2012 in Film, Part 2: Miscellaneous Awards and Shout-Outs

The ever-so-slightly-overdue Part Two, featuring stuff I wanted to mention or write about the films that didn’t make my top 15 back in Part One.

The Disappointing

Prometheus
Dir. Ridley Scott (USA/UK, 2012)
124 minutes

Watching Prometheus is like being served a delicious cake where around one in three slices is guaranteed to contain a human tooth. It’s a gorgeously shot picture with a truly epic visual ambition (it’s no surprise that Scott quotes directly from Lawrence of Arabia), where the connective tissue of characterisation and plot is thin to the point of transparency. It’s a film featuring great performers at the top of their game which gives them so little to grasp, only Fassbender comes out with anything resembling a character arc. It wants to have its cake as an austere, thought-provoking science fiction puzzle piece, and eat its cake as a monster-movie slasher (wait, how many cakes are there again? This metaphor got away from me). In its mixture of ambition and frustrating shortcomings, it’s not like any other film I saw this year. I loved looking at it. I can’t say the same for watching it.

Berberian Sound Studio
Dir. Peter Strickland (UK, 2012)
92 minutes

The first two thirds of this Lynchian psychodrama, featuring Toby Jones as a repressed British sound director working on a gory Italian giallo film in the 1970s, are pure magic, a supremely unsettling marriage of uncanny sound design and Jones’ slow disintegration as the violence he’s exposed to through his work starts playing tricks on his mind. The final third is where the film chooses to gutter out into inconsequentiality, tragically squandering all of the tension it so expertly built up before. That it would have ended up in my best-of list with a stronger third act is testament to how frustrating I found its botched ending.

The RapGenius.com Award for White Devil Sophistry

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Dir. Benh Zeitlin (USA, 2012)
93 minutes

This magical realist drama set in a never-named stretch of American swampland uses the obvious connections to New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina to bring up wider resonances it neither earns nor makes any effort to explore. Framing the story through the precocious voiceover narration of a young girl frees the filmmakers from any obligation towards subtlety, allowing them to emotionally bludgeon the audience with cutesy truisms.The presentation of the Bathtub’s “community” as a bunch of dissolute drunks who resist any attempt at outside assistance or “civilisation” speaks not only of some patronising conception of how the poor live, but of fetishising this stereotype. The father’s aggression and violence towards his daughter is similarly indulged as part of this “authenticity”. An excellent star performance from Quvenzhané Wallis and the cinematographer’s clear gift for staging arresting shots can’t save the film from drowning in its own smugness and incoherence.

Now, on to better things…

Best Performance
Joaquin Phoenix, The Master
Denis Lavant, Holy Motors
Marion Cotillard, Rust and Bone
Toby Jones, Berberian Sound Studio
Ebizô Ichikawa, Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai

Best Supporting Performance
John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene
Michael Fassbender, Prometheus
James Gandolfini, Killing Them Softly
Patton Oswalt, Young Adult
Amy Adams, The Master

Having typed out these lists quickly aiming for gut reaction, I took a look back and realised the lack of female performers was glaring, and a let down on my part. So to redress the balance somewhat, I want to mention the excellent performances this year from Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene; Anne Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises; Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild; Stephanie Sigman in Miss Bala; Emily Blunt in Looper; Juno Temple in Killer Joe; and Greta Gerwig in Damsels In Distress, who either made their films stand out from the crowd, or did a lot to make up for any deficiencies said films otherwise had.

Best Double Act
Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, The Cabin In The Woods

Best Couple
Sam (Jared Gilman) and Suzy (Kara Hayward), Moonrise Kingdom
Runner up: Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) and Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), Rust and Bone

Performance(s) by an actor who I had written off until this year
Matthew McConaughey, Killer Joe, Magic Mike
Runner up: Charlize Theron, Prometheus, Young Adult

Best performance by an actor using 20-30% of their face
Bane (Tom Hardy), The Dark Knight Rises
Runner up: Dredd (Karl Urban), Dredd

Best Cameo
Harry Dean Stanton, The Avengers
Runner up: Sigourney Weaver, The Cabin In The Woods

Scenes of the Year
1. Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) “processes” Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) for the first time, The Master
2. Monsieur Oscar (Denis Lavant) walks with Eva Grace (Kylie Minogue) through a derelict department store, Holy Motors
3. Charlie Parker shares his suspicions about the Barclays, The Imposter
4. Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) does her old routine to Katy Perry’s “Firework” on the balcony, Rust and Bone
5. Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt)’s final conversation with his employer (Richard Jenkins), Killing Them Softly
6. The family K-fried-C dinner, Killer Joe
7. Scout Master Ward (Ed Norton) rescues Commander Pierce (Harvey Keitel), Moonrise Kingdom
8. The disappearing fingers, Looper
9. Eric Packer (Robert Pattinson) confronts Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti), Cosmopolis
10. Mavis (Charlize Theron) explodes at the baby-naming party attendees, Young Adult

Action Sequence of the Year
1. Iko Uwais’ police officer and his brother versus “Mad Dog”, The Raid
2. Gina Carano versus Michael Fassbender in a Dublin hotel suite, Haywire
3. Dredd (Karl Urban) going hand to hand with a corrupt Judge, Dredd
4. James Bond versus a guy with a stolen hard drive on a speeding train, Skyfall
5. The Avengers versus Loki and bunch of aliens in central Manhattan, The Avengers

Best Cinematography
The Master
Runners up: Skyfall, Miss Bala

Best Soundtrack
Bombay Beach
Runners up: The Master, The Imposter, Haywire

Best Music Cue in a Film
“Strokin’” by Clarence Carter, Killer Joe
Runner up: “Let My Baby Ride” by R.L. Burnside, performed by Denis Lavant et al, Holy Motors

And as a reward for sitting through all that verbiage, let’s close this out with David Ehrlich’s ridiculously enjoyable montage of his best films of the year. Here’s to 2013.

 

2012 in Film, Part 1: My Favourite Films of the Year

Yes, that’s right, part one. The traditional best-of list follows, with an upcoming collection of awards for stuff that might have escaped mention here. As always, there are films I didn’t get to see in time that will probably be on next year’s list, and films that I liked but not enough to make the cut. And now, on with the show.

15. Bombay Beach
Dir. Alma Har’el (USA, 2011)
80 minutes

Bombay Beach is a strange, impressionistic documentary that values aesthetics over reportage. It looks into the lives of individuals and families in a run-down lakeside community in California that we would otherwise dismiss or never even hear of, and shows them as simply people, trying to make the best of a bad situation, but all capable of connection and love. It’s impossible to watch scenes like the Parish family struggling with their ADHD son, or the old man who philosophises to the camera about the hard life he’s led, and not see them as people who deserve far more than what they’ve been given.

But the film doesn’t contend itself with “realist” documentary miserablism. There are wonderful moments where the participants dance amid the semi-rural decay of Bombay Beach while the Beirut/Bob Dylan soundtrack thrums beautifully in the background; scenes that imbue their run-down surroundings with a kind of dreamlike beauty. It’s “anti-realist” in the best possible way; it shows an ideal of a better world and lets this world’s inhabitants act it out.

14. Killer Joe
Dir. William Friedkin (USA, 2012)
102 minutes

This was the year that Matthew McConaughey became an actor I took seriously, and a lot of that had to do with his revelatory performance in Killer Joe; a comically heightened Southern-fried pulp/noir blowout that gradually morphs into a folkloric cautionary tale of what happens to people who invite evil into their lives. The final extended scene betrays its stage-play origins, but the go-for-broke insanity of the whole thing (McConaughey in particular) turns it into a viscerally disturbing black comedy tour-de-force.

13. Carancho
Dir. Pablo Trapero (Argentina, 2010)
107 minutes

A bracingly nasty Argentinian neo-noir, unashamed to have its protagonist plumb the depths of scumbaggery. He’s a disgraced lawyer turned ambulance chaser (the “vulture” of the title) who’s not above faking accidents with the help of homeless people to earn some extra cash. Scuttling through the endless night of Buenos Aries, he strikes up a relationship with a paramedic who’s developing an addiction to opiates.

It’s dark stuff, but there’s room for a tender love story that, as with all things in this film, shades into desperation as the couple struggle to escape the corruption all around them. Gritty, hand-held cinematography chases the characters through ever-narrowing avenues. Crunching  collisions of metal soundtrack a story about the trauma inflicted by a brutal world.

12. Looper
Dir. Rian Johnson (USA, 2012)
118 minutes

Looper starts out as a zippy, high-concept sci-fi/noir exercise but quickly goes to some pretty dark places as it asks questions about how much of other people’s futures we would sacrifice to protect our own past. There’s also a weighty element of subtext on arrogant old age meeting cocksure youth, and the blame directed to the previous generation for leaving the present a screwed-up world.

Weird facial prosthetics aside, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is pretty great, Willis actually seems to be trying and there’s a great scene-stealing turn from Jeff Daniels as a hangdog crime boss. The cinematography and production design conjures some unique images from among the fields and run-down post-industrial cityscapes of 2044. The restless camera tilts and whirls during the shootouts and chases, keeping us as disoriented as the uncomfortable ambiguities in the script.

11. Chronicle
Dir. Josh Trank (USA, 2012)
84 minutes

Like the most effective B-movies, Chronicle takes a simple premise (teens gain superpowers, document the experience via camcorder) and makes much more out of it. As with most found-footage movies, the filmmakers have to strain a bit to stick to the gimmick (although the characters’ powers do make for an elegant way around some obstacles). It turns from a teen drama to something far bigger and more disturbing, without sacrificing the low-key presentation – which at times makes it feel almost like a horror film. It’s one of the (very) few superhero movies I’ve seen that actually puts across how weird and unsettling superpowers would actually be.

You can read it as many things: as a film about the emotional and moral consequences of living in a world of social media, where being the star of your own movie necessarily relegates others to bits parts. As a critique of the superiority complex inherent in most superhero narratives. As a questioning of why our culture’s dreams are so often ones of power, violence and rage. And none of this subtext ever overwhelms the drama.

10. Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai
Dir. Takahshi Miike (Japan, 2011)
126 minutes

Miike returns to historical samurai drama after 13 Assassins, toning down the delirious ultraviolence of that film to offer something more cerebral, but no less gripping. Narrative expectation is upended is the story we think we are watching becomes about something else entirely. Miike uses the conventions of stately, classical samurai films to deconstruct not only the much-romanticised historical period, but the films that portray it admiringly; the chivalry and codes of honour are a farce, as hollow as an empty suit of armour.

9. The Raid
Dir. Gareth Evans (Indonesia/USA, 2011)
101 minutes

All-time outstanding achievement of this year in wrecking shit. Brutal, non-stop violence as a small group of cops take on an army of crooks in a tower block turned warzone. An action movie that’s inspiring for how well it lives up to its promise, and for its utter stripped-to-the-bone commitment to mayhem. Every perfectly-choreographed storm of blades, feet and fists is a gauntlet thrown down to everyone else working in this area, saying: Raise Your Game.

8. Haywire
Dir. Steven Soderbergh (USA, 2011)
93 minutes

Almost the opposite number to the previous entry, this is a series of bone-crunchingly realistic fight setpeices set within a classic Soderbergh “process” film about characters who are defined by their jobs, and all the little actions they perform in service of those professions. In using an actual professional fighter as lead, Soderbergh can stage lengthy, complex fights where you see the characters work out in real time the best move to make. Every grab, punch, kick and slam is just professionals doing their thing.

There are so many funny moments – the guy under the door giving the finger, Carano running into shot behind a certain character, the final line – and a pleasingly retro jazzy soundtrack, that make it obvious Soderbergh’s having great fun with this. That it refuses to take itself too seriously is a big part of the film’s charm.

7. Miss Bala
Dir. Gerardo Naranjo (Mexico, 2011)
113 minutes

A brutal and often viscerally uncomfortable chronicle of the violence done to innocents in Mexico’s drug war, which achieves its aim through monomaniacal focus of one of those innocents. Our protagonist Laura is rarely off screen; the camera tracks her constantly like a lover (or a stalker). The film unfolds in a series of long takes that create an unbearable claustrophobia; we are trapped in each scene with Laura as she struggles to get out of every situation alive. (A sequence where she emerges from a crashed car into a running gun battle between cops and criminals has its own surreal beauty.) It’s an unflinching exploration of how corruption chews up and spits out anyone who tries not to take a side.

6. Moonrise Kingdom
Dir. Wes Anderson (USA, 2012)
94 minutes

Anderson fully indulges in whimsy and building perfect diorama-like worlds even as he delivers his saddest and most honest story, about a forbidden romance and elopement between two kids leading the adults around them to assess where their lives have gone wrong. In a sly inversion of their usual personae, Ed Norton and Bruce Willis play the pair of sad sacks in charge of the search efforts, and regular Anderson players Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman make welcome appearances. but the film truly belongs to Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the lovestruck couple lighting out into the wilderness. Alternating between slapstick and poignancy, it all builds to a rousingly silly climax that still allows for a lot of heart; a perfectly constructed gem.

5. Killing Them Softly
Dir. Andrew Dominik (USA, 2012)
104 minutes

Grimy and despairing, this ultra-downbeat crime drama filters its narrative through the financial collapse and Presidental election campaign of 2008 to tell a story of an America where the most secure institutions and the rules they play by seem to be in slow-motion collapse.

A pair of scuzzy, none-too-bright low-level hoods (Scott McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn) rip off a mob card game in an excruciatingly tense sequence. Brad Pitt is the consummate professional brought in to clear up the mess, but continually stymied by the equivocations of his bosses and the incompetence of his peers (including James Gandolfini in a film-stealing performance as a lugubrious, alcoholic hitman).

The film takes place in a New Orleans more decaying and rain-lashed the the anonymous metropolis of Fincher’s Se7en, playing on the theme of how capitalism devours its own without knowing or caring. It’s as brutal with the ways people can manipulate others into doing their bidding as it is with the beatings and shootings. The whole sordid story builds to a black-hearted punchline that equals the ending of There Will Be Blood for sheer mordant humour.

4. The Imposter
Dir. Bart Layton (UK, 2012)
99 minutes

A supremely unsettling documentary, which uses its anti-realist techniques (such as reconstructions often  overdubbed with the participants’ own voices) to draw the audience into the sheer bizarreness of its story and the twists encountered on the way. It owes a lot to Errol Morris (said reconstructions, the Interrotron-style presentation of interviewees speaking straight to camera), and is similarly concerned with his regular themes of the flexibility of truth and the stories people tell to conceal unpalatable facts from others and from themselves. Unfortunately, that to tell much more would spoil the effect, so I’d ask everyone to go see it with as little information as possible, and get caught up in the stomach-churning series of revelations.

3. Rust and Bone
Dir. Jacques Audiard (France/Belgium, 2012)
120 minutes

What could be worthy, melodramatic subject matter is given real weight by the naturalistic direction and the raw power of Cotillard and Schoenaerts’ performances. The film is unabashedly rooted in the physical; Audiard’s camera lingers on flesh and skin in all its rough beauty, variously scarred, bloodied and tanned by the sun. Vulnerability comes through at every turn, with the characters’ interactions alternating between brutality and tenderness. The coupling of physical and emotional trauma is key to this story of damaged bodies, damaged people, and what it means to heal.

2. The Master
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson (USA, 2012)
137 minutes

A film that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible; huge landscapes and the surface of individual human faces are given the same level of loving, detailed exploration. Phoenix and Hoffman are truly exceptional; every indication you’re watching an actor perform falls away as you’re lost in the fine details of these characters. It’s a thorny, paradoxical tale of two men struggling with the unspoken connection they appear to have, both too headstrong to settle into the simple prophet-and-follower pattern. Set against the dawn of 50s conformism, it shows people who yearn for something more, wrestling with their own natures, trying to make sense of their lives. But even setting the acres of subtext aside, it’s as rewarding to simply enjoy the film as a gorgeous tactile thing and luxuriate in it.

1. Holy Motors
Dir. Leos Carax (France/Germany, 2012)
115 minutes

Leos Carax’s latest film makes no attempt to disguise its self-reflexive nature; it’s an endless hall of mirrors of film commenting on film. The tale of one day in the life of “Monsieur Oscar” (Denis Lavant), being chauffered around Paris in a limousine between different “assignments”, laboriously applying different disguises as he goes, is the framework on which Carax hangs a number of vignettes from downbeat drama to farce, with room for a musical number or two.

All of the surreal moments and Russian-doll nesting of different performances could make it very arch and distant, but there are moments of real emotional heft. Lavant’s weathered face has a kind of ruined charisma that shines through all the disguises and prostheses – whether dressed to the nines or clad in rags, he looks like a man who has seen far too much, and knows he’ll have to see much more. There’s a moment where he and Kylie Minogue (yes, really) take a walk through a derelict department store, reminiscing about the past. And while we’re unsure whether they are both actors taking a moment to acknowledge their past relationship, or whether they’re both just playing another role, it’s a truly moving bit of acting by them both.

With its irrepressible bursts of silliness and refusal to stay still, this is a film lovers’ film in the best way possible – so convinced of the possibilities of the form it’s hard not to get caught up in its enthusiasm yourself.

And as a bonus, the best non-2012 films I saw for the first time this year (please excuse my embarrassment at the number of classics I’ve somehow only just got round to watching):

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (Gondry, 2006), Blue Valentine (Cianfrance, 2010), Contagion (Soderbergh, 2011), Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977), Hard Eight (Anderson, 1996), Shaft (Parks, 1971), P.T.U. (To, 2003), Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda, 1958), Targets (Bogdanovich, 1968), A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971), Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944), The Driver (Hill, 1978), Rope (Hitchcock, 1948), Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993), Fat City (Huston, 1972), Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), Le Cercle Rouge (Melville, 1970), The Last Detail (Ashby, 1973)

Part Two coming soon…

My 15 Favourite Albums of 2012

15. JJ DOOM – Key To The Kuffs
The latest DOOM collaboration project features producer Jneiro Jarel creating an ever-changing sample-heavy soundscape that’s a fitting backdrop for DOOM’s brand of intricate wordplay and surreal humour.
Essential Tracks: Guv’nor, Rhymin Slang, Wash Your Hands

14. Richard Hawley – Standing At The Sky’s Edge
Hawley changes up his style from retro-50s crooner to wall-of-sound heavy rocker, managing to make every track on this short album an epic, elemental storm of noise.
Essential Tracks: Standing At The Sky’s Edge, Leave Your Body Behind You

13. Future Of The Left – The Plot Against Common Sense
Still furious, still filthy, still brilliantly funny, still face-meltingly loud – we need Future of the Left more than ever, and they don’t disappoint.
Essential Tracks: Failed Olympic Bid, I Am The Least of Your Problems, Notes On Achieving Orbit

12. Smoke DZA – Rugby Thompson
DZA enlists some top-notch production from Harry Fraud and hits the expansive, cinematic beats hard, contrasting ice-cold aggression with luxuriant smoothness.
Essential Tracks: Ashtray, Kenny Powers, Rivermonts

11. Action Bronson – Blue Chips
To be honest, Bronsolino’s other mixtape released this year, the Alchemist-produced Rare Chandeliers, could also be in this position. But I’ve had most of the year to listen to this one, and  Party Supplies’ heavy-on-the-funk-samples production is appropriately scuzzy backing for Bronson’s down-and-dirty rhyming about crime, food and women.
Essential Tracks: Steve Wynn, Expensive Pens, 103 and Roosy

10. Santigold – Master Of My Make Believe
Pop music in 2012 looks a lot more like Santigold than it did in 2008 when she released her debut album. But while she may be less of an outlier than before, she’s still mixing styles to great effect. Master takes elements of hip-hop, orchestral pop, electro and more, making them into propulsive dancealong numbers or melancholic ballads. Genre-hopping doesn’t usually look this easy, or this fun.
Essential Tracks: Go!, Disparate Youth, The Keepers

9. Nas – Life Is Good
Nas as elder statesman – comfortable without being lazy, unafraid to try, digging into his past without being self-indulgent. It’s the best he’s been in years.
Essential Tracks: A Queens Story, Accident Murders, Back When

8. P.O.S. – We Don’t Even Live Here
The Doomtree crew member delivers another dose of polemical rap and hard-hitting beats, sounding like a war report from a lost generation.
Essential Tracks: Fuck Your Stuff, How We Land, They Can’t Come, All Of It

7. Bob Mould – Silver Age
Mould deploys heavy riffs and his often-overlooked gift for a hooky chorus to mine a string of pop-punk gems.
Essential Tracks: Star Machine, The Descent, Angels Rearrange

6. Killer Mike – R.A.P. Music
El-P and Killer Mike were always going to be an uncompromising pairing, and this album fulfills that promise. El’s bone-rattling crunchy beats give the album its shape, and offer a perfect fit for Mike’s Southern drawl. The lyrics are righteously angry and fiercely intelligent. It’s a perfect representation of the best that rap can be.
Essential Tracks: Big Beast, Reagan, Butane (Champion’s Anthem)

5. Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city
Anointed as Compton’s next great hope, Kendrick Lamar does a lot of playful self-mythologising on his major label debut (not least on the Dr Dre-featuring closing track). After a string of excellent mixtapes and features, good kid feels like something he’s been building towards for a while; an atmospheric concept album about his younger self struggling with temptation. Lamar excels at complex rhyming and crystal-clear storytelling, and the moody, downbeat production mirrors the album’s journey through introspection, depression, darkness and recovery.
Essential Tracks: Sherane (Master Splinter’s Daughter), Money Trees, good kid, Swimming Pools (Drank)

4. Silversun Pickups – Neck Of The Woods
Like a soundtrack for an unrealised film, ominous and abstract post-rock guitar patterns build to shattering crescendos.
Essential Tracks: Busy Bees, Simmer, The Pit, Dots And Dashes

3. El-P – Cancer 4 Cure
As our world gradually turns full sci-fi dystopia (Drones Over BKLYN, anyone?) El-P seems more and more in step with the times. The production is a warzone where every electronic sound is broken apart and hastily repaired, as the lyrics plumb depths of self-loathing and paranoia. It’s dark music for dark times; in other words, essential.
Essential Tracks: The Full Retard, Oh Hail No, For My Upstairs Neighbour (Mums the Word)

2. Ab-Soul – Control System
It’s been a good year for the Black Hippy crew, and Ab-Soul in particular outclassed the competition. His latest album is a stack of back-to-back classics, with a stable of producers responsible for jittery Dre-influenced beats that never let the listener get comfortable. Soul’s lyrics range from conspiracy theorising to sharp dissections of gender relations. The album closes out on The Book of Soul, a masterful, moving story of personal tragedy.
Essential Tracks: Track Two, Double Standards, Lust Demons, ILLuminate, The Book Of Soul

1. Aesop Rock – Skelethon
Trickily verbose wordplay and darkly witty lyrics stand out against beats that stutter and glitch like malfunctioning machines or corrupt digital artifacts. Every line is so densely packed with meaning that it takes a series of listens to decipher. It feels like a coded transmission, or a Rosetta Stone that will give up all its secrets with only a little more digging. It’s an album to get lost in, a soundtrack for feeling lost and trapped inside your own head. In terms of depth and staying power, it’s an epic achievement.
Essential Tracks: Leisureforce, Zero Dark Thirty, Cycles To Gehenna, Crows 1, Racing Stripes

Sex And Sterility: Steve McQueen’s Shame

Seeing Steve McQueen’s Shame and Steven Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience within a week of each other is interesting. The two films have obvious points of similarity: both take place in a New York represented as a city of commerce and performance, where moneyed sterility and urban grime intermingle; and both feature stylish, ultimately blank protagonists whose lives revolve around sex in entirely different ways.

And of course, they come from different places. The Girlfriend Experience is another Soderbergh film concerned with people doing things; about what it means to have a vocation you take seriously, about all the little processes and actions that go into someone practicing the job or activity that defines them. Shame is an addiction drama (and an old-fashioned one at that), where mood, tone and theme take precedence. It’s a curiously uneven film, that paradoxically is at its most affecting when it stays on the surface.The film begins with a close-up shot of protagonist Brandon (Michael Fassbender) lying in bed. It’s presented at a 90-degree angle, with his body lying sideways to fill most of the frame. This notion of Brandon as a man trapped within the confines of the screen is reiterated again and again. As he paces like a caged animal around his pristine minimalist apartment, great care is taken to position his body against the edges of the frame.

For a film that aspires to a kind of low-key naturalism, Shame is a very deliberately thought-out bit of work. McQueen owes a lot to Kubrick in terms of obsessive attention to detail, especially with regard to sets and costumes. In particular, for all the nudity in the film (and there is a lot), the characters’ clothes play a clear role in delineating how they see themselves and what facade they present to the world.

Brandon is always impeccably dressed, armoured up in overcoat and ever-present grey scarf for the subway commute to work. (The scarf is important; look closely at the final scene.) There’s something in the way that Brandon’s boss and sister are both pointedly shown adjusting some part of Brandon’s pristine outfit, in a way we never see his call girls or casual hookups do.

There’s also a certain amount of information about power relations to tease out. Brandon’s office wear is standard creative-casual; suit with an open-necked shirt. His boss Dave (an excellently oily James Badge Dale) takes the so-important-I-don’t-need-to-dress-smartly route, spending most of the office scenes in a truly ugly hooded sweater.

Dave in particular is a very funny character, alternating between glib everyone’s-friend modern manager in the office and coked-up lothario on his nights out with Brandon. The scenes set among the nightlife of up-scale New York professionals are an excellently-observed study of embarrassment and social competition.

It’s kind of curious how so much of the film can be so deft and clever, and yet the scenes set around the mutually destructive pairing of Brandon and his sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan) so often lapse into overly schematic melodrama. Mulligan does a decent enough job with an underwritten part; her Cissy is if anything more of a cipher than Brandon, one dependent on the cliche of the flighty, hysterical woman who exists in the narrative merely to provide angst for the hero.

Nevertheless, Fassbender and Mulligan are good enough actors that their conversations, shot with a claustrophobic intensity, result in some powerful scenes. It’s when McQueen layers more techniques over the spare visual style that the film becomes too mannered for its own good.  The heavy, cloying strings ladled over the opening scene and the lengthy “bottoming-out” sequence (threesome and Fassbender sex face ahoy) did more to pull me out of the film than any of the “explicitness” promised/threatened by critics.

Shame is definitely a film worth watching. Fassbender is a truly magnetic performer, and McQueen has a masterful control of cinematography that focuses the viewer’s eye on the important details in every shot. For all the chatter surrounding the treatment of sex addiction, the film is ultimately at its best when its focus is at arm’s length. That doesn’t count as a failing; I feel one of McQueen’s strengths as a director is being able to interest you in a character or situation that is presented in such a detached manner. And taking such an intellectual tack on such an emotional subject is a way to explore addiction without either moralising or throwing a titillating gloss over the scene.

My Favourite Films of 2011

It’s been an odd year for film. It may not have had the immediate cachet that last year displayed, but it was still split between old masters coming out of the woodwork to re-establish their claims and newcomers making incredible debuts. Beyond the assured money-spinners of Harry Potter and The King’s Speech, the British film industry delivered a number of excellent films with fairly minimal fanfare – many of them reviewed here. In addition to the great Brit-flicks on my list, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was a very well-crafted film that harked back to a more slow-paced, cerebral type of spy story. And John Michael McDonough delivered a great debut with mordant Irish crime comedy The Guard, featuring Brendan Gleeson in a standout role as a shambolic small-town policeman clashing with Don Cheadle’s straight-man Fed. Ben Wheatley’s Kill List was matched in ultraviolent intensity by Simon Rumley’s US-UK production Red, White and Blue and Bong Joon-Ho’s Korean revenge thriller I Saw The Devil. In Hollywood, summer blockbusters like Thor and Super 8 were very well-made, combining spectacle with a Spielberg-esque light touch. (Transformers 3 was predictably awful. I saw it in a double bill with Super 8. The less said about it the better.) All told, I think this year has at least as much quality releases, but any narrative surrounding them has yet to emerge. Anyway, I hope you enjoy my entirely subjective top fifteen.

15. Kill List

Dir. Ben Wheatley (UK, 2011)
95 minutes

This gripping horror-thriller provided one of the most disturbing film-watching experiences I had last year. A tale of two ex-soldiers turned hitmen taking on a job that goes very badly for them both, it turns on an audacious narrative shift that somehow comes with the inevitability of a nightmare. The grim landscape of anonymous chain hotels and suburban housing developments lends a perfectly bizarre incongruity to the increasingly gruesome storyline. Director Wheatley uses jump cuts and eerie soundscapes to keep the audience constantly on edge, lending domestic arguments and scenes of bloody violence the same unsettling atmosphere. Not for the faint-hearted, but still astounding.

14. Archipelago

Dir. Joanna Hogg (UK, 2010)
114 minutes

A drier-than-dry comedy of manners about a well-to-do family’s holiday on the Scilly Isles doesn’t sound a promising prospect. But Joanna Hogg’s latest feature fashions an absorbing drama out of those raw materials. Through lengthy, static camera shots, she achieves an almost anthropological focus on the awkward upper-middle-class social manoeuvrings. Tom Hiddlestone stands out from an excellent cast as the first son preparing to embark on a volunteering mission for reasons he doesn’t fully understand. And despite the distanced direction, we still feel for this dysfunctional but essentially caring family.

13. Attack The Block
Dir. Joe Cornish (UK, 2011)
88 minutes

In a year full of foul, poisonous rhetoric from our political classes directed towards the disenfranchised, it took a low-budget sci-fi film from comedian-turned-first-time-director Cornish to humanise inner-city youth. The protagonists aren’t whitewashed; they first appear mugging a young woman on her way home. But an alien invasion inspires them to fight back in defence of their block, and the rough-hewn community within. Block is fast-paced, witty and extremely well-crafted for a debut feature. And underneath the action, it poses serious questions about how we live together. It’s a hopeful and humanistic picture, unafraid to wrap big ideas in populist entertainment.

12. Bridesmaids
Dir. Paul Feig (USA, 2011)
125 minutes

Bridesmaids is well worth discussing beyond the cultural conversation it started about women in comedy; it’s a sharp-eyed, extremely funny look at growing up. Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph are excellent as the childhood friends whose relationship is tested to destruction over the latter’s impending wedding. Wiig’s Annie is impressively three-dimensional; immature and often unlikeable, she perfectly portrays a young-ish adult unhappy with the turns her life has taken. The supporting cast all put in good work — particularly Chris O’Dowd and the hilarious, scene-stealing Melissa McCarthy — and despite the overlong runtime, it’s an enjoyable ride with people who feel real.

11. 13 Assassins
Dir. Takashi Miike (Japan, 2010)
126 minutes

Master of ultraviolence Takashi Miike here delivers a more toned-down historical samurai picture – which still makes it crazier than most action films out there. The setup — former samurai recruits the titular group of swordsmen to assassinate a sadistic young lord — is a long, slow boil, containing questions of honour, duty and sacrifice. It all leads up to the film’s centrepiece; a delirious 40-minute battle sequence, staged in a booby-trapped village, with the 13 assassins versus a small army. Miike stages the carnage expertly, creating a grippingly visceral sequence that ebbs and flows like a real battle. You stagger out of the cinema privileged at having watched a master at work.

10. Drive
Dir. Nicolas Winding Refn, (USA, 2011)
100 minutes

A stylish throwback to the ‘80s LA-set thrillers of Michael Mann and William Friedkin, Refn’s first US-set film is also of a piece with his previous studies of violent men, shot with a lyricism that belies the brutality they carry with them. Ryan Gosling’s taciturn stuntman/getaway driver isn’t just a Hollywood archetype; he’s a character who’s internalised those those archetypes to show a better face to the world. And although his budding relationship with Carey Mulligan is tenderly believable, it’s only when he’s plunged into the middle of a botched gangland deal that his true nature comes to the fore.

The film benefits from an excellent supporting cast, including the aforementioned Mulligan as a beatific single mother, Bryan Cranston as Gosling’s sad-sack boss, and Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman as a pair of vicious gangsters. But for long stretches Refn chooses to present the film as a near-mute Zen pulp poem, letting the electronica-heavy soundtrack do the talking and concentrating his camera on the architecture of LA, Gosling’s blank expression, the glare of neon or a spurt of rich red blood. It’s a strange fusion of noir and fairytale, with familiar elements retooled and let loose on the road once more.

9. Meeks’ Cutoff
Dir. Kelly Reichardt (USA, 2010)
104 minutes

Though it contains few moments of violence, Meek’s Cutoff is one of the tensest films I saw in 2011. Kelly Reichardt’s low-budget Western takes place among a group of emigrants journeying to Oregon. Travelling by wagon, horse, and on foot, they are constantly vulnerable to the smallest accident marooning them in the parched landscape.

Tensions shimmer like heatwaves between the members of the party, particularly shifty guide Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) and self-assured traveller Emily Thetherow (Michelle Williams). Reichardt’s unobtrusive direction and use of minimal dialogue or music draw us inexorably in to this almost alien world, where the creak of wagon wheels is the only sound. It’s a journey that leads us not towards a traditional climax, but a brief, surreal moment of epiphany.

8. The Interrupters
Dir. Steve James (USA, 2011)
125 minutes

I’ve unfortunately missed out on most of the critically-acclaimed documentaries released in 2011, with one exception. This powerfully affecting story of death and life in inner-city Chicago follows a group called Ceasefire, composed of former gang members, who walk the streets doing what they can to stop the cycle of retaliatory violence spinning out of control. In each nervy conversation with a young person they’re aiming to dissuade from violence, you see the toxic combination of youthful bravado and rage borne of desperation. And as the members themselves tell their stories, you’re left with the sense that each of them feels a furious need to try and relieve future generations of the kind of pain they’ve both caused and suffered.

It’s a film short on moralising and easy answers. The people featured are themselves the story; their self-justifications, reminiscences and struggles to make it through day a reminder of universal human frailty and the capacity for hope.

7. Weekend
Dir. Andrew Haigh (UK, 2011)
97 minutes

Haigh’s debut is a honest, melancholy but uplifting relationship drama about two people coming together in a one-night stand turned brief romance. The slightly shy, introverted Russell (Glen Cullen) picks up Glen (Chris New) at a club, and while both assume it’s a one-time thing, they end up hanging out and getting to know each other over the course of the weekend.It’s a rare example of a film featuring a gay couple that doesn’t play as a tragedy or worthy issues-based drama. The closest it comes to polemic is the presentation of the simple urgency of the affection Glen and Jay feel for each other; no one could watch this film and come away unconvinced of the relationship. The flat, affectless handheld camera work makes you feel like makes you feel present in the the most intimate moments, and both Cullen and New give excellent performance, with all the hesitations and awkwardness of real conversations. As the weekend goes on, each becomes more and more exposed to the other until their conversations are raw and almost painful in their honesty. It’s a wonderfully made love story that manages to be truthful about love.

6. Submarine

Dir. Richard Ayoade (UK, 2010)

97 minutes

Comedy genius/music video director Richard Ayoade (you might know him from such Britcoms as The IT Crowd and Darkplace) branches out into feature filmmaking with this coming-of-age tale. Set in a small Welsh seaside town, it follows Oliver Tate, a precocious schoolboy who, like most teenagers, views himself as the heroic protagonist in the film of his life. But strains in his parents’ marriage and the arrival of his first crush threaten to throw his world into confusion.

Ayoade has crafted a brilliant vision here, alternately laugh-out-loud and moving. The distinct look of the film, riffing on Wes Anderson and the French New Wave, is enhanced by the gorgeous retro soundtrack from Alex Turner. Newcomers Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige are excellent as the star-crossed teenage couple, with the adult supporting cast (Noah Taylor, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine) holding up their end. But in the end, this is a film all about youth; how we romanticise ourselves, and the inevitable heartbreak that comes when we have to reconcile that image with the real world.

5. True Grit
Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen (US, 2010)
110 minutes

There are few films that can make me leave the cinema with a sens of aboslute glee. This year, True Grit was one of them. Was it the sense of being in the hands of directors who have absolute mastery of their craft? Was it the excellent performances from Hailee Steinfeld as steely fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross, Jeff Bridges as drunken lawman Rooster Cogburn, and Matt Damon as conceited Texas Ranger LaBoeuf?

Maybe it was that for a Coens film, this is remarkably straight-faced. There are extremely funny lines, thanks to the dry wit of the novel remaining in the script, and moments of off-kilter humour. But as the film takes us to the deserted wilderness beyond American civilisation, it becomes a ripping adventure yarn where the central trio are tested, parted, and then brought back together to help each other.

It’s utterly thrilling to see a directorial team firing on all cylinders, working with excellent actors, bringing a great story to the screen. The perfect climactic action sequence, a non-stop series of impasses and reversals, and the moving coda set years after the main narrative, are a perfect closer to this wonderfully-crafted film.

4. The Skin I Live In
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar (Spain, 2011)
117 minutes

Almodóvar’s latest is a bizarre melodrama/thriller featuring Antonio Banderas as disturbed plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard, who keeps a young woman, Vera (Elena Anaya), as a pampered but de facto prisoner in his home. The three inhabitants of the mansion – Vera, Ledgard, and his housekeeper – spend the early part of the film dancing around each other in a strangely self-aware performace of their required roles. The ever-present monitor screens and microphones in the house by which Ledgard keeps watch over Vera makes the audience complicit in his voyeurism, and draws us into the bizarre family set-up, before it is blown apart by a relevation which recasts all that has gone before.

Banderas has never been better, his soap-opera-star-gone-to-seed looks perfectly suited to the charismatic but dangerous Ledgard. Elena Anaya is, if anything, even better; the smallest changes in her expression and body language suggest a world of torment under her placid exterior. As with most Almodóvar films, there is a depth beyond the pulpy subject matter, and the chronological trickery only enhances the film’s themes. For all the acting and gameplaying going on in the film, this is a story about identity and the inner strength needed to remain true to oneself.

3. Animal Kingdom
Dir. David Michôd (Australia, 2010)
113 minutes

After his mother dies of a heroin overdose, J (James Frecheville) is sent to live with his grandmother (Jacki Weaver), the matriarch of a family of criminals in suburban Melbourne. Caught between his family and the detective pursuing them (Guy Pearce), he must rely on his own wits to stay alive.

The plot, a “relative innocent caught up in criminal underworld struggling to break free” set-up, is well-worn in crime films. Where it differs is in the depiction of murder in the midst of banal Australian suburbia. The operatic tone of a Goodfellas is absent here – these are frightened, desperate men, crashing around cramped under-lit houses. And even Pearce, the nominal “hero”, fights a battle between morals and expediency. The wonderfully foreboding atmosphere makes Animal Kingdom feel like both an excellent crime thriller and examination of a dysfunctional family, looking at the lies we tell our relatives and ourselves.

2. Take Shelter
Dir. Jeff Nichols (USA, 2011)
120 minutes

I’d heard the praise for Jeff Nichols’ latest film long before it arrived in my neck of the woods. But I was still unprepared for how it affected me. This is an unbearably tense film, with scenes scarier than most horror films. And the most terrifying thing about it is that all the threat comes from inside the protagonist.

Michael Shannon plays a taciturn Midwestern blue-collar worker plagued by bad dreams and premonitions of doom. While the film doesn’t strain for topicality, it’s easy to read into Shannon’s nightmares modern-day America’s fear of terrorism, plagues and natural disasters, to say nothing of fear as a pathology in itself.

We never shake the sense that Shannon and his family are under terrible threat, both from his own mind and the insanity and barbarism of the US health care system. The more his condition worsens, the greater the chance of losing his job (and the health insurance that comes with it) becomes. Like a toppling row of dominoes, every mistake and bad decision leads inexorably to a worsening of their situation. Shannon’s massive, slablike face (probably the closest our puny “reality” will come to channeling a Jack Kirby drawing) is brilliantly expressive, registering the tiniest shifts from love to dread to stoic determination. While we see Shannon’s gradual breakdown staged against a mundane semi-rural background, the claustrophobic cinematography and eerie sound design draw us deep inside a world where one’s own senses can’t be trusted.

Take Shelter remorselessly presses on the nerve marked “fear of your family turning against you”, and even worse, it teases the possibility of Shannon turning against his family. It’s a film about fear, isolation, and the unique torment that is facing mental illness without support. But Nichols recognises that relentless pessimism is as much of a cop-out as unearned optimism. Any happiness gained during this film is hard won, but comes with the honesty of looking your problems in the face, and relying on the people who care most about you.

1. The Tree Of Life
Dir. Terrence Malick (USA, 2011)
139 minutes

During the time I’ve spent on this list, I’ve been trying to sum up what my greatest cinematic experiences of last year meant for me. I feel that the very essence of film lies in its power to transport you, for that giant screen to be a gateway of sorts to another world. More than anything, Terrence Malick’s latest film reminded me of the essential wonder of cinema. You are held rapt, and given a glimpse of something wonderful.

A young boy in small-town 50s Texas. A grown man, ill at ease among towers of steel and glass. The beginning of the universe, the making of the world, and the struggle of life in all its forms. Malick weaves these threads into a tapestry that contains all the questions on life, nature and spirituality that he’s been asking over his entire career.And it’s remarkable how subtly these themes are integrated into the DNA of the film. The constantly roving cinematography, taking the POV of a silent observer flitting in and out of rooms and wandering along bucloic country roads, is the viewpoint of an endlessly curious child. When the scenes switch to a detached, almost Kubrickian exploration of the early universe and primodial life on Earth, we carry that sense of childlike wonder with us. Every instance of creation — the birth of Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain’s children, the musical signatures tapped out on the piano, the massive arrays of machinery that Pitt works with — echoes that primal moment when something was born from nothing.

While the film is a distillation of Malick’s favourite themes – man vs nature, sin and grace, how a child sees the world – it also feels like an expansion of his vision, an attempt to do something even more impressionistic and abstract. It might not have worked for some, but I was riveted. I assume there will be more to discover on further rewatchings, but one showing was enough to make a deep impression on me. It’s what film should be about.

My 21 Favourite Albums of 2011

Because fuck a Top 20, that’s why.

21. PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
An album that speaks to our times, with unsettlingly delicate orchestration and vocals illustrating lyrics that speak to the blood-soaked reality behind the bucolic image of English history.
Essentials: The Words That Maketh Murder

20.Kanye West/Jay-Z – Watch The Throne
Could it ever have lived up to the hype? Probably not. But in among the filler are a decent amount of straight bangers.
Essentials: No Church In The Wild, Gotta Have It, Murder To Excellence

19. Big K.R.I.T. – The Return of 4Eva
Up-and-coming Southern rapper Big K.R.I.T. delivers a mixtape with the tightness and cohesion of an official album, varying from bass-heavy trunk anthems to perceptive trips down memory lane.
Essentials: Rise And Shine, Dreamin’, American Rapstar

18. Dum Dum Girls – Only In Dreams
Classic girl-group garage-pop that rises above pastiche.
Essentials: Bedroom Eyes, Just A Creep

17. Danny Brown – XXX
This year Danny Brown gave us hilariously filthy lyrics, woozy drugged-up beats, grim tales from post-industrial Detroit, and a compelling portrayal of a post-twentysomething afraid they’ve missed the chance to make something of themselves. All on one mixtape. One FREE mixtape.
Essentials: XXX, Pac Blood, DNA

16. Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness
The riotous chroniclers of youthful indiscretions age (dis)gracefully into an indie band heavy on the heartbreak.
Essential: By Your Hand, Songs About Your Girlfriend, To Tundra

15. M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
Expansive, glittering dance-pop magic that sprawls but never bores.
Essentials: Midnight City, Reunion

14. British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
The deliberately archaic British Sea Power turn their attention to modern times with an album of squalling guitars and lyrics that form a perfect soundtrack to this year of protest.
Essentials: Who’s In Control, Mongk II, Living Is So Easy

13. The Roots – Undun
The Roots expand their scope further on this concept album, taking cues from jazz and classical orchestration to tell the story of one man’s life and death.
Essentials: Make My, Kool On, Lighthouse

12. Tom Waits – Bad As Me
The mad genius returns with an album that feels like a showcase of all his greatest successes, from gravel-voiced barroom stomp to eerie fairground tunes.
Essentials: Chicago, Hell Broke Luce

11. Doomtree – No Kings
A furious blast of insurrectionary punk-tinged hip-hop, railing against the established order.
Essentials: No Way, Beacon, Gimme The Go

10. My Morning Jacket – Circuital
Expansive, anthemic rock incorporating everything from electronica to country.
Essentials: Victory Dance, The Day Is Coming, Wonderful (The Way I Feel)

9. Random Axe – Random Axe
Black Milk, Guilty Simpson and Sean Price trade their differing but equally versatile mic skills over classic boom-bap producation.
Essentials: Random Call, The Hex

8. Girl Talk – All Day
Mixtape king Gregg Gillis mashes up another disco-friendly masterclass in pop.
Essentials: The whole thing.

7. Gang Of Four – Content
Just when we need them, Gang of Four deliver more spiky, bass-heavy tunes that dissect the rot within our consumerist cargo cult.
Essentials: She Said “You Made A Thing Of Me”, I Party All The Time, A Fruitfly In The Beehive

6. Frank Turner – England Keep My Bones
Billy Bragg-style singalong acoustic ballads with a progressive-yet-traditional concept of identity, community and remembering where you’re from.
Essentials: Peggy Sang The Blues, I Am Disappeared, Wessex Boy

5. TV On The Radio – Nine Types Of Light
Rich, textured songs that frantically race from contemplative noodling to get-down funk jams.
Essentials: Keep Your Heart, Will Do, Caffeinated Consciousness

4. Drive- By Truckers – Go-Go Boots
The quieter cousin to last year’s raucous The Big To-Do, this album indulges the Truckers’ storytelling side, from Southern Gothic to Modern Americana.
Essentials: I Do Believe, Used To Be A Cop, The Thanksgiving Filter

3. Arctic Monkeys – Suck It And See
Alex Turner and co continue their journey to songwriting geniuses with this impeccable collection of British pop soon-to-be-classics.
Essentials: She’s Thunderstorms, Black Treacle, Suck It And See

2. Wild Flag – Wild Flag
US fem-rock supergroup delivers blasting guitar-heavy love letters to the transforming power of music.
Essentials: Romance, Boom, Glass Tambourine

1. The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
Impeccable songwriting and musicianship combined with country/Americana roots give this album a timeless quality.
Essentials: Don’t Carry It All, Down By The Water, This Is Why We Fight

Thought Bubble 2011 Reviewed

Last month I went up to Thought Bubble, the Leeds-based comic convention. It was my first time at an event like this; the draw for me was a combination of seeing artists and writers I liked, meeting up with people I was internet-acquainted with, and check out some more under-the-radar comics. And, of course, spending a bit of time back up in Leeds.The event was held across a couple of convention halls down at the Armouries, with some other venues drafted in for talks and other events. While it wasn’t the easiest of layouts to navigate, all the staff and volunteers on hand were absolute pros and ever ready to help out attendees.

From the initial rush of people at the start of the first day, things slowed down to a constant gentle press; the place was crowded, but never oppressive. And there were plenty of things to see. The convention was was very mixed in its setup, so “professionals” and self-publishers would have tables alongside each other. The atmosphere was very friendly and non-exclusive.

When I didn’t have anything specific to get to, I was happy to wander around looking at the independent comics on sale, and watching wonderful artists like Sean Phillips, Cameron Stewart and David Aja doing sketches. (I often forget how calming and relaxing it is just to watch someone draw.) I also had the pleasure of meeting up with Dan White, Andrew Hickey and Illogical Volume, of the excellent UK comics blog collective Mindless Ones, and chatting with them about comics and other assorted nonsense.

I also happened to pick up some very good comics while there, the majority of which I would never have heard of otherwise. Some reviews below:

Cindy and Biscuit in: What We Did At The Weekend
Dan White (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Milk The Cat Comics

Dan White’s latest Cindy and Biscuit entry is in the best tradition of “kid’s comics”, in that it perfectly sums up what it means to be a kid; the instant switching between wide-eyed innocence and bloodthirsty attack mode, the value in discovering something all your own, and the inevitable bump as you’re brought back down to earth after yet another intrusion from the adult world.

The art means a lot here. Biscuit is drawn as the Platonic essence of dog; constantly either alert or in motion, his whole body converging to the sharp point that is his nose. And Cindy is all knobbly knees and elongated limbs, the perfect representation of the gangly awkwardness of childhood. This self-contained story of a girl and her dog fighting off an alien invasion is in full colour, brilliantly used to heighten the encroaching weirdness. It’s got action, comedy, and maybe even a little bit of poignancy too. Highly recommended.

Fight!
Jack Teagle (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Nobrow

I first found out about Teagle when I picked up his comic Jeff Job Hunter (also from NoBrow) earlier this year. A fun satire about a young jobseeker tasked with questing through an underground dungeon full of monsters in order to collect his JSA, it struck a sour chord with my experience of being out of work.

Fight! is the first of an occasional series, beginning with two wrestlers fighting as analogues of God and the Devil. Lou, the “Devil” character, is tired of his red skin and horns stereotyping him as the “heel”, and sets out to discover what happened to his famous wrestler father.

As with JJH, the simple, cartoonish art creates a pleasant blend of the surreal and the mundane. Teagle packs in as much as possible, with a back-up story on the inside cover and fake ads on the back. It’s decent, but I’d recommend Jeff Job Hunter over it.

Filmish #3: Technology and Technophobia
Edward Ross (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Chiaroscuro

This series of minicomics offers straightforward introductions to various aspects of film theory. They owe a great debt to Scott McCloud’s books – as in Understanding Comics and other works, a cartoon version of the author appears on each page to explain concepts to the reader and interact playfully with the contents of the panels. This issue looks at the way technology has been represented and criticised in films, from Chaplin’s Modern Times to Videodrome, Jurassic Park and Primer. There are cited quotes from academic texts, and a bibliography at the end for further reading. A neat idea, executed well.

Hitsville UK
John Riordan (Co-Writer/Artist), Dan Cox (Co-Writer)
Self-published

A spectacular technicolour pop-comix blast of greatness, Hitsville UK is a comics about the sense of romance that you get from all great music, and especially from stuff you stumble across by accident. The conceit of the comics is to profile several bands grouped around one start-up record label, allowing Riordan to take a different art style for portraying each act. The skipping between each different band and their various troubles gives the comic an excellent sense of pace, like it’s a bunch of old-school 2-page strips crammed together.

The off-kilter kookiness of the art and colouring suggest a world at right-angles to our own, where all the romance and promise of music still holds absolutely true. It’s pretty much perfectly designed to hit someone like me in their sweet spot, but don’t let my blatant bias put you off – it’s actually really good!

I Got Comics #1
John Miers (Writer/Artist)
Self-published

An large-format collection of art-comics stories where form reflects function. Contrast is a constant here; black versus white; colour vs space; the art playing out scenarios of antagonism, thesis and antithesis. Whether illustrating a philospohical debate, a family argument, or the story of the Tower of Babel, the stories suggest conflict as the essential stuff of the artists’ life. The tour de force here is the closing story “Ink Vs Paper”, a black-and-white fight scene taking place in a Japanese castle, between combatants who use the material of the comic against each other. It’s Spy vs Spy with a fourth-wall-breaking conceit.

Pope Hats #1 and #2
Ethan Rilly (Writer/Artist)
Publisher: Adhouse

The first two issues of this series by Canadian cartoonist Rilly (released in 2009 and this year, respectively) are wonderful-looking, really well-constructed comics. Pope Hats follows Frances, a young law clerk who has to deal with the trials of her workplace and her flighty, hard-drinking actress roommate. Better critics than I have listed the artistic influences on display here, but I was taken with how much Frances looks like Tintin, sharing the button nose and black dot eyes of Herge’s boy reporter.

There’s a bit of Adrian Tomine in its portrayal of ennui among educated young people, and something of Dan Clowes in its static angles and deadpan realism. But Rilly avoids the worst tendencies of both writers (self-indulgence for Tomine, misanthropy for Clowes) by focusing in on the little moments when people my age stop and picture life passing them by. It’s hard to explain the appeal of this comic other than that it makes you feel for the characters. They’re drawn small, navigating a landscape of grids and straight lines, while trapped in their own thoughts, talking at cross purposes, unsure of how to break through to each other.

The two issues include one or two back-up stories, which is mainly a chance for Rilly to do some smaller vignettes. Along with the well-designed cover, it gives each issue a feel of being a more complete package; of it being a comic in a proper physical sense.