My Top 5 Movies This Year
Spinner Defarge is Middleton High School’s resident pop-culture expert, dedicated to providing cultural criticism as it used to be: fair, intelligent, and honest. In a world where real talent seems to be going out of fashion, Spinner is a lone voice of dissent, telling it like it is to those who don’t know better.
5. A Hologram For the King
An aching, masterfully crafted tale of self-discovery set amdist a beguilingly exotic backdrop, “A Hologram for the King” is the kind of movie that might not appeal to impatient viewers, but will be sure to satisfy anyone with a desire for a deep-reaching narrative and wonderfully tragicomic performances from a diverse cast.
4. Green Room
To call this film “bone-chilling” would be the understatement of the century. “Green Room” is a non-stop thrill ride that takes no prisoners; I left the theater practically trembling with pure adrenaline. The punk ambience is impressively accurate and evocative (one scene in which a mosh-pit is showed in slow motion transforms a seemingly savage ritual of directionless aggression into a transcendent statement of free expression) and the performances are airtight and frightfully intense. Patrick Stewart is pure, concentrated malice.
3. The Lobster
When I was younger, I really wanted a pet. I begged my father to let me have one but he refused. When at last my nagging became too much for him, he punished me by unleashing a family of lobsters into my room while I was sleeping. I woke up in the night to the sound of scuttling on the floor and was so scared that I could barely move. All this being said, I had no problem making it through “The Lobster”, a wonderfully idiosyncratic love story for the thinking man.
2. Knight of Cups
What can I say about this movie that hasn’t already been said? It’s a devastating, brilliant, strange, philosophical film, so genius in its construction that I had to see it twice. In fact…
- KNIGHT OF CUPS
The second time I saw this film was twice as good as the first time around. I recall something my father was taught me when I was very young about the value of doing things twice. He would put a lobster close enough to my nose that it would grab it with its claw; obviously, this would hurt a lot, but the second time it grabbed me I barely felt anything. “See,” my father would say, “the second time is always better”. After a repeat viewing of “Knight of Cups”, during which I managed to pick up a large array of hidden motifs that I’d missed the first time, I’ve found that I couldn’t agree with my father more.
