Streaming on Stan - A High Recommendation for THE LONG SHADOW (Writer: George Kay, Director: Lewis Arnold)

Dennis Hoban (Toby Jones), Jim Hobson (Lee
Ingleby), The Long Shadow

There is a story, possibly apocryphal, back in the 60s I hasten to say, of a teacher at a college that taught newly-arrived migrants the basics of English. The teacher, so it is reported, used to practise his students on the sentence: “In Australia if a policeman is on the ground, we kick him.” It may have had traction in anarchist and libertarian circles, small as they were. 

The phrase came back during the course of watching The Long Shadow  a six part Brit ITV series devoted to a dramatic reconstruction of the times and the deeds of the infamous Yorkshire Ripper, a man who terrorised Lancashire and Yorkshire from 1975 to 1980 and over that time murdered at least 13 women, most of them prostitutes working street beats. 

 

While Stan’s publicity tells us the series is ‘the true story of one of the most notorious and shocking serial killer cases in the world, the five-year manhunt for Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, focusing on the lives of his victims and the loved ones they left behind’ I can say with absolute certainty that the PR description is to use a word frequently employed by the coppers on the case “Bollocks”. This show is the metaphorical equivalent of kicking a policeman who is on the ground.

 

It’s about the coppers in all their inglory. It peels away layers of Brit police incompetence, sexism, racism, prejudice, petty harassment and dogged refusal to acknowledge the blindingly obvious. “You have failed’ becomes a catchcry from the most senior levels of the force as they berate the various detectives that over time are put in charge of the investigation. Their replacements however all seem even more dim and misguided than those that went before. One, Dennis Hoban played by the awesome Toby Jones, the first cop in charge of things states how appalled he is that, after being taken off the case and kicked upstairs to a desk job, his replacement is Detective Hobson (Lee Ingleby) whom Hoban clearly thinks is incompetent. Hobson proves to be so.

 

George Oldfield (David Morrissey)
The Long Shadow

Hobson is eventually replaced by George Oldfield (David Morrissey) who spends years getting absolutely nowhere. The fact that in episode two an identikit drawing of Sutcliffe has been dismissed as irrelevant and tossed in a drawer where it remains until (SPOILER ALERT) various women constables manning the help line phones piece the pictures together. 

 

On the way through, as the true horror of what Sutcliffe got up to slowly emerges we get a picture of petty police harassment at ground level, dogmatism at middle levels, and flailing blame shifting at upper levels. This is not swinging London. It’s the other Britain of the 70s – grim, grey, mean – on full display. 

The Long Shadow is written by George Kay who if he were writing for film would likely be being celebrated with mid-career retrospectives. His output ranges through Killing Eve, Lupin, The Hour, the quite extraordinary Litvinenko and much more. Here he delivers another devilishly good piece of TV, something to make you suspicious of coppers all over again.

Defending Cinephilia 2023 (3) - Janice Tong spends time On Wandering Paths

Jean Eustache

2023 has been a year of highs and lows, as with its companion 2022, marked another year of change – a decidedly sinister wink at our unsettling world. I felt quieter this year, more focused with work and on finishing my second novel; all this enterprise was nonetheless accompanied by a pilgrimage into the soul, through reverie, remembrance and dream.

 

Cinema, or rather, the moving image has provided nourishment and comfort; choosing carefully amongst the many on offer, and discarding more than what was chosen; I’ve come to realise that the few films I watched this year (170 to be exact) have come to be a summation of goodness and all that is illuminated amongst dark days.

 

On the Wandering Paths - Jean Dujardin as Tesson

 

Film Festivals – A Haunting

 

The year of film festivals always opened with the French Film Festival in March, and the harvest this year was one of its best. Saint Omer, a lyrical and haunting courtroom chamber piece by Alice Diop, and Denis Imbert’s On the Wandering Paths, based on Sylvain Tesson’s slim but poetic volume of the same name, were two films whose images and meaning stayed with me throughout the year. For all their differences, the walk that Tesson undertook (some 1,300 kms) echoed Rousseau’s interior ambling in his 1782 book Reveries Of The Solitary Walker, in that both are song-like and reverential. 

 

Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, The Trial

A highlight in this year’s festival rounds was Cinema Reborn’s program, whilst I only saw four films, the full program offered a treasure trove of works from all around the world. Of the four I saw, it was Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans that took the crowd’s breath away, the theatre was silent and in awe. But for me, it was watching Orson Welles’ The Trial that I found myself holding my breath – glorious on the big screen, it’s digital restoration leant a sharpness to the images, but it’s the cinematography, the sets, the breezy jazz soundtrack from Martial Solal Trio and Anthony Perkins’ performance as Joseph K. that withstood the test of time. Also, Jean Eustache’s little seen The Mother and the Whore literally stole my heart, the three and a half hours sped by; and you leave feeling as though you’re tearing yourself away from your friends on new year’s eve.

 

Last Night of Amore (2023) at this year’s Italian Film Festival was amongst the best new crime thriller films I’ve seen in a very long while. Pierfrancesco Favino was mesmerising to watch as retiring lieutenant Franco Amore, as was its elliptically ringed storyline.

 

The inimitable Mr Dough and the Egg Princess

Lastly, I had a chance to see Mr Dough and the Egg Princess (2010), a 12 mins short by Hayao Miyazaki at the Ghibli Museum Theatre in Japan this month, in December, to round out my year; a highlight amongst all the animés that have feathered my imagination since I was a child; with Dog of Flanders (1975) being my favourite television show when I was still living in Hong Kong. Later, my love of animé led me to collect the manga series Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1982 to 1994) amongst others as I sang the theme song to My Neighbour Totoro (1988) in Japanese and my heart was kept light and child-like with Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle(2004). All these films seem to be so present in my mind still, but it was in fact decades ago when I last saw some of them. A project for 2024 perhaps, would be to revisit each one.

 

New Films | Old Films

 

Films traverse across time, they’ve always had that ability, to transcend the present; to capture our present moment and carry us elsewhere. When I was researching to write the Cinema Reborn notes on La maman et la putain, I came across what was Eustache’s last film; a short film called Les photos d'Alix, filmed with his son, Boris, and photographer Alix Cléo Roubaud, also known to me as the wife of one of the greatest living French writers, Jacques Roubaud. Over the years, I was able to read all of his novels that have been translated into English, my favourite being Some Thing Black (1990), a book written in poetic fragments, both to document and his way to deal with, the loss of Alix (I also loved his masterwork The Loop (1993)). In 2019, I had made a pilgrimage of sorts to visit his flat – I stood below what I believed to be his window. But the windows were shut and I did not catch a glimpse of the great man on the many occasions I wandered around his neighbourhood on the Left Bank. So this short film, a rare find in itself, is one that I will always treasure.

 

Alix and Boris in Jean Eustache's Photos of Alix

And whilst I had stopped writing film reviews for what was originally the J+N ‘home’ film festival created during the Covid lockdown in 2020; the choices of films to watch at home are limitless; and this year, I’ve been blessed with many, here are but a small selection: 

 

An Elephant Sitting Still (2010), China, dir. Bo Hu

All That Breathes (2020), doco, India | UK | US, dir. Shaunak Sen

Fists in the Pocket (1965), Italy, dir. Marco Bellocchio

Marx Can Wait (2021), doco, Italy, dir. Marco Bellocchio

Before the Revolution (1964), Italy, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci

This Summer Feeling (2015), France | Germany, dir. Mikhaël Hers

The Vice of Hope (2018), Italy, dir. Edoardo De Angelis

 

Best friends, The Makanai

 

Small Screen’s a Charm

 

I would not be content if British crime dramas were not amongst my standard repertoire; and many have been watched over the past 12 months. However, the two series that stood out for me this year are both Korean and available on Netflix: Somebody (2022) and My Name (2021); both series figure a singular and striking female heroine; in Somebody, she comes in the form of an aspergeresque coder cum app designer who plays a game of cat and mouse with a serial killer – but this is just surface tension, delve deeper and this is an onion that has no centre, with Schumann’s Vogel als Prophet (played here by none other than Maria Joao Pires) from Waldszenento accompany their wanderings – it is a must-watch. My Name, is a story of a stoic criminal protégé who attempts to infiltrate the police; and like Infernal Affairs (2002), the story is filled with twists that double in on themselves leaving you guessing every step of the way.

 

 

Han So-hee as the tough heroine in My Name

Also worth mentioning are: 

 

Blanca (2021) Italian – set in Genoa, a blind profiler gets into detective work; uncovering the hidden trauma of her sister’s death along the way.

Marnow Murders (2021) German – haunting, brilliant, raw, sad; I fell in love with all the characters from the get-go. The Germans have a way of getting into the heart of the hurt from the very beginning.

The Allegation (2021) German – from the real-life German Worms Trials, again with brilliantly-drawn characters, including my favourite Peter Kurth (here’s a little treat for you if you’re a fan).

The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (2023), Japanese – beautiful and heartfelt; it was difficult to finish this series.

Irma Vep (2022), French – what’s not to love? It’s Assayas, Vincent Macaigne, Lars Eidinger and Alicia Vikander, a remake of a remake of a remake.

Alicia Vikander against the Paris night skyline in Irma Vep

As to the Brit crime dramas I mentioned before, here are a few that are hard to pass up:

 

Dalgliesh (2021) 2 seasons, available on Prime, based on the Adam Dalgliesh novels by P. D. James. Almost as good as Endeavour. Bertie Carvel is excellent!

The Chelsea Detective (2022), 2 seasons, available on Prime. My husband and I joke that all good detectives have some things in common: first they have to have a beer or a whisky at the end of the day, accompanied by their favourite music (opera for Morse, jazz for Wallander, rock ‘n roll classics for DCI Banks, new age for Hathaway –the protégé of Lewis) and second their failed love affairs. DI Max Arnold has all of these hallmarks and more.

Karen Pirie (2022), 1 season, available on Prime. Beautifully drawn character, loved her immediately; relatable, funny, human; a really gripping crime show.

Bertie Carvel is superb as Adam Dalgliesh

 

 

2024, only 2 days away…I look forward to what good tidings you bring! 

Claude Gonzalez's GUIDE TO FREE MOVIES ONLINE (Part One) - Kanopy, Tubi, SBS OnDemand, ABC I-view and more

Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

This list was originally compiled by Claude Gonzalez after he took over the final few weeks of David Stratton's long ongoing University of Sydney course on a the History of World Cinema. It is intended as a guide for those who will now have to self-navigate through the thickets of online cinephilia. As Claude remarked however, a good number of classics by established filmmakers are available online for free.  But not everything... 

What Claude presents here (Part one)  is a list of resources and recommendations that he created for his own film students that could help with your search for elusive titles.  He hopes readers find the following useful, and that it brings you many hours of film viewing pleasure

 

CG’s Classics Film List.

 

Streaming Services

 

Many of you will have to a streaming device (Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku), or a Smart TV which will enable you to use streaming apps such as Netflix, Stan, Amazon Prime Video, etc. to view your films on. Unfortunately, these streamers do not offer cinema classics, and all require a monthly payment.  Yet there are four streaming services that you can install apps onto your device, and that will give you access to a good number of classics for free.  

 

1.Kanopy

 

https://www.kanopy.com/en

(joining page)

 

https://www.kanopy.com/en/category/9513

(film list page)

 

This is a free streaming service that was established in the U.S. in 2008 by Public Libraries, and that has since linked up with libraries all over the world, including Australia.  It is free to anyone who is a member of a local library and who has a library card.  To use it you will need to download the app onto your device (the same way you have apps for your streaming services now), and then enter your library card number.  It works the same way as borrowing a book, with your membership allowing you to view 10 films per month from their film collection of classics (foreign films, silent cinema, documentaries) and educational programs.  Kanopy rents its films and pays a fee to the filmmaker on a pay per view basis. It’s a great resource and it has many films (excellent quality prints) that are not available anywhere else.  I highly recommend it as a good starting point.

 

2.Tubi

https://tubitv.com/home

 

Tubi is a film rich streaming service, which is free but it’s a little bit more esoteric in its film programming.  The streamer is an American company that has access to the film libraries of MGM, Lionsgate, and Paramount. To join you will need to download the app onto your device, and then once you register, (with an email address and new password), you will have access to a large library of films – some classics, some Euro trash and even some TV shows.  Use the browser on the top of the page, and with a bit of patience you’ll be rewarded.  Here’s a link to the classics section, which as you’ll see has some great films listed.

https://tubitv.com/category/classics

 

Two Australian Streamers 

 

Both Kanopy and Tubi are Ad free and make their revenue via their pay per view royalties and established film catalogues. There are also two local film streamers - SBS On Demand and ABC iView - that are free and have access to good film libraries. You may know them as TV Channels, but if you look closer within their online line up you will find a Movie page. Each of these Movie pages contains a film library that is free to use via their app:

 

3.SBS On Demand - has many foreign films, classics and new releases that can be found via their search engine, or via subcategories on the movie page (IE: Korean Cinema, Japanese Cinema, French Cinema, etc).  It’s a very good service, well-resourced and with monthly updates. The only minus to this streamer is that it pays for its content via the use of Ads, which will break into the film now and then, sometimes at the worst possible moment, but it’s a good resource with lots of titles none the less.

 

https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/movies

 

4.ABC iView – a is a very good service with a movie page too, but more limited in its programming, mostly English language films and recent releases; the titles date from 1990s to the mid 2020s; it’s good but it has a narrow choice of films.

 

https://iview.abc.net.au/category/film

 

Online Libraries

 

Following are two online libraries that cater to students.  Each has a vast collection of free films; the only drawback is that sometimes the quality varies depending on the print and the source it is linked to. But the films are available to everyone, and you will find many titles that are hard to get and that are part of the film canon. Its audio books are good too, with many of them downloadable for use on your other devices.

 

 

1.Open Culture

https://www.openculture.com/

(home page)

 

This is a web site that aims to centralise content (audio, text, films, academic papers, textbooks, and lectures) for students around the world.  It works by curating and then placing links it has found from other web sites (The Film Board of Canada, etc), and then placing them in categories that are useful for online study.  It is funded by the use of pop-up ads on its page; they do not break into the film, but they sit on the page (smaller and less obstructive than normal); you can get rid of them by making the screen full size. 

 

https://www.openculture.com/freemoviesonline

(film page)

 

Example - Canadian films:

https://www.openculture.com/2020/03/watch-3000-films-free-from-the-national-film-board-of-canada-2.html

 

 

2.The Internet Archive

https://archive.org/

(home page)

 

This is a very large American digital archive established in the 1990s that provides its user’s free access. The platform and the general public upload videos, and then they are shared and curated on the site. Here is a link to their Film page.  

 

https://archive.org/details/feature_films

 

Note – it’s a good site but a bit overwhelming – so I recommend that you use the search bar up the top of the page to streamline your hunting of films.

 

*If you have a smart TV or streaming device like Apple TV, this platform will allow you to link and watch it via your TV monitor at home - use the icon with the upward pointing arrow to link to your device.  The icon with the two-sided arrow will enable you to make the film full screen on the device you are currently using (laptop or phone).

 

*Overall, the quality is good, not always great (acceptable) but if it’s a film you have never seen or that is hard to find then this site is a good place to look for it.

 

For example, here is a link to its film noir page.  Within you find an alphabetical list that contains noir films, audio recordings and textbooks on the subject.

 

https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22Film+Noir%22

(film noir page)

 

Here is a link to Laura (Otto Preminger,1944), a film we studied during our Thriller session.  It’s not available online but it is here, and the quality is ok:

https://archive.org/details/laura_202003

 

Then on the other hand there are prints that are excellent in quality.  Here is a link to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953), which is very good:

 

https://archive.org/details/gentlemen-prefer-blondes-1953_202211

 

So, as you’ll see it will take patience, a good sense of what you want to find and a punt on the quality of the print.  

To be continued with Part Two - A Guide to YouTube, coming soon

 

The Current Cinema - Barrie Pattison recommends tracking down MASTER GARDENER (Paul Schrader, USA, 2022)

Master Gardener, the new (2022) Paul Schrader has caught up with us.  Since he surfaced with his script for Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Schrader's been one of the most challenging personalities in movies. He's impressive in person. I've watched him front a meeting. One time critic and media teacher, he can talk film and hold an audience as long as the organisers will let him. In his films, Schrader comes close to actually pulling off the stunt of fusing popular culture and high art. Hollywood directors as diverse as Orson Welles, Charles Vidor and Sam Fuller had a go at that with dodgy results.

Master Gardener kicks off with titles on a striking background of stop-motion plants blooming. We rapidly get to characters, whom some commentators find under-written. Sigourney Weaver's first appearance lets us know she's a Louisiana old money society matron from the way she summons her head gardener Joel Edgerton with demands for boosted returns on a charity sale of the flowers he supervises. She refers to her grand niece as "mixed blood." 

Joel Edgerton, Master Gardener

Edgerton is revealed more gradually in blip inserts of him as a bearded member of a black-uniformed militia and shots of him updating a log book - the historic difference between English and European gardens. Like a range of the writer-director's protagonists, his lead here deals with the extremes of experience by keeping a diary that we watch him entering at night, seated alone with a reading lamp and backed by his voice over, like Claude Laydu in Journal d'un curé de campagne. Even more than American Gigolo's re-working of Pickpocket, this is Schrader's closest approach to his hero Robert Bresson - not really a claim to my admiration. 

Quintessa Swindell, Master Gardener 

The girl turns up as twenty something Quintessa Swindell, whom Edgerton finds a suitable pupil. Master Gardener keeps on setting up expectations, which are much more mundane than the ones the film film actually delivers.  Is Esai Morales Edgerton's AA Sponsor or is Edgerton going to be the White Saviour subjugating the rebellious spirit of the girl from the minorities? Their relationship is knowing. "It's always fun to watch grown men in pastel pants out-bid each other over a flower."  

Turns out teacher and pupil both bring baggage.  Schrader likes leaving trails of breadcrumbs. His films are full of material that his followers swoop on. I'm surprised that the mixed notices this has gathered aren't on about about being banished from the garden. 

What we do get once again is shock revelation and ultra violence. I didn't think the film could survive turning the Sigourney Weaver character nasty but Our Man was testing his and the audience limits. Edgerton's amiable, stoic Travis Bickle substitute takes some getting over. They work at it, with him concerned about the fate of the jailed associates he rolled over on, or that of Weaver and even her porch dog after the attack, a not altogether subtle attempt to soften the character. 

Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Master Gardener

We note that right wing extremists, as here, and in The Blackklansman or the new Fargo series, have replaced gangsters and Communists as stock villains in Hollywood movies and  quite possibly the U.S. collective mind. 

Technical work and performances are superior, with the support etching their presence in small screen time, but words are Schrader's material. The dialogue registers in the meeting with Morales planting an imaginary gold star on Edgerton's forehead, contrasted with the apparently purposeful replacement. When the characters want sex they verbalise  it, something that some festival audiences couldn't handle. The vandalism of the garden team's loving work is not the shock that the film intends any more than the reveal on Edgerton's tattoos. Schrader can manage wide shot scenics and gives the player's effective close ups, but in the two shots he falls back on, attention drops. I won't buy the labored regeneration symbolism, particularly as visualised with the drive through the flower verge road. Probably the most telling image is Edgerton, the severe black of his work clothes broken by the red patch of his pruning shear  handles.

The conclusion with Edgerton's dismissing Weaver's use of her word ("I've known obscene") is the film's big ask. I don't find it completely satisfying but the film offers more substance than most of what we see, including Schrader's other films. It is going to stay with me. It would be a pity for it to slip by. 

The Current Cinema - David Hare on the de-gaying of Leonard Bernstein "as both man and history" in MAESTRO (Bradley Cooper, USA, 2023)

Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein
Maestro

Watching Maestro last night, two things struck me, especially as the movie entertains several formal nods to "old fashioned" movies like the Academy ratio and B&W, then color treatment for the major history of the story.

The first is the notion that the Bernstein/Felicia Montealegre union was what they used to call a "Manhattan Marriage". Or what was in more brutal terms a marriage of convenience between a closeted gay man and a willing female supporter. The Lenny/Felicia alliance was more than simply a sham but the film fails because of what I believe is a profoundly underwritten part for Carey Mulligan playing Felicia, whose own very substantial life as an activist is barely hinted at in the picture.

The other equally crucial thing that's lost in the picture is the sheer volume and often the commitment to Lenny's male lovers that barely gets past occasional "gift" shots of Lenny and whoever kissing or holding hands in the wings. One of his most important lovers, the clarinetist David Oppenheim (played beautifully by Matt Bomer) is hinted at but not opened out in any meaningful way.

In fact, although I hate to say it the screenplay has simply de-gayed Bernstein as both man and history. Maybe, maybe not are the Bernstein children the cause of this bowdlerization, just as the similar Manhattan Marriage in a 1947 film, Humoresque with Joan Crawford as a wealthy arts patroness married to a wealthy gay philanthropist played to a T by Paul Cavanaugh was nearly strangled by the Breen Office. Or maybe the producers now feel that the material needn't go into any greater depth as though the whole "gay thing" has been so culturally re-processed for the millennial generation that anything more sordid than a kiss in the dark is unnecessary.

I don't know, but in any case the screenplay also omits the whole body of Felicia's activism including the famous Black Panther party hosted at their Dakota apartment during the Panthers' FBI seek-and-destroy phase. One of the guests there was Otto Preminger who shared Lenny's own hopes for a secure Israeli nation (then in the mid-late sixties). None of this is in the picture.

And so the film flounders I feel on two inadequately written characters. This manifests in the two leads' performances which drastically compromises them. Mulligan is an actress I've always liked and she always makes you care about her characters but here she's given a confusing, unstable accent and an obviously underwritten part.

As for Lenny, the schnoz I believe is a big mistake because it has the effect of altering Cooper's cheeks and eyes to make him look like he's perpetually awake. His eye colors are also, as a friend has noted, not semitically brown (like my own) but blue.

The moments are there and they're wonderful, notably Lenny's conducting of the last few minutes of the Mahler 2 which is gorgeously staged, played and directed. As are so many of Lenny's moments of solitary contemplation.

But this is a movie in which the creation of arguably the most important American stage musical of the twentieth century, West Side Story, is simply not given any space, nor its creation in toto by four gay men, two of them (then) closeted - Lenny and Robbins - and two “out” - Sondheim and Laurents.

A real lost opportunity. 

Defending Cinephilia 2023 (2) - Rod Bishop covers a lot of territory

 

Restaurants

From either side of the Pond came The Bear and Boiling Point, two high-pressure series set mostly in restaurant kitchens. Lots of yelling of “CHEF!!”, “BEHIND!!” and “PLATE UP!!” All served with a sprinkle of obnoxious sous chefs. If you’ve ever thought your Christmas Dinners couldn’t get worse, The Bear is here to fix that. After painstakingly preparing an enormous dinner, Mum stops all the constant bickering, insults, abuse, infighting and fork throwing around the table by driving her car through a wall and into the dining room.

Quebec

Xavier Dolan has threatened to give up filmmaking following The Night Logan Woke Up, a five-part television series exploring his favourite topic - emotionally dysfunctional families. Includes a riotous family dinner that runs a close second to the dinner in The Bear.

Australia

The Plains, David Easteal’s extraordinary, strangely gripping, structuralist-inspired, three-hour documentary account of a man’s daily commute along freeways from the outer suburbs to his home in inner Melbourne. 

Limbo, Ivan Sen continues to explore damaged characters and minimal dialogue, this time with the multi-hyphenate’s striking black and white photography among the drill hole debris of Coober Pedy. 

Colin from Accounts

Two superior series - Deadloch a consistently funny, feminist/lesbian inversion of serial killer police procedurals; and Colin From Accounts, also a consistently funny, rom-com unafraid of taking risks. The latter includes a lacerating Millennial birthday party in a boutique inner Sydney bar. And a dog on wheels.

The Last of Us

USA

For its third episode Long, Long Time, The Last of Us virtually dropped its central narrative of an ex-marine escorting an immune teenage girl across a pandemic-ravaged and desolate USA. Instead, there’s an almost feature length two-hander between two gay men facing their advancing age in the time of the apocalypse. The small screen doesn’t get any better than this.

Killers of the Flower Moon could probably have taken less time to tell its account of the murders of the Osage for their oil rights, but De Niro, Scorsese and Robbie Robertson are in top form. Set in rural America in the same time period as Days of Heaven, these aren’t the only similarities it has with Malick’s great film. 

The Blue Caftan

Europe and beyond

Arresting filmmaking in Alcarràs, Close, EO, The Eight Mountains, Saint Omer, Pacification, Anatomy of a Fall and Afire. Also from Pakistan, the gay-themed Joyland and from Salé, Morocco, the very impressive The Blue Caftan, with its near transcendental, penultimate scene.

Korea

Stand-out feature film work in Past Lives, Riceboy Sleeps and Return to Seoul. Enthralling historical drama series in Pachinko; poignant comedy series in Extraordinary Attorney Woo and feel-good, intergenerational romance in Encounter (2018).

Emun Elliott, Hugh Bonneville and Charlotte Spencer
in The Gold

England

The Brink’s-Mat heist of 25 million quid in gold bullion from Heathrow in the 1980s is given a decidedly class-conscious twist by Neil Forsyth with Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville commanding the police chase in The Gold. Perhaps the best written Brit series of the year.

Scotland

Dry-as-flint Scottish humour in new series of Guilt and Annika, way better than any comedy from south of the border. “Awa’ wi’ ye, ya Sassenachs!”