On Compiling A Film Canon. January 2017 Update.

Welcome to the first Hope Lies film canon entry of 2017 (and indeed, the first Hope Lies article of 2017). I hope that had a pleasant festive period, and wish you all the best for the coming year.

I must have taken a year off from It’s A Wonderful Life last year, as that’s the only possible explanation I can think of for it not already being in the Hope Lies Canon. In short, it’s a perfect film, and the greatest of all Christmas movies.

Joining Frank Capra’s enduring classic is Noah Baumbach’s The Squid And The Whale, a contemporary picture that stands as something as a cinematic antipode to the Jimmy Stewart flick. As scathing and cynical as mainstream American cinema gets, from Baumbach’s movie was borne one of *the* great grumps of the modern era in Jeff Daniels’ patriarch of the most dysfunctional family this side of The Royal Tenenbaums. I wrote more of The Squid And The Whale here.

Rounding out the month is Anthony Mann’s The Man From Laramie, an excellent psychological western from 1955. Jimmy Stewart appears once again, as a good man wronged in the developing West. Mann’s film is a beautiful ode to the complex societal structures of the USA, with his villain an odious, petulant man-child, empowered by an inherited wealth. No prizes for guessing who he reminds of.

More information on the Hope Lies film canon can be found at our ongoing and regularly updated Letterboxd list.