The Brown Note Movie Review

For me the Wachowskis' adaptation of David Mitchell's tome on standing up to authority and the little ripple effects of inspiration throughout time, is arguably the most underappreciated film this century so far. Riven with faults but aiming for the heavens and filled with stunning film-making, even on a philosophical level. The cast play multiple character in different eras as one small act of defiance reverberates forever. A masterpiece, warts and all and one of my very few 9.5/10 for any new release film.

Writer-director, Martin McDonagh's middle film between the sublime, In Bruges, and slightly overrated, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, is the least good out of the three but he's never going to be less than interesting. Stellar cast but a little messier this time around.

I had not been impressed by director Kathyrn Bigelow as a director by the time she inexplicably won best picture, director and screenplay for essentially Point Break in Iraq, The Hurt Locker, an even worse winner than Argo. The excellent, taught and expertly paced hunt for Osama movie, Zero Dark Thirty was everything that film wasn't.

Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy are a superb film - I know what I said. I must've had a spell on me to rate this so dwarf-singing snooze-fest so highly, the films haven't improved with age.

The people that brought you the godawful Paranormal Activity series dropped this vastly superior, Scott Derrickson, directed chiller. I'm always a sucker for Ethan Hawke anyway but this is a far more atmospheric work with a terrifying soundtrack.

David O. Russell was on an incredible run by Silver Linings, backed by his own great writing and a stellar cast.

This is definitely an era where I seemed to hand out 8/10's like candy because there are just to many glaringly awful directorial choices (John Goodman, I'm looking at you) for that to be true. A masterclass of acting from Denzel Washington and a terrific plane sequence make it worth wading through the occasional muck.

The middle two thirds of this Tarrantino western are flat out classic, sadly the opening twenty and especially the dire comic book final quarter, where Jamie Foxx tanks the film in comic book madness, undercut a near masterpiece.

This fascinating and original southern eco-drama from writer-director, Benh Zeitlin, deserved the mark it made.

Virtually every best picture winner of the 2010s was a total farce, no exception here. Ben Affleck got his flat-lining career back on track with a shock success in the directing chair with the superb Gone Baby Gone, followed with the half brilliant, half poor Heat rip-off, The Town, and this forgettable Iranian embassy siege drama was the weakest of the three yet won best picture. Go figure.