Reviewer JASON BECK salutes the past year’s on-screen best …
5.The Revenant
In a lackluste year on the big screen, this one was worth the price of admission just to see an angry momma grizzly bear give Leonardo DiCaprio the full 50 Shades of Grey treatment.
After a ‘bear’ five minutes of rougher than usual handling with tooth and claw, Leonardo will never be the same again.
With its brilliant cinematography and otherworldly feel, it’s a film that takes you somewhere totally different.
A good revenge plot driven by character never goes astray, and for once pretty boy Leonardo delivered in spades.
4. Midnight Special
A dark horse outsider, Midnight Special is a film that touches on our post-9/11 conspiracy theories and nightmares.
A boy with special powers must be protected from Big Government by his father … but is the boy a messiah or the devil?
Add some religious hocus-pocus and a bit of dimension-swapping, and you’ve got a film with some really interesting ideas behind it.
The odd-looking and perpetually strange Michael Shannon (a kind of weird-looking, male Tilda Swinton) stars as the father, and puts in his usual star turn of oddity as a twisted, tortured man.
3. Hell or High Water
What an absolute little cracker this one is – the more you think of it, the more it stays with you and the more you find in it.
It’s a searing portrait of Trump’s rustbelt America, and what people are prepared to do to escape it.
Chris Pine and Ben Foster play two bank-robbing brothers – one wild, one calm – avenging their dead mother against the banks to save their family farm.
Worth it just for this bitter line of black graffit scrawled on the wall: “Three tours of Iraq but no bailout for people like us”.
If a film can be summed up in a sentence, then that one sums up this film.
Great acting performances, a startling and intense script, and the bleak cinematography combine beautifully for on-screen magic.
Special mention to Jeff Bridges, having the time of his life as a crusty old US Marshall in this modern western.
2. Deadpool
Who thinks it’s about time these po-faced superheroes took themselves a little less seriously?
Enter Deadpool, and what a ripping little genre-buster it is.
Ryan Reynolds takes the concept for a spin, flips it, sets it on fire, and then urinates on whatever’s left.
The humour is at the heart of this film – the script sparkles, it’s lively and Deadpool is far from the usual invulnerable man of steel.
If only all comic book heroes could take a leaf out of his book, the world would be a better place.
Why does it all have to be so damn serious?
1. Arrival
At last, just as the year was ending, some cinema arrived for thinking people.
Perhaps the most different type of alien invasion movie ever made, Arrival tries seriously to grapple with how we would communicate with beings who have nothing in common with us – to the extent that they don’t even have the same concept of time.
Like all alien movies, it’s an in-depth examination of our own fears, hopes, dreams and insecurities.
Acting performances are top-notch, the script dreamy, casting is brilliant, and the plot superlative – with a surprise in store.
