It might be a weird thing to say but with Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski and his cinematographer Lukasz Zal have produced a black and white film that is bursting with colour.
The story of a love affair witnessed episodically over the years between a Polish songwriter and pianist and a young singer who become intrinsically linked through a love of music and then each other. An attraction that crosses and bridges barriers of age, politics, distance and borders.
Similarities could be drawn to the central pairing of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout De Souffle. On paper the combination shouldn't really work but the chemistry between Tomasz Kot and Joanna Kulig is undeniable and the sparks that fly between the two of them are hot enough to burn through the cinema screen.
As Eldon Tyrell tells Roy Batty in Blade Runner, "the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and you have burned so very, very brightly".
With a passion this intense, it is clear that the relationship is ultimately doomed but something keeps drawing them back together. Like a moth to a flame.
No stranger to doomed romances (My Summer of Love, The Woman in the Fifth), with Cold War Pawlikowski has created a film that feels like a blend of La La Land meets Casablanca that has been directed by Ingmar Bergman dabbling in a French New Wave style.
That sounds like a rather jazzy way of describing this mix of notes and style but it all blends together perfectly to produce on of the best films of 2018. One that, unlike the central couple Wiktor and Zula, will find an audience and will never let them go.
From tales of Norse Gods and visiting the Nine Realms in Thor, the Marvel Cinematic Universe then followed that up with... a period action film set in World War II?
Yes, it was time to introduce the face and poster boy for Marvel since 1942... Steve Rogers aka Captain America.
And who did they get to portray the Star Spangled Man with a plan? Well, the Human Torch of course.
At this point, Chris Evans (no, not that one) was most famous for starring in Fantastic Four. 7 years on, it is hard to imagine anyone else carrying the shield... well maybe, Bucky or Falcon (if you read the comics).
Powered by a terrific cast including Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Toby Jones, Stanley Tucci, etc, director Joe Johnston proved the perfect choice for the tale, having previously delivered a perfect slice of retro charm with The Rocketeer. He even manages to throw in a reference to his work on Raiders Of The Lost Ark when the Red Skull gains possession of The Tesseract and quips that "Hitler digs for trinkets in the desert".
The CGI still holds up well in the early scenes with "tiny" Steve before the super serum and Evans does a great job at showing Rogers' pure heart and determination ("I could do this all day").
The origin of "Captain America" gifts the MCU with one of its all-time greatest moments, the Star Spangled Man with a Plan musical number, and its finest leading lady in the form of Peggy Carter.
Hayley Atwell is a match for Steve in terms of wits, guts and style and gets her moments to shine. The only times she comes across as the "love interest" is when she reaches across and touches his chest post-serum and during the Armageddon-Aerosmith style radio message at the end.
Their relationship is what gives the movie its heart and leaves the audience with a heartbreaking denouement before setting us up for The Avengers (somewhat disappointingly with a mini-trailer for the film rather than a standard post-credit sting).
Infinity Stone Counter = 1 (The Space Stone aka The Tesseract)
2017 was quite the year for Netflix. Not only was it the year that it broke through with its original film programming, it was the year I finally discovered that "Netflix and Chill" was not just about watching movies on the sofa!
They had quality genre hits such as The Babysitter and the excellent Gerald's Game that caused several people, including me, to do this...
But 2017 was the year that Netflix decided that they wanted to compete with the big boys and be taken seriously. Could they do it? "Yes we Cannes!" and Netflix went to France to compete in the Cannes Film Festival with Book Jong-Ho's Okja and Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories.
Did it go as planned? Not quite. The French in particular were against the idea of films playing in competition that would not receive a cinematic release, head judge Pedro Almodovar said that the films would never win a prize and the controversy overshadowed two good films and a very rare thing... a great Adam Sandler performance.
Netflix decided they were not going to let that stop them and have doubled down on their original programming; organising a deal with Curzon for limited runs of the films to appear on their screens, financing $100 million for Martin Scorsese's The Irishman starring DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci and now they have gone legit are entered the Oscar race with Mudbound.
Amazon Studios were the first to the podium last year with Manchester By The Sea but Mudbound is the sole streaming film in the race this year and received 4 Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress, Best Song, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
The cinematography nomination is well deserved, and history making as Rachel Morrison became the first female cinematographer to be ever receive one. The film looks stunning and every shot captures the feeling of the Deep South in Forties America. Mudbound tells the story of two families, the Macallan's and the Jackson's. Linked by land, the film explores their relationships defined by race, class and the fall out of WWII with both families giving their men to the war but find they are treated differently upon their return.
Performances across the board are as strong as the liquor and tensions that brewed in Mississippi, with particular standouts being Garret Hedlund, Jason Mitchell and Jonathan Banks as the deeply racist Pappy.
The film really comes into its own once the war is over and it explores the friendship between Hedlund's Jamie and Mitchell's Ronzell, which will ultimately come to define both families.
The main issue with the storytelling is the decision of director Dee Rees and screenwriter Virgil Williams is the over-reliance on voice-over narration.
Given it is adapted from a novel and this was the structure of the book, it is understandable however as Robert McKee in Adaptation would scream "...and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character."
So not only does the audience get one voice-over, it gets six different characters narrating their own parts of the story and at times, the narrative becomes as clear as mud.
Thankfully the narration does not overshadow the performances and the result is a film that shows that if the commissioning team at Netflix continue to fund films and stories like this, they are Bound for glory.
That Dunkirk spirit is well and truly alive and in full force at the moment in the UK. Following 2017's Their Finest and Christopher Nolan's cinematic masterpiece Dunkirk last July, it seems that filmmakers are not heeding Basil Fawlty's advice and can stop mentioning the war!
For Darkest Hour which shows what was happening across the channel as the men waited, and waited, for their salvation and evacuation.
Not only is Dunkirk the flavour of the month but this is the third screen characterisation of Winston Churchill in the last 12 months, following Brian Cox's Churchill and John Lithgow's portrayal in The Crown.
Churchill is so popular at the moment, don't be surprised if you see a feature length adaptation of the Churchill nodding dog put into production by the end of the week!
Director Joe Wright also returns to the issue of Dunkirk, 10 years on from filming that incredible single take tracking shot of James McAvoy and the troops on the beach in Atonement. However there is very little of that inventiveness and bravura filmmaking style on show here. It sadly falls into the trap that many biopics of British subjects and heroes can fall into, in that it feels more like a Sunday night BBC drama than a film destined to be enjoyed on the big screen. Yes, I'm talking about you The King's Speech (and on that topic, I much preferred Ben Mendelsohn's take on George VI than Firth's).
The only time the visual flair exhibited in the dance sequence in Pride & Prejudice and every frame of Atonement and Anna Karenina came into view was the shots of Churchill in lifts surrounding by darkness or peering through windows, slowly increasing his sense of isolation from the cabinet and imprisonment within his belief to do what he believes is right for the British people.
The film does capture how alone Churchill was in his stance against the impending pressures of Nazi Germany, feeling like he was one man against the world.
The film is perhaps too effective at this however as ultimately Darkest Hour is a two hour drama built on the foundation of one performance of bluster and bravado by Gary Oldman.
From the first time we see Churchill, Oldman disappears beneath the prosthetics and costume to completely embody the British Bulldog, and stomps, shouts and chews as much scenery as he does cigars that no one else can barely register an impact on screen. Even the great Kristin Scott Thomas gets left in the shadows as his wife Clemmie.
Rather than a big screen adaptation, Oldman's Churchill might have been better suited to a one man show on the West End where he performed some of his greatest speeches to a captive audience.
While there is no denying Winston's impact and legacy on British history, the Darkest Hour is unlikely to be the brightest moment in the history books of Oldman and British cinema. Even if it does bring him a shiny golden Oscar.
In the 2013 film Trance, art auctioneer Simon says "No piece of art is worth a human life".
The Monuments Men spends its 118 minute running time arguing that it is, several of them in fact.
The plot sounds like Ocean's WWII with George Clooney assembling a team of art experts to go into the war zone and protect and retrieve some of the most important historical and cultural artefacts.
The team includes people like Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin and Hugh Bonneville but one of the film's biggest problems is that as soon as they get together, they split off into pairs or solo missions and you spend so little time with each person it is difficult for them to make any real impression, which makes it difficult when some of the cast meet their maker.
It feels like a waste of a cast that clearly has genuine chemistry together (as evidenced by Damon, Bonneville and Murray on the Graham Norton show) but there is never the chance for them to display it here.
With the cast spread out over Europe, tonally the film is similarly all over the place. Is it meant to be a light-hearted WWII romp a la The Great Escape, hard-hitting war movie or art history lesson on this forgotten tale? The film never seems sure in itself and suffers as a result.
The Monuments Men is unlikely to be a film that anyone will give their life to try and save in order to protect it over other classics in cinema history.
