Movies of 2014 Part 4: My Top Twenty

No preamble, just remember that geese can be troublesome.

20) Volver (2006, Pedro Almodóvar)

Another part of my slight Almodóvar binge earlier in the year, this one was expedited after Josh put it on his top ten films of the Filmspotting era (i.e. post 2005). And I loved it.

I have a theory about Almodóvar, that not only would most of his films pass the Bechdel test with flying colours but in fact many would not pass an anti-Bechdel test, that is that two named male characters have a non-female related conversation throughout the film (Hable con Ella is a possibility but I think the females in their life feature prominently in every conversation between the two male protagonists). Volver is probably the richest example of this type of his films, dealing with several complex and interesting female characters and their relationships with each other.

Of course, being Almodóvar there’s a strong sense of the ‘wacky’ here as well, centring around the single mother figure of Raimunda and the uncanny reappearance of her mother’s ghost following her death. Her mother’s ghost is not, it seems, a haunting force but rather a benevolent and convenient one, appearing only to help those in need.

Where it goes I found very funny and very moving, driven along the way by Penélope Cruz’s powerhouse performance in the milieu she works best, Spanish melodrama. But Almodóvar shows again his flair for situational jokes that make it an enjoyable journey to take.

One note, if you haven’t seen this film, don’t read the IMDb page because I feel the plot summary listed there is kind of a massive spoiler. I got the full effect of this film going in knowing nothing.

19) Beau Travail (1999, Claire Denis)

So another point of constant disagreement with my brother, I’m enjoying the vision I have right now of him reading this top 20 and choking on whatever beer he’s drinking when he sees how high this is.

This makes it into my top 20 for a simple reason: that although I struggled with the film as I watched it, it has absolutely stuck with me for the rest of the year.

A very minimalist, stream-of-consciousness style narrative tells the story of a troop of the French foreign legion in Africa led by the enigmatic Galoup (played by the equally enigmatic Denis Lavant), but ultimately it shows a portrait of a man’s mind imploding under the pressure he places on it.

It’s never made entirely clear what sorts of pressure Galoup is exerting: on the surface he’s trying to repress jealousy, there are fairly overt hints that he’s repressing racist tendencies but hidden in the subtext is a strong homoerotic repression as well.

This all comes to a head with the final sequence which is frankly one of the most gloriously incomprehensible final scenes I’ve ever seen, and it’s this more than anything that made a huge impression on me and has stuck with me. I still can’t quite wrap my head around it all but it provides the most wonderful and cathartic apogee to all the muted and ethereal action preceding it, while at the same time standing in razor-sharp juxtaposition to the film’s overall aesthetic. It’s a great work of art.

18) Shame (2011, Steve McQueen)

I definitely watched Steve McQueen’s filmography in a weird order, starting with Hunger then leaping ahead to 12 Years a Slave before leaping backwards to this sophomore effort. At the same time, it worked out well for this because I believe this is my favourite of the three.

There was actually a kind of trepidation when I approached this, because I’d heard a lot about it being sort of an ugly and confronting film to look at. That’s all true, but I also found this the least confronting of McQueen’s films so maybe there is something to be said for watching them in this order.

Michael Fassbender plays an admirable supporting turn here opposite the star of the film, Michael Fassbender’s penis. But  he is outstanding inhabiting this troubled, obsessive character and embodying his struggle.

The story is unsettling, but in a genuinely engrossing and emotionally engaging way, no doubt  helped by the spirited presence of one of the finest actors working today, Carey Mulligan as Fassbender’s penis’ owner’s sister.

Yeah, it sounds weird but I genuinely enjoyed this film. It’s fascinating, challenging drama.

17) The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun, 1979, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

From Fassbender to Fassbinder. I knew absolutely nothing about Fassbinder except that a German bloke I used to chat to on the IMDb message boards used to revere him as one of the greatest all-time filmmakers, so I thought I’d give him a look.

My first impression was sublime. The look and feel of this wartime epic is just gorgeous, and has a similar aesthetic to your best Antonioni films.

The film was moreover a terrific bit of storytelling. It tells the story of Maria Braun, a beautiful and enterprising German woman, and her life in the final stages of World War II and trying to forge a life for herself in its wake.

Certainly in scope it puts me in mind of my number 7 film of last year, Underground, only instead of almost parodical surrealism, The Marriage of Maria Braun is characterised by a grounded sense of reality, and the drama is shot primarily through the perceptive eyes of Maria, whose ruthlessness on the surface belies a frightened vulnerability and a repressed desire for peace and happiness.

It’s a fairly obvious metaphor for the country itself (again like Underground), yet produces a very effective and powerful fable.

16) Eight Men Out (1988, John Sayles)

I’ve been recommending this film to my brother for the best part of the year, owing to how much he liked Moneyball, and I would reiterate that recommendation for anybody who enjoyed it, because this has a similar vibe of a sports film that isn’t so much about the sport itself but what goes on behind the scenes.

Telling the story of the Black Sox scandal - where the unbeatable Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 world series – the film covers all the bases (yes, pun intended… I will wait here and accept your applause before continuing) in a fair, yet provocative manner: the players’ perspective of feeling underpaid and underappreciated, the bookies looking to manipulate the odds, the coach caught in the middle. Sayles also manages to squeeze in the message that the spirit of baseball equates to the spirit of America, only he doesn’t out and out say those exact words like Kevin Costner obviously wanted to in Field of Dreams but rather introduces it as a powerful implication in the wake of this damaging scandal.

The ensemble cast, including John Cusack, John Mahoney, Michael Rooker and David Strathairn (also Charlie Sheen but let’s ignore him), puts on a fantastic show, but ultimately Sayles just does a great job of pulling the myriad elements of this puzzle together to make a really intelligent sports movie.

It’s also genuinely heartbreaking at times and stuck with me for a long time; I don’t get that impact from your standard underdogs-triumph sports movie.

15) Our Hospitality (1923, John G Blystone/Buster Keaton)

Another film I’ve been pimping all year, this was by far the standout of my early-2014 Buster Keaton binge, for a number of reasons.

The premise is charming in and of itself: Keaton is the son of a man killed as part of an ongoing violent feud between two families in the deep south. When he learns that he is has inherited property in the area, he goes to investigate and, on the journey down, falls unwittingly in love with the daughter of the opposing family. When he sets foot in her house to meet the family (and realises who they are), he learns the opposing family’s code of southern hospitality forbids them from killing him provided he remain a guest on their property.

Of course, being Keaton it would be a fairly stolid effort if it just revolved around the situational comedy of the family begrudgingly hosting their guest (which is, though, also entertaining), so he resolves to try and escape from the house, leading to all sorts of Keaton-esque hijinks, now-you-see-me-now-you-don't jokes and entertaining chase sequences.

It all builds, however, to one of the most spectacular stunt sequences outside The General, which was not only hilarious but actually thrilling and kind of mind-boggling. This whole film is just a massive amount of fun.

14) The World's End (2013, Edgar Wright)

Speaking of massive amounts of fun, this is another fine example. The third and – I think – best of Wright’s Cornetto trilogy, I completely embraced this comedy in ways I just didn’t for the previous two films, whatever the reasons.

The main reason I was completely taken in by this was, pure and simple, Simon Pegg. I’ve known that Pegg is an incredibly gifted comedic performer for a very long time (basically, since before he was cool), but I think he reaches the pinnacle of character comedy as the flippantly immature and rambunctious Gary King.

The film traverses a very similar path to the previous two films in the trilogy, in having a group of people going through the fairly mundane motions of everyday existence, blissfully oblivious to the dark forces gathering momentum around them. I found the adversaries in this film perhaps a little derivative (I mean Wright is a pastiche filmmaker, but I mean that they didn't add anything surprising), but they remain a formidable opponent to our heroes, and bring the film to a very different place in the questions they ask.

Like I said, I’m not quite sure of what held me back from fully embracing Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but looking at what I so loved about this film, I think I found the characters in Shaun of the Dead a bit lacking, and the plot setup in Hot Fuzz too slow, whereas in this the characters are all multi-dimensional comic creations and the plot just whizzes forward. I just had more fun with this than I have with any Wright-Pegg-Frost creation since Spaced.

13) The Skin I Live In (La Piel que Habito, 2011, Pedro Almodóvar)

Yes the number one film of my Almodóvar binge, I’d heard good things about this, and yet felt completely left-fielded by what it turned out to be.

Essentially Almodóvar’s foray into the horror genre of sorts, this maintains his fantastical imagination while keeping his focus firmly on questions of gender and the body politic.

Antonio Banderas is chilling as the brilliant but sinister plastic surgeon who is experimenting on a type of superior skin substitute, and really shows depths to his range that I surprisingly never picked up from The Mask of Zorro (despite the support of the Magic Taco character, from the Z to the O to the Double-R O).

Ultimately this film is just a brilliant piece of work, wildly creative in its narrative and visuals, but also cutting right to the bone in the questions it asks about appearance and identity.

12) Show People (1928, King Vidor)

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that many people reading this (Hi, Mother!) haven’t caught up with this film yet, so I’ll just say if you enjoyed The Artist a few years ago, definitely give this one a go.

Made during the glory days of silent cinema, it tells a very self-referential and self-effacing story of a small-town Georgia girl who travels to Hollywood to become a star, and coincidentally, manages to achieve it.

The relationship between Peggy Pepper and her first patron and friend, Billy Boone, forms the heart of the story, but ultimately the film lines up a fight-to-the-death between comedy and drama or, more aptly, low vs high art.

All of the satirical jokes and physical comic sequences are spot on to make this a fun piece to watch, but ultimately this surprised me because of how ahead of its time it feels. I feel like this is one of the earliest examples of Hollywood taking shots at itself, and is so obviously a big influence on The Artist (which I loved) that it deserves to be more widely seen.

11) World's Greatest Dad (2009, Bobcat Goldthwait)

**So I was going to do a major spoiler warning here but the IMDb plot description does the same thing… Still, if you haven’t seen this, do yourself a favour and watch the film before reading this or the IMDb page**

I think like many people, I heard of – and caught up with – this film in the wake of Robin Williams’ suicide this year, after which a lot of people pointed at this as one of Williams’ most rounded performances.

Not only is that true, but the film was worth catching up with for so many reasons. Firstly, I love black comedy, and this maintains absolute perfection in its tone throughout its running time. It’s not funny; in fact it’s unrelentingly bleak and depressing, but there are times when the cynicism is so absurdly inflated that the only possible response is to laugh.

Williams plays a failed writer (/teacher) called Lance, who is father to an unpleasantly antisocial teenage kid who Lance discovers is into autoerotic asphyxiation. When his son's hobby goes inevitably wrong, he decides to honour his son by whitewashing over the perverse details and turning it into a teen-angst suicide instead.

Basically it’s just one long skit of dramatic irony as the people around him become profoundly moved and affected in various ways by the version of events that Lance has created, and Lance finds himself out of his depth as the lie takes on dimensions he hadn't anticipated. This is where it gets very funny and remarkably sad at the same time.

And what really makes one sad catching up with this now is that “very funny and remarkably sad” is the perfect description of Williams himself. 

10) Caché (2005, Michael Haneke)

It took me a long time to catch up with this effort from Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke but it was evidently well worth it.

Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche play a married couple who are mysteriously persecuted by an individual posting them surveillance footage shot outside their house. It’s reminiscent of Lynch’s Lost Highway in its setup, but where Lynch veers off the road into weird metaphysical Lynchean territory, Haneke presents a tightly wound and coherent moral thriller.

Auteuil is wonderfully ambivalent as a man obviously struggling with his conscience, which Haneke plays out through a variety of different sequences where he is in turn defensive, aggressive, and awkwardly repentant and deferential.

The central mystery is, of course, left mostly unanswered, although Haneke plays his little tricks with the final sequence to establish a prevalent, easy-fit theory and spark off internet debate. As seductive as the theory is, I think it’s equally seductive to think of this as a sort of nightmare parable (Lynchean in ambiguity) with no easy explanation. Either way it’s a cracking film.

9) The Fisher King (1991, Terry Gilliam)

So I finally caught up with this before Robin Williams’ death, but maybe the events surrounding it made this film climb in my estimation as I reflected back on it, and his performance in particular.

The truth is I wasn’t entirely on board with this film when I first watched it. It seemed a bit long, and Jeff Bridges felt a little miscast at times due to his characteristic nonchalance which seemed misplaced in such a heavy-lifting role.

However, it continued to resonate with increasing volume the more I looked back on it: how Williams’ manic energy is used so economically, how Mercedes Ruehl breathes such spirit and life into what could have been a stock character, how Bridges’ unrelenting impassivity becomes his greatest vulnerability.

Most of all it stuck with me how Gilliam’s typical chaotic, frenetic storytelling is used to create something truly beautiful here, as he puts on the screen little more than his own grappling with the complexities of the human mind. And that final sequence, man it makes me smile just thinking about it.

8) Chungking Express (Chung Hing Sam Lam, 1994, Kar Wai Wong)

Well, people who’ve been paying attention should have known this one was coming. It just wouldn’t be a top ten of the year without a Wong Kar Wai film somewhere in there, would it?

Funnily enough I watched this not knowing that my number 6 film of last year, Fallen Angels, was a follow-up to this film, and yet I did pick up the similar themes while I was watching it. It’s a film about lonely people and the tentative connections they make even while they wallow in their own isolation. It’s so Hong Kong.

Wong’s characteristic eye for the surreal and Christopher Doyle’s cinematography again combine in sublime ways for a lush and vivid look at the metropolis, while the film is elevated above your standard beautiful-looking film by the presence of my favourite actor Tony Leung doing his usual insouciant brooding.

As with all Wong films it will take a revisit to wrap my head fully around the scope of this film, but watching it for the first time it’s just sweet, sad and at times surprisingly hilarious.

7) Close-Up (Nema-ye Nazdik, 1990, Abbas Kiarostami)

And now after my discussion of Certified Copy two posts ago, we return back to Kiarostami’s native Iran and more of his characteristic meta-narrative.

This cute, funny little film plays out as a low-budget courtroom drama, telling the trail of Mr Sabzian, who conned his way into a wealthy Iranian family’s home and life pretending to be the famous Iranian film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Kiarostami keeps his camera throughout most of the film focussed on faces, and peers through the changing expressions to try and reveal motivations. The key question in this film is why? What was Mr Sabzian after, money? Or did this poor nobody just want to feel important, respected?

The really sweet thing is that even in his humiliation, Kiarostami gives Sabzian his moment in the spotlight. He’s able to argue eloquently why he meant no harm, no disrespect, he just has an incredibly close and personal relationship to the movies by and about Iranians – a theme that runs throughout Kiarostami’s early works.

There’s a certain sense of mental unbalance in him but Kiarostami treats Sabzian with the respectful fascination of any documentarian with an intriguing subject. Although this isn’t a documentary per se, like much Persian cinema it straddles that line between fictional narrative and reality footage and does so in very humanistic, interesting ways.

6) Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell)

Speaking of humanistic films, this isn’t one in any way.

This non-Archers Archers film - it’s curious to note - was released around the same time as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (actually according to IMDb this was earlier, although didn't get a US release until the following year), both dealing with unstable and malevolent people with parental issues.

What really worked for me in this film is that the atmosphere is just genuinely creepy, and the main character, with the hilariously non-descript name of Mark Lewis, is a completely unnerving, frightening person.

Where Kiarostami used his camera in Close-Up as an instrument of reverence and respect, Michael Powell here celebrates its other use, to expose and lay bare raw emotions – in this case terror.

The character of Helen, Mark’s downstairs lodger, provides the conscience and voice of reason as she tries her spirited best to befriend the lonely and deranged figure upstairs. Where the relationship goes in revealing Mark’s disturbing inner life still makes my skin crawl thinking about it.

When I think of bludgeoning horror films like, well, the Evil Dead series, it really makes me appreciate the subtle atmosphere of dread that older films like this and Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques manage to capture.

5) The Hunt (Jagten, 2012, Thomas Vinterberg)

Ah, here it is. My brother’s number 1 film of last year and his number 1 most-browbeaten recommendation all of this year. For those who don’t know my own story behind this film, I had the chance to watch this on my flight to New York in 2013, but didn’t because although I like Mads Mikkelsen it wasn’t enough of an enticement over the other movies on offer. Then I later discovered it was directed by Thomas Vinterberg and I railed for months about QANTAS’ incompetence in failing to recognise and broadcast the major selling point of this.

So, having finally caught up with it, its presence in my top 5 should be evidence enough that it managed to live up to expectations. Yes, it affected me very gravely, including the fact that I watched it in two parts during my lunch breaks of two consecutive days at work, and the second day I just had this dreadful trepidation about continuing it, because I was still so haunted from the first part.

But this is what Vinterberg does so well, at least in the now-two films of his that I’ve seen, he just yanks you out of your comfort zone into the uncomfortable chair, clamps your eyelids open and makes you watch as he applies psychological torture to his characters.

Unpleasant as the whole experience sounds, and is, he deals with very controversial but pertinent subject matter. In Jagten his subject is that of child abuse, with particular reference to the false accusation and the impact that this has on the alleged perpetrator, those around him but also the accuser themselves.

While it tends to play out in a similar narrative arc to your usual wrongly-accused drama, Vinterberg films some unforgettably surprising twists that just elevate this to another level of haunting outrage.

There are shades in this film similar to Atonement, but Atonement where the false accuser is completely innocent. In fact what makes this film so powerfully affecting is the fact that there isn’t an unsympathetic character in there. Everybody’s reactions and actions are so understandably human. And that’s what Vinterberg does best: provoking by means of holding up a mirror and showing us just how ugly we can be.

4) Weekend (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)

Yes, it finally happened. A Godard film cracked my top… anything, really, well anything actually impressive. Do I finally ‘get’ him as a filmmaker? Oh my good heavens no I don’t, but this film is just too fantastic for words. So here’s some words, to describe exactly how fantastic it is:

This is a very, very weird film. There’s no particularly clear narrative, despite the fact that it follows the same two characters on their journey, there are a number of very typical Godard dutch angles, surreal dialogue muted under heavy-handed musical scores, weird lighting effects and so forth, but somehow it created an overall effect that I loved while I was watching, and an impression that stayed with me.

I do love dystopias, as most of you should know, and I also love surrealism in film, and this brings those two together in a wonderfully matter-of-fact way. There’s no reason given why the countryside is littered with abandoned, burning cars, or why people keep spontaneously breaking into belligerent fist-fights, it’s just there.

There’s an episodic feel to this which usually might be seen as a weakness but when it all contributes to a thematic mood, and it can’t detract from the narrative (since the narrative doesn’t exist), it just serves to heighten my interest.

But most importantly, some of the sequences in here are just gob-smacking. In particular, the traffic jam sequence which consists of a seven-minute-long continuous tracking shot, with constant action and frenetic movement: it’s a work of absolutely sublime art and could be a short masterpiece all by itself. It has a start, a middle and an end – and that’s really all it needs.

The film, too, has all of these elements and although it doesn’t make a conventional journey through them, it definitely makes a memorable one.

3) Raise the Red Lantern (Da Hong Deng Long Gao Gao Gua, 1991, Yimou Zhang)

Well after so much bitching in my bottom 31 about some of the choices on that Buzzfeed list, I can report that this film is at the pinnacle of the subgroup of films I watched purely due to its presence on that list.

This lush Chinese melodrama tells the story of a group of four concubine ‘sisters’ playing a cutthroat political game with their master, who decides nightly at which of his concubines’ houses he will ‘raise the red lantern’ and spend the night.

It’s all told through the eyes of the newcomer of the four, who comes with the inherent advantage of being the youngest, but suffers from an initial naivety about the dangerous game already being played within the complex.

Aside from the gorgeous look of the film, I was just captivated throughout by the taut intrigue of the drama and the complex web of political deception practiced in various ways by the sisters, in particular our protagonist as she begins to develop her cunning. At times the ritualistic practice of the household is mocked, while at others it’s a gateway for subterfuge.

This is the film that made Farewell, my Concubine such a disappointment, because although that film has a far grander vision, this film manages to say so much more within a narrow, claustrophobic setting. It’s just masterful storytelling.

2) One Day in September (1999, Kevin Macdonald)

For the second time, I have a documentary at number two on my list, and again it makes it there because of the impeccable construction of its narrative. Unlike Man on Wire, my number 2 film of 2011 though, this is far from an uplifting film experience.

The story of the hostage situation at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where a group of Palestinian terrorists broke into the compound of the Israeli Olympic contingent and held a group of athletes and team officials at gunpoint, this film plays out the situation as it happened (so much of it was captured on camera anyway) and intersperses it with a fascinating set of vox pop interviews from those closely involved.

This is a harrowing, spellbinding account of the events, and as I watched the film my initial feeling of hostility towards the perpetrators slowly grew into a flaming ball of outrage at the media, the officials involved, basically everybody who had a hand in this whole horrific mess.

To be honest, before Spielberg’s completely shit 2005 film Munich I had never heard of this hostage event, but after seeing this film, the feeling that people like me could be unaware of it for so long just further fueled my outrage.

The recent Sydney siege of course brought these events back into sharp focus as people started actually posting photos and descriptions online of what the police were doing. I simply can’t fathom how fucking unconscionably detached from reality you have to be to think this is a good idea, just like I can’t fathom how fucking unconscionably detached from reality the television crews in Munich had to be to film the top-secret police operation as it was happening and just hope that the terrorists didn’t have any of the myriad television sets they knew were in the room tuned to the news.

Kevin Macdonald, who also made the gripping 2003 documentary Touching the Void, hits an absolute home run here. Aside from just being a tense thriller, this is a provocative and challenging film document and a chilling reality check.

I don’t know, should I have a drumroll for the big reveal?

….Sigh...

1) Her (2013, Spike Jonze)

So when I saw The Wolf of Wall Street, I had no hesitation at locking in the rock-bottom slot. Probably a few days later when I watched this, it slotted very comfortably into my top spot of the year. I wasn’t as finite about it then, but I knew it would take something really very special to top this because this, in itself, is really very special. In fact when I saw it I declared that it was my film of the decade so far, and while I’ve had nearly all year to reflect on that statement I haven’t considered revising it. After all, the decade is still only four years old.

What won me over with this film was firstly, as you know, Mother, I love dystopias. But there are dystopias like, say, William Gibson’s Neuromancer or even Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar that are so far removed from the present day that they’re easy to detach from as just the realm of fantasy and imagination.

Spike Jonze here delivers an eerily uncanny future world that is so familiar as to be practically recognisable, so all of his speculations hit home every time. The feeling of detachment and isolation brought on by an overreliance on technology is territory well covered by so many internet articles I’ve read on my smartphone, but never before has it been brought to life so vividly as here.

Into this dreary drone of automatism steps the inimitable Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore, a lonely guy who spends his professional life writing surrogate heartfelt letters for clients unable to express themselves to their nearest and dearest (another bit of speculative satire that rings so true).

When he plunges into an unusual relationship with a revolutionary new operating system designed to become his perfect match, Theodore discovers that profound interpersonal connection that he’s been lacking, and realises the far more important implications of that discovery.

The voice performance by Scarlett Johansson as the OS ‘Samantha’ is astoundingly good: vibrant, nuanced and human far more than any OS – and any voice-only performance – has any right to be. Her character’s narrative arc, too, is one of the most poignant and moving stories brought to life in recent memory.

I think the only real criticisms I’ve read of this film (apart from those, like the Guardian’s review, that completely missed the whole fucking point of the story) are that there were false moments or that it seemed too long. For me every moment rang true and felt necessary, and the pace was absolutely perfect. There are also some wonderfully darkly comic moments that Jonze has always excelled at but delivers to their full potential here (most notably the hilariously awkward and sad surrogate sex sequence).

Really though, I’m just an old softy, and I’m a sucker for heartfelt romance stories. Despite its unusual foundation, I genuinely think this is one of the best romance stories told in the last… I don’t know, fifty years of cinema? I would almost go back to 1953, and Roman Holiday, that’s how much I enjoyed it. This was distinctly bittersweet, but utterly moving, humanistic and uplifting.

I enjoyed it the most of any film I saw this year, but I would also not hesitate to call it the best and cleverest film I saw as well.

So with that I finally and belatedly wrap up another month of year-end lists, and can rest for 11 months before starting it all again. Enjoy 2015, Mother!

Movies of 2014 Part 3: Bottom 31

So although I'm leaping backwards, and reversing my 'countdown' order to be a 'countup' order, there shouldn't be any real explanation necessary. This is my 31 least-favourite films I watched in 2014. Some of them were not necessarily bad, but something was lacking. Let's call it 'spirit'.

151) Stranger than Paradise (1984, Jim Jarmusch)

Jarmusch is very hit and miss for me. Not just in terms of overall films but even within the same film. This is definitely true of what most consider his masterpiece, Dead Man, which has an interesting aesthetic but I found otherwise completely intractable.

Then there are his earlier films like this, which all have the same sort of no-fucks-given nonchalance about story, character, and so forth – it’s all just about creating a vibe. Well, congratulations Jim. Most filmmakers manage to do that in a few shots and then bother with making a film; they don’t just draw out vibe-creation to 90 minutes.

152) St Joan (1957, Otto Preminger)

OK so I have big problems with Joan of Arc films in general, if only because I have big problems with the story of Joan of Arc.

But then comparing this film to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s harrowing La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc draws out so many more problems. Where Dreyer made effectively a horror film about suffering and anguish, Preminger here makes a very plodding and very sanctimonious epic that just held very little interest for me. It has a very history-on-screen vibe which I tend to find somewhat dull at the best of times, but then there’s also just an unfortunate pandering to religious mysticism that just rubbed me the wrong way.

153) Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati)

It’s quite possible I was just in the wrong frame of mind when I watched this, and maybe I need to educate myself with more Tati to understand what he’s doing here.

But this virtually silent, surreal walk through an alterna-Paris was interminable for me, and while there were some moments of mild amusement, they were few and far between. What’s more, once I realised a joke had just happened it made me sit up and pay attention only to find that that was it, and there wasn’t more coming.

It’s an interesting film I guess, but I didn’t find it an interesting watch at all.

154) Get Shorty (1995, Barry Sonnenfeld)

This is one of quite a few films that really should be part of the middling dross section of this write-up, but in sorting managed to fall through the cracks somehow.

Basically there’s nothing particularly wrong with this film that should earn it that ‘bottom 31’ achievement badge. It’s mildly amusing, certainly fast-paced enough to be entertaining, with a suitably convoluted Elmore Leonard plot and cast of characters.

It just feels like a massive Hollywood circlejerk though, even though it’s mercilessly lampooning Hollywood – because I know how much Hollywood loves self-satire. It had very little other meaning for me. Quite middling.

155) Where the Wild Things Are (2009, Spike Jonze)

Yep another one that really fell through the cracks. I’ve seen some mixed things said about this: Josh Larsen from Filmspotting had this on his top 10 films of the past nine years list for some reason, while reviews at the time seemed utterly lukewarm, which is why I didn’t go out and see it despite my interest in Spike Jonze.

I think people who really, really love this film also really, really loved the book. As far as I can tell it’s a very true adaptation, in terms of both the story and characters and more generally, the spirit of the thing. But I remember reading the book as a kid and being very nonplussed about it, and I think the same thing happened to me here.

And I’m not really sure what Josh sees in it, but then he tends to take an unseemly delight in anything that feels overly childish to me (we’ll get to more of that later), and this certainly does that.

156) Cabin in the Sky (1943, Vincente Minnelli/Busby Berkeley)

An interesting musical at least in terms of the concept, this film combines a great deal of gospel music with African American mysticism and produces a light-hearted story of love and redemption.

I found the tone quite puzzling, though: it felt actually quite dark at times and then at others it’s all a bit Vaudevillian and slapsticky. As a result I was never really captured by the characters and the film went by quite slowly.

157) Greatest Show on Earth (1952, Cecil B DeMille)

OK so I’m disappointed indeed that this one fell through the cracks, because I’ve been trying to argue with my brother that it’s not all that bad a film. And yet, here it is in my bottom 31.

This is a bit of an epic and a lot of a spectacle, but hidden within its showiness is actually a decent and human story about love and envy. The cast put together a great ensemble and there are some entertaining circus sequences.

OK, so it’s still mediocre. But it’s a damn sight better and less ridiculous than Around the World in 80 Days.

158) Desperado (1995, Robert Rodriguez)

This one didn’t really fall through the cracks. For a film with a western aesthetic that has lots of gunslinging action, I sure found it dull. It just seems very samey with this ultra-violent genre of modern popcorn western.

Perhaps I should have watched El Mariachi first. I don’t think there was any confusion about the characters or the situation, but maybe coming in with preconceived ideas of the premise helps you enjoy it more, or enjoy the nuances of Rodriguez’s work more.

Ha! Just kidding. He has no nuances.

159) Swing Time (1936, George Stevens)

This was definitely one that fell through the cracks, but at the same time I’m a bit confused as to why this did, and yet Carefree and White Christmas managed to pip that magic 150 mark: the former because it’s just as unmemorable a film as this but with some great dance sequences (as this also has), and the latter because it’s basically exactly the same plot.

I guess I was probably just harder on this film because it was on this list of Classic Movies you must see, and I’m not really sure why. I feel like they may have just had a board of Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicles and they faced away from it and threw a dart backwards.

I don’t know, personally I just found more charm in Easter Parade. And Top Hat.

160) Amarcord (1973, Federico Fellini)

OK, this can be the simplest and quickest write-up ever!

Why is this in my bottom 31? It’s a Fellini film.

You want more? Well there is one aspect of this film that makes it worth watching and memorable - and in fact is really great - but I can’t say what it is because I refuse to spoil it for my brother, who by the way has to SMS me just before he starts to watch this.

But apart from that, it’s full of Fellini-isms, and Fellini-ness, and as with all Fellini films, is just a huge mess that people inexplicably find some meaning or interest in. I’m getting tired of bothering with him.

161) Nashville (1975, Robert Altman)

Wow, this is three films on a row from that Buzzfeed list that find themselves in my bottom 31 because well, they just don’t really deserve to be considered ‘classic’ movies that ‘film buffs’ ‘should’ see.

So I didn’t really hate this as much as I’ve hated other Altman messes, like M*A*S*H, but it feels like a very heartless and ultimately pointless ensemble piece. Sort of an excuse for having an entire movie through-line, by instead having a bunch of different narratives that you can just cut to whenever one thread wears thin.

That criticism could, of course, be applied to any multi-linear narrative with varying success, but it’s definitely how I felt watching this. As I said above, I just didn’t see the point.

162) Syriana (2005, Stephen Gaghan)

Wow, speaking of messes. It’s quite possible that there could be a really intense and interesting thriller in here, and certainly that’s what the marketing told me to expect.

But it just all washed over me, and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of tangled storylines and puffed-up political agendas. There is, I think, a very fine balance between making a multi-thread thriller of big, ambitious scope and making a convoluted jumble.

As maligned as it often is, I think something like Crash manages to maintain and communicate its message very effectively through all its threads. Here, it just gets lost, for me at least.

163) Farewell my Concubine (Ba Wang Bie Ji, 1993, Kaige Chen)

Woah, jeez, another of those Buzzfeed films that finds itself down here, and in fact it looks like the bottom of the lot, which surprises me a bit.

There’s some decent stuff in this film – beautiful cinematography and a set of really solid performances – but enjoyment I think relies on a bunch of things. Firstly, you need to be happy to sit through a very long film; and secondly, you have to have a sensibility for operatic things. A fondness for Chinese opera in particular would come in very handy here.

I don’t have that sort of sensibility so it just seemed far too mired in self-pity and melodrama – which may indeed have still been OK if it didn’t just keep dragging on.

164) Secret Love (Bimilae, 2010, Hoon-I Ryu)

I have absolutely no idea why I watched this film. I had to IMDb it even to remind myself of what it was about.

Basically it’s been a very disappointing year in watching Korean cinema for me. Admittedly I didn’t seek out anything with huge reputations (this has a microscopic reputation, if at all) but this was a typical example of a film that has the same aesthetic and ambition of your best Korean cinema but just doesn’t live up to it.

It’s far too caught up in its own histrionics really to sell the convoluted thriller aspect, but ultimately it just lacked feeling as well. I don’t just mean ‘feeling’ in the sense of poignancy or melancholy but even the feeling of malevolence of an Oldboy could have done wonders with this. Just very meh.

165) American Hustle (2013, David O Russell)

Part of David O Russell’s inexplicable meteoric rise to critical acclaim concurrent with his meteoric crash to the depths of hell in terms of film quality, this film has the essence of a curious conman movie, until Russell got his glitter-coated, style-over-substance paws all over it.

At the same time, this has been one of the most astutely-slammed films of recent times, and it’ll be a bit of a cliché for me to heap more deserving shit on it. Instead I’m going to bow to a superior acid-tongued critic, The New York Post’s Kyle Smith who absolutely nails it in his first paragraph:

“So David O. Russell invited over some interesting actors (and also Bradley Cooper) to be filmed at a 1970s theme party. Too bad that footage didn’t make a movie.”

(Rest of his excellent review here)

166) Fletch (1985, Michael Ritchie)

I guess I had a mini project of watching some classic SNL-born comedies of the 80s this year, looking at what’s also coming in a few films time.

This is actually a fairly amusing noir satire with its head screwed on right and some jokes of varying success. So why does it find itself so low on my list? Two words: Chase, and Chevy. Not necessarily in that order.

I don’t know why but everything Chase does is dripping with irritating smug. I don’t find him funny, I definitely don’t find him likeable. He’s serviceable when he’s playing a parody of himself in Community, but when he was a youngster, I just don’t get his popularity.

167) Vanya on 42nd St (1994, Louis Malle)

Yeah, well, just to prove I’m not just anti-low-brow, have about the most high-brow film conceivable even lower down.

This is a really odd, and really oddly pointless film. Basically it’s film footage of an off-broadway theatre company doing their last minute run-through of an upcoming production of Uncle Vanya.

The cast is great; the truth that they bring to their line recitations is great; it retains the vibe of Chekhov’s play in a weird ‘meta’ way; but it’s still just footage of a line run.

168) I am Legend (2007, Francis Lawrence)

Perfectly predictable last man on earth fare. This is a complete cliché by this point, almost as complete and clichéd as the idea of casting Will Smith in anything, oh and why not make him the world’s leading scientician while you’re at it.

I’m actually OK with Will Smith in general, but I just think his charisma works best when he’s got someone to play off. And I mean a straight man, not a dog that doesn’t talk. I just didn’t enjoy his company enough to be stuck with him alone for most of this.

169) ¡Three Amigos! (1986, John Landis)

Yes, more SNL 80s comedy, and again more Chevy Chase dragging down his far more charming co-stars.

I guess it’s kind of unfair to compare this unfavourable with Galaxy Quest, since that film was obviously riffing on the same theme as this more than ten years later, but I just think that latter film made such a brilliant spoof of tacky 60s TV while at the same time wholeheartedly embracing its culture and its fandom.

¡Three Amigos! I feel doesn’t quite embrace the culture: it’s more caught up in its love of SNL cast members, so the three guys become disproportionately celebrated and everything else is just relegated to caricature. Some jokes work, but the film didn’t do anything for me.

170) Thor (2011, Kenneth Branagh)

So I did watch all of the pre-Avengers films in order to watch The Avengers this year. Both Captain America and the Avengers itself were in my middling sludge list, and this finds itself down here. Why, in particular?

I’m probably being a bit unfair on this, but as an Old Norse literature buff and a comic book ignoramus I was a bit taken aback a few years back to learn that there actually was a comic book called Thor and it did consist of a comic-book-afied version of the Old Norse universe.

So how successfully did it translate? Actually not too badly, which is why I think I’m being a bit unfair. I found it generally a bit formulaic and the action sequences lacked coherence for me, and Chris Hemsworth’s hair has far more acting ability than he does, but overall it was solid action fare.

171) Iron Man (2008, Jon Favreau)

So we move via Thor from the inexplicable popularity of a smug twerp in the 80s to the inexplicable popularity of a smug twerp, today.

Someone out there: please explain to me: Robert Downey Jr – what the fuck? No, I have very little else to say: what the fuck?

Is it that he went to jail, hahaha? Or is it really that people have a constant undying love for irritating smugness? It’s not even really that he’s so irritatingly smug that leaves me in the dark, it’s that that’s all he’s got. There’s no other angle, or depth, to his acting ability. It’s just rattle off smugness, hahaha.

Oh, and just add Gwyneth Paltrow into this mix. No mystery at all why it’s down this low. Can’t remember if I’ve said this publicly or not yet but I really think she and the acting profession desperately need a conscious uncoupling.

172) The Jungle Book (1967, Wolfgang Reitherman)

So I mentioned when talking about Where the Wild Things Are that Josh from Filmspotting takes an overly friendly approach to things that I find ridiculously childish. And I think that applies to classic Disney animation more than anything else.  He doesn’t even seem to factor in the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia he views these old films through to see that they are really saccharine, flaccid and awkwardly one-dimensional by today’s standards.

But let’s take this one on its own merit. It’s an episodic kind of tale, presumably drawing its stories’ inspiration loosely from its source material, imbued with a bunch of decent, upbeat songs. It’s got no very coherent storyline, though, and my frustration as an adult watching this kept growing as it got further and further away from even an attempt at a storyline.

This is perfectly fine, imaginative stuff to plonk your kids down in front of, but they should still be judged on their own merits, and this is just a mess. As, I hasten to point out that I discovered lately, is my most beloved childhood film Mary Poppins. Nostalgia or no nostalgia, they’re all largely gibberish.

173) The Big Boss (Tang Shan da Xiong, 1971, Wei Lo/Chia-Hsiang Wu)

Watched this purely because on the day I watched it, I felt like some old Bruce Lee. The version I watched had a really shit dubbing job - well, actually the dubbing was OK but it was shit in the sense that any dubbing is shit.

Basically this film is a video game, only without the enjoyment of being able to control the characters. Bruce finds himself embroiled in a dispute between his worker friends and the corrupt management of an ice factory, and must eventually battle his way through several levels of bad guys before fighting the big boss.

There are some really, really ridiculous moments, most notably involving a set of attack dogs, but it’s ultimately campy fun. It’s you know, not ‘good’ though.

174) Drinking Buddies (2013, Joe Swanberg)

Got this film from my library because Adam from Filmspotting talked about it a bit when it came out – I think mainly because he likes Jake Johnson and not because the film had any profound impact on him. I’m not sure what sort of impact it had on him but it can’t possibly have been profound.

This is actually a reasonably sweet friendship-romance film: Johnson, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, set in and around a craft beer brewery. It’s sort of my world, but at the same time it’s just not particularly interesting, at all.

I think what’s really missing here is comedy: there’s maybe a bit of humour in the way the characters interact, but it’s just the way that friends interact, there’s nothing situational about the humour and nothing that made me laugh out loud. Kind of cute, but very pointless.

175) The Misfits (1961, John Huston)

Speaking of pointless: Marilyn Monroe in a western. Or, for that matter, any film.

This is probably not such a bad film, but it left me bored and frankly feeling like I’d wasted my time. It doesn’t have any of the sense of adventure or frontier tension that I generally love in westerns, it’s really just more of a mismatch buddy comedy set in the old west.

Old Clark Gable has none of the melting charm of Old Burt Lancaster, and Marilyn Monroe, as hinted at previously, has none of the melting charm of a flat, grey, rock.

So ultimately I was just not won over by any of this.

176) Alien³ (1992, David Fincher)

I’m still fairly lukewarm about the original Alien film, but I love James Cameron’s sequel, so continuing that upward trajectory was my only possible expectations for this third, and presumably necessary, film.

Unfortunately the trajectory didn’t continue and it didn’t feel wholly necessary. It’s fun to see Sigourney Weaver running around with no hair, but the whole all-male prison setting is very grimey-for-the-sake-of-grimey.

It kind of serves as a precursor to Fincher’s film aesthetic, but it’s just lots of fights and gore and predictability otherwise. Probably as necessary a film as Terminator 3 which, as we all know, doesn’t exist and never will.

177) Evil Dead II (1987, Sam Raimi)

Ah, speaking of unnecessary films…

This is a perfectly fine film, provided you’ve never seen Evil Dead or are very happy to watch the exact same film for a second time.

Basically this film serves as much purpose as a scrolling marquee at the beginning of Army of Darkness that reads “At some point, Ash fell into a timewarp and got a chainsaw”.

When I first picked up Army of Darkness many years ago I first asked the IMDb boards if it was necessary to watch the two Evil Dead films first, and the answer was a resounding ‘no’. Little did I know at the time that it wasn’t actually necessary to watch number 2 at all. Ever.

178) Sleeping Beauty (1959, Clyde Geronimi)

Yes, more classic Disney hate from me.

This film falls down mainly because it’s so languid and frankly dull. The story is reasonably interesting, and the magical elements are well animated, but I just felt it had no character. While Maleficent to her credit is probably the archetype of evil stepmother characters, the portrayal these days feels like nothing more than a cliché, and Aurora is just your cardboard cut-out pretty girl.

At the same time, this falls down in my estimation further than The Jungle Book because it’s not just flights of imaginative fancy that I would happily stick my hypothetical kids down in front of. It’s effectively a rape fantasy where being pretty ultimately saves the day.

179) Dumb & Dumber (1994, Peter & Bobby Farrelly)

It’s always handy when a film’s title doubles as my review in its entirety.

Given the internet’s giddy excitement last year about the announcement of a sequel to this beloved sophisticated comedy, I felt it was time to catch up and further my education into the works of the esteemed Farrelly brothers.

Unfortunately in making this decision I forgot about the two maxims of the universe: one, the internet is full of complete morons; and two, the more complete a moron you are, the louder your voice will be.

According to the IMDb this film is about two “good-hearted but incredibly stupid friends”. I don’t know if I’m just not stupid or braindead enough to find the ‘heart’ in these two but they struck me as yes, incredibly stupid, but in a malicious, selfish and dangerous way. All of which may have been OK if I’d laughed at any of their antics. Unfortunately I’m not quite stupid or seven-years-old enough to find this funny.

180) The Chaser (Chugyeogja, 2008, Hong-jin Na)

Yes, another piece of very disappointing Korean cinema for me, this. A bit less of a random choice than Secret Love, this came on my radar during Filmspotting’s Korean Auteurs marathon where they rated this film highly enough as a genre-bending thriller.

In truth this is objectively of far higher quality than most of the rest of my bottom 10, but I just had a horrible, horrible time with it. It’s just constant, bludgeoning despair, where presumably our sympathy is meant to waver and shift for and against our protagonist but I just found myself hating everyone and everything in it.

At the same time, I experienced a similar level of unrelenting brutality from Kim Jee-woon’s I Saw the Devil, but that latter all built to a really take-it-or-leave-it denouement which provided a satisfying level of catharsis no matter how you really felt about it. The Chaser offers no end to its ambiguity and its blurring of the line between good and evil so the only conclusion that you can draw is that the world and everything in it sucks.

I don’t like films that make me feel like that. Speaking of which…

181) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, Martin Scorsese)

No, I’m not kidding. If I ranked the films I’ve seen in the last ten years, this would be bottom. What’s more, if I ranked the films I’ve seen in the last ten years on a more objective measure of ‘quality’ rather than my own personal reaction, this would still be bottom.

So firstly, I’d like to address my brother. Earlier in the year when I saw this, he spent about a week asking me again and again “What did you think of The Wolf of Wall Street?” and I successfully dodged those questions until he stopped asking. I knew then where this would be at the end of the year. Additionally, in response to one of one of his 2014 film write-ups (it was #300-#281) I said that I “violently disagreed with one of your rankings” and he naturally assumed that I meant a film was dramatically lower than it should have been. No, it was this film, and it was ridiculously high. He also had the sheer audacity to try and pander to the idiotic masses by qualifying “I do appreciate that it was a good film”. He's wrong, and so is everybody, and here’s why.

Firstly, I need to admit that my own personal reaction to this was strongly negative. Not just that Jordan Belfort and his lackeys were devoid of charisma, but the film itself is long and utterly tedious. There have only been two occasions in my life when I’ve actually had to grit my teeth and stop myself walking out of a film. One was Raja Gosnell’s Scooby-Doo (2002) and the other was this, and they are on par with each other in terms of sophistication.

What really gets my goat about the acclaim that this film got was that people talked about this in the same conversation with Goodfellas and Casino as the climax of some kind of Scorsese trilogy of American corruption. The comparison is ludicrous, for the simple reason that The Wolf of Wall Street lacks the most basic element of any drama: there is nothing at stake.

On the surface the comparison seems apt: it’s people, engaging in criminal activity, and plenty of footage of them kicking their feet up and enjoying the finer things in life at the expense of their souls and the American taxpayer. But think back on the scene in Goodfellas where Tommy gets ‘made’. Think of the final confrontation between Ace and Nicky in Casino. Now think of the scene in The Wolf of Wall Street where the stakes are life-and-death. Oh, there isn’t one? Silly me, this probably isn’t dramatically on par then.

It also reveals a fundamental flaw in this film’s obsession with consumption: in Goodfellas and Casino I can’t help but forgive the characters for their wasteful excess in living the high life, because I accept that they’re playing an extremely high-risk game and winning. It feels like they deserve it. In The Wolf of Wall Street where they’re not really putting any stake on the table it doesn’t feel right to just sit and celebrate their unwarranted success, and yet that’s the only thing the film offers.

But what’s worse than that is I really feel Scorsese brings a blatant narrative dishonesty to this film. He completely whitewashes – presumably by basing it on Belfort’s own account of the events – any sense of the people who lost money on his Ponzi schemes. Not that a rich victim sob story would ameliorate the film, but it just goes to prove that he’s actually not interested in showing any impact. I didn’t miss that this was entirely his intention, but the glitz wore thin very quickly when I realised that this monotony would continue for the entire running time.

I think a far better way to compare this film is with Spielberg’s Catch me if you Can. Again unfavourably for this film - since I would compare it unfavourably with your average Kardashian sex-tape - but I think the two are very similar in their approach. Both tell the story of conmen, and both of them are focussed primarily on watching those conmen enjoy the high life. They even both have ‘father figure’ characters who act as stabilising figures to the rampant recklessness. But the key difference is that Spielberg’s focus is on the relationship between the conman and his pursuer as they try to outwit each other, and time and time again the conman is proven to be the wilier player. Spielberg finally asks the question, at what cost?

Scorsese cares about none of this, it’s just prolonged footage of a frivolous orgy with no cost. We know that Belfort will eventually get caught, because this should happen, and we know we can’t care, because there is obviously nothing on the line throughout. He gets a few years in prison? Yep, who gives a shit. I certainly don’t.

So what do I say to all of those people who enjoyed this film? Well, power to you. The truth is that if you’re entertained for five minutes watching somebody masturbate into a hundred-dollar bill, then you’re likely to be entertained for two and a half hours of the same. But repeating the same joke over and over again (haha, they’re spending money extravagantly! Hilarious!) doesn’t make a good film, no matter how entertaining you find that joke. In fact, it goes a long way to making this a bad film when that's all it is.

The only time that I actually laughed, at all, during my hours of torture, was late in the piece when Belfort in a drug-fuelled rage slaps his wife. No, I didn’t chuckle at the domestic violence, but rather at the fact that there was an audible gasp throughout my fellow members of the audience. As if after all that we’ve just witnessed, a slap on the face is suddenly shocking behaviour and so out of character for this upright citizen.

I look forward to the day when Belfort and this dribble of a film are discarded in the sewer of history.

Until that day, I will relieve myself by celebrating some truly great bits of filmmaking, when my top 20 is revealed tomorrow.

Movies of 2014 Part 2: 50-21

So here I get into my proper write-ups, which I largely haven't edited so they might be complete gibberish, or they might be sensationally insightful. Or more likely they will fall somewhere in the middle, as the coherent but completely pointless ramblings of an egoist. These films were good enough to warrant writing up, but not good enough to rank higher on the list. And in other redundant statements, this is a blog post, and you're reading it.

50) Talk to Her (Hable con Ella, 2002, Pedro Almodóvar)

This probably has the longest lag-time of any film between me saying “I want to see that” and actually seeing it, and I have no idea why. I think I missed it at the cinema, and then Napster got taken down, and then 12 years passed (at some point I saw a blimp!), and then it turned up in my local library.

It was also part of a bit of an Almodóvar binge I went on this year kicked off by What have I done to Deserve This? (see 150-51, above) and also the culmination, although given how much I absolutely adored some of the other Almodóvar, this one couldn’t quite live up to 12 years of expectations.

The story blends his typical melodrama and sinister mystery but, in a fairly radical departure, deals primarily with male protagonists – although the crux of the story still revolves around their interaction with the females in their life. There’s plenty of heart, and plenty of unnerving awkwardness in this film, yet somehow the ending just didn’t completely click with me, and I felt a bit unsatisfied at the end.

49) Sabrina (1954, Billy Wilder)

I think my only Billy Wilder this year, and while it’s a somewhat mediocre effort by his standards there’s still plenty to like.

Speaking of 12-year gaps, I’m pretty sure it’s been about 12 years since I’ve watched anything with William Holden in it and it’s been far too long. He’s at his most charismatic here as the lothario David Larrabee who ends up competing with Humphrey Bogart for the affection of the poor-but-looks-like-Audrey Hepburn-and-is-therefore-desirable chauffeur’s daughter (played by Audrey Hepburn).

It’s really just another hit on the Billy Wilder hit parade of light comical romances, not up there with Roman Holiday or Some Like it Hot but plenty of spark nonetheless.

48) The Big Parade (1925, King Vidor)

A bit forgotten in the realm of film history, this still has a significant claim to fame in that some believe it surpassed D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the then highest grossing film of all time (dubious).

More importantly, it has a better claim to fame in that it’s an enjoyable, well-told film about friendship and love in the First World War.

A bit lengthy and a lot silent, the cast led by John Gilbert brings an immense amount of gravitas and enthusiasm to the action and there are some genuinely memorable scenes, most notably the farewell sequence where Gilbert’s character Jim receives his orders to advance and he must abandon the French farmgirl he’s fallen in love with. Renée Adorée puts on one of the best silent-era performances I’ve seen (possibly beaten only by Virginia Cherrill in City Lights) and steals the movie as she runs desperately through the crowd to find him.

47) Barney's Version (2010, Richard J Lewis)

This was a great surprise for me. It’s one of those classic Oscar bait films that manages to get a tiny amount of attention during awards season but without winning anything, gets swiftly forgotten forever after and donated to local libraries by people who bought it on a whim. That’s where I found it.

And it was genuinely good. I’m a sucker for Paul Giamatti in general, but when he’s given the vista of light and shade that he portrays in this film it’s an absolute tour de force. He’s funny, absolutely pathetic in the way only he can be, but in the end really likeable as the brash and impulsive Barney Panofsky.

Anyway, I can’t avoid characterising the film as Oscar bait, but at the heart of it remains a very warm, charming story.

46) Le Trou (1960, Jacques Becker)

I saw this film purely on the repeated recommendation of my brother, who had it really high up on his list from last year.

I’ve discussed with him, so really I’m just repeating my thoughts on this film to anyone who isn’t him reading this (Hi, Mother!). I think this film has as its big high point its ending, which is a wonderful apogee of the slow-burn, procedural build-up the story presents.

At the same time, I’m not a huge advocate of slow-burn, procedural stories in general - I like them well enough, but since I saw this after Bresson’s quite similar A Man Escaped (which is incidentally well below this in the list), the majority of this film didn’t really excite me.

45) Prisoners (2013, Denis Villeneuve)

I felt a little tentative going into this film, knowing that Villeneuve was seen by most to be on a steep downward descent from the highs of Incendies in 2010 (my #3 film of last year, incidentally) to this year’s Saramago-adaptation Enemy, which I’m yet to see.

But there’s plenty of meat in this taut, dark thriller about an irascible father – the uncharacteristically not-meltingly-charming Hugh Jackman – who gets a bit peeved when his young daughter is kidnapped and possibly murdered.

There are shades here of the best Korean thrillers, as Villeneuve plays with the dichotomies of hunter/hunted and perpetrator/victim, but the director’s heavy handedness begins to show itself here and while the film abounds in suspense, it sadly lacks in subtlety.

44) Spring Breakers (2012, Harmony Korine)

OK so I haven’t been able to wrap my head around this film. In fact I’m a bit embarrassed to have it so high on my list, given the way it was marketed as a Skrillex-scored Vanessa Hudgens and Selena Gomez-vehicle. With bikinis.

Despite all of this, I defer to my favourite film critic and go-to apologist for the downtrodden, Adam Kempenaar of Filmspotting, who unashamedly put this as his number 8 film of last year, on whose persistent high opinion my viewing rested entirely.

The thing is, this film is about little more than four girls going crazy for the best spring break of their lives. It does rely for atmosphere very heavily on the sultry tunes of Skrillex and the ample busts of the four PYTs and nameless (often faceless) others.

Then enter James Franco, disappearing entirely into the role of Alien, a sleazy drug dealer who embodies the spirit of what we Aussies would call a ‘Tooly’. Although Spring Breakers starts with an armed robbery, it ends down a very dark rabbit hole that I just didn’t expect, and the impact of that culmination has left me pondering far longer than any normal bikini-party-dubstep adventure should have.

43) Gone Girl (2014, David Fincher)

Here we go, possibly the most talked-about movie of the year, or at least one of the three most talked-about movies of the year, but the one that has had the most accusations of misogyny thrown at it.

I’m not going to weigh in on the debate, for a very simple reason: although I knew about the claims of misogyny going in, I’d completely forgotten about them at about the five minute mark. Obviously I’m a white privileged male, but I think throwing epithets like misogynistic at a film like this is frankly overanalysing.

Because all this film is is just superb entertainment. Without wanting to sound like the voiceover guy doing the latest Vin Diesel trailer, I feel this is full-throttle suspense and enjoyment from start to finish. There’s tension, plenty of satire, and a huge amount of humorous irony.

I haven’t read the bestselling novel, so I can’t draw comparisons or really talk about what Fincher does with this film that isn’t just part of the source material. But I just had a mountain of fun with this.

42) The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976, John Cassavetes)

It’s taken me a long time to go through my John Cassavetes collection. Such a long time, in fact, that I still haven’t finished. The main reason is that each time I watch a Cassavetes film, I’m so overwhelmingly depressed that it takes me about a year to work up the courage for another.

True to form, he delivers a dour and upsetting masterpiece here, in his trademark improvisational style. Ben Gazzara puts in a gutsy performance as the strip club owner forced to deal with the mob due to his gambling debts, and the dirty wash of the images - so typical of Cassavetes’ camera -provide the central atmosphere.

Gazzara’s spirit carries not only the film, but also the heightened sense of tragedy, as he is forced to face up to the fact that he’s become a failure as both a business owner and a man. I would call this film the antithesis to Atlantic City (see a few films below), and given how much I enjoyed that film this became a bit of a sore point for me.

41) Crumb (1994, Terry Zwigoff)

A film that has been on my list for very many years owing to its presence in the book 1001 Films to see before you die, I can finally tick this one off my bucket list. So there’s only about 930 now still to go, hooray!

Providing evidence that a documentary is often only as good as its subject matter, Terry Zwigoff has here made a film that is exactly as fascinating and somewhat disturbing as its central figure, the cartoonist R Crumb.

Knowing nothing about Crumb or his work going in, I enjoyed the way Zwigoff uses Crumb and his dysfunctional, competitive family to give us a very thorough, warts-and-all portrait, while addressing all the necessary questions surrounding his work. He’s presented variously as troubled genius, one of the most significant artists of his century, and deviant pervert, which in the end all add up to the same thing.

40) Brother from Another Planet (1984, John Sayles)

I went through a small John Sayles binge earlier in the year, but basically this and one other film (which we’ll hear about) was all I could find through my channels at the time.

This is a funny little film, essentially a Blaxploitation parody, in the same way that Jackie Brown could be. Joe Morton stars as the unexplained extra-terrestrial presence whose resemblance to an African American gets him taken in by a Harlem community and whose unexplained knack for fixing gadgets gets him employed as a repairer of arcade machines.

At the heart of it, this is quite a silly film, but one whose unpretentious roots in satire and film pastiche keep its fantastical feet firmly on the ground. A nicely eclectic supporting cast helps make this an interesting world and lend it a surprisingly warm vibe.

39) Certified Copy (Copie Conforme, 2010, Abbas Kiarostami)

Feel like this one was a long time coming as well, given how much critical and intellectual jizz was spurted all over this film when it came out a couple of years ago. Given as well my esteem for all of Kiarostami’s work, it was very necessary for me to catch what I think was his first effort working outside his native Iran.

This was recently referred to as a Linklater-esque film, which was my first thought during it as well. It’s very talky, and very meandering in both its aesthetic and its vision.

At the same time, the central conceit of the film – the relationship between its two central characters played by Juliette Binoche and William Shimell, and the mysterious ambiguity around its nature – is unmistakeably Iranian. The blurring of reality and fiction comes out both in the way Binoche plays with Shimell, and the way the film plays with us.

Among Kiarostami’s work I would still rate Taste of Cherry his masterpiece, but this is most certainly the most accessible his philosophy and style have been.

38) The Long Goodbye (1973, Robert Altman)

As with most people who have sense, I have a like-hate relationship with Robert Altman. I hate his films that are shit and overrated (like MASH and A Prairie Home Companion) and like well enough his films that aren’t shit and overrated, and this is one of these.

I felt I needed to catch up with this one because it was brought up a lot on Filmspotting, and it’s definitely worth a look.

Elliott Gould plays Raymond Chandler’s famed sleuth Philip Marlowe, in an older and more settled form than we saw in The Big Sleep. In fact the pre-credit sequence (basically, his cat is hungry and he needs to go to the store for more food) is one of the most off-puttingly weird and uneventful film openings I can recall. However, as Marlowe gets more and more swept away in a complex and corrupt criminal plot, it starts to make sense of the cat sequence as it becomes clear he’s kind of getting over this shit and just wants to be left alone.

The storyline is noirish but the aesthetic isn’t. Altman seems to play with the genre here – playing a nonchalant hand with dialogue and an unexpectedly bright palette – in the same way he does in McCabe and Mrs Miller (still to come) with the western genre. While I don’t think there’s any great revolution here, it’s an enjoyable film with the right amount of cynicism and the right number of twists.

37) Atlantic City (1980, Louis Malle)

So a few films ago I referred to The Killing of a Chinese Bookie as the antithesis to this film. I’ll get to that in a second, but firstly I have a confession to make. I’ve fallen in love this year. No, it’s not a pretty young girl that’s taken my fancy; and no, it’s not a little furry critter that I want to look after. What I've fallen in love with is ‘old Burt Lancaster’. As a young bloke, he was a creditable leading man, and he has a filmography to be immensely proud of up to about his 50s. But beyond that point, he is downright adorable.

Here he plays Lou, a small-fry criminal with delusions of grandeur, who gets caught up in a drug deal gone wrong by being flattered into being a fence. Although this and Chinese Bookie have a similarly gritty feel, and lots of people get killed in both, there’s a wry sense of humour throughout this film as it lampoons the criminal mentality that it seeks to portray. Where Ben Gazzara finds himself having to betray his own sense of moral courage, Burt Lancaster here finds himself acting more reprehensibly than he ever has as a huckster – and feeling more alive than ever.

I’ve found Louis Malle an oddly eclectic filmmaker, and this is some of his best work – entertaining and unsettling and humanistic all at the same time.

36) Super Fly (1972, Gordon Parks Jr)

Personally I wouldn’t count Brother from another Planet as Blaxploitation – unless you also include Jackie Brown – so this is the only real Blaxploitation film that I’ve seen.

Initially I have to admit I was a little confused by what I was watching, simply because the main protagonist here, played by Ron O’Neal, basically doesn’t look very black. But once I realised that he was our Blaxploitation hero, I was completely taken in by his pimp’s quest to break the shackles of his existence, while at the same time aiming to take vengeance on the white establishment that put him there.

Curtis Mayfield’s music is possibly the real star here though, doing a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of atmosphere and scene-setting. It’s all a big part of this film’s super-fly vibe, which is basically all I can say about it. It’s a real pleasure.

35) La Moustache (2005, Emmanuel Carrère)

Another film I watched purely on the insistent recommendation of my brother, and a very strange one.

It’s strange even just outlining the story. One day a man on a whim decides to shave off his moustache, and is a little perturbed by everybody’s failure to comment on it. Then it enters an unsettlingly Kafkaesque downward spiral as the people around him insist that he never had a moustache. Then basically he starts to go insane.

There are still far more questions than answers surrounding this film to me, but its blurry focus on reality is compelling, and Vincent Lindon’s performance in the lead role is strangely empathic. One doesn’t expect a film called ‘The Moustache’ to be so unrelentingly nightmarish, but even in the throes of its silly conceit it manages to throw up a hundred unsettling images that make you doubt the truth of the world.

34) Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, John Carpenter)

I caught this one on the tail end of my John Carpenter binge towards the end of 2013, and have to admit it made a huge impression on me.

It strikes early and it strikes big with a bit of a sucker punch as we see – well, I hate to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it so just see it before you read the next bit – a gang member just murder a little girl buying icecream. It’s kind of hilarious, because it’s so unremittingly black and white in terms of who’s good and who’s bad. You can kill all the cops, innocent civilians and heroes you like, but kill a little girl getting icecream? You’re a cunt.

So the ensuing two hours of tension and adrenaline are fuelled by an artificial sense of moral outrage at these really over-the-top villainous guerrillas who isolate and besiege a small town police station. It’s all just a bit of popcorny fun, but when it’s this well done I make no apologies for liking it, or for ranking it higher than high-brow stuff like Certified Copy.

33) The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012, Felix van Groeningen)

One of the few films I actually caught at the cinema this year, owing to some free Dendy tickets we had late in its run.

I feel like a lot has already been said about this film and its merits, because they should really be self-evident to anybody who watches it – its power, its heart-wrenching message of love and loss – but I will talk about what didn’t quite work for me.

It’s a film that’s split into sort of three parts – backstory, immediate past and present – and I found the tone of the different parts of the story as it wove its way through them to be so different that I found trouble reconciling them all. That’s not to say it’s not effectively done, but I felt such an overwhelming sense of pessimism that I started to lose sympathy for its characters. And that was a shame, because the story, the performances, the love of music that’s at the heart of the story and the backbone of the film, are all very moving. I just came out feeling a bit rubbish.

32) McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971, Robert Altman)

So back we go to the Robert Altman well of like-him-well-enough-or-hate-him-for-being-shit-and-overrated. And this is probably the closest he’s come to being actually loved by me.

This revisionist western is probably the best example of the sub-genre, having a very unglossed image of the old west and the frontiersmen who really made a go of it. Warren Beatty is at his unhinged best as the naïve McCabe who decides to open a whorehouse, while the wonderful Julie Christie provides a rare example of a fully-fleshed female character who is the primary source of both antagonism and wit.

Altman’s winter aesthetic here as well provides a winning formula: in stark contrast to the sparse and heat-ridden cinematography of your average western, he manages to capture a still and silent beauty of the snow-covered plains, while maintaining the genre’s focus on the unforgiving nature of both the landscape and the men who inhabit it.

31) Blue Valentine (2010, Derek Cianfrance)

After my enchantment with thefirsttwopartsof The Place Beyond the Pines last year, Derek Cianfrance’s earlier Ryan Gosling vehicle was a very high priority for me this year. And it didn’t disappoint.

Really telling a very similar story in a very similar way to The Broken Circle Breakdown, I guess this one worked a bit better for me because, in spite of the dark mood that surrounds it, it left me feeling just a spark of ambivalent hope for the future.

I love Ryan Gosling in practically anything (except a blender, amirite?) and while I don’t share the world’s love affair with Michelle Williams, she is truly excellent here as the young nurse caught between her work and an irascible boyfriend. There’s a pervading sense of frustration and injustice throughout this story, and while it didn’t quite captivate me like thefirsttwopartsof The Place Beyond the Pines, it certainly foreshadows the sober drama of Cianfrance’s next effort.

I am eagerly anticipating the upcoming The Light between Oceans.

30) Local Hero (1983, Bill Forsyth)

So I mentioned earlier in regard to Atlantic City that this year made me fall in love with 'old Burt Lancaster'. This is the film that did it.

Although he’s largely absent throughout the middle of this film, Lancaster is so unbelievably adorable as the ageing businessman whose fixation on stargazing seems to be detracting attention from the lucrative landgrab of isolated Scottish seaside that his company is partaking in.

Most of the heavy lifting is done by Peter Riegert and an absurdly young Peter Capaldi as, respectively, Lancaster’s company representative and the young impressionable Scot charged with the task of looking after him. It’s an extremely sweet, funny and human film, elevated beyond comprehension by Lancaster’s just… I don’t know, he’s just so fucking adorable. Don’t you just want to hug him?

29) Stories we Tell (2012, Sarah Polley)

As with most years, I’ve watched various excellent documentaries this year, some of which (Gimme Shelter; The Act of Killing) you saw in the previous sludge-in-the-middle post, but some of which were just a cut above.

Sarah Polley’s autobiographical documentary uncovering her family past is certainly one of those; it’s buoyed largely by the fact that her family history and personal story is extremely interesting, and the members of her family that she interviews to tell the story all charismatic.

It’s a very personal story, and everything is laid out bare for us to take in, but as per the best modern documentary filmmaking, the way in which Polley edits and constructs the story here is what makes it so compelling. It’s like we’re reliving the twists and turns of the story ourselves at the same moments when the family themselves are encountering them. Sweet and poignant, this is ultimately just a very likeable film full of very likeable people.

28) Blue Jasmine (2013, Woody Allen)

Wow, so I was a bit surprised at how high this ended up landing on my list, but at the same time I can’t really argue with it.

I think Woody Allen has made some of his best work in recent years turning his inventive and humorous idea on time-worn stories. Match Point was still, to me, his best post-2000 work, but possibly now pipped by this wonderfully subversive take on A Streetcar Named Desire.

Cate Blanchett largely carries this film on her towering shoulders, in an amazingly powerful but nuanced performance that rightly got her a long, long-overdue Best Actress Oscar (as an aside, can we please FINALLY admit that Gwyneth Paltrow winning in 1999 was just an abhorrent, unfunny joke and give the award back to Cate?).

What carried me through though was the tricks that Woody plays with the familiar story in order to subvert expectations, in particular the unexpected twist for the Stanley character and his relationship with Jasmine’s sister. As with the unexpected diversion from Crime and Punishment that Match Point takes, I was sucked in again and I enjoyed it immensely.

27) Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer)

And here we are with the most underseen but talked-about film of the year, and also one of the most weird and unsettling experiences I’ve had with a film, not just this year but ever.

No setup, no explanation is given in this film to why an alien creature who looks like Scarlett Johansson is scouting the streets of Glasgow to find single men and lure them into her lair. No clear storyline is apparent behind its sequence of sketches and no remittance is given from the screechily brilliant score from Mica Levi (robbed at the Oscar nominations, as an aside).

But for all its unnerving weirdness, there’s something scintillating about this elusive film. It goes through many memorable bumps before it arrives, again with no exposition, at its unforgettable conclusion. There are certainly more accessible films out there, including David Lynch’s entire oeuvre, but this is a mystery worth pondering.

26) Le Samouraï (1967, Jean-Pierre Melville)

I sourced and watched the good bits of Jean-Pierre Melville’s filmography this year after years of hearing their merits espoused on Filmspotting. While I very much enjoyed Le Cercle Rouge, it fell sadly into the realm of middling sludge on my rankings, and this one pips it for a proper write-up.

Falling into a similar criminal milieu though, Le Samourai again stars the inimitable Alain Delon as a hitman who gets on the wrong side of his employers when he is spotted leaving the scene of a hit. Delon really charges the film forwards in his unflappable way, maintaining an inhuman levelheadedness as every step he takes seems to be mined.

This is just very effective thriller making, that relies heavily on the ‘thrill’ rather than any kind of dark aesthetic or heavy-handed message. Melville understands, and demonstrates adroitly here, that the first purpose of filmmaking is to entertain, and this journey is definitely one of the most exciting ones I embarked on this year.

25) Short Term 12 (2013, Destin Daniel Cretton)

Right, well while I talk about this film I might be a bit…

…um, distracted, as I’ll be having to…

…fight off the angry hoards of indie film-lovers trying to…

…set fire to me for having this down as low as number 25.

Honestly I did really like this admirably subtle yet powerful look at the residents of a halfway house for troubled youths. Brie Larson was excellent in a well-rounded performance as the supervisor of the facility who is trying to come to terms with her own past as well as steer the kids in her care onto the right path.

But somehow - and I don’t know how - it just didn’t click for me in the way that it seems to have for everybody else without exception. Mainly it just didn’t surprise me, I think. While it carries itself with aplomb throughout, it went into only the places I expected it to from the plot description, so no matter how well it does all of that, it just won’t blow me away.

24) La Bête Humaine (1938, Jean Renoir)

I’ve had a similar relationship so far with Jean Renoir as the one I’ve had with Robert Altman, albeit with only two films prior to this point. I got absolutely bugger all from La Grande Illusion, while Regle du Jeu I liked well enough. So where does La Bête Humaine fall into this tableau?

It’s at the top, actually. I found myself really drawn into this strange, slightly noirish tale of love and murder on the railways of France. As with other films from this sort of era and movement, there is a very slow build-up until we’re fully exposed to the key players of the story, but from there is a wonderful drawing out of moral ambivalence and a blurry sensation of justice.

Jean Gabin is esoterically brilliant as the Human beast of the title, an otherwise placid man prone to uncontrollable fits of rage, who falls in love with the young lady he witnesses in a compromising position following a murder aboard his train.

As with Renoir’s other films, there’s a sense of humour underlying much of this that I can’t quite explain, nor even confirm that it’s there, but it’s a really interesting story told with just the right amount of ambiguity.

23) Boyhood (2014, Richard Linklater)

Yes, well you knew this was coming. I’ve defied expectation, though, by not having it as my number 1 film of the year. Unfortunately, since of course my list is not films from this year but all films I saw for the first time this year, and looking down at my list, I’m forced to admit that I have, in fact, made the predictable and clichéd choice of this as number one film of 2014.

The truth is that I’m generally pretty quickly drawn into a Linklater talkie such as this – he has an effortless way of casually strolling into your head and leaving a little nugget behind – and when it also manages so deftly to paint such a profoundly moving coming-of-age portrait, you know you’re onto a winner.

Having heaped all that praise on it, the thing that troubles me about this film is quite simply that I don’t feel Linklater needed to make this a 13-year project. He really could have achieved the same level of humour, meaning and profundity with a few different young actors and some creative ageing makeup effects for everybody else. That’s not to say that the long drawn-out filming process is at all a hindrance here – it’s another part of his miraculous effortlessness – but simply that the deceptively simple story we get here doesn’t quite measure up to the enormous ambition of the project itself.

Going in not knowing, I could easily have believed that it wasn’t filmed over 13 years but with makeup and different child actors, but it would still have been a thoroughly enjoyable and meaningful film. I’ll have more to say about the measure of ambition in a couple of films’ time.

22) Let the Right One In (Låt den Rätte Komma In, 2008, Tomas Alfredson)

I picture some people reading this – well, I don’t really picture anyone reading this except you, Mother, but if they did – occasionally just perking up at the mention of a hugely popular film such as this that was all the absolute rage for a while and has since dropped a little out of consciousness.

Yes, it took me a long time to get on this particular bandwagon, largely because I was trying to find this through my illegitimate streaming channels, and couldn’t find a subtitled version, but it was worth the wait.

This is the sort of film that only European filmmakers could produce (I haven’t yet seen the remake, Let Me In, but my point still stands regardless). It’s a gritty, dark, actually quite disturbing horror flick that somehow manages the impossible feat of being at the same time warm and even romantic.

Tomas Alfredson already had a large international following when he made the first of his that I saw, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, so having enjoyed his work in that later effort it was really a revelation to go backwards and see where his reputation came from. It’s extremely well-earned – this is just chilling, atmospheric filmmaking.

21) Before Midnight (2013, Richard Linklater)

There, didn't I tell you that you wouldn’t have too long to wait for me to talk more about Linklater and the measure of ambition? There you were complaining about how much you wanted me to talk more about Linklater and the measure of ambition immediately, and you couldn’t wait, but that wasn’t such a bad interlude while we dissected Swedish vampire movies, was it? There, there.

So Before Midnight, the third in Linklater’s Before trilogy and its complete culmination at this point, is an extremely ambitious effort and, to my mind, completely equal to that ambition. Set another nine years on from Before Sunset, this film sees Celine and Jessie as the couple that we always dreamed they would become through the first two films, but also the couple that romantic films always seem to expunge from the possibility of existence, one whose relationship is becoming frayed and worn with age and life.

This is an astutely mature and intelligent film, something that could only be produced over a long thought process by a number of incredibly creative minds. It’s a sobering reminder of the nature of human relationships, but one that retains a profound romanticism and sense of hope.

The funny thing is I think I’d get shouted down if I were to loudly declare in the shadow of Boyhood that this is Linklater’s most ambitious and most successful masterpiece, and yet it was only twelve months ago that everybody was saying those very words. I’d say what a two-year period he’s been having, but yeah, this one was really in the works for a full 18 years since 1995, far longer than even Boyhood can claim. But in terms of film releases, the last two years have been very kind to Linklater, and he's been very kind to us.

So that's my write-ups, part one. Just to confuse everybody further, I will next be leaping back to count 'up' my bottom 31 films of the year before we get to delve into my top 20.