Dunkirk

Director: Christopher Nolan

Acting: 9

Dialogue: 8 (There was little talking)

Score: 10

Plot: 10

Cinematography: 10
Rewatchable? Yes!

Dunkirk is about the historical evacuation of British soldiers from the Dunkirk beach in France.

Before I start I want to predict that Dunkirk will win the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, and Best Costume Design.

What Nolan has done is weave a intricate and brilliantly executed film that unfolds from 3 viewpoints: Land, Sea and Air.

The acting in the movie was amazing, as I have come to expect of a Nolan film. The actor that stood out for me was Tom Hardy as the RAF pilot. He barely spoke, and his face was in a mask for 90% of the screentime he got. But Hardy's charisma still shines through any facial obstructions. (Bane, Mad Max, etc). Fionn Whitehead, who plays one the in characters in the film,impressed me.

Hans Zimmer did the score and, as usual, did a madness. There were no loud orchestra or violins or the other flourishes I had come to associate with Hans Zimmer. Instead, the score comprised mainly ofominous bass sounds set to the beat of small,ticking noises. Like the hands of a watch. Very minimal.

Hoyte Van Hoytemma was the cinematographer. Now, I developed a very deep bias for Hoyte ever since I watched the Spike Jonze film Her, so I was not surprised when he also delivered in Dunkirk. The shots were amazing, brilliantly composed to reinforce the feelings of hopelessness and fear that were likely going through the minds of the British soldiers. Look at these:

Not another movie about life on Mars

LIFE (2017)
Director: Daniel Espinosa
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson
Acting: 7
Score: 4
Cinematography: 7
Dialogue: 7
Watch again? No
Story: 7



Life is a good movie. A group of astronauts discover evidence of life in Mars and their research goes downhill from there. The plot is simple and there isn't a lot of heavy acting with the exception of Jake Gyllenhaal of course who delivers raw emotion (bias lol). The movie is predictable and it does rely heavily on suspense or maybe too much to keep the audience going.

(http://www.slashfilm.com/life-trailer-jake-gyllenhaal/, 2017)

This story doesn't follow the new trend of sci-fi movies that take a calmer approach and rely on feeling and intelligence like Arrival, Interstellar and Ex Machina, however, it is a safe choice for a movie night. The rating for the score is pretty low because it isn't memorable and there is so much that can be done with music with a movie like this.

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The Salesman (2016)

Acting:                  10

Score(music):          6

Cinematography:   8

Dialogue:               10

Rewatchable:        Yes

A man, a teacher and part-time actor, moves with his wife, also an actress, to a new apartment. One day, he comes home to find his wife assaulted, and then begins a search for the culprit while she struggles to deal with the trauma.

Simple story right?

Wrong.

The Salesman is one of those you are just glad you watched when its over. The movie is laden with themes of forgiveness, revenge and humiliation, but despite all this, it manages to stay clear from being preach-y or too pedantic.

Asghar Farhadi, who directed and wrote the script, did a great a job of just telling a story and leaving all the interpretation for the viewer (At least that's how I see it). The writing was just brilliant. In the movie, the man (Emad) and his wife (Rana) are both stage actors doing a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Asghar did a great job with finding parallels between the play and his movie and interweaving the narrative.

A clutch of great acting all-round, Taraneh Alidoosti (as Rana) stood out for me. I felt she executed her mostly traumatized character well. Shahab Hosseini was great also. His gradual descent from loving, caring teacher into someone driven only by blind revenge is laudable. In fact, he won the Cannes Award for Best Actor for this role.

The Salesman won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film (Its an Iranian film), among numerous other awards. Rightly deserved too. However, Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian, boycotted the Oscars in protest of Trump's travel ban.

2016 was a good year for film!

So the Oscars start in a few hours and we decided to come up with a list of our faves! Low-key we feel it's not right to make this list yet considering we haven't seen movies like Lion, 20th Century women and Fences. Also, the three of us had to compromise because we couldn't list out all our favorites. Generally, 2016 was a good year for film.
Let's get into it... quickly...

12) NEON DEMON-

You either really hate this movie or appreciate it. There's no in between as this movie obviously has no mass appeal. It's a very experimental film and even though not all of us agreed it should be on this list we admit that it is daring and it perfectly shows Nicolas Refn's devotion to style and surrealism.


11) THE INVITATION-

The invitation was a good thriller with a very good performance from Logan Marshall-Green. The writing was really good and the cliffhanger at the end was amazing. It was one of our early faves of the year so it deserves a spot.



10) THE WITNESS-

The Witness premiered in 2015 at the New York Film Festival but was widely released in 2016 so it still counts :). This documentary leaves the viewer with so much empathy especially in the final scene when the last experiment was conducted. It also unravels the different ways the average person perceives fear (which we absolutely loved). The Witness will definitely keep you thinking.




9) LOVING- 
We all loved Loving! (sorry we had to do it). It was really beautiful and touching. Ruth Negga was the star of this emotional drama. We love how Jeff Nichols sticks to his plot-driven with a heavy emotional core film pattern.

(Nocturnal Animals would have been 9 but some people disagreed)

8) SWISS ARMY MAN-
The weirdest movie ever. However we appreciated it for what it was. It was quirky, funny and sad and we all learnt a thing or two about friendship. The Chemistry between Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano was amazing and of course the dialogue was filled with dry humor but that's our thing anyway. P.s all our friends hated it but that's ok lol.


7) ARRIVAL-
We have been rooting for Dennis Villenueve since Enemy and Prisoners. He is so unique and we always end up feeling a bit smarter after watching any of  his films. It's so cute how he tries to simplify his films, according to Amy Adams he described Arrival as a 'a story a mother tells to her child'. No Dennis, it was multi-layered. He has captured us again with this well put together film on human relations through language. It’s the most 'realistic' Sci-fi we have seen.

6) MOONLIGHT- 

Where do we even begin? Barry Jenkins left us wide mouthed with this beauty. Moonlight easily had the best cinematography this year and a story so daring that we can only wonder what next Barry has in store. Also we loved how classical music was used in the movie, the juxtaposition of it all was just lit.

5) MANCHESTER BY THE SEA- 

There’s nothing better than a well-acted simple family drama that draws you in. Manchester by the sea is an amazing drama and whilst everyone is praising Casey Affleck, the phenomenal Lucas Hedges should not be forgotten. Let’s just say one of us cried during the house fire scene…

4) THE WITCH- 

This movie was a stand out and it's sad to see it went under radar during awards season. Perfect writing, beautiful cinematography and a striking dialogue. This is the definition of bone-chilling-art-house horror.

3) THE LOBSTER-

Once again a fascinating dark comedy with a surprisingly strong performance from Colin Farrel. Words can't even begin to describe what we felt about The Lobster. It was simply amazing and ridiculous at the same time. The narration throughout the movie made it the funniest movie of the year in our opinion. 

2) JACKIE-
Natalie Portman's acting range is crazy, and it will be very disappointing if she does not win the oscar, even worse if she loses it to Emma Stone. Everything to love about this art house biopic is in the review we posted earlier. Honestly. Truly.







1) SILENCE-

Martin Scorcese came back with this beautiful, intriguing, thematic masterpiece. It's like nothing he has ever done and it's evident he took his time. We definitely will not be forgetting about Silence, this profound story of religion, idolization and history accompanied by the amazing performance from Andrew Garfield was our favorite this season. The scene where Andrew's character had to react to the  'step on me' instruction was so intense and striking it easily became one of our best movie scenes. We surprisingly all agreed this deserved a best directing Oscar nomination. And we have no words to the few critics who said it was 'punishingly long'. 




Honorable mentions:
Nocturnal Animals, The Shallows, Don't Breathe, Hell or High Water, Cafe Society. These movies were great but we wanted to stick to 12.

Loving (2016)

Acting: 10
Score: 10
Cinematography: 8
Dialogue: 8
Rewatchable: Yes!

Jeff Nichols makes things small. Loving is a small movie in the sense that the movie focuses on a small portion of the events on which it is based.

If a director like Spielberg or Eastwood made this film, there would be sweeping courtroom battles, huge constructed period sets, so much gra gra that would threaten to drown you. But Jeff Nichols...he makes things small.

The movie is about an interracial couples fight to remain married, and how that fight led to a constitutional change in the US whereby miscegenation laws were repealed.

It is a really beautiful and touching film. And a pattern is starting to appear for Jeff Nichols films...plot-driven movies with an emotional core and restrained delivery.

Jeff Nichols wrote the screenplay and focused on the family and internal battles of the couple. Ruth Negga absolutely nailed her role, and has a well-deserved Oscar nomiination for Best Actress. I really hope she wins. (ANYONE apart from Meryl Streep or Emma Stone. Please)

Joel Edgerton, who is now working with Jeff Nichols for the second time, was solid. Nothing too fancy. In terms of supporting actors, Michael Shannon makes a delightful appearance later in the movie as a Life Magazine photographer that interviews the couple. I just like seeing Shannon in movies.

But the actor that was the most joy to watch, apart from Ruth Negga was this guy, Nick Kroll.

Whenever he was on screen, there was just something...a feeling I got that he was holding back. I will definitely be monitoring any other future projects he has. He has the feels of a dope actor.

Stills from the movie:

Swiss Army Man (2016)

Acting: 7
Dialogue: 8
Score: 10
Cinematography: 10
Rewatchable: Sort of!

Synposis: A guy stranded on an island finds a dead body that can do lots of things, like a Swiss army knife. The two of them embark on a journey back to civilization.

This movie was great! It started out slow, but by the time the end credits rolled I was sort of sad it finished. Paul Dano, possibly one of the most underrated actors alive (along with Michael Shannon, Peter Sarsgaard and Kelly O'Reilly) does a killer job as usual.

Daniel Radcliffe, whose last few movies have been in attempt to break out of the type cast the Harry Potter series placed him in, surprisingly delivers too. (It's really hard to act as a dead person, guys)

But the shining point in the movie was the songs. I was expecting the movie to get Best Original Song and Best Score oscar nominations. But it was overlooked, sadly. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the writers and directors, really made a gem debut.

Stills from the movie:

Arrival (2016)

Acting: 8
Dialogue: 10
Cinematography: 10
Score: 10
Rewatchable: Yes!

 Denis Villeneuve is quickly becoming my favourite director. Every Villeneuve film I have seen - starting with my accidental discovery of his first Englsh speaking film, Prisoners - has managed to blow me out of my seat. And its very hard for me to get blown out off my seat.

 Arrival - A sci-fi movie in which aliens come to earth in huge, black, marble-like ships for some obscure reason. Then here is the nice twist: instead of focusing on some apocalyptic, doomsday confrontation, the film centres on the struggle to understand these aliens and why they are here using linguistic experts around the world.

 This film is very unique, and I feel it should win the Best Picture Oscar award. The score was brilliant; On the Nature of Daylight is used in the beginning and end of the film. The ending of this movie is probably the most well-executed you will ever see. But that's for another blog post.

 Another aspect of this film that was spectacular was the cinematography. I am a sucker for nice images, and Bradford Young's cinematography was consistently awesome. Juzz look at:

I was delighted to find that Bradford Young had worked on an acclaimed Nigerian film, Mother of George, in 2013. So now I am definitely rooting for him to win that Cinematography Oscar.

Villeneuve has 2 more films on the works now. The sequel to Blade Runner, and Dune. Pepper us. Before I leave let me bless your eyes again: