Dear Under Southern Eyes Readers,
Yes I did forget to post my customary round-up of the films I saw in 2014 and before we knew it, January 2015 had already gone and February 2015 was set to fly past as well!
Well the usual bad news is that whatever Hollywood put out that I deigned to watch was not great even where it covered subject matter that I was interested in. Point in case was Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” which in spite of its ambitions and production was an underwhelming experience. Other disappointing films were the Coen brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis”, a work which I felt did a disservice to the life and outlook of US folk guitarist Dave von Ronk whose experiences provided source material for the movie; Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” which used its source material to create something that was frankly pornographic and depraved; and Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises” which for me was frankly dishonest in brushing over the suffering of people during the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in Tokyo and the fire that followed, and whitewashing the course of militarism and aggression that Japan followed in the 1930s – 40s.
So the main cinematic joys of my year came down to independent cinema and old Hollywood crackers like Frankenheimer’s classic “The Manchurian Candidate”; the Spierig brothers’ quirky “Predestination”; Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s vampire mockumentary “What We Do in the Shadows” and Michael Leigh’s sprawling “Mr Turner”. Some movies that could have been very good but ended up being sunk by their plots or narrative structures were Bandele’s “Half of a Yellow Sun” and Sissako’s “Timbuktu”. The Acquisto / Reis film “A Guerra da Beatriz” was a moving story of justice and reconciliation and a welcome highlight of the year.
Well it’s time to put my head and neck back to the grind-stone to find more interesting, informative and, above all, entertaining films that actually have some integrity and which mean what they say. Happy film-going for 2015!
Nausika / Under Southern Eyes