Review of 2016: My 15 favourite undistributed films of the year

Fifteen very fine films that didn't get - and, in some cases, didn't want - a UK cinema release in 2016. They instead found a home on DVD/Blu-ray, or on a View On Demand/streaming service, such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video...

15. James White (dir: Josh Mond)
Sharply observed character study of a hedonistic New Yorker struggling to cope with his mother's terminal illness. Christopher Abbott (Martha Marcy May Marlene) is perfect as the handsome, entitled and hopelessly lost titular character, but it's Sex And The City stalwart Cynthia Nixon who provides the movie's beating heart.

14. Tallulah (dir: Sian Heder)
Ellen Page is an itinerant young woman (the titular Tallulah) who kidnaps a neglected baby and passes it off as her own in this smartly-written drama. Alison Janney - as the mother of Tallulah's boyfriend - and Tammy Blanchard - as the baby's alcoholic mother - are both superb in a film with more shades of grey than an E.L. James fan convention.

13. The Invitation (dir: Karyn Kusama)

It's the dinner party from hell in this unsettling horror as an unsuspecting young couple attend a reunion of friends and old flames in the Hollywood Hills. Something feels 'off' from the moment they walk through the door and Kusama has enormous fun working with that to bring the sense of tension and paranoia slowly but surely to boiling point. The last 20 minutes - when everything goes batshit crazy - are well worth the wait.

12. Nina Forever (dirs.: Ben Blaine and Chris Blaine)
Bizarre British chiller about a man whose girlfriend returns from the dead every time he has sex with his new lover. Underneath the blood and craziness, there's a rather clever meditation on grief in which Utopia's Fiona O'Shaughnessy excels as the titular Nina. It perhaps runs out of steam a little towards the end but the first hour's a blast.

11. Other People (dir: Chris Kelly)Jesse Plemons is a gay, New York-based, comedy writer returning home to Sacramento to spend time with his cancer-stricken mother (Molly Shannon). It might sound like the perfect set-up for a total syrup-fest but this is a very smart, very funny black comedy in which every moment rings true. The opening scene - set immediately after Shannon's death - manages to be both hilarious and heart-breaking at the same time.

10. The Bronze (dir: Bryan Buckley)
The Big Bang Theory's Melissa Rauch is a former Olympic bronze-medal-winning gymnast fallen on hard times after her career is ended by injury. Rauch has enormous fun upending her goody-two-shoes onscreen image to deliver a series of brutal, potty-mouthed zingers as the thieving, foul-mouthed has-been, who clings for dear life to her small-town hero status. But this, more than anything, is a story of redemption and an effective one at that.

9. Amanda Knox (dir: Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn)
Revealing documentary in which Knox, the young American twice convicted then acquitted of the 2007 Perugia killing of Meredith Kercher, talks about the terrible impact of the murder and subsequent trials on her life (she was innocent, let's not forget). The filmmakers strike (fool's) gold in their interviews with the Kercher case's buffoonish prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, and sleaze-ball journalist Nick Pisa.

8. The End Of The Tour (dir: James Ponsoldt)

Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg are both terrific in this sharply-written drama about David Foster Wallace, the acclaimed but deeply troubled author of breeze-block-sized novel Infinite Jest. Eisenberg is his usual dependable self as the wheedling magazine journalist trying to get into the novelist's head as he embarks on a book tour, but How I Met Your Mother alum Segel gives the performance of his life as tragic Wallace.

7. Divines (dir: Houda Benyamina)

Oulaya Amamra is a revelation as Dounia, a tough, ambitious street kid who deals drugs in a bid to earn enough money to escape the rough Paris estate where she lives with her alcoholic mother. After falling for a young dancer, she finally sees a way out, but soon discovers leaving the street life behind is far from easy. Benyamina's poignant film doesn't pull its punches or offer up glib happy endings and is all the better for it.

6. Blue Jay (dir: Alex Lehmann)

Compelling, melancholic two-hander starring Sarah Paulson and Mark Duplass as former high-school sweethearts, who bump into each other many years later and quickly fall back into old routines... while trying desperately not to talk about the painful episode that drove them apart in the first place. Written by Duplass, it boasts another stellar performance from Paulson.

5. White Girl (dir: Elizabeth Wood)
Based on director Wood's real-life experiences, the film sees pretty, entitled New York college student Leah (Morgan Saylor) getting in well over her head when she begins a relationship with a local drug dealer (Brian Marc). The writer/director takes on class, race and gender in a raw, breathless film that doesn't stand still for a minute.

4. April And The Extraordinary World (dirs: Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci)
This beautifully rendered and incredibly imaginative animation, set in a Steampunk version of 1940s France, is a delight from beginning to end. Yes, the plot is utterly daft (something about an invincibility potion and talking animals) but that's easy to forgive amidst all the mad science and breathless derring-do. Marion Cotillard voices the titular April.

3. Entertainment (dir: Rick Alverson)
Bleak, baffling and often quite brilliant road movie about a depressive, misanthropic comedian on a stand-up tour of seedy bars and strange visitor attractions in California. It's scabrous, outrageous and hugely funny, but also has something to say about the loneliness and desperation of stand-up life. Gregg Turkington channels his real-life comedy alter-ego Neil Hamburger to uproarious effect.

2. Look Who's Back (dir: David Wnendt)
Adolf Hitler returns to life in 21st century Berlin in a biting satire from Germany. At first the Führer is mistaken for a stand-up comedian and takes his 'act' onto television, but it isn't long before his gift for manipulation, and lethal charisma, brings him a whole new army of followers. Oliver Masucci is scarily plausible as Hitler and, with fascism on the rise on both sides of the Atlantic, I'm not sure Wnendt's film could be any more timely...

1. 13th (dir: Ava DuVernay)

The Selma director's documentary about the mass incarceration of African-Americans (particularly men) in US jails is excoriating stuff. DuVernay starts her analysis with the abolition of slavery in 1865 and the US constitution's 13th amendment which wrote it into law: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Her controversial but powerfully argued contention is that rather than being abolished, slavery was merely "redesigned", the line that says "except as a punishment for crime" deployed as a weapon against America's black population in the form of mass incarceration.

Back in October 13th became the first documentary to open the New York Film Festival, and features a parade of diverse and impressive talking heads, including Black Panther activist-turned-tenured professor Angela Davis and former Republican speaker of the house Newt Gingrich.

But anyone expecting a party political broadcast on behalf of the Democrats will be sorely disappointed as DuVernay turns some of her fiercest fire on former president Bill Clinton and his wide-ranging crime bill of 1994, which led to prison overcrowding amongst other unintended consequences. Impressively up to date - including coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement and Trump's bid for the White House - if 13th doesn't make you fizz with anger, I'm not sure what will. 

**Next up: My Top 30 Favourite Movies of 2016 - numbers 30-21**

Woody Allen, Amanda Knox and Macbeth: Your Week In Film (October 3-9)

Sleeper hit: Woody gets the boxset treatment in Six Films

DVD, Blu-ray, VOD and TV highlights for the next seven days...

Crisis In Six Scenes (Amazon Prime Video), Woody Allen's first TV gig in 20+ years, is a long way from the writer/director/actor's best work but he is nevertheless enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the ripe old age of 80. Allen's most recent film Café Society - a smart and bittersweet romantic comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart - was a real return to form after a couple of post-Blue Jasmine duds, and then there's Woody Allen: Six Films - 1971-1978 (Blu-ray) WWWW, the first in a series of three boxsets devoted to collecting a number - but not all - of his older movies.

I don't know whether there were problems obtaining the rights to What's Up, Tiger Lily? and Take The Money And Run (Allen's first two films as director) but this collection kicks off with Bananas (1971), his third outing. Allen is Fielding Mellish, a disaffected college drop-out who gives up his job as a tester of ridiculous products and ends up becoming the president of fictitious South American country, San Marcos. Some of the humour hasn't aged well (with the benefit of hindsight a gag about "advanced child molesting" seems especially egregious) and it is in reality just a series of sketches and sight gags married to a free-wheeling plot. But, with its satirical edge, references to philosophy and sexual politics, plus some clever set-pieces (getting real-life sports reporter Howard Cosell to top and tail the film was a stroke of genius), there are clear hints of just what Allen was capable of and where he was heading. 

His work grew more sophisticated with 1972's inventive Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask (Gene Wilder's love affair with a sheep the highlight of seven amusing vignettes), outrageous sci-fi spoof Sleeper (1973), and Love And Death (1975), in which Allen drove a coach and horses through Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy to hilarious effect. This early period culminated in the sublime Annie Hall (1977) - probably still the director's best-loved movie. In a little over 90 breathless minutes, Allen hits us with everything he's got - flashbacks, subtitles, fourth-wall breaking, animation, a cameo from Marshall McLuhan - and it's a wild, wonderful ride full of memorable lines ("La-di-da" is the least of it) and more belly laughs than some comedians manage in a lifetime. It wouldn't be nearly as good without Diane Keaton as the spoiled, mercurial and somehow utterly magnetic titular character though. 

The set comes to a dark and downbeat full stop with Interiors (1978), a fulsome homage to the work of Ingmar Bergman and one of Allen's only out-and-out dramas. Three sisters (Keaton, Kristin Griffith and Mary Beth Hurt) battle to keep their family together after the trio's father (EG Marshall) walks out on their mentally ill mother (Geraldine Page). It's a flawed but emotionally powerful work in which only Page's Eve is genuinely sympathetic. Everyone else (white, wealthy, privileged, arty) seems to suffer from a serious case of First World Problems, be it writer's block, umbrage at hostile critics or a simple lack of creative talent.

Page was Oscar-nominated for the role and it is the rawness of her performance that elevates the material every time she is on screen and holds the film together. Seeing - and enjoying - Interiors again after 20-odd years made me wonder why Allen hasn't returned to the well of pure drama (maybe the travails of his real life are dramatic enough). A second boxset, featuring the likes of Manhattan and Broadway Danny Rose, is promised for December.

Interior monologue: Geraldine Page is raw and powerful

Allen has endured more than his fair share of infamy in the last couple of decades but it's nothing compared to the subject of Netflix documentary Amanda Knox WWW. Knox is, of course, the young American woman twice convicted then acquitted of the 2007 Perugia murder of fellow exchange student Meredith Kercher, and whilst Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn's talking heads-led film probably won't win any awards for style or originality it's a crucial and fascinating watch nonetheless. 

That's mainly because it features Knox talking, in depth, about the murder itself and its terrible impact on her and co-accused former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, but also because it makes you wonder how on Earth a case based on such flimsy evidence and near-as-damn-it forced confessions (Knox was subjected to a 53-hour interrogation by police, containing physical and verbal abuse) could ever have made it out of the starting gate. 

The filmmakers strike (fool's) gold in their interviews with the Kercher case's prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, a man who styled himself after Sherlock Holmes (even filmed ostentatiously smoking a pipe at the original trial) and was convinced of Knox and Sollecito's guilt, mainly because of what he decided was their "inappropriate behaviour" (also known as 'kissing') after the crime's discovery. If Mignini's contributions are infuriating and exasperating, they are small potatoes compared to those of Nick Pisa, a slimy Daily Mail 'journalist' who'd be expelled from the National Association of Gutter Press for his distinct lack of class. His series of salacious 'revelations' (also known as 'fiction') involving sex games gone wrong and even satanic rituals helped convict Knox and Sollecito in the court of public opinion. And it wasn't long before a real court followed suit, sending the pair to prison until they were freed on appeal four years later (turns out that DNA evidence wasn't just flimsy, it was hugely contaminated).

I'd have liked a bit more detail (what was it like for the pair in prison? How did their families cope?) but Amanda Knox is a powerful corrective to the tide of errant nonsense and calumny that still passes for serious comment about the case. Of course, it's easy for Brits like me to mock the Italian authorities and their lax investigative skills but cases such as those of Barry George and the Birmingham Six prove that miscarriages of justice have no borders.

Murder in mind: Amanda Knox was rightly acquitted  

Subscription service Mubi have really upped their game this year, no longer just screening a range of interesting or rare old films but offering a number of exclusives too. Baden Baden WW½ was only in UK cinemas a couple of weeks ago but has already surfaced on the online platform, along with two of writer/director Rachel Lang's short films, For You I Will Fight and White Turnips Make It Hard To Sleep. All three feature the same character - Ana Och (Salomé Richard) - a directionless young woman with a big heart, who flits from job to job, place to place and relationship to relationship, without ever really finding her niche in life. Richard is excellent as boyish every-girl Ana while Lang perfectly captures that 'what the bloody hell am I supposed to do now' moment of panic that hits post-teens when they realise adulthood might not be for them after all.   

The last 20 minutes of Macbeth (Wednesday 5th, 21:00, Film4) WWW are probably the most visually stunning of any film I've seen in the last couple of years, as Birnam Wood does indeed come to Dunsinane and Michael Fassbender's murderer king faces off against his nemesis Macduff. Elsewhere, Snowtown director Justin Kurzel's adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Scottish play' is a broodingly gothic, brutal and nightmarish affair, buoyed by suitably intense performances from Fassbender, and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. Kurzel has an interesting take on the central character - he isn't just an ambitious monster spurred on by a pushy wife - but a battle-weary warrior unhinged by the death of his young son. It's a nice twist but one that fails to humanise the character as much as the director would clearly like it to.

Ratings
WWWW - Wonderful
WWW - Worthwhile
WW - Watchable
W - Woeful