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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
I saw Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element on release in 1997, and immediately hated it. Being a cynical, sneering teenager, I had no time for the bright and colourful visuals, the self-consciously wacky characters, the broad, slapstick comedy, the baffling Lee Evans cameo. Eventually though, as the real world grew progressively duller and my hair increasingly greyer, I came to appreciate the film for what it was rather than what it wasn’t, and it’s now a film I check on every few years. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets has a lot in common with The Fifth Element, and having trained myself to appreciate the former, I found it easy to appreciate the latter. →
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My 2012 film highlights
Throughout 2012 I watched approximately 262 films, which I don't think is an unreasonable amount. What follows are 20 films from that list that I felt deserved a special mention for a variety of reasons. Not necessarily what I'd consider to be the best films I saw last year, nor even limited to films that were released that year either. →
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Review of Josh Trank’s Chronicle
Various Hollywood lizards have spent a great deal of time trying to bring an unwanted, live-action, Americanised adaptation of Akira into production, with reactions drifting between hilarity and gnashing of teeth as project status updates flickered between 'cancelled' and 'project back on, Keanu Reeves to play Kaneda'. Though Josh Trank's first film Chronicle is not a literal adaptation of Akira, it's so similar in tone and story that it's safe to consider the Hollywood adaptation (last known status: cancelled) safely trumped. →