Best of 2019: 10-1

A link to Part 1 here.

A link to Part 2 here.

A link to Part 3 here.

A link to Part 4 here.

And with this, we conclude with the following...

Bonus Entry: Sarazanmai (2019) [Global Streaming Premiere]

First of all though, I would kick myself not to mention the following, which has to have this special entry for the simple fact this is an eleven episode animated show, one whose co-director/creator Kunihiko Ikuhara is a true auteur, but is as a series an odd one out here just because (annoyingly) TV series get discounted off certain film listing sites.

Sarazanmai marks a great end to the 2010s for Ikuhara, whose after an absence in the 2000s, came back to directing anime in the 2010s with three truly unique television anime - Mawaru Penguindrum (2011), a complex and sprawling piece of surrealism explicitly dealing with the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway; Yurikuma Arashi (2015), explicitly about the persecution of gay women by way of a tale of a forbidden love between girl and girl-bear; and Saranzanmai, which is the first work of his which is entirely about a male cast, a magical realistic musical drama comedy in which three teenage boys are transformed into kappa, sent off to deal with ghosts who are manifestations of desires left to turn toxic.

The show, as with everything from Ikuhara, is significantly more complicated than this as beneath his pop surrealism, the auteur deals with very dark or/and adult material throughout his work, this one dealing with everything from anti-capitalist ideas, mocking Amazon with all the delivery box motifs, to a gay male character with a conflict in his love for another character, or two villains whose sympathies we gain when the pair, two male lovers, are in their own tragedy. Probably the one detriment to Sarazanmai is how brisk this show is at just eleven episodes, but it doesn't deny that it's an impressive return from the director I was grateful to see.

It's also utterly unique on a visual standpoint, constantly weird and hilarious, has musical numbers and manages, due to real life kappa mythology, have a plot point entirely about having to suck people's souls out of their anuses, which is even more hilarious as it was revealed Ikuhara didn't even let the producers know he was including that detail until the production started.

10. 24 Frames (2017) [UK Blu-Ray Premiere]

This top ten proper is going to run with two reoccurring themes, one of veterans in their older years making some of their best work, reflecting back on life, and the number of these inexplicably not readily available or shown in theatrical screenings. Thankfully, 24 Frames was released by Criterion in the USA and UK, so it's able to be seen.

The film also marks the fact that its creator, legendary Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, wasn't even able to fully complete the production as he died of cancer in 2016. The 2010s felt as if it was the legendary auteur going around the world - Certified Copy (2010) a puzzle set in Italy, Like Someone in Love (2012) in Japan - but it is sad that this never came to be.

He nonetheless left on a work as idiosyncratic as everything else, a man who gladly straddled naturalism and overt experimentalism, ending his filmography with what are living photographs, heavily reliant on computer effects but with a visible sense of the unnaturalness adding to the beauty of the material. It's not hard for me to create a parallel with the film that has the number one spot, which we will get to, in a number of reasons, but 24 Frames was a beautiful echo to a man with a great career in itself.

9. Let the Corpses Tan (2017) [Streaming Premiere in UK]

From the beauty to irritance, as probably one of the least explainable things is how the latest film from Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, who have been served well in the UK and got a US theatrical release for this production, had this unique film just dumped on Amazon Prime without even a barebones DVD release. This is the kind of thing that makes me leery eyed about the streaming boom, in the sense that we are going to be unfocused on actually making films readily available to the public in favour of just promoting your wares.

A shame as, starting off with reinterpreting the giallo genre in avant-garde form, Cattet and Forzani have managed to avaid becoming one trick ponies by switching to the poliziotteschi (Italian crime) genre and western motifs, interpreted through their delirium and experimental style following a film length shoot out between thieves and cops in the middle of nowhere. Brimming in surreal and sexy imagery, Cattet and Forzani haven't missed a beat, for me as a duo among the most consistent working filmmakers. It's just a shame about the poor treatment of this film in terms of distribution, especially as there are scenes here, golden shower and all, that would look sumptuous on the biggest theatrical (or home theatre) screen at hand.

8. The Wandering Soap Opera (2017) [MUBI Streaming Premiere]

And for another film that will be difficult to see, The Wandering Soap Opera offers the feat that whilst Raul Ruiz passed in 2010, he is still making films years later with one planned to be released in the 2020s. All entirely based on unfinished or unreleased projects, but Ruiz is like a character from a Jorge Luis Borges story in that, with all the tangents and labyrinths in just how his films were made let alone what was inside them, Ruiz was the perfect man perfect man to defy mortality and still direct, his widow (and filmmaker) Valeria Sarmiento committing to an accomplishment anyone can admire by making films like this available.

The Wandering Soap Opera offers a great example of a) how much Ruiz filmed to be able to accomplish this, and b) how he was the most extreme form of working director who gladly took projects, as this originates from a student workshop, one of many he helped work with over his life. It is also felt with greater significance as this was the first time the expat, who fled his homeland of Chile in 1973 due to the military coup d'état led by future dictator Augusto Pinochet, sat back forth on his home soil. This is found in this series of vignettes of their mix of dark humour and surrealism, even this little project having so much that stands out as inspired and lasting in memory, even a man offering a woman to see his muscles and dropping two pieces of raw meat in her hands. Especially seen in a restored version as intended, rather than a VHS rip as is usually the case in watching a Raul Ruiz film, it offers how much of an accomplished director he is. Bold colours, striking images from the unconscious and a lot of weirdness I had to appreciate.

7. Mektoub, My Love [Canto Uno] (2017) [UK Theatrical Premiere]

Out of this top ten, Abdellatif Kechiche's film is going to be the one that I will have to defend as its one many will probably have a negative reaction to. Immediately off the bat, the bigger concern for myself is the fiasco that surrounded the sequel of this apparent trilogy, Intermezzo (2019), that if the scandal is entirely truth means Kechiche crossed a line that I cannot find acceptable. If the accusation is true, that he coerced his main actress Ophélie Bau with a male actor into an explicit (possibly real) sex scene with alcohol, that it's disgusting and a black mark to a director whose work I have seen is exceptional. Even if this horrible aspect wasn't there, the film had such a negative reaction that its disappeared since its 2019 Cannes Film Festival premiere, with suggestions that Kechiche wants to cut out all of Bau's scenes in it, which is absurd knowing how much she is integral to the first film's many virtues.

Sticking to what is called "Canto Uno", barring one very explicit sex scene in the first few minutes, and certain camera shots, the dirty coat brigade would be disappointed as this is a three hour plus film which is an example of slow cinema, with lots of dialogue, and whose biggest scene is the real life birthing of farm animals. As for the issues of the male gaze, the film yet (co-written with the Ghalia Lacroix) puts all the power in the female cast whilst the male characters aren't likable in the slightest. The women, especially the older ones including Kechiche regular Hafsia Herzi, are opinionated and completely sympathetic, with all the issues surrounding Ophélie Bau even more tragic as she's a huge virtue of this first film, a character full of life whose home life, working on a farm, is devoted to with utter sympathy. In contrast, the men visibly come off as problematic, like the kind old uncle who is unfortunately too comfortable with young women to the older womens' horror, or the boyfriend of one character is an arsehole. Even our protagonist is luckless, a man who cannot even get a nude photography session in the end, let alone anything else, as his trip through the film is an endless cycle barring those two animals.

To think Kechiche squandered this project, which plays to the extremity of slow cinema immersion with its constant scenes in night clubs, to the point it lulls you into a trance, in a terrible creative decision, tragic more for the people who worked on this film than him, more for his films as this means a film as great as Couscous (2007) is now marked with this if confirmed. The irony is that the first Mektoub, My Love would've worked by itself as a single film, even if a piece of a source novel, as it fittingly ends where it should've always been for the protagonist, getting nowhere but humbled.  

6. November (2017) [UK Blu-Ray/DVD Premiere]

And here is a case of a film that should've had a theatrical release too, and it's a tragedy it didn't, only the fact Eureka released the film as part of their Montage releases series a consolation.

And this is an example where this smarts, as this is a new and exciting voice whose style is visually gorgeous in its monochrome and not like anything you've witnessed before. Inherently this taps into my favourites for one reason - any film that depicts the real life mythologies and folklore of its home land is always worth seeing, even a micro budget Nigerian Nollywood film, as it stands out with something to say about that culture. From Estonia, this film has made good in drawing eyes to this Eastern European country's cinema whilst the source, a novel by Andrus Kivirähk, taps into material from their folklore that is truly unique. This is immediately informed to you the viewer with the first shot introducing a kratt, a mechanical creation that can be brought to life if you are willing to trade Satan your soul by way of three drops of blood, servants of farmers unless they have no work and thus either kill them or, in this case, get bored and becoming a proto-helicopter, trying to air lift a poor cow before that concept would properly exist in the 20th century.

November keeps in this direction throughout, between the dead returning back as giant chickens or ways to trick Satan in terms of that soul, whilst also eventually becoming a bittersweet romantic tragedy and a scathing view of ideals, in which baring the sincere love of a young farm girl everyone else is usually superstitious, greedy, jealous and even stealing objects from the church. The result is something truly unique, hence that initial lament that this never got a proper cinema release, with only hope director Rainer Sarnet makes more from the back of this.

5. Pain and Glory (2019) [UK Theatrical Premiere]

For Pedro Almodóvar, I'd qualify this as a "small" film in his career, a film which is not about grand gestures like his "large" film, The Skin I Live In (2011) an example starting the 2010s for him, but one of small scale scenarios and emotions. This is not a detriment as these "small" films in an auteur-director's career are as important as the grander scaled ones, and Pain and Glory slowly crept up the list to this spot with very good reason. Like many of the films here from older veterans, Pain and Glory is self reflective, Antonio Banderas' aging and ill director frankly a blatant stand-in for Almodóvar himself, once a transgressive and hot new talent in the 1980s like the main character, now a revered master in his older age.

Pretty much anything else I could say is frankly trifling when the wiser thing would be to just recommend you the reader to go track the film down, whether you have seen many of Pedro Almodóvar's films or even none at all. It'll do you good.

4. In Fabric (2018) [UK Theatrical Premiere]

In vast contrast, a younger auteur gets presents us the bizarre tale of an evil dress, which gets significantly weirder and complicated than that premise sounds. Peter Strickland has spent a career through the 2010s of making truly idiosyncratic films, with In Fabric really impossible to define, both in that it is actually a film of multiple plots and that, whilst meant to be a horror film, also gets into strange comedy when Julian Barratt and Steve Oram as senior bank managers encourage their staff to role play their stress by putting on one of the many period costumes inexplicably in their shared office.

A lot can be gained from the film, be it the scathing view of modern society being oppressive and bland, to the aesthetic, even down to using old archival imagery to stick this film in a phantom zone between 1970s and modern Britain. When it's freakish, it's also strangely sensual, and when it's humorous, it's also surprisingly emotional.

There is a glee in knowing a film this openly odd was possible to be made, a sense of Peter Strickland already developing a fascinating auteur status of high art genre filmmaking, but that which surprises. I mean, this film manages to get away, in a film suitable for fifteen year olds, a lot of transgressive material that I don't you could in an earlier decade, even in one scene masturbation and menstruating mannequins, which has to be one of the strangest sequences of this entire list I've witnessed all year.

3. Happy as Lazzaro (2018) [UK Theatrical Release]

If Alice Rohrwacher's film had stayed in its original form in the first half, a naturalistic film about a community in a form of manipualition, as they are within a peasant position in an unknown modern time, I might've found Happy as Lazzaro disappointing and sluggish. Then a major shift takes place - [SPOILER] a bit of Rip Van Winkle inspiration in the plotting [SPOILER] - and Rohrwacher's film became excellent. Like the film coming up on in this top ten, her story is about human decency, as its startling jump into magical realism nonetheless is a pretext to a humanity in which our titular figure, a true innocent named Lazzaro who brings around him the best in people regardless of their position. A scene in this film is entirely about finding weeds and naturally growing vegetables people ignore growing on backstreets, and it's compelling alongside the more dramatic scenes, a warm and heartfelt tale about anyone.

There's still a political side though, which is made more striking due to this. A sense of rage being held back in a world which crushes on the poor, coming together in an ending sequence at a bank that has lingered with me. This was my first Alice Rohrwacher film, and as someone who has started in the early 2010s, the Italian director has immediately caught my attention as a potential new great auteur if she is consistent, my hope being that her other work from before will come together as a strong and unique voice too.

2. The Mule (2018) [UK Theatrical Premiere]

Speaking of human decency, it's amazing to think Alice Rohrwacher, with clear Left leaning sympathies, and Clint Eastwood, a right leaning libertarian known for films like Dirty Harry (1971), can share similar views but Eastwood as a director also made Unforgiven (1994), always reflecting on the human condition in the few films I have seen with a greater wisdom as he has aged. Even a film I have found troubling, the Chris Kyle biopic American Sniper (2014), is complicated by scenes that question him and deal with post traumatic stress syndrome. Eastwood is a director I am growing in admiration of, someone regardless of politics who takes his work with a greater sense of perspective than most.

The Mule is such a film, and with the film at number one a MUBI streaming exclusive, The Mule itself is the best film seen at a cinema for me this year, in which Eastwood manages in deal with a real life tale of an elderly man who transported drugs around State lines through an incredible amount of weight, growing it into such thoughtful and intelligent ways. The morality is never to question as it is about a man showing decency, stuck in this scenario due to fate, and learning more, both reconnecting to his family and just learning still in his old age. A scene does far more better in dealing with a man overcoming politically incorrect ideas, when he accidentally uses a now unacceptable term whilst helping an African American family with a broken down car, and learning from them just in how it presents how he with grow within the moment we never see when it cuts to the next scene. The film is funny, odes to the simplest things in life like a pulled pork sandwich, and also deliberately neutering action tropes with the most relaxed highway pursuit you could have onscreen. He even manages to get away with his own character  having a threesome with two younger women without it becoming scuzzy, instead sweat and likely to delight men and women who are older in the audience with the knowledge that aging doesn't mean you lose out on the fun in life.

Again, on the surface the man who interviewed a chair wondering where Baraka Obama is, doesn't fall into any cringe worthy attitudes and instead suggests this profound sense of humanity. Clint Eastwood as a result is a smarter director than most who, on the right or left, just tub-thump and embarrass themselves. He's still making films, with Richard Jewell (2019) in British cinemas in January 2020, and now I am becoming more interesting in him, there's a huge filmography as an auteur let alone onscreen to entice me.

1. Hanagatami (2017) [MUBI Streaming Premiere]

The only reason Clint Eastwood didn't get the top spot is that a Nobuhiko Ōbayashi film that I may sadly never see again in a long time was streamed on MUBI and was incredible. In spite of the fact House (1977) is rightly become a cult classic, none of Ōbayashi's work beyond it has been released in the West.

This, reflecting on Abbas Kiarostami's final film, was supposed to be Ōbayashi's last too, diagnosed with cancer and with the fear he could die before even filming Hanagatami. He didn't in a miraculous turn of fate, going on to make Labyrinth of Cinema (2019), but the ending of this anti-war period film, following young adults in the shadow of the Pacific War on the side of the Japanese and the spectre of their country's defeat, clearly was meant to be a goodbye, the director himself onscreen as part of a hair raising lament for humanity as a man born during the spectre of the militarisation of Japan and the lasting effect of its end.

Hanagatami can connect to many films on this top ten. An older veteran director in his most reflective. A deliberate artificiality in his juxtaposition of enhanced colours and images for a delirious effect. An ode to humanity and human decency, undercut by the darkness of what is expected; found in startling moments like a classmate in the film hanging a pet cat, trying to force another person's eyes open, or a character whose succumbing to a terminal disease in her youth. The result is one that, tragically, is going to be a series of vague recollections in my memories because, again, Ōbayashi hasn't had any of his films made available in the West barring House. At least MUBI had the decency to show this at least once, this near three hour gem having such a lasting impact that it deserved to be in the number one slot.