Film Awards 2016: Part III

King of the Jungle

What a pleasant surprise The Jungle Book was. It looked gorgeous in a I-can't-believe-it's-not-butter-real! sort of way, and had the feel of Apocalypto for kids, with some light humour thrown in and some light maiming and human sacrifice thrown out. This is one of those children's movie that's fun for adults too that's actually fun for adults too! The Jungle Book was a delight from start to finish. A cinematic treat easily beating The Legend of Tarzan to the award for best jungle-based movie. The latter may feature the son of Stellan Skarsgård, the man who plays Prof. Lambeau in Good Will Hunting and who I have an irrational love for (I know how you feel, jealous T.A). But I will not let that love - or Margot Robbie - cloud my judgment. The Legend of Tarzan was a disaster of colonial proportions.

Most Disappointing Film

Any chance there's a script up there?"

There are very few films I have had the real urge to walk out on. As bad as some of the films I've seen this year have been, it never crossed my mind to leave the cinema early. As I said in my introduction to these awards, a bad film in the cinema is still a film in the cinema. But there was about a ten minute stretch during Knight of Cups when I wrestled with the thought. Those who dislike Malick's films sometimes criticise them for resembling two hour perfume adverts. I wasn't having any of that, not even for To the Wonder. But there is perhaps no better way to describe Knight of Cups. This is self-indulgent, up-its-own-arse film making that moved me only to disappointment. In his review of The Tree of Life, Xan Brooks writes that he does not believe in God, but he does believe in Terrence Malick. Well I do believe in God, and the only thing that scares me is Terrence Malick. Has his latest blockbuster caused me to lose faith? Not quite. For all its many faults, it has a great line: "You don't want love. You want a love experience." There's a criticism to cut the modern individual to the heart. The only problem is that it's not much fun watching Christian Bale having half a dozen love experiences in a couple of hours. I think I need to come to terms with the reality that it won't get any better than The Tree of Life. But it surely doesn't have to be as bad as this. The good thing is that the newly-prolific Malick has a couple of movies coming out soon. Like a Premier League team with a midweek fixture after a heavy defeat, he has a chance to right some of the wrongs and get Knight of Cups out of my system. Over to you, unnamed project starring half the actors in Hollywood.

The Joseph Fletcher Award for Services to Situation Ethics

Governments have a lot of difficult decisions to make. For example, do we accept the $13 billion that is legally owed to us, or do we refuse it? Or, in the case of Eye in the Sky, do we murder an innocent child or do we not? Eye in the Sky is as close to a piece of propaganda for liberal democracy that you're likely to get. It shows all sorts of fine people wrestling with what we're supposed to believe is the central moral dilemma. There's an old joke that says Catholics can do what they want as long as they go to confession, and Protestants can do what they want as long as they feel bad about it. If there's any truth to this, then Eye in the Sky is a deeply Protestant film. There's lots of politicians and soldiers who feel bad about doing what seems to be a necessary evil, but the final message of the film is: don't judge us from your comfortable armchair; we sacrificed our lives so that you could have the freedom to sit in this cinema munching on popcorn and Minstrels and watching important movies like Zoolander 2. In other words, only those who have had to decide whether or not to murder a child are in a position to criticise governmental action. London Has Fallen made no secret of its sadism, no attempt to rationalise or justify its brutality. Eye in the Sky is an evil film precisely because of these attempts. And the worst of it is, it's not even telling us the really brutal truth. Now, imagine a country deciding that London Has Fallen and Eye in the Sky are the only two nominees for the Best Picture Oscar.

The country you have imagined is Fuckheadica.

Best Biopic

If you want to learn the truth about someone's life, it's probably best to avoid their biopic. The best you can usually hope for in these films are half-truths. And you can be fairly certain that these half-truths will add up to a story of redemption. This was the formula for last year's Steve Jobs and it was the formula for this year's Miles Ahead. I didn't much about Miles Davis before I saw this film, save for the fact that he was a famous jazz musician. Having seen the film I now know that he was a famous jazz musician with a drug problem. This is a strange movie. It follows Davis around in the wilderness years of his career, when he apparently spent his time getting into hilarious jams while chasing his next fix. In the flashbacks we witness a younger Davis in his pomp, playing his trumpet in smokey jazz venues and occasionally beating his wife. It's not an exaggeration to say that these two timelines don't mix very well. Davis is presented to us as a flawed genius who loses his way, though the flaws are severely underplayed (what's a little violence towards women when you can play a mean trumpet?). Don Cheadle is very good in the lead role, but there is something soulless about the whole project.

Best Comedy

I love a good buddy comedy, and The Nice Guys is a a perfectly good buddy comedy from the master of the genre. Russell Crowe plays Russell Crowe, an aging, surly man with a short temper. He's the straight guy to Ryan Gosling's clumsy, flamboyant P.I.. It's an old formula but it works. Gosling in particular demonstrates some good comedy acting chops. The jokes come thick and fast (some work, some don't, but who's counting?), making this a worthy addition to the buddy comedy canon. That it did so badly at the box office while The Avengers' Civil War 2: Thor vs Black Widow and Hawkeye's Revenge made 17 trillion dollars is why we now have Brexit and Trump.*

Best Film Featuring a Member of the Skarsgård Family

If the son of Stellan Skarsgård cannot save a film then can Stellan Skarsgård himself? This is the pressing question of our age, and the answer is...sort of. Our Kind of Traitor taps into the popularity of British author John le Carré. I've never read a le Carré novel, but if this film is anything to go by then the book on which it is based was probably churned out by le Carré one rainy afternoon while he was waiting for the roast chicken to finish. That is not to say that this is a bad film (or that it must be a bad book). It's just not a very thrilling espionage thriller, and I like my espionage thrillers thrilling.


* Not strictly true