The 2022 Oscar The Grouches

Last year I spoke of being down but not out, having hope and searching for a new beginning, and 2022 lived up to that. The first half I spent unemployed but happier than in the past and divided my time between watching films, falling back in love with reading, growing despondent, actually seeing friends (in some cases for the first time since the beforetimes). Then in the second the old adage about buses transferred to the employment of a odd man in the South of England and two positions came along at once. The first - an admittedly well-paid (at least to me) role in pensions and insurance - I still don't know how I got. Even the thought of the 90 minute interview seemed far-fetched, I don't know that I have that much material on a subject I like let alone something as dull as myself and customer service. But it happened. Then literally a day later a friend aware of my situation and who also runs my local independent cinema called to say his long-term projectionist had handed in his notice and he was looking at hiring someone who could work across several different departments, and my enthusiasm and foul-mouthed ramblings soon became a career. I'm not entirely sure how this happened either, or how I'm six months in in a field I'm passionate about that rarely feels like a job to me. I'm very lucky.

Everything is better now and that in itself feels entirely strange somehow but it has happened. I'm happier and have prospects, I'm living again, my mental health is better, in cinematic terms I've also watched more films this year than I have in several (182) and I've even written, including a review out of the blue on here. My list reflects this as does my list of the best films not from this year. On TV I've loved the twisty, talk-heavy meta-self analysis Irma Vep (despite not loving much else Olivier Assayas has ever done) and Lars Von Trier's absurd apocalyptic hospital horror The Kingdom: Exodus while online MUBI and the Arrow Video app have been providing the streams of my dreams (and a lot of Meiko Kaji).

I genuinely don't know what 2023 holds but the trite platitude 'anything can happen' seems more true and more plausible than I ever considered. Here's to it...

2022
Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg - USA)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul - Thailand/Colombia/UK)
Gangubai Kathiawadi (Sanjay Leela Bhansali - India/Hindi)
Vortex (Gaspar Noé - France/Belgium/Morocco)
Hold Me Tight (Mathieu Amalric - France)
Oye Makhna (Simerjit Singh - India/Punjabi)
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar - Spain)
The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh - Ireland/UK/USA)
Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook - South Korea)
Taste (Lê Bảo - Vietnam)
KGF: Chapter 2 (Prasanth Neel - India/Kannada)
En Corps [Rise] (Cédric Klapisch - France)
Earwig (Lucile Hadžihalilović - Belgium/France/UK)
One Second (Zhang Yimou - China)
Hit The Road (Panah Panahi - Iran)
Official Competition (Gastón Duprat/Mariano Cohn - Spain/Argentina)

Not 2022

Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini - Italy)

Out Of The Blue (Dennis Hopper - Canada)

Chess Of The Wind (Mohammad Reza Aslani - Iran)

The Blood of Hussain (Jamil Dehlavi - Pakistan)

Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo (Toshiya Fujita - Japan)

Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale - USA)

Egomania: Island Without Hope (Christoph Schlingensief - West Germany)

Bérénice (Éric Rohmer - France)

The 2016 Oscar The Grouches

This year has been a strange one in so many ways. At the end of 2015 I felt disenchanted and fairly disappointed in myself in a number of ways and did something I never have before, namely making three loose aims to reach for in 2016. In a surprise to everyone (especially me) two of the three have actually happened. I've made them happen. Unfortunately as good as things have been in those respects my spare time and energy has taken a big hit and as a result so has the number of films I've seen and written about. There are so many I've wanted to see and not gotten around to and a few more that have simply fallen by the wayside. 250 has become 126, 100 odd has become 1 and the top 20's of past years have become a top 11. Last year I said that I wanted to be better and I humbly think I am but in 2017 I still want to improve, to be far better than I am now, more able, more capable, more efficient in dividing my time and handling my load (no sniggers please). I want to watch more, write more and enjoy both but I don't know if I will. I don't know that I'll get the chance. Regardless these are my favourite films of the year, give them a shot, enjoy them, make of them what you will. Until we meet again.

1. The Wait (Piero Messina - Italy/France)
2. Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (Karan Johar - India)
3. Yakuza Apocalypse (Takashi Miike - Japan)
4. A Girl At My Door (July Jung - South Korea)
5. The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson - Canada)
6. Thou Wast Mild And Lovely (Josephine Decker - USA)
7. Room (Lenny Abrahamson - Canada/Ireland)
8. Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson - USA)
9. Horse Money (Pedro Costa - Portugal)
10. Sarbjit (Omung Kumar - India)
11. Bridge (Amit Ranjan Biswas - India/Bengal)
    

The 2015 Oscar The Grouches.

          The Top 20

1. Miss Julie (Liv Ullman - Norway/Ireland/UK)                               
2. Mommy (Xavier Dolan - Canada)
3. The President (Mohsen Makhmalbaf - Georgia)
4. Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako - Mauritania)
5. The Dance Of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky - Chile)
6. The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy - Ukraine)
7. The Look Of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer - Indonesia/Denmark)
8. Phoenix (Christian Petzold - Germany)
9. Gett (Ronit Elkabetz -Israel)
10. The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (Guillaume Nicloux - France)
11. Love (Gaspar Noé - France)
12. The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones - France/USA)
13. Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev - Russia)
14. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson - Sweden)
15. The Duke Of Burgundy (Peter Strickland - UK)
16. P'tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont - France)
17. The Green Prince (Nadav Schirman - Israel/Germany)
18. The Falling (Carol Morley - UK)
19. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson - USA)
20. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan - Turkey)

2015 has been a strange year both personally and cinematically, and while there have been countless fantastic, innovative and unexpected films I haven't seen nearly as many as I could (or should) have and reviewed even fewer, work, bereavement, mental health, dwindling spare time and just plain laziness having taken precedence or got in the way. I can only apologise, hopefully in 2016 I'll be able to keep up. Overall I just want to be better. Regardless, above are my top 20. Make of them what you will, seek them out, discover, enjoy and revisit them. Until we meet again.

The 2014 Oscar The Grouches.

The Top 20

1. The Policeman's Wife (Philip Gröning - Germany)

2. Exhibition (Joanna Hogg - UK)

3. Nymph()maniac Volumes 1 & 2 (Lars Von Trier - Denmark/UK)

4. Goltzius And The Pelican Company (Peter Greenaway - Netherlands/UK)

5. Mr Turner (Mike Leigh - UK)

6. Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer - UK)

7. The Past (Asghar Farhadi - France/Iran)

8. The Patience Stone (Atiq Rahimi - Afghanistan)

9. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh - Cambodia/France)

10. 12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen - UK)

11. With You, Without You (Prasanna Vithanage - Sri Lanka)

12. The Congress (Ari Folman - France/Israel)

13. The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas (Elina Psikou - Greece)

14. Venus In Fur (Roman Polanski - France)

15. Sofia's Last Ambulance (Ilian Metev - Bulgaria)

16. Stranger By The Lake (Alain Guiraudie - France)

17. Meteora (Spiros Stathoulopoulos - Greece)

18. Attila Marcel (Sylvain Chomet - France)

19. Fill The Void (Rama Burshtein - Israel)

20. Two Days, One Night (The Dardenne Brothers - Belgium)

Performance of the Year

Jessica Chastain - Salomé

Glorious, girlish, ridden with rejection, she teases, demands, dances, deals, masks her face with her veils, wraps them around herself like Red Riding Hood; her skin as incandescently pale as the feathers of a dove, as the moon of which she speaks, she writhes like Shinsuke Nakamura, bites her words, spits them out replete with teeth marks, her lips and her fingertips mottled with drops of blood. She weaves false memories to her lust, her adoration, her hate and passion alike. She asks for love with rage and sobs. She rises and descends, she lives and dies with a heart full of throat. She is strong and yet weak, alive and yet myth. She is all. There just wasn’t a better actor this year.


Short Film of the Year
Buy Bling Get One Free! (Kosuke Takaya - Japan)

Cleverly written and innovatively shot Kosuke Takaya's satire of youth and fashion consistently plays with genre expectations, places genuine horror alongside bizarre farce and has the best giraffe related moment of the year. For that alone it comes highly recommended.

Most Surprising Performance

Julia Roberts - August: Osage County

If you'd told me at the start of the year that Julia Roberts would have been the best actress in anything I'd probably have either dismissed you, the film itself or both. If you'd told me that she would be the best actress in a film starring Meryl Streep I'd have doubtless sworn at you and thrown my hands in the air, exhausted by your constant tomfoolery. But that is the situation August: Osage County presents us with. Here Roberts is ferocious, raw, desperately trying to curb an explosion (mostly her own) amid familial obligations and at a career best. Given the power and frayed emotion of her character I fully understand if she never wants to reach this level again but, in a selfish way, I hope she does.
Full review: http://whyiswilhelmscreaming.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/i-think-what-you-said-is-true-im-going.html


Frustrating Fucktrumpet of the Year
Ali Abbas Zafar

Zafar's thundering Gunday was very probably the film that caused me the most turmoil while picking a top twenty. On the one hand, it was cinematically the best Bollywood film I saw this year and quite possibly one of my top five overall. On the other it was wildly racist. As his mainstream breakthrough it should have launched Zafar's career into the top line and marked him out as a talent to watch and cherish for years to come. As it is he may never be allowed to direct again. Say it with me - fucktrumpet.


Funniest Scene
Moebius

Often considered a purveyor of human cruelty, the ever-experimental South Korean director Kim Ki-duk's films have traditionally been nothing to laugh at and, for the most part, his latest Moebius is no different. Except in one deadpan scene that is. To describe it may spoil part of the pleasure so all I'll say is that it invokes The Hands of Orlac...except with a penis.