Second-guessing which films got the BBFC the most complaints in 2018

Every July, comes Christmas time for film classification nerds, when the BBFC drop their annual report. We love to pore over the report, read between the lines at the BBFC’s evasions and obfuscations, and the PDF enriches our appreciation of film classification, whilst teaching us a thing or two about film overall.

As my Oscar predictions show, I’m somewhat keen on predicting film-related things. Thus, using my experiences of the 2018 UK releases I’ve watched, my observations from how people have interacted with the BBFC Twitter account, and word of mouth from others, here be the 2018 UK releases that I think got the BBFC the most feedback last year. Point of clarification: by '2018 UK releases', I refer to films that came out in UK cinemas in 2018. Something like The Favourite, which had a 2018 US release date, came out here in 2019, so wouldn’t count. You can expect to see complaints for that in 2019's BBFC annual report!

01. Red Sparrow

Jennifer Lawrence is wooden af

Film review: DUNKIRK (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

I tried to write a review of Dunkirk without using the vernacular 'twink', or slagging off Cokehead Delevingne. Did I succeed? Read on to find out...

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The evacuation of 400,000 British men from Northern France during World War II is depicted from three viewpoints: that of the Allied soldiers on the beach, the civilians who bought them back to Britain in their personal boats, and the pilots caught trying to protect the soldiers from German attack overhead. Three time scales are employed in the film; we follow the soldiers for a week, the civilians for one day and the pilots for an hour, as their arcs converge to one pivotal moment.

No Country for Young Men

Dunkirk 2: The Frenchman Rises - where Tommy goes back for Gibson, rescues him, and the two celebrate being evacuated by going to a LA Dodgers game. Absolutely love that Barnard is wearing Ray-bans in this photo!

Over the Easter weekend, when I wasn't watching my club lose miserably to Spurs, I was making the most of the poll function on Instagram, to investigate one of life's most important, unanswered questions:

Just who is the hottest actor in Dunkirk?

Bit of an oversight...

Dunkirk has released its third For Your Consideration advert, and, just like last time, I noticed an omission in who they were campaigning for. Except unlike in Harry Styles' case, this snub is for one of the best, if not the best element of the film, and thus, totally unacceptable:

They've asked for consideration in all categories and outlined the ones that are most relevant to Dunkirk. Yet there's no mention of Hans Zimmer's incredible score!! Given that the music in the film was so tension-amplifying, that the BBFC even mentioned it in their extended information, that really is quite the oversight.

The only possible explanation is that Warner Brothers thought the score was so good, it didn't need highlighting; the quality spoke for itself. Which it does. After all, Zimmer's collaborations with two other single-word-titled Christopher Nolan movies, Inception and Interstellar, were both nominated in the Best Original Score category at the Oscars, and both those films had less Best Picture momentum than Dunkirk has.

But, still, it would have been nice to pinpoint it anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Being beady-eyed when it comes to nerdy film things, I also noticed that whoever made the ad has rejigged the order of two of the actors:

To jog your memory, this was the order of actors in the previous FYC:

The poster creator obviously didn't like this film that much, then!

Nobody's gonna drag Harry down.

I was perusing Awards Daily's FYC gallery when I noticed this ad Warner Brothers put out for Dunkirk:

In case that shade was a little too nuanced, here's a list of actors who WB are campaigning for:

It's of trifling importance as bar Mark Rylance, none of the cast really have a shot at an Oscar nomination (and even for Rylance, with no show at the Golden Globes, SAGs or even the London Film Critics' Circle, that's an uphill battle), but I couldn't help thinking that Warner Brothers are shading Harry Styles somewhat by not listing him here.

I wasn't bowled over or anything by Harry Styles in Dunkirk (he did what he had to do, no more, no less, but was definitely more successful transitioning into acting than his former beardgirlfriend Cara Delevingne), but given he got to act 'angry' and Christopher Nolan used both of his PG-13-mandated allowances of the f-word on Styles, it seems somewhat amiss not to at list him here. It certainly couldn't hurt, IMO, and bar Rylance, who was the standout performer, the gulf in acting quality between Styles and the rest of his co-stars certainly wasn't that palpable.

So it's a bit harsh for Warner Brothers to be tacitly saying 'young Fionn Whitehead is worth the adspace... but you? Nah.'

As a side note, back when Dunkirk first hit UK cinemas in July, I was tickled by this e-mail we got from the Odeon:

Interesting that here, they've focused on the two Peaky Blinders and Inception/Dark Knight Rises actors, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy (who British audiences would more likely to be familiar with), thesp Kenneth Branagh and of course, the pretty boy Styles himself, yet omitted Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as a result.

It reminded me of what Nolan said about casting Styles in his movie, 'I saw thousands of young men, but Harry just had something that the rest didn't.'

I believe that 'something' in question is the ability to draw in randy teenage girls by their droves. ;)

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I saw this pun in The Sun, and I kind of loved it:

Reflections on Monday’s Golden Globe nominations

The awards season is officially underway! I was on holiday in NYC when the Golden Globe nominations dropped on Monday and didn’t have time to do a reaction post, so here be my rather delayed Good, Bads and Uglies on the nominations. 

Good

- Dunkirk and Christopher Nolan being nominated. Dunkirk is currently my choice for best of 2017 (having not seen the vast majority of the Oscar heavyweights as they’re released later), and the only 9/10 I’ve awarded a 2017 film.

Clever Girl (and Thirsty Girl).

The ultimate date movie Gone Girl is on Netflix, which allows me to pore over every shot and admire the precision with which David Fincher bought the novel to life. A touch I particularly liked was displaying Amy's undergraduate and Masters certificates:

Like the scheming eponymous lead, I also hold an undergraduate and a Masters degree. Unlike Amy Wexford Elliot Dunne, however, they're from institutions slightly less distinguished than Harvard and Yale.

All that being said, if my brother succeeds in graduating from Cambridge, then gets his MSc from Oxford or an American Ivy League, then he can consider himself as decorated as Amy!

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I saw The Light Between Oceans yesterday. I thought it was absolutely bloody awful (Light Between Oceans? More like SHITE between Oceans), bloated, over-sentimental, and various characters' actions didn't seem consistent with their personality that they'd exhibited previously. It was even worse than The Place Beyond the Pines, if that's possible.

Although Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander both gave strong, affecting performances as the parents who are blighted with miscarriage upon miscarriage, I'm starting to find Alicia Vikander's continual thirst for Oscar glory a little trying. You just won one girl, calm down a bit!

This frustrates me because there's no doubt that Vikander is a great actress (loved her work as the alluring robot Ava in Ex Machina), but I feel her talents would be put to better use if she didn't try so hard. That she won the Oscar this year for her work in The Danish Girl, a film which encompasses the Trifecta of Awards Thirst: Eddie Redcarpet, director Tom Hooper and Alicia, illustrates that begging for awards can reap its desired effect.

Personally, I'm not averse to an actor campaigning relentlessly if I thought they deserved the gold (#YouDoYou), which is why I'm a lot more forgiving to Anne Hathaway for working the awards circuit, hard, in 2013, because she slayed as Fantine.

But it's just a shame Alicia had to win and in doing so, stealing Rooney Mara's Oscar for such a brazenly awards-orientated role of the put-upon supportive wife, as opposed to her more intelligent and restrained performances in Ex Machina or The Man from U.N.C.L.E, performances that were far more engaging and allowed her natural grace to shine, rather than sobbing incessantly, which was all she did in The Danish Girl. I like my Oscar-winning acting turns to come with a bit more nuance.

I do like Alicia (when I saw her first in 2012's Anna Karenina I described her as 'a very pretty Swedish actress'), and those big brown eyes of hers were just made for emoting. And despite The Light Between Oceans craving awards, it probably won't receive them, as the film has (rightly) been received with muted reception in the US, so graciously, I won't have to resent her more during this year's Oscar season.

But with another Oscar-begging title out next year, Tulip Fever, I'm afraid I'm going to have to brand Alicia Vikander the female Eddie Redmayne in terms of serially appearing in awards-bait. Eddie Redmayne has a less-than-flattering monicker 'Eddie Redcarpet', given in reference to how he played a disabled character and a transgender character, back to back, in order to receive an Oscar win and a nomination, respectively. Alicia Vikander is approaching this level of strategic film choices, and thus, I have no choice but to dub her, Felicia Vikander.

Side note: Alicia wasn't the only one guilty of being a little too keen to win her Oscar this year, as Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson were campaigning endlessly, to the point where it also turned me off Brie (I thought Saoirse Ronan should have won for her majestic performance in Brooklyn). Between those three, they made 2016 the desperate Oscar campaign I'd ever had the misfortune of witnessing. (I love you Leo, but was The Revenant a cold shoot by any chance? You hadn't mentioned).

These three's Oscar thirst was further accentuated when compared to the behaviour of Brit Mark Rylance, winner of Best Supporting Actor, who did zero campaigning, and didn't even show up to BAFTA, the movie award body of his homeland, to accept his gong, because he was acting on Broadway at the time.

So, whilst thirst paid off in Leo, Alicia and Brie's cases, it's encouraging to see that some actors don't feel the need to try so hard, and were happy to let their acting do the talking.