It’s been nearly two years since I last wrote this post listing out five of my favourite films, so I thought it would be a good idea to update that list. Some caveats to preface this list with: first, think of this list as extending the previous one, not replacing it. By and large, I still like the films in the original list more than the ones here but I hate the idea of qualitatively ranking stuff in some numerical order, so I’m going to maintain the position that they’re always arranged in no particular order.

Second, the original dictum that these are films that are my personal favourites remains. There’s a reason why this list is called “Favourite Films” and not “Best Films” after all. I can completely understand if someone wants to counter one of my choices with something with greater artistic merit. I can even acknowledge something else as being qualitatively better while recognizing that I personally liked it less for a variety of reasons.

Finally, just because this updated list is newer doesn’t mean that the films in it were first released later than those in the original list. Since I don’t watch a lot of films and rarely get to watch one in the year that it was actually first released, classifying them by year isn’t meaningful to me. Generally, the inclusion of the films in this list only means that I watched them for the first time some time within the past two years and has nothing to do with their year of release.

Warning: might be spoilerish for some people if you haven’t watched these films before.

No Country for Old Men

Every once in a while, you get a film that looks like it’s going to hew exactly to genre conventions, so you just settle down for a comfortable if sometimes predictable ride. No Country for Old Men starts out that way. A satchel of money that everyone wants and is willing to kill to get sparks off a suspenseful cat-and-mouse game. What is great about this phase is the way that the protagonists are realistically portrayed as being competent and well matched against each other without being superhuman and still very much subject to the whims of fate.

As the film moves along however, it overtly subverts and undermines the conventions it relies on. The end result is a very thoughtful and even philosophical film on the banality and inevitability of evil. The Coen brothers use the desert landscapes the film is shot in to good effect, giving it a lonely and desolate feel that ties in perfectly with its themes. But it is Javier Bardem who steals the show as the face of pure and elemental evil.

Let the Right One In

Few so-called horror films are actually scary these days. Most simply try to gross the viewer out with gory scenes or fall back to that old standby: the jump scare. This makes Let the One Right One In doubly special. Not only is it a truly scary modern horror film, it’s a film that manages to do this with that most familiar and hence least effective of Hollywood monsters: the vampire.

The horror in this film builds slowly and over multiple overlapping levels. The desperate loneliness of the boy who reaches out forlornly to the only true friend he’d ever known. The creeping realization that this is all just part of a cycle that has happened before and is fated to happen again. And perhaps the sickest and most horrifying of all, the certainty that despite it all, the characters’ love is heartfelt and genuine. The frozen landscape once again complements the story well, chilling you to the bone both psychologically and physically. That it succeeds even for someone watching this film in Malaysia on a hot Sunday afternoon is really saying something.

Watchmen

Watchmen is easily the weakest of the films in this list. I’ve already written extensively on it, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much especially when it comes to its many flaws. As a big fan of the graphic novel however, I feel compelled to give it some support for being such a brave film that makes so few commercial compromises in order to stick as closely as possible to the original vision of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. I find it odd that it’s being overshadowed by Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight which despite its brilliance, is still very much a commercial superhero film.

If nothing else, Watchmen at least proves that it is possible to tell a complex, adult story about superheroes on the big screen. Of course, since it also demonstrated that even if you throw major money into it for marketing, this kind of film still can’t manage to find an audience of decent size, that may not do much good in the long term.

Oldboy

Korean films, or at the ones that I’ve watched, tend to have quirky, even surreal, elements that I often don’t quite know what to make of. Are they cheap attempts at humour or are they meant to be meaningful in a deeper way? In the case of Oldboy however, the surreality works well to reinforce the preposterousness of the protagonist’s situation. The climax of course is the absurd mismatch between the scale of the misdeed and the revenge that was planned and enacted against him.

Some of the visual effects in the film felt unnecessary and out of place to me but there’s no doubt that this is overall a film that will a lasting impression on anyone who watches it. It certainly takes the concept of revenge fantasies to a whole new level. The fight scene in the middle is also something to watch for. There’s a viscerality and dynamic quality to it that just isn’t present in many Hollywood action films and best of all, it’s shot all in one long take.

United 93

It’s strange to say that a documentary style film can be emotionally affecting, but it’s true that I found United 93 to be easily the most heart wrenching of the films in this list. The disordered style of the film and the frequent use of hand-held cameras helps to convey the chaos and confusion of the tragic events of the day. Even the dialog is messy since it wasn’t written on the script but instead improvised through rehearsals and interviews between the cast and crew.

But the great thing about this film is the way that the directing is almost invisible. While other filmmakers give you the conscious impression that they’re trying to direct your attention to specific aspects of the story, in this one, the historical events are given the space to stand on their own, with no attempt to add any Hollywood drama or polish to them. Interestingly, director Paul Greengrass was originally slated to direct Watchmen, which leaves us wondering what the film would have been like if he had been at the helm.

So that’s it for this list. Looking through it, it struck me that of the five films in it, four were based on other works. Both No Country for Old Men and Let the Right One In were based on novels of the same name while Watchmen is of course based on the greatest graphic novel of all time. Even Oldboy is loosely based on a Japanese manga carrying the same title. Only United 93 was based on an original script written by the director himself, but every effort was made for it to be historically accurate as possible. What that says about my tastes in film I don’t know.