My favourite films of 2017: #30-21

Top gun: Brie Larson fights for survival in Ben Wheatley's Free Fire

30. Neruda
Director: Pablo Larrain  UK release date: 7 April
Off-kilter but visually sumptuous biopic of the famous Chilean poet, Nobel Prize winner and communist. Luis Gnecco's titular lead becomes a fugitive in his own country during the 1940s as he is pursued by Gael García Bernal's disturbed policeman. Larrain (Jackie) takes all sorts of liberties with real events, while his portrayal of Neruda is enjoyably unflattering.

29. Dunkirk
Director: Christopher Nolan  UK release date: 21 July
Nolan expertly utilises three different timelines (a week, a day and an hour) to tell the story of the famous WWII evacuation in an artistically bold and emotionally potent way. Aided and abetted by Hans Zimmer's frantic score, this is immersive, inventive filmmaking to take the breath away. Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance supply the actorly gravitas.

28. It Comes At Night
Director: Trey Edward Shults  UK release date: 7 July
Krisha director Shults turns up the paranoia to 11 in this post-apocalyptic thriller-cum-horror, grabbing you hard by the lapels in its first few minutes and refusing to let go until its haunting closing shot around an hour and an half later. A great cast - including Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo, and Riley Keough - are the icing on the cake.

27. Free Fire
Director: Ben Wheatley  UK release date: 31 March
It turns out a 90-minute shoot-out in a filthy warehouse between two gangs of inept criminals is a hell of a lot better on the big screen than it sounds on paper. Michael Smiley, Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson, and Armie Hammer are all on top form in a violent and riotously funny piece of work that doesn't owe quite as much to Reservoir Dogs as you'd imagine.

26. Land Of Mine
Director: Martin Zandvliet  UK release date: 4 August
Fact-based drama about young German POWS forced to clear thousands of land mines from Danish beaches after WWII. Roland Møller is the sadistic sergeant charged with completing the task - whatever the cost to his prisoners. An under-appreciated gem that powerfully explores notions of human decency and forgiveness.

25. The Age Of Shadows
Director: Kim Jee-woon  UK release date: 24 March
I Saw The Devil director Kim's blistering period piece set in Japanese-occupied Korea centres on members of the resistance and a cop (played by Song Kang-ho) with divided loyalties. It's breathless, it's brutal, it's sumptuous to look at - it also happens to be one of the year's richest and most rewarding action films.

24. Thelma
Director: Joachim Trier  UK release date: 3 November
A supernatural "coming out" story with shades of Carrie about a young university student, played by Eili Harboe, with terrifying psychic powers. This is far from a super-powered CG fest, though, as Trier (Louder Than Bombs) focuses as much on Thelma's burgeoning sexuality, and repudiation of her strict religious upbringing, as he does on her abilities.

23. In Between
Director: Maysaloun Hamoud  UK release date: 22 September
Hungarian-born Hamoud's directorial debut is a compelling story of three Palestinian women living together in Tel Aviv, and torn between embracing modernity and the more conservative diktats of their families' culture. Mouna Hawa as Leila is a revelation, while the friendships are beautifully explored and believable. The final shot is perfect.

22. Silence
Director: Martin Scorsese  UK release date: 1 January
Based on Shûsaku Endô's novel, Silence sees two Catholic missionaries (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) searching for their lost mentor (Liam Neeson) in 17th Century Japan, at a time of great religious persecution. Bloated, self-important and old-fashioned? Maybe, but nobody does heavyweight epic with quite as much pizzazz as the Goodfellas director.

21. La La Land
Director: Damien Chazelle  UK release date: 13 January
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone can't sing or dance like Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, but this musical love letter to old Hollywood, romance and jazz is utterly charming. The song and dance numbers are mostly terrific (especially the opener, Another Day Of Sun), and Chazelle serves up a bravura ending a million miles from the schmaltz-fest I was expecting.

**Up next: #20-11**

My 25 favourite films of 2017 so far: Part Two #10-1

After yesterday's appetiser, here's the main course - my top 10 favourite films of the year so far. To be considered, movies had to have been released into UK cinemas between 1 January and 30 June 2017. Releases exclusive to VOD, Blu-ray and DVD did not qualify for inclusion.

10. Prevenge
Director: Alice Lowe UK release date: 10 February
Director/writer/star Lowe makes the tricky art of comedy-horror look easy in her filmmaking debut, shot when she was seven months' pregnant. She plays Ruth, newly widowed and bearing a child that exhorts her to take bloody revenge on those responsible for her partner's death. Yes, it's funny (Lowe earned her comedy chops on the likes of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, so how could it not be?) but Prevenge is also joyously grisly, at times channelling the likes of Rosemary's Baby and Andrzej Zulawski's deranged Possession to great effect. I can't wait to see what she does next. 

9. I Am Not Your Negro
Director: Raoul Peck UK release date: 7 April

Narrated by Samuel L Jackson, Peck's fascinating documentary about black novelist, playwright, poet and activist James Baldwin focusses mainly on an unfinished book - Remember This House - which was to feature his memories of three great black American leaders: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, as well as ruminations on US history. Baldwin - a startlingly brilliant orator and formidable intellect - knew all three men well and stood by horrified as one by one they met violent ends during the 1960s. As a result there's a mixture of anger and sadness in Peck's film, feelings perfectly articulated in Baldwin's oratory, particularly lines such as: "The story of the negro in America is the story of America. It is not a pretty story." Bringing Baldwin's writing bang up to date, Peck shows us how that story hasn't got any prettier.

8. Personal Shopper

Director: Olivier Assayas UK release date: 17 March
Kristin Stewart reunites with Clouds Of Sils Maria director Assayas for this strange and horror-inflected meditation on grief and loneliness. Stewart is an American living in Paris and working as a general dog's body for a ghastly celebrity model. She is also a medium, desperate to make contact with the spirit of her dead twin brother, who has passed away following a heart attack (she shares his condition). A lengthy scene in which Stewart goes to London and back again on Eurostar, all the while exchanging texts with a mysterious person or entity, is Assayas at his most playful and audacious. 

7. La La Land

Director: Damien Chazelle UK release date: 13 January

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone can't sing or dance like Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds but this musical love letter to old Hollywood, romance and jazz is utterly charming. Gosling's a struggling pianist, Stone an unloved actress, but the pair's passion for each other acts as rocket fuel for their ambition and self-belief, much improving their career fortunes even as the relationship founders. Yes, it's corny and whilst Gosling and Stone certainly have chemistry, their actual relationship is oddly chaste. That said, the song and dance numbers are mostly terrific (especially the opener, Another Day Of Sun), and Chazelle serves up a bravura ending a million miles from the saccharine-fest I was expecting.

6. Get Out
Director: Jordan Peele UK release date: 17 March

Anyone who only knows US comedian Peele from his part in last year's limp cat comedy, Keanu, is likely to be knocked out of their seat by this whip-smart combination of horror and satire that has its sights firmly trained on the notion that, since Obama, America is a post-racial society. British actor Daniel Kaluuya is in a mixed race relationship with his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) and one weekend she takes him to meet her moneyed, progressive parents at their remote country estate. They're initially friendly but clearly uncomfortable in his presence and that soon gives way to something far more sinister. Peele (previously best known in the US for the Key & Peele sketch show) puts liberal white America under the microscope and really doesn't like what he sees there.

5. Raw
Director: Julia Ducournau UK release date: 7 April

"Visceral" is a word thrown around by film critics to describe any bit of old tat with some violence in it these days. It's a word that has lost its power through repetition but one that nevertheless fits this extraordinary French cannibal film like a bloodied glove. A teenage vegetarian (Garance Marillier) is made to eat a rabbit heart as part of her initiation at a veterinary college and soon develops a taste for meat, including the human variety. Ducournau's unsparing film can be viewed as a straight-no-chaser horror flick or a coming of age yarn about a young woman transitioning into dog-eat-dog adulthood, but it adroitly juggles many other themes too, including sexual awakening, teenage rebellion, and sibling rivalry.  

4. Moonlight
Director: Barry Jenkins UK release date: 17 February
Jenkins' Best Picture Oscar winner is probably too subtle for its good at times and it certainly took me a couple of watches before his movie's considerable charms inveigled their way into my heart. But, once you get past those early doubts, Moonlight is a beautifully judged and entirely powerful piece of work boasting great performances (especially Naomie Harris, Mahershala Ali, and Alex R Hibbert) and superb storytelling. It follows the same character, Chiron, at three different stages of his life as he strives to come to terms with his difficult upbringing and also with his sexuality. It's a delicate, low-key film, and I was therefore astonished - but delighted - the Academy gave it the nod over La La Land.

3. The Handmaiden
Director: Park Chan-wook UK release date: 14 April
Sumptuous adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel, The Fingersmith, which relocates the action from Victorian England to 1930s Korea. As part of a criminal scheme, a young pickpocket (Kim Tae-ri), is sent to work for a Japanese heiress (Kim Min-hee) betrothed to her repulsive uncle (Cho Jin-woong). Instead of fleecing her employer, however, she falls in love with her and the two commence an affair. The Handmaiden is all about deception - during the film's three separate chapters, it time and again picks the pocket of your expectations. Park deliberately withholds information and skews perspectives, making for a discombobulating ride that keeps you on your toes every step of the way.

2. Manchester By The Sea
Director: Kenneth Lonergan UK release date: 13 January
Excoriating, heart-rending drama starring Best Actor Oscar winner Casey Affleck as a grief-stricken janitor returning home to the titular Massachusetts seaside town following the death of his older brother. There he has to confront a terrible secret from his past whilst struggling to forge a path into a more hopeful future. Director Lonergan's sharp script balances the bleakness with occasional stabs of wry humour, Michelle Williams is dependably superb in a supporting role and Affleck turns in one of 21st Century Hollywood's great performances. You'll cry, you'll laugh, you'll cry some more. You'll carry on crying until you realise everyone in the cinema is looking at you...

1. Elle
Director: Paul Verhoeven UK release date: 10 March
An outrageous and audacious revenge fantasy of sorts which sees Isabelle Huppert's icy video game executive raped in her Paris apartment before commencing a strange and erotically-charged game of cat and mouse with her attacker. It's an incredibly divisive film that no one seems to entirely agree upon. Is it suggesting that women secretly like sexual violence? Or is it an anti-rape statement skewering the male need to subjugate difficult, powerful women? On the surface, Elle is only a short walk away from the likes of Basic Instinct (director Verhoeven's 1992 potboiler starring Sharon Stone) but it's a far more complex and rewarding work than that, helped enormously by Huppert's total immersion in one of modern cinema's most unreadable characters. Oh and, SPOILER ALERT, I think she knows who her attacker is from the moment she first lays eyes on him.

Finally, a few mid-year awards...
Best straight to VOD/DVD/streaming film: Macon Blair's I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore on Netflix.
Most pleasant surprise: Matt Damon is miscast as a grizzled mercenary and the quality of the CGI is variable but The Great Wall gives good blockbuster. 
Tip for the top: Julia Ducournau, the director of Raw (see #5), is going to be HUGE.
Worst film: Take your pick from Assassin's Creed or Power Rangers (although I'm yet to see Transformers: The Last Knight).
Biggest disappointment: Edgar Wright's Baby Driver is a lot of fun but hardly worth all those five-star reviews. See also Toni Erdmann.
Most ill-advised acting choice: Jake Gyllenhaal as a grotesque Aussie TV animal-wrangler in Okja. Ruined the whole film and reminded me of Robert De Niro's similarly OTT turn in The Adventures Of Rocky & Bullwinkle. Not a good look, mate. 
Wish for the rest of the year: That adult fans of comic-book movies finally start to engage their critical faculties and stop declaring every bit of super-powered tat that comes their way  "awesome" or "amazing".

La La Land, XX, and Get Me Roger Stone: Your Week In Film (May 15-21)

Dancing with the stars: Gosling and Stone hoof it up in La La Land

This week's UK home entertainment highlights. All films available to buy, stream or watch now, unless otherwise stated...  

A few years ago, weak-sauce horror anthologies, such as V/H/S and The ABCs Of Death, nearly put me off the portmanteau format for life. But I was intrigued enough by XX (DVD and VOD) WWW – four shorts, all written and directed by women – to dip my toe back into the piranha pool and am certainly glad I did.

Jovanka Vuckovic's The Box – the tale of a young boy who stops eating after peeking into a mysterious gift-box on the New York subway – is as intriguing and elusive as it is bleak. Seemingly cursed by something supernatural, soon the boy's disorder spreads like a virus through his family, proceedings becoming ever more disturbing and uncomfortable. Vuckovic doesn't serve up a conventional twist, which makes this even better, and keeps her cards close to her chest when it comes to explaining exactly what is going on. I haven't read the Jack Ketchum short story her segment is based upon but did wonder if The Box was really about anorexia, although it could just as easily be concerned with the powerlessness of a mother to protect her family from a brutal and arbitrary world. 

In stark contrast is the grimly amusing slapstick comedy of Annie Clark (aka pop star St Vincent)'s The Birthday Party, which she co-wrote with Roxanne Benjamin. It stars the excellent Melanie Lynskey (I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore) as a frantic mother trying to hide her recently-deceased husband's corpse so as not to spoil her young daughter's birthday costume party. It's a low-key delight that throws up more questions than answers, with a smartly delivered denouement that made me laugh out loud.

Don't Fall is the weakest of the four stories, although it perhaps deserves kudos for being the only one here that doesn't tackle the theme of motherhood. A group of friends discover a set of weird cave paintings while out scaling rocks in the desert. In the black of night they are menaced by a savage supernatural creature identical to the one in the artwork, perhaps attracted by the fear of heights one member of the group has exhibited earlier in the story. It lacked a strong premise or twist and is probably the only segment that may have worked better as a full-blown feature. Rather better is the final story, Her Only Living Son, a "reimagining" of the events that take place after Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. Written and directed by Karyn Kusama (who helmed last year's excellent The Invitation), it's a clever and unusual way of talking about single mums, difficult kids and absent fathers, although 'I Was A Teenage Antichrist' may have been a better title for it.

One final thing: be careful if you're searching for XX on Amazon – you're going to have to wade through quite a bit of porn before you find it, including Anal Debauchery 3 and Orange Is The New Rack (I'm not making this up). I fear that title – XX as in kisses but also the female sex chromosome – may be a little too clever for its own good!

Nasty women: XX is an all-female horror anthology

From the knockabout humour in the trailer, I'd assumed Get Me Roger Stone (Netflix) WWW was a mockumentary about an outrageous but fictional member of Donald Trump's inner circle – part Frank Underwood, part Malcolm Tucker perhaps. Five minutes into the actual film, however, I realised Stone was all too horribly real and had been spinning his webs and spreading his poison for a variety of Republican politicians (including ex-Presidents Nixon, Reagan and both Bush's) for many decades. 

Stone, who is now 64, has to be seen to be believed. A body builder who dresses like a dandyish villain straight out of Batman, he is nevertheless a terrifyingly ruthless operator who never seems remotely perturbed by the wreckage – human and political – his dirty tricks leave behind him. Dylan Bank, Daniel DiMauro and Morgan Pehme's film follows Stone in the lead up to last year's US presidential election, filling in his jaw-dropping history as it goes. A friend of Trump's from way back, Stone admits he saw something in The Donald in 1988 and was just waiting for the right moment to launch him on the path to the White House ("I was a jockey looking for a horse... and Trump was a prime piece of political horse flesh").

The problem is that, despite his genuine, 24-carat awfulness, there is something almost likeable about Stone. He's a self-confessed libertarian – pro gay marriage, pro choice, all for legalising marijuana – and also incredibly self aware. He knows he's a dick and rejoices in it. There's a brilliant moment here when we see him at home. Oh look, there's a portrait of him on the wall as Napoleon and here's his 91-year-old mum, who he describes as being like the mother from The Sopranos (if I remember correctly, she tried to have Tony Soprano whacked at the end of season one). He also has a large tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back, and was chased out of Washington DC in the mid-90s after a sex scandal (he and his wife Nydia advertised themselves in a swingers' magazine, their ad reading: "no smokers, fatties, or phonies"). He's lived a fascinating life and some of it is not only outrageous but bloody funny too.

Writer/directors Bank, DiMauro and Pehme keep their distance. They just point their camera at the titular character and a parade of talking heads (including Trump, investigative journalist Wayne Barrett, and Fox News arsehole Tucker Carlson) and let the story unfold. There's no need to try and paint Stone in a bad light, he's totally open about the innumerable manipulations and slights of hand he has pulled in the course of his political life.

It's easy to dismiss those on the Republican right as fools and idiots but that view gets you precisely nowhere with someone as savvy and sharp as Stone. His astonishing takedown of the Reform Party and their presidential candidate Pat Buchanan (using Trump as a stalking horse) in 2000 proves that beyond any doubt. In fact, it's probably why Al Gore never became president. I'd call him the Darth Vader of politics but Stone was never corrupted by the dark side, he was its willing pupil from day one. This is a guy even Machiavelli would beg to dial it down a notch.

Unfortunately, the end game of Stone's decades of deceit and weapons-grade cynicism has resulted in the alt-right mob winning the keys to the White House with him – their Dick Dastardly of dirty tricks – on the inside. I'm still naive enough to believe people go into politics to do a bit of good but if you're palling around with frothing conspiracy loon Alex Jones and accusing Barack Obama of being a secret Muslim born in Kenya, there's no moral high ground for you to occupy. "I revel in your hatred because, if I wasn't effective, you wouldn't hate me," he says at the end of the film in a message to his numerous detractors. After this, I suspect he'll have plenty more.

Heart of Stone: Political dirty trickster Roger

The first time I saw La La Land (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD) WWW½ – one Saturday morning last October at the London Film Festival – it already had a good bit of critical momentum behind it and that all-important 'Oscar buzz'. I doubt anyone could have foreseen, though, just how much of a cultural phenomenon Damien Chazelle's musical would become. Has there been a more pored over, analysed or dissected movie in the last 12 months or so? Not even Moonlight – the film that beat it to the Best Picture Oscar in farcical circumstances – comes close.

Unfortunately, rather a lot of what was written about La La Land was utter hogwash. Sure, some interesting stuff entered the conversation about its appropriation of black and gay culture that sparked off valuable discussions, but otherwise it was desperate writers looking for clickbait far too much of the time. Yes, the two lead characters are self-obsessed – one's a musician, the other's a wannabe actress, they live in Los Angeles, so what do you expect? No, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone can't dance nearly as well as Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, well spotted. Yep, director Chazelle does homage several other movies in the course of his film, but so what? And no, it isn't as important or powerful a film as Moonlight but, other than the Oscars snafu, the pair have little to nothing in common so why are we even having this conversation for the hundredth time?

With all that in mind I was rather worried that the negativity and naysaying would spoil my enjoyment when I settled down to see La La Land again, seven months on. I needn't have worried, though, because Chazelle's follow up to Whiplash is every bit as adorable as it was the first time. 

Mia (Stone) is a wannabe actress working as a barista on the Warner Brothers movie lot. She auditions for roles in terrible TV shows ("No, Jamal. You be trippin'.") and gets nowhere. Seb (Gosling) is a formidable jazz pianist, playing Christmas carols for chump change at seedy bars while dreaming of owning his own classy music venue. They meet, they bicker, they sing and dance, and eventually their love for each other acts as rocket fuel for their ambition and self belief. But it's a double-edged sword because the pair's suddenly improved circumstances puts huge pressure on their relationship. They begin to grow apart...

Big, brassy and bold, La La Land was never quite the scrappy little movie Chazelle wanted us to believe it was. In fact, it feels like an event – something grand and significant, even though it's really just a handsomely staged love story with maddeningly catchy songs, some passable dancing and one or two heart-warming gags. The film may be two hours long but feels like half that. It has the pace of a tornado. Bang, bang, bang – scene follows song follows set-piece like a breathless stage musical. My own personal highlights are the brilliant opener Another Day Of Sun, which sees dozens of motorists abandoning their cars to dance across an LA freeway, and a bravura segment towards the end consisting of a 'what if?' version of the entire movie. 

If I have one criticism it's that Stone and Gosling's central relationship is slightly odd. Mia and Seb's is hardly an affair of torrid passion. In fact, apart from the occasional snog, there appears to be little physical between them at all. Some have suggested the leads lack chemistry but I don't think that's true – rather, I suspect Chazelle wanted his protagonists to have a relationship that was sweet and tender rather than overtly sexual. Unfortunately, I think it comes out weirdly chaste instead.

Ultimately, though, La La Land is a love letter to jazz, to old Hollywood, to movie musicals, and to love itself. If you have a romantic bone in your body, you can't help but fall under its spell.

Date night: Will love blossom or wilt in La La Land?

Two other movies worth checking out this week are Manchester By The Sea (DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD) WWWW, which I bombarded with effusive praise in a lengthy review here, and The Levelling (VOD and cinemas) WWW½, a British film from first-time director Hope Dickson Leach, which I'm going to try and find time to talk about properly on here later in the week.

This week's UK TV highlights
1. Adulthood (Tonight, Channel 5, 12.15am)
2. Things To Come (Wednesday, Sky Cinema Premiere, 10.10pm)
3. The Heat (Saturday, Channel 4, 9pm)
4. Insomnia (Saturday, BBC1, 11.40pm)
5.The Homesman (Sunday, BBC2, 10pm)

What I shall be watching this week: Off to the cinema to catch Miss Sloane and Alien: Covenant

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

The Birth Of A Nation, La La Land and more (The 60th BFI Film Festival Part 2)

Get up, stand up: Nate Parker's The Birth Of A Nation

Certain critics and commentators have urged a boycott of The Birth Of A Nation WW½, debutant filmmaker Nate Parker's drama about a real-life slave uprising in West Virginia in 1831 - and it's easy to see why. In the fallout from the #Oscarssowhite brouhaha, it was touted as an Academy Award frontrunner but soon became mired in controversy with the revelation that Parker - its star, writer and director - had been tried but acquitted of raping a young woman while he was at college some years before. The woman in question took her own life years later and, to put it mildly, the filmmaker has badly fumbled his attempts at damage limitation since.

I'm usually an advocate of separating an artist from his art but that is extremely difficult here, especially as Parker's attitudes to women are as problematic in his movie as they appear to be in real life.

Deliberately taking its name from DW Griffiths' influential but poisonously racist silent film of the same name, Birth follows Nat Turner (Parker), a literate slave and preacher, whose cash-strapped 'master' (Armie Hammer) hires him out to the owners of other cotton plantations hoping his sermons might calm the ire of fellow captives (Turner uses passages from the Bible to legitimise their suffering). However, following the savagery he witnesses on his travels and ultimately endures himself, Turner snaps and plans a bloody armed insurrection against the slave owners and their families (interestingly, he finds scripture that give this course of action the thumbs-up too).

A difficult Birth: Parker's film is stirring but problematic

Birth clearly owes a debt to Steve McQueen's superior 12 Years A Slave but the final half-hour is genuinely rousing and heart-breaking, culminating in a defiant image that probably deserved the standing ovations the film received at Sundance on its own. The problem is that there have now been enough movies and TV shows about slavery to have generated their own clichés and that is definitely the case here - so we have a whipping scene, a parade of monstrously one-dimensional white characters, a wedding which culminates in the bride and groom jumping a broomstick and an awful lot of cotton being picked. Less forgivably, considering Parker's aforementioned history (which, by the way, also includes an accusation of indecent exposure), are two instances of rape.

Now, neither is shown on screen and it's documented fact that the sexual assault of slave women was routine but here the incidents are used as little more than plot fodder to fire up Turner and the other male slaves, and thereby speed the story into its momentous final act. The women are given no agency whatsoever, their pain all but forgotten once the real action starts. The story of the West Virginia uprising is an important one but it's difficult to shake the feeling that perhaps it should have been told by someone without quite so much distasteful baggage.

On considerably less controversial ground is La La Land WWWW, a warm and witty romantic musical and director Damien Chazelle's follow-up to Whiplash. We're in modern-day Hollywood and Emma Stone is a struggling actress, Ryan Gosling a down-on-his-luck jazz pianist. But when the pair fall in love their passion becomes rocket fuel for their creativity and ambition. Unfortunately, Gosling's success as part of a (frankly god-awful) jazz-fusion band initially outstrips Stone's and their bond soon starts to fracture.

I feel using the word 'lovely' as a superlative is much underrated but lovely is what this is - old-fashioned, kind-hearted and shot through with longing. Additionally, you'd be hard pressed to find two leads as eminently likeable as Stone and Gosling, and the pair possess that lightning-in-a-bottle crackle of true chemistry certain other films this year would kill for (I'm looking at you, Allied).

It's a love letter to Hollywood, a love letter to jazz, a love letter to creativity and following your dreams. More than anything, though, it's a love letter to love - how it can make you walk on air one minute (quite literally here) and plumb the depths of despair the next. There's a breathless, bravura 'What if?' scene right towards the end of the film that is simply stunning and if La La Land isn't amongst the Oscars I'll eat my hat (the horrible woolly blue one that would taste disgusting). Chazelle has conceded his film's debt to the likes of Singing In The Rain and The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg, and I'm sure some critics are going to lambast him for being corny and perhaps a tad indulgent. But the rest us will fall and fall hard for his movie's seemingly inexhaustible supply of bittersweet charm.

As for the songs, having only seen the film once, it's hard to tell if they are strong enough to make La La Land a copper-bottomed classic but I suspect it's awfully close.

Dancing in the street: Stone and Gosling in La La Land

On the subject of love, Toni Erdmann WWW arrived at the festival on a wave of critical adoration (its exclusion from any of the prizes at Cannes was met with absolute fury in some quarters). But while director Maren Ade serves up a couple of genuinely hilarious set-pieces, this German comedy does sag somewhat in the middle.

Chronicling the fractured relationship between Winfried, a fun-loving father (Peter Simonischek) for whom no prank is too silly, and his workaholic businesswoman daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller), it's really about the horrors of corporate life; how Ines and her similarly uptight colleagues are never off duty. If they aren't in the office, they're having drinks with clients or checking emails at home. Their job isn't so much a part of them, it is them.

Following the death of his old dog, Winfried surprises Ines with a visit in Bucharest, but all attempts at bonding with his frosty offspring are rebuffed. However, instead of flying home to Germany as intended, he assumes a new identity (the Toni Erdmann of the title, resplendent in ridiculous wig and comedy teeth) and sticks around to get under her skin. 

The first hour is terrific, as are the final 40 minutes or so, and it is genuinely very funny at times (Hüller's rendition of 'The Greatest Love Of All' was my personal favourite of the comic set-pieces although the naked birthday brunch ran it close). But Ade's problem is simply that at two hours, 42 minutes, her film is decidedly flabby and could have done with a hard edit. Some people actually walked out of the screening I attended and I don't think it was because they were laughing too hard. It was because they were bored.

If anything, it reminded me of one of those '80s Hollywood comedies, usually starring John Candy, in which an overbearing but preternaturally wise man-child uses unorthodox means to teach the squares (parents, bureaucrats, fuddy-duddies) an important life lesson. Thing is, unlike Toni Erdmann, the likes of Uncle Buck didn't come garlanded in enough positive critical baggage to sink a battleship. They never ran close to three hours in length either.

The odd father: Toni Erdmann is hilarious but too long

If Toni Erdmann could have done with a chop then what of American Honey WW½, which runs even longer? Andrea Arnold's sprawling road movie resists a couple of obvious opportunities to bring itself to a neat end; instead, eventually, it just sort of shrugs and gives up the ghost like a knackered marathon runner.

Filmed in the old-fashioned, but seemingly quite hip again, square academy format (see Mommy, Meek's Cutoff and Ida), it focuses on Star (promising newcomer Sasha Lane), a young woman facing a bleak future as she 'skip dips' for food, accompanied by grubby kids that aren't even hers, and fends off the boozy advances of an older man who may or may not be her partner. After a chance encounter at a supermarket with Jake (Shia LeBeouf) and his gang, Star abandons her old life and jumps into their van, setting off across the American Midwest to, um, sell magazine subscriptions to people who really don't want or need them.

Apart from its punishing length, my biggest bugbear is that pretty much everyone in it is profoundly annoying and unsympathetic. The kids with whom Star shares her great subscription-selling adventure are just awful - a gibbering, braying, squealing, drugging, boozing, boring collection of unmitigated gits you'd leave the country to avoid. Oh look, here's the weird one who goes on about Darth Vader a lot, and here comes the one who keeps getting his cock out for some reason.

The chance to travel across the States with little money in a smelly van packed to bursting with some of the most objectionable people on Earth is not my idea of fun. Christ, if this is what modern American youth has come to it's little wonder that Trump got in. And that, I suspect, is precisely the point Fish Tank director Arnold is trying to make here - this is what 21st Century US capitalism has done to its working class young; marginalised them, and made them desperate. Just how desperate is something the British filmmaker returns to again and again in the course of her movie and suffice to say it isn't pretty.

There may be shortcomings, then, but American Honey does boast a very fine soundtrack (Rihanna, Mazzy Star and a bunch of great hip-hop) and, most significantly of all, Riley Keough is superb as Krystal, the gang's flint-hearted boss. She may be every bit as unpleasant as the other characters, but at least has the decency to be a fascinating force of nature with it. The movie's most memorable scene features Krystal wearing a skimpy Confederate flag bikini as she barks instructions at LeBeouf, who she is making apply suntan lotion to her body while Star watches in horror and embarrassment. The corporate ladder-climbers in Toni Erdmann might be made to suffer for their supper, but it has nothing on this.

A taste of Honey: Newcomer Sasha Lane

UK cinema release dates
The Birth Of A Nation: December 9
La La Land: January 13 2017
Toni Erdmann: February 3 2017
American Honey: in cinemas now (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD February 20 2017)

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