SMALL PRINT:ON FRIDAY, you will all be up bright and early to grab The Ticket and – having set the day aside – begin perusing our choices of the best film and music of the year. I am not going to reveal any "spoilers" (horrible word), but I do think it's worth considering what the most overlooked films of the year might be. Now, I don't mean the most underrated. I mean those films that, despite their high quality, completely flew beneath the radar, unnoticed – as opposed to hated – by audiences or critics.
Two very different films spring to mind. Firstly, let's celebrate a gorgeous Russian picture entitled A Room and a Half. Playing here only in the Light House and the Irish Film Institute, Andrey Khrzhanovsky's hilarious, moving treatment of poet Josef Brodsky's exile from St Petersburg got decent reviews, but never picked up the head of steam it dearly deserved. Featuring lovely animation and (my late chum Michael Dwyer would have approved) the best cinematic cat of the year, this strange entity is that most rare of beasts: a movie that shows no obvious influences.
The critics in the screening with me all agreed. “Where the hell did that come from? How come no major festival gave it any sort of serious recognition?” Okay, it isn’t the best looking film I’ve ever seen. So what. Adrian Lyne’s movies look nice and they’re pure effluent. Did any of you see it?
The other film I would like to drag out of undeserved obscurity is Christopher Smith's Black Death. Now, here I must own up to a degree of bias. If there is one subgenre I love it is the warty folk horror. You know what I mean. Films such as Witchfinder Generalor Blood on Satan's Clawin which gnarled peasants confront inexplicable horrors called up by the likes of Vincent Price or Donald Pleasence.
Featuring Sean Bean as a rough sort (no?) who is puzzled to discover a village that has somehow escaped the Black Death, the film is exciting, nasty and nicely muddy. Most surprisingly, it has important things to say about the ways in which religion can undermine good sense. Seek it out.
Originally posted on Donald Clarke’s blog: irishtimes.com/blogs/ screenwriter
