Straight Outta Crouch End

Where I would usually just post a list of my ten favourite films of the year on Facebook and hope to attract upwards of eleven likes and three comments calling me pretentious, this year I've felt compelled to say a few words about my top two films of the year - Cemetery of Splendour by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Mia Madre by Nanni Moretti. At first when I came up with my ranking I thought very little connected the two films, and then, the more I thought about them, the more I found points of similarity between the two that point to a radical shared agenda. The first aspect on which the films share common ground is their exploration of trances and dreams. They set about this in different ways, so that the similarity can be easy to miss: Moretti's cinematic language is ostensibly forthright and realistic, whereas Weerasethakul's very aesthetic has to do with trances and slumber. Mia Madre , about the professional and personal struggles of a woman trying to make a film ...

1. Pearl Liaison from RuPaul's Drag Race, for being sickening 2. Oscar Isaac, for having the highest handsomeness to talent ratio in 2015 3. Carlos Acosta, for retiring at his most bae 4. Big Sean, because, bless him, you don't need to be the best rapper when you're the hottest rapper 5.    Jérémie Elkaïm, for being hot when he shouldn't be in Marguerite et Julien 6. Alexander Skarsgard, for being hot when he shouldn't be in Diary of a Teenage Girl 7. Sufjan Stevens, for being the hottest and only person to make the best album this year 8. Deray McKesson, for being the hot face of Black Lives Matter activism 9. Dustin Brown, for services to tennis sexiness  10. Tamal Ray from the Great British Bake Off, for being lovely and pretty while making cakes