The worst movie of the year, without a doubt, is Drive. Made for every wannabe Jeremy Clarkson by Danish-born Nicholas Winding Refn, it’s the worst because it’s trying to be the new Charles Bronson and Jason Statham revenge flick, but tries very hard to pose as art as well. In the end it’s nothing but violent, stupid, closeted homoeroticism with a soft porn soundtrack.
Not far behind it is another Danish film, the winner of this year’s Oscar for best foreign film. In a Better World is bristling with good intentions but ends up being as patronising as those images you get in the so-called developed world of starving, big-eyed black children. They need your help because that is all Africa is: a victim. Conversely, it has spectacular scenery. But don’t think ordinary people live there, not on your Nelly Mandela.
Someone had a similar sense of humour to Danish auteur Lars von Trier when s/he let Melancholia open two days before Christmas. Von Trier hates America so much that he uses American actors to say so. Obviously names like Kirsten Dunst and Kiefer Sutherland might attract some existential Yanks to the cinema - ie encourage sales - because the story certainly won’t. Lightened to an extent by some droll humour, like a stretch limo getting stuck on a narrow road on an exclusive golf estate, Von Trier is still on his philosophically shaky thesis that all people are evil, which he doesn’t bother to explain or argue. By the way, that planet heading towards Earth is going to destroy it, and duly does. Followed by the end credits.
If something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark then Another Year seems to be saying that all is sexless sense and sensibility in the UK. Mike Leigh’s script was nominated for an Oscar and lost to the s-s-s-stuttering one with its closeted Nazi sympathies. But for all its realistic speech it still ends up being a crashing, middle-aged bore.
The first real Facebook movie was Catfish and people either thought it was the movie Hitchcock would have made or a massive con. Manipulating us into believing that we were watching a thriller unfold, it ended up being the story of some lonely soul out in the back of beyond. It was a massive con.
You get children’s movies that are just for children and some that include adults - like Horton Hears a Who! - and some that use an adult sensibility to patronise children. Rango falls into the latter category. Full of its own cleverness, it makes jokes about writing screenplays and probing prostates, as if children really know or give a damn about such things. Great animation, lousy story.
Riddled with every conceivable ballet cliché – narcissism, lesbianism, controlling mothers and teachers - Black Swan will probably end up being a camp classic.
Certified Copy has a married couple talking in Tuscany and then talking some more and, because it was made by an Iranian auteur, it’s supposed to be art but it was actually quite boring.
The Bang Bang Club failed to frame (sorry) three of its four South African photographers and their picture editor and tried too hard to cover too much ground. But at the very least that country's history is being engaged - however skewly.
Australian artist and Jane Campion protégé Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty touched on all kinds of interesting feminist issues in a novel, even memorable way but failed to distil any of them, which a film I failed to mention last week did. Though Emma Stone is miscast in The Help, it is still a powerful and necessary flick with great performances from Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Bryce Dallas Howard.
And on that positive note I hope you all have a happy New Year.
Neil Sonnekus
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