Anyone still reading this?

Hello. You might have noticed that this blog looks a bit abandoned as of late. Well, that's because it is. I'm still writing, but I've moved on to the noticeably yellow website The Upcoming. This means I now get invited to all the fancy screenings with Mark Kermode and Jason Solomons and the like, which is a bit less taxing on my fragile wallet. Also, lots of people now read my reviews, instead of just my mum and five friends (if that).

You can now follow my reviews here. You can also see my Letterboxd profile here, if you're really desperate to know my immediate reaction to Dreamworks' Trolls, or what I think of random Japanese melodramas from the 50s. Finally, I have a sort-of-blog-but-not-really here, which collects my best bits of writing - some of it from here - and some new, uncategorised stuff in one place, along with a couple of screenplays I'm working on. Because I am, you know, an artist, darling.

It's been fun, writing for Movie Bash, but I'm now quite prepared to move on. Not because I don't like writing any more - I've just always hated the stupid Americanised name that my 16-year-old self came up with four years ago.

I feel like I should go out on an inspirational quote or something.

Um.

"I'll see you at the movies."

"Stay gold, pony boy."

Who's the real author of Weiner?

When Anthony Weiner, former Democratic congressman and disgracee of a humiliating sexting scandal, began his candidacy for Mayor of New York City in 2013, it's doubtful he could have ever predicted the political car crash(es) that would ensue. Yet what's remarkable about Weiner - a fly on the wall documentary directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg - is that, even when the eponymous figure is at his lowest, being attacked and humiliated by almost every news program and paper, he refuses to turn the cameras off. We are granted such unprecedented insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of a scandal that, at times, we almost can't believe what we're seeing.

When Anthony Weiner giggles over his disastrous appearance on the Lawrence O'Donnell show, when he goes into a meltdown in response to a Jewish man's comments at a deli, when he is smuggled into his own campaign headquarters via a McDonald's elevator to avoid the woman he sexted with, it's not hard to imagine that this is an elaborate mockumentary written by Armando Iannucci. But it's not. It's real. And it's fascinating.

Does this mean it's any good? Not good in the subjective sense - it's some of the most fun I've had at the cinema this year - but good in the more objective, well-made, worthy-of-praise-and-possibly-Oscar-nods sense. Well, yes and no. Yes, it's almost perfectly edited, and yes, it tells a clear and compelling story that bears relevance to the wider world. Yet in the days after seeing it, I began to wonder if it was not a great political documentary, but simply one of the most lucky films to have ever existed.

When Kriegman and Steinberg began filming Weiner, they couldn't know what was going to happen. They took an opportunity and seized it, and were able to film some stunning footage. But by the definition of "fly on the wall", they didn't make the footage, nor did they engineer its outcome. They filmed what was there, what was granted to them by an unapologetic narcissist with outsized political dreams.

Throughout most of the film, then, it feels like Kriegman and Steinberg were not the directors of their own film: Anthony Weiner was. He knew he was being filmed throughout the entire journey, and this almost certainly affected his behaviour. The film opens with his rant in congress against the Republicans who tried to block healthcare for 9/11 first responders, which subsequently goes viral. It's his skills as an orator and political grandstander that are, without question, remarkable. It's just the rest of his personality that gets in the way. And he is so obsessed with his own image that, in spite of O'Donnell asking, "What's wrong with you?", in spite of the knowledge that he will lose, he continues in his Sisyphean quest, to the expense of his career, his personal relationships, and his marriage to Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

A few weeks ago, I saw Notes on Blindness, Pete Middleton and James Spinney's remarkable documentary that semi-dramatises theologian John Hull's diaries about his descent into blindness. I say "semi" in that, much like Cleo Barnard's The Arbor, it takes the recorded voices of its subjects and has actors re-enact them via lip sync. But unlike Barnard's film, the artifice is less pronounced; at times, you almost forget that it is Dan Skinner on screen, not John Hull.

Both the strengths and weaknesses of Middleton and Spinney's film derive from the fact that it is less a documentary and more a creative response to a document. They cannot imagine what it was like inside Hull's head, nor do they try to. Instead, we get almost abstract compositions - a set of fraying photographs, a perfectly white bout of snow - that at least try to simulate the emotions associated with blindness.

Much like Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, or Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing - or even Rufus Norris' London Road, another piece of trendy verbatim-cinema - there is a conscious blurring between documentary and fiction, that makes you question whether these boundaries even need to exist. At the same time, though, there is a question of whether the documentary has a greater duty towards realism than the fictional piece. Audiences going into a film will likely know whether it intends to be factual or fictional; to make a film purporting towards the factual but executed with a rather liberal creative instinct could, potentially, be misleading, even dishonest. As much as I loved The Act of Killing, it was Oppenheimer's companion piece The Look of Silence that I considered the greater work, in that it was less geared towards cinematic spectacle and more towards individual, personal truths.

Taken on these terms, then, Weiner is the most realistic form of documentary, in that it offers an unvarnished insight into a man spinning his own fiction. While every image, every sound, every juxtaposition between the two is a creative choice in of itself, it seems difficult to tell this particular story any other way, so clear was its trajectory. Does this make it better, worse, or simply different to the kind of documentary that attempts to actively instigate something new, to explore and participate in the world instead of simply filming it? Should capturing life at its most "real" be the first priority in these endeavours, or can augmenting it with fiction allow the work to reach greater heights of "real" than would first be imagined?

I don't really answers here, except that I'm reminded of a shot in John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Ford wanted to film a cavalry procession through Monument Valley, and he did so to the backdrop of an approaching lightning storm. Neither Ford nor anyone else predicted the storm's appearance - and yet, it remains an integral part of the film's mise-en-scene. Nowadays, it's likely such a shot would be re-created with CGI. But because of its circumstances, does Ford's scene feel more true to life? If so, who's the real author of that shot? Does it matter?

Reviews Roundup

The Witch

Some cretins have said this isn't a real horror film. Ignore them. Robert Eggers' tale of New England religious hysteria is one of the scariest - and greatest - horror films I've seen in years, whose goat- and witch-based scares are augmented by the film's investments in story, character, and ambiguous subtext. When I say I was almost sick twice, I mean it as the highest compliment.

★★★★★

High-Rise

I like Ben Wheatley, but I found his High-Rise to be a bit of a trial. True, the production design is astonishingly good - the 70s have never felt so hellishly concrete - and there's something special in its astutely choreographed scenes of orgiastic chaos. But in maintaining the same kind of pace for two hours, it all becomes numbing spectacle, detracting somewhat from the demented clarity of Ballard's original vision.

★★★

Midnight Special

A.k.a. The Case of the Missing First Act. Why so many critics have responded so positively to Jeff Nichols' latest is beyond me. By jumping straight into its road movie premise, and by refusing to use any kind of flashback structure, we never find out who, exactly, the central characters are - or why we should care about them. Nichols tries to combine his deep South aesthetic with something more Spielbergian, but fails on both fronts. The tone is too dour; Michael Shannon is given nothing to do except practice his concerned face; and the actual sci-fi, when it finally emerges, is astonishingly vague, even a bit stoned. It's not terrible, and there are a few nice set-pieces, like a meteor strike at a gas station. But Jesus, when that final reveal came, I wanted to throw things at the screen.

★★

The Jungle Book

It's weird to think that this film was made in a studio somewhere in London. The effects are so good that I almost believed I was in India, surrounded by real animals with suspiciously familiar American accents. If only it wasn't for the damn kid playing Mowgli. He can't act to save his life. And the whole musical-not-a-musical thing - including The Bear Necessities and I Wanna Be Like You, but nothing else - feels out of place, a decision motivated by nostalgia. But when you've got a stunningly realistic tiger, voiced by Idris Elba, of all people, then does anything else really matter?

★★★★

Eye in the Sky

Argh. It might as well be a stage play. It simplifies the debate about the issue to something depressingly basic. It undermines its central premise by including some clearly unrealistic technology. And to top it all off, the whole damn thing's too bloody sentimental - would drone operators really cry at their desks? But even so, Eye in the Sky is still the best film ever made about drones, and I suppose that's saying something.

★★½

REVIEW: Anomalisa

I love Charlie Kaufman about as much as it's possible to love someone you've never met. His films - particularly Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but also Synecdoche, New York and Being John Malkovich - have had a bigger impact on the way I write than those of almost any other writer. Whenever it comes to explorations of the mind, the personality, and the ways, both conscious and subconscious, in which we respond to art, there are few minds out there who can respond with such stunning insight.

So when I say that Anomalisa is one of the best films Kaufman's ever made, you'd better believe I mean it. And it's strange to say that because, in spite of its material appearance, it's one of his most unapproachable works yet. The story centres around Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a customer service expert who's flown to Cincinnati to give a talk about his latest book. Thing is, Stone's going through a midlife crisis, so he perceives everyone around as the same person, with the same voice. Oh, did I forget to mention it's a stop-motion animation? That's quite important. The characters - while altogether more detailed than, say, their Wallace and Gromit brethren - are crafted in a way that draws attention to the facial masks they're wearing, which sport cracks around the edges and across the eyes. Everyone bar Michael is wearing the same mask, and all of them are voiced by that terrifically unnerving character actor, Tom Noonan.

Well, almost all of them. Restless in the hotel he's staying in, Michael suddenly hears a different voice. He sprints along the corridor, knocking on doors, until he finally comes across a room occupied by two women. One of them is called Lisa, and is voiced with heartbreaking inelegance by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Michael, asserting himself with an almost predatory confidence, buys them drinks, then invites Lisa back to his hotel room.

I mentioned that this film is quite unapproachable, and it's not just because of the stop motion - though that is a part of it. Rather, we're asked to view the world through Michael's eyes. And Michael isn't necessarily the nicest guy in the world. He's narcissistic, self-involved, and capable of quite ruthless cruelty. Spending time with him is uncomfortable, to say the least, because we're afraid of what he might do to people, what kind of havoc he might cause in his vulnerable, self-destructive state.

But that's the genius of the film. The stop motion conceit is one of the best renderings of the subjective experience that I've ever seen. We never forget that people are puppets, and therefore, we never really empathise with them - just like Michael. We get sick of Tom Noonan's voice so quickly, we find anyone who's speaking with it intensely annoying - just like Michael. And when Jennifer Jason Leigh comes along, we're desperate to hear her speak, and sing, that we're completely willing to ignore her flaws - just like Michael.

And then, well, there's the sex scene. Destined to rank alongside Don't Look Now in the hall of the all-time greats, the moment when Michael and Lisa become intimate is simultaneously unreal, surreal, and, in spirit, more real than anything else out there. It's deeply uncomfortable, and feels like it lasts for eons, but there's real beauty in it - like we're seeing humanity stripped back to its most vulnerable, exposed essence. The film attains tragic proportions the morning after, when Leigh's voice is suddenly overlayed by Noonan's, and we realise that, for Michael, the spell has worn off. He's bored of her, and he's doomed to remain unhappy.

There's an argument to be made that the conceit works best in its original state, as a "voice play". (Apparently, the actors would sit on stage and read their lines while sound effects were played around them, leading to some Brechtian-based LOLs.) But it's the visuals that transforms this film into something beautiful. I've always thought that animation is better at capturing the essence of life than live-action cinema - if cinema is a medium for transforming life into something meaningful, then surely the greatest purity can be achieved by a complete breaking from reality? In Anomalisa, something as simple as walking down a corridor becomes something magical, simply because of its precise, and otherworldly, execution. I loved it.

★★★★★

REVIEW: Batman vs. Superman

WHY DO ALL SUPERHERO FILMS HAVE TO BE SO LOUD? CHRIST, TRY AND REMEMBER THE LAST TIME THERE WAS ONE THAT HAD A MOMENT OF GENUINE SILENCE, WHICH DIDN'T PUNCTUATE EVERY SCENE WITH HANS ZIMMER MUSIC AND A BIG FUCK-OFF EXPLOSION. YOU CAN'T DO IT, CAN YOU? AND THIS FILM, A KIND OF NERD MECCA, HAS TO BE THE LOUDEST OF THEM ALL. IT'S NOT COMPLETELY TERRIBLE, IT'S JUST EXHAUSTING - LIKE BLASTING AC-DC FROM A HELICOPTER, WHILE HAVING TO MAINTAIN A CONVERSATION WITH ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER.

THE PLOT IS A BIG FUCK-OFF MESS, BUT IT MOSTLY CENTRES AROUND TWO MEN, BUILT LIKE FRIDGES, PREPARING TO BEAT THE HOLY LIVING SHIT OUT OF ONE ANOTHER. BEN AFFLECK PLAYS BATMAN, AND SPENDS MOST OF HIS TIME SNARLING AND MOANING ABOUT HIS DEAD PARENTS. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE SEEN THEM DIE, NOW? THOUGH BATMAN'S STORYLINE IS CERTAINLY MORE COMPELLING THAN SUPERMAN'S, WHO SPENDS MOST OF THE TIME MOANING ABOUT HIS AWESOME SUPERPOWERS AND ATTRACTIVE GIRLFRIEND - PLAYED BY AMY ADAMS, NO LESS. AND THEN LEX LUTHOR SHOWS UP, AND WONDER WOMAN, AND YOU JUST WANT TO SIT IN THE CORNER AND HAVE A CUP OF TEA, AND MAYBE A LITTLE CRY. BUT YOU CAN'T, BECAUSE THE FILM GOES ON FOR TWO AND A HALF HOURS. TWO AND A HALF HOURS. TWO AND A HALF HOURS.

AFFLECK IS FINE, HENRY CAVILL IS FINE, JESSE EISENBERG GIVES THE WORST PERFORMANCE OF HIS CAREER. I WILL BEGRUDINGLY ADMIT THAT ZACK SNYDER STAGES A FEW GOOD ACTION SCENES THAT, IF SEEN IN ISOLATION, WOULD BE BRUISINGLY EFFECTIVE. BUT TAKEN AS A WHOLE, BATMAN VS SUPERMAN IS A HUMOURLESS, TWO AND A HALF HOUR BOUT OF ENDURANCE, WHICH MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN MADE BY A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD. BUILDING UP TENSION? PACING? WHAT ARE YOU, SOME KIND OF QUEER? LET'S DO TWELVE EXPLOSIONS IN THE SPACE OF A MINUTE! FUCK YEAH!

★★

A few more thoughts on Hail, Caesar!

1. Alden Ehrenreich was properly great.
His character was the most genuine part of the entire thing, right up with Llewyn Davis and Marge Gunderson in terms of heartfelt Coen characters. And the scene he shared with Ralph Fiennes - complete with an expertly-timed hand whip - is probably the funniest thing I'll see all year.

2. Was the plodding structure intentional?
Was it supposed to be about the frivolity of Hollywood entertainment, about killing time?

3. If it's intentional, then does it make Hail, Caesar! worse or better?
There were quite a few moments where I was bored. Surely, then, the comedy wasn't good enough?

4. The comedy wasn't good enough.
For every great bit, there was a bit that was only so-so. Why was Jonah Hill there? Tilda Swinton only hinted at being funny. Where were the gags?

5. Why did the storylines fizzle out so noticeably?
Scarlett Johannson showed promise, then disappeared. So did Frances McDormand.

6. Am I just being a grumpy bugger?
No.

7. At least it showed that most movies made in the 50s were a bit shit.
And the homoerotic undertones-made-overtones of the sailor sequence were properly funny.

8. I'm still getting over the fact that Alden Ehrenreich was so good in this film.
The scenes with him taking his co-star on a date were so sweet. And that lasso work! Hot damn.

Oh yeah, here's an updated version of my Scale of Coen™:

1. Miller's Crossing
2. Fargo
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. No Country for Old Men
5. The Man Who Wasn't There
6. The Big Lebowski
7. Blood Simple
8. Barton Fink
9. True Grit
10. Raising Arizona
11. A Serious Man
12. Hail, Caesar!
13. Burn After Reading
14. The Hudsucker Proxy
15. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
16. Intolerable Cruelty
17. The Ladykillers

REVIEW: Hail, Caesar!

As acting president of the Coen Brothers' fan club, I might not be in the most neutral position to review Hail, Caesar! But I think this also puts me in a good position to see when their work might not be up to snuff - and while their latest might be one of the funniest, most original screwball comedies we're likely to see this year, it's ultimately empty, adding up to little more than a collection of well-made sketches.

The story - if there even is one - follows Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who's based on the real-life "fixer" in 1950s Hollywood, responsible for handling stars and covering up scandals. In the history books, he's a dark figure, who was famously involved in the suspicious death of Superman star George Reeves. But the Coens consciously re-invent him as a nice guy, who visits his priest every 24 hours to confess smoking a cigarette after he's told his wife he's going to quit. It's like Mannix himself has had a hand in his own script. Yet it serves their overall vision - that Hollywood, for all its flaws, is a palace of dreams, full of kooks and oddballs who are all granted with the opportunity to weave their own brand of movie magic.

Mannix is working on Hail Caesar: A Tale of the Christ, a prestigious bible-epic with a big star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney). Problem is, Whitlock gets drugged and kidnapped, so Mannix has to pull some strings and recruit the help of some stars to get his movie star back, all while keeping things out of the reach of the press and ruminating on an attractive job offer.

And...that's about it, really, as far as plot goes. What this really gives the film an excuse to do, though, is pastiche the hell out of classical Hollywood. And what a cast the Coens have assembled to do so. Beyond Clooney doing Ben-Hur, we have Scarlett Johannson doing an Esther Williams mermaid musical; we have Channing Tatum doing a brilliant imitation of tap-dancing Gene Kelly; and in the film's best scene, we have singing cowboy Alden Ehrenreich (who surely deserves to become the film's breakout star) trying his hand at a period costume drama, under the command of impatient thespian Ralph Fiennes.

Throw in a scene with a Soviet submarine, and some great blink-and-you'll-miss-them cameos from Wayne Knight and Clancy Brown, and surely you've got a hit? Well, not exactly. While the Coens have always had a deft touch for movie magic, creating worlds we could never even dream of, they're not always so great at filling their films with urgency. The through line of the film is Mannix, and he struggles a bit with his faith. But for what purpose? Nothing that happens to him during the timeline of the film seems to test him in any way. The kidnapping storyline with Clooney? Well, spoilers, but it resolves itself. There's a couple of subplots to do with communism, and star image - but again, it's all airy nothingness, that makes very little impact. I mean, it's fine for the stakes to be low in a comedy - but can't we give these tremendously talented people something to do beyond just showing up on-screen?

In fairness, the film sort of engages with this, even if it doesn't offer anything more interesting in return. In conversations with his priest, Mannix says his job is easy, and to do something harder - and more serious - somehow feels "right". But he doesn't. He's too enchanted with the movies. And I think the Coens, for all their clever deconstructions of the medium, love the movies too. In fact, I don't think it's a stretch to say that, for them, the movies are like a religion. It's just a shame this is one of their weaker psalms.

★★½

REVIEW: Bone Tomahawk

Forgot to write about this. It's really good! Don't read anything about it, just go and see it.

Unless you're squeamish. Then, um, don't go and see it.

★★★★

The Oscars - the political event of the year

When the Oscar ceremony began last night, surely there was only question on people's lips: what was Chris Rock going to do? His decision to stick with hosting an awards show darkened by storm clouds of controversy seemed like a no-win situation - whatever he could do, or say, would not change the snubs, or the seemingly systematic repression of minorities within the Hollywood production machine. (As upsetting as, say, Creed's snubs were, the real fact was that not enough opportunities are being given to those who need them - Danny Leigh pointed out that only one black person has ever been nominated for Best Editing: Hugh A. Robertson, for Midnight Cowboy in 1969.)

But from his opening line - "Man, I counted at least fifteen black people on that montage!" - it was clear that Rock was going to address the problem head-on. And for ten minutes, Rock delivered some great stuff. He called the Oscars the "White People's Choice awards"; he bluntly declared, "You're damn right Hollywood is racist"; and he made jokes with the kind of disarming edge that made his stand-up comedy so great in the first place: "The in memoriam montage is just going to be black people who were shot by the cops on the way to the movies!"

Slightly less successful were his attempts at easing the tensions in the room, and pandering to a largely white crowd. When he talked about black people in the 60s as being too busy "being raped and lynched to care about who won best cinematographer," there was the uncomfortable sentiment that the problems with Hollywood weren't important enough to treat seriously. And the swipes at the #AskHerMore campaign seemed a little off-putting, especially considering the fact that, earlier in the year, sexism in the industry was as pressing an issue as race.

Still, the monologue worked, and the rest of the show was uncharacteristically entertaining, at least for a while. There were plenty of unpredictabilities on offer, namely Mad Max: Fury Road's surprise sweep of six - SIX! - Oscars in technical categories. I can't have been the only one overjoyed by Mark Rylance's ousting of Sylvester Stallone in the Best Supporting Actor category, a genuine triumph of performance over politics and the Oscar "story". And who expected that Spotlight would really win Best Picture? After Crash beat Brokeback Mountain in 2006, I think it's safe to say we all gave up on the Academy rewarding five-star films; yet here we were, seeing the hackneyed offerings of The Revenant and The Big Short ousted in favour of something genuinely brilliant.

Elsewhere, though, everything went as expected, in plodding fashion. The middle section was particularly dire: Alicia Vikander won Best Supporting Actress; Inside Out won Best Animated Feature; Son of Saul won Best Foreign Film; Carol got nothing; the Earth revolved around the Sun; five cups of tea could barely keep me awake. The absolute nadir came when the fucking Minions presented the award for Best Animated Short, and Don Hertzfeldt's amazing World of Tomorrow lost out to some overrated film about bears (no, not that one.)

Alejandro González Iñárritu won Best Director, Brie Larson won Best Actress, and, of course, Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor. Larson deserved it; so did DiCaprio, in a way, though maybe not for this particular film. But what made this section of the show - and some otherwise numbingly dull segments - watchable was a focus on real-world issues. DiCaprio brought up climate change, saying, "Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted." This echoed the sentiments of everyone's favourite Bag Lady, Jenny Beaven, earlier in the show, who highlighted the possibility of Mad Max being "horribly prophetic ... if we're not kinder to each other, and if we don't stop polluting our atmosphere."

In light of winning Best Picture, the producers of Spotlight expressed hoped that the film could effect change in the Catholic church. And while I thought Lady Gaga's performance of "Til It Happens to You" was about as subtle as a punch to the face, it attempted to say something about the very real, very serious issue of college campus rapes - so important, in fact, that the Vice President Joe Biden introduced the song. It must, therefore, have been doubly painful for Gaga to lose out to Sam Smith's wet sneeze of a Bond song; but even he tried to bring light to LGBT issues, albeit in a hilariously naive, misguided fashion. (Elton John was sitting right there when he announced that no other openly gay man had won an Oscar.)

Surely this was the best way to use the Oscars, as a platform to effect real-world change? The more interesting event will be next year's ceremony, when we can see if any of this has stuck - or whether this relic of "old" Hollywood will be forever doomed to remain in the dark ages.

Oscar Predictions

Me again. This upcoming Oscar ceremony looks to be a mix of dead-certs and exciting/worrying unpredictabilities, so I'll do what every other critic is doing and try and predict where each gong will (and should) go. Well, almost every gong. I don't really give a shit about Best Documentary Short. Sorry, Claude Lanzmann.

(Also, just to note: I'm pretty sure that anywhere between 50-100% of these are entirely incorrect.)

BEST PICTURE

What'll win?
The Revenant
How sure am I?
60%
What should win?
Spotlight/Mad Max: Fury Road
What's been snubbed?
Carol (!), 45 Years, Inside Out, Creed

BEST DIRECTOR

Who'll win?
Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant)
How sure am I?
75%
Who should win?
George Miller (MM: FR)
Who's been snubbed?
Todd Haynes (Carol), Ryan Coogler (Creed), Todd Haynes, Ridley Scott (The Martian), Todd Haynes

BEST ACTOR

Who'll win?
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)
How sure am I?
100 billion percent
Who should win?
Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs), I suppose (weak category - plus, he was better in Macbeth)
Who's been snubbed?
Michael B. Jordan (Creed), Colin Farrell (The Lobster)

BEST ACTRESS

Who'll win?
Brie Larson (Room)
How sure am I?
85%
Who should win?
Eh, they're all pretty amazing
Who's been snubbed?
Emily Blunt (Sicario), Karidja Touré (Girlhood), Lily Tomlin (Grandma)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Who'll win?
Sylvester Stallone (Creed)
How sure am I?
50%
Who should win?
Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies)/Christian Bale (The Big Short)
Who's been snubbed?
IDRIS FUCKING ELBA (BoNN), Benicio Del Toro (Sicario), Michael Shannon (99 Homes)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Who'll win?
Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl, though she deserves it for Ex Machina)
How sure am I?
60%
Who should win?
Even though she's in the wrong category, Rooney Mara (Carol)
Who shouldn't win?
Kate Winslet (Steve Jobs)
Who's been snubbed?
Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (Tangerine), Marion Cotillard (Macbeth)

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Who'll win?
Tom McCarthy & Josh Singer (Spotlight)
How sure am I?
85%
Who should win?
McCarthy & Singer (Spotlight)/Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve & Josh Cooley (Inside Out)
Who's been snubbed?
Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig (Mistress America), Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight)

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Who'll win?
Adam McKay & Charles Randolph (The Big Short)
How sure am I?
70%
Who should win?
Phyllis Nagy (Carol)
Who's been snubbed?
Aaron Sorkin (Steve Jobs)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

What'll win?
Son of Saul
How sure am I?
80%
What should win?
Son of Saul, probably (I haven't seen it yet)
What's been snubbed?
Force Majeure, Girlhood, Wild Tales, Taxi Tehran...

BEST ANIMATED FILM

What'll win?
Inside Out
How sure am I?
99%
What should win?
Inside Out/Anomalisa
What's been snubbed?
N/A

BEST DOCUMENTARY

What'll win?
Amy
How sure am I?
90%
What should win?
The Look of Silence
What's been snubbed?
Going Clear

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Who'll win?
Ennio Morricone (The Hateful Eight)
How sure am I?
60%
Who should win?
Carter Burwell (Carol)
Who's been snubbed?
Rich "Disasterpeace" Vreeland (It Follows), Michael Giacchino (Inside Out)

Right, beginning to lose interest now. Only one more...

BEST ANIMATED SHORT

What'll win?
Sanjay's Super Team/Bear Story/World of Tomorrow
How sure am I?
??%
What should win?
WORLD OF TOMORROW please God let Don Hertzfeldt win an Oscar

Only four-ish hours to go...

The Best Picture Nominees - A Definitive Ranking

The Oscars are tonight, just in case you'd forgotten, and in my preparation for an all-night coffee binge I thought I'd rank the best picture nominees, from rubbish to least-rubbish.

#8: The Big Short

For some reason, a bunch of critics who I follow and respect have totally praised the crap out of this weird comedy-true story-drama hybrid. (At least, all bar P-Bradz.) I thought it was underwhelming: a few good jokes aside, the film mostly settled for being patronising, the guy who made Anchorman pretty much reading aloud from Michael Lewis' book for 130 minutes. The knockabout tone (it's filmed like an episode of The Office) then awkwardly switches gear into mawkish moralising when the shit hits the fan, and it feels completely unnatural. But hey, what do I know? Apparently it's one of the frontrunners for the big prize. God help us.

#7: The Revenant

What will likely be the big winner of the night, it's true that this story of man's tendency to disagree with all things bear has a savage power in its super-realistic scenes of snow and bloodshed. But it's also a bit wanky and pretentious, as Iñárritu often is, and would have benefited by shaving off an hour here and there. Still, there ain't no stopping the DiCaprio, who hopefully will spend his acceptance speech eating another buffalo liver, live on stage, just for the LOLs.

#6: The Martian

An entertaining if lightweight film about comradeship, the future of space travel, and Matt Damon's poo, it's a little perplexing that it's been given a seat at the big boys table. But then again, it's a resolutely old-fashioned Hollywood picture that affirms the positive aspects of the human spirit, which, alongside things about class struggle and repressed white guys, the Academy gobbles up like maltesers. Though for me, it loses serious points by NOT BEING CAROL.

#5: Room

Lenny Abrahamson's adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel is surprisingly effective, particularly in its first hour, confined to the titular location. The second hour's pretty good, too, though its overpowering score and diversions into sentimental melodrama occasionally threaten to overwhelm. Good thing, then, that Brie Larson and newcomer Jacob Tremblay both turn in powerhouse performances, grounding everything in a properly convincing mother-child relationship. As much as I liked Blanchett and Rampling, I'm okay with the fact that Larson is practically guaranteed a win.

#4: Brooklyn

I'm going to be honest, I haven't seen this film yet. But the trailer looks really nice and it's got Saoirse Roman and Domhnall Gleeson in it, so I'll pop it in a neutral position and move on.

#3: Bridge of Spies

We take Steven Spielberg for granted sometimes. He comes along and makes a classy, rich, and properly exciting period piece that, in another year, could have been an awards frontrunner. Instead, most of us sort of shrugged like hey, what else was he gonna do, make a bad film? At least Mark Rylance'll win something - though if he's beaten by Rocky Balboa, I might just stab someone.

#2: Spotlight

Tom McCarthy's journo-drama was marketed as prime Oscar bait: true story, talented ensemble cast, a struggle against the odds, a boring promotional picture (above), the works. Truth is, it's a lot smarter than all of that - and might be one of the best investigative journalism films ever made. Bullshit drama and liberties with the truth are dispensed with in order to make the gut-churningly dark story (whose outcome we know, but forget we know) all the more gripping. Keaton, Ruffalo, McAdams, and the other one are all great, but it's Lieb Schrieber who steals the show as the quiet editor with absolute moral conviction. For it to lose to something like The Big Short would be nothing short of a travesty.

#1: Mad Max: Fury Road

How the shit did this make it into the Best Picture nominees? Genuinely one of the most gleefully insane films of the past 20 years, whose oil-spitting, tires-crunching action is enrichened by its surprise feminist bite, it might signal that the taboo surrounding action films (and comedies, and science-fiction films, and horror films...) at awards season is slowly being lifted. Or maybe it's an outlier. The latter is more likely. But we can hope.

REVIEW: A Bigger Splash

The spirit of Michelangelo Antonioni lives on in this fun European art house drama, and at times pulpy thriller, which centres around beautiful people sunbathing by swimming pools, waiting for the inevitable release of death. It involves a David Bowie-esque rock star (Tilda Swinton) whose holiday with boy-toy Matthias Schoenaerts is interrupted by the arrival of an old flame (Ralph Fiennes) and his apparent daughter (Dakota Johnson), whose loud stirring up of feelings, past and present, threatens to make everyone more miserable than ever.

There's an irresistible appeal in its sumptuous Mediterranean location, there's existentialism by the bucketload, and there's even a bit of Michael Haneke-style judgement of the middle class in the backgrounding of the migrant crisis - but really, the appeal of this film boils down to its stars, who ricochet off each other like pinballs. Johnson and Schoenaerts (god, that name) are given the best roles they've had in a while, but it's Swinton and Fiennes who shine brightest as a mute rock star and a likeable dickhead, respectively. Fiennes, in particular, is superb, continuing on a rich series of comedic roles that stretch back to foul-mouthed Harry in In Bruges - though Swinton, at times, channels the spirit of Charlie Chaplin in a brilliant gesture-based performance. It's luxuriant in every sense - including its running time - so your mileage may vary, depending on your individual level of patience with that Italian kind of self-indulgence. I liked it.

★★★★

Also, MOVE OVER OSCAR ISAAC, THERE'S A NEW KING IN TOWN:

Eight things I could have done instead of watching the 2-hour-long BAFTA ceremony last night

1. Knitted a scarf

2. Solved a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle

3. Watched Back to the Future

4. Read Tolstoy's War and Peace

5. Invented an economically-friendly alternative fuel source

7. Developed a sizeable cocaine addiction

8. Killed myself by driving off a cliff

At least Rebel Wilson was funny.

REVIEW: Deadpool

Let's talk about superheroes. Men, women, and deformed creatures in colourful costumes have been a core part of our popular culture since the 1930s, and throughout time they've adapted accordingly. It makes sense that Superman was the most popular superhero of his day - an era between, during, and immediately following a war would, of course, appreciate a strong-jawed hero to represent American patriotism at its finest. Likewise, it's no surprise that Batman dyed his hair black and began drawing skulls in his diary around the 1970s and 80s, when America was going through one of its more troublesome phases. The 90s were the last gasp of comic book nerd originality, whereas the 2000s saw these heroes burst into the mainstream with a string of high-budget Hollywood renditions - again, it's no coincidence that Sam Raimi's Spider-Man topped the box office less than a year after the September 11th attacks, when the world was in more dire need of superheroes than ever.

But where are we now? Having established gargantuan "cinematic universes", where electing to not follow the convolutions in a multi-billion-dollar "timeline" is seen as more subversive than reading the comics in the first place, the dual threat of Marvel and DC have overloaded our senses with superheroes of every calibre. The divisions seem clear; in Marvel, we have the standard A-list Avengers lot in Iron Man, Hulk, Capt. America, Thor, et al, and the equally star-studded X-Men, whose films continue to straddle the awkward line between individual personality and numbingly tedious special effects; whereas in DC we have the darker, grittier sorts of Batman, Superman, and the soon-to-be Suicide Squad, whose attempts to construct drama of Shakespearean grandeur are somewhat undermined by the bulges in their spandex.

Then we have the niche sorts, the outliers. Last summer we had Ant-Man, the film that shot itself in the foot by replacing a director with genuine talent - Edgar Wright - with a numbingly tedious one - Peyton Reed - and whose subversions were dwarfed by an adherence to the almost authoritarian formula of "the origin story". And now we have Deadpool, a film that could almost be Ant-Man's X-rated cousin, and a film whose attempts to be "different" (sorry, I'll stop with the scare quotes) are crippled by a similar sense of timidity in its narrative.

Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, a motor-mouthed mercenary who makes his living intimidating bad guys for money. One day he meets stripper Vanessa (Morena Baccarin), a sort of wish-fulfilment, fetishised reflection of himself, and the two fall in love - though their happiness is impeded by the discovery of cancerous growths throughout his body. Wilson volunteers for an experimental treatment, but he's betrayed by a one-dimensional British villain. He acquires superpowers that make him invincible, but he loses his chiselled good-looks in the process, instead becoming a scabby mess.

But never one to resign himself to his (not entirely terrible) fate, Wilson dons a stretchy red suit and calls himself Deadpool, and starts murdering goons in pursuit of revenge against his nemesis. Along the way, he tries to crack a joke every three seconds, his material stretching from fart jokes to fourth-wall breaking digs against X-Men to more fart jokes. It comes across as being in the room with a cocaine-addled 15 year old trying to be edgy - the emphasis, really, on "trying". Most of its humour derives from ironically pointing at tropes in superhero narratives, then doing them anyway, as if thinking of an alternative was just too hard.

Nevertheless, I have to admit - somewhat guiltily, I might add - that some of its scenes come quite close to hitting the mark. There's a nice montage after Wilson meets his amour that covers a year in their relationship, that's a bit like the kitchen table scene in Citizen Kane but with more penetrative anal sex. Ryan Reynolds has always been an actor without a clear purpose, but he gives a good, committed performance, his enthusiasm for the material growing to infectious levels at times. And while I could have done without some of the offensive-for-the-sake-of-offensive jokes, others really are quite funny - particularly those that satirise Reynolds' star image - and suggest that there is a tangible niche in a film that makes fun of the ubiquitous superhero narrative.

But then again, it never goes far enough. Deadpool repeatedly makes fun of boy-meets-girl romances, but it's played almost entirely straight here, its standard journey and resolution, where the Damsel in Distress is rescued from the Evil Villain by the Hero with Character Development, shining through its plethora of dick jokes. Deadpool calls himself an anti-hero, but he follows a boilerplate superhero's journey - which is maybe the point, his word-vomit personality masking a neurotic instability. Yet it's all too reigned in, as if the bigwigs at Marvel were afraid that, if the audience listened too hard, they wouldn't go and see Thor 4 or Iron Man 5: This Time There's a Robot Dog!

If you're happy to have your brain cells beaten into a pulpy mess, then by all means go and see Deadpool. Indeed, you'll probably laugh, remember a few good lines to share with your friends. But don't expect anything more, and don't think about it too hard - otherwise, you might start to wonder if this was all a bit of a wasted opportunity.

★★½

REVIEW: Spotlight

I don't have too much to say about Spotlight, except that it's brilliant and you should go and see it immediately. It's based on the true story of journalists from The Boston Globe uncovering a widespread scandal involving the systematic abuse of children by Catholic priests, one that goes - you guessed it - right to the very top. But it doesn't have the usual "based on a true story" trappings that most films of its type endure. There are no false theatrics, no contrived backstories and melodrama inserted to spice up the action - instead, it's a brisk, heart-thumping, palm-sweating thriller, in the truest sense, that earns its stripes by respecting the intelligence of its audience. The stories of the victims aren't explicitly shown, because we don't need anything to remind us that CHILD ABUSE is BAD - to insinuate otherwise would be insulting. Instead, we're more interested in the journalists themselves, flawed, human, and expertly portrayed, whose growing horror as the facts mount mirrors our own.

A few have made comparisons to All the President's Men, but it's closer in tone and look to the procedural action of The Wire. (Probably not a coincidence - the film's director, Tom McCarthy, played a scummy reporter in Season 5 of the show.) Above all, honesty is paramount. There's one big moment where Mark Ruffalo - the closest the film has to a showy performance - delivers a very angry speech about the paper's failure to publish quickly enough that, in any other film, would be treated as a soapbox moment. "They knew, and they let it happen! It could have you, it could have been me, it could have been any of us!" he screams. His editor, played by the always wonderful Michael Keaton, waits for him to finish. Then he tells him to calm down and be reasonable, that publishing now would compromise the investigation. Ruffalo reluctantly agrees. They get back to work.

★★★★½

REVIEW: Trumbo

I have no strong feelings about Trumbo one way or the other. It's a perfectly fine - if numbingly straightforward - re-telling of the true story of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, played by Bryan Cranston. He's as good as you'd expect, though with the physical transformation, the funny voice, and the sheer amount of gurning he does, it's clearly a performance geared towards winning an award.

In fact, plenty of Oscar-bait hallmarks are loud and clear in Trumbo. It's set during the fifties, meaning there's a buttload of nostalgia for the GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD - and provides an excuse for actors to do a bunch of impressions of famous stars, including John Wayne, Otto Preminger, and a particularly bad Kirk Douglas. It's also a story set during McCarthy's communist witch-hunts era, which is a bit like having Indiana Jones fight the Nazis: no matter what our protagonists do, so long as they're fighting on the right side of history, they're going to be sympathetic. (It tries to give us a "there were no bad guys, only victims" message, but sort of undermines this with having Helen Mirren play someone so evil she might as well have a little Hitler moustache.) Oh, and let's not forget Louis C.K. playing the BEST FRIEND WITH CANCER, meaning WE HAVE TO FEEL SORRY FOR HIM even if he is COMMIE SCUM.

It's glamourous, it's slick, and it has a solid moral centre. But it also looks like it was made for television, and treats a serious story with an occasionally inappropriate light touch - it doesn't delve as deeply into the issue as, say, Good Night and Good Luck did. Also, does it promote the message that the artist - and therefore, the ego - is more important than the art itself? I don't know. Probably not. Cranston's performance is gummy enough to carry it, but the film is really a bit toothless.

★★★

P.S. Alan Tudyk plays a fat man who repeatedly makes this face:

The Coen Brothers: A Retrospective

Originally written for The Boar.

Hail Caesar! is coming out later this month, and it looks like a hoot. A comedy set during the Golden Age of Hollywood, it's united a great cast under what should be a snappy 100 minutes of gleefully ironic fun, featuring fat Jonah Hill, bumbling George Clooney, and Channing Tatum dressed as a sailor. But equally notable is that it's the 17th film by the Coen Brothers - their first in three years. And when investigating why this should be seen as a proper "event", it might help to go back over their 32-year-long career and examine what, exactly, makes this dynamic duo so compelling.

I first discovered the Coen Brothers when I was 14 years old. I caught the last half an hour of Raising Arizona on television, and had absolutely no idea what was going on: the action was loopy and fantastic, a colourful phantasmagoria of Southern accents, rapid-fire dialogue, banjo covers of Beethoven, and Nicolas Cage. I went back and watched it again, a few more times, just to be sure it wasn't all a dream. As a fiercely individual piece of work, it struck me as unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Its humour was offset by irony, yes, but there was also a professionalism and coherence to the proceedings, a tightly-controlled celebration of chaos that transcended the film's screwball nature and made it something special.

From there, it was off to snowy Minnesota, to the cityscapes of Los Angeles, to the various plains of desolate Texas for a number of tales surrounding kidnap, murder, and plans gone awry. Joel and Ethan Coen, two Jewish kids from suburban Minneapolis, became, in my world, established deities of cineliteracy, whose intimate knowledge of film history wowed me as much as it confounded me. Their influences range from the literary, with films based on works by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, to that of genre: their critical approach has led them to make comedies, thrillers, noirs, Westerns, gangster dramas, romances, musicals - even horror, in the Shining-inspired design of Barton Fink's hellish Hollywood hotel. In short: two smart motherfuckers.

What characterises their films is a sense that they know how stupid people are, and how seldom they understand their emotions: how they interpret individual symbols and signs differently, often to disastrous effect. Think of Jerry (William H. Macy) in Fargo, who assumes his plan to kidnap his wife and then claim the ransom money from her rich father will work, without recognising that the two criminals he has hired to complete the job - played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare - are clearly insane.

Or think of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton) in the vastly under-appreciated The Man Who Wasn't There, whose open affectlessness incites "Big Dave" Brewster (James Gandolfini) to try and beat him to death. Crane instead stabs him with a letter opener; and, of course, it is Crane's wife Doris (Frances McDormand, later Mrs. Joel Coen) who gets charged with the murder. As Strother Martin's Captain from Cool Hand Luke once said: "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

This stupidity bleeds into their other, lighter works, too, prompting comparisons to Preston Sturges - though I have to confess, as time goes on, I'm finding these increasingly irritating. Moronic goofballs, often played by George Clooney, are at the heart and centre of films like The Hudsucker Proxy, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading, comedies of errors where idiocy, in all its many forms, leads to a series of humiliating consequences.

What's not always clear is whether we're supposed to be laughing at or with these characters - and it's here that complaints about the brothers' lack of genuine empathy become apparent. So heavily layered are elements of irony, cultural appropriation, and even postmodernism that, at the end of the day, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the brothers take a rather dim view of human nature, and a perverse glee in smashing people's heads together like puppets.

But I don't think that's always true. In their best films, there's a strong morality that accompanies this academic reading of history and genre - people like pregnant police chief Marge Gunderson (McDormand again), who can't understand people's tendency towards violence, or Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), an artist who keeps trying, in spite of continual, crushing failure. If anything, the strange, outlandish characters that pepper the Coen brothers' universes, by default, actually endear those who bear the slightest resemblance to a real human being.

Picking a favourite is always hard. There's a reason why I keep mentioning Fargo, and if I was trying to be objective about it, I'd pick No Country for Old Men - though there's an issue with authorship there, much of its greatness deriving from Cormac McCarthy's novel. And I'm convinced that the agonisingly melancholy Inside Llewyn Davis will, come 2020, be seen as one of the best films of the decade.

Yet ultimately, I'd have to go for their third film: Miller's Crossing. A 1920s gangster thriller, somewhat inspired by Hammet's The Glass Key, it's got a reputation for being dense and convoluted - but there's so much to love, including a fascinating performance from Gabriel Byrne, a beautiful Carter Burwell soundtrack, and some of the GREATEST DIALOGUE EVER WRITTEN ("I'm awake." "...Your eyes are shut." "Who you gonna believe?"). The iconic scene where Byrne and John Turturro face off in the titular spot in the woods is still a career zenith for all involved - and again, it's all about communication. If Hail Caesar! can even be one-tenth as good as the Coens' best, it'll be a treat.

EDIT: Also, because all of you (read: none of you) wanted to know:

1. Miller's Crossing
2. Fargo
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. No Country for Old Men
5. The Man Who Wasn't There
6. The Big Lebowski
7. Blood Simple
8. Barton Fink
9. True Grit
10. Raising Arizona
11. A Serious Man
12. Burn After Reading
13. The Hudsucker Proxy
14. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
15. Intolerable Cruelty
16. The Ladykillers

No, I won't negotiate on A Serious Man.

REVIEW: The Revenant

The Revenant threatens to be one of those films where everything surrounding it is a bit more interesting than the film itself. Everyone wanted to make it clear that it was shot in the REAL Alaskan wilderness, that Leonardo DiCaprio ate a REAL buffalo liver, that it was only shot in the REAL one hour of daylight the crew had each day (they presumably spent the rest of their time playing Scrabble and catching hypothermia). It's already storming awards season, DiCaprio's name being engraved in a gold statuette as we speak, and it's been obsessively written about - from Ray Mears fact-checking the film's narrative, to Carole Cadwalladr's (stupid) argument that it's just meaningless "pain porn", to the surfacing of a photo of stunt double Glenn Ennis, looking like a particularly vicious Smurf in his CGI-friendly bear suit. Oh, and then there was that bizarre rumour about a non-consensual relationship between DiCaprio and his animal adversary, with the studio having to clarify that their star - six-time Oscar nominee and bankable star of one of the biggest blockbusters of all time - was not, in fact, raped by a bear.

Why bother seeing the film itself, right? Well, you'd be doing yourself a disservice, because The Revenant - while hardly revelatory - is a solidly visceral and atmospheric revenge thriller, one that paints the formation of America as a relentlessly brutal affair that left few unscarred. The year is 1823, and the hero is Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), a trapper hunting for pelts in the unsettled Louisiana wilderness. After his party narrowly escape a Native American ambush, Glass, walking alone through the forest, comes across two bear cubs. He barely hears the twigs breaking behind him before boom, he's being raped mauled by a bear. Through sheer force of will he manages to kill the animal by stabbing it in the neck; his party, after stitching up his wounds, try to carry him home, but fail. Three are left in charge of looking after him: John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), and Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), Glass' Native American son. Fitzgerald emerges as a villain - he kills Hawk, then tricks Bridger into abandoning Glass, in order to claim money from the deed without having to, you know, do his job.

A perfectly plan, were Glass not such a resilient son-of-a-bitch. He proceeds to drag himself through blood, shit, and snow to get his revenge on Fitzgerald. On the way, he cauterises a wound with gunpowder; he falls down a waterfall; he rides his horse off a cliff, then hollows out the animal and climbs inside for a night's sleep. It's easy to see why DiCaprio is being honoured. Whenever he suffers in this film, you can sort of see a big "acting" lightbulb flash on-and-off, just to wake up any Academy members who might have drifted off. Though this isn't to undermine his performance; DiCaprio disappears into the role, a scraggly beard and messy locks masking his naturally boyish looks, and he expresses little by way of dialogue, instead favouring spittle flecks and grunts.

While the sequences of survival in the snow can get a bit monotonous (it's hard to convey "cold" in a film, especially when you're watching it while wrapped in a blanket) there are some action sequences that, in the synthesis between Emmanuel Lubezki's photography and Alejandro Iñárritu's direction, really are spectacular. The aforementioned bear raping mauling is a highlight, with the continuous long-take and the crunchy sound effects making every minute of the encounter last a lifetime. And the opening sequence, where Native Americans drive the trappers out of their beach encampment, feels like something directly out of Blood Meridian (which I imagine Iñárritu was going for).

But when you make this comparison, you realise where the film falls down. Once you strip away the style, the excitement, the DiCaprio, you realise you have what is, in essence, an overlong revisionist Western. The plot is really simple - a guy goes out to get revenge on the guy who killed his son - and it's got a bunch of really pretentious tendencies; namely, a recurring vision of Glass' dead wife, whose two lines of dialogue make her the best (and only) female role in the film. And the depiction of Native Americans is a bit questionable, too. They're all shown as being quite friendly, really, their leader's noble desire to find his kidnapped daughter standing in stark contrast to the Americans' desire for money; you can't help but think that, back then, it was a bit more complicated than that. One cringeworthy moment comes when DiCaprio meets a Native American hunting for buffalo, and they bond over memories of their families, the music swelling up like something out of a Robert Zemeckis film. In Blood Meridian, everyone descended to an equally bloodthirsty level, but in The Revenant, the view of human nature is, ultimately, quite rosy.

Again, it's very well-made, and worth seeing just for the sequence where Leonardo DiCaprio and a bear makes sweet, sweet love beat the shit out of each other. But unfortunately, it falls short of greatness.

★★★½

REVIEW: The Big Short

Imagine if Adam McKay, the director of Anchorman and Step Brothers, tried to make Margin Call.

★★

REVIEW: The Hateful Eight

Me and Quentin Tarantino have had a tricky relationship, see. I want to like his stuff. I really do. I remember how good those first two were, and if he'd spent the next part of career trying to re-capture that magic, I might have been more sympathetic. But no: Quentin decided to disappear up his own arse, and make films that interested him and him alone. Hey, how cool are samurai movies, huh? Aren't grimy explotation movies, like, awesome? What if I made a movie where a bunch of dudes killed Hitler? Wouldn't that be totally out there? The problem is, Quentin Tarantino has proved to be such an obnoxious bellend in person that his worst films are like being stuck in a room with him for two hours, as he splutters about his latest theory that Batman is a metaphor for the industrial revolution or something. He forgot there were other people listening, and became obsessed with the sound of his own voice.

I'm not saying that's all changed. But in 2012, he made Django Unchained. As a film, it was a little bloated (read: too fucking long) and had a few other, recurring problems (enough with the cameos), but it was mostly entertaining, filled with great performances, and said some interesting things about slave narratives. In the same vein, The Hateful Eight - while far from a masterpiece - is the first film of his in a long time that I'd say, without any kind of qualifying statement, I liked.

Actually, that's not true. There's a few things wrong with it. It is self-indulgent - the entire cinema cringed in unison when "The 8th Film from Quentin Tarantino" came up - and it's far too long. But I was surprised to admit that what I thought would annoy me ended up doing the exact opposite. Both an overture and an intermission could be unnecessary, but Tarantino makes full use of them to draw you into his atmospheric and strangely mature story. The former, in particular, sets the mood brilliantly, making full use of Ennio Morricone's "ghetto" score to amp up the dread. We're in a desolate Wyoming, somewhere between The Searchers and The Thing, where DEATH might as well be spelled out in 50-foot-high letters - there's one great shot of a stone statue of Jesus Christ, atop a crucifix, in a spasm of pain, and the camera stays there for a hauntingly long period of time.

The film follows John "Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell), who's captured notorious outlaw Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and is determined to collect her $10,000 bounty. Standing in his way are six others - Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a former Union soldier and suspected war criminal; Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a somewhat demented sheriff-to-be; Bob (Demián Bichir), not characterised much beyond being Mexican; Oswald Mobray (Tim Roth), a posh British hangman; Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a shifty-looking cowboy; and Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern), a cranky ex-Confederate general - all of whom form a group of eight not-particularly-pleasant-people (gosh, I wish there was a better way to say that). They're all forced to hole up together in a bar when a blizzard comes along, and when it becomes clear that someone's working to free Daisy from the Hangman's clutches, the entire thing turns into an Agatha Christie story - albeit one with way more exploding heads, obvs.

Considering this film goes on for three hours - THREE HOURS - you'd expect the pace to sag. But actually, it all feels quite well-managed. Tarantino creates some actual characters this time to befit his incredible cast, and they build up a crackling rhythm between them as the film gets going. Jennifer Jason Leigh is very impressive as the film's sole female element, giving a powerful, empathetic presence to someone having to contend with a room full of gravely-voiced boys; and Samuel L. Jackson is on ripe, charismatic form as Warren, the kind of role that made him famous in the first place. But it's Walton Goggins who makes the strangest, funniest, strongest impression as Mannix - hardly surprising, considering he was quietly brilliant on Justified for about six years, so here's hoping he'll become the film's breakout star.

What works is that none of the characters are idealised, they're all equally horrible, all representing some nasty facet of 18th Century (or maybe, if you're feeling generous, 21st Century) society. And dare I say that this film actually says something rather interesting in its violence? While the majority of the story is focused on trying to work out who's-doing-what-and-why, in sensational and dialogue-heavy fashion, there's a rich vein of absurdity hanging over the story, as well as some angry political provocations. We're in the shadow of the Civil War, the memory of its horrors giving us a dissonant moral vacuum where Hate, however irrational, prevails. And for what? Is there even a reason for all this to be happening? There's a constant reappearance of a letter from Abraham Lincoln, which is later revealed to be forged. It's like the film in microcosm - lies to disguise, to trick, to kill, all for nothing. Sure, it's no Fargo, no Wild Bunch. But it's the best film Tarantino has made in years. So there.

★★★★

If John Lewis made The Snowman...

...it would be an emotionally manipulative pile of shit like this.

Seriously, I'd be pretty fucked off if someone locked me in a fridge for 10 years.

Eight things we learned from the Golden Globes

1. Saying offensive things in a random order still isn't that funny

2. Celebrities are at their best when they're on drugs

3. Quentin Tarantino is still the whitest cringebag ever

4. People think Sly Stallone is a better actor than two-time Olivier Award winner Mark Rylance

5. I don't know who most of these people are

6. Leonardo DiCaprio still looks like someone inflated a baby

7. Nothing I do in my life will ever make Denzel Washington this proud

8. Sweet JESUS I'd forgotten how BORING awards shows are

If this is supposed to be "the fun one" then how am I going to make it through the BAFTAs?