Category: 'Best Of' Lists

2006: Good Movies (10-1)

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At this point I must mention what films I didn’t get to in 2006 that I would like to have. This is in accordance with Andy Horbal’s much-referenced best-of lists critique (embraced by Jim Emerson among others). My writing isn’t yet strong enough to get behind everything he says, so my list is more description than discussion; next year I’ll no doubt be more adventurous and confident.

So: A Scanner Darkly and Fast Food Nation were two new films by Richard Linklater, one of my favourite directors. His failures are more interesting than most directors’ successes, and when he gets it right, his work is like nothing else (see Before Sunset).

Likewise, I missed Michel Gondry’s two releases, The Science of Sleep and Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, which I chastise myself over because Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was so good. How would he do without the safety net of Charlie Kaufman’s great screenwriting? I’ll have to find out later.

49 UP and Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple were the documentaries I most regretted missing. As you can see from my list (and last year’s), I consider documentary cinema to be on equal footing with fiction, and as Hollywood’s outlook seems to change for the worse every year, the growing popularity of documentaries is a wonderful side effect.

Finally, I probably ought to have seen Casino Royale, Flags of our Fathers and The Squid and the Whale. And there’s probably a hundred other films that were good that I didn’t really know anything about. Instead, I saw a few twice (#2, #3, #5, #10). But with that out of the way…

10. Children of Men – Alfonso Cuarón
The Mexican director/cinematographer pair of Cuarón and Emmanuel Lubezki turned my world upside down with this, the most groundbreaking film of the year. I’ve never seen anything like it; I would liken it more to the computer game Half-Life 2 than anything seen before in cinema. And that’s a huge compliment – it is a very good game, but my point is that this film is arguably the most immersive ever made. A script that is excellent in places and incredibly weak in others is totally overshadowed by some of the most incredible long takes and set pieces we’ll see for a while, and they all contribute to a sense of being part of the action. It’s also set in a childless future where anarchy mostly reigns, and it features fine acting from Clive Owen and Michael Caine among others. The film that surprised me most this year, but don’t I wish it could have ended differently.

9. Munich – Steven Spielberg
Bursting through almost unprecedented media attention (no small thing given Spielberg’s often controversial and extremely well-examined career), this film showed itself to be nothing like the defamatory, politically driven piece of work that was written about by so many. Perhaps because of this, it seemed to be somewhat overlooked by many, where in fact it may be the best film of Spielberg’s illustrious and varied oeuvre. A long, expansive film, it was Spielberg at his best in all facets of the craft: visually superb, great use of music, perfectly paced, and a great example of narrowing a wide focus down to one simple thing – the effects of the events in question on one man. Many questions were asked of us, many challenges laid down, and one could not help but leave the cinema in deep thought.

8. Waves – Li Tao
Certainly the least seen film on this list, Waves deserves as wide an audience as possible. It is very much a New Zealand story, but its scope is truly global. Boundaries are breaking down, and in her chronicle of four Chinese high school students being educated in New Zealand, Tao gets inside their experiences so intimately that we feel as if we know them personally afterwards. They are all very different people, and we understand why they live their lives as they do. Never ‘messagey’, never forced, this film will strike a chord with all who see it, because it offers a way of seeing that acknowledges cultural differences and shows how we are all similar. A vital, thought-provoking work.

7. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room – Alex Gibney
I saw this right at the end of the year on DVD, and I just thought, wow – documentary perfection. The subject matter is fascinating, the talking heads insightful and passionate, the music expertly chosen, and the archive footage perfectly edited into place. It all adds up to a masterful blow-by-blow account of just what made the Enron debacle one of the most incredible events in Wall Street history. It’s a parade of scum, low human beings who knew they were fucking over millions and just laughed about it, even as they kept the public outlook positive. It would make a fine double bill with #6 – two films that expose the hubris and sheer audacity of some of our most powerful members of society.

6. Good Night, and Good Luck. – George Clooney
No messing about from Clooney on this, his second feature, which heralds a very encouraging future behind the camera. Respect for the audience is paramount as this straightforward, free-flowing films moves quickly through the story it has to tell. And what a story, especially in these times of pandering and dishonest journalism – much of the dialogue is directly taken from what the real people said, but their words are clearly chosen to reflect our current climate. Shot in glorious black and white, and enlivened by great acting by all (especially David Strathairn’s amazing performance as Ed Murrow), this is a finely orchestrated, highly enjoyable film. If it had been a bit longer, I might have placed it higher.

5. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story – Michael Winterbottom
Not quite as flat-out enjoyable as the director’s earlier 24 Hour Party People, this was still one of the funniest movies of the year. More than that, though, it was one of the better films about films, a look at how absurd film sets really are. It is rambling and unfocused, like its predecessor, but the characters – from Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon hilariously playing themselves, to Naomie Harris’ passionate PA, to Mark Williams’ enthusiastic battle expert, to Elizabeth Berrington’s fragile costume lady, ad infinitum – are so well-drawn that you just slip straight into their world. Almost like real life! It helps if you love movies, but their ought to be something for everyone here.

4. Syriana – Stephen Gaghan
The one film of the year that had my brain in a total storm afterwards, I really, really need to see this again – it’s been almost a year. Each time I look back on it, my admiration grows. I had no idea how to write about it then, and I still struggle to have any coherent thought to express. It drops you right in the characters’ world without any preparation – the opening bombing set piece is masterfully executed, and sets the tone for the whole film – and throughout you feel one step behind, just as the characters invariably do. It’s like nobody connected with oil knows exactly what’s going on; many can see one small part of the picture, but never the whole thing. Either that or the people that can see it all are exploiting for all it’s worth. Like I said, I’d have to watch it again to make any sound judgment on it, but such daring, urgent filmmaking as this has to be encouraged.

3. De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté – Jacques Audiard
More excellence from one of France’s strongest filmmakers currently working, The Beat My Heart Skipped was probably my favourite film of the year (though obviously not quite the best). Like with his earlier (and slightly superior) Sur mes lèvres, Audiard places us in the utterly subjective film universe of Romain Duris’ Tom, a nervy, tension-filled ‘real estate developer’ looking to go straight by getting back into classical piano. Brilliantly, it is shown that practising the piano is a far more infuriating and spirit-crushing enterprise than beating up thugs for collection money. Alexandre Desplat’s score is great as usual, especially alongside the Paris dance-pop that is almost always in Tom’s ears. The epilogue will alienate many, but I thought it put the perfect full stop on an exhilirating and fascinating film.

2. Caché – Michael Haneke
Haneke’s latest assault on his own class is a clinical, endlessly debatable work that, like everything else he’s done, is deliberately designed to provoke. He doesn’t care if you walk out pissed off, upset or suicidal, as long as you have a reaction. And you will. What were they saying in that final shot? Should we feel sympathetic towards or disapproving of Auteuil’s character? The questions didn’t stop for me; in fact, I saw it twice to see if I could ‘get it’ on a second viewing (I didn’t). Afterwards, I felt manipulated like a patron at a magic show, but I’m damned if I wasn’t awed. This guy is in total control, and his brand of unsettling cinema is something I will return to again and again.

1. United 93 – Paul Greengrass
In the ultimate year of challenging, questioning cinema, United 93 outstripped everything else with its raw intensity. Instead of asking questions, it just laid the events bare and let you question things yourself. I was incredibly distressed by it, particularly a final shot of such horror and audacity that I am wary of seeing it again. There are no hidden agendas; this film is about nothing more than the events that occurred on September 11, 2001. No room for proselytizing or polemic here, just cold, hard facts. Many saw this as signifying a lack of meaning, a kind of needlessness; me, I thought it showed how Greengrass nailed our feelings by cutting through the hype and emphasizing how purely bloody frightening the whole thing was. Imagine being in that plane! Now you don’t have to. A staggering achievement.

2006: Good Movies (20-11)

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Because I live in New Zealand, and better yet, in the South Island, I get to see most films between 3 months to a year after their original US/UK release. As a result, several films on this list appeared on many US critics’ 2005 lists, and the films appearing on their 2006 lists will have to wait until next (this) year for me.

Not that I’m complaining. I saw more movies last year than probably any other year in my life, and I enjoyed a great many of them. For the first time, I kept records of what I saw, which ended up tallying around 150; between 30 and 40 of these were at the movies. For me, there’s no better way to spend my disposable income than to go to the cinema, and I am totally unrepentant about that.

On with the list, anyway. I saw enough to have a top 20 instead of a top 10 this time, so I’m splitting in half to make it more digestible. Also, I’m counting down rather than up, because I find that reading someone’s top choice first renders the rest of their list less interesting. Part 2 will appear sometime in the next couple of days.

20. Manderlay – Lars von Trier
More straightforward and less challenging than its predecessor, the excellent Dogville, von Trier’s latest brash critique of human nature is still a difficult film to wrap one’s head around. Like all his films, it is designed to bring about a reaction in the viewer, be it positive or negative; he wrings this from us not with subtlety, but with tremendous insight. Many would consider this a pack of lies and a waste of time, but I think he got it right again: we are weak in more situations than we are strong, and racism, especially views of one’s own race, does not die out.

19. The Aristocrats – Paul Provenza
Dozens of comedians tell their own variations of the world’s filthiest joke, and in doing so provide us with a few of the mechanics of what makes something funny, and/or offensive. I expected a good laugh, and it gave me that (once I’d settled into the baseness of it all), but there was also a strong awareness that most of these people were very intelligent as well as highly amusing. They knew exactly where to insert beats, when to take it further, when to cut it off. A fascinating and hilarious film.

18. L’Enfant – Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
Silly young Bruno deserved none of our sympathy, but the Dardennes forced it from us without resorting to any kind of cheap cinema trick. He’s just a kid, after all – a kid who went out into the world too soon, who had a child too soon. This Palme d’Or winner at Cannes in 2005 is an intimate, unsentimental account of one very naughty boy’s actions and desperate attempts to make amends, and I was moved by its simple truths.

17. The Queen – Stephen Frears
Frears has directed a great variety of good films over the years, from to My Beautiful Laundrette to High Fidelity to Dirty Pretty Things. He did it again here, but Helen Mirren was the reason for going with her pitch-perfect performance. All the sternness and unshakeability was there, but in the film’s best scenes, so was a vulnerability we couldn’t imagine HRH QEII displaying in public. In particular, the scenes involving the stag stood out in a film that did the basics right – a good (but not great) script, adequately directed, with fine acting across the board.

16. Darwin’s Nightmare – Hubert Sauper
Helplessness was the key word here in one of the most depressing, spirit-crushing films ever to be made. It is important that people see films like this to have their eyes opened to the horrors still going on in parts of the world – things we can’t imagine in our First World cocoon – but when it ended, I felt impotent. What could I do to help someone like Eliza, the prostitute servicing foreign fish-plane pilots (who are often violent) for a dollar a trick? What could I do to give the fish-frame sellers a better go at life? Sauper wisely doesn’t offer up any solutions, because no doubt he’s just as clueless; still, he’s getting the word out there.

15. An Inconvenient Truth – Davis Guggenheim
For the first time in nearly 40 years as a movie reviewer, Ebert told his readers “you owe it to yourself to see this film”. And he’s right. Half of it may be a vanity project for Al Gore, but the other half is so vital and surprising that if you do not see it, or are not aware of the things it discusses, then you are taking the future for granted when you should not be. The effects of global warming are real, and we have to start doing something about it, now. Gore is a good speaker, and his high-budget presentation is worth every penny if half the people that see it change their views.

14. Out of the Blue – Robert Sarkies
I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I only got to two New Zealand films this year, skipping River Queen, No. 2, and Sione’s Wedding among others. This was the second, a vast improvement on Sarkies’ earlier Scarfies, and a solid entry in the Paul Greengrass-led documentary fiction genre. Through a few brilliant shots, Sarkies shows how much of a wake-up call the Aramoana massacre was, subtly embracing the bigger picture while carefully portraying the events in chilling fashion. Non-professional Lois Lawn gave one of the performances of the year as 73 year-old Helen Dickson, one of the heroes of the real event; Karl Urban was bloody good too, showing there’s life after Doom.

13. The Proposition – John Hillcoat
The best Western in years, driven by Nick Cave’s poetic screenplay and music, and by Guy Pearce’s typically excellent less-is-more performance. The film meanders aimlessly at times, but that is offset by the impressiveness of some scenes, and by the overall look and feel Hillcoat and his team achieve. Its stripped-back nature worked in its favour, keeping things unmuddied by unnecessary plot elements, but always retaining a sense of something extra going on (as indeed is revealed in the final scenes). Also, it represented the beginning of my fascination with Danny Huston, who seemed to pop up in every other film I saw last year.

12. Miami Vice – Michael Mann
If your name is Michael Mann, you don’t need a good script. Collateral had an okay script which Mann enlivened with his new-found love for digital video and general badass-edry; Miami Vice was a shitty, even awful script which he managed to fashion into one of the most intriguing and thrilling films of the year. Again using Dion Beebe’s incredible DV, he crafted a lengthy atmospheric piece that barely hung together plot- and character-wise, but when the atmosphere is that thick, I don’t care what’s going on. It was a true triumph of style over substance, like Kill Bill, or as I will discuss in part 2, Children of Men. In particular, it had the most artful violence of the year.

11. Brokeback Mountain – Ang Lee
A fine tragic love story, free of pretension or sentimentality (apart from an occasionally grating score). Heath Ledger’s performance won all the plaudits, and excellent though he is, I say don’t overlook Jake Gyllenhaal. Both commit themselves to their roles completely, and their scenes together (of which there are less than I expected) are by far the strongest in the film. Rodrigo Prieto provides his usual high standard of cinematography, but it’s very much Lee’s film with its careful compositions and thoughtful, meditative pace. You think you ain’t never goin’ to see a movie about no queers? Watch this, and be surprised at how much you care.

2006: Music

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Similar to last year, here are 13 new albums I listened to this year, in order of most appreciated to least appreciated. I am laughably inept at this sort of writing, but I’m putting it down in the hope that someone will listen to something new because of it. If you prefer, just scan down the list.

1. Night Ripper – Girl Talk
Mashups are becoming more and more popular, and Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk) might just be the man to bring them into the mainstream. I heard that he’d made an album containing samples from hundreds of different songs from the 60s to the 00s, but I got it more as a curio than anything else. The mashups I’ve heard in the past have occasionally been worth repeat listens, usually drab (though clever) after you’ve played it once. Night Ripper is a lot more than clever, though. It flows seamlessly from one sample into the next for over 40 minutes, layering them on top of each other, slowing them down, chopping them up, and sometimes using two or three conjunction to create some sort of delicious irony. In my head, all the samples contained within will forever be associated with this record, even the ones that I knew and loved before hearing it for the first time. It’s fresh, it’s now, it’s great.
Favourite track: 03 – Hold Up. It isn’t right to play favourites with an album that continuously segues (and that I can only listen to all the way through), but if there’s one track that best demonstrates Gillis’ ability to throw seemingly disparate sounds together and make them sound like they should have been heard that way before, it’s this one.

2. Return to Cookie Mountain – TV on the Radio
Into my African-American section now, and first up are the Brooklyn rockers TV on the Radio. This is somewhat less experimental than their excellent debut Desperate Youth / Bloodthirsty Babes, but it is a better record because of its more focused sound. While there’s nothing as spectacular and unusual as that earlier album’s Staring at the Sun, there’s still plenty of messing around. There’s nobody else that sounds like these guys, truly; combine that with lyrics as poetic as anything creeping its way into the mainstream, and you’ve got pretty much my favourite musical group of the moment.
Favourite track: 02 – Hours. The shortest and most straight-ahead track on the album – I love it because it provides the best vehicle for Tunde Adebimpe’s incredible voice and songwriting ability.

3. St. Elsewhere – Gnarls Barkley
DJ Danger Mouse topped my list last year by producing Gorillaz’ Demon Days, and he came very close to doing the same again in 2006 with this effort. Another I have to listen to from start to finish, DM and Cee-Lo Green’s first collaboration doesn’t really sound like rap, or rock, or pop. Yeah, I like things that are different and defy categorization (which is mostly fruitless with music anyway). Crazy was the song of the year and possibly decade, something so odd yet soothing as to captivate me whenever and wherever I hear it. If anything’s wrong, the album is very short at just over 37 minutes.
Favourite track: 02 – Crazy. Definitive.

4. Food & Liquor – Lupe Fiasco
Setting aside the absurdly self-indulgent namedrop-fests that are Intro and Outro (‘outroduction’ isn’t in the dictionary anyway, rappers take note), Lupe Fiasco’s debut was what Kanye West fans such as myself turned to this year to provide them with their hip-hop brilliance. Every track is catchy and innovative from the first listen, and lyrically he’s almost as smart as West, rapping about subjects more of us can relate to – particularly on the Kick, Push tracks. There’s no clear theme that runs through it all, but pretty much every track from 02 to 15 has wizardry of some kind.
Favourite track: 15 – Kick, Push II. Came a long way from dirty ghetto kids, yeah.

5. The Warning – Hot Chip
NME named Over and Over as the track of the year, and I’ve to agree it’s not far off. I was enamoured with it immediately, being as it was the most catchy song I heard all year, but it took me a while to warm up to the rest of it; once I did, I discovered something I liked very much. They’re a pop/electro mixture that is unusual yet strangely relaxing to the ear – often seemingly unstructured, but always knowing where they’re going. I have since obtained their first album, 2005’s Coming On Strong, which is of similar (though less daring) quality.
Favourite track: 11 – No Fit State. The darkest and most introspective on the album, with a driving beat/synth mix that you can’t shake from your head, and lyrics that will either delight or frustrate (in my case, the former).

6. Peeping Tom – Peeping Tom
Whether or not you’re a fan of Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, numerous other projects) shouldn’t matter in this case. It’s pop music as he’d like it to be, and it has a dirty, grimy feel that appeals to me very much. Each track is a collaboration between Patton, with his unmistakeable glam metal voice and unique musical innovations, and a different well-known musician or group, ranging from Amon Tobin to Massive Attack to Norah Jones. Despite that, it’s consistent all the way through, and there’s no real dead weight.
Favourite track: 11 – We’re Not Alone (Remix) feat. Dub Trio). I love a good closer, and this is a very good one – it stands alone just fine, but gives extra coming at the end of all the other tracks.

7. Taiga – OOIOO
Definitely the oddest thing I branched out to this year, this is the fifth album from Yoshimi P-We (subject of The Flaming Lips’ most well-known album) and her fellow female experimental punk rockers. I gave it repeat listens solely on the strength of the opening track, UMA, which had the most kick-arse drumming of any song I heard this year; as I got to know the rest of it better, it began to resemble something more interesting than a rack of confused sound. I wouldn’t say I love it, but I certainly enjoy and admire it a lot more than I expected to.
Favourite track: 01 – UMA. More than anything else this year, I’d love to see this performed live.

8. Confessions on a Dance Floor – Madonna
Yeah, I can’t believe it either. Lyrically she’s worse than ever (“I don’t like cities, but I like New York / Other places make me feel like a dork”), but das Queen of Pop reinvents herself better than anyone else. I never thought she’d do anything better than 1998’s Ray of Light, but she topped it pretty comfortably with this no-mucking-about dancehall extravaganza. It flows better than anything else this year except Night Ripper, and whoever she’s got producing now really knows how to churn out a good synth hook.
Favourite track: 02 – Get Together. Chosen as the third single; I particularly love the way it segues out from Hung Up, into this, then into Sorry.

9. Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound
This was my introduction to Brazilian music, and it’s great. Os Mutantes, Gilberto Gil and Caetono Veloso are now names that will always prick up my ears when heard. I don’t think it’s cheating to put a compilation on here, especially when everything on it is good and quite alike-sounding.
Favourite track: 05 – Alfomega – Caetano Veloso. Supposedly the man is reviled by some in Brazil for his general pretentiousness, but he makes interesting music, so he gets a pass from me.

10. Scale – Herbert
Politically charged electronic music from the man who, from his lofty perch, looks down on anyone who uses non-original samples. He doesn’t fit well on a list that has Girl Talk sat at the top, but he’s always done pretty good stuff, and there are some very interesting tracks here. Unfortunately, there’s an equal amount of filler; he doesn’t seem imaginative enough to produce consistently intriguing music. Definitely worth a look for the standouts, though.
Favourite track: 01 – Something Isn’t Right. Extremely catchy, and vocally superior, anti-war / anti-Bush / anti-Blair / anti-establishment track – one of the best on any album on this list.

11. Black Holes & Revelations – Muse
Everybody’s favourite hilariously overblown rockers (or, as Ed would say, metallers in popular disguise) returned with another ‘more-is-more’ effort this year. I like Muse a lot, but I’m not getting behind any of the critical acclaim for this album, and certainly not for the much-vaunted second single Supermassive Black Hole. There are some very good tracks, as always, but as a whole it’s a pale imitation of Absolution or Origin of Symmetry, and a little way off the quality of their debut Showbiz. Matthew Bellamy remains, however, one of the most talented musicians working today – he is Muse.
Favourite track: 02 – Starlight. For a change, they toned their WORLD IS ENDING shtick down a bit here, and it worked wonderfully.

12. Half These Songs Are About You – Nizlopi
I listened to this on the back of the delightful JCB Song and its great video; the rest of the album is mostly not up to much, except for a couple of very good tracks. This is the sort of music I thought could be very, very successful, that inspired-by-Coldplay brand of wailing and gentle orchestration that everybody seems to love. Nizlopi haven’t hit it big yet, but they may yet do so; if they do, I will applaud respectfully, but with reservations. One thing the singer does extremely well is use swear words: sparingly, startlingly, in a way that makes you sit up and pay attention.
Favourite track: 08 – Freedom. A good song for feeling unhappy to; actually, just a good song.

13. The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living – The Streets
After two masterpiece albums about generally being an average yob, Mike Skinner turned to his now massive fame and fortune and tried to make it funny and interesting to us, his adoring listeners. Bzzt! No good, mate. It isn’t that his rhymes and flow have dried up; the stuff just isn’t nearly as inherently interesting, and it’s barely half as clever as what he’s put out before. On top of that, the hooks and beats are much more dull. File under ‘disappointment of the year’, apart from a couple of lights in the gloom. Hopefully he makes amends next time by returning to what he knows best.
Favourite track: 01 – Pranging Out. Falsely heralds the album as being as excellent as its predecessors, but the poorness of what follows shouldn’t distract from the fact that this is one fine track.

That’s it. Artists/groups that I discovered for the first time this year, but who did not release albums in the same year, included NoMeansNo, Modest Mouse, The Bravery, The Wrens, Benjamin Diamond, Masters of Reality, Hüsker Dü… and モーニング娘。Don’t laugh at me; I was once like you.

2005: Music

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My review of the year 2005 will begin with Music. Here I will list the new albums that I listened to this year more than a couple of times, in descending order of admiration. Unfortunately, I don’t really know how to talk about music, as you’ll see.

1. Demon Days – Gorillaz
It’s close, but I’m going with Demon Days for my favourite album of the year. I probably listened to it more times than anything else, and I’m listening to it right now, so I suppose it’s appropriate. I wasn’t excited when it came out; the self-titled first one had a few good tracks, but the four-year interval killed off any remaining hope for a better follow-up. Eventually, I got around to listening to it, and on about the fourth time I suddenly loved it. It’s like nothing else released this year. I can only listen to the whole thing right the way through, because it is a genuinely great album, not just a collection of work compiled together; every track works on its own but works better in the context of the others around it. Give it a go, even if you’re sceptical.
Favourite track: 15 – Demon Days

2. ’64 – ’95 – Lemon Jelly
Paul Deakin and Nick Franglen’s third album is their best yet, after the considerable quality of lemonjelly.ky and Lost Horizons. “This is our new album. It’s not like our old album” proclaimed the cover, which proved to be very accurate: ’64 – ’95 adds a bit of darkness to their patented pleasantry, signalling that they’re not just a chillout duo any more. Another album that I have to listen to all at once, as each track segues wonderfully into the next and worms its way into your head for days. They are sampling wizards, even using a bit of John Rowles; it’s good music for any situation, with several excellent tracks.
Favourite track: 02 – Come Down On Me

3. Late Registration – Kanye West
I don’t care if you don’t like hip hop; this is a great album. Thanks to Richie for alerting me to its brilliance. I call it hip hop, but it’s hard to label (categorising music is difficult and pointless, anyway). It frequently reminds me of Outkast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below, which is to say it’s in the same class: it’s catchy, profound but not preachy, musically intriguing. Several tracks stand out, and the interludes – especially Bernie Mac’s introduction – are amusing. Next, I shall get a hold of his debut College Dropout, which many say is even better. Hard to believe, I tell ya.
Favourite track: 19 – Gone

4. Come On! Feel the Illinoise! – Sufjan Stevens
A five-star review in the Herald put me onto this, and after two listens, I was hooked. He’s incredibly audacious and pretentious, this young man, seeing fit to give tracks ridiculous names like ‘A Conjunction of Drones Simulating the Way in which Sufjan Stevens has an Existential Crisis in the Godfrey Maze’ and singing in a typically anguished ‘indie-wail’. But, it’s actually pretty good – very good, even. He’s on a mission to educate all of us about each of the 50 United States, and does a pretty good job on Illinois here – reaching for a deeper truth while contemplating such things as John Wayne Gacy’s killings and the Sears Tower. The whole album is wonderfully arranged and flows nicely, with Stevens himself playing almost all the instruments, and includes a nod to The Cure (naturally). Do try it.
Favourite track: 12 – The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts

5. Bang Bang Rock ‘n’ Roll – Art Brut
“Formed a band, we’ve formed a band. Look at us! We’ve formed a band!” So opens the most enjoyable album of the year. If The Streets were a punk rock band, this is what they’d sound like. It’s proper British punk rock too, irreverent but not inane, tapping into the everyday lives of young people everywhere. Rua told me about these guys, appropriately through the song My Little Brother, so cheers Rua. Just listen to it, and songwriters take note: you can reach a great many deeper truths by keeping it simple. Metaphors need not be complex – just write and sing sincerely.
Favourite track: 04 – Rusted Guns of Milan

6. The Fanatics – The Fanatics
Not actually an album, but a 7-track EP – still, this was the best NZ offering this year. The hype is not enough for this duo from Auckland: they have a unique sound, what they call ‘electro-rock’, which harks back to the 80s but also contains elements of the Future… sounds a bit like Fischerspooner, but with no pretence. They’re currently working on an album, which I am as excited about as I have ever been about a forthcoming music release.
Favourite track: 02 – Dead

7. Odyssey – Fischerspooner
Gay couple Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner were performance artists (gag, spit) who decided that the music they wrote for shows was far more interesting than the performances, so they turned their attention full-time to making music. Their first album, #1, was inconsistent with a few outstanding tracks (Sweetness, Emerge to name two); thankfully, Odyssey is an improvement, feeling more like a real album rather than a collection of tracks just thrown together onto a CD. Their sound is pretty much unique and at the forefront of what we call synthtron, or electroclash (man, music genres are ridiculous). Spooner’s lyrics are a bit dodgy, but Fischer’s sound carries it through; plenty of good tracks on here, so if you heard Emerge in a club and liked it, you’ll probably like Odyssey.
Favourite track: 08 – Happy

8. Funeral – Arcade Fire
I like singers who wail in falsetto, so I was always going to like Arcade Fire. Win Butler wails with the best of them, and sings about reasonably interesting things; as always with me, though, it’s the instruments that draw me in. Alternating between strong & driving and a sort of dreamy low-keyness, this album is great right up until the last track, which is a terrific anti-climax. Pity. Still, I enjoy it very much, and it contains maybe my favourite rock song of the year.
Favourite track: 09 – Rebellion (Lies)

9. The Sound Inside – Breaks Co-op
The other NZ album I bought this year, and it’s really bloody good. I was in Real Groovy browsing for about an hour, and found myself listening to and very much enjoying what they were playing over the PA. Turns out it was these guys, so I came back the next day and bought it. I bought it in July, and it’s a perfect summer album, so of course I haven’t come to appreciate it so much until now. It is a departure from their earlier stuff, largely because of the addition of a new band member, but it is (in my opinion) an improvement. Very much easy-listening chillout music, but… you know… good.
Favourite track: 05 – Last Night

10. Human After All – Daft Punk
Homework was essential, Discovery was a delightful reinvention, and after four years of waiting for another one we get… this? That was my initial response to Human After All – they produced this in a couple of weeks, surely? It felt like complete rubbish, derivative of everything else they and several other French house groups have done. A couple of tracks stood out, but overall it was just a big mess. But then I looked again at the title, and at all the track names, and I realised that they were in fact taking the piss. Out of us, out of what we’ve become. In the end, it’s clever, but a fascinating waste of time is still a waste of time. I don’t dislike the album, but I feel they would’ve been better off taking another six months to create something with the innovation of either of their first two. At any rate, the final track is one of my favourites of the year – it’s a blindingly obvious six and a half minutes, but as I said earlier, simplicity can often bring about a stronger and deeper reaction in the listener.
Favourite track: 10 – Emotion

11. Get Behind Me Satan – The White Stripes
More of the same from Jack and Meg, but if it’s a same you like, then great – fortunately, I do like it. Nowhere near the greatness of Elephant or the near-perfection of White Blood Cells, this is still a good offering; there are a few experiments here and there, but mostly they’re just doing what they’ve always done. Kind of feels like they phoned it in a bit. As I say, good regardless.
Favourite track: 02 – The Nurse

12. Nympho – Armand Van Helden
Easily the biggest disappointment of the year. 2 Future 4 U and Killing Puritans are two albums I own and very much enjoy, but what the hell happened here? This is lazy, sloppy work from a guy I thought was at the forefront of the DJ scene. There are some very good club tracks – Into Your Eyes, My My My – but where are the nine-minute epics of previous outings? Perhaps I didn’t give this one a fair go, but it seemed to me that his trademark repetitiveness was different this time: he was repeating boring beats and hooks, not interesting ones. Shame.
Favourite track: 03 – Into Your Eyes

So, only one new album a month on average. It goes to show that most of the music I listen to is from previous years. For the record, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips and Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes by TV on the Radio were my most-listened-to non-2005 albums this year. Both are phenomenally great, totally unique albums that you should track down and listen to as soon as you can.

2005: Good Movies

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My review of the year 2005 continues with the top ten movies I saw in cinemas. They had to play either on general release or in a festival, thus North by Northwest in a one-off at the Regent and Cremaster 3 in Film Society were not considered.

1. Grizzly Man – Werner Herzog
Nothing else screened in 2005 could approach the brilliance of Herzog’s Grizzly Man. In the guise of a nature documentary, the great Bavarian sums up life, the universe and everything, and in doing so embraces the darkness that defines our existence. More than in any of his other films I’ve seen, more even than in Lessons in Darkness, Herzog stares into the abyss and refuses to turn away; rather than trying to lionise a very troubled human being, he condemns his madness while at the same time celebrating him. Only Herzog could produce an effective film that both damns and praises its subject, while at the same time turning his gaze to the audience and demanding that they re-evaluate their own lives. It fits perfectly with his overall body of work, and stands in my opinion as one of the greatest films – documentary or fiction – ever made.

2. My Summer of Love – Pawel Pawlikowski
I had high hopes for this on the back of Pawlikowski’s excellent debut Last Resort, not to mention the presence of the incomparable Paddy Considine; still, I was stunned by how good this was. Virtually everything about this film was perfect. The screenplay was very focused on character, involving a sequence of events that make up a plot (rather than a plot that drives a sequence of events). Each scene seems to top the last, and the dialogue is powerful and real. The cinematography is first class, just beautiful in places. The acting (essentially a three-role film) from Considine and leads Nathalie Press and Emily Blunt is as good as you’ll see. The use of music is unequivocally the best of the year. The directing, man… absolutely perfect. Seriously, when I start making movies, this will be my model for a perfectly directed film. No shot is wasted, no aspect of the actors’ performances left untapped; with few locations, few actors and relatively small crew, Pawlikowski creates the most affecting and believable film story of the year. Only the ending prevents me from placing it at #1 – while excellent, it was so surprising as to seem a bit out of place. On second viewing, I’m sure it’ll seem more right. See this one, at all costs.

3. DiG! – Ondi Timoner
Like Grizzly Man, this was a documentary mostly about one completely mad guy. It was also one of the funniest and most entertaining films of the year. You would keep wishing that Anton Newcombe would just give himself a break sometime, but he would always trump himself by doing or saying something even more ridiculous (sending the Dandy Warhols shotgun shells with their names on stands out as a particularly insane act). Taking place over 7 years, this documents Newcombe’s constant rise and fall, and his rivalry with the Dandys’ Courtney Taylor (who narrates). As good a film about rock and roll as has been made, you come to the end feeling as though you personally know the principal figures, which I always think is some sign of success.

4. Palindromes – Todd Solondz
Solondz, the master absurdist, again makes fun every single member of the audience whatever their views are. It’s not as simple as that, though; he’s not merely taking aim at our collective ridiculousness through the medium of film. It’s not a protest. It just shows us for what we are: opinionated, narrow-minded fools who search for meaning everywhere in our lives when there simply isn’t any. I saw this the day after Grizzly Man, which was somehow fitting; both films are audacious enough to say that everything in our lives is absurd and trivial, but convince us that it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just the way we are. I see Palindromes not as an exploration of the abortion debate on film, but an extension (and improvement upon) the director’s earlier Happiness – an offering of freaks and outliers of society that represent all of us far better than the winners.

5. Sideways – Alexander Payne
I really need to see this again, since I’ve only seen it the once back in February. In any case, it was clearly going to be one of the year’s best even as early as that. The combination of Payne and Jim Taylor’s screenplay with a fine four-piece acting ensemble resulted in a wonderful reworking of the buddy comedy and road movie genres. Several scenes are great (most memorable being Miles’ lines on the beach), but they all contribute to an overall tone and theme that leaves you thinking for days. This is an extremely genuine film, amusing and (for a film about wine drinkers) remarkably free of pretentiousness. If for no other reason, see it for Paul Giamatti’s superlatively great performance; if you need another, see it for the skill of Payne, who after only four features has honed his craft to near perfection.

6. The Constant Gardener – Fernando Meirelles
A powerful, angry thriller by John le Carré was expertly transformed into a provocative and affecting film by the soon-to-be legendary Brazilian Meirelles. Filmmaking is rarely as politically charged as this, and because it was handled well, I was happy to climb aboard with the film’s agenda. It’s well acted and well shot, and as well as making you think, it’s a damned good thriller; structurally Meirelles messes you around, before slowly joining the threads back up. Some scenes could have been handled better, and it is a little difficult to handle the influx of information in the third act, but overall it is a quality exercise in filmmaking. And anyway, a film that so clearly states that it wants to change your opinion should be applauded for being so up front.

7. Sin City – Robert Rodriguez
The most brutal film of the year was also one of the most hyped, but for once, it lived up to great expectations. I’ve never been much of a fan of Rodriguez, but the technical skill on display here is so mindblowing that it has to be seen to be believed; it really is as if a comic book has come to life. And what a violent comic book it is. Many, many moments are excruciatingly grotesque (several of them, unbelievably, involve Elijah Wood), and contribute to an overall sense of sub-baseness that pervades every frame. This is all style and absolutely no substance… but what style, man. It’s so much fun it’s practically a guilty pleasure, and I must say, I’m quite looking forward to instalments 2 and 3.

8. Batman Begins – Christopher Nolan
None of the trailers or stills excited me, and the pedigree of the previous Batman films was not a little off-putting, but the presence of Nolan as director and Christian Bale as star forced me along to see this on opening night. I was far from disappointed; in fact, I really bloody liked it. This immediately re-states the parameters for Bruce Wayne/Batman, removing any comparison with the earlier films; if it seems a bit odd for the first half hour, don’t worry, you’ll eventually settle into it. This is a rare blockbuster that focuses on character rather than action, offering one of the most entertaining and enthralling screen heroes of the new millennium. Unfortunately, while a lot of the action is bad-ass, most of the fight scenes are epileptically edited with seemingly billions of cuts per second – the only disappointing aspect of an otherwise fine film.

9. Inosensu: Kokaku kidotai – Mamoru Oshii
English title: Ghost in the Shell: Innocence. This is a sequel to the 1995 original, Ghost in the Shell, which was a very direct influence on The Matrix, and I found it to be a better film. Typically for an Oshii work, it was very confusing and often totally violated all traditional rules of film storytelling; still, that never derailed a fascinating, beguiling film. I’d need to see it again to understand it, but I was happy to just be swept up in the wonder of it all – it’s visually extraordinary with its mix of traditional and CG animation, and always mindblowing. Probably only good for anime fans, and probably needs to be seen on a big screen; fortunately, I and the venue fit these criteria, so I enjoyed it very much.

10. Gegen die Wand – Fatih Akin
English title: Head-On (literally Against the Wall, a much better title if you ask me). This film’s first hour and a half is so good, I just wish they could have kept it up for the final half hour. Still, that doesn’t stop this being a powerful film, well directed and acted and with great use of music. It creates characters that we quickly care about and want to see succeed, despite their extreme anti-social qualities; however, we also quickly know that everything isn’t going to end well, so it is difficult to hold out hope. Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin and Best Film at the European Film Awards, this signals the arrival of a major new directing talent, and looks closely at lives without any sort of direction. It’s tough and shocking at times, but well worth your time.

One thing to note: the first four spots are all taken up by Film Festival films, which goes to show how shitty the general release slate was last year. I get the feeling we’re on an unstoppable slide: 2004 was good overall, 2005 rubbish with great moments, so 2006 will surely be the worst year for studio film yet. I hope I’m proved wrong.