Tag: movies

Best of 2024: Movies

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I got a Curzon subscription this year, which in effect meant I could go to the cinema as much as I wanted without thinking about the cost. This was an excellent decision, and meant I saw much more than normal. Of the 72 films I saw, here are my favourites.

New releases

Best of the year for me is a tie between three films. Challengers was an absolute riot — I watched it twice in cinemas, and I’ve not stopped thinking about that incredible final scene since. Megalopolis is equally seared into my brain — a truly one-of-a-kind spectacle, a rare example these days of a single artist’s unadulterated and uncompromising vision. And Twisters in 4DX was a proper Going To The Movies experience: at the time, I called it “the experience of a lifetime”, and I stand by that six months later.

From the more conventional “best films” lists, Zone of Interest was probably the best — a truly sickening watch. The Holdovers was the kind of film I normally hate, but I enjoyed it very much. Poor Things was pretty good. And Civil War was, as I’ve said before, a much more politically interesting film than people gave it credit for. And I enjoyed Dune: Part Two a lot at the time, but it’s not stuck with me the way the first one did. Perhaps I’m due another rewatch.

Also enjoyed: Anora, All We Imagine As Light, Perfect Days, How To Have Sex, The Iron Claw, Monster, Hoard, La Chimera, Hit Man, Kinds of Kindness, September Says, Crocodile Tears, Santosh, Queer

Underwhelmed: The Boy and the Heron, Fungi: Web of Life, American Fiction, Evil Does Not Exist, Love Lies Bleeding, Furiosa, The Beast, Sleep, The Substance, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, Endurance, The Wolves Always Come At Night, Architecton, Small Things Like These, Conclave, Wicked

New to me

I watched lots of excellent older films last year, too. The standout was probably The Red Shoes, which is a truly incredible film. Cléo from 5 to 7, Paris, Texas, and Days of Heaven are all wonderful, too. On the horror side, I very much enjoyed Psycho, Carrie, and The Wicker Man. Rear Window and Blue Velvet, too. Hoop Dreams is one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen. And Past Lives was a great new-old movie.

Also enjoyed: The Witch, Jodorowsky’s Dune, The Searchers, The Funhouse, Room 666, Mad Max 2, Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition, Mishima, Nosferatu, Hero, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

Underwhelmed: Galliano: High and Low, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Artificial Intelligence, Eraserhead

Rewatches

I was lucky enough to rewatch 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dune: Part One, and Interstellar at the BFI IMAX this year. All were excellent, obviously. At home, I enjoyed rewatching Four Lions, The Terminator, and Hereditary. Not so much The Phantom Menace or I, Robot, though.

Twisters (4DX) review

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

This, in 4DX, was genuinely the experience of a lifetime. My heart rate was still elevated a good 20 minutes after it finished. The combination of wind, rain and movement means this is probably as close as it gets to actually being in a tornado. That, in turn, makes the emotional beat of the film work that much better: when you’re in the storm, you’re every bit as terrified as the characters; when it passes you’re every bit as relieved to have made it through.

The film itself isn’t particularly good — Powell excepted — but the effects allow it to transcend itself and become a truly exhilarating, unforgettable experience.

2024 Culture Roundup (so far)

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve seen/read that’s worth talking about so far this year.

GIGS

Fortuitous timing meant that I saw Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo one week after each other, providing an excellent opportunity to compare the two superstars of our age.

Swift, who I saw first, certainly offers value for money, especially at Parisian prices. Her three hour show cycles through all the hits (and makes you realise just how many she’s got). And a very flashy lighting setup, coupled with computer-controlled flashing wristbands on every audience member and a stage floor that doubles up as a screen of its own, certainly delivers a sensory overload.

But despite the glamour, the whole thing felt oddly unemotional and detached. Some of that comes from Swift’s over-reliance on screens, with little-to-no physical staging throughout the entire show, and a surprisingly small group of dancers who struggle to fill such a massive stage. Those staging decisions make the show feel intangible and distant. Another problem is that the show is, surprisingly, quite unpolished: many of the on-screen visuals use poor quality CGI, and the costume-change breaks are much too long and poorly executed, occurring after a song has finished instead of (as is more often the case) during an outro. Both choices ruin the immersion Swift’s clearly aiming for, taking audiences out of the show and ruining its pacing.

But much of the problem comes from Swift herself, who is so over-polished and tightly scripted that she never feels truly present. There’s very little audience interaction, and even while performing there’s little real emotion — it often feels like she’s just going through the motions. There was only one point where I felt like I saw the real Swift, right at the start of the show. Clearly feeding off the crowd’s adoration, she said “I want to see what happens if I do … this”, before pointing her finger at a section of the crowd, which predictably burst into screams. Beaming, she swept her finger across the arena, the ear-splitting scream moving perfectly in sync. It was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to someone being truly drunk on power, and cemented this idea of Swift-as-otherly-god-figure, as opposed to Swift-as-relatable-human: certainly a spectacle to witness, but not something that makes for a thrilling show.

Contrast, then, with Olivia Rodrigo, a performer overflowing with humanity from the minute she appeared. Throughout a tight, under two hour set, Rodrigo performed each song as if she really, really felt it, bopping around stage and having the time of her life. Watching her felt like watching a real, complicated, funny human being; a perfect fit for her raw and funny songs. And she was a natural performer, too, with a stunning voice and impeccable audience banter. And despite having a considerably smaller budget than Swift, it was much better spent: one sequence, with Rodrigo sitting on a moon that floats out over the crowd, surrounding by glowing stars, provided more memorable imagery than anything in Swift’s three-hour behemoth. A truly five star show.

But despite that, it still wasn’t the best show I’ve seen this year! That honour goes, unexpectedly, to Ustad Noor Bakhsh, for a thrilling performance at the Southbank Centre back in March. The 79 year old benju player from rural Balochistan is a virtuoso in and of himself, playing all sorts of gorgeous compositions; but the true magic came from a largely South Asian crowd with an uncontainable energy. My heart goes out to the poor security guard who unsuccessfully kept trying to stop people from coming to the stage and dancing; but I’m very glad he failed. Bakhsh is playing Glastonbury next month; he’s easily the performer I’m most excited to see.

THEATRE

So far, this has mostly been a year of disappointments. I had high hopes for Machinal, Hadestown, Enemy of the People, Player Kings, and Boys from the Blackstuff; all underwhelmed (especially the latter). Thankfully there was only one truly dire production: Simon Godwin’s abysmal Macbeth, which misleadingly used “site-specific” marketing to disguise a bog standard, dull production, pointlessly staged in a warehouse with awful acoustics and terrible seating. Everyone involved with that should be ashamed of themselves.

That said, a couple of highlights. Port of Entry in Chicago has the best immersive set design I’ve ever seen, bar none, and was an unforgettable and moving production (despite some at-times-ropey storytelling). Yael Farber’s King Lear was wonderful (making up for an underwhelming Branagh production last year), with an incredible cast (Danny Sapani and Clarke Peters in particular) really bringing the text to life. The Portrait of Dorian Gray was a wonderful showcase of how to effectively use cameras and video on stage, and Sarah Snook was superb throughout. And The Hills of California, though lacking the profundity of other Butterworths, was still a thrilling evening.

Other things I saw: The Comeuppance; Nachtland; Double Feature; Collaborator; The Gods The Gods The Gods; The Last Show Before We Die.

ART/EXHIBITIONS

I travelled to Paris in January to see the Rothko retrospective, and I am so glad I did. It was an absolutely stunning exhibition; full of emotion and pain that hit you on a really visceral level. I spent several hours just absorbing it all. It wasn’t perfect — some of the lighting was surprisingly shoddy and Fondation Louis Vuitton is a logistical mess — but it’s definitely an exhibition I’ll never forget.

While in Paris, I also saw Parfums d’Orient at the Institut du Monde Arabe, which was a real gem. Clever use of scent boxes and interactivity made an otherwise hard to exhibit topic come to life, and the curation (which took you through different spaces where scent is used, like the home, the mosque, and the baths) was quite lovely.

And although I’m biased, my dear friend Surya Bowyer’s exhibition Paper Cuts (still on at the Peltz Gallery) was really wonderful — a thoughtfully chosen selection of images of Indians filtered through the colonial-gaze, paired with some gorgeous new commissions and really insightful wall text. Infuriating and beautiful, all at once.

Some duds, of course; most notably UVA Synchronicity which was the clearest example of “shallow Instagram bait” I’ve seen in some time. And Entangled Pasts at the RA had all the potential of a good show, but was let down by a number of stupid curatorial decisions.

GAMES

I finally got round to playing Disco Elysium, which is not quite as good as everyone makes out, but is still really special. Norco, too, was an interesting play. And I liked Botany Manor more than I expected to. Inscryption starts off really strong, but deteriorates annoyingly quickly. Doki Doki Literature Club! is batshit, but it’s free and certainly worth playing. And I’m hopelessly addicted to Hades, despite being quite bad at it.

My standout, though, is not a video game but a cooperative tabletop escape-style game called Threads of Fate. It’s an absolutely genius puzzle game, combining real-life props and diaries with Wikipedia trawling, and all held together by a surprisingly affecting story. It’s so satisfactorily designed, with really thoughtful and tricky puzzles that never make you feel cheated, and gorgeous physical materials. So good, in fact, that as soon as I finished it I went out and bought all of the company’s other games (which you can, and should, do here).

MOVIES

Film is easily the medium where I’ve had the most luck this year; perhaps that’s because it’s also what I’ve most-consumed. Basically all the Oscars entrants were superb. I’m still thinking about Zone of Interest, and Poor Things, The Holdovers and The Iron Claw were all great too.

Of other new releases, Dune: Part Two was stunning (the changes from the book might all be improvements!), particularly in dual-laser IMAX (70mm left something to be desired). Challengers was an absolute riot; that final scene is one of the best things ever committed to film. Perfect Days, Past Lives, How to Have Sex, and Monster were all great too. And I really liked Civil War, which is much more politically interesting than people give it credit for.

I saw a bunch of excellent older releases for the first time, too: Psycho, Cleo from 5 to 7, Paris, Texas, Carrie, The Wicker Man, and Days of Heaven all wildly live up to the hyper, particularly the latter. Hereditary and Four Lions still delighted on rewatch, too. (The Phantom Menace, less so.)

The only “bad” thing I’ve seen was Fungi: Web of Life (a shallow, dull documentary). Plenty of good-not-great flicks, though, including Mad Max 2, La Chimera, Hoard, Galliano: High and Low, Love Lies Bleeding, Evil Does Not Exist, Room 666, The Funhouse, The Searchers, American Fiction, Hoop Dreams, Side by Side, Jodorowsky’s Dune, and The Boy and the Heron.

BOOKS

I’ve not finished nearly as much as I’d have liked; instead I’m midway through a bunch of middling books. 

The two standouts came from authors I’ve previously read and loved: RF Kuang’s Yellowface and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. The former is brilliantly funny, very gripping, and almost Nabokovian in its use of a detestable narrator. The latter perfectly captures a very specific time of life, and is full of drop-dead gorgeous lines that permanently change the way you think.

I also enjoyed the Three Body Problem and its sequels; the writing (in translation) is pretty dire but the story and ideas are interesting. Circe was good, too. And I liked, but didn’t love, Cinema Speculation, Rendezvous with Rama, I’m A Fan, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and Rebecca.

Civil War

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

At no point in Civil War, Alex Garland’s new film about a second American civil war, do we learn why anyone is fighting or what they’re fighting for. We are given absolutely no sense of who is good or who is bad; no sense of who we should be rooting for.

Many have used this to criticise the film. They argue that it takes a dangerous both-sides-have-a-point approach that’s inappropriate in a post-Trump America. But I think that’s missing the point. The film is itself a critique of impartiality and both-sidesism, and in particular a critique of the kind of journalism that leans that way.

(the rest of this contains spoilers)

The reason we never learn who’s in the right is because our protagonists — all of whom are journalists — do not care who is in the right. Their politics are completely opaque to us, and it’s heavily implied that they don’t have any at all (beyond “war is bad”). For the entire movie, the only thing these people care about is getting a good story and a good picture. The journalists are just in this for the drama; what’s actually at stake is irrelevant to them.

I view this as a damning indictment of horse-race, so-called “objective” journalism: journalism which refuses to stand for anything, which just sits back and documents what’s happening without making any claims on what should be happening. Civil War goes out of its way to to show us just how repellant this approach is — whether it’s the glee in Jessie’s eyes as people get murdered on every side, or the psychopathic Joel losing his mind when it appears the war might have finished before they’ve had the chance to report its conclusion.

I’ve seen some people describe this film as a love letter to journalism (particularly war journalism), but I think that couldn’t be further from the truth. Civil War is, in my view, the most anti-journalism film since Nightcrawler. One thing that’s particularly telling is that it never makes any attempt to show that the journalists’ work actually matters. In fact, it goes out of the way to show the sheer absurdity of the work, at one point showing us a live broadcast in the middle of a firefight which is clearly not in any way journalistically valuable beyond the shock value. The implication we’re left with is that these people’s work does not matter. Towards the start of the film Kirsten Dunst’s character explicitly spells this out, musing out loud on how, despite her hopes, her work photographing atrocities abroad has failed to deter violence at home. Her entire career, she realises, has been for nothing. And by the end of the film, her pursuit of the shot has still achieved nothing — other than her death. (That death is caused by Jessie, who starts the film off as almost-human but by the end has morphed into a unfeeling psycho utterly unaffected by the death of her mentor.)

Civil War is, on my reading, a film that despises journalism-as-entertainment, and especially despises it when it masquerades as something highbrow. It argues that journalism which treats politics as a game or a contest does everyone a disservice by ignoring the substantive issues — not just whether one side is winning, but whether one side ought to win, morally speaking. It shows us, viscerally, how journalism is all too willing to chase drama and lurid details, despite how little any of that matters (beyond titillating us). And it shows how such an approach is terrible not just for the wider world, but for the journalists who end up debasing themselves for it.

Best of 2023: Film

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I watched ~53 movies last year; these were the best (in no particular order).

New films

Oppenheimer

A Nolan movie, shot in IMAX, about nukes: I was always going to love this. But I really, really did love it. Despite its straightforward subject matter, it’s much more experimental than his other films (the frequent snippets of atoms and fire, the incredible auditorium scene) and it really shines for it. It’s a compelling story about an absolutely terrible person, and the ending is so devastating that I cried both times I watched it. And, of course, it’s visually stunning in 70mm IMAX. It’s not a perfect film — the third act does drag a bit — but it’s very, very good.

Asteroid City / Poison

Wes Anderson might be at the peak of his game. Asteroid City blends every element of what makes his films great (comedy, production design, melancholy) into a near-perfect composition, offering a meta-commentary on Anderson’s work at the same time. And Anderson’s short film anthology is equally good — particularly Poison, a fun thriller that takes a sharp left turn into a damning indictment of colonialism (which in turn reframes the shorts that precede it).

Red Rooms

By far my favourite of this year’s London Film Festival. A tense and compelling thriller that never goes quite where you expect, with a superb score to boot. Truly astonishing how disturbing it manages to be without ever showing you the atrocities it’s about.

Killers of the Flower Moon

I adored this, despite it being really hard to stomach. Scorcese, De Niro and DiCaprio being great is par for the course; what’s really special about this is just how brutal the story is, and how Scorcese’s narrative choices make that brutality feel so much more visceral and plausible. It’s rare that a historical drama feels quite this alive and relevant.

Samsara

The majority of this film was good, but not great — a slow and ponderous exploration of daily life and religion, not dissimilar to many many other films. But the middle section — in which you’re instructed to close your eyes for several minutes, while colours flash in front of your eyelids and a soundtrack blares — is revelatory. Designed to mimic the soul migration experience laid out in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it’s by far the most innovative thing I’ve ever seen in film, and it works beautifully.

Honourable mentions: Godzilla Minus One (shockingly emotional!), Anselm (stunning in IMAX 3D, though it doesn’t have enough to say), John Wick: Chapter 4 (worse than the others, but still great), Anatomy of a Fall (too long, but very thought provoking), Across the Spider-Verse (not quite as good as its predecessor, but still good), Barbie (has very little to say, but the production design is great and it’s funny), The Mission (insightful documentary about religious fanaticism, colonialism and hubris), Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 (great set pieces, and surprisingly good discussion of AI).

Dishonourable mention: The Creator (an utterly pointless movie with nothing interesting to say — and that’s coming from someone who does care about the rights of conscious AI).

New to me films

Mulholland Drive / Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me / Inland Empire / Twin Peaks: The Return

I am very, very late to the works of David Lynch, and I am so glad to have finally dived in. More than anything else, this year for me will be defined by the many hours I spent watching Twin Peaks. Something about Lynch’s particular brand of surrealism just clicks with me — the fact that the “true” meaning is just out of reach, but the emotional effect is still so powerful, and that it’s all paired with a truly sincere heart and love for humanity. If I had to pick a favourite of what I’ve seen so far, it’s probably The Return Part 8 (watching this so soon after Oppenheimer was interesting); of the movies, Inland Empire is going to stick with me for a very long time.

In the Mood for Love

There’s not really anything to say about this that hasn’t already been said. A close to perfect, devastating, movie.

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Very much in the same vein, though with even more to say about the world — a really beautiful film.

Casablanca

A rare example of a classic film that surpasses the hype! It’s more than stood the test of time; if it was released tomorrow it’d still be a hit. And god the cinematography is good.

Apocalypse Now

I liked everything about this except Brando, which feels heretical to write but just is true. I think I possibly prefer Full Metal Jacket as a Vietnam film, though.

The Seventh Seal

Not sure I entirely “got” this, but very much enjoyed what I did take away. Warrants a rewatch.

Tokyo Story

This hasn’t aged quite as well as some of the others on this list, in my opinion; the themes are a bit too spelled out for modern audiences. But it’s still a very lovely piece.

Blade Runner: 2049

Technically a rewatch, though seeing this in IMAX for the first time felt like seeing it anew. Deakins says the 2.39:1 version is the better, but I think he’s wrong: the expanded aspect ratio makes the film’s atmosphere so much more overpowering, and it really benefits from it.

Honourable mentions: Decision to Leave, La Dolce Vita, Ford vs Ferrari, Scream, Cure, Peeping Tom, My Neighbour Totoro, The Thing, Tripping With Nils Frahm, Vertigo, The Dark Knight (IMAX rewatch), When Harry Met Sally

Some good things, January-June 2023

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Theatre etc.

My highlight so far this year is probably A Morte do Corvo, a Punchdrunk-inspired immersive production in Lisbon. I’ve been fortunate with a range of good immersive experiences: Phantom Peak, in London, was very silly but very fun; Heresy: 1897, in New York was a brilliantly difficult immersive escape room (with a coherent plot!); Saw: Escape Experience is too easy but has excellent production value; and The Burnt City continues to be excellent (though I think its impending closure is for the best, it is time for something new). The Grim, meanwhile, was a very unimpressive and somewhat repugnant immersive production.

On the conventional theatre front, I very much enjoyed Phaedra at the National Theatre. (Simon Stone is probably my favourite director today.) The Almeida’s Romeo and Juliet — currently playing! — was also very good. And I saw some pleasant, if not particularly memorable, other shows: The Return of Benjamin Lay, The Motive and the Cue, Women Beware The Devil and Medea. I’m excited for the upcoming theatre season, which looks quite a lot better.

There were two very different magic shows in London: Derren Brown’s Showman, which was very good but not his best; and Penn & Teller, which was fine but a little lacklustre.

Also some good dance productions: Creature by Akram Khan was quite nice but Woolf Works was stupendous. Sadly the other Wayne McGregor I saw, Untitled, was not very good. On the opera front, Akhnaten was spectacular.

Books

Nothing so far has truly blown me away. Small Things Like These came closest — it’s heartbreaking — and The Glass Hotel was also very good. Babel, Trust, and the Biography of X are all also good, but not groundbreaking. On the non-fiction side, Chip War, Parfit and The Alignment Problem are all pretty good but none are essential (though the former might be, depending on your semiconductor knowledge).

Art

Again, a rather mediocre six months. The big shows — Ai Weiwei and Cezanne in London, Yayoi Kusama and Georgia O’Keefe in NYC — were all just fine. Souls Grown Deep Like The Rivers was rather good, as was Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Tate Britain. But my highlight has to be the permanent collection at the excellent National Gallery in DC — the Rothko/Newman rooms in particular are breathtaking.

Gigs

Four Tet’s Squidsoup show was incredible — just absolutely stunning, with a gorgeous set list and genius 360-degree sound system. Rival Consoles also put on an amazing show at the Barbican — he is incredible at taking you on a lengthy journey through noise. And I’ve already written about Jamie XX’s very fun and eclectic set at Printworks.

The biggest show I went to was Beyoncé’s, having bought a last minute ticket. She was very good with a technically impressive production, though the set was designed without viewing angles being taken into consideration (a pet peeve of mine). And I continue to think she’s a bit overrated — reviews called this the most impressive arena tour ever, but I personally think Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Ball topped it over a decade ago. (Also Beyoncé uses a teleprompter, which is a bit embarrassing.) Still, I had a lot of fun despite not really being a Beyoncé fan, so credit where it’s due.

Movies

Probably the medium where I’ve had the most luck this year. I’ve been watching lots of fantastic older movies: In the Mood for Love, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Casablanca all blew me away. Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire baffled me in a very pleasing way. La Dolce Vita, Vertigo and The Seventh Seal didn’t quite connect with me, but are impressive nonetheless. When Harry Met Sally, Scream, and Legally Blonde are all a lot of fun. Some recent-ish gems, too: Ford vs. Ferrari (which I watched just before going to Le Mans) is excellent; so is Tripping With Nils Frahm, a gorgeous concert film.

Of new releases, Asteroid City is my highlight so far. I think it’s my favourite Wes Anderson, though I need to rewatch it — it moves very quickly. Across the Spider-Verse was very good, though worse than its predecessor; the same is true for John Wick: Chapter 4. I didn’t really get Decision to Leave, and M3gan didn’t quite live up to its potential.

Some of my favourites, though, were rewatches. Some movies, like Shutter Island and Saw, don’t hold up well on second viewing. Others really shine, though. Raiders of the Lost Ark is still fantastic. And rewatching The Dark Knight in IMAX was exhilarating.

My review of “Whole Earth” and “We Are As Gods”

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

I reviewed the new biography and documentary about Stewart Brand. The best part of both is where they dive into the tension between Brand’s techno-utopianism and environmentalism (even though I tend to side with Brand that the two can and should co-exist).

You can read the whole thing at The Economist, here’s an excerpt:

Mr Brand’s technophilia helped shape Silicon Valley. But it drove a wedge between him and his ecologically minded friends. He had always been an outlier, enjoying Ayn Rand’s libertarian books at university. His fascination with humans settling in space—he financed the subject’s first major conference in 1974—widened the divide. In 2009 Mr Brand distanced himself from his fellow environmentalists, advocating for genetically modified organisms and nuclear power. As for the eco-warriors, he labelled them “irrational, anti-scientific and very harmful”. In response George Monbiot, an activist, suggested that Mr Brand was a spokesperson for the fossil-fuel industry. The criticism echoed Mr Kesey’s remark decades earlier: “Stewart recognises power. And cleaves to it.” 


More good things (books, films, restaurants)

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Books

The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton — I’ll write more on this soon, but it is a very good, wide-ranging and surprisingly poetic book.

Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff — will also have more on this soon, but if you’re interested in Brand (and you should be), this is worth reading.

From Satori to Silicon Valley by Theodore Roszak — a short and very readable overview of the links between Silicon Valley and the ’60s counterculture.

Various Batman graphic novels — Year One was the highlight for me, though The Dark Knight Returns and Hush are good too. Neither are as good as The Long Halloween, Arkham Asylum or The Killing Joke, though. I also read The Black Mirror and The Court of Owls, neither of which impressed me very much.

Films

That comic binge was brought on by anticipation for The Batman, which was much better than I expected. It’s probably my favourite Batman film, though The Dark Knight is arguably a better film in and of itself. (I also watched a few animated films, and would recommend both Under the Red Hood and Mask of the Phantasm if you liked The Batman.)

We Are As Gods is a very good documentary about Stewart Brand, and by extension about the ’60s, de-extinction, and techno-utopianism.

I also watched Dune for the fourth time, this time at home, which confirmed my suspicions that it derives a lot of its power from the big screen (particularly IMAX). Still good, though.

Restaurants

Bake Street has started doing biryani on Sundays, and if the first batch was anything to go by this is now one of London’s best meals. Everything else there is still fantastic too, obviously. I’m very excited that Feroz is opening a new outlet in the promising-looking Arcade Food Hall.

Towpath reopened the other week, and a sunny lunch of taramasalata, carrot-top fritters and peas was pretty much perfect.

A lunch at Dosa Express was particularly memorable for the snacks — pani puri, samosa chaat, dhai vada. The dosas were good too, particularly the crispy rava ones.

The Black Axe Mangal x St John meal kit was worth it just for the t-shirt; the excellent food was the icing on the cake.

Music

I’ve been listening to a lot of Acid Arab, Michael Giacchino’s The Batman soundtrack, Floating Points’ new single, and Music from Saharan Cellphones.

fabric at the Opera was a very clever and fun event, which I hope they do a lot more of. Rival Consoles and Frank Wiedemann stole the show.

Some recommended things from the last month

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

Book: Eating to Extinction by Dan Saladino. This is one of the best food books I’ve read. It’s both very poetic and information-dense: I suspect I am significantly more pro-capitalism than the author and I view the Green Revolution as an unambiguously good thing, but Saladino’s writing does make me mourn the diversity we’ve lost and want to help save it as best I can. (Happily, doing so involves buying delicious ingredients.)

Film: Dune in 1.43:1 IMAX. I’d already seen this twice in cinemas, including once in 1.9:1 IMAX. Watching it in full IMAX (at London’s Science Museum) was still breathtaking — the extra height makes a huge difference in conveying the scale of the world. Showings are few and far between but I highly recommend trying to find one.

Restaurant: Brat x Climpson’s Arch. Beautiful tomatoes and cod’s roe on toast; divine burnt cheesecake.

Play: A Number at the Old Vic. More plays should be this short and more actors should be this good.

Best films of 2021

~ Shakeel Hashim ~ Leave a comment

2021 releases, in rough order of my favourites:

Dune

A fairly revelatory experience for me: I was blown away by every aspect, with the music and production design particular highlights. I’m very glad I got to see this in IMAX: it felt like being in another world.

Boiling Point

Unbelievably tense, hyper-realistic, and an astonishing feat of filmmaking: an actual single-take film set in a fast-moving kitchen. Genuinely faultless.

Red Rocket

There is absolutely no question that Simon Rex’s character in this is a gigantic piece of shit, yet he is so charismatic that you still (kind of) like him. Cemented Sean Baker as one of the best directors alive, in my mind.

C’mon C’mon

Sentimental in all the best ways, led by excellent performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Woody Norman (the latter is one of the best child actors I’ve ever seen).

Benedetta

A very beautiful and very funny film that still manages to be emotionally affecting. Virginie Efira is an excellent psychopath.

Older films I happened to watch and enjoy this year, in no particular order:

  • Akira
  • Persona
  • Dr Strangelove
  • Spring Blossom
  • Minari
  • Deerskin

Honourable mentions: The Power of the Dog; Licorice Pizza; Memoria; The Green Knight.

Waste of time and money: Promising Young Woman; The Afterlight; The French Dispatch; Belfast.