2016: THE MIDDLE

Cosmos

A maestro's swansong, Cosmos plays like a milder outing than Zulawski's more famous efforts like Possession or Third Part of the Night. Very enjoyable, nonetheless.






Arrival

High hopes for DenisVilleneuve's excursion into sci-fi but these gently deflated as the central concept became obvious well before time, a kind of Christopher Nolan twist that, like almost everything by Nolan, felt less impressive than intended. I'll still see what Villeneuve makes of Blade Runner.






La La Land

Some good songs, committed performances and sensational choreography almost got me in a sleight of hand. Just not quick enough to mask the shallowness of the overall exercise with its welcome stretching length.












Room

Enjoyed for its strength of conviction in sticking with the less glamorous aftermath of atrocity, following the healing process rather than glory in the sordidness of the crime. Still, felt short of the mark I wanted it to hit.






A Month of Sundays

Good effort from Matthew Saville about grief and mid-life ennui with characters and dialogue that reminded me of Paul Cox's best. Too long, though, and too often indulged in setting up humour that would have been better served by brevity.






Whiskey Foxtrot Tango

Compelling dramedy with Tina Fey in the lead (followed closely by Margot Robbie) in a tale of the costs of adventure and finding one's best fit. Wanted more of the grit outside of the Kabubble, though.






Blood of My Blood

Impressive tale of long reaching vengeance against the misogyny of the church told across centuries in a small Italian town. Keep wanting to put it in the high list but it doesn't quite make it there for me.






Chevalier

Greek weirdwave in the tradition of Dog Tooth and Attenburg about male competition subverted by its own cleverness and a confusing play of the competition itself to the effect that it was easy to forget about as the character quirks were aloud to prevail. A scene of competitive Ikea shelf assembly should have been sidesplitting but bled out its own energy.




A Dragon Arrives

Some fun and epic sized mystery storytelling realised that it had to get all serious towards the end or disrespect the whole premise. This worked but felt separated from the first two act









Gary Numan: Android in La La Land

A mostly informative and endearing character portrait on an interesting pop star who engineered a major shift in music at the start of his career. Numan suffers from Aspergers syndrome which highly focused but cold appearance actually aided his robotic persona into fame. His is a good story but the documentary's purpose was to concentrate a little too much on his most recent album, suggesting that much of the fame years' stories are still to be told.

The Beatles: The Touring Years: Eight Days a Week

A loss of focus on the declared purpose of the piece (went beyond the touring story into the recording which has been told very fully elsewhere) but also suffered from too sharp a focus on the US tours. Always nice to see the Fabs on screen but this felt like a feature length introduction to the Shea Stadium footage (which had more than a little flown in from other audio sources). There is a much fuller and truer film to be made about this.