Top 10 Films of 2019

10) Velvet Buzzsaw

Bad art kills people

Bad art reviews kill people

Or maybe it’s both

9) Nomad

Bruce Chatwin: A life

People, places, and writings

By his friend Werner

7) Shaft

Sam L is the man!

Richard Roundtree is the man!

So much fine hokum!

7) Ready or Not

Meet the in-laws, dear

The cost of losing is dear

Fun for all the fam-

6) A Private War

War correspondent

She must seek and speak the truth

A Greek tragedy

5) Free Solo

Alex can’t look down

Cameraman can’t look up

We can’t look away

4) Non-Fiction

Assayas returns

to skewer pretension and

patch some broken hearts

3) The Mule

Clint’s OAP Mule

Safely outruns the police

And  gives them sage words

2) Apollo 11

Just NASA footage

Cinema verite set

to soaring synth score

1) Balloon

Stasi Kretschmann hunts

daring young East Germans bent

on hot air escape

Notes on Balloon

An old-school nerve-shredding Cold War German thriller was the film of the week yesterday on Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle.

30 years ago the German Democratic Republic aka East Germany was still in existence, an insanity propped up by Russia. This film is set in 1979 with two families desperate to escape to the West, and taking the unusual approach of running the border by hot air balloon. The first attempt is a failure, and the wreckage of the balloon 200 metres from the border leaves enough evidence for Stasi Lt. Col. Thomas Kretschmann to find them, given enough time. Resources are not a problem. He has 300 agents working by the end on catching 4 people who wanted to live 10 kilometres to the south. As Kretschmann closes in our heroes decide to go for broke and build a second balloon, and composer Ralf Wengenmayr does his best Hans Zimmer and really elevates the film with rhythmic percussion, scurrying strings, and swoops of synthesiser. Director Michael Herbig is best known in Germany for comedy, but this film is a chilling portrait of a society drenched in fear and paranoia, and dripping with well-crafted suspense.

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