New Year, Same Me: it’s the first What’s Worth Watching of 2023! I do hope you had a restful holiday period, and I’m sorry I took the month off, meaning you were forced to watch Glass Onion for want of anything better on your streaming service of choice.
If this is your first time reading, well, ignore that apology, it’s not for you. What is for you is this brief reminder of what on Earth you’ve signed up for: a monthly bunch of recommendations for old, unusual, or off-the-beaten-algorithm you can find on everything from Netflix to iPlayer to the humble YouTube.
To start things off right we have: a Christmas film, a zombie film, an episode of an old TV show by a current legend, and the most invigorating doc you’re likely to see over the next 12 months. Unless something better comes along. And I remember to include it.
Recommendation round-up
Le Pupille (2022, Alice Rohrwacher) 37 mins
I can’t figure out how this delightful little film exists — presumably outgoing Disney CEO Bob Chapek signed off on it while sloshed at his first (and last) company holiday party? — but I’m sure glad it does. Produced by Alfonso Cuaron1 and directed by Alice Rohrwacher,2 it’s a forty minute slice of festive magical realism. “Clumsily and freely based on a letter the writer Elsa Morante sent to her friend Goffredo Fofi,” it’s a short paean to rebellious girls disrupting the Christmas pageant at a strict Catholic boarding school. Like a box of Quality Street, it’s just the right mix of sweet, rich textures, and parts your parents will probably prefer to the ones you like. Everyone’s happy!
The Gourmet (1987, Michael Whyte) 43 mins
If it’s not too late for a Christmas film, I can be forgiven for sneaking a ghost story in under the seasonal wire,3 can’t I? This TV movie curio comes recommended by no less an authority than Reece Shearsmith,4 and boasts screenplay by none other than a wet-behind-the-ears Kazuo Ishiguro. Charles Gray stars in the title role, as a gourmand who has tried every delicacy known to man and so seeks out more…exotic fare. Like ghosts. It’s about a weird old man who wants to eat a ghost, located in a London church that doubles as a soup kitchen. It’s as brilliantly bizarre as it sounds; atmospheric and offbeat.
Timbuktu (2014, Abderrahmane Sissako) 96 mins
Did you know that ITV has a new streaming platform? And that, once you’ve finished working your way through all 123 episodes of Midsomer Murders so you can follow the now-airing 23rd season, they’ve a decent film catalogue to boot? My pick of the pops is this, an arresting and knotty depiction of the Malian city’s brief occupation by jihadists. The enforcing of sharia law has particularly tragic consequences for one family, in a wrenching central plot that eschews melodrama for quiet, firm dignity, and assesses the hypocrisies of religious fundamentalists with a gimlet eye.
Review of the month (sponsored by Peppermint Rennie’s which saved my life several times over during the Christmas period)
A Bunch of Amateurs (2022, Kim Hopkins) 95 mins
The BBC continue their unparalleled run of buying the rights to fascinating documentaries and then concealing them within their Storyville strand nobody ever bothers to look in with this, a charming example of cinephilia-as-community. Our art form of choice is often a lonely one; even when you’re sat in a room full of people sharing the viewing experience, you can’t say owt or you’ll be5 slapped in the chops by a card-carrying Sight & Sound sub. That may be more great British reserve than reverence for the arts, but then again, A Bunch of Amateurs makes a good argument for our horrible little island as more than just a passive audience of rule-enforcers.
The film follows, fly-on-the-wall style, Bradford Film Club, who’ve been gathering to both watch and make films since the 1930s. With most of the current membership nearing retirement age, the doc chronicles their attempts to reshoot the opening of Oklahoma! — with a fraction of the budget and resources the average stage production can manage, and the knowledge it may be the last thing they do. There’s a certain amount of “oh those kooky provincial folk” humour, but it’s as clear-eyed about the economic and existential threats facing the club as it is in documenting their particular foibles (not to mention arguments). It has all the warmth and humanism, and lack of sentimentality, as the comparable work of Agnes Varda, and was one of Mark Kermode’s films of the year.6 Bloody lovely.
Best of the rest
Zero For Conduct (1933, Jean Vigo) Speaking of 40-minute paeans to childhood rebellion…uh, that’s what this is also. Immensely influential on the French New Wave and Lindsay Anderson’s If…, Vigo’s film is as anarchic in style it is content, as a group of schoolkids overthrow their boarding school oppressors (Watch on YouTube)
Princess Cyd (2017, Stephen Cone) A queer coming-of-age film in lower case, following teenager Miranda coming into her sexuality while visiting her estranged aunt in Chicago. “Impeccable vibes,” as the kids were likely saying some years ago now (Watch on Prime)
Pontypool (2009, Bruce McDonald) He who is tired of zombie films is tired of life, as Samuel Johnson said in his Criterion closet video. This idiosyncratic spin is set in a radio station, where a talk show host tries to stem the tide of a cannibalistic contagion that’s spread through language (Watch on Freevee)
Of Children of Men and That One Harry Potter That’s Good fame
Of Happy as Lazarro non-fame — unjustly I might add
Or “tinsel” as some insist on calling it
On the Inside No 9 podcast, not personally
Justly, I might add
Yeah yeah, but you know what they say: even a stopcock releases gas twice a day. Is that what they say?