8 Lessons Learned from the 2019 BBFC Annual Report

The blog is rated 15 for strong sex references and drug references.

On Thursday, the BBFC dropped their 2019 Annual Report, which for film classification nerds, is also known as 'Most Complained about Films to the BBFC Day'. I spent Friday evening poring through the report, looking for clues and new information, and psycho-analysing every adjective used in the report. In short, I was in heaven.

Here were eight prominent things I noticed from reading it:

01. Emma knows her BBFC…

Tale as old as time… that the first point I make every year when discussing the BBFC annual report, is not an observation, but rather, a shameless display of braggadocio. The three most complained about films in 2019 were Joker, The Favourite and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and I'd predicted all three of these in my prognostication blog.

Second-guessing which films got the BBFC the most complaints in 2019

This blog is rated 15 for strong sex references and descriptions of violence.

After years of releasing their annual reports every July, 2018's BBFC annual report was instead released in late May. As I really love testing my BBFC senses on a yearly basis, to see how good I am at reading the general public's perception of what BBFC ratings for films ought to be, I thought I'd guess which films got them the most complaints in 2019!

Note, when I refer to a '2019 release', this actually means any film that came out in cinemas in the UK in 2019. So The Favourite, although a 2018 film by American release dates (and eligible for the 2019 Oscars and BAFTAs for that precise reason), didn't hit UK cinemas until January 2019, and is thus a 'UK 2019 release'. 

My guesses:

01. Joker

10 Most Attractive Men in a 2018 film

As with all my eye candy lists, the only criteria for being on the list is that the guy has to have been in a 2018 release that I've actually watched! The archive of hotness here.

10. Jean Dujardin, Return of the Hero 

The Consistency Act

This blog is rated 15 for infrequent strong sex references.

The new Fionn Whitehead film, The Children Act, is one of those curious cases where the film is rated 12A in Britain and Ireland, yet got an R in America.

Inbetween a 15 and an 18

This blog is rated 15 for strong sex references.

Every year, I like to analyse the BBFC short insight for a film, before I’ve even seen it. Last year, I nerded out to the BBFCinsight for Dunkirk, as it was an unprecedented case of four different adjectives for each of its classification issues.

The year before, I was excited because Suicide Squad got a 15, which is really unusual for a big studio superhero movie. Funnily enough, Suicide Squad’s short insight is actually subsumed in Dunkirk’s, ‘sustained threat, intense sequences, moderate violence, strong language’, yet Dunkirk is a rating lower.

Tangential, but Dunkirk has Harry Styles (a singer-turned-actor) and Suicide Squad has Cara Delevingne (a model-turned-cocaine addict). They used to ‘date’ each other. I daresay one was substantially more successful at acting than the other.

2018’s bout of ‘Emma critiquing the BBFCinsight of a film having not even seen the movie’ comes for the upcoming The Festival. For this film, Iain Morris and Damon Beesley, the creators of The Inbetweeners, collaborate again, as director and producers, respectively.

10 Lessons Learned from the 2017 BBFC Annual Report

I’ve waited long and hard, but Christmas for Emma has arrived! The BBFC Annual Report for 2017 dropped today, and here are the ten main takeaways I got from consuming it!

01. Emma knows her BBFC

Just as I’d predicted in my anticipation blog, the film which got the most complaints to the BBFC last year was Logan. 

Battle of the Sex Scenes

This blog is rated 12A for moderate sex references.

Despite the BBFC constantly palming me off with less-than-satisfactory templated e-mails of little substance whenever I pose them a query, I always seem to come back for more.

Perhaps this is because my brain is so film classification-geared, that I’m hungry to have movie discourse of any kind, and the BBFC did act on my Call Me by Your Name e-mail earlier this year, showing that they are receptive to suggestions, once in a blue moon.

My most recent e-mail to them was about Battle of the Sexes, rated 12A for infrequent moderate sex. The oh-so-informative extended insight reads:

In one scene, two women have sex; however, there is no strong detail.

My attempt at writing a BBFC report for BEAST (2018)

It was William Shakespeare who remarked ‘brevity is the soul of wit’, and with regards to that quote in many walks of life (for example, intolerable guys who’s arrogance would make Gaston from Beauty and the Beast appear modest droning on about how oh-so-clever they are for having passed their CFA exams), The Bard was not wrong.

Second-guessing the films that the BBFC got the most complaints in 2017

This blog is rated 15 for references to child abuse and strong sex references.

The BBFC drop their Annual Reports around July every year, where they discuss all facets of their guidelines and the film classification process in the UK. I await these reports with the same eagerness I await the Oscars with, and I think it's fun to try and predict which titles cause the BBFC the most complaints every year!

Red Sparrow's 15 Rating Should Never Really Have Been Here

The only positive thing I can say about Red Sparrow is that Charlotte Rampling and Jeremy Irons were in. Although, after this, Batman v Superman and High-Rise, Jezza might want to find himself a new agent...

I watched Red Sparrow on Thursday (don't worry, I used my Limitless card to book a ticket to Kenneth Branagh's vanity project so I didn't contribute to JLaw's Box Office, then sneaked in). It was, as I expected, dreadful. After Passengers and mother!, I daresay a film this bad is the last thing Jennifer Lawrence needs, but there you go.

A peach of a request.

The only thing this Movie Ratings Obsessive enjoys more than e-mailing the BBFC, is emailing the BBFC while picturing Timothée Chalamet, gorgeous star of Call Me By Your Name and set to become the third youngest man to receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination next Tuesday, at the age of 22, being intimate with a peach.

LFF Film review: ON CHESIL BEACH (Dominic Cooke, 2018)

Summer 1962. In a Dorset hotel, overlooking the seaside, two virgins, Edward and Florence, navigate their wedding night with shared trepidation, although the root of their anxiety are worlds apart. He, a History graduate from a humble but loving home, can’t wait to get his hands on his beautiful bride. She, a talented violinist from a richer family, is filled with revulsion at the thought of sexual contact with anyone.

Brigsby Where?

Add Brigsby Bear to the list of films I’m going to need to watch purely for BBFC research purposes (like with Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry).

Brigsby Bear is a PG-13 in the States and a 12A in Ireland, yet a 15 in the UK. This in itself is not that bizarre; The Shallows also got those three ratings by the three respective ratings boards.

But it’s the classification reasons that I find bizarre. In their short insight, the BBFC flagged the ‘scene of drug misuses, moderate sex references’.

As with sex, I’ve detected a clear hierarchy of strictness when it comes to drug use at PG-13/12A. In terms of strictness, it goes IFCO > BBFC > MPAA.

The MPAA are the most lax when it comes to drug use, having passed Ray at PG-13, when that got 15 in the UK and Ireland.

David Fincher’s Oscar-winning The Social Network, a PG-13 in the States and a 12A in the UK, got a 15A in Ireland. The Irish flagged ‘the scene of strong drugs misusage’ as the principal reason for its 15A. 

Indeed, many might be surprised that The Social Network only got a 12A in the UK, given the scene in question is a Harvard party, where one girl snorts cocaine off another’s body.

She played the fiddle in an Irish band, but she fell in love with an Englishman.

Given that romance is my favourite genre, it goes without saying that I've seen my fair share of love scenes in movies. There’s an unofficial hierarchy when it comes to how strict the BBFC, IFCO and MPAA are when it comes to lovemaking at 12A/PG-13, and it goes (from least strict to strictest): BBFC < IFCO < MPAA.

For example, the sex scenes in The Light between Oceans, Brooklyn and My Cousin Rachel received the 12A equivalent in all three films boards. About 80% of PG-13-rated sex scenes do fall in that Venn diagram intersection of BBFC, IFCO and MPAA rating sameness.

Saoirse Ronan shines in Brooklyn. She's also in the music video of Ed Sheeran's 'Galway Girl' a song I currently have stuck in my head!

10 things I learnt from the 2016 BBFC Annual Report

So, after waiting, and waiting, and waiting, the BBFC Annual Report for 2016 dropped! Here it is, and having pored over it, here are my major takeaways from reading it!

01. I guessed those complaints pretty much spot-on

I’m glad my many hours of wasting time watching films purely for BBFC research purposes (such as Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry), poring over BBFC minutes and lurking who complains to their Twitter account has paid off, because my prognostications for the films that would cause them the most complaints were even better than my Oscar predictions (and the Oscar goes to…. La La Land! No, Moonlight! #stillgloating).

The IFCO Annual Report for '16 Illustrates the Utility of Having the '16' Rating.

The IFCO released their Annual Report for the last calendar year and it's very brief compared to the BBFC ones.

Four Adjectives for Four Classification Issues

That Harry Styles movie, Dunkirk got its BBFC rating today, and as with Christopher Nolan's last six feature-length films, it's a 12A:

What stood out for me is that the short insight, for the four things in the film that render it 12A-worthy, each feature a different adjective:

- sustained threat (as was used in the short insight for Nolan's The Dark Knight, still by far the most complained about movie in recent years to the BBFC)

Second Guessing the Most Complaints the BBFC Got in 2016

The BBFC’s 2016 Annual Report is set to be dropped any day now (2015's one came out late June last year), and for me, it’s basically like waiting for Christmas. Of course I’ll do an extensive coverage of the Report when it comes out, as I did with the 2015 one, but for now, I thought I’d guess which films the BBFC got the most complaints about.

Note that these are my predictions for public feedback, not my own thoughts about the BBFC’s performance in 2016, which I have outlined in this blog post already.

01. 10 Cloverfield Lane (12A, people will say it should have been a 15)

When the BBFC is wayyyyy more wordy than the IFCO.

Ireland's insight for why Spider-Man: Homecoming is a 12A is pretty straightforward:

Very similar to their insight for Wonder Woman, a 12A for 'moderate action violence' in Ireland and 'moderate violence' in the UK. Notice how in that case, the Irish used one more adjective than the BBFC did. Another movie which got a 12A in the UK for 'moderate violence', not-so-Magnificent Seven, has a wordy AF IFCO insight, 'intense sequences of Western action and killings'.

So this demonstrates that generally, the Irish like to use more words than the BBFC, right? Right?

Well, here's Spider-Man: Homecoming's BBFC short insight, which is detailed, bordering on verbose:

A few interesting things:

1) Obscured strong language? I remember in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, when Johanna tells the the Capitol 'f_ck you' and it's bleeped out, so maybe something like that? (Tho the BBFC just called that strong language, rather than 'bleeped strong language'.)

2) The IFCO have mild ticked in the sex/nudity box, yet the BBFC consider the sex references in Spider-Man: Homecoming moderate. This is very interesting, as the BBFC are generally more lax on sex references than the IFCO (Eddie the Eagle is a PG over here and a 12A in Ireland). The only time (to the best of my knowledge) that the Ireland have rated something lower than the British for sex references is the boob-groping in Your Name. So maybe the sex references is something like that?

3) The BBFC consider the threat moderate, yet the Irish didn't flag it. So either the BBFC are being too cautious, or the IFCO are too hardened.

I will be able to judge which insight was more appropriate when I see the film!

A stray observation from perusing the DVD section of charity shops on a Saturday morning.

Hanna, which was the BBFC's second most complained about film in 2011 (second only to Black Swan), mainly due to the strength of the violence, exacerbated by the fact that it was a young teenage girl involved in most of the fight scenes, is a 15 in Ireland. I'm glad to see the Irish are sensible, and didn't let the fact that the lead actress being their countryman, blind them to their film rating duties.