably murky tale of an actress (Natalie Portman) visiting the home of a woman (Julianne Moore) with a shady past, to research playing her in a film role. I didn’t love all of this, but it definitely kept me interested and felt like it was exploring something relatively unique compared to the usual Hollywood fare. The only thing I really struggle with was Marcelo Zarvos’s overly dramatic music score – which put me in mind of something else, maybe one of Almadóvar’s recent films – PARALLEL MOTHERS perhaps?
MIGRATION (2023, Benjamin Renner) – This was right up my street. Not only did it look beautiful, but it’s all about ducks and I love ducks. They’re cute and delicious. In fact, I’d quite happily eat the entire cast of this film (admittedly, it feels a bit weird saying that so soon after watching SOCIETY OF THE SNOW where indeed half the cast got eaten). The voice cast were all great, and special mention should go to the soundtrack score by John Powell which was far stronger than the film itself. It almost felt like it belonged in something grander, something epic. I really needed the nice, warm glow of this film. Just the tonic and exactly what I needed after a tough couple of days watching the manic tension of THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE, THE ZONE OF INTEREST and SOCIETY OF THE SNOW.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – DEAD RECKONING PART ONE (2023, Christopher McQuarrie) – Consistently great. A solid four-star movie and the hardest film series to rank as 6 of them are so good (we all know which one is the duffer, sorry Gen-Y kids). It’s time to start talking about Christopher McQuarrie being one of the greatest action writer-directors around; even the (many) exposition scenes were forward facing and kinetic. And, not to sound like a male chauvinist, but good lord, the ladies! Hayley Atwell, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby and Pom Klementieff. It feels like such a departure – even though we’re twenty-odd years into the 21st century – to completely cast a film with what might be called in the north of England ‘thinking man’s crumpet’. Cor blimey. After GHOST PROTOCOL, which I give 5-stars, I’d rate all the others as 4-stars (except the 1-star duffer), and ranking-wise they’re all so bloody interchangeable it doesn’t really matter what order you put them in. It’s quite telling that this is 9 minutes longer than INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY but manages to feel about half an hour shorter.
NIMONA (2023, Nick Bruno & Troy Quane) – Nice genre-mix of medieval and sci-fi – half A KNIGHT’S TALE, half BLADE RUNNER – in this Oscar-nominated animated film. I wasn’t a huge fan of the animation style, a little too angular and flat-looking for me, but the muted colour palette was a nice change from the eye-popping stuff Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney have conditioned us to. Heartwarming and hilarious at times.
OF AN AGE (2022, Goran Stolevski) – STRESS!!! Loved the opening sequence to this, which I found hilarious, perfectly capturing the awkward life or death urgency of youth. The writing throughout felt so real – how a chance encounter means so much so briefly – and the second half of the film, based on another chance encounter, also felt like it was plucked from real life. Loved the camerawork too, full of closeups capturing stolen glances, and awkward looks. And a great cast captured on that lens.
THE PIGEON TUNNEL (2023, ERROL MORRIS) – Men will literally become a best-selling spy author instead of going to therapy. This was quite a turgid documentary, with Earl Morris interrogating John le Carré about the effect his father had on him. But that’s all it was. 90 minutes of a man talking about his father. The trimmings around the interview – the Philip Glass score, the well-filmed re-enactments, the inserts of photographs and documents – elevates this into a much better film than it should be.
PRISCILLA (2023, Sofia Coppola) – Very good, although exactly what you’d expect from Sofia Coppola – all rotary telephones and shag carpets (even shag-lined bathroom scales) – and more of a focus on vibe than anything remotely related to real life human interactions. It’s easy to see what drew Coppola to Priscilla’s story – there’s more than a little similarity between Priscilla being plucked out of obscurity thanks to a chance meeting at a party, and Coppola being born into filmmaking royalty. I don’t mean to discredit her achievements, but there’s being born on the finish line, and then there’s making a film about being plucked onto the finish line. I expect Coppola grew up surrounded by sycophants too, just like the Memphis Mafia here who spend the film whooping and hollering in the background. I had heard that Jacob Elordi wasn’t in this much as Elvis, and that it’s Cailee Spaeny’s film as Priscilla, but Elordi seems to share the screen time well. He plays Elvis as a moody child, throwing chairs at walls and flipping out when a pillow-fight doesn’t go his way. It’s a far cry from the in-your-face heroic portrayal by Austin Butler. Also interesting that the thing I know Cailee Spaeny from is BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE, another film where she dotes on a Christ-like figure. After John Carpenter got the real-life Charlie Hodge – Elvis’ towel-man – to act as himself in Carpenter’s TV movie, ELVIS, opposite guys in their twenties playing his contemporaries, it’s a real shame that Coppola didn’t reanimate Hodge’s corpse and try to repeat the trick.
ROBOT DREAMS (2023, Pablo Berger) – Super-sweet ennui trip as an anthropomorphic dog loses his robot pal at the beach and spends a good deal of time trying to get him back, before life gets in the way. This said a lot about friendships, but boy the soundtrack was great with Earth, Wind & Fire’s September and Booker T. & the M.G.’s Hip-Hug Her. The dream element of this was very well done – I’m actually glad I didn’t watch it with my daughters as they would have had one too many questions – and the recurring shots of the World Trade Centre was just another element of this motif. What’s real? What’s not? What would we like to be real? What wouldn’t we like to be real? Superb visual homages to JAWS, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, UNCLE BUCK, GREMLINS and many more.
SHARPER (2023, Benjamin Caron) – Hugely enjoyable grifter thriller which, at least in its first half, is clever to keep you in the dark about who’s being grifted. Beautifully shot, I actually had to check I was watching the right film about 10 minutes in as it looked and felt far better than I was expecting – particularly for a film from a streamer (Apple+). The cast are all superb – Sebastian Stan (looking like he’s auditioning for a Gary Numan biopic), Julianne Moore and John Lithgow, alongside newcomers Justice Smith (one of the highlights of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES) and Briana Middleton. Loved the structure of this, presented as a series of non-linear vignettes, which started to overlap. These films always struggle to get over the line without catching any flack when everything pulls together, and while this does suffer from a couple of issues (Julianne Moore’s too-swift decision to do something near the end felt narratively unearned), it was forgivable due to the fun pouring out of the story.
SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING(Quentin Dupieux, 2022) – I saw this so long ago, mid-2022 during that year’s NZIFF, I actually covered this in last year’s Oscars post (thinking it just hadn’t been eligible for that year). One thing to be taken from Quentin Dupieux’s DEERSKIN (2019) is that he writes and directs truly bizarre films. In that sense he’s like a Gallic Jim Hosking, only he’s been doing it for a little longer (and his films are less shouty). His new feature FUMER FAIT TOUSSER (SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING) – one of two films he released in 2022 alongside INCROYABLE MAIS VRAI (INCREDIBLE BUT TRUE) – is a tale of five Power Ranger-like superheroes, the Tobacco Force, who spend their days fighting evil creatures. I loved it, and it was great to see with a full Friday night audience.
SOCIETY OF THE SNOW (2023, J.A. Bayona) – I wasn’t expecting to say this, but SOCIETY OF THE SNOW makes 1993’s ALIVE look like a walk in the park. Thirty years have passed and the ability to do much more on screen has improved, so to that end there wasn’t a moment of this when I didn’t believe the plane and its survivors were stuck up a mountain in the middle of the Andes. A terrific film, and definitely my pick for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. My only criticism is that it could have been a good twenty or twenty-five minutes shorter. And I’m going to struggle to not think about this film the next time I step onto a plane. So, yep, thanks for that!
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE (2023, Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson & Kemp Powers) – I see you, SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE, preempting BARBIE’s 2023 blockbuster feminism with the line “My holes can take me anywhere!” We’re not worthy. Well, at least the MCU stans aren’t. Dazzling animation that doesn’t stick with one style for 5 minutes. In fact, here it’s the norm for one character in a shot to be drawn in one animation style, another character from a different style, and then a background from something else entirely. It shouldn’t work, but the first film proved that it did, and this sequel just goes in with two feet. There’s a person in a Facebook comic book group here in New Zealand who’s wanked on in the past about SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE being the worst Spider-Man film around (when up to now it’s been the best, right?). His argument seems to be predicated on the fact that Miles Morales is black, and therefore it’s – yawn – “SUPERWOKE”, or some such tosspot term, for the filmmakers to muddy the Spider-Man character with, which in his – clearly racist – eyes should be 1000% white. What a fucking shame. And from memory, this so-called comic-book fan had a Māori or Pacific Peoples sounding name. Wow, when you’re so right wing and bigoted, you’re against inclusivity despite being a person of colour. Ugh. Everybody should – and can – have a Spider-Man they can look up to. What a glorious picture, and I’m glad it’s so triggering for the small-minded. Can’t wait for the third one.
TALK TO ME (2023, Michael & Danny Philippou) – Wow. Easily my favourite horror film of the year so far. Could have been a mistake watching this just a few nights after revisiting Friedkin’s THE EXORCIST on the big screen, but this is a possession movie that proudly stands on its own two feet. And one hand. Loved every bit of this – the early fascination with phones (portals of their own!), the ultra-realistic interactions between friends and family members, the background of micro-societal pressure and school clique structure, all of it just felt so grounded and fresh. And rules! It’s awesome to see a horror film have some rules again; reminds me of the fun set of rules in GREMLINS. Gotta break those rules, right? See what happens…
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE (2023, İlker Çatak) – If this film was the drummer in Green Day, it’d be called Tré Uncomfortable. Loved this completely, but I ended up watching so much of it through my fingers. A teacher takes a stand against the immoral badgering of students during an investigation into some petty thefts, before finding herself caught in the middle of a minefield of students, parents and faculty. It has an awesomely tense soundtrack score, all scratchy strings, that seemed to make everything a hundred times worse. I thought the scene with all the blouses was incredibly well done, just to show the creeping sense of dread that doubt can induce. I’ve had a few moments like that in real life, and the film accurately brought this to life I such a visual flourish. This would make a perfect double bill with Thomas Vinterberg’s THE HUNT, another film about a school teacher who finds himself drowning in the quagmire of accusations and half-truths.
THEY CLONED TYRONE (2023, Juel Taylor) – One of the better Netflix originals – a genre-bending sci-fi crime thriller, set in the hood, with a host of pimps, sex workers and drug dealers. Shares a fair bit of DNA with Jordan Peele’s US and Duncan Jones’ MOON, spun through a Spike Lee / John Singleton blender, and the cast – John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris – look like they’re having a lot of fun. There’s a lovely grain on this, making it look like it was filmed in the early ‘90s. More films should take this approach to cinematography, particularly horror films which always look like ass when they’re too shiny and digital.
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR (2023, Wes Anderson) – Loved this, and, as I’m sure everybody will agree, it’s twice the film that ASTEROID CITY is. Clearly the furthest reaching of his four Roald Dahl adaptations released on Netflix this year, this genuinely feels like the culmination of everything Anderson has been working towards – a production so completely in sync, everything from lighting to stage design, from acting to editing, from cinematography to music. It all just buzzes along so nicely. Superb.
*
And some films that don’t appear on the eligibility list:
CAT PERSON (Susanna Fogle, 2023) – Immensely enjoyable adaptation of a New Yorker short story, which takes a famous Margaret Atwood quote (‘Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them’) as its starting point. One of my favourite films of the year, although I admit that it won’t be for everybody. Male chauvinists need not apply. Emilia Jones (CODA) starts dating Nicholas Braun (SUCCESSION) much to the disapproval of her best friend Geraldine Viswanathan (BLOCKERS) and some increasingly darker and darker BILLY LIAR-esque fantasy sequences. I’d expect this to provoke many a conversation between men and women (not to mention between men and men, and women and women) for many years to come.
HELLO DANKNESS (2022, Soda Jerk) – Yeah, this one definitely won’t be eligible. Sofa Jerk’s new film is a 70-minute mix-tape of movie samples and clever digital manipulation to recount the 2016 election, and subsequent fall out and culture wars, as seen through some well chosen clips from major Hollywood motion pictures from (mostly) the 1990s onwards. There’s a heap of key movies involved – far too many to list here – and as a result it seems unlikely the film will have a life past the big screen, due to the obvious legalities of using so many clips without permission. Cleverly hilarious.
HOLY SPIDER (2022, Ali Abbasi) – Another one of my favourites of the year, this film couldn’t be any more up my street unless it was filmed where I live. HOLY SPIDER is a serial-killer thriller, based on real-life events in the city of Mashhad in Iran, that has drawn comparisons to Fincher’s ZODIAC. There’s somewhat of a boom in films coming out of Iran at the moment – thanks in part to Asghar Fahadi, Ana Lily Amirpour and Jafar Panahi whose successes have lit a fuse – and it might just be my favourite country for filmmaking at the moment, the standard of films coming out of there is so high. On paper the film sounds fairly formulaic if it had come out of Hollywood – a female journalist investigates a serial killer with a taste for sex workers in a bustling city, and ends up posing as one to find him – but the location provides a fresh spin on what can sometimes be a tired thriller genre. While the first half leans heavily towards ZODIAC, and tried and tested tropes, the second half introduces an element that could only come from an Iranian film. There’s an undercurrent of social acceptance of the killings, not least by the slow-to-act local police force, echoing cases like the Yorkshire Ripper murders, and a political and moral angle that complicates matters even more. The cast are great – Zar Amir Ebrahimi as the journalist, and Mehdi Bajestani as the killer she seeks. Bajestani reminded me of a dead-eyed Tom Noonan, which made me think of Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER and added to the terror of the crimes. I also enjoyed the brilliantly brooding synths on the soundtrack score by Martin Dirkov, which gave everything a contemporary feel. A superb achievement by director Ali Abbasi, whose previous film BORDER (2018) was a weird favourite of mine some five years ago. I noticed in the credits to HOLY SPIDER, he thanked Bong Joon-ho and David Lynch, which goes some way in declaring the company he keeps (and maybe the kind of career he’s heading towards).
HOT POTATO: THE STORY OF THE WIGGLES (2023, Sally Aitken) – Such a great documentary – even though I’m slightly biased because I interviewed its Associate Director and Co-Producer Fraser Grut on the My Movie DNA podcast. There was so much emotion packed into this, I found myself wiping away tears at least three times, and I didn’t even grow up with the Wiggles, so I can’t imagine what it must be like for people who had such a strong, foundational link to them. A beautiful story, well told, with a dozen twists and turns like very good documentary should have. One of my favourite documentaries of the year.
LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (2023, Cameron & Colin Cairnes) – For somebody who watched the BBC’s GHOSTWATCH on its first broadcast as a mortified 14-year old (and then had to go out delivering newspapers in the dark the morning after), this felt very close to home. An almost note-perfect recreation of a live 1970s late-night American TV show, I suspect this would work even better when watching on the small screen (which might cover up some of the joins). The sequences between transmissions, as the show went repeatedly to commercials (another spot-on reference), actually reminded me THIS TIME WITH ALAN PARTRIDGE, as the star would go off for a sidebar with the line-producer to discuss how the show was going. David Dastmalchian is perfect in this as the sleazy talk-show host Jack Delroy, coping with a personal tragedy as he chases high ratings. The chaos, when it eventually started happening, was handled extremely well, and a couple of gross-out moments made me laugh out loud (what I’d call the ‘involuntary Sam Raimi response’) several times.
LOOP TRACK (2023, Tom Sainsbury) – While I was at first disappointed that this wasn’t as comedic as I was hoping to see from New Zealand national treasure Tom Sainsbury, it’s clear that he’s a filmmaker to watch, with this impressive directorial debut. Sainsbury plays Ian, a nervous, distracted man who embarks on a trek though the New Zealand bush. Seeking some time to himself, he bumps into a small group of people on the same route, who he joins out of politeness, before he starts to think he’s being followed… It’s a thriller at the end of the day, but can be read as a black comedy, with the humour mostly coming naturally from the pitch-perfect casting. There’s far more to it that that, but to describe it further would give a lot away. Best to go into this blind, if possible.
MY NAME IS ALFRED HITCHCOCK (2022, Mark Cousins) – There wasn’t a chance I was going to miss this; a wonderful start to NZIFF 2023 after my 2022 festival got all but cancelled (aside from one or two late screenings) due to a positive COVID test in the days leading up to the start. Despite his faux pas in (almost) identifying Jane Campion as an Australian on the opening credits to 2011’s THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (which I talk about here, and which he corrected on the later 2021 film after I tweeted him several times), I’m a big fan of Mark Cousins. Here, he brings us Alfred Hitchcock’s disembodied voice, magically speaking from beyond the grave in the 21st century – cinema’s original disruptor and the eternal voyeur. Hitchcock acts as a guide through clips from his film (and to a lesser extent, films from other directors), some of which – the close-up of Janet Leigh driving in PSYCHO – I’ve never seen looking better (thanks, in part I later found out, to the bazzing new projector at the Hollywood Avondale, and part, I’m guessing, from the clips being sourced from the brand new 4K transfers). The film is segmented into six segments (which I remembered through the use of a mnemonic: ‘Every day, let the fulfilment hover’) – Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfilment and Height – and Hitchcock’s slow, laconic drawl (expertly done by impressionist Alistair McGowan) almost hypnotises us through the film. I also liked Mark Cousin’s brief audio cameos, in a film celebrating a director known for his cameos. This was a majestic piece of work, and just the right film to introduce the wonders of Hitchcock to younger (and future) generations.
NO BEARS (2022, Jafar Panahi) – Loved this. Dusty cars, gossiping villagers, traditions, respect, politeness. Very similar to an Asghar Fahadi film where the event or thing that provides the seed of the drama, whether it be a kernel of truth or an accusation, is something so small and seemingly inconsequential when it first happens. This is my first Jafar Panahi film so I’m unsure whether the similarity with Fahadi runs through all his work? It hit similar strides as the border peril in fellow Iranian film HIT THE ROAD and there was somewhat of the horror from politeness of SPEAK NO EVIL. Panahi is quietly incredible in the leading role, playing himself in a film he’s written and directed about a filmmaker struggling to make a film remotely in a small Iranian village near the Turkish border. He fills the frame with so much and you’re never quite sure what the focus of the shot is, and even the film within a film device was handled with a vitality missing whenever this usually happens in cinema. Deliciously long takes too, another one of my favourite filmmaking tricks.
THE PARAGON (2023, Michael Duignan) – Wow. A world premiere at the glorious Hollywood Avondale, with much of this crazy time-travel/multiverse movie shot in the local area. This was made for just over $25,000 – a ridiculously low amount for a feature length film. And yes, from time to time, it did look (and sound) like a film that was made for $25,000. But the film reached for the stars – one of the most ambitious low-budget genre films I’ve ever seen – and mostly grabbed them and pulled them down into West Auckland with both hands. A wonderful achievement.
RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW (2023, Jak Hutchcraft) – Always impressed when a documentary provokes a feeling you only get from other types of films, and at one point this is just as tense as the very best thrillers. I loved this, but of course, I’m biased as I WAS AT THIS VERY EVENT! My Brighton friends Robbie and Natalie had invited us down as they had attended the year before when Fatboy had played after the cricket and it was all a bit low-key. So me and best buddy Paul drove down for the weekend, arriving the day before – which was all a bit of luck – as we might not have made it down had we gone that day due to all the traffic jam. Had the best time, managed to slip in near the stage, close to some steps. Made lots of new friends. Had to help a pair of young girls next to us who were tying poppers for the first time, and one of them snorted instead of sniffed (!). Then after Fatboy finished with Pure Shores, we sat around for a while on some huge skip bins until it got a bit quieter, and then went to a house party. Great times. Only the next morning, when I woke up, did I find out about the size of the crowd. My Mum had sent me a text saying ‘Are you ok? News says .25m people on beach’. I thought maybe she got her number wrong. Did she mean 25,000? But no, as this film lays out, it was an estimated attendance of 250,000. Thankfully, we had somewhere to stay – Robbie and Natalie’s living room floor – as I would have hated trying to get back to London. I didn’t realise all of that chaos until watching this film.
*
My Picks For The Winners:
Finally, here are my 20 picks for what the Academy will actually vote for on the night (excluding the three shorts categories). I’ll be aiming to beat my terrible score of just 40% (8 out of 20) last year.
Best Picture: PAST LIVES ❌ (Winner: OPPENHEIMER)
Best Director: Christopher Nolan (OPPENHEIMER) ✅
Best Actress: Emma Stone(POOR THINGS) ✅
Best Actor: Cillian Murphy (OPPENHEIMER) ✅
Best Supporting Actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (THE HOLDOVERS) ✅
Best Supporting Actor: Robert Downey Jr. (OPPENHEIMER) ✅
Best Original Screenplay: THE HOLDOVERS ❌ (Winner: ANATOMY OF A FALL)
Best Adapted Screenplay: AMERICAN FICTION ✅
Best Animated Feature Film: SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE ❌ (Winner: THE BOY AND THE HERON)
Best Documentary – Feature: 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL ✅
Best International Feature: THE ZONE OF INTEREST ✅
Best Cinematography: OPPENHEIMER ✅
Best Film Editing: OPPENHEIMER ✅
Best Costume Design: POOR THINGS ✅
Best Makeup And Hairstyling: SOCIETY OF THE SNOW ❌ (Winner: POOR THINGS)
Best Original Score: KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON ❌ (Winner: OPPENHEIMER)
Best Original Song:What Was I Made For?(BARBIE) ✅
Best Sound: THE ZONE OF INTEREST ✅
Best Production Design: POOR THINGS ✅
Best Visual Effects: THE CREATOR ❌ (Winner: GODZILLA MINUS ONE)
An absolute grail of a soundtrack to receive from Waxwork Records as the final package of their 2023 subscription (alongside Pino Donaggio’s BODY DOUBLE score, another white whale – both first time pressings on vinyl). Cue joke about receiving package from courier driver and shouting ‘What’s in the box?’.
I was lucky to see David Fincher’s SE7EN on the big screen last year, on the final night of Academy Cinema’s Nights Of Neo-Noir festival in Auckland. It might be his brilliant second film, but I always like to think as it as his directorial debut proper, ignoring the hiccup of ALIEN 3, on which he battled studio interference so heavily, it never truly felt like his own film.
I hadn’t seen SE7EN in such a long time, yet when it first came out I spent a good 5 or 6 years endlessly rewatching it on VHS. Seeing it for the first time on the big screen felt like reconnecting with an old friend. A stinking, rotting, fetid and puerile old friend, but one I remember well.
Everybody is amazing in this, from the three leads – Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow – to that other fella, and a stellar supporting cast of R. Lee Ermey, Richard Roundtree, John C. McGinley, Mark Boone Junior, Leland Orser and Michael Massee.
But it’s Fincher’s slow-burn direction, Andrew Kevin Walker’s twisted screenplay, Darius Khondji’s claustrophobic cinematography and Howard Shore’s knife-edge soundtrack score that really pull you in.
I only just realised on this thousandth (or something) rewatch that Somerset really does walk off the case after the second murder, ’greed’. For some reason I thought he was showboating like he did after the first murder, ‘gluttony’ – which is why Mills is bringing him up to speed on the case when they’re investigating the ‘greed’ murder and interviewing the victim’s wife, which leads them to the painting.
Such a glorious thriller, and superb to see it projected so close to the short cinematic release of Fincher and Walker’s latest collaboration, THE KILLER.
I recently spoke to legendary music supervisor Tarquin Gotch for the My Movie DNA podcast, a man that not only had a impact on my cinematic tastes, but has left an indelible imprint on my record collection.
Apart from the John Hughes soundtracks in my collection which he music supervised – PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES and SHE’S HAVING A BABY, PRETTY IN PINK, which was just prior to his involvement with Hughes, and the LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST boxset that set the ball rolling for me to approach Tarquin in the first place, I wondered what else I had in my shelves with his name on it.
I found Rowan Atkinson’s 1985 live album LIVE IN BELFAST – always a hoot to listen to – with Tarquin’s name listed on the centre-labels as an executive producer (he was managing Atkinson at the time), and the HOME ALONE soundtrack, the film on which he switched from music supervisor to executive producer for Hughes, but I couldn’t find anything else. I’m still certain I’ll come across other records I already own, with his name on them somewhere.
In Real Groovy a couple of weeks ago, just before the interview, I spotted the 1985 debut album by the Dream Academy waiting for me in the racks. A quick check of the inner sleeve, and there it was: ‘Management: Tarquin Gotch’. So up to the counter I took it.
I don’t have any knowledge of the Dream Academy outside of their use as needle-drops in John Hughes’ films, but what songs they are: a cover of the Smiths’ Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, used to great effect in FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF when the trio visit the art gallery, The Edge Of Forever from the same film, when Ferris says his goodbyes to Sloan, and the devastating instrumental version of Power To Believe, which soundtracks a pivotal scene towards the end of PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES.
So this self-titled debut is definitely worth a shot, I thought. And I was right, it is!
The chanted melody on album opener Life In A Northern Town is immediately recognisable due to its use as a sample by Dario G in the song Sunchyme. The second song on the album is The Edge Of Forever, again instantly recognisable due to its use in FERRIS BUELLER…. But the rest of the album is just as strong, I love it and I’m slightly kicking myself for not having found it earlier. I’ll definitely be picking up their two other studio albums as soon as I can find them.
I’m told the band namecheck Nick Drake on the album – they don’t on my copy, a US first pressing – so maybe it’s only on the sleeve of the Life Is A Northern Town single? The song was written as an elegy to Drake (although the lyrics don’t deal with him directly), and the band were a key force in raising Drake’s profile before his records were reevaluated by the music press towards the end of the decade.
The Fleetwood Mac section in Real Groovy is always one of my favourite record store hangouts, particularly as I get closer and closer to completing my collection of all the Mac Studio albums (just a handful left to pick up, for those following along at home).
Christine McVie’s recent SONGBIRD compilation left such an impression on me, I had to grab her self-titled second album when I saw it in the racks, a first US pressing.
Featuring a cover photo that makes it look like she’s playing piano at the Battle of Naboo, this self-titled outing is a pop-rock gem, comfortingly sounding a lot like mid-‘80s Fleetwood Mac which is, of course, a good thing.
Lindsey Buckingham has his fingerprints all over the album, providing rhythm guitar on two songs, backing vocals on two songs, and lead guitar and backing vocals on another; and Mick Fleetwood, almost to give his blessing, plays drums on one song. But it’s clear that McVie is well-liked across the rock world with a host of other guest players – Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ray Cooper – who all pop into the studio to play on a song or two. And that’s not to say her band aren’t up to scratch – not only does she have Steve Ferrone on drums, but guitarist and co-songwriter Todd Sharp, a touring guitarist with Fleetwood Mac, is no slouch, and the same goes for bass player George Hawkins, a popular choice for Mick Fleetwood and Lindsey Buckingham’s solo outings. The album is produced by Russ Titelman, noted at the time for being Randy Newman’s producer, but who found greater success with Clapton’s JOURNEYMAN and UNPLUGGED a few years later.
This is McVie’s first solo record since her 1970 debut, CHRISTINE PERFECT, released under her maiden name. I’ve not found that one…yet…but I’ll get to it eventually, and I see that her third and final solo album, 2004’s IN THE MEANTIME finally got a vinyl reissue last year. The hunt continues…
Woah, another well-overdue reissue after Catatonia’s INTERNATIONAL VELVET towards the end of last year. Just like that album, this is another late-‘90s favourite of mine, and of course we get Cerys Matthews from Catatonia appearing here on the album’s highest-charting single, The Ballad Of Tom Jones, reaching #4 in the UK.
I went into Real Groovy looking for another well overdue reissue, which I didn’t find in the ‘SP’ section, but found this instead. Over the moon to finally find it; something I’d only ever owned on CD back in the late ‘90s.
I do like SPIDERS, their 1996 debut, but there’s a fair bit of filler on that, particularly on the back half of the album. The writing and production on TIN PLANET is much stronger, and I’ve always loved the album tracks just as much as the singles. It must have been hard for these post-Britpop bands at the end of the decade, coming along after all the buzz had died down. Embrace, Cast, Space and others seemed to come along in those wilderness years between 1995 and 2000 when Coldplay and the Kaiser Chiefs started another wave of interest in British bands.
My good friend Kaj once pointed something out that might explain my interest in Space. For a late-‘90s Indie band they’re quite unique in that all the three songwriting members of the band are all into different genres of music. Vocalist Tommy Scott is a fan of film soundtrack music, guitarist Jamie Murphy leans towards the classic Britpop sound of the early ‘90s, and keyboardist Franny Griffiths is a fan of electronica and dance music (represented by the techno freak out on album closer Fran In Japan). So instead of the usual guitar-heavy sound achieved by most Indie bands, their sound is more cinematic, with glorious strings and Scott’s crooning vocals, but grounded by Murphy’s guitars, Griffiths’ keyboards, and a solid Britpop rhythm section in David “Yorkie” Palmer on bass and Leon Caffrey on drums.
Listening to this, it takes me back to my own wilderness years between leaving University, and leaving home to flat with friends in Manchester. I used to listen to this a lot on my CD walkman, cycling up to my dead-end supermarket job, before my career took off elsewhere. I even bought a live concert – on VHS I think – of the band touring the album in Liverpool (in which Scott was taking far too much interest in the band’s fans at the front of the stage and mostly ignoring the rest of the audience, always a bugbear of mine when I see it happen in real life – I’m looking at you, Lorde).
Rod the Mod’s debut album, released as AN OLD RAINCOAT WON’T EVER LET YOU DOWN in the UK, and THE ROD STEWART ALBUM in the US – and as per the Australasian copy I’m spinning now – also here in New Zealand.
It lacks the punch of his work with the Faces and the Jeff Beck group, but it’s not a bad start for a solo career. Ronnie Wood and Ian McLagan from the Faces are here throughout, and the rest of the band are filled out by two guitarists (Martins Pugh and Quittenton) from a rock band called Steamhammer (no, me neither) and Micky ‘I’ve played with everybody in the 1960s’ Waller on drums. Keith Emerson (from Emerson, Lake & Palmer) and Mike d’Abo from Manfred Mann also drop by.
Album-opener Street Fighting Man, a cover of the Rolling Stones’ song that Wood himself would go on to play thousands of times when he stepped into that band, is definitely an interesting recording. It starts off as a rootsy interpretation, similar to how the Band might cover it, before ending it’s five-minute running time with a more direct, Stones-esque blast through the song.
We’re here for Rod’s voice though, right? And it’s on top form, even if some of the material isn’t exactly thrilling. Incidentally, his recording of Mike d’Abo’s Handbags & Gladrags, the second version of the song after Chris Farlowe’s 1967 single, didn’t even bother the charts. Rod’s version peaked at #69 in the UK and #42 in the US. Despite being one of the iconic Rod Stewart songs, it’s never been a successful single for him, and only charted high for the Stereophonics, hitting #4 in 2001.
Vinyl Stylus 