Beanpole

This quite extraordinary film from the 28-year-old Russian director Kantemir Balagov was a prize-winner in Cannes; in the UK it had three showings at the London film festival and then went straight to the streaming platform Mubi. Everyone should see it. The inspiration is The Unwomanly Face Of War, the 1985 oral history of Soviet womens wartime experiences by Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich. In the shabby, traumatised city of Leningrad after the war in 1945, two women have survived: a tall, unworldly young woman nicknamed Beanpole and her friend Masha. The two women have a bond of friendship relating to the little boy, Pashka, that Beanpole looks after, and this becomes the keystone of a terrible, shared tragedy. A harrowing, vital movie. PB

A rare modern film based on an epic poem, Swedish directors Pella Kgerman and Hugo Liljas first feature film Aniara begins as a sci-fi adventure and ends up an exploration of chaos, despair and cultural collapse. A transport ship moving wealthy evacuees of an increasingly uninhabitable Earth gets thrown off course on the way to a Martian colony. The cruise liner, replete with arcades and a psychotropic sense-memory evocation room, is self-sustaining, so survives as a generation ship. Help is always just around the corner, as are the numerous conspiracy theories damaging morale. As time grows infinite, new social structures emerge, some of which are technologically advanced, others more primitive. Ill just come out and say the words interplanetary sex cults. The film doubles down on weirdness, leaving no narrative corridor unexplored. High Life and Ad Astra both found their audiences this year, but this movie, far superior, unfortunately slipped into a black hole. JH

A man goes to a nightclub, spots a fetching stranger sporting a leather getup, and scurries off with him for a casual shag in a side room where the masked figure then murders the guy by spiked dildo. So begins an erotic slasher with a clear sense of humor about itself, counterbalanced with serious considerations for the Aids epidemic and the ostracizing of the gay, porn and gay-porn communities. A serial killer stalks the French blue-movie industry in 1979, targeting the stable of performers employed by producer Anne (Vanessa Paradis), who has some unresolved issues of her own with her ex-girlfriend and current editor Los (Kate Moran). As they jointly work through production on the film they title Homocidal and the body count continues to rise, director Yann Gonzalez stages ravishingly, ripely carnal set pieces at the intersection of fear and desire, a nexus at which the films milieu of decadent queer indulgence has been comfortably situated. CB

While the premise of Penny Lanes brilliant documentary Hail Satan? initially appears to be pure sensationalism the use of black masses to counter white supremacy as the film unfolds, the story becomes both stranger and more uplifting. Lane introduces the devilishly good work of the Satanic Temple, a growing group of activists who are challenging the encroaching overlap between church and state through the use of satanic imagery. So, if a government building in Arkansas erects a Christian monument on its grounds, the Temple campaigns for its own religious symbol to be built nearby: a 10ft statue of Baphomet. The theory is closer to satire than satanism, but theres a deeply felt sincerity to the Temples work also. That goes further than its defence of democracy its there in its embrace of diversity and a pretty impeccable set of moral values. Not all heroes wear capes; some of them wear horns as well. PH

Were living through a climate emergency; its fitting then, that Canadian film-maker Brett Story has made a film about the apocalypse. Borrowing its format from Chris Markers Le Joli Mai, which examined Paris in 1962, shortly after the Algerian war, The Hottest August is set in New York circa 2017, during its hottest summer on record, eloquently drawing poetic links between the islands rising temperature and the political tensions bubbling between its residents. Her vital critique of the way late capitalism is mutating both the planet and the values of the people inhabiting it invokes Karl Marx, Annie Dillard and Zadie Smith but the experience of watching is more visceral than cerebral, conjuring a genuine (and genuinely terrifying) sense of creeping, paralysing dread. An alien soundscape designed by Ernst Karel of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab helps to create further a feeling of futurelessness. SH

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is the charming, elegiac tale of Jimmie Fails, a man trying to hold on to a San Francisco that no longer exists. Living across the water in Oakland, Jimmie dreams of a lost era when his family lived in a beautiful Victorian house in San Francisco, long before the tech industry changed the city into something colder, more manufactured, and less like home. Jimmie travels across the east bay every day and stealthily maintains the exterior of the house, mourning the fact the affluent white couple who moved in are allowing it to fall in disarray.

Joe Talbots first feature film is many things. Its an eccentric buddy comedy, on par in color and tonality with Wes Andersons works. Its a near-documentary, in its look at gang culture, gentrification, and the damaging effects of toxic masculinity. But ultimately, its a portrait of a break-up, showing how ones heart can be tethered to a place that ultimately does not love you back. Its a film that deserved more attention than it got, and should definitely be required viewing for anyone whos moved to San Francisco in pursuit of the American dream. GS

Theres a scene in Midnight Traveler, a documentary by Emelie Mahdavian, that has stuck with me probably more than any other this year: Hassan Fazili, forced out by the Taliban and deep into his familys journey from Afghanistan to Europe one he, his wife Fatima, and two daughters consistently film on their mobile phones recounts a story of personal terror in voiceover. The screen is full of landscapes and undramatic footage; Hassan doesnt need to show you the story to get its impact. In fact, filming his familys pain, what once felt like an act of artistic resilience, now feels ethically queasy. His meditation on the ethics of filming, of prioritizing the screen instead of the people in front of you, is one of the many surprising, deeply empathetic layers to this low-fi documentary that subverts any tropes in coverage of the migrants story.

The film, stitched together by Mahdavian using the familys cellphone footage and collected via a messenger over the Fazilis two-plus year journey, communicates a much-covered crisis in bracing honesty by putting the story of a familys formative years first. Its cadre of small, relatable moments singing in the kitchen, playing in the snow, a playful marriage quarrel make Midnight Traveler quietly revelatory. The Fazilis are buffeted by their circumstances but not defined by them; at every turn, it prizes experience and honesty over seeking sympathy. Few films have given me the illusion of understanding anothers journey this year more than Midnight Traveler; few films show more power in the quiet moments. AH

Graham Norton aside, Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren didnt do a lot of press for The Good Liar. It hasnt made a lot of money and it isnt figuring in the awards conversation. All of these are a pity, because its not just very well made, its also supremely entertaining one of few films Ive seen in recent years where I really wanted to know what happens next.

The pair meet on a genteel dating site. Shes a wealthy widow; hes a conman whos scented his next big score, and is faking it as a moderately hobbling old buffer. So far, so enjoyable. But the plot loops are more elaborate than that premise suggests; the stakes higher, the history rather more freighted. Around the halfway point you dont start wondering who is really scamming who; you start doubting almost everything youve seen before.

This isnt a knowing homage like Knives Out nor a glossily postmodern box of secrets, like Pain and Glory. Its just a straight-down-the-line thriller, built on a nest of twists, perched on shifting sands. It wont especially make you cry or laugh, or think differently about the world. But it completely commands your attention. For two hours, everything else is irrelevant. And sometimes thats enough. CS

Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke has for some time now been making brilliantly acute fables of modern China: a huge country undergoing a dislocating upheaval while still not fully recovered from the last one. His films tend to be oblique in intent, partly to enhance the ambiguous nature of their conclusions, but also useful in that in contrast to contemporaries such as Lou Ye Jia is not seen as a threat by censors.

Well, Ash Is the Purest White is a remarkable film: elliptical and not exactly user-friendly, but building with a granite-like power that profiles the chaotic birth of the communist-capitalist era at the turn of the millennium. Jia, appropriately, turns to the gangster-movie format to tell his story, at least at first. A local hoodlum, or jianghu, named Bin, gets the sniff of power in the grimy industrial town of Datong after his boss is murdered; his girlfriend Qiao is fiercely loyal but ready to disengage with the gang life. When Bin overreaches himself in a street fight with opposing goons, Qiao fires off a pistol and takes the rap and the prison sentence for Bin.

Ash Is the Purest White then heads into less conventional territory. After she gets out, Qiao realises Bin has moved away from Datong and abandoned her, and she tries to confront him. But the relationship, it seems, is beyond repair; her fortitude and fidelity of no account. Scrapping to survive in Chinas new era, she falls in briefly with a man who claims to be chasing UFOs and even appears to have some sort of extra-terrestrial vision herself. Bin, incapacitated by a stroke, returns to Datong, but their relationship is no happier in the long run.

As Peter Bradshaw says, this is a gripping parable for the vanity of human wishes; for all Qiaos commitment to burning as brightly and fiercely as the white volcanic ash she sees on a far-off mountain-top, its her fate to endure disappointment and dismay. And that, I think, is something we can all relate to. AP

There was an avalanche of festive films this year, seemingly more than ever with Netflix following in the footsteps of Lifetime and Hallmark by releasing a stockings worth of similarly low-budget and low-entertainment Christmas melodramas. But buried underneath the yellow snow, there was a finely wrapped gift, a surprising little gem that delivered a familiar assortment of ingredients but in strangely irresistible packaging. Crudely referred to as a teen Love Actually, Let It Snow focuses on a young, diverse ensemble and their romantic misadventures leading up to the big day. There are precisely zero surprises along the way but theres a wealth of chemistry between the charming cast and director Luke Snellin rises above the platform to craft a film that actually looks like it could be released in cinemas, rather than premiering on your smartphone. I was pleasantly surprised by Let It Snow, especially in comparison to the big-budget theatrical inanity of Emma Thompsons incompetent Last Christmas, and unlike that film, I can see myself unwrapping this one again next year. BL

Originally posted here:

The best movies of 2019 that you haven't seen - The Guardian