After barely surviving a mandatory shutdown in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the executive class running some of the largest film studios in the world decided that they weren’t quite ridiculously rich enough yet and furthermore they hadn’t taken enough liberties – financial, creative and moral – with those employed by them.

And so the actors and writers collectively said no and downed tools for five months in a dispute over pay (including residual payments in the age of streaming), working conditions, and especially the increasing threat of artificial intelligence being used to not only write screenplays based on algorithms but to steal the likenesses of actors (living and dead) and store them in perpetuity without just compensation.

With Hollywood productions quiet for half the year and none of the “talent” allowed to promote those movies that were completed prior to the strikes, we ended up with a more limited and less enthusiastically received slate of major releases. Not even superhero movies or franchise sequels fronted by Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise were guaranteed hits anymore.

Despite all this, 2023 ended up being a pretty good year for cinema, with plenty of examples of not only memorable blockbusters but of distinct filmmakers leaving their mark and under-represented communities providing vibrancy and freshness to a myriad of new stories. Based upon UK release dates, these are my 10 Best Films of 2023.

Follow me @SSPThinksFilm on X (Twitter).

10. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah Review

2023 has been a great year for films about how Gen-Z processes their major life experiences, and this delightful, hilarious little film starring most of the Sandler clan (including Adam as an adorably schlubby dad) is up there with the very best.

As she approaches her her 13th birthday and the Jewish coming-of-age ritual, Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) is determined to make her Bat Mitzvah the most perfect and memorable of her peer group, including that of BFF Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). But things get a lot more complicated as hormones, teenage crushes and petty but damaging psychological manipulation via social media enter the mix.

Five years ago, Bo Burnham made his memorable feature debut with Eighth Grade and told one of the most connective, visceral stories about becoming a teenager in years. Sammi Cohen’s film has the same aim but demonstrates how seismically culture has changed in just half a decade, all through a Jewish cultural lens. There may have never been a more challenging time to be growing up in an always-online age, and Alison Peck’s insightful script in addition to the across-the-board wonderfully naturalistic performances help to make this an unexpectedly profound crowd-pleaser.

9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 Review

#JusticeforJamesGunn incarnate, the final chapter of the unlikeliest a-hole superhero team’s story shatters expectations and satisfyingly delivers on almost every level.

After years of defending the countless worlds together, the Guardians team has reached a precarious place. Their leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) has slumped into a depressed, alcoholic stupor after losing the love of his life Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), and Rocket’s (Bradley Cooper) past as a bio-engineered test subject comes back to haunt him in a very real way. Can the team come together one last time and save the galaxy, and themselves?

Marvel is seen as a pretty risk-averse studio and certainly much of their recent output has been received with a shrug from many viewers, but Guardians Vol 3 shows what happens when one of the best directors they partnered with is left to finish the story he wanted to tell. The action has never been more polished and visually dazzling, the performances from people and animated raccoons alike so honest and full of pain, Gunn’s love of animals so prominent as the team go up against a truly detestable figure who causes pain for the hell of it.

Recommended for you: MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked

In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, viewers are spoon-fed characterisation and exposition using dialogue akin to the airplane method weirdly successful with infants. Viewers and fans deserve more credit.

The MCU web is a complex one. Even for those who have keenly watched every film release, and would be confident naming all characters on the board of a Marvel-themed edition of Guess Who, there are a lot of moving parts, both at an individual film level and in the ever-expanding list of crossovers, cameos, and introductions. So much so, that fans are, with every release, becoming more reliant on blog posts and videos to explain these references. With that in mind, wouldn’t some merciful condescension offer some clarity?

Increasingly often, and never more so than in Marvel Studios’ latest offering Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, we aren’t afforded the privilege. Instead, audiences are left to wonder about – or miss altogether – the myriad of possible connections between characters, between narratives, between universes and even multiverses, instead having the specific plot points broadcast to us in headline phrases. Given the enormous success and budget of Marvel’s visual effects department, it is safe to say that they can be trusted to illustrate events without some of the world’s most famous actors simplifying their performances like they’re a tour guide. But it’s the dialogue that is to blame…

Stronger dialogue is often identified as having two very simple traits: it shows, rather than tells, and; it’s individual and idiomatic. In Michael Waldron’s Multiverse of Madness script, speech does the opposite.

Parts of the film feel like they are a collage of phrases from other Marvel movies, and act purely as a textual description of an on-screen event. Viewers need dialogue to characterise and/or progress the plot, as well as entertain them, but here it is used in a foundational way that feels unfinished. Similar to the production of a first draft, where the script’s job is to build the story’s pillars and walls before they’re painted in subsequent versions with vernacular and believable emotion, Doctor Strange 2’s impressive cast is forced to utter lines that feel like they could have instead been reminders about what CGI was planned for post-production. The experience of watching this film could be noticeably improved by focusing more on allusion, subtext, and inference, rather than by repeatedly staging – and losing – a battle between a line’s quotability and cheese.

Here are some of the worst examples:

‘Kamar-Taj must now become a fortress.’

Wong growls this after a roughly ten-minute insight into Wanda’s commitment to out-do Mrs Doubtfire in reaching her children. Viewers know she’s coming, and for whom, and there is even a neat sequence where all the other sorcerers arrive in defence of the stronghold. Because of these, audiences are capable of inferring that the combative actions and stances of all these characters is a defensive move against Scarlet Witch. So why collapse the tension with a line from an 11-year-old writing a comic book?

Better options for this would be to either: move the plot like this does but in a less derivative way, such as bellowing an imperative to ‘Lock the Gates’; or provide some light-relief in the form of a complaint: ‘When do I get a day off?’ or ‘All you’ve done is give me a headache, Strange’. Wong repeatedly shows this irreverent streak in times of significant tension, so why not then?

‘Come in and tell me everything about your universe’

In one of the other universes Strange visits, he meets previous adversary Baron Mordo, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who enthusiastically delivers this line like a welcoming old friend. Of course, this is how (albeit with a little suspicion shared by fans and Strange) he is portrayed in this moment. But this line is too functional and not realistic enough. Instead, the writer could have used another declarative more indicative of a friendly relationship, such as ‘Let’s get you out of that ridiculous coat’, or used an interrogative that characterises, or perhaps is used as a red herring, to incite trust from viewers. This could be, for example, ‘How’s the tea over there (in your universe)?’ or ‘Is Wong still taking himself too seriously?’ Either could be used as a segue into a subsequent scene where Strange explains his predicament or the reality of his universe.

‘Perhaps if I can pull you from the rubble, the spell will break’

The communication of this plot point is simple to fix: it should belong to the visual medium. Aside from some budgetary constraint (which seems an incongruent concept with Marvel), it seems odd to imagine this being a conscious choice, to have this said rather than shown.

Perhaps, for example, initial jerks of the character out of the rubble are met with a hazing, or a stretching of the spell, a cracking in the pattern seen on screen. This option would avoid that squirm-inducing feeling of being patronised, unfortunately present at various points throughout Multiverse of Madness.

There are more of these, notably ‘Go back to hell’ and ‘Face the eternal consequence’, which both seem like direct quotations from director Sam Raimi’s earlier film Drag Me to Hell, but the rules are the same – not enough of the polishing or individualising that makes scripts effective.

So why did they make the final cut? Surely Marvel, with its seemingly infinite resources and clear ability to manage outrageous plot structures, have included this type of dialogue for a specific reason?

In parts, it is easier to see the motive behind the dialogue. For example, Wanda’s intentionally tropey dialogue, continued from ‘Wandavision’ as a symbol of her naivety about family life and longing for mediocrity, is great. Most audiences notice the stock phrases and priorities, and they work successfully as foreshadowing or dramatic irony. In addition, there are parts of the film where the dialogue appears as scaffolding, acting as a stabiliser for younger viewers or those new to the MCU. Even so, to both demographics, the visual medium is surely a more powerful tool. By eliminating this weaker dialogue, writers can avoid some of the ‘Theme Park’ criticisms of Marvel films made by directors such as Martin Scorsese, and allow audiences to focus on other, stronger, elements of the film.

Potentially the most noteworthy strength of Multiverse of Madness is Raimi’s use of horror tropes, which are, despite their frequency, undoubtedly entertaining, as well as contributory towards a darker tone many have called for to be in more Marvel films. The Evil Dead-esque chase sequences, the violence that pushes the limit of PG-13 content, the obligatory hand springing from the ground, all of these are signatures of a director who appreciates the relationship between fear and fun, a balance films such as Venom and Morbius failed to strike. However, what feels nostalgic and, at times, just delightful, in these visual moments feels limiting and, in terms of audience intoxication in story, sobering, in speech. Maybe these aforementioned phrases were intentional, left in or included in meetings with Raimi and Waldron so that the tone of the fan service is complemented in dialogue. Nonetheless, it is difficult to imagine the misguided nature of that choice not becoming all too apparent on the first table-read, or take.

Dialogue is so indicative of tone, so powerful in its ability to manipulate the overall experience of a film, that it needs to be used carefully; its ability to cloud other elements of any given movie is both a tool, and an obstacle. By considering this in the drafting process, and perhaps encouraging more cooperation between screenwriters and visual effects producers, Marvel can climb out of the straight-jacket constraints of conventions it has bound itself in, and trust its audiences more than it currently is.

Written by Callum McGuigan

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
Director: Sam Raimi
Screenwriter: Michael Waldron
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Xochitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams, Benedict Wong, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Stuhlbarg

In a seemingly throwaway scene in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, loudmouth newspaper editor J Jonah Jameson and his Daily Bugle staffers are furiously brainstorming what to call the new villain in town who will eventually be known as Doc Ock. When the hapless Hoffman (played by Raimi’s brother Ted) excitedly pitches they name him “Doctor Strange”, Jameson wryly responds “That’s pretty good… but it’s taken!”. Who’d have thought that 18 years later Raimi would make good on that joke?

Previously on the Marvel Cinematic Universe… Peter Parker’s secret identity as Spider-Man was revealed to the world so he asked sorcerer Doctor Stephen Strange to cast a spell to make everyone forget. That spell went wrong and the multiverse opened, bringing heroes and villains from other worlds to ours. Elsewhere (‘Wandavision’), Wanda Maximoff created and sealed herself off from the world in her own blissfully happy reality, enslaving the minds of the town of Westview in the process

Now, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) must help protect dimension-jumping teenager America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) who is fleeing a dark force that wants to take her power and her life, all the while encountering alternate versions of his own enemies and allies.

Sam Raimi’s hugely distinctive filmmaking style probably stands up the best to MCU-ification out of all the big name directors who have played in this limitless toy box so far. Black Widow only really felt like a Cate Shortland film for its fairly low-key opening 20 minutes, and while nobody else but Chloé Zhao would have made Eternals look quite the way it did, the naturalistic, personal storytelling of her earlier work was lost amongst the space operatic hugeness of the thing. In contrast, Raimi sprinkles dark humour and disturbing visuals including jump-scares and dismemberment throughout all the usual superhero action, moments straight out of Evil Dead or Drag Me to Hell sit somewhat jarringly but proudly alongside all the predictable fight scenes between super-people. 

Standout scenes in Multiverse of Madness include a New York street battle against a tentacled cyclops, an imaginative and unexpectedly musical magical duel, and a sequence where Strange and Sorcerer Supreme Wong (Benedict Wong) try to protect their charge from her pursuer in magical sanctuary Kamar-Taj by briefly trapping them in the seemingly inescapable “Mirror Dimension”. All of these set pieces remind you that Raimi is still among the best out there at blocking action scenes and keeping the geography crystal clear among the chaos. 

This is a multiverse movie but only to the extent that it is required for the plot to keep moving and the spectacle to keep coming. Don’t go in expecting lots of groundwork to be laid for future entries in the MCU; while we are presented with the entertaining possibilities in regards to characters and who might play them in other universes, it’s pretty explicitly stated that not much of this will stick around and affect the status quo of this series going forward (next year’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania looks likely to be the next entry to do that). 

Multiverses are all the rage in Hollywood these days, from Spider-Man: No Way Home, Everything Everywhere All at Once and the upcoming The Flash, and as a storytelling trope they in theory allow you to do anything you can possibly imagine. This makes it more than a little disappointing that most of the worlds Strange and America Chavez travel to are just similar versions of New York with a slightly different colour palette. A dazzling montage that ricochets the pair through reality after reality, including one in which they’re animated and another in which they appear to be made of luminous paint, is all too fleeting.

There is a colossal bit of fan service about halfway through the film’s remarkably restrained 2 hour run-time – the much-teased Illuminati scene that is this secret society of smart superheroes’ first live-action appearance – but even this is gleefully lampshaded after the bare minimum amount of time is given for fans to squeal at who they’re seeing. 

Annoyingly for some viewers, Marvel movies now require you to at least Wikipedia the major plot points of the TV shows in order to fully appreciate their latest big screen releases. In the original pre-Covid plans for “Phase Four”, Multiverse of Madness was set to be released before No Way Home, picking up directly after the events of ‘Wandavision’. The showrunner of ‘Loki’, Michael Waldron, is on screenplay duties here and continues Wanda’s character arc from the sitcom-inspired show created by Jac Schaeffer.

Wanda/Scarlet Witch’s journey – explicit discussion of which would constitute a spoiler – is likely to provoke the most heated of discussions among fans of the character, and it is debatable whether every eye-opening moment she is given here is fully earned, but Elizabeth Olsen is still excellent in the part. 

Elsewhere in the cast, Benedict Cumberbatch is still an incredibly reliable lead allowed to bring a little melancholy to a character who finally has time to register how unfulfilling his life is when he’s not saving half the universe – plus he gets to play multiple iterations of Strange, all of whom have lived very different lives and experiences. Xochitl Gomez is a real find and has a warm repartee with Cumberbatch, while Rachel McAdams gets to be a much more active participant in the action this time around. 

There are admittedly some rather laborious exchanges, telling rather than showing using clunky dialogue to explain what the hell is going on and why it matters. Some of this might be due to having to re-write the film to fit in with the new chronological order of the MCU caused by the pandemic delays, but there must be more interesting ways to keep your audience up to speed. The middle stretch of the film, while not wasting any time, sags and loses focus, though this is the rare Marvel film that keeps momentum in its final act.

Sam Raimi has a mischievous and twisted sense of humour, but he is also a pretty sentimental sort, so in the end this film is all about love. Much like the first Doctor Strange film, this isn’t the deepest of stories but it is memorable on a visual level, moves at a pace and delights in demonstrating how a vivid directorial vision can punch up some samey material. Multiverse of Madness is flashy and pretty exciting stuff that will delight fans in the moment, but whether it will linger remains to be seen. 

Score: 17/24

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Doctor Strange (2016)
Director: Scott Derrickson
Screenwriters: Jon Spaihts, C Robert Cargill, Scott Derrickson
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Michael Stuhlbarg, Benjamin Bratt, Scott Adkins

One of the major problems with launching new films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that a lot of the characters from Marvel comics have essentially the same origin story. “Arrogant jerk becomes selfless hero” is almost as omnipresent as DC’s “grief gives hero guilt-driven purpose”. Stephen Strange’s story may not be all that far removed from that of Tony Stark or Thor, and the first act of Doctor Strange might feel very familiar to anyone who has seen Batman Begins recently, but the rest of the film offers so much that is new on a visual and conceptual level that you don’t really mind.

Brilliant but arrogant neurosurgeon Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is brought crashing down to earth when a car accident leaves him barely able to use his hands. In a desperate search for a miracle cure, he travels to Tibet and comes under the tutelage of the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) who leads an order of sorcerers who protect time, space and reality itself from inter-dimensional threats. Will Doctor Strange put aside self-doubt and reach his full potential in time to stop renegade sorcerer Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) from performing a dangerous ritual that will open the door to the “Dark Dimension”?

From the film’s first sequence – an eye-popping magical heist and chase through London – director Scott Derrickson is making a bold aesthetic statement. Christopher Nolan, who may have been influenced himself by Steve Ditko’s imagery from the original “Doctor Strange” comics, ain’t got nothing on this. From entire cities flipping and folding, shards of reality punching through our field of vision, an elaborate fistfight inside a reversing timeline and some good old-fashioned psychedelic mind-melting, this is easily one of the most unique visual offerings of the MCU so far. An argument could certainly be made that the benchmarks of distinctive modern visual effects used to portray reality misbehaving are Dark City and The Matrix, Inception and now Doctor Strange.

As much of a bold choice as Joaquin Phoenix (who turned down the role) would have been, Benedict Cumberbatch was born for this and makes surgeon Strange a strutting Sherlock. He is an endearingly inept magic user at first, but never above using his previous arrogance and competitive streak to try and get ahead in his new and unlikely profession. Chiwetel Ejiofor hints at a lot more going on below the surface of his calm and collected but pained Mordo, whilst Mikkelsen brings deadpan humour to Kaecilius’ interactions with Strange, and Rachel McAdams’ Dr Palmer refreshingly reacts to strange goings on like a real person would and doesn’t instantly forget her ex was a terrible person when he rocks up in a snazzy new uniform. Swinton is convincing as an ageless bastion of knowledge and generally justifies her casting over the highly stereotyped image of the Ancient One in the comics, but they could always have made her odder to really tap into Swinton’s skillset. 

It helps that Marvel is committed to keeping things light where needed, notably a pleasing recurring gag that has Strange comparing formidable arcane librarian Wong (Benedict Wong) to the endless list famous mononymous music stars. Even the most intense action set pieces get punctuated by a few slapstick gags, especially when Strange is still a novice and tends to win more by fluke (or very protective sentient cloak) than through skill.

The sheer visual onslaught is at times a bit much. It seems churlish to compare this (one of the best blockbusters of 2016) with Duncan Jones’ Warcraft released earlier the same year (which…wasn’t), but both do encounter the same problem in that human beings can only process so much information via our eyeballs at once. The opening set piece works, as does the concluding sequence for its sheer ballsinesss, but there is so much going on in the scene that ends the film’s second act where Strange and Mordo chase Kaecilius through the highly malleable “Mirror Dimension” that it’s a real challenge to keep up.

Doctor Strange may not be the most thematically demanding movie out there, but it has got imagination in abundance and personality to spare, and it’s very easy to enjoy it on a wild, pure escapist level. The way the Marvel Universe(s) are left at the end of all this certainly offers up some interesting narrative and character possibilities for the MCU’s future, and those possibilities have certainly started to bear fruit in over the past couple of years. Whereas once we might have feared how Strange joining the wider action in the MCU would remove any tension given that his powers are essentially limitless, post-Thanos those fears have proven unfounded. Besides, there are other formidable (and colour coded) magic users sharing this universe who have had a pretty bad time in their appearances of late and who could conceivably abracadabra even Strange into oblivion without much effort should they wish to…

19/24

The man was something of a prodigy, and then he disappeared.

After a twenty year hiatus that some have speculated he spent in Paris as a hairdresser or that he perhaps spent in his home state of Texas as a secret mentor to the likes of Before Sunrise and Boyhood director Richard Linklater, Malick returned with one of the great American war movies The Thin Red Line in 1998, the famously withdrawn and secretive filmmaker’s existential and poetic sensibilities shifting more and more into focus over the coming twenty years; decades that would see him earn a Palme d’Or for The Tree of Life in 2010 and subsequently divide audiences with a descent down the rabbit hole of experimental, uniquely visual cinema.

New to Malick? We recommend: Where to Start with Terrence Malick

In this edition of Ranked, we’re looking at all 10 of Terrence Malick’s feature film releases from Badlands (1973) to A Hidden Life (2019) and ranking each in terms of their unique qualities, artistic standards and importance to Malick’s own filmography, taking into account the filmmaking intentions of this great director as well as the critical and public reception of each release.

Make sure to let us know your favourite Terrence Malick film in the comments at the end of this article, and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with more articles like this one.

10. Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey (2016)

Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey is less of a Malick movie intent on subverting the expectations of the form or developing a melodic narrative to rival that of the great poets and is more an experimental journey into IMAX. It looks beautiful, as fans of the director’s work have come to expect, and it feels every bit as epic as a lot of his more recent releases, but working outside of the narrative form does limit how much it feels like a Terrence Malick film and as such it sits at the bottom of our list. This one will be of interest to Malick fans, but is far from a must-watch for wider audiences.

9. Song to Song (2017)

Terrence Malick’s later work has come in for a lot of criticism, especially pre-A Hidden Life where the director almost abandoned narrative structure altogether for much of his work in the 2010s. Song to Song is perhaps the biggest offender of the era in terms of being impenetrable, the star-studded music-festival-going romantic drama feeling at times more like an advert than a film, every shot remarkably beautiful but Malick’s intentions at their most difficult to find. For the uninitiated, Song to Song will instantaneously wow with its sensational photography, but this is a film by a filmmaker with intentions diverted away from meaning in the traditional sense and is therefore a film that is difficult for some to become interested in.

And, why do you have such a thing for time-travellers?

You’ve played the time-traveller’s lover three times (four if you count Marvel’s Doctor Strange, which for the purposes of this I do not).

What does it all mean? Are you trying to tell us something, or are you desperately trying to carve out this role as your own niche?

For those who don’t know, Rachel Mcadams is a versatile actor. She often plays strong women who are not to be messed with, like Regina George in Mean Girls. The issue is that some 12% of her overall acting work thus far in her 20 year career has been spent playing a time-traveller’s partner.

Something is up, but I have a theory…

Rachel McAdams is a new kind of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, one that you can control. If she doesn’t quite fit your ideal the first time, you can do it over again and again until you get exactly what you want out of her. And do not fear, even if you’re off gallivanting around space and time, she’ll sit waiting like some long lost puppy dog.

Example One: Inez – Midnight in Paris (2011)

Surprise surprise, a female character in a W**dy Allen film gets the short end of the stick.

Labelled ‘Materialist fiancee’, Rachel McAdams’ character Inez is left at the hotel while Owen Wilson’s Gil goes off on his time travelling adventures, finding himself in the company of great artistes and women from a bygone era of even less agency.

Inez’s lack of love for Paris is presented as annoying and almost the opposite of romantic, and she is (unsurprisingly given the writer) the one in the wrong. Inez is not without fault, she is after all having an affair, but both members of this couple are terrible people. The sad part is that Gil is able to have his fantasies and is literally living his dreams, while she has to stay put in the real world, getting punished for being a woman, I guess.

Example Two: Claire Abshire/De Tamble – The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009)

The premise of this film is the perfect example of “genre is everything”.

Henry (Eric Bana) first meets Claire (Rachel McAdams) when he is 28 and she is 20, the latter coming into the former’s life via the library he works at – a pretty standard meet-cute.

The twist is that Claire has known Henry since she was 6, not that he knows it yet.

Future Henry (to him, and us, at least) has been visiting Claire on his travels through time, the earliest time period of her life being when she was six years old.

Henry can not control when and where he goes, making this thankfully a little less creepy, but it does raise the question of: did he visit her because she is his wife, or is she his wife because he visited her?

The potential answers raise a lot of issues regarding agency and free will, as is perhaps obvious.

McAdams is given some almost apologetic agency when she is written to turn down Henry’s proposal of marriage (when she is of age, of course), but then she quickly changes her mind and ends up marrying a version of him from the future anyway.

No, it’s not confusing at all.

As is good for any relationship, she then spends the rest of her life waiting for him to leave or for him to come back.

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Example Three: Mary – About Time (2013)

Here we leave the best (sorry worst) for last.

First and foremost, McAdams’ character doesn’t even have a surname and has the same first name as the protagonist’s mum – there are genuinely red flags everywhere.

White, middle to upper class Tim (played by Domhnall Gleeson), meets McAdams’ Mary in one of those restaurants where you can’t see anything – look at how much of a good guy he is for falling for her in a circumstance in which personality is all he has to go on!

Tim has control over time travel for some reason, so the next day he goes back in time to save his friends’ play (god complex much), and thus never actually meets Mary in the way we’ve already been shown.

But what will he do?

Well, remembering that she loves Kate Moss, he goes to an exhibition about her and just… waits.

He literally stalks her.

When she finally shows up, he tells her what he thinks about the exhibition, which is actually what she thinks about it because she told him at the dinner from last night that didn’t actually happen.

From there, Tim manipulates every aspect of their relationship, heading back in time to fix minuscule details that benefit him and forge his desired version of her.

He has sex with her three times in the first night to make sure he does good – each being the first time for her…

What the f*ck, Tim?!

The worst part of the film is that Mary is unaware of Tim’s time travelling ability. Mary is little more than a video game avatar that Tim can control. If she isn’t the perfect woman before, she will be when Tim is finished with her.

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The suitable conclusion to make here would be that Rachel McAdams is a go-to Hollywood name for the quirky and beautiful love interest that audiences can imprint themselves onto fairly easily, thus fulfilling the fantasies of men by being literally anyone they want her to be, while also offering women a figure they can see themselves as due to the character having very few actual characteristics.

Why an actor with such a talent for comedy and drama would be content with these roles is anyone’s guess. Why would you do this Rachel? You were supposed to the best of us!

The very best and very worst of humanity has been on show more loudly than ever as of late and there seems to be a never ending tide of bad news hitting the screens of our favourite devices, so it’s perhaps no surprise that people are turning to the trusty movie musical for a bit of escapism, have dived back into classic fantasy-adventures like Indiana Jones to feel a little excitement and have clicked the “comedy” section of their preferred streaming service more times than they’ve told themselves they’ll start their new fitness regime.

(Don’t be hard on yourselves, I’ve done the same. We’re in this together.)

With all of that in mind, and the apparent need for a good laugh during these hard times, we here at The Film Magazine have selected five truly fantastic comedy films from the past five years that are sure to take your mind off things and bring a smile to your face, if only for a few hours at a time.

Whether you watch these alone with a plate of donuts or gather friends for what I’ve been assured are “zoom parties” (I haven’t been invited… yet), these are five excellent, totally escapist comedies from the past five years that you have to see.

Let’s be friends – share your suggestions in the comments at the end or Tweet us!

1. The Nice Guys (2016)

Admittedly, Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are far from the first Hollywood stars you think of when deciding which actors you might like to see in a comedy, but that’s all just part of the magic; a magic that screenwriter-director Shane Black borrowed from his debut directorial feature Kiss Kiss Bang Bang more than his hit and miss Iron Man movie Iron Man 3.

The plot is about a private investigator (Crowe), the straight man, who bullies another private investigator (Gosling), the joker, and then discovers he needs his help to solve a mystery filled with murder plots and all of your great buddy cop tropes.

Black, who famously makes movies that play with the tropes of the genres he’s writing and directing for, does so again here, but never loses touch of the truly gravitational aspects of the buddy cop movies that seem to have long been absent from our screens.

The physical comedy in this one is superb, and Gosling and Crowe have remarkable chemistry as the leading duo the intelligent and utterly hilarious script is centred upon.

The Nice Guys may have flown under the radar back in 2016, but now is truly the perfect time to catch up with it.

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Spotlight (2016)
Director: Tom McCarthy
Starring: Mark Ruffalo; Michael Keaton; Rachel McAdams; Liev Schreiber; John Slattery; Stanley Tucci.
Plot: The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core.

It is often said that for a drama to be truly impactful it must be relevant to the contemporary landscape of its culture and be of exceptional quality. What Tom McCarthy and company have created is just that; a tour de force of shock, horror, empathy and emotion that engages in a way that goes beyond the cinema and into the dark reaches of your thoughts before bed. Spotlight may well be the greatest of all of 2016’s Oscar nominated movies.

Based on the true story of the Boston Globe newspaper’s uncovering of a mass of child molestation in Boston’s Catholic Church, this Josh Singer (The Fifth Estate) and Tom McCarthy written movie presents the journey of four of the newspaper’s journalists, known as the ‘spotlight’ team, as they search for facts and tackle legalities in their pursuit of informing the public of the 7o-plus high ranking church members who molested local youths. It is both a moving and thought provoking destination piece that doesn’t get bogged down in personal stories (love interests, personal distress, and so on) but instead focuses entirely on the story that is being uncovered and the ways in which the Pulitzer Prize winning team come to get it out to the public. Although a dismissal of the personal with regard to any drama’s story telling would usually lead to a complete lack of connection between a movie and its audience, Singer and McCarthy have cleverly constructed a screenplay that feels so communal that you can’t help but to will on its heroes whilst knowing very little about them simply because you want the truth to be outed as much as they do; because you want the faceless villains of the piece and those who protected them to be exposed. In correspondence with this, the script is air tight with almost zero occurrences of time wasting or gap filling that I could argue should have been left on the cutting room floor, making for a tense and thrilling watch without seeming overly long courtesy of a stretched run-time that could have become exhausting given its demand on the viewer, as was the case with its Oscar nominated counterpart The Revenant.

Perhaps just as intelligently, McCarthy’s team selected an ensemble cast of top actors and recognisable faces that helped to make each of the characters feel identifiable beyond the limits of the incredibly focused script, and every one of them delivered work of the highest quality.

The Oscar nominated Mark Ruffalo was the movie’s standout performer, delivering a performance that was a transformation from many of his usual characters yet remained in the confines of believability. The most impressive aspect of his portrayal was the alteration to the rhythm of his speech as it made the usually tonal Ruffalo sound like a completely different person. This, when combined with his off beat twitches and stutters, presented a reporter who was borderline obsessed with his investigation and entirely married to his work, and was without a doubt the best supporting performance I’ve seen out of this year’s Supporting Actor nominees (including Tom Hardy whom I found to be incredibly good too).

Rachel McAdams and John Slattery both gave typically good performances without being stand-outs, while Michael Keaton was very good in his identifiable yet authoritative role as the leader of ‘spotlight’. It was, however, the work of Liev Schreiber and Stanley Tucci that truly grabbed my attention beyond that of Mark Ruffalo, as each man delivered subtly courageous performances in roles with little screen time that worked to entice and provoke an emotional attachment to the wider themes and stories of the movie that go beyond that of the uncovering of the script’s centerpiece tragedy. Tucci’s character was written in such a way that his lovable and identifiable star persona was in keeping with, and was played with the subtlety it required. What Schreiber offered as a strong-willed yet incredibly polite and quiet man was almost entirely different to those roles he has excelled in, in the past. This made for a surprising and admirable performance that helped to boost the quality of the film as an overall presentation and ultimately made his character, who could have been vilified in the script and most certainly will be vilified by portions of the audience opposed to the themes of the film, a likable and respectable character; something that helped to keep the focus of the script’s criticisms on that of the Church and its unlawful members as opposed to Schreiber’s ‘outsider’ character.

Much of the quality of the finished film has to go to its authorial director who was clearly involved in most of the major aspects of the movie. McCarthy, whose back catalog includes the critically panned ‘The Cobbler’ starring Adam Sandler, handled the severity of the true story with humility and respect both in his writing and in his presentation of the picture, and he undoubtedly got the best out of his talented cast. Even in moments of nostalgia, such as how journalists had to work with archivists instead of accessing old press clippings and reports over the internet in 2001, McCarthy was subtle enough to not present this in such a way that made you smile at how far we’ve come or long for those ‘good old days’ to be back, but instead used them only to illustrate how much more difficult the characters’ tasks were at the time. Similarly, the way he handled the movie’s timeline crossing the events of 9/11 was respectful yet remained out of the main focus of the movie and was evidence of a focused and inspired filmmaker making some of his best work.

Perhaps just as importantly, the director’s collaborators seemed to be entirely dedicated to his message and the true story they were presenting. Boston looked beautiful, the office settings looked used and creative, and the actors themselves were dressed and ‘designed’ in such a way that made each of them different to their usual selves while not overstepping the mark and taking attention away from what was being produced. Similarly, the score was somewhat subtly remarkable, issuing reminders of the evocative story rather than provoking emotion on its own. These things, and the ways they were put together by the director, made for a surefire Oscar nominee that I can only liken in its evocative nature and overall quality to The Theory of Everything from 2015’s Oscar Race.

In general terms, this film’s large and culturally significant scope of tackling Pedophilia in the Catholic Church was eye opening and obviously of incredible importance to those not yet knowledgeable about such matters, and while criticism is bound to be fired at it for its rather one sided presentation and the ways in which it comes to be a message of vilification regarding the entirety of the Catholic Church and not just the actions of those in the Boston area over the quarter century between 1975 and 2000, Spotlight must be considered the best of all of this year’s Oscar front-runners in most categories for its combination of respect, humility and passion in all sectors, with fantastic career defining performances in front of the camera and some sensational work behind the camera. Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight is impactful and moving, and certainly one of the best movies released this decade.

23/24

“About Time” follows Tim, aged 21, as he discovers his ability to travel into and adjust his past and what that means for his future love, family, and work life. Basically, if you could have endless do-overs, how would you use them?

A friend once told me that you can’t have a good movie without a good script. Richard Curtis (Love Actually), writer and director of “About Time”, fully grasped this concept. The writing was heartfelt and mature in a very rare way. It discusses serious issues such as fate versus the choices we make and growing through conflicts, be them learning how to time travel effectively or overcoming everyday vices. Now, don’t get the wrong idea, even in its darkest moments this film carried with it a sense of lighthearted realness. It was almost as if the actors weren’t acting, they were just showcasing real lives and real people and, believe it or not, the time travel aspect of this film fit in perfectly. It was extremely believable.

Now, it would not have been nearly as believable if the actors hadn’t done such a phenomenal job. After all, a good script can’t go all that far without good actors. The intro – the score paired with Domhnall Gleeson’s voiceover as Tim – lends a familiar feeling. It’s almost hard to describe but even if you’re watching this movie for the first time, you feel as if you’re revisiting an old friend. Maybe its familiarity is in Gleeson’s tone or in the intimate and sarcastically comedic conversations he soon shares with Bill Nighy, Tim’s incredibly wise father in the movie. Maybe it’s in Rachel McAdams’ classic hair-tuck-smile and giggle (Because, come on, what’s a rom-com/drama without Rachel McAdams)? Or, more likely, familiar feelings can be found in just about every aspect of the film. I think that’s what it was going for – a universal and constant feeling of empathy for the characters.

Another important note with regard to the characters was that there were really no minor roles. Every character in the film had a specific, maybe even polarizing personality type, and they were all there for a reason. People that the viewer may have written off at the beginning of the movie such as Uncle Desmond played by Richard Cordery, or Tim’s best friend Jay played by Will Merrick, would revisit the audience with profound thoughts or renewed importance later in the movie. These characters reinforce the theme that everyone you meet makes a difference in your life and affect even the smallest of decisions you make in the future.

The one thing I had a problem with concerning this film was its marketing. If you watch the trailer, it’s engaging and endearing, yes, but it’s also misleading. The trailer would have you believe that the film is solely a romantic comedy with all of the essential cliches mixed in. However, there is so much more depth to it all. Every person, every event, every decision, every little thing – even the occasional silence – means something and illustrates how each can affect the rest of your life. The trailer should have tried to capture that more appropriately.

From the get-go this film instantly became one of my favorites. There’s a lovely familiarity about it, despite the twists and turns you definitely won’t see coming. The actors move rhythmically along with their lives, letting their paths cross organically or, specifically in Tim’s case, creating their own paths. Everything is interesting and engaging and descriptive and lovely. Also, cameos from actresses and actors like Margot Robbie and the late, great Richard Griffiths only add to the film goer’s experience. If you’re looking for a great under-the-radar film, this fits the bill perfectly. It’s because of all this and the many emotional spoilers I simply couldn’t ruin for you (because you should really go watch the movie), that I’d give About Time a…

20/24