My 10 Favourite Films of 2011

In no particular order:


Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malik)

Cinema, in part, is life writ large. Terrence Malik's masterpiece is life writ bloody humungous. Like an over-inflated sense of one's own awsomeness. Soft and tender, like the downy hairs on a frowning woman's face and floatily sensual like a helium-engorged silver cats head. Try and find it silly and pretentious and it will turn around and groggily hug the very softest membranes of your inner organs. Literally all of life is here, and it's a gossamer fist slid through a star-filled tube of gas. Why wouldn't you love it? It loves you.


A Separation (dir. Asghar Farhadi)

This isn't bad, trite, ill-observed, weak, emotionless, with nothing to say about people, Iran, the middle classes, working classes or religion. In fact it's the opposite. I hope my tone is conveying how good it is. Ha-ha. Now I'm grabbing you by the lapels and saying how wonderfully acted it is. Ha-ha. Now I'm shaking you. Perhaps you should see it.




Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (dir. Tomas Alfredson)

A fuggy, hand-rolled mix of elegant wallaper, age-aware-agents and unspoken irrelevant malice. Like breaking into an apartment untouched since the 70s to be told 'things are changing' by a group of immaculately dressed, highly intelligent, very sad, betrayed ghosts.




Of Gods & Men (dir. Xavier Beauvois)

Tremendous trapped trappists. This film is so much more than those 3, awesomely unimaginative words. Elegiac, haunting, loving and spiritual in a way that has nothing to do with those simpering, essential-oil burning, kaftan-wearing freaks who infect the very earth we walk on. The best use of music in a film this year.




True Grit (dir. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)

At this stage, the Coen Brothers don't care what you think. They just want to make a movie. As if by accident this one chimes with you. They complete you. A Western.




Submarine (dir. Richard Ayoade)

To a one-time insufferable, self-obsessed young adult whose belief that they are the centre of the universe over-rides their concern for others, I can jive with this joint. Its funny, different, confused and lovingly done. The film in my head is happy to include a reference to this film in a script that doesn't even fucking exist yet!




Green Lantern (dir. Martin Campbell)

A comic-book movie that acts and behaves like a comic-book movie. Funny, thrilling wish-fulfilment fantasy which speaks to anyone who ever just wished a purple chap would turn up and say "You are special. I'm making you a super-hero".  Just think! You would want that!!




Black Swan (dir. Darren Aronofsky)

If you're making a psychodrama, make sure you add a healthy, talking-apes-worth of psycho with that drama. What would happen if you took random snippets of everything written on Linkedin and then diffused them with a common-or-garden hand-spray onto a film about losing oneself. Then make it more-so. With an unhappy frown. And a mirror made crack'd with a sprinkle of mental. Dressed as a prettier version of a duck.




Senna (dir. Asif Kapadia)

Formula 1's greatest driver. If you like people who are far more talented than you will ever be in your miserable, fetid, bed-sitted life, you will like this. If you don't, you will like this. If you like Formula 1 then a petrol-fumed icing has just been applied liberally to what you call "my cake".




and finally a bit of TV derived from film...
This is England '88

Just like the film of the same name minus the 88 and This Is England 86, this is a drama with characters in. And by characters I mean real people on your vid-screen. And like in real life almost everyone is, at heart, benevolent, funny, thinking, breathing, sweating, copulating and being. Every line is delivered like words spoken from a mouth, every image make mundanity achingly pretty. The best drama on a TV. 

After Hours review (1985, dir. Martin Scorsese)

When did you last find yourself trapped somewhere on a night out? A tragic victim to fate when a potential encounter turned out to be something else or a wrong turn led to unheralded possibilities? I’ve more than once found myself wandering rain-washed streets long after the last train has rattled down the tracks of circumstance. I’ve no doubt neon signs reflected in pools of oily rain-water were involved too.

And that’s why I love After Hours.



A twisted, tormented trip through the dark streets of down-town Manhattan awaits Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) reminding us that hell can often be found on earth. The bare bones of this modern fable bring to mind Dante’s epic poem ‘Inferno’. Every time Paul escapes from one circle of tortured souls, he seems only to fall into another. Compounding his agony are characters who resurface only at the worst times to hound him and push him further into the depths. Franz Kafka is frequently referenced by the screenplay – in the book Paul reads, and in some of the dialogue which is lifted in whole sentences from Kafka’s writing. Writer Joseph Minion draws parallels with the anguish in the face of absurdity which characterizes Kafka’s stories.

After Hours can also be read as an emulation of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. A simple object, a ‘plaster-of-paris cream-cheese-bagel paperweight’ in this case, stands in for the White Rabbit, leading the protagonist down The Rabbit Hole into a dreamscape menagerie of weird creatures. Those who seem at first to be friends turn on the merest whim, while even an innocent request can be misconstrued by a paranoid brain. After Hours is New York. A collection of differing – dare I say ‘kooky’? – types thrown together in a confined space, rubbing up against each other with often explosive results.



It takes place over the space of a single night. Paul tries to pick up Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) in a coffee bar. Taking her number, his libido forces him to call right away on the pretence of collecting one of her roommate’s paperweights. He calls her and, after a strained conversation, travels to Soho in a taxi, losing all his money through the cab window. Paul is ensnared, unable to return home without a fare, frustratedly unable to progress his relationship with Marcy (has he misread the signals? Is she deeply scarred physically and emotionally?) and at the mercy of fate.

After Hours features some of my favourite US actors, including a perky turn from Terri Garr, a benevolent John Heard, a giddy Catherine O’Hara, stoner comedians Cheech & Chong and a hysterically disturbed turn from Rosanna Arquette. Other familiar faces turn up as bondage artistes, criminal low lives, punk clubbers and misunderstood gay men. Vertiginous camera moves and nervy acting from Griffin Dunne help propel a fast-paced narrative.



Watch After Hours in conjunction with King of Comedy as an exploration of Scorsese’s black comedy oeuvre. Stylistically this certainly feels like the same New York as Taxi Driver. Or show the film to someone as a historical lesson on what a night out was like before the ubiquity of cash machines and mobile phones. For anyone who remembers those ‘dark ages’ it will strike chord and possibly make one yearn for a time when it was possible to be truly alone in a city.

Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3 review (DVD, 2011)

If you weren't lucky enough to frequent a certain type of picture-house of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, you've lost your chance to experience the true Grindhouse effect in all its filthy glory.

The next best thing is the Grindhouse Trailer Classics collection!

This feature-length collection of cinematic previews has it all - nudity, ninjas, violence, sexual deviancy, samurai, sadism, exploitation, drug-use and cult favourite, John Saxon! As you'd expect (perhaps even demand), dirt, scratches and clicks blight the video and audio, enhancing the sense of decay and depravity. The colours are as garish and vibrant as they ever were. And the majority are voiced by the instantly recognisable basso profundo of Paul Frees.

Leading your clammy, shaking hand in to this wonderful, lost world is critic and cult-film expert Kim Newman. A gloriously enthusiastic and informed voice in the obscure and esoteric, even Newman is a neophyte to some of the weirdness here. Additionally, his passionate explanation of Grindhouse can be found in the extras section of the disc to help define the experience for the uninitiated.

Nucleus Films have curated a museum of the very strangest previews you will perhaps ever see. To find fault with these trailers on grounds of quality or content would seem a little churlish. These films are no less valid for not being “art-house” or “worthy”. In a lot of these trailers many you'll find a subversive aesthetic missing from most contemporary cinema. In an age when film-makers were pushing boundaries of acceptability, a cinema of fun and excess grew and flourished.

I find an amateurish but passionate film more interesting than a technically perfect, safe piece. What isn't exciting about beautiful Cannibal Girls pick-axing victims to the sound of bells ringing to warn patrons of excessive destruction and eroticism? You'd peek wouldn't you? Superchick may be something of a male fantasy, but isn't an ass-kicking woman more invigorating than a passive, screaming victim? Aren't budgetary constraints the mother of invention? Dogs trained to rob banks? I fear some of these trailers may be superior to the films they are selling!

Admittedly there are some troublesome trailers here for modern sensibilities. A film about the first black CIA recruit tackles racial politics of the time whilst still portraying other black characters as hoods and pimps. Nazi Love Camp 27 risks treating the holocaust as sexual fantasy, though seems to have an admirable budget compared to other films here. And rape seems to be a recurrent narrative device, always used as a prime motivator for revenge and violence on the perpetrator. Whether this in any way excuses its use is up to the viewer.

Grindhouse Trailer Classics 3 is released on December 5^th through Nucleus Films. Personal favourites include Linda (possession, nudity, crazy make-up and crabs!), Black Mama/White Mama (inter-racial revenge violence meted out by some of the feistiest women you'll ever meet) and the very curious The Doberman Gang. This extensive and impressive assortment achieves the original intent: to titillate and excite the viewer into seeking out the full feature. Treat yourself to a trip back in celluloid time to a cinema filled to bursting with degradation, sleaze, deviancy and excess. I guarantee there are things here you simply won't experience anywhere else. And that can't be a bad thing.

The Spanish Prisoner review (1997, dir. David Mamet)

Steve Martin? In a serious role? It works. That all-too-coiffured white hair, which has never not been white, is really rather austere anyway.

David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner (1997) isn’t Hitchcockian, but I’ve mentioned Hitchcock now, and as you can see I haven’t edited it out. You can see where one might make such a comparison: it features an innocent man in over his head thanks to the machinations of people far more insidious than himself. There’s much in the way of confusion, obfuscation and dastardly plots lying in wait for him too as he uncovers the machinery behind the curtain.

You won’t find swishes of Hitchcock’s bravura visual style here, or his knack for keeping things moving at a steady but heart-tickling speed. Our territory here is most assuredly Mamet-ian. David Mamet prefers the theatre with all its rhythms and artificiality intact. The characters here speak exactly as real people don’t. And the plot moves steadily and deliberately.

This isn’t why you’re going to watch The Spanish Prisoner, though. You’re here for the twists, the turns, the twisty-turns and the smarty-pants dialogue. What you thought was going to happen happens, then it doesn’t, then it does again and then that sequence repeats but backwards. Not all of the revelations will be entirely unexpected, or even convincingly revealed, but the creaky bits are obviously homage to thrillers from another era, so you can forgive it that.

Joe (Campbell Scott) is the inventor of a process. Something very valuable which has to be hidden away. It doesn’t matter what it is and we never find out anyway. What’s important is that people want it and are prepared to go to mind-bending lengths to get it.

Scott turns in an everyman performance and that’s fine; it’s what’s needed. Rebecca Pidgeon is maddeningly perky and amateurish but it suits her character, and anyway, she’s married to the director, so that’s fine too. Ricky Jay is here because he’s a seasoned Mamet actor and Mamet has to have him in his films. It’s a law of nature. Ben Gazarra is typically charismatic and inscrutable. And Steve Martin is playing out of type, which is good because he’s really rather adept at throwing his acting chops around. I can’t understand why he doesn’t take more of these roles.

I can’t tell you more; I really can’t. I don’t want to spoil the surprises on offer. Pay rapt attention, though. Every object is imbued with implication, every glance can be interpreted two or more ways and every word drips with meaning. And all will be referred to later on in some form of satisfying pay-off. You’ll need to concentrate and at the end you can give yourself a hearty pat on the back for doing so.

The Spanish Prisoner is available on DVD, though out of print, so some copies can fetch a high price.

Red, White & Blue review (2010, dir. Simon Rumley)

Sitting in a darkened room with 15 people, my toes were so curled I could almost kick my kneecaps. Across the room I saw winces, hands across eyes and heads fully turned from the screen. “Oh my…” breathed the woman behind and I wondered who would pass out. They stoically clung on with me, though. We made it through.

The second half of Simon Rumley’s Red, White & Blue kicks your punished psyche into some pretty deep, dark holes. Thankfully your trust is earned with the fascinating drama of the first half. Erica (Amanda Fuller) vacuums by day and vamps by night. In a new bar every night she picks up men with ease, never sleeping with the same one twice. Anyone who gets too close is shunned.

Franki (Marc Senter) is in a band, possibly on the verge of success. They practise rock music in a garage until it’s time for Franki to donate blood to his sick mother. Some of the most heart-rending scenes are between Franki and his mother. That he loves her and wants to help her is never in question.

Nate (Noah Taylor) lives in the same boarding house as Erica. A confessed torturer of animals and CIA operative (or fantasist), Nate tries to break down Erica’s barriers by declaring everything to her. Their initially faltering relationship is frustrated by her indifference. When they do form a bond we witness a profound change in Erica. Cutting up the photo album of her sexual conquests, she finally comes to Nate’s room. They lie together and he makes a crazy suggestion…

Rumley uses a short sequence from one of my favourite films, Carnival of Souls, to signify a turning point. “I’ll never come back,” says Mary. After this moment, none of the characters is able to return to where they were. Then Franki receives terrible news. Something severe enough to change his life, and potentially those of family and friends.

Subsequently there is a rapid descent into one of the very lowest levels of hell, the slow-burn opening giving way to an incendiary denouement. Red, White & Blue is not torture porn. Nor is it gory, sensationalist or cheap. What begins to feel like Dead Man’s Shoes by Shane Meadows or even Death Wish by Michael Winner soon turns into a revenge drama of a different colour. With grim finality it goes beyond revenge into territory occupied by Takashi Miike’s Audition. Most violence is implied. Like the shower scene in Psycho, our eyes see far less than our brains think they saw. Electrifying cuts and distorted bursts of music heighten the anxiety.

Rumley’s film is most certainly a multi-headed beast, uneasily mixing human drama with staggeringly bold nastiness. The sound-design is especially impressive as are the editing and performances. Special mention goes to Sally Jackson as Franki’s mother for a tender, human portrayal of a very ill woman, as well as Amanda Fuller, who makes troubled Erica brave and then vulnerable but never insipid or weak.

Be warned: this film will shock. Yet it’s not your standard horror/revenge fare. Its messages are open to discussion (what is revealed by Nate pushing past the US flags outside Franki’s house? Are the CIA involved in torture? Why does the boy’s mother accept Erica?) but Red, White & Blue has a human heart and is just as beautiful, conflicted and unpredictable as any of us.

Carnival of Souls review (1962, dir. Herk Harvey)

Where do zombies come from? West African and Haitian folklore might be somewhere to start, but I was thinking of the Hollywood zombie, the shambling wretches whose genesis was first witnessed in George Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead. They owe a debt, or at least an offering of brains, to Herk Harvey and his only feature length film, Carnival of Souls.

Caked in sodden silt and muddy water, Mary crawls from a river, escaping a car plunged from the bridge above. Staggering dazedly away she appears unable to believe she lived through the accident. Restarting her life, she flees town to find new work as a church organist. Lodging in Salt Lake City, she succumbs to strange ‘episodes’; fading out of existence, invisible to the townsfolk, as all sound drains away. When she eventually slips back into reality, it is obvious something has altered her. Mary has also developed an unhealthy fascination with an abandoned seaside pavilion nearby.

Then a strange man appears at a distance, watching. He is gaunt and pale with black circles around his eyes. Here we witness our first glimpse of the look Romero would appropriate for his zombies. ‘The Man’ is a malignant presence, unseen by others and hounding Mary when she is at her most vulnerable.

More of these haunted entities rise from the ground and the water, pursuing her. As these uncanny forces block her every move, she is driven mad and cornered inside the pavilion itself where she learns her fate.

Carnival of Souls is an undeniably unsettling influence in the history of horror on film but it is far from perfect. There are some shocking instances of amateur acting and ham-fisted scripting. Witness the toe-curling, self-conscious way the local workers stop their work on cue and listen to Mary’s organ playing. Or the heavy-handed irony of the church warden telling Mary she needs to play with more soul.

Then there are performances that add texture to a simple tale. Mr Linden from the neighbouring apartment watches Mary with a voyeuristic gaze. His predatory intrusion represents a real world threat to Mary. Linden contrasts awkwardly with the plainly moralistic folk elsewhere in town. Hiligloss is adequately haughty and haunted as the heroine and carries the film well.

There are flashes of directorial brilliance, such as the transposing of the car dashboard with the knobs on the church organ, or the ghoulish reflection of The Man in the car window at night, a great example of special-effects done on a small budget. And the unforgettable climax with its dancing ghouls pirouetting before the camera. Harvey’s creative talent was possibly nurtured on German Expressionist cinema, as there are touches of Nosferatu’s Count Orlock in the long shadows cast by The Man as he enters the church.

And no appraisal of Carnival of Souls would be complete without mention of the arresting score, composed almost entirely of organ music and played by Gene Moore which accentuates the horror by being unnervingly oppressive.

In the end, Carnival of Souls plays like a short story from a Creepy or Eerie comic-magazine from the 1950s, complete with obligatory O. Henry twist ending. It is at once unforgettably haunting and almost laughably simplistic in its outlook. Yet in this tale the seeds were sown of a cinematic heritage that survives to this day, the modern zombie.

Unfortunately Harvey never made another feature length film and after its release, Carnival of Soulslapsed into obscurity. Rediscovered in the 80s and playing late at night on TV, it found new audiences and continues to this day to exert a freakish power over the viewer.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me review (1992, dir. David Lynch)

Reviled by many critics and ignored by audiences, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) has unjustly slipped under many film fans’ radars. Dig below the surface, scrape away years of dirt, and you’ll reveal a rich and multifaceted cinematic gem.

Sitting down to watch TPFWWM again, I am reminded of two things. First: it is one of David Lynch’s finest films as a director, and second: it is one of the greatest horror films ever made, despite the fact it has never been categorised as such and you’ll never find it in the horror section of your local online video download store-hub.

Serving as a prequel to Twin Peaks, the TV series, TPFWWM tells one story that operates on two distinct levels. The film assembles the facts behind the last seven days of Laura Palmer’s life, a high school prom queen played with tortured fatalism by Sheryl Lee. Key to understanding Laura is the revelation of the sexual abuse she suffers at the hands of the mysterious “Bob”.

Overlaid like an acetate cartoon-cell on top of the very everyday town of Twin Peaks, is the supernatural world of The Black Lodge. This is a place outside of conventional space and time whose inhabitants sometimes leave to live in a small room above a convenience store. These entities exist to inflict pain on humankind, the suffering represented by the creamed corn they consume with each soul. They release one of their own, Bob, to possess someone close to Laura with the intention of corrupting her and condemning her to torment in The Black Lodge. An equally valid counter-interpretation is that this is only in the mind of the actual perpetrator of these acts.

Our film opens on a TV screen displaying static. An axe thuds abruptly into the TV as sparks fly and a woman screams. This violently demonstrates that Twin Peaks the TV show is in the Past. Dead. Finished.

In the FBI’s Philadelphia headquarters, David Bowie’s Agent Jeffries appears for a few minutes, after 2 years missing in the field. Jeffries points accusingly at Cooper (a clue to his eventual fate) and proceeds to explain to the assembled agents of his imprisonment in The Black Lodge and the creatures he met there. Jeffries attended one of their meetings to decide the fate of Laura Palmer at the cost of his soul. His tale told, he promptly disappears again.

Meanwhile, in an unfriendly town which appears to be the emotional opposite of Twin Peaks, Agent Chet Desmond, played by Chris Issac, accompanied by Agent Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland channelling Stan Laurel) investigate the murder of Theresa Banks. As Desmond closes in on the otherworldly fate of girls claimed by Bob, he too disappears without trace.

There are several scenes in TPFWWM which are instantly cinematic, unique and bold enough to distance the film from its broadcast heritage. The 10-minute “Pink Room” sequence takes place in a sleazy bar, almost all sound drowned out by pounding, rhythmic music. We can nearly discern snippets of dialogue but the overall effect is exactly the same as trying to hold a drunken, dreamy conversation in a noisy bar or club. The result is hypnotic, unsettling and ultimately leads to one of Laura’s redemptive acts as she saves her friend from a similar fate to her own. (Later DVD releases have subtitles come up at this point, but I know that the original European cinema print has no subtitles and the atmosphere it conjures is all the better for not having them.)

In another powerful scene we encounter Bob in Laura’s bedroom. The intrusion is so unexpected and visceral that we cannot still our hearts from leaping when it comes. Maybe it’s because we don’t expect the standard jumps and scares of a standard horror film here, that we are so taken aback by this.

Lynch has always been a great and unique sound designer. The eerie and omnipresent industrial rumble over Eraserhead springs to mind, or the noise the cadaver makes when moved early on inTPFWWM. When Laura and her father are accosted by a one-armed man on the road into town, his insane screeching and the revving of the car engine combine to drown out the words in a deafening overload of hate and anger.

Yes, you may gain slightly more satisfaction fromTPFWWM if you’ve seen Twin Peaks the series, and for fans of the television show most of the major players do appear in cameos, but as a stand-alone film concerning abuse, incest, loss of identity and the downwards spiral of a confused high-school girl, it is brave and fearless. As a fable about possession and evil inflicted by spirits from another world, an inter-dimensional war between gods centring on a small town and a supernatural horror, it is also triumphant. A game of two halves certainly, but both will chill, disturb and unnerve you more than most so-called horror films out there.