The Year in Film Review

Hello and welcome to this review

of the Year in Film.

I'm Mark Kermode and we're here at

the Cinema Museum in south London.

Over the next half an hour,

I'll be looking back at some

of the best movies released in UK

cinemas in 2017.

And what a year it's been.

As always, the film year began

with the Oscar circus which back

in February became the scene of one

of the most astonishing debacles

in awards history as La La land,

which had already picked up gongs

for Best Director,

Best Cinematographer, Best Music,

Best Original song, Best Production

Besign, and best actress,

for Emma Stone, was announced

as the winner of the best picture

award, only for that to be

revealed as a mistake.

I'm sorry, no, there's

been a mistake.

Moonlight, you guys

won best picture.

In fact, the award

went to Moonlight.

Director Barry Jenkins's minor key

masterpiece which also won best

best Adapted Screenplay

and Best Supporting Actor

for Maherschela Ali.

Among the night's big hitters,

Manchester by the See picked up

the award for best original

screenplay and best

actor for Casey Affleck.

Meanwhile, Viola Davis won

the supporting actress award

for her role in the Fences.

An adaptation of August Wilson's

stage play directed by leading

man, Denzel Washington.

I gave 18 years of my life to stand

in the same spot as you!

As always, some of the most

interesting movies

competing in Oscar night were in

the foreign-language film category.

My own personal favourite

was Toni Erdmann, a jet black comedy

from writer director,

Maren Ade.

about father- daughter estrangement

boasting a brilliant central

performance by Sandra Huller.

In the end, the foreign-language

film award went to The Salesman,

an affecting drama from Iranian film

director Asghar Farhadi,

who had previously won

the award for A Separation.

This time, in protest

against President Trump's

controversial travel ban,

Farhadi boycotted the Oscar

ceremony, explaining

that his absence was out of respect

"Out of respect for the people

in my country and those

of six other nations

who had been disrespected

by the inhumane law that bans entry

of immigrants to the US."

Of course, all true film fans

understand that cinema

is an international medium that

knows no boundaries or borders

and in 2017, UK cinemagoers

were treated to a veritable

smorgasbord of delights

from all corners of the globe.

From Israel came In Between,

the bittersweet debut feature

from Maysaloun Hamoud about three

Palestinian women living in Tel

Aviv, each fighting their own battle

for independence and fulfilment.

In The Handmaiden, Park Chan-wook

transferred the story

of Sarah Waters's novel Fingersmith

from Victorian England

to 1930s Korea under

Japanese colonial rule,

with deliciously twisted a result.

Dutch director Paul Verhoeven coaxed

an Oscar-nominated performance

from French icon Isabelle Huppert

in Elle, a controversial drama

about a Parisian businesswoman

playing cat and mouse

with a violent assailant.

In By The Time It Gets Dark, Thai

film maker Anocha Suwichakornpong

used the infamous atrocities

of October 1976 as a jumping-off

point for a kaleidoscopic meditation

on past and present,

truth and fiction,

cinema and memory.

A performance of tremendous wit,

vitality and lusty defiance

by Sonia Braga drove Brazilian

film-maker Kleber Mendonca Filho's

Aquarius, a portrait of a woman

refusing to be bullied out

of her seafront

apartment by developers.

Professor.

Thank you so much.

Italian film-maker Luca Guadagnino

scored a critical hit

with Call Me By Your Name,

which many have named

their favourite film of that year.

In February, Hungarian film-maker

Ildiko Enyedi scooped the top prize

at the Berlin Film Festival

with On Body And Soul,

a brilliantly bizarre tale of two

misfits finding dreamy love

against the stark

backdrop of an abattoir.

One of the most uncategorisable

films to be released in UK cinemas

in 2017 was I Am Not A Witch,

a remarkable Zambian

story from writer-

director and British Independent

Film Awards winner Rungano Nyoni.

Margaret Mulubwa stars of the young

girl who is accused of being a witch

and given a stark choice -

to accept her supernatural

branding and live a tethered

life as a sorceress,

or to cut her ties with local

tradition and be

transformed into a goat.

Part social satire,

part surreal fairy tale,

this terrifically strange parable

addresses magic and misogyny,

superstition and social strictures,

in a manner which is as indefinable

as it is unmissable.

Although I Am Not A Witch was shot

and set in its director's homeland

of Zambia, Rungano Nyoni grew up

in Wales and

the film is a British-

French co-production.

2017 saw the release of several

British-backed feature debuts,

which proves that home-grown talent

continues to flourish.

Staying for the funeral?

Of course.

My favourite British

film of the year was

Hope Dickson Leach's The Levelling,

a poetic tale of family division

and reconciliation which played out

against the postdiluvian backdrop

of flooded Somerset.

I don't want this to be your fault!

Not again.

Having been named a star of tomorrow

by Screen International way back

in 2007, it took Hope Dickson Leach

nearly

a decade to make her first feature,

which stars Ellie Kendrick and David

Troughton.

It was well worth the wait.

Other screen debuts included

Lady Macbeth, the first feature

from theatre director William

Oldroyd.

Transferring its themes

from Russia to the rugged

of Victorian era North East England,

the film made

a star of Florence Pugh,

who previously shone

in Carol Morley's The Falling,

and she commands the screen

in this lusty tale of

repression and rebellion.

Yorkshire provided the arresting

setting for God's Own Country,

the feature debut from Francis Lee

won the BIFA for best

independent film.

Depicting a tentative relationship

to a young local farmer

and a migrant Romanian worker,

God's Own Country was another

low-budget British odyssey

with a licence as broad

as the countryside itself.

Meanwhile, Alex Barrett's London

Symphony takes cinema back

to its silent roots,

filming in over 300 locations

to present a celebration

of diversity and difference

with a superb score

by James McWilliam.

While gems such as The Levelling

and London Symphony showed what can

be achieved with limited resources,

other British-based films have more

multiplex-friendly appeal.

Films such as Goodbye

Christopher Robin, which gently

interwove fact and fantasy as it

retraced the creation

of a children's classic.

Boasting some beautiful writing

by Frank Cottrell Boyce,

this charming film, which could have

been call Saving Mr Milne,

served as a fitting epitaph

for the life and work of producer

Steve Christian who died

earlier this year.

And then there was Breathe,

which provoked both laughter

and tears as it visited

the story of pioneering polio

survivor Robin Cavendish.

With terrific terms

from Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy,

Breathe marked the directorial

feature debut for Andy Serkis.

Best known as the performance

capture maestro who brought iconic

characters like Gollum

and King Kong to life.

This year, Serkis reprised

the Role Of Caesar In War

For The Planet Of The Apes,

the third instalment in the rebooted

dystopian fantasy franchise.

War for the Planet of the Apes

was just one of a number of fantasy

blockbusters which proved that

mainstream movies don't have to be

drearily done to be popular.

In fact, they can be

inventive, challenging,

funny, subversive, dark,

delirious, whatever you want just

as long as it's good.

MUSIC: Hurt by Johnny Cash.

One of this year's most

adventurous mainstream

offerings was James Mangold's Logan,

a X-Men movie unlike any other,

apparently made for people

who prefer Westerns like Unforgiven

to standard comic

book franchise fare.

At the other end of the mood

spectrum was Patty Jenkins'

Wonder Woman, a thrillingly

empowering romp starring

the indefatigable Gal Gadot, which

proved a box office

smash, thereby destroying once

and for all those nonsensical myths

about superhero movies

requiring male heroes.

Incidentally, the rope-wielding

figure of Wonder Woman,

also provided the inspiration

for Angela Robinson's stranger

than fiction tale of fetishism

and female empowerment,

Professor Marston and the Wonder

Women, a real eye opener.

For those who like their superheroes

to come with a sense of humour,

New Zealand director

Taika Waititi's Thor:

Ragnarok was a delight.

A rollicking adventure which turned

out to be funnier than many

of the year's alleged comedies.

Let's do Get help.

No.

Come on, you'll love it.

I hate it.

Works every time.

It's humiliating.

Do you have a better plan?

Now.

We're doing it.

We're not doing get help.

Get help!

Please, my brother is dying!

Get help!

Help him!

Classic.

As for Kong: Skull Island,

which featured Thor co-star

Tom Hiddleston, hats off to director

Jordan Vogt-Roberts,

for managing to leave his quirky

indie fingerprints all over this 200

million-dollar studio behemoth,

which boasted the biggest primate

you've ever seen on screen.

Of course, there were some

clunkers, most notably

Justice League, which suffered

production problems ranging

from the departure of the original

director to studio uncertainty

about the dark or light

the finished film should be.

In the end, it just turned up dull.

That's not something

you could say about Dunkirk,

Christopher Nolan's overwhelming

epic about the allied retreat

Christopher Nolan's overwhelming

epic about the Allied retreat

from France in 1940.

Shot in the large Imax

format and best viewed

on the biggest screen possible,

preferably in 70mm,

Nolan's long nurtured labour of love

is a stunning achievement

which deftly juggles three

intertwining time periods,

one week, one day, one hour,

as it traces the story

from land, sea and sky.

And beneath it all is Hans Zimmer's

devastating score, a rising chord

of anxiety which tears

the audience's nerves to shreds.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

There were thrills of a very

different kind in Edgar Wright's

in Edgar Wright's Baby Driver,

a pedal to the metal cocktail

of music and movement which is best

described as an American in Paris

meets

the French connection.

Developing an idea that he had first

explored in a 2003 music video

for Mint Royale's Blue Song,

Wright's roller-coaster ride

Ansel Elgort as a getaway driver

who lives his life

to the rhythm of

a personal playlist.

The result is a blast.

Kathryn Bigelow cranked up

the tension in Detroit,

a powerful reconstruction

of a shocking incident that took

place amid five days of rioting

during the summer of 1967.

British actors John Boyega

and Will Poulter headed and ensemble

cast ably led by Hurt Locker

director Bigelow who became

the first woman to win the Oscar

for best director back in 2010.

For those in search of laughter,

the year's most unlikely romcom

proved to be the perfect tonic.

What is happening,

what are you doing?

I'm changing under this blanket.

I've seen everything.

Remember?

We were just having sex.

Yeah, but you were in

the throes of passion then.

Based on the real-life

experiences of co-writer

and star Kumail Nanjiani,

The Big Sick was While You Were

Sleeping For the wide awake

generation, a touching tale

of cross-cultural entanglement

between a Pakistani born man

and an American woman wrestling

with the conflicting

ties of unexpected love

and arranged marriage.

Meanwhile, Armando Iannucci turned

history into grim farce

in The Death of Stalin.

The star-studded cast

sank their teeth into this

brutal black comedy.

One of the best things

about being a movie critic

is you get to see films

about which you know

nothing in advance.

Take, for example, Secret Superstar,

a laughter and tears Bollywood

treat, which combines Hannah Montana

style teen fantasy with a strong

social realist message

about domestic abuse,

divorce law, gender selective

pregnancy termination, and and more.

gender selective pregnancy

termination, and more.

I went in unprepared

and was completely won over

by the charismatic energy of

Zaira Wasim and her scene-stealing

co-star and producer Aamir Khan.

And on the subject of children

finding beauty in tough

surroundings, one of the best films

of 2017 was The Florida Project,

described by director Sean Baker

as a modern day Our Gang.

These are the rooms we're

not supposed to go in.

But let's go anyway!

Set in the rundown shadows

of Disneyworld, the Florida Project

had heart and show to spare,

thanks in no small part

to a brilliantly natural performance

by rising star Brooklynn Kimberly

Prince.

I've failed as a mother!

Mom, you're a disgrace.

2017 also turned up to be

a great year for animation,

cementing my belief

that we are currently living

through a golden age in which hand

drawn and computer graphics live

side by side with stop motion,

rotoscoping and even oil painting.

Hey new kid, what did

you do to land in here?

So, are you the boss?

Guess you catch on pretty quick.

And that's how you talk to girls.

Among the animated wonders

which dazzled UK cinema audiences

this year were My Life

as a Courgette, a heartbreaking yet

joyful Swiss-French tale of abused

kids finding kinship in a care home,

and The Red Turtle, an ambitious

East-West venture produced

by Japan's studio Ghibli

and directed by London based.

animator Michael Dudok Du Wi between

studios in France and Belgium.

France and Belgium.

A wordless gem about a man

stranded on a desert island,

this sublime film harks back

to the universality of silent

cinema, creating something of beauty

which can be enjoyed by audiences

of all ages forever.

2017 also saw the release

of Loving Vincent, billed

as the world's first

fully painted feature in which 125

animators working in Greece

and Poland created 65,000 frames

based on live action footage

to create an astonishing collision

of real and artistic invention.

Blimey.

Do something.

Put the pin down or

we'll hypnotise you!

And from the sublime

to the ridiculous, let's hear it

for Captain Underpants:

the First Epic Movie,

A film so fabulously funny that

I saw it twice in the same week

and wanted to go back again.

Tra-Laa-Laa!

On the subject of seeing

things a second time,

it's worth pointing out that

alongside all the original

material that played

in the UK cinema this year,

2017 also saw its fair share

of sequels, remakes and reissues.

Back in January, director

Danny Boyle reunited us

with the original cast

of Trainspotting in T2,

which caught up with Renton,

Simon, Spud and Begby,

upon whom age and regret

had taken its toll.

Considering how important

Trainspotting was to a certain

generation of filmgoers,

it was a huge relief that the sequel

didn't trample all over our dreams

and turned out to be a touching

and inspiring movie

in its own right.

The same was true of Blade Runner

2049, Denis Villeneuve's

eagerly-anticipated

sequel to Ridley Scott's

epochal original.

There is an order to things.

That is what we do here.

We keep order.

Despite brilliant reviews,

Blade Runner 2049 didn't quite prove

the runaway box office hit

that its distributors had hoped for.

No matter, for my money,

it's a masterpiece.

True to the spirit of the original

but sharp enough to forward

its own brave new world.

And then there was Paddington 2,

a sequel which look like it didn't

And then there was Paddington 2,

a sequel which look like it couldn't

possibly live up to the promise

of its predecessor and then did.

Marmalade sandwiches all round.

Ow!

On the remake front,

Sofia Coppola won a best director

award at the Cannes Film Festival

in May for The Beguiled,

her take on a tale previously told

by Don Siegel in a twisted 70s

classic about a wounded

Civil War soldier taken

in by a cloistered group of women.

In June, a new adaptation of Daphne

du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel

arrived, in UK cinema,

with Rachel Weiss stepping nimbly

into shoes which had really been

filled by Olivia de Havilland?.

And in November, Agatha Christie's

Murder on the Orient Express

which have been filmed several times

before, most notably in 1974,

rolled in with a glamorous

cast led by actor

director Kenneth Brannagh,

and his extraordinary

performing moustache.

For me, one of the real

treat of 2017 was seeing

William Friedkin's gruelling

masterpiece Sorcerer back on screens

in a glorious 4K restoration,

heralding its long overdue

reassessment as a masterpiece,

a full 40 years after it first

formed in cinema.

One of the reasons Sorcerer,

itself a remake of Wages of Fear,

flopped back in 1977

was that the fact it opened

back-to-back with Star Wars,

he film that ate

the box office alive.

For decades later, that

intergalactic franchise

is still ruling the galaxy,

With episode eight, The Last Jedi

opening in the run-up to Christmas,

and once again driving Sorcerer

of our screens.

Alongside the French connection,

sorcerer director William Friedkin

is best known for the Exorcist,

he most successful

horror film of all time.

2017 was a very good year

for horror, with Andres Muschietti's

adaptation of Stephen King's It

laying claim to the title

of horror's biggest box office haul,

albeit an adjusted for inflation.

No!

Hiya, Georgie!

What a nice boat.

It was good fun but the real

ground-breaking work was being done

on the edges of horror in films

which slipped subtly across genres.

One of the best films of 2017

was Jordan Peele's Get Out,

a sharp sociopolitical chiller

with scratched away at the suface

of so-called post-racial America,

to find poisonous secrets lurking

behind the liberal smiles.

So you guys coming up from the city?

Yeah, we're just coming

up for the weekend.

Can I see your license please?

He wasn't driving.

I didn't who was driving,

I asked to see his ID.

Bizarrely, when it came

to the Golden Globes,

Get Out was placed into the best

musical or comedy category also

when asked to define the film

himself, Peel said pointedly,

it's a documentary.

Black Swan director

Darren Baranowski toyed with horror

films in his bill will bring

cinematic powerful Mother!,

which found Jennifer Lawrence cast

out of eight latter-day Eden

into an increasingly

overcrowded hell.

Other arthouse offerings such

as Olivier Assayas's Personal

David Lowry's A Ahost Story

and Yorgos Lanthimos's

the Killing of a Secret Deer

twisted supernatural tropes

to their own psychological end.

While Trey Edward Shults's creepy

It Comes at Night got under the skin

of modern American paranoia

with its clever inversion

of home invasion with this.

Here in the UK heavily

pregnant Alice Lowe wrote,

directed and starred Prevenge,

a uniquely weird antenatal shocker

which brought together murder,

madness and maternity in a fever

dream of fear and fast.

I would swap her to have him back,

so he can't hear you.

He can't hear you.

She can't, she's very articulate.

But for me, the best horror film,

indeed the best film of the gig

was Raw, the flesh gripping,

French- Belgian feature debut from

writer-director Julia Ducournau.

Using cannibalism to tell its story

of growing pains and sibling

rivalry, Raw is a astonishingly

assured work from a unique

film-maker whose vision

is etched into every frame.

Straddling humour, heartbreak

and horror with ease.

There was horror of a very different

kind in City of Ghosts,

one of the most striking

documentaries of 2017 which looked

at the online activists and citizen

journalist in Raqqa,

who risked everything to let

the world know what was really

happening when the homeland

was taken over by Isis.

This year also saw the UK release

I am Not Your Negro,

Raoul Peck's unique film

James Baldwin, which culminated

in the best documentary category

in the Oscars in February before

opening here in April.

Despite theatrical success of films

like Fahrenheit 9/11,

many people still view documentaries

as being more at home

on television and in cinema.

2017 was a year in which

the boundaries between

big and small screen

is became increasingly blurred.

Indeed, in their end of year

round-up at the cinema magazine

Sight and Sound named the TV series

Twin Peaks: The Return as the second

best film of the year.

Meanwhile, Netflix and Amazon,

found their logos being booed

at the Cannes film Festival

after French cinemas complained

that films intended for the home

viewing market should not be allowed

to compete in a film festival

unless they have a proper

theatrical release.

It's a fair point but who,

other than Netflix, would have

allowed the Korean director

Bong Joon-ho to make a movie

as wonderfully weird

as the creature feature Okja,

which competed for the Palm d'Or?

Of course, the really big

controversy for which 2017 will be

remembered are the stories of sexual

abuse and harassment

which multiplied in the wake

of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.

As the silence surrounding

harassment within the industry

was finally broken, Hollywood found

some of its most bankable players

publicly named and shamed.

When Kevin Spacey became the subject

of abuse allegations,

of Ridley Scott's All the Money

in the World enlisted

Christopher Plummer to reshoot

all of Spacey's scenes

at short notice.

Meanwhile, campaigning groups

such as Raising Films,

which was set up by Levelling

director Hope Dixon Leach,

Have called for industry wide

perform to protect those working

within film production

from exploitation and abuse.

So what of the future?

Hopefully, the scandals of today

will prove the wake-up calls off

tomorrow and bring about real change

within the industry.

Watch this space.

In the meantime, there

are plenty of great movies

to look forward to in 2018.

Strong contenders currently

being tipped for prizes

at the forthcoming Oscars include

Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards

Outside Ebbing, Missouri,

starring Frances McDormand,

Stephen Spielberg's The Post,

featuring Meryl Streep

and Tom Hanks, and Greta Gerwig's

directorial debut Lady Bird,

all of which open here

in January and February.

Personally, the films I'm

mostly looking forward

to in the coming months

are Dark River from the selfish

giant director Clio Barnard,

Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really

Here which proved a prize-winning

hit at Cannes in May,

and Guillermo Del Toro's the shape

of water, starring the wonderful

Sally Hawkins.

The great thing about movies

is that you never know

what's going to be a hit.

Take Tommy Wiseau's 2003

catastrophe Rhe Room,

rightly regarded to be one

of the worst films ever made,

but which became a midnight movie

cult favourite and has now spawned

a star-studded making of drama

which has turned Wiseau

into the stuff of legend.

As screenwriter William Goldman

famously observed in Hollywood,

no one knows anything.

And reversals of fortune

are always possible.

I'll leave you with a clip

from the Disaster Artist.

Enjoy the movies.

We do alley scene!

This set on the alleyways and looks

exactly like the real

alleyway out there.

That's right, that's what we do

in Hollywood movie right?

Well why don't we just shoot it

in the real alleyway?

Because it's real Hollywood movie.

Yeah sounds good.

OK.