CineFix is back with another great list looking at one of my favorite movie genres: the thriller. As always, CineFix does such a fantastic job with their lists (which you can find an archive of at their YouTube channel if you click here). Their top 10 lists aren’t so much just straightforward lists, but a breakdown of the different elements that make up their topic, then picking one outstanding example of each element to put together their 10 selections. For example: with the thriller there are films that rely on tension, physical danger, comedic suspense, film noir, etc. As always, they usually pick as one of their considerations what I would have chosen as the actual number, but they do such an educational job of moving through film-not just recent movies but the entire history of cinema-that I always learn something or find a film I need to add to my watch list by perusing their picks. If your first experience with Martin McDonagh’s particular brand of dark humor was Three Bridges Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, then you really need to go back and watch Seven Psychopaths and on of CineFix’s picks: In Bruges. What did you find missing, not just from the honorable mentions, but from the list entirely? As his Annihilation opens today, I thought the exclusion of Alex Garland’s Ex Machina was particularly glaring, but what stood out to you?
Please forgive the off topic nature of this, but I saw the Oscar nominated animated shorts today. The one i’m rooting for is Negative Space, which is haunting. I thought it was dark and creepy too, but I went on the internet and read many opinions, and people seem to be accepting the poignancy as a pure thing, untainted by undertones of menace. So who am I to argue? I just thought it was amazing.
Meanwhile the obligatory Pixar short ran before Cars 3 so I had not seen it, and there was nothing to recommend it at all, not the animation, not the story. Only a visual element, the creature, a being made out of items from a lost and found box, made the short remotely interesting. But they asked me to care when he died, after a theee minute short where he taught a life lesson to a bully. You guys are good, over at Pixar, but you aren’t THAT good. Don’t get cocky.
It was pretty much a wash this year. Kobe Bryant narrating the story of his life, with a John Williams score (seriously, I am not being funny, they actually got the great John Williams). It felt like a vanity project, and I feel the need to reeeaaaly emphasize that word, vanity. Also, a film with photorealistic frogs exploring a rich person’s house, mysteriously vacant, with signs of partying from the night before, as well as clues that a crime has been comitted. (SPOILER: a corpse surfaces in the pool at the end, and because of the bloating, he looks like a frog. Sadly I am not making this up). And an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes, which was great, yet somehow a little safe after all the fairy tale sendups and mashups i’ve gone through since reading the book as a little kid. The animation was pretty underwhelming too. I look forward to these all year. Hopefully the live action ones will be better, and the world’s animators (and academy voters) get thier act together when next year rolls around.
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Equally off-topic, I saw Finding Vincent, and you were right, far superior to Coco and one of the biggest snubs among the nominations. Astonishing feat of animation.
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It’s just so beautiful, the animation technique so unique and and the subject so gut-wrenching. The movie fills you with joy and sorrow simultaneously. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it.
I did not mean to cavalierly dismiss the animated short nominees, the one with the frogs for example was stunning in terms of the animation. I believed in those frogs, and I get why it is being recognized. I just could not get with it as a film. A really gifted person can master the techniques necessary to make an amazing work of art, but I don’t think you can be taught to insert a soul.
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