Slow West (2015)

When an incident back home forces the girl of his adolescent dreams to flee to America, naive 16-year-old Scotsman Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) sets off in hot pursuit. Little does he realise that Rose (Caren Pistorius) and her father (Rory McCann) have a large price on their heads, and that in his youthful innocence-cum-ignorance he is inadvertently leading a parade of bounty hunters right to them. Interested parties include Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), an Irish immigrant who sells his services to Jay in the supposed spirit of camaraderie; Payne (Ben Mendelsohn), a gang-leader and alpha-hunter who has a history with Silas; and Angus the Clergyman (Tony Croft), a lone mercenary who assumes the identity of a holy man to wrong-foot his prey. As they draw closer to their respective prizes, however, Silas begins to admire Jay’s courage and determination.

Of all cinema’s assorted genres and subgenres, it’s perhaps the Western that is the most divisive among cinephiles, at least behind horror. Either you can relate to the perennial nameless wanderer — a personification of tumbleweed both bow-legged and squinty-eyed — or you can’t; and if not then the Old West is invariably a barren and inhospitable place populated by characters that you find it next to impossible to engage with. Thankfully, as is often the case in the multiplex medium of film, there are exceptions, and John Maclean’s Slow West is undoubtedly one of the most exceptional of all. After all, this is a Western with a Scottish protagonist, a comedic undercurrent and strong female character — it’s about as far removed from the blanched American desert and staunch individualism that usually characterises this kind of movie as it is possible to get. There isn’t a single sheriff, deputy or Mexican in the entire movie.

Some have described the absurdist tonal elements as decidedly and distinctly Coen-esque, but while the brothers might well have been an influence Slow West goes well beyond the likes of No Country For Old Men and True Grit in reconciling its tragicomic sensibilities. These are complex, compelling and (most unusually) coherent characters who just happen to be companionable, too. Rather than get caught up in race-relations and other issues of American culture Maclean takes a refreshingly European view of the whole set-up, having Jay and Rose themselves take a more sympathetic stance towards the natives and other immigrants. This new perspective and fresh approach lends the film a novelty that precious few Westerns can lay claim to, particularly in its treatment of women and ethnic minorities. We have in recent years seen the genre transplanted to the American outback in films such as The Proposition and The Rover, but this really is our first exposure to a British or specifically Scottish Western (Maclean hails from Tayside).

To praise the film for possessing such wit, however, is not to suggest that it’s not without acuity or gravitas too, as a gut-wrenchingly unforgiving visit to a trading post during the film’s second act unmistakably proves. Whereas most Westerns glorify violence through prolongued shoot-outs and protracted death throes, the often ruthlessly unsentimental Slow West focuses instead on the immediacy and inglory of death. Lives are ended, potential is squandered and children are orphaned, while the killers themselves are rarely spared their just deserts. The film ends with a strikingly silent and senseless montage, revisiting the trail of dead bodies left by Jay and Silas as they lie motionless across 19th Century Colorado. Earlier in the film, Jay asks an apparently friendly anthropoligist if he minds sharing his fire with a murderer, to which the ethnographer replies that he wouldn’t have many visitors if he did. The film subtly but succinctly outlines the harsh and sometimes inhuman realities of colonialism, and arguably serves to criticise both contemporary American foreign policy and its questionable gun laws at the same time.

Throw in one of cinema’s more convincing Scottish accents (pronounced to perfection by the impeccable Smit-McPhee) and the spectacle of seeing two men in long-johns drying their laundry on a line strung between two horses (complete with comedy call-back) and you have one of the most accessible and pleasantly surprising Westerns to date. And to think, I was all too ready to derisively dub it Slowest.

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (2014)

Ten winters have passed since Simian flu devastated the human race and left a new generation of uber-apes to inherit the Earth. They are ruled by Caeser (Andy Serkis), the chimpanzee indirectly responsible for both man’s demise and the ape uprising, who leads alongside Koba (Toby Kebbell), his trusted second in command. When a small number of humans are found to have survived, however, the relationship between Caeser and Koba begins to fray; mindful of the friendship he once shared with a human Caeser pushes for peace, while Koba insists that they eradicate their one-time abusers once and for all. There is disharmony in the human camp too, with Malcolm (Jason Clarke) wanting to work alongside the apes in order the restore power to San Francisco and Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) determined to declare all-out war on Muir Woods.

It speaks volumes about the legacy of Tim Burton’s ill-fated reboot that even after the unexpected success of Richard Wyatt’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes audiences are still skeptical of the franchise’s modern-day reimagining. This year’s sequel, despite all evidence to the contrary, was widely expected to undo Wyatt’s good work and reinstate the series’ standing as a laughing stock. In reality, however, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is perhaps even better than its predecessor; the title may be just as cumbersome, but everything else is sleeker and even more satisfying than before.

Following a brief newsreel hinting at the scale and severity of the initial ALZ-113 outbreak, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes eschews humanity in favour of ape-kind, checking in with Caeser and the family he has raised over the last decade. The original film was remarkable for a number of reasons, the most obvious being its portrayal of Caeser himself. Serkis is once again exceptional, combining well-observed behavioural ticks and intuitive sign language to give Caeser unmistakable personality. He is this time joined by a number of other talented motion-capture artists too; Kebbell and Greer are terrific as Caeser’s advisor and mate, but it’s newcomer Nick Thurston who ultimately impresses most as his wary son, Blue Eyes.

Despite bravely shifting the focus to Caeser, the emotional centre of the previous film was arguably John Lithgow’s Charles, the Alzheimer’s-stricken father of Caeser’s human guardian. Here, however, the human characters barely feature (though Keri Russell still manages to distinguish herself as a grieving mother), and on this occasion it’s the relationship between Caeser and his son that grounds the film emotionally. The corrupted youth trope is hardly a new one, but the unique setting and singular characters nevertheless lend it an element of novelty, if not originality. Their relationship is as nuanced, touching and sympathetic as any you are likely to see this year.

This is far from a subdued melodrama, however, and Matt Reeves — who directed Cloverfield prior to the rather less successful Let Me In— certainly knows how to stage an effective set piece. This being a prequel we already know roughly what is going to happen, but Reeves still manages to invoke a sense of suspense by keeping the stakes personal and the characters interesting. After a moment of light relief in which Malcolm et al manage to generate enough electricity to power a gas station radio, war returns to San Francisco as the horse-riding, gun-totting apes lead a charge on the virus-resistant human resistance. Chaos erupts as battles break out — human vs. human, human vs. ape, ape vs. ape — and each conflict is as compelling as the one before.

Given the law of diminishing returns, whereupon sequels — let alone sequels of prequels of reboots — regularly fail to live up to their predecessors, it’s all the more remarkable that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is as good as it is. With its state-of-the-art special effects, quasi-satirical subtext and measured character study, this is undoubtedly one of the strongest competitors for best blockbuster of the year.

The Congress (GFF 2014)

Robin Wright (playing herself) is a star on the wane; the once in-demand actress — famed for the likes of The Princess Bride and Forrest Gump — hasn’t made a film in years, and her chequered history with Miramount Studios has left her with few friends in the Hollywood system. She still needs to provide for her disabled son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), however, and is advised by her agent, Al (Harvey Keitel), to sign a one-off contract that will give the studios the rights to use her image for the next twenty years. Technology has advanced to the stage that an actor can be scanned by computers, and their performances thereafter rendered digitally without their involvement, or even permission. In the future, she is summoned to a congress with Miramount manager Jeff (Danny Huston) to discuss the next stage in her career.

Having been voted the European Animated Film of the Year at the European Film Awards back in 2013 (the committee clearly hadn’t caught up with Disney’s Frozen at that point), it will likely come as something of a surprise when half an hour into The Congress you are still watching Robin Wright in live-action. Though disorientating, however, this section of the film is incredibly strong. A beautifully shot and somewhat scathing satire of the American film industry, The Congress posits a not-too-distant future in which actors are taken out of the acting process. The film comments on everything from Wright’s own filmography to the impact of aging on a performer’s career. Even once the film has switched to animation, this thread of the narrative proves just as fruitful, with further exploration of the actor as a brand and of the very future of film itself.

Wright is terrific in quite a difficult role, convincing as a credible version of herself while also giving what is quite clearly (particularly later on in the film) a performance, too. An actress with an aversion to science fiction movies (among a great many other things, it seems) in what is very much a science fiction movie, she could have been a very different character to pull off. It’s almost a shame that she has to become a cartoon at all, so effective are her earlier scenes both at home and at work. The sequence in which she is actually scanned is one of the film’s best, as Keitel’s character is forced to run Wright through the whole gamut of emotions for the studio’s computers. The whole cast is great, in fact, though only Huston’s presence truly carries over to the animated segments, thanks in large part to his already caricatured features.

At first, the animation when it comes is a surreal delight, as Wright drives along undulating rainbow roads flanked by leaping whales, assorted ships and fluid, florescent scenery, arriving at the titular congress to find guests drinking polyjuice potions that result in a whole host of celebrity cameos. The idea that you might one day consume movies orally is an interesting one, and ties beautifully into the film’s themes of freedom, choice and identity. With this change of direction already happening so late in the narrative, however, there is little to no time to establish any rules or logical flow, and what started out as a sober satire soon descends into almost meaningless surrealism. At least, it appears meaningless to anyone unwilling to do the legwork for themselves; there are probably tens of interpretations or insights to draw from The Congress if you have the time or inclination to analyse it after the fact (I’ve since heard one reading of the film which invokes the Palestine conflict), but during the movie it’s hard not to get lost in the fast-flowing torrent of consciousness that Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman seems to have unleashed, apparently indiscriminately.

It doesn’t stop there, however, for having apparently lost interest in his first thesis (that would be the one involving the future of actors and acting) Folman returns to the relationship between Wright and her son in a spectacularly grinding gear-change. Suddenly back in the real world, God knows how many years in the future — and remember, we’d already jumped twenty years before it even went animated for the first time — Wright is confronted by Zeppelins and apocalyptic ruin as she goes in search of her now adult son. At the beginning of the movie Aaron Wright is seen playing with kites, and the imagery is carried over here as his mother rides a familiar kite-like contraption up to one of the blimps floating overhead. You sense that her search is supposed to be fraught with urgency and emotion, but everything is so confused by this point that you’re still too busy trying to figure out what the invasion at the congress fifteen minutes ago was all about. Imagine The Matrix or The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, only described to you by an excited child with an overactive imagination.

The Congress starts out as a five-star satire, a refreshingly ruthless assault on stardom and celebrity, but systematically undermines itself with flights of fancy too unfathomable to really qualify as a coherent argument. It seems unsatisfied to have merely broken the fourth wall, and continues to break down boundaries faster than it can actually set them up. It’s overcrowded and undercooked, resulting in a final act that is neither intellectually stimulating or emotionally satisfying. It outlasted its welcome to such an degree that I’m not even sure I can be bothered tracking down Stanislow Lem’s source novel in pursuit of answers.

ParaNorman (2012)

Able to commune with the dead, horror nut Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has been ostracised by his parents, his peers and his community of historic witch-hunters; a state of affairs that he rather prefers. When he is informed by his dead uncle (John Goodman) that it is his duty to perform an ancient ritual to keep the dead from walking the earth — by overruling a legendary witch — Norman sets off for the local graveyard to undo the age-old curse. Followed by his sister (Anna Kendrick), the school bully (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), friendly student Neil (Tucker Albrizzi) and Neil’s older jock brother (Casey Affleck), they soon find themselves confronted not only by the zombified remains of the town’s puritan founders, but a mob of terrified townsfolk desperate for answers.