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10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 DECEMBER 2018 FILM FILM 2 The Florida Project Already a name to watch out for following the re- lease of Tangerine -- getting down and dirty with the transgender sex worker community on the Sun- set Strip, and filmed entirely on a series of mobile phones -- co-writer and director Sean Baker en- joyed a real breakthrough with The Florida Project. With a cast mostly made up of amateurs -- held to- gether by the warm central presence of the always on-point Willem Dafoe -- its depiction of poverty is shot from the point of view of an innocent but pre- cocious child, played with preternatural conviction by the eight-year-old Brooklynn Prince. 3 Phantom Thread Amidst much talk of his retirement, award-win- ning actor Daniel Day Lewis teams up once again with director Paul Thomas Anderson -- whom he had regaled with a blisteringly brutal performance as oil magnate Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007) -- to help stitch together an absorb- ing love story with a pitch-black centre. The finest recent example of stylish, subtle Gothic romance (Roger Michell's weaksauce adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel doesn't even come close), it boasts all of the studied refinement and psychological insight one can expect from Paul Thomas Anderson, and is likely to reward repeat viewings. 4 The Shape of Water Guillermo Del Toro's quirky tale of an amphibian fishman starting a relationship with a deaf woman in 1960s Maryland might just be among the tamest and most 'mainstream' of offerings from the Mexi- can auteur (it certainly cemented his position as a bona fide purveyor of 'good taste' cinema by sweep- ing up some of the top Oscars this year). But it's also a much-needed story of outsiders coming together to face bigotry… and any film that has fish-man- on-human sex can't be accused of being a sellout feature from this vaunted purveyor of the dark and fantastic. 5 Mission Impossible: Fallout Superhero films may have hijacked the box-office friendly action set pieces, but leaner and meaner -- though no less mainstream -- cinematic machines like John Wick and, indeed, Christopher McQuar- rie and Tom Cruise's handling of the Mission: Im- possible franchise are doing their damnest to bring back some of the stunt-heavy, visually crisp and dy- namically choreographed action to the big screen. 'Fallout' is a delectable piece of work -- sprinting to the finish line without missing a beat. The best and worst films of 2019 Our resident film critic TEODOR RELJIC sifts through a year's worth of film reviews to pick the worst and best of the bunch MATTEO Garrone returns to the Italian un- derworld that made him a household name with Gomorrah. Only, he plumbs the more low-end depths of organised crime with Dog- man, whose dark fairytale undercurrents do contain some of the spellbinding magic he worked on Tale of Tales too. Loosely based on a horrific real-life incident from the 80s, Dog- man is an absolute marvel -- a gripping thriller about a put-upon dog-groomer whose soul is certainly not clean, though it's markedly clean- er than the neighbourhood-terrorising mob- ster who bullies him into submission. Dark, funny and always engrossing, this is an intense but rewarding cinematic repast. 1 Dogman