10 Best Films of 2016

I realize I haven’t written nearly enough reviews this year and I have a million excuses for that: being busy with Nic’s school, his skating, my skating, What the Flick?!, various radio shows, trying to read actual books. But I promise you I see everything, and I keep a running list of potential top-10 contenders as I go along. Here are the ones that made the cut for 2016, with an addendum — the astounding, seven-part documentary “O.J.: Made in America,” which I didn’t want to get rid of yet couldn’t find a proper home for. Yes, I realize that’s a cheat. Anyway, enjoy — and please let me know what your favorite films of the year were.

1. “La La Land”

La La Land Movie Review

The exact movie we need right now. I saw it the Friday after Election Day when I was feeling anxious and despondent about the world in general. Within the first few seconds of the opening number — a technically dazzling song and dance on the flyover from the 105 freeway to the 110 — everything changed. “La La Land” leaps off the screen with radiant, infectious joy. Writer-director Damian Chazelle’s love letter to classic, Technicolor musicals is impeccably crafted, from the songs and choreography to the costumes and lighting. Oscar-winning editor Tom Cross, who also cut Chazelle’s “Whiplash,” makes all the big, splashy machinery zip along beautifully. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling have ridiculous, crackling chemistry as aspiring artists who fall giddily in love, only to find it isn’t so easy to balance their ambitions and affections. And it’s one of the greatest Los Angeles movies ever, with locations around the city you don’t usually see.

Watch the What the Flick?! review

2. “Moonlight”

Moonlight Movie Review

The thing about this movie is the way it sneaks up on you. Clearly, the story of a young black man struggling with his sexuality in the projects of Miami is beautifully shot and powerfully acted from the very start. Writer-director Barry Jenkins has crafted a film that’s poetic while remaining firmly planted in reality; it’s gritty, yet ultimately hopeful. Subtly moving performances abound, from Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Andre Holland, Janelle Monae and the three actors seamlessly playing the evolving character at the center of “Moonlight”: Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes. But it’s not until the film’s quietly stunning climax that you realize how skillfully Jenkins has layered these character’s experience on top of one another to create a complete life. The tears will flow, and they will be earned.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here
3. “Nocturnal Animals”

Nocturnal Animals Movie Review

Seven years after his gorgeous first feature, “A Single Man,” fashion designer-turned-filmmaker Tom Ford wows us once again with this twisty, trippy tale of revenge and regret. Ford intricately intertwines the story of a rich, miserable art curator (Amy Adams) reading a manuscript sent to her by her estranged ex-husband (Jake Gyllenhaal) with the violent events of the novel itself, sprinkling flashbacks to their young love in between. Fact and fiction, past and present blend in mesmerizing fashion; editor Joan Sobel deserves special credit for the way in which “Nocturnal Animals” unpredictably leaps around in time. Given that Ford is an obsessive, meticulous stylist, every image is exquisite, but this isn’t just a magazine spread come to life. He’s also drawn powerful performances from his actors in the service of a story that packs a surprising emotional punch.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here
4. “The Lobster”

The Lobster Movie Review

What a wonderfully strange movie this is: quietly daring, darkly funny and wholly original. Greek director and co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos has created an alternate universe in which finding a romantic partner is a societal mandate — where citizens must follow a strict set of rules in order to secure happiness within 45 days, or risk being turned into the animal of their choice for the rest of their lives. It’s actually hilarious. Lanthimos’ tone is so precise and austere that when absurd things happen — and they happen a lot — you can’t help but laugh out loud, if only to enjoy a release from the tension. Colin Farrell is tremendous in an uncharacteristically frumpy, understated role, with a great supporting cast including Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux and John C. Reilly. My favorite film from the first half of the year.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here
5. “13th”

13th Movie Review

“Selma” director Ava DuVernay gets her arms around a complex, emotionally charged topic — the legacy of slavery in America and the current state of race relations and African-American incarceration — in concise, clear-eyed fashion with this powerful documentary. Her scope is amazing here — what she achieves in a short amount of time and how she remains surprisingly equal-opportunity in both her choice of sources and targets is astounding. DuVernay talks to everyone from Angela Davis and Henry Louis Gates to Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist. You will never see a more exquisitely photographed series of talking heads in a non-fiction film; DuVernay has taken great care not only with the content she draws from her interview subjects but also with the settings and lighting when she talks to them. A vital and (unfortunately) all-too relevant film that will leave you near tears by the end.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here
6. “The Handmaiden”

Image result for the handmaiden

Gorgeous, sexy, frightening and unexpectedly funny, Park Chan-wook’s “The Handmaiden” is a constantly surprising delight. This film is just luscious. If you’ve seen Park’s previous movies (“Oldboy,” “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance,” “Stoker”), you know what a sumptuous stylist he is, but he’s outdone himself here. Set in Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930’s, it’s a twisty tale of love and revenge that’s just brutal but also romantic in its own way. Language isn’t just a source of identity but also a weapon in a time and place where propriety is everything. And despite the patriarchal setting, “The Handmaiden” is a story about strong women standing up for themselves and looking out for each other. And that’s all I’m gonna say … just trust me and go see it.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here
7. “Hell or High Water”

Hell or High Water Movie Review

Think of it as “No Country for Old Men” meets “99 Homes” — a movie that’s not exactly doing anything new, but it’s doing what it does beautifully. It’s very much a How We Live Now kind of film — the story of two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) in depressed, small-town West Texas who go on a bank-robbing spree to avoid foreclosure on their family’s farm. Director David Mackenzie and writer Taylor Sheridan create a vivid sense of place and a rich cast of characters, with perfect casting in even the smallest parts. There’s great interplay between Pine and Foster as well as between Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham as the lawmen on their tails. “Hell or High Water” features tour-de-force camerawork and precise pacing from the very start, but it’s unbearably tense by the end.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here

8. “Kubo and the Two Strings”

Kubo and the Two Strings Movie Review

The latest stop-motion animation offering from Laika is deliriously lovely and powerfully acted with a transporting score. But it also gives its viewers, especially the younger ones, a lot of credit for being able to handle some tough stuff without ever talking down to them. In the directorial debut of Laika CEO Travis Knight, the young Japanese boy who gives the film its title (voiced by Art Parkinson) faces deadly peril from the very first moment we see him. He learns early on that the world can be a cruel place and that he’ll frequently have to function as the grown-up in the equation when his ailing mother is incapable of doing so. But “Kubo” packages these weighty themes within visuals that are just jaw-dropping in both their beauty and craftsmanship. Charlize Theron and Matthew McConaughey deliver strong performances as the magical creatures who help him on his quest.

Read the review here

9. “Sing Street”

Sing Street Movie Review

Like “La La Land,” “Sing Street” is pure joy. It has a similarly infectious energy and a blissful lack of irony. It’s all about falling in love, getting your heart broken and finding out who you are through song. And like Irish writer-director John Carney’s previous films (“Once,” “Begin Again”), which covered similar thematic territory, it’s completely earnest about the transformative power of music. Basically, it’s about a misfit teen (the charming Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) who starts a rock band to impress the beautiful bad girl (Lucy Boynton) who lives across the street from his school. Set in 1985, it has a keen, affectionate eye for the songs and styles of the era — everything from Duran Duran to Spandau Ballet to The Cure. But the original tunes on the soundtrack are terrific, as well. If you’re ever in a bad mood, this movie will cure that instantly.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here
10. “Everybody Wants Some!!”

Image result for everybody wants some

This might just be the most Richard Linklater-y film Richard Linklater has ever made. It expertly blends so much of what make him “him”: baseball, Texas, pop music and talkingtalkingtalking. It’s got the agreeably shaggy vibe that has been one of the key signatures of his long and eclectic career, with characters who are much smarter and more philosophical than you’d ever give them credit for at first glance. But despite the heightened nature of the dialogue, Linklater makes you feel like you’ve spent time with real people in a real place that you’d love to visit again. It follows a freshman baseball player (a winning Blake Jenner) as he figures out where he fits in with his teammates (Wyatt Russell, Glen Powell, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin) in the days before college begins in August 1980. It is a complete blast.

Watch the What the Flick?! review here

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  1. Love your Top 10 list! Saw it when you posted it on Twitter and immediately dropped what I was doing so that I could read.

    Hope you’ll start a new running list of movies in a couple of weeks!

  2. American Honey is probably my pick for movie of the year. Equal parts stunning and horrifying — I was shocked and captivated by its truths. Riveting stuff!

    Thanks for the recommendations, will definitely check The Handmaiden out.

  3. My personal top 10

    1. La La Land
    2. Christine (seriously underrated by must, though I saw that you liked it on What the Flick)
    3. Moonlight
    4. Hell or High Water
    5. Arrival
    6. Everybody Wants Some
    7. Imperium (Did anyone see this one?)
    8. The Invitation
    9. Green Room
    10. Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (the most purely joyous movie-watching experience that I had this year; an animated revival of the 60’s series with the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward. Not the Batman movie we need, but certainly the one we deserve right now)

  4. Living in the UK release dates vary wildly, hence La La Land, Moonlight and The Handmaiden haven’t opened here yet and The Lobster was 2015.
    The 13th put it’s point across well, even if I could see that a big chunk of the narrative had been used before in another documentary called The house I Live In.
    Hell or High Water was a good solid movie even if the not-in-any-way-subtle subtext consumed the story.
    Kubo and the Two Strings, amazing animation let down by yet another Joseph Campbell retread.
    Sing Street, the film that never met a plot contrivance it didn’t like.
    Everybody Wants Some!! was frankly one of theworst films of the year.The characters were utterly obnoxious and no fun to spend time with. I had to urinate half way through and was far more enjoyable than watching the film.

    My own favourites. Room, Goodnight Mommy, Welcome to Me and Mustang were 2015 releases in the US.
    I, Daniel Blake which is Ken Loach’s best film to date has caused something of a political earthquake over here.
    Pitbull: Nowe Porzadki is a Polish crime thriller which may have opened in the US but the UK distributor seemed to think that no one from outside of Poland would be interested in seeing it and didn’t press screen it, so consequently no one is talking about it.
    Remainder was a little homegrown thriller reminiscent of early Christopher Nolan, back when Nolan used to make good films.
    The two outstanding documentaries of the year were, Author: The JT Leroy Story and Homme Less about fashion photographer Mark Raey.
    Like many others Captain Fantastic and American Honey were favourites and The Jungle Book was just awesome.

    Also a question for Christy: reading through your list and other previous Best of the Year posts I notice that world cinema always seems to be under represented, why?

  5. Great list Christy. It’s always a pleasure to know there is someone out there with great taste! I agree with you on La La, Moonlight, Everybody Wants Some, and still need to watch the 15th. I also personally loved Eye in the Sky, Arrival, Allied, and Sully. Kubo and SING Street I also admired, though it would be more top 25 for me.

  6. Allow me to pitch one challenge, one curved ball, into this mix.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

    A movie which isn’t mentioned above – the team behind it, will some day knock the ball out of the park, I’ve no doubt.

    Sequences in the movie, were better than most that one will see in any movie, this year.

    Achieved too, with economy of means.

    Whoever was standing behind the camera, understood two things.

    Firstly, what actors can do.

    Secondly, what a camera can do.

    Brought down to basics, movie making as an art form is un-mistakable.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrox, pushed an envelope.

    My take, B.

  7. Sleepers that weren’t mentioned in the list.
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Lion
    The Nice Guys (super fun movie, Gosling and Crowe are great in it)
    Spa Night (have not seen but heard good things)
    Sand Storm
    Edge of 17
    Dheepan
    My Blind Brother
    Central Intelligence
    Pop Star
    Keanu
    Midnight Special

  8. Re: The Supreme Court of Movie Criticism

    Christy,

    I have a quick question.

    These movies all have something in common, which I think in time will appeal to folk who are only teenagers or early twenties right now. At tea break one day, we were chatting. Something came up about the soccer world cup in 1990. It turned out that some people in the workplace, didn’t remember the world cup in 1990, because they were born in 1990. This happens to us, more and more these days. Like, you look at many of the movies above. They convey to a younger generation, what the world used to be like, only a couple of decades or a little longer ago. Like, the story about the tea break conversation and the world cup – I stubbornly refuse, I think to accept that there are young adults nowadays who don’t remember the 1980’s, or even the 1990’s. But a lot of young people, with these movies, have an opportunity to take a tourist trip back to when we were young – and find out what was authentic (I won’t say ‘cool’, because some of it was gnarly), what was authentic, about the culture and the young people of several decades ago.

    Here is my question.

    When we were of this age, what movies did we watch back then, which fulfilled this role. I mean, growing up in the 1980’s or 1990’s – you’d be looking back to the 1960’s maybe. I don’t know, but for me some of the early Paul Newman black and white movies – did convey some of what was authentic about the young people and culture of earlier decades – when I watched those Paul Newman movies, during the 80’s and 90’s. Like a lot of what was in ‘Hud’ starring Newman, was gnarly and even ugly too – but it was authentic. It was young, edgy.

    I could be wrong, but I think that is what several of the movies above manage to do – and they all do it in their own unique ways. Like, ‘Hell or High Water’, probably isn’t a movie I’d have watched unless I’d seen it on the list above. However, having watched it now, it’s set in the present day – and I listened to WTF panel discuss ‘Hell or High Water’ too. The really neat part about that movie – is not that it feels like a transition point on the way to full out ‘Mad Max’. The really cool thing about ‘Hell or High Water’, when it is viewed through the eyes of the people who was only born in 1990 – is that ‘Hell or High Water’ feels like it was based in the world that I grew up in – more of an analogy, physical world – as opposed to the world that exists today. And in a way, ‘Hell or High Water’, has that same raw, un-tamed energy rumbling underneath it’s hood, that I remember from watching those Paul Newman movies, an awful long time ago. And that’s my point, is that young people now look at this, and will get something like the experience I had watching the Newman black and white movies – when we had VCR’s and color TV’s back in the 80’s or 90’s.

    There’s one of these movies that crops up almost in every generation. I mentioned Woodie Harrelson’s movie, the Hi-Lo Country, which was about post WWII and the veterans returning back from that war to rural New Mexico in the forties. There’s another movie starring Richard Gere, Miles from Home, it was released in 1988. Both of these movies, are worth watching now that they’ve become available to access via the online rental catalogues. One can access them will more ease, than having to go hunt down DVD copies etc. Someone once said here in Ireland I recall, there were early Elvis Presley movies from the 50’s I think – which had this young Elvis, who was really cutting edge, dangerous and cool. And let’s not forget of course, the whole James Dean ouvre, that is out there. Dean is someone whom the young generation now, don’t know about at all – and it’s through movies like ‘Hell or High Water’ I think, that they find a way back into those older actors – the Presley’s, the Newman’s, the Dean’s, Richard Gere, Woodie Harrelson etc.

    What I’m presenting to you basically, is a different perspective to the one that WTF discussed in their review, of Hell or High Water. I’m placing it into a different framework of reference – than the Mad Max and other movies – into which Alonso and Matt placed it into. But either one, serves to do much the same thing. I preferred the more cowboy oriented stuff, than the post apocalyptic movies. A lot of the panel on WTF, actually love the Mad Max old and modern interpretations. But there is a whole other body of cinema work there too, which the panel sometimes has a blind area to. It’s like the ‘supreme court’ really. On WTF, there isn’t quite the right kind of cinematic ‘balance’ on the bench, if that makes any sense or logic. Although, every time that Ben manages to tack himself on to the very extreme left end of it – it does appear to return to a somewhat more even keel. Check out the 1988 Richard Gere movie. I must watch it again myself. All the best, B.

  9. Christy,

    One more recommendation, to round out the selection I created overhead – in relation to movies, of which ‘Hell or High Water’ is I think – in a similar vein. There was a Jessica Lange, Sam Shepard movie released back in 1984, Country, directed by Richard Pearce. The Richard Gere one from 1988, and the Billy Crudup, Woody Harrelson and Patricia Arquette one from 1998. Together those show a vein that exists within American cinema – to which the ‘Hell or High Water’ picture can be viewed within. That would be my take on it, at least.

    One thing which WTF panel did mention it though, about ‘Hell or High Water’ does resonate with me. They described it as part of the post 2008 economic crisis collection of interpretative cinema works. I’d agree with that – but what will really punch you in the gut – if that is your shtick, is the Lange and Shepard movie from 1984. I won’t spoil it beyond saying that. It’s a movie, made by Shepard and Lange when they were young, that saw an awful lot coming down the tracks, much later in history as it would play out.

    And again, as I said, by looking at ‘Hell or High Water’ in the manner in which I described, it does also take it away from a need to place ‘Hell or High Water’ alongside Mad Max, and that who lineage of cinema. Although, if one wanted to put it in that lineage too, fine. B.

  10. Re: Bad movies

    It’s interesting though, that the more difficult judgement which the ‘bench’ had had to wrestle with in the last year, was Bad Santa 2. Does that tell us anything – it did split the bench, down the middle. Something got broken there, that can’t get put back together. B.

  11. Re: 2016 Documentary

    Christy,

    Sometimes I know you can review things like documentaries with the folks at WTF. I know at some stage, I’ve listened to members making Werner Herzog types of voices, talking about volcanos and the like. However, much closer to home, I listened to a thirty year old veteran of the computer industry, describe things like – when he began in computing back in the days of Atari, and Apple Two’s – it cost a ‘dollar’ per instruction computation. Or to put it another way, it took a million dollars for a MIPS, or million of instruction computations.

    (You’ll just have to bear with me a moment, as I try to ‘science the s***’ out of this – while doing a very lame Martian lone survivor impression)

    The man interviewed Jim McNiel, had chosen with Hertzog at age seventy two, to tell the story about networks – which was the business, which McNiel is involved with after all these years. Hertzog he mentioned, asked McNiel, so what if the internet goes down? It just means, we won’t be able to watch ‘What the Flick’ etc – and we’ll go back to the 1980’s, which wasn’t that bad, was it? I mean, many of the ‘best movies’ of 2016 after all, are ones that transport us back all the ways to the 1980’s, or the 1950’s, or whatever golden era that you may choose. McNiel’s answer to Herzog was more considered, and he explained about how scary it is, the various ways in which things are connected today – to an extent that things were not before.

    The documentary, called ‘Lo and Behold’ was released very recently I think and was at Sundance earlier. One of the panel may have already have mentioned it in conversation about their visits to festivals, I can’t recall. McNiel’s answer to Herzog, was that we don’t know how to operate like we did in the 1980’s any longer. We don’t have fax machines and such, that work when the networks don’t. Which brings one in mind of another movie, that was high up on the list of favorites for 2015 – that was the ‘Spotlight’ movie – which in reviews, the panel had thought about their own respective backgrounds working in careers in print media, in earlier lives. We probably couldn’t even go back to 2001 now, if we wanted. That was the point which McNiel had made to Werner.

    I just thought that I’d mention the documentary. There aren’t many that make it into consideration of a mention, for ‘best movies’. Maybe, it might be more enjoyable than the one about ‘magma’ flowing out of volcanoes etc. Werner is doing voice over’s about flowing packets of information, instead of lava. I think, he makes it work. All best, B.

  12. Re: Difficulty of the Film Making Process

    I watched the three person panel debate about the latest Oliver Stone movie, from 15th September 2016, on WTF channel. I was fascinated by the critics take on this latest movie from Stone. In a round table recently, he had referred to older classic movie directors, and their ‘process’ of spending fifteen years sometimes to create a movie. Whereas the critics are often like birds on the wire. They all arrive together, and fly away together. Mel Gibson in the same roundtable, which was a great listen I thought, agreed with Stone in this idea that an ‘edit’ was akin to a re-write sometimes. I.e. The concept or idea, around which a film is developed can alter, as late in the process as that.

    It must be exceptionally useful for younger students of movie making, to have a resource such as those which Christy and her colleagues provided now, via the media channels that exist now. I’d viewed ‘A Thin Red Line’, the movie about the Second World War, a long time ago and it was always one of my favorites. I hadn’t realized that one actor had arrived at the first screening of the movie, expected to view himself in a star role in the movie – and he had been dropped from it – cut out, and ended up on the floor of the editing room. Shocking. It’s an extreme example maybe of the point that Gibson and Stone talked about recently, in the round table.

    The point that I’m getting to, I guess, is that it’s fascinating the movies that perhaps took an awful lot of effort from very experienced movie directors this year – which haven’t even made it into conversations about ‘top ten’ in movies of 2016 – not to mind, making it into a selection for the top ten. When I thought about it, Snowden was one of these notable standouts – of movies that don’t even make it into the conversation. I was delighted, via the medium of the Internet to be able to reach back to 15th of September and extract that ten minutes of review of the work of Stone (those birds on the wire, who arrive and depart as a flock I guess). I really wanted to understand what Snowden movie as a work, might have been missing, that it does not get a mention.

    It was a valid criticism from Stone at least. Critics don’t get to live through the fifteen years, in the short space of the ‘two hours’. In any case, it’s always interesting to listen to both a perspective from a critic and from a creator. Because those two perspectives are equally valid in many ways. I was delighted to listen to Christy’s reference to the Steve Jobs movie of 2015 (another one of those headline movies of that year, I had forgotten about, in relation to my mention of the Herzog documentary comment above). That was, in relation to the new movie about McDonalds restaurants. The idea of movies that try to deal with ideas, and where ideas come from, who owns them, who doesn’t etc. What a good documentary is capable of doing I think – and a good reason to have a debate about ‘the best documentary’ movies in any given year – is that a good documentary can join together ideas that are contained in a lot of great movies, and make sense of it.

    The movie about information technology that was reviewed on a video blog about networking security (of all places, I know, big snore), directed by the seventy two year old Werner Herzog, could be one of those movies, which gathers together ideas from many different scripts – everything from a movie such as ‘Spotlight’, to one like ‘Steve Jobs’, or even one about McDonalds. That’s the magic about documentaries. They can take quite a broad view, and it’s why I always enjoy the movie critics take on a documentary when I can listen to one – because unlike the second edition of ‘triple-X’ or heavens forbid, another ‘bad santa’ – the documentaries really do require the movie critic to put their thinking hats on.

    And in a way, that brings us back to Snowden. It doesn’t make it into the conversation about great movies of 2016, and I’m looking forward to watching it when I do. But, it does leave me with the question, did the movie by Stone, encourage the audience to think at all? All best, B.

  13. Re: Stuff that happens outside of America

    Christy,

    The panel of critics at WTF are going to be really busy this season, with the big awards happening etc. One thing I wanted to give a little notice on, was a small movie that appeared over here a long time ago – and a second installment is on general release today. I hope that Ben can be on his best behavior, when hopefully the crew does get around to sitting in Trainspotting Two movie, and providing us all with an expert analysis. There’s something about this movie, that has a kind of deep resonance for a certain generation of young man, who live outside of America.

    Alonso mentioned that the Mary Tyler Moore show, was his Star Wars. Well, the closest thing that some of us had growing up to Yoda, was a character that was created by Irvine Welsh, known as Francis Begbie. Francis was a bad, bad man – more in tune with the dark side, than with the bright side. The mistake that they made in the sequel to the movie from twenty years ago is obvious to me. The movie, the sequel is supposed to begin at the scene of a graveyard funeral, where people are crying about the departure of the late Francis Begbie. However, he doesn’t disappear entirely, but he kind of remains with the ‘group’ as they try to navigate their way through life – sort of like Yoda and Ben sit on the shoulder of the middle aged Skywalker. Straight away, the director and script writer dropped the ball there.

    The other opportunity that the director of ‘T2’ missed out on, was the mandatory thing with everything to do with the character of Begbie. That is, there is some mythical story of his escapades in the universe – that is, up until the point that ‘Sick Boy’ who knows the actual deal – allows the ‘cat out of the bag’, while telling his best buddy Mark, about what actually happened. Nevertheless, this is still an important movie. It’s important because a whole lot of us now, are unable to come to that awareness as ‘Sick Boy’ did (he’s sort of on his way, to achieving his balance with the ‘force’), that it’s been a whole twenty years. These words in the trailer for the movie, ‘How’s it going Mark, after twenty years’. Those words are almost guaranteed to rebound multiple times, inside of the brains and consciousness of a lot of men of a certain now, in these parts of the world. Fair is fair, and I hope that Ben can try to be gentle in some way on the movie and the rest of it’s followers.

    The honest truth however, is that I don’t fully understand after twenty odd years, what it was about Trainspotting, back in that time. No one really understands it. Maybe, we had all wanted to walk on the wild side like those gang of individuals in the movie. There was a small part of all those characters, in a lot of young men, if truth be known. They were some of the best written characters ever to have appeared together in a movie – and the original was created with much economy and simplicity. That is what is apparent about the original now, when viewing it after all of this time. Looking forward to hear the take of the critics on it, from the other side of the galaxy, over there in the big continent. All the best. Over and out. B.

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