The Anticipated 20 for 2020

The last list of 2019 encompasses 20 feature films (in alphabetical order), both animated and live-action, that I will be looking forward to seeing next year, while crossing fingers a few of these pieces actually get finished by the end of the current decade. I know that at least half of the entries have already played in various corners of the world, but one can easily get lost in keeping track of all the festivals. (Not to mention that I find it virtually impossible to attend them.) As usual, my focus is not on the widely recognized names, though I believe that Lech Majewski, Rita Azevedo Gomes and Roy Andersson should ring some cinephilic bells. So, without a further ado, I present the selection draped in my best wishes for 2020! 💖

1. 1000 Kings / Bidzina Kanchaveli

2. A Portuguesa / Rita Azevedo Gomes

3. About Endlessness / Roy Andersson

4. Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles / Salvador Simó

5. Children of the Sea / Ayumu Watanabe

6. Diner / Mika Ninagawa

7. Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway / Miguel Llansó

8. Junk Head / Takahide Hori

9. Koko-di Koko-da / Johannes Nyholm

10. Lake Michigan Monster / Ryland Brickson Cole Tews

11. Magnetick Pathways / Edgar Pêra

12. Plot Points / Daniel & Clara

13. Sanctorum / Joshua Gil

14. The Fear of Looking Up / Konstantinos Koutsoliotas

15. The Last Fiction / Ashkan Rahgozar

16. The Painted Bird / Václav Marhoul

17. The Sea Behind Her Head / Scott Barley

18. The Spine of Night / Morgan Galen King

19. The Wild Goose Lake / Diao Yinan

20. Valley of the Gods / Lech Majewski

70+ Favorite Shorts of 2019

During 2019, I watched more than 700 shorts, many of which were submitted for the first Kinoskop and considered for its seven selections, or screened at Hazel Eye Film Festival and via the Festival Scope platform. I also had access to a number of works by artists whom I've come in contact with, and not to mention the bottomless pits of Vimeo and YouTube where I discovered a few channels worth subscribing to, such as Random Acts (art films), Alter (horror) and Dust (sci-fi). After going through my notes, I realized there are over 150 films rated 8 or higher, and still remaining vividly in my memory. (Hell, I even remember good few of 7s!) Considering that listing them all may turn away some readers, I'll narrow down my choices to the offerings not older than 3 years, i.e. released in the period 2017-2019, and organize them into several categories.

ANIMATED REVERIES

1. The Flying Fish (Murat Sayginer, 2019)

2. The Tesla World Light (Matthew Rankin, 2017)

3. Into the Flame (Sean McClintock, 2019)

4. Cali Ball (Shon Kim, 2018)

5. The Extinct Suite (Anna Malina Zemlianski, 2017)

6. Plateau in Ascension (Joe Hambleton, 2018)

7. A Sun Will Always Sing (Chad Thompson, 2019)

8. Freight (Sava Živković, 2019)

9. Belial’s Dream (Robert Morgan, 2017)

10. Mold (Sujin Kim, 2019)

+ Honorable mentions go to the animated series Undone (Hisko Hulsing) & Love, Death & Robots (Tim Miller, 2019).

DOCUMENTARIES & ENIGMAS

1. SD103: Snakes & Ladders (Daniel & Clara, 2019)

2. Bodies And Space And Place And Home (Sarah C. Prinz, 2018)

3. Fugue (Steven Adam Renkovish, 2017)

4. My Echo, My Shadow and Me (Roger Deutsch, 2019)

5. Soil (Alican Durbaş, 2017)

6. Merry-Go-Round (Ihor Podolchak, 2017)

7. And What Is the Summer Saying? (Payal Kapadia, 2018)

8. They Looked at Me and I Smiled (Benjamin Edelberg, 2019)

9. The Place from Where I Write (Nikolina Bogdanović, 2018)

10. Inventario Churubusco (Elena Pardo, 2018)

GENRE SUBVERSIONS

1. Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You (Brandon Cronenberg, 2019)

2. He Was Called Chaos Bērziņš (Signe Birkova, 2018)

3. Commission (Ieva Belode, 2019)

4. The Underworld (Jann Clavadetscher, 2019)

5. Floralis (Johnny Clyde, 2019)

7. Ready or Not (Eleanor Dolan, 2018)

7. The Stranger (Pip Chodorov, 2018)

8. At Dawn the Flowers Open the Gates of Paradise (Elzbieta Piekacz, 2018)

9. Spring II (Ed Carter, 2019)

10. The Gift (Dumas Haddad, 2019)

ECOLOGICAL & SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

1. We Are Opposite Like That (Himali Singh Soin, 2019)

2. Furnace (Kent Tate, 2019)

3. 80613 (Kalainithan Kalaichelvan, 2019)

4. Tendency to Collapse (Marta Węglińska, 2018)
5. How to Find Silence in a Noisy World? (Adam Loften & Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, 2018)
6. Olla (Ariane Labed, 2019)

7. Lui Lack, tú no tienes la culpa (Stefan M. Mladenović, 2019)

8. Rain (Martin Gerigk, 2017)

9. It Wasn't Meant to Be Sexy! (Claudia Siefen-Leitich, 2018)

10. Ecos (Mariana Dianela Torres, 2018)

INNERMOST POETRY

1. Auricular Confession (Martin Del Carpio, 2019)

2. Aleph (Antonia Luxem, 2018)

3. It Will End in Tears (Susu Laroche, 2018)

4. Cornered Star (Melanie Manchot, 2018)

5. I’m Not a Doctor (Michael Higgins, 2019)

6. Inward Light (Gabriel Linhares Falcão, 2018)

7. Tactus Memoriae (Camelia Mirescu, 2017)

8. Anima (Jared Michael Sobotka, 2019)

9. Solstitium (Justin Brown, 2019)

10. I Don’t Own Anxiety (Marie Craven, 2019)

MAGIC, ALCHEMY & NEO-SURREALISM

1. Kinetics (Atoosa Pour Hosseini, 2018) 

2. Crowned and Conquering (Zareh Tjeknavorian, 2019)

3. Night Mother Scent (Takatoshi Arai, 2017)

4. Moonlight People (Dmitrii Frolov, 2019)

5. In the Arbor of the Bitter Orange (Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian, 2017)

6. Where The Night Ends (Petr Makaj, 2018)

7. Je te tiens (Sergio Caballero, 2019)

8. Pwdre Ser: the rot of stars (Charlotte Pryce, 2018)

9. Obatala Film (Sebastian Wiedeman, 2019)

10. Horse Follows Darkness (Delia Gonzalez, 2017)

+ Honorable mention: Islands (Yann Gonzalez, 2017)

THE ART OF MUSIC VIDEOS

1. M83 - Temple of Sorrow / Lune De Fiel / Feelings (Bertrand Mandico, 2019)
2. Amenra - A Solitary Reign (Tine Guns, 2017)

3. Stimming x Lambert - Edelweiss (Dalibor Barić, 2019)

4. Rage Park (Stathis Athanasiou, 2019)

5. Kriill - Your Eyes, Will I Ever (Félicien Colmet Daâge, 2018)

6. Thom Yorke - Last I Heard (…He Was Circling The Drain) (Art Camp & Saad Moosajee, 2019)

7. TWRP - Starlight Brigade (feat. Dan Avidan) (India Swift, 2019)

THE POWER OF THE ABSURD

1. Ghoulish Galactic Grievances (Josh Owen, 2019)

2. Universal Ear: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum (Graeme Cole, 2019)

3. Grand Bouquet (Nao Yoshigai, 2019)

4. Šafarikova 19 (Lana Pavkov, 2018)

5. The Brother (Kai Fiáin, 2018)

50+ Cinematic Favorites of 2019

Another year is closing to an end, and once again I find myself challenged by more than fifty features that I rated high enough to consider for the annual list. When it comes to No. 1, I have absolutely no dilemma awarding uncompromising explorations of the Cinema itself and its alchemical, as well as experiential potentials, with three ex aequo winners emerging from the Luminous Void. They are followed by a masterful period piece which I compared to a 'slow-tempo gothic-doom metal album' in my review, the animated, Cubist-inspired ode to Art, the most exhilarating big screen experience and the oddest amalgam of psychological drama, absurd comedy and gothic horror that I've seen since Edgar Pêra's The Baron.

Inter alia, you'll also find an ancient myth turned historical epic, an unclassifiable flick about a 'murderous' flower, a magic-realist biography of the 80s Leningrad underground rock scene, some sharply satirical and stylistically impressive offerings, and even a cyberpunk puppet adventure! If that is not eclectic enough for you, maybe an emotionally sweeping anime, a genre subversion WTFery, or a Cinderella story gone surreal / pulp sci-fi in a world of pro-soccer will satisfy your needs? And let's not forget the clash of parallel dimensions in the 60s India, a post-war drama with the bold color palette, and a B-movie exploitation centered around a Lucha Libre fighter... Although the list is focused on the films released in the last three years, I allowed myself the liberty of including a few 2010s exceptions that I watched for the first time in 2019.

1. Luminous Void: Docudrama (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2019)

    Autumnal Sleeps (Michael Higgins, 2019)

    Kino Clinic (Jann Clavadetscher, 2019)

2. The Riddle of Jaan Niemand (Kaur Kokk, 2018)

3. Ruben Brandt, Collector (Milorad Krstić, 2018)

4. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

5. The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019)

6. Ghost of the Golden Groves (Harun-Al-Rashid, 2019)

7. Romulus & Remus: The First King (Matteo Rovere, 2019)

8. Jonaki (Aditya Vikram Sengupta, 2018)

9. Long Day's Journey Into Night (Gan Bi, 2018)

10. Delirium (Ihor Podolchak, 2013)

11. Notes From a Journey (Daniel & Clara, 2019)

12. Seduction of the Flesh (Júlio Bressane, 2018)

13. The Wind (Emma Tammi, 2018)

14. Unicorn (Eduardo Nunes, 2017)

15. Pig (Mani Haghighi, 2018)

16. Little Joe (Jessica Hausner, 2019)

17. Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)

18. Moon Tiger Movie (Maximilian Le Cain, 2019) (pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4)

19. Who Will Sing to You? (Carlos Vermut, 2018)

20. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (Mari Okada, 2018)

21. Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov, 2018)

22. Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019)

23. Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

24. The Prince's Voyage (Jean-François Laguionie & Xavier Picard, 2019)

25. In Praise of Nothing (Boris Mitić, 2017)

26. White Snake (Amp Wong & Ji Zhao, 2019)

27. The Missing Sun (Brennan Vance, 2017)

28. With a Breath (Viveka Frost, 2019)

29. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov, 2019)

30. Luz (Tilman Singer, 2018)

31. Listen Little Man (Marko Žunić, 2019)

32. I Lost My Body (Jérémy Clapin, 2019)

33. Aren't You Happy? (Susanne Heinrich, 2019)

34. Greener Grass (Jocelyn DeBoer & Dawn Luebbe, 2019)

35. Empty Horses (Péter Lichter, 2019)

36. Rage (Sérgio Tréfaut, 2018)

37. Paradise Hills (Alice Waddington, 2019)

38. Little from the Fish Shop (Jan Balej, 2015)

39. Wildlife (Paul Dano, 2018)

40. The Mountain (Rick Alverson, 2018)

41. Battledream Chronicle (Alain Bidard, 2016)

42. Anna and the Apocalypse (John McPhail, 2017)

43. Krasue: Inhuman Kiss (Sitisiri Mongkolsiri, 2019)

44. The Attackables (Kerstin Cmelka & Mario Mentrup, 2019)

45. Ralf's Colors (Lukas Marxt, 2019)

46. Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt, 2018)

47. The Wolf House (Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León, 2018)

48. Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018)

49. Lowlife (Ryan Prows, 2017)

50. Yamasong: March of the Hollows (Sam Koji Hale, 2017)

For various reasons, ranging from 'I'm still not sure how to feel about this' to 'it reminds me of the 80s cartoons which I'm a sucker for' to 'way too exotic to be ignored', honorable mentions go to...

1. High Life (Claire Denis, 2018)

2. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

3. The Night Comes for Us (Timo Tjahjanto, 2018)

4. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

5. Aquaman (James Wan, 2018)

6. Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)

7. Another Day of Life (Raúl de la Fuente & Damian Nenow, 2018)

8. Hanagatami (Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, 2017)

9. Aniara (Pella Kågerman & Hugo Lilja, 2018)

10. Edge of the Knife (Gwaai Edenshaw & Helen Haig-Brown, 2018)

Pig (Mani Haghighi, 2018)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼(☼) out of 10☼

Mani Haghighi makes the ultimate sacrifice by decapitating his own head and staging his own funeral in a metatextual twist of his latest offering praiseworthy for the opening credits alone which, as it later turns out, represent a hyper-stylized commercial for a bug spray directed by a blacklisted filmmaker protagonist, Hasan Kasmai. A seamless blend of arthouse cinema, screwball comedy and serial murder mystery, The Pig (Khook) works wonders on both personal and political level, self-ironizing an artist's ego, addressing the destructive power of social media, and sharply satirizing the Iranian society, particularly its censors. All the while, the joker-auteur's tongue is planted firmly in his cheek, with the entire cast obviously having a whale of a time – this goes double for Mina Jafarzadeh who plays Hasan's loving, riffle-wielding mother with gusto.

Drenched in garish, over-saturated colors of Mahmoud Kalari's sharp cinematography which beautifully captures Amir Hossein Ghodsi's neat set designs and Negar Nemati's oft-eccentric costumes, this wildly eclectic affair effortlessly glides between its farcical reality and a few dream sequences, not to mention a hilarious, neon-lit hard-rock hallucination. Around its mid-point, it even takes the viewer to a posh mask party that appears like an homage to the greatest scene of George Franju's Judex as if conceived by the techno-loving ghost of Federico Fellini! However, its focus remains mainly on the somewhat infantile and vainglorious, yet utterly sympathetic hero brilliantly portrayed by bushy-haired Hasan Majuni who wouldn't look out of place in some darkly humorous Spanish production, whether in or out of the red tutu dress...

Cinematic Disappointments of 2019

In his review published on January 1, 1982, one of the most respected film critics, Roger Ebert, said that John Carpenter's The Thing is 'basically just a geek show, a gross-out movie in which teenagers can dare one another to watch the screen'. The reason behind this quote (which I and many genre aficionados couldn't agree less!) is to show or rather, confirm that no criticism is immune to subjectivity and bias. So, I sincerely hope that no one will take the following list to their hearts, just because their 2019 favorites and a few touted masterpieces are included (and arranged in alphabetical order). Also, I must admit that some of these entries are my own failed attempts at being adventurous during the excursion out of my comfort zone (such as German comedy 100 Dinge), whereas the others are found guilty on various charges: for being despicably generic, clichéd and flatter than a pancake (Prey); for faking emotions and contemplative atmosphere, while aping Kubrick, Malick and Villeneuve (Ad Astra); for appearing like an overlong commercial that aims for transgression and pretends to be the next Beyond the Black Rainbow (Perfect); for poorly remaking / remixing acclaimed classics although nobody asked for it (Rabid / MetropolisRemix); for lacking any sense of humor, trolling the hell out of the viewer and thinking its eclectic hyper-style is hypnotizing (In Fabric); for unengaging story that seems to go on for 35 years instead of 3 and a half hours, and uninvolving characters played by de-aged actors who still move and grimace like old men that they are (The Irishman), etc.

1. 100 Dinge (Florian David Fitz, 2018)
2. Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019)
3. Anna (Luc Besson, 2019)
4. Artik (Tom Botchii Skowronski, 2019)
5. Bacurau (Juliano Dornelles & Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2019)
6. Capharnaüm (Nadine Labaki, 2018)
7. City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes (Kenji Kodama, 2019)
8. Climax (Gaspar Noé, 2018)
9. Darlin’ (Pollyanna McIntosh, 2019)
10. El día que resistía (Alessia Chiesa, 2018)
11. Gangbyeon Hotel (Sang-soo Hong, 2018)
12. Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina, 2019)
13. Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce, 2018)
14. In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)
15. In the Tall Grass (Vincenzo Natali, 2019)
16. Limbo (Mark Young, 2019)
17. MetropolisRemix (Garrett Guyunn & Andrew John Holt, 2019)
18. Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)
19. Nightmare Cinema (Alejandro Brugués, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Ryûhei Kitamura & David Slade, 2018)
20. Occidental (Neïl Beloufa, 2017)
21. Perfect (Eddie Alcazar, 2018)
22. Piercing (Nicolas Pesce, 2018)
23. Prey (Franck Khalfoun, 2019)
24. Rabid (The Soska Sisters, 2019)
25. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)
26. The Rookies (Alan Yuen, 2019)
27. Tinta Bruta (Filipe Matzembacher & Marcio Reolon, 2018)
28. Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)
29. Velvet Buzzsaw (Dan Gilroy, 2019)
30. We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Stacie Passon, 2018)

A dishonorable mention goes to Synonymes (Nadav Lapid, 2019) which I dropped approx. 35 minutes into it.

Still shot from In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)

Minotaur's Secret

At the Labyrinth’s entrance, there is a dead silence. A small tree which grows out of a lost camera is known as The Sound Devourer, but not a soul can tell the origin of its seed. Some say that it is only a figment of the Poet’s imagination, but others swear its leaves will heal sadness, if they don’t turn to dust right after you pick them. 

Inside the Labyrinth, a dangerous creature may live. Many heroes have fallen trying to put an end to its existence, though their ghosts look like those of the suicide victims, blue-eyed and silver-skinned. The beast is immortal, and it feeds on the fairy tales presented to it by the northern winds... or so the story goes. And it doesn’t like to be referred to as ‘it’, because its persona has two horns and a long tail reflected in the mirror.

Through the hallways of the endless maze, no word is ever uttered, yet their walls bleed with hieroglyphs that only HE understands. Sometimes, when his thoughts swirl around as if in a vortex, even he finds it hard to read the pictograms. His vision becomes blurry and a strong headache causes the appearance of another interdimensional portal. Despite numerous visitors from various worlds, he still hasn’t encountered anyone capable of breaking the curse for good...

I Lost My Body (Jérémy Clapin, 2019)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼ out of 10☼

Jérémy Clapin's eccentric feature debut marks another great addition to the rich catalogue of French animated films intended for mature audience. Mostly told in flashbacks, from the perspective of a severed (and sentient) hand which could be a distant cousin to Thing from The Addams Family franchise, it brings the story of both physical and emotional loss which comes full circle from macabre to melancholic, somewhat subverting the viewer's expectations as it approaches the deliberately open ending.

I Lost My Body (originally, J'ai perdu mon corps) is based on the novel Happy Hand by Guillaume Laurant (of Amelie and The City of the Lost Children fame) who also co-wrote the adapted screenplay - a simultaneously bizarre and poignant meditation on fate, grief, love, and coming in terms with oneself, while taking matters into your hands... or at least one hand. At the beginning, we are introduced to what appears to be a murder or accident, with only a fly as a witness. A black and white sequence takes us several years into the past which shows a kid trying to catch another fly (turned into a visual leitmotif and plot device), following his intellectual father's instructions. Cut back to the present, a dismembered hand escapes the laboratory refrigerator and embarks on a long journey through the Parisian gutters, subways and ducts, keeping a low profile and fending off pigeons, rats and dogs on its way to reconnect with its owner, Naoufel.

Through the recent and remote memories of this 'beast with five fingers', we learn of Naoufel's predicament as a lowly pizza delivery boy, and his stalkerish romance with a Gen-Z librarian, Gabrielle. The time is the mid-1990's and our protagonist's audio cassette recorder - a childhood present from his parents - plays an important role in the economically constructed narrative. Not a single moment is wasted during less than 80 minutes of the film's running time, and not a single emotion is faked or overstated, thanks to the finely tuned performances from the entire cast, especially the newcomer Hakim Faris, and Victoire Du Bois who has collaborated with Guy Maddin (The Forbidden Room) and Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name). A slice-of-life drama which sees Naoufel evolving from a crestfallen introvert to a daring risk-taker is tightly interwoven with the hand's surreal adventure (a dream?) packed with a handful (no pun intended) of wonderfully orchestrated action set pieces. Clapin employs a stylish, if not consistently seamless combination of traditional and computer animation, with its palette of desaturated colors and Dan Levy's moody, eclectic score co-establishing the autumnal atmosphere of longing for the brighter future...