5 Off My Head: Siri Says 2008

Now that the festival rush of Fall 2025 is behind me I've been feeling the nagging sensation to check back into our long long too-long running series of "Siri Says" posts -- the last one I did was back in January! These posts have gotten increasingly sporadic as the remaining years have dwindled -- when I checked what's left this morning I saw there were only five years out of one hundred left for us to do. Do what, you ask since it's been so long since I've done one? Well the idea is that I had my phone choose a random number between 1 and 100 and then I picked my five favorite movies from the year that corresponds. Once we got down to the teens the process changed a little because it took too long for Siri to get to a number I hadn't already done, so I wrote the remaining years on slips of paper and picked one with my eyes shut. And that's how we ended up with the year 2008 today.

It's the last year of the Aughts we had left to do -- another decade crossed off! And this is another year when I was actively blogging here at MNPP so there's documentation of my thoughts on 2008's movies already -- click here to see what my favorite movies were at that moment. My list now, seventeen years later, has changed a little! Not entirely, but some. So let's get to it. I give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 2008

Synecdoche, New York

(dir. Charlie Kaufman)

-- released on October 24th 2008 --

Let the Right One In 

(dir. Tomas Alfredson)

-- released on December 12th 2008 --

In Bruges

(dir. Martin McDonagh) 

-- released on February 29th 2008 --

The Fall 

(dir. Tarsem Singh) 

-- released on May 30th 2008

Lake Mungo 

(dir. Joel Anderson) 

-- released on June 18th 2008 --

-----------------------------------------

Runners-up: Wall*E (dir. Andrew Snanton), The Wrestler (dir. Darren Aronofsky), Wendy & Lucy (dir. Kelly Reichardt), Mister Lonely (dir. Harmony Korine), Funny Games U.S. (dir. Michael Haneke), The Chaser (dir. Na Hong-jin), Timecrimes (dir. Nacho Vigalondo), Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh), [REC] (dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza)...

...  Teeth (dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein), Encounters at the End of the World (dir. Werner Herzog), The House Bunny (dir. Fred Wolf), The Ruins (dir. Carter Smith), Doomsday (dir. Neil Marshall), Cloverfield (dir. Matt Reeves), Hunger (dir. Steve McQueen), Reprise (dir. Joachim Trier)

What are your favorite movies of 2008?

It's Blitz!

I am not sure yet if this is my final NYFF 2024 review or not -- we'll see if inspiration keeps raging over the weekend and into next week or not but I am on a little bit of a roll if I do say so myself -- but today my thoughts on Steve McQueen's upcoming WWII drama Blitz, which closed NYFF this year, landed on Pajiba -- click here to read them. I appear to've dug the movie more than many critics I've read -- it's lean into melodrama suited me just fine, thank you very much -- but it's not without its issues in that it feels like it would've made a better miniseries than movie. I wanted more, basically! Anyway you don't have long to wait for this one -- it's hitting theaters on November 1st and then Apple will drop it on their streaming platform around Thanksgiving. Here is the trailer if you haven't seen it already:

NYFF Ahoy!

Although it seems nuts to be onto the fall festivals already (not that I will miss this hellfire summer in the slightest, mind you) it is indeed the perfect moment for me to take stock of my hometown beloved, the New York Film Festival, since they've officially announced all three of their Gala films now. We'll start with the end, or is that the middle -- today they announced their Centerpiece film screening and it will indeed be Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language full-length film The Room Next Door starring Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, and Alessandro Nivola. See all my previous posts on this one here -- we've been rather excited about this for some time, because of course we have. 

This will be its U.S. premiere -- it's premiere-premiering in Venice in September. The NYFF screening is October 4th, right in the middle of the fest -- hence it being the "Centerpiece film" duh -- which runs from September 27–October 14. And speaking of those dates -- the Opening Night film that they announced a couple of weeks ago is Nickel Boys from Hale County This Morning, This Evening (a truly spectacular movie, that) director RaMell Ross -- an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel, Nickel Boys stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Daveed Diggs, Fred Hechinger, and two young actors named  Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in the leads; it's about "two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow–era Florida." Anybody read the book? 

And then there's our Closing Night movie -- Steve McQueen's Blitz! I've been jonesing for this ever since I first heard about it -- the Hunger and Shame and 12 Years a Slave director is tackling the World War II bombings that devastated London from the ground level, with Saiorse Ronan playing a working-class mum who gets seperated from her little boy in the underground. Blitz also stars, among many others, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham, and Hayley Squires -- I have been a massive fan of Squires ever since she wowed in Ken Loach's 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, so I hope her role is juicy too. A lot of people think this might be the movie to finally get Saoirse her Best Actress Oscar, but I don't think enough people have actually seen it yet to know that much. (Having seen her in The Outrun at Sundance though I can already tell you that this is going to be a very good fall for her.)

Anyway that's three films down, dozens more to come -- I daren't even conjecture, they always surprise me, but I find myself getting giddy thinking about it already. If you're planning on attending you can buy packages right here right now; single tickets go on sale in the middle of September. 

Small Axe is Here to Stay

And speaking of "my favorite directors" I saw this new photo of Steve McQueen the other day and it took me a moment to even recognize him -- dude is hella skinny! Anyway that aside it's a big day for those of us who love his work -- his series of 2020 short-films titled Small Axe are hitting Criterion in box-set form today! You can buy the set right here -- and Amazon has it cheap too, just 70 bucks right now. I somehow still haven't done a list of my favorite movies for 2020 but I'd have to figure out how to fit Small Axe in there if/when I did/do -- whether it be by individual film or all in one big chunk, it belongs. An absolute masterpiece.

In related news -- have any of you watched Uprising, his three-part  documentary series about three different events in 1981 London, yet? Shamefully I keep forgetting to watch even though it's on Prime Video. Gonna send myself a reminder for this weekend. Next up for McQueen is the film Blitz, about you guessed it the blitz bombings of London during WWII -- it stars Saorsie Ronan and Harris Dickinson, among many others (no Michael Fassbender though, which makes me sad -- I feel like they must've had a falling out). And McQueen also has a WWII doc called Occupied City coming out soon as well, about Amsterdam's Nazi occupation. I guess he really got into World War II during the pandemic. Here's a photo of Saorsie looking killer in period garb on the set of Blitz:

Harris Dickinson Nine Times

I saw these photos of Harris Dickinson for the CR Fashion Book (whatever the hell that is) a couple of days ago and knew, obviously, I would have to share them -- the above one, which is the cover image, just had some real annoying text across it that I wanted to photoshop away and unfortunately for all of you I am extremely lazy and it took me these couple of days to do that. But look here! I did it! Our PayPal link is in the right-hand column -- now would be a good time to shower me with doubloons obviously. Aaaaanyway I did also want to look up what Harris is up to, to make sure he was getting gigs post-his career-best work in Triangle of Sadness, and no fears on that end -- dude has projects lined up with Sean Durkin, a series with The OA creators Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, and a movie with Steve f'ing McQueen. Harris is fine! And speaking of fine, hit the jump to see Harris photos of looking mighty fine...

Triangle of the Small Seventh King

Tis the happiest day of the month, Criterion Announcement Day! These titles are all dropping in April of this year, starting with and most excitingly director Steve McQueen's five-film series Small Axe, which screened on the BBC in the UK and on Amazon here in the US. All five, set in the same West Indian neighborhood in London over the course of a few decades, are magnificent -- here is my review of Lover's Rock, and here is my review of Mangrove, and here is my review of Red White and Blue. I never reviewed the other two (because they didn't screen at NYFF like those three did) but they also rule. This set hits on April 25th.

Next up and nearly as awesome -- they've got Ruben Östlund's current awards-prospect Triangle of Sadness also hitting 4K and blu-ray on April 25th! (Love that cover.) Have you seen this movie yet? I've seen it twice but weirdly never reviewed it? I thought I had but... nope. Huh. Anyway I like it quite a bit! Yes it's fairly blunt in its aim but sometimes (I say this often) bluntness is needed. And everybody's absolutely stellar in it -- I'm happy that Dolly De Leon is probably going to get an Oscar nomination but we should also be giving more love to Harris Dickinson, who works real magic with an extremely tricky role.

We should definitely be talking more about the first sequence in the film, the excruciatingly awkward between him and Charlbi Dean (RIP) -- such a barn-stormer. Aaaanyway the other discs hitting in April are all upgrades to 4K from already existing Criterion blu-rays -- they consist of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (out on April 18th) and Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King (out on April 11th). I should probably try to watch the latter again someday -- I haven't seen it in ages because I hated it back in the day. Perhaps I've grown into it?

GALECA Goes Small Screen

As mentioned with terrific pride on several occasions I became a member of GALECA, the guild for LGBTQ entertainment journalists and critics back in 2018 -- that's right, the year of Call Me By Your Name, which I loved so much I decided I had to lobby for it as hard as I could. Y'all know I'm not the biggest pusher of Awards Season narratives but I think our little group does a better job than most, and I think that's showcased in our just-dropped nominations for this year's TV Awards, which I've got for you below. 

This is the first year our Dorian Awards have been split up, with our Movie Awards happening during the usual Movie Awards Season and our TV Awards happening, well, now. And it makes sense to me -- pre-halfening the list of awards was hella long! This is much more manageable. There are a couple of shows I lobbied hard for this year that didn't make a dent at all (Raoul Peck's Exterminate All the Brutes, which I wrote about at Pajiba awhile back, is an absolute masterpiece that didn't get a single mention) or not much of a dent at all (just one nomination for shows like PEN15, The Underground Railroad, and blasphemies of blasphemies -- and bringing us back to my beginning with this guild -- Luca Guadagnino's We Are Who We Are, although I recognize that show was divisive... 

... but the haters are hella wrong). Still those last three shows did get mentioned, and Steve McQueen's Small Axe masterful miniseries got three nominations, and that's more than most of the TV academies will probably recognize those things. Plus plenty of love for It's a Sin and Hacks and Mare of Easttown, all predictable as far as these things go but excellent all the same. Our winners will be announced on August 29th, but for now hit the jump for the full list of nominees...

10 Off My Head: Siri Says 2013

So I got a new cell phone this weekend and the set-up was creepily easy -- I just had to hold the new phone in proximity to the old one and... shit like transferred right over? Through the air? Technology truly baffles me, but sure, why not, just let it happen even if it makes me skin crawl. (I was reading up on the things my new phone can do and I found out about the "Facetime Attention Correction" which was the creepiest -- you're basically deep-faking your own eyeballs? Ugh!) 

That said it wasn't until this very moment now when I sat down to do this week's entry in our "Siri Says" series -- where I ask Siri to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then tell you people my favorite films from the year that corresponds -- that I suddenly became worried for the sentient being called Siri that lives inside my telephone. Was she transferred over along with my information? Is this some other lady giving me numbers now? Some imposter? If I can't trust my Siri who can I trust? This is like the start of every 90s Erotic-Thriller, I tell ya.

Anyway I asked this "Siri" for my number today and just like last week "she" gave me a usable number on the very first try -- at this point, having done so many of these posts, getting an unused number on the very first try is an outlier. So my point is whether this is "my" Siri or not "she" is doing a good job so whatever -- cut to the "Siri" on my old phone getting bricked, consciousness trapped forever in some nowhere-world, an episode of Black Mirror if ever there was a really boring episode of Black Mirror. (Or perhaps this has all been Performance Art for Spike Jonze's Her, included below.)

Point being the lady inside my phone, whomever she might be now, told me "13" so we're choosing from the Movies of 2013. 2013 was the year that MNPP's annual awards tradition of The Pantys went a little wonky, because I fell down and broke my arm around the time I was meant to post them, and posting anything became difficult for a few months. I only got around to posting a list of My 15 Favorite Films of 2013 in... March of 2014, lol. And looking back today my list is a little different. Our foundations are quaking, y'all. 

My 10 Favorite Movies of 2013

Frances Ha

(dir. Greta Gerwig)

-- released on May 17th 2013 --

The Bling Ring

(dir. Sofia Coppola)

-- released on June 21st 2013 --

Short Term 12 

(dir. Dustin Daniel Cretton)

-- released on August 23rd 2013 --

You're Next 

(dir. Adam Wingard)

-- released on August 23rd 2013 --

12 Years a Slave

(dir. Steve McQueen)

-- released on November 8th 2013 --

Inside Llewyn Davis

(dir. Coens)

-- released on December 6th 2013 --

Stoker

(dir. Park Chan-wook)

-- released on March 1st 2013 --

The Great Beauty

(dir. Paolo Sorrentino)

-- released on November 15th 2013 --

Her

(dir. Spike Jonze)

-- released on December 18th 2013 --

Stranger By the Lake 

(dir. Alain Guiraudie)

-- released on 2013 --

-------------------------------------

Runners-up: Only God Forgives (dir. Refn), The Heat (dir. Paul Feig), Pacific Rim (dir. Guillermo Del Toro) Enough Said (dir. Nicole Holofcener), About Time (dir. Richard Curtis), A Field in England (dir. Ben Wheatley), Nymphomaniac (dir. Lars Von Trier), Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon-ho), Tom at the Farm (dir. Dolan), The Past (dir. Asghar Farhadi)...

... The Counselor (dir. Ridley Scott), Captain Phillips (dir. Paul Greengrass), Gravity (dir. Alfonso Cuaron), The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer), Byzantium (dir. Neil Jordan), I'm So Excited (dir. Pedro Almodovar), Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler), Oblivion (dir. Joseph Kosinski), The Place Beyond the Pines (dir. Cianfrance), Filth (dir. Jon S. Baird) 

Never seen: The Grandmaster (dir. Wong Kar-wai), What Maisie Knew (dir. Scott McGehee), The English Teacher (dir. Craig Lisk), Ida (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski), Grace of Monaco (dir. Olivier Dahan), Bastards (dir. Claire Denis), Black Nativity (dir. Kasi Lemmons), The Fifth Estate (dir. Bill Condon)

-------------------------------------

What are your favorite movies of 2013?

The News Outta Nashville

I can't recall how many years I've been participating in my pal Jason Shawhan's annual fill poll for Nashville Scene but it's been a few and it's always a good read -- and who doesn't need good things to look forward to these days? So here's a good damn thing -- the 2020 poll went up today, feating a Top 25 list of films assembled from faves from me and dozens upon dozes of other critics, and you should check it out! I suppose that shot of John Magaro above gives away what our #1 movie was (or it does now that I said it does anyway) but there are flavors for every palate on the menu. Oh and Jason also asked us an assortment of cinema-related queries, about the year that was and the year ahead, so bonus!

The King McQueen

Every time I do a post about Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" anthology of films I have to re-link like a billion links because I have reviewed 3/5ths of the series already, and I don't feel like doing that again -- I just found out that I have a bonus day off this week, meaning the only day of office-work I have this week is today, and I have suddenly been swallowed whole by a "kid before their summer vacation" mind-set, aka I ain't getting anything done now. It's full-tilt stare-at-the-clock o'clock around here. So here's the deal -- the first part of "Small Axe" is out now over on Amazon, and this is me reminding you to watch each and every single part, starting with this one. They get released every Friday, through December 18th. All everything else that you need to know about "Small Axe" including a trailer and links to all of my reviews you can find in this post that I did last time the subject came up. Voila, done!

 

I lied -- he wears two wigs all at once https://t.co/VJrcznCL3e pic.twitter.com/9oWfMREoKT

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 23, 2020

Steve, Bring Me the Axe

Lots of trailers today! Now comes our best-to-date look at the new thing from Shame and Hunger and Widows and 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen -- it's really hard to choose a single film to attach to his name, I just wanna go with every one of his bonafide masterpieces -- called Small Axe. I have talked about Small Axe a lot at this point but let's recap -- Small Axe is an anthology of five films all set in the same West Indian community of London where McQueen himself grew up, over the course of a few decades. 

The films vary in length and you'll see a cast-member here and there float through another chapter, but they are all (supposedly) standalone films. I say "supposedly" because I have seen three of the five films already, and they all were standalone, but who knows what'll happen in the other two -- maybe all the characters from the three I've seen will show up and have a Battle Royale. (I would so watch Steve McQueen direct a remake of Battle Royale.) 

The first part is called Mangrove and it will premiere on Amazon on November 20th. I reviewed Mangrove when it screened at the New York Film Festival right here. It tells the true life story of Frank Crichlow (a truly phenomenal Shaun Parkes), the owner of a restaurant who finally has enough abuse from the police and fights back. It co-stars, among many, Black Panther's Letitia Wright. it is real fucking good, you guys.

The second part is called Lovers Rock, it premieres on Amazon a week later on November 27th, and I reviewed this chapter right here. This part is also real fucking good. The third part is called Red White and Blue, it premieres a week later on December 4th, it stars Star Wars phenom John Boyega as a police officer in training trying to buck the system from within -- I reviewed this chapter right here and, spoiler alert, it is real fucking good! Sensing a theme?

The last two chapters are called Alex Wheatle and Education, they air on December 11th and 18th respectively, and... I sadly have not seen these. Yet. You best believe I've been refreshing my inbox for screeners. Here is the trailer they just dropped this afternoon:

Point being I recommend you write all of these dates in your little pleather-cased date-books in ripe red ink immediately -- you will not want to miss this, the cinematic event of the year. I've seen some people call these "television" but I'm not categorizing them as such myself -- these are five films, a sort of Cinematic Universe of actual import. Imagine that. If you'd like the official descriptions of all five films hit the jump, I'll share them below:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Shame (2011)

Brandon: If you had a choice to live in the 

past or the future, and you could be anything

you wanted to be , what would you be? 

Marianne: What would you be? 

Brandon: Well, I always wanted to be a 

musician in the Sixties. 

Marianne: That's cool. Musician? 

Brandon: Yeah. 

Marianne: Sixties it's tough though! I saw 

Gimme Shelter recently, you know, 

the Rolling Stones documentary? 

Brandon: Yeah. 

Marianne: Kinda seem like hell! 

Brandon: What? 

Marianne: Yeah, Sixties be like 

the last place I want to be. 

Brandon: No way! 

Marianne: Yes. Ugh, chaos! 

Brandon: So, where would you and 

what would you want to be? 

Marianne: Umm, I dunno. Here, now. 

Brandon: That's boring. 

Marianne: Fuck you.

There are a lot of things I could think about when I think about Steve McQueen's film Shame -- a lot, and I have spent a lot of time talking about them over the years too...

... but lately I've really been thinking about the scenes between Michael Fassbender and Nicole Beharie. That's probably because I've seen Beharie in a couple of things over the past couple of months -- Miss Juneteenth and an episode of Monsterland, specifically. But looking back on the film now nearly a decade later -- that's difficult to believe! This movie turns 10 next year! -- don't their moments together feel like a lynchpin to the entire enterprise in a weird way? 

Of course that can be said of any piece of a Steve McQueen movie -- they're always perfectly constructed, not a piece of flotsam in the bunch, and so we wish the director a very happy 51st birthday today. Y'all don't know how fortunate you are, with the entire pentalogy of Small Axe films hitting Amazon next month -- having now seen three at NYFF (Lovers Rock reviewed here, Mangrove reviewed here, and Red White and Blue reviewed here) this is, as I said earlier, the cinematic event of 2020. Even if it's on a small screen.

Axe Me No Questions

'Nother day, 'nother piece of Steve McQueen's so-called "Small Axe" series of films to review from the New York Film Festival -- this time around over at The Film Experience I'm taking a look at the middle segment titled Red White and Blue and starring former-Finn John Boyega in the true-life story of a 1980s police officer and yes, if you're like me then you're saying to yourself hot damn it's about time Steve McQueen worked with John Boyega. Now that's a duo. Okay okay so I still want Steve to work with Michael Fassbender again, but for now this will do. And if you missed my other two "Small Axe" reviews read my thoughts on Lovers Rock right here and my thoughts on Mangrove right here. They are all supremely excellent and "Small Axe" -- when it drops on Amazon in November -- is the cinematic event of the year. I'm dying that I have to wait for the last two thirds with the rest of you normal people!

On a side-note I was so inspired by all this hot sexy Steve McQueen action that I re-watched Widows the other night and hot damn is that a movie. Just an all around banger -- I think I actually liked it even more this second time through. We did that movie wrong in 2018 -- it shoulda gotten all sorts of awards attention. We don't deserve Steve McQueen, we really really really do not.

VIOLA DAVIS' APARTMENT IN WIDOWS THOUGH pic.twitter.com/OpyrRuxUB6

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 4, 2020

Invasion of the Ginger Snatchers

First things first it seems important to share the above photo of former Dunkirk twink and current Saoirse squeeze Jack Lowden hanging out with his bearded ballet-dancing brother Calum -- you know. Important. Jack's Instagram has been fun over quarantine -- I advocate following him for your recommended daily dosage of ginger goodness. Sometimes doubled! You can't OD on Ginger!

Moving on! Jack is the co-star of a very fine horror movie that's coming out very soon! And yes that is The Great And Honorable Fiona Shaw you see in the above gif alongside him. The movie is called Kindred and IFC is dropping it on November 6th -- it stars Tamara Lawrance (a British actress seen in several TV series over there; she's also featured in one of Steve McQueen's upcoming "Small Axe" series of films) as a young woman in love with our boy Edward Holcroft...

... which marks any character automatically as "smart." Anyway they go to the country to visit his mother (Shaw) and... things get scary. I have indeed already seen this and will review it closer to its release date but I recommend you put Kindred in your calendars, is what I am saying for now. November 6th. That being said this trailer gives away too much, and you maybe shouldn't watch it. I enjoyed knowing nothing going in. But you're an adult and can make your own damn decisions, so here. Choose wisely...