#20: Ouija: Origin Of Evil – Even The Other Side has rules
This is one of those films that instantly sounds like a bad
idea. The 2013 film Ouija was such a horror non-event that it’s surprising that
anyone even cared enough to remember it, let alone try and expand on it. Add to
that the influence of producers like the annoyingly prolific Jason Blum of
Blumhouse Productions and the reliably dismal Michael Bay, whose studio
Platinum Dunes have made the words “horror” and “prequel” synonymous with “run”
and “hide”. Enter director/co-writer Mike Flanagan, fresh off of an already
unprecedented success with Oculus, who did something that no-one would have
expected from a production with this starting point: He put the effort in to
make it work.
He put the effort into the characters, turning the
crudely-explained waifs of the original into people worth caring about. Bonus
points for the cast, from the motherly strength of Elizabeth Reaser as Alice to
Annalise Basso’s youthful rebelliousness as Lina, all the way to Lulu Wilson as
the epitome of all things childish and creepy as Doris. Flanagan’s filmography
is full of stories about how the presence of the supernatural can affect a
tightly-knit family unit, and it’s here where that trait of his is at its most
powerful, resulting in a sometimes-humourous, frequently-scary and
ridiculously-emotional film.
He put the effort into the visuals, taking the 60’s period
setting and going full force with it, only using then-contemporary filmmaking
technology to bring it to life. This is evident right from the start with the
deliciously-retro studio logos and the ever-present cigarette burns on the film
stock. Add to that cinematographer Michael Fimognari’s use of blurred
perspective, pushing the old-school rule of horror of how much the unseen can
scare an audience to wring the most out of the setting.
But more than anything else, he put the effort into showing
the ins-and-outs of this world, from the technical trickery of Alice’s trade as
a spiritual medium to the rules that dictate the actions and intentions of the
resident ghostly presence. I’ve come to accept that the real world runs far
more on chaos than anything resembling logic, but when you’re crafting a
fictional story, it needs to hold enough internal continuity to make seem even
more real than that. Indeed, Flanagan and co-writer Jeff Howard utilize so much
cold-brick logic to explain what is happening on-screen that it genuinely
floored me when I saw it for the first time. Consider how much of modern
cinema, particularly in the supernatural horror sub-genre, runs on the idea
that nothing needs to be explained properly and that filmmakers can get away
with nonsense, and you should see why I hold this film in high regard. Because
it shows that cinema can benefit from people willing to put all the effort in,
and it can create some truly amazing experiences as a result.
#19: Toy Story 3 – “It’s just for kids” is no longer an
excuse
Even in the realms of Disney/Pixar, a factory that has
produced some of the most emotionally-intense childhood memories on a global
scale, this film stands out as something special in their filmography. A
threequel to the film that put Pixar on the cinematic map, this story feels far
more like it was made for that original audience instead of the younger
audience of the time it came out. It’s an incredibly heavy sit, looking at
ideas of abandonment, maltheism and even existential ennui, resulting in
moments that are sure to traumatize a whole new generation of filmgoers. I
mean… that furnace scene… holy hell, that furnace scene is one of the most
intense things I can remember seeing in a “kids’ film”.
But that’s kind of the problem: No-one truly expects films
aimed at children to be this good or this weighty. Hell, whenever subpar family
films come out (and they continue to do so with alarming regularity), one of
the most common defences for them is that kids aren’t as picky as adult
audiences and we don’t have to appeal to a higher standard that they
‘obviously’ don’t possess. With that in mind, I have an even greater adoration
for this film because it quite categorically proves that that defence is
bullshit. No, films aimed primarily at children don’t have to be crap; in fact, they benefit from a far wider audience
than most, meaning that they have a chance to show truly poignant ideas on a
larger scale. This is a film about CGI-rendered plastic toys that delves into
deep character psychology and heavy philosophical ponderings that outclass
quite a few “mature” releases. It made me weep intensively when first watching
it, and that effect has stayed true with each subsequent re-watching. Something
being made for younger audiences isn’t an excuse for it being crap; not when
they can be as good as this.
#18: Inception – Less head trip, more head odyssey
I’ve always had a real affinity for heist capers. The
emphasis on character motive to justify why we’re watching a heist take place
to begin with, the tightly-constructed machinations of the plan to pull the
caper off, the reactive ingenuity to the inevitable surprises that stand in the
way of that plan; all of this really appeals to the part of me that likes
seeing time and care put into narratives.
But even with that in mind, it’s an easy bet that this
particular heist flick is unlike any other, turning the concept on its head and
diving in to create a story about the power of influence and planting ideas
into the minds of others. Between Nolan’s penchant for somewhat unorthodox
crime narratives and the reality-bending effects work of Double Negative and co.,
this matches intricate writing with immaculate visuals to create a real head
trip of a film. Add to this the acting, from the reliably captivating Leonardo
DiCaprio to the working man’s hero Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and the
characterization that comes with it (which, admittedly, stays strongest with
Leo’s Dom Cobb more so than everyone else here) and we are presented a story
about the power of dreams, their influence on reality and one’s perception of
it, and how regret can haunt the mind.
But ultimately, even with the nimble genre juggling on offer
here, from dialogue-heavy exchanges to James Bond-worthy action beats, it’s the
main conceit that draws me in the most. The idea of sufficiently-advanced
technology being used to tap into the human mind is one of my favourite sci-fi
tropes, as I find most things to do with human memory to be quite fascinating,
and while the initial conceit of stealing ideas right out of people’s heads is
intriguing, it’s the titular conceit of planting ideas into people’s heads that makes this feel like something worth
cherishing. I mean, the notion of using technology, imagination and exhaustive
planning to craft a narrative meant to give a person a specific idea? How else
would you describe the aim of cinema?
#17: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut – The
anti-musical
This film is my all-time favourite musical. It also comes
from a TV show that, as polemic as it can get, garners a lot of respect from me
due to how ruthless it has been throughout its run. Originally put forward as
the last hurrah for Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s greatest creation, they went
all out to basically take shots at anything and everything they could with this film. Yes,
even more so than usual, as they believed that this was gonna be their last
chance. Well, while the show would only go on to thrive after this point, that
same level of dedication to leaving no lamb unslaughtered results in a truly
bombastic piece of cinema.
Religion, politics, sex, vulgarity, scapegoating, Big Gay Al
being super and thanking you for asking; as overused as the word has become nowadays,
this is straight-up vicious in how
efficiently it rips through anything it touches, resulting in a film that not
only preaches the free speech gospel but, unlike a lot of wannabes in the
modern era, actually follows through on it. To this end, the big central point
of the film is Eric Cartman and the V-Chip, a device meant to deliver an
electric shock anytime Cartman swears. Needless to say, it gets used quite a
bit. But as the film continues, with him at the forefront, we see how language
and blue language in particular is commoditized and controlled. It’s the most
pure form of human speech, meant primarily as a means to express raw uncut
emotion, but suppress it for too long, it becomes a threat. It becomes weaponized.
And when the enemy comes a-knockin’, that weapon can be used to tear down the
very institutions that shut it up in the first place. As someone who treats
human speech and freedom of expression as a very necessary right, this only
strengthens my regard for Stone and Parker’s ethos.
But even more than that, it’s the way this film handles the
musical side of things that appeals to me. Stone and Parker may have cut their
teeth earlier on with films like Cannibal! The Musical, and even later on with
The Book Of Mormon, but this represents the more punk side of their
musicianship. Every song here, from the rousing sing-a-long Mountain Town to
the scapegoating national anthem Blame Canada to the incessantly catchy What
Would Brian Boitano Do?, even the hilariously grandiose Up There, is designed
to riff on more popular musicals like Oklahoma and Les Miserables, with Up
There basically being every Disney Princess song ever written before or since.
The music itself is solid, but it’s the fact that it succeeds through
outshining its more illustrious competition that gives it the edge.
#16: mother! – A singularity of human history
When I watched this film in the cinemas, I imagined that this
is what it must have felt like to see a David Lynch film in the cinemas: I
walked away from it with the feeling that I had just seen something truly
special, while the rest of the audience was going “Well, there’s two hours of
my life I’m never getting back”. I hold Darren Aronofsky in very high regard as
one of my all-time favourite filmmakers, and even I didn’t know that he was capable of something this spellbinding.
Through very claustrophobic framing, with the camera
clinging to Jennifer Lawrence’s title character like a lost child scared by the
carnage going on around it, and a blunt but layered approach to scripting, this
film manages to cover a lot of thematic ground in a scant two-hour running
time. It combines Biblical stories, contemporary political fears,
bubbling-under-the-surface feminism and environmentalism on blast to create a
narrative that uses pain and prejudice to speak to a number of higher ideals.
It’s violent, coarse, more than a little vulgar (cannibalism and child death
are rarely if ever shown tastefully, this being no exception), but it avoids
being shocking simply for its own sake. Instead, it forces the audience to
confront a blisteringly fast rundown of human history to show what we have
done, what we’re still doing, and where we’ll end up if we keep doing it.
That’s the bit that really sinks in for me: The fact that
this film manages to cover several thousand years worth of humanity’s impact on
this earth in the space of two hours. Beginning rather literally on the
Biblical side of things, recontextualizing the stories of Genesis to fit within
a far smaller frame, it kicks into high gear by the third act to show humanity’s
many atrocities. That kick into high gear is jarring, no doubt, but it still
matches up to the trajectory of human development. We went through thousands of
years of slowly amassing our skills and resources… and then, in the last 200
years, we ourselves have kicked into high gear, developing even faster than the
natural world around us. We went from years-long voyages just to go to another
country to clicking on a website and getting tickets the same day. It all
happens so fast that, by the time we’ve touched down and seen how scorched the
earth has become, it’s already too late to save ourselves. All we can do is
start all over again… and hopefully, remember the mistakes we made.
#15: Hot Fuzz – The class clown who scored the highest
This is Edgar Wright at the absolute peak of his cinematic
powers. Everything that makes his filmography so aggressively rewatchable (the
cleverly-delivered foreshadowing, the aptitude with action scenes, the
always-hits-the-bullseye sense of humour, the excellent use of music) is pushed
to their utmost limit to create a buddy cop flick that absolutely nails every
tone it goes for. The acting presents the primest of prime British comedic
talent, with everyone from the main stars to the cameos leaving an impact by
film’s end, while the writing takes a familiar Western conceit of the outside
sheriff being brought in to sort out a deceptively-peaceful settlement and
exhumes so much character analysis out of it as to make it seem laughable that
the others aren’t this good.
That’s what makes this film stand out for me: It’s a film
that actively set out to mock the ever-loving hell out of action tropes,
particularly those found in buddy cop movies, and yet managed to do better
justice to those tropes than even the lauded kings of the genre. An overly
intricate motive behind all the murders in Sandford involving property, loyalty
and bragging rights? Nah, they just wanted to get rid of some bad actors and
annoying journalists. The policeman who is the best at what he does? Not only
are his workers unable to stand how by-the-book he is, he himself is so fixated
on his work that it is all that he knows. His charge and later colleague who
hungers for the explosion-heavy depiction of police work in cinema? Not only
does he get his wish once it comes time for the amazing town-wide shootout, the
aftermath shows the most fidelity to actual
police work of any film in the genre. You’d be surprised how much paperwork
goes into this profession in the real world, something that only this
particular story feels right in acknowledging. This isn’t just a great and
biting action-comedy; it’s an action-comedy that sets a bar for every film
after it to follow. As someone who tries to make his mark on the world through
a rather idiosyncratic sense of humour, I like the idea of the class clown
being the one who sets the biggest precedent for the bookworms.
#14: Being John Malkovich – A sociopathic romance
Ever wanted to know what
it’s like to experience the world through someone else’s eyes? This is
something that I have often been forced to wonder about, as I have frequently
felt so out-of-tune with everyone else around me that I have no choice but to
wonder how I am perceived by everyone else. It’s the kind of thought that keeps
me up at night sometimes, but at the same time, that forced intent of being
aware of the perceptions of others is what helped me, at least a little, to
survive in the real world.
But what about those people who take that idea literally?
What about people who only experience comfort in their own skin when they are
able to manipulate others to suit their purposes? This story, directed by music
video director-turned cinematic titan Spike Jonze with the ever-peculiar Charlie
Kaufman handling the script, is a pretty straight-forward bit of high-concept
storytelling: A puppeteer-cum-office clerk discovers a portal into the head of
John Malkovich. This film deals in the usual fascination with human psychology
that has become a staple of Kaufman’s writings, but it also shows one of the
most unorthodox romances I can recall seeing. The love triangle of John
Cusack’s Craig, Cameron Diaz’s Lotte and Catherine Keener’s Maxine is built on
manipulation and textbook sociopathic behaviour, one that is only strengthened
by the perpetual weirdness that surrounds them. The portal into the head of an
infamously memetic actor, who delivers one of the crowning moments of surreal
when he takes a trip into his own head, is only the tip of the iceberg;
particularly when you consider that this film also involves misinterpreting a
puppet show for a display of smut, an office floor that technically doesn’t
exist, and a group of people seeking to become a singular cerebral gestalt in
the mind of another.
Part of me wonders how well this film would’ve held up if it
stuck with Kaufman’s original ending, which would have involved a puppeteering
showdown with the literal Devil, but the film we actually got still holds up as an impossibly strange but endlessly
fascinating bit of mentally-damaged romance. Also, that ending is heartbreaking
as fuck.
#13: Fuck – The blessing of curses
I swear, I don’t intend to make these segues. I’m not that clever.
All the same, this is a fairly easy production to get one’s
head around: Bring in a collection of comedians, porn stars, culture critics
and legislators to discuss the myriad of uses behind one of humanity’s
favourite profanities. It does a pretty well-deserved run-down of the word in
and of itself, from its figurative uses as a “sentence enhancer” to its more
literal uses as an adverb for the act of copulation, and even delves into how
the word has been so overused in human history that, to this day, we still don’t actually know what the word
even means. This speaks a lot to the use of language in the modern era, where
it seems like dictionaries have become pointless since we all seem to define
and redefine words as we see fit. Hell, even I’ve done it a fair few times on this blog; somehow, I doubt the
word ‘mindfrag’ is an actual word, nor does everyone define it the same way I
do.
That said, this documentary isn’t exactly the slickest thing
to find its way onto this list, but I’d hold that up as a positive more than
anything else. It sticks to the rule of ‘cheaper = better’ and allows the
content to take its rightful place at the forefront over any kind of technical
wizardry. Don’t get me wrong, it features some great soundtrack choices and the
use of Bill Plympton’s cartoons make some of the explanations really pop. It’s
just that it puts more emphasis on what it has to say than how it chooses to
say it; kind of like the use of the word ‘fuck’ come to think of it. That ends
up working in the long run because this film’s ultimate intent is not just to
highlight how versatile this one silly word can be, but why it needs to exist. Whether it’s the depths
of political outrage (“fuck the system!”, etc.) or the heights of sexual
ecstacy (“fuck me!”, etc.), this kind of purely emotional speech exists for a
reason. And considering how many barriers it broke down in the realms of free
speech and freedom of expression, it’s a damn good reason.
#12: David Stratton: A Cinematic Life – More than just a
film
When I first learnt about the art of media critique back in
2010, I went through numerous phases as far as what I planned on doing with it.
Wanting to give back to an art form that gave me all that has been discussed on
this list already, exercising my brain’s natural pattern of overanalysing
everything it can latch onto, maybe even turning it into a viable career if I
put enough effort into it; for my high-school brain, the possibilities were
endless. But as I graduated and made my way out into the real working world, I wound
up resigning myself to the notion that while I am deeply dedicated to this
hobby of mine, it’s likely that it will remain a hobby and nothing more. Bit
disheartening, I know, but bear in mind that I’ve always had a certain
pessimistic realism in a lot of my thought patterns; how I feel doesn’t change
the reality that this is a difficult enterprise.
Enter this documentary about one of the most famous film
critics Australia has ever produced, as much a chronicle of his life as it is a
primer for Australian film culture as a whole. It still mesmerizes me just how
much David Stratton’s life mirrors my own, from the endless cataloguing of the
films he’s seen (kind of like my consistent yearly rankings for films I review
on here) to taking internships and employment opportunities for the chance to
see free movies (I once took a job at a movie theatre partly for that very
reason), even going to a lot of movies with his grandmother (I wound up
watching this film in the cinema with my
grandmother, a coincidence that the both of us still can’t get over).
But beyond the surface comparisons, it’s the guy’s utmost
respect and admiration for the cinematic art form that rings true for me.
Having grown up surrounded more by YouTube critics than traditional media
critics, something about Stratton always set off some of my pretence alarms.
That’s always been part of his draw, as part of the At The Movies double-act
with Margaret Pomeranz, but for me, that sort of high-brow elitist critic has
come to be the epitome of everything I dislike about this business. All of that
took a very heavy left-turn once I saw not only his dedication to that craft
but just how much cinema itself helped him throughout his life, from his
emigration to Australia to his re-examination of his family relationships. This
entire list exists because of how much cinema has influenced my own life and my
own worldview, so I’d be remiss if I didn’t make this rather vital connection.
More than anything else, though, this film is a point of
pride for me. Watching Stratton and others extoll the many cinematic boons this
country of mine has given the world, from the critical darlings to the box
office crushers to the genuinely significant advances (we have bragging rights
to the world’s first-ever feature length film with the lost film The Story Of
The Kelly Gang), fills me with joy that I am just as much a part of that
culture as the filmmakers themselves. Stratton may have been an observer to the
work of others, but he raised that status to a height where it made critical
discussion a vital part of the conversation. For the Aussies, he made the role
of film critic into one worth pursuing and cherishing. I tend to stay away from
feelings of pride in most things, feeling far more comfortable just making of
light of myself rather than puffing out my chest, but here, I actually feel
proud that I am a film critic, an Aussie and an Aussie film critic. And
honestly, as those of you who have seen my turn in Employable Me can guess,
being able to meet the man in person was a defining moment in my life that only
confirmed this film’s place in my heart.
#11: Her – Love in the 21st century
I have never been that lucky in love. A combination of
social phobias and an all-or-nothing approach to expressing my own emotions
resulted in more than a few situations early on where I was either getting
rejected or lead on against my better judgment. Hell, to this day, I’ll admit
to not feeling like I know enough about the matters of the heart to really get
anywhere in a timely manner. Add to that my non-straight sexuality, and the
haunting words I was once told by a gay guy I tried chatting up at a bar years
ago (“You’re not bisexual. Trust me: Any hole is not a goal.”), and things are
more than a little complicated.
It’s because of this that I hold this film in extremely high
regard, to the point where this might be my single favourite romantic film.
Wielding a slight tinge of social science-fiction in its main conceit about the
most advanced A.I. the world has ever seen, director and now-writer Spike Jonze
takes us through a road map of modern sexuality. From phone sex to swinging to
polygamy to relationships-by-proxy, even dipping its toes into specific
fetishes like the sexual conversation between Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore and
Kristen Wiig’s Sexy Kitten that takes a turn for the cringe-inducingly awkward,
this manages to highlight a lot of how modern technology and still-advancing
understanding of human sexuality have influenced each other and how humanity
has progressed as a result. Even some of the more fanciful aspects of the
setting, like Theodore’s job writing love letters for strangers and the eerily
human A.I. played immaculately by Scarlett Johansson, are closer to reality
than you would think.
Actually, more so than its views on love and companionship,
it’s the film’s ethos on human joy in its purest form that resonates with me
the most. I can trace a lot of my contemporary attitudes towards media,
socialising and life as a whole to this one
speech by Amy Adams’ character.
Life is short. The chances we have to experience joy
are even shorter. So long as no-one gets hurt and everyone involved consents,
seize any chance you have to experience that joy. Spike Jonze took the
age-old adage of “it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved
at all” and extrapolated it to cover pretty much any bittersweet moment of humanity that we’re capable of
experiencing. These are truly words to live by, and ever since first watching
this movie in December of 2014, I have certainly made the effort to do just
that.
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