Mea culpa, ‘1974’

With a resurgence of talk about the “Red Riding” trilogy of films ahead of their U.S. release next month, I’ve been reminded of a critical omission I made in my Best of 2009 list a few weeks back.

As I wrote when the films premiered on British TV around 10 months ago, they are wholly cinematic works and deserve to be considered (and distributed) as such — but because they were introduced to me as television, my mind keeps skipping over them when I think back on the year in film.

All of which is terribly unfair on Julian Jarrold’s “1974,” the first of the three tonally and structurally separate films, which I described as follows in the spring:

Following Andrew (”Boy A”) Garfield’s swaggering rookie journalist as he investigates the link between three missing girls and rapidly finds himself in over his head, it’s an astonishingly textured, sensory film, awash in dusk-coloured light and a gorgeous Northern soul soundtrack, that recalls “Zodiac” in its measured narrative approach and even shades of “Twin Peaks” in the alluring strangeness cast over its very ordinary locale.

James Marsh and Anand Tucker’s contributions to the trilogy are respectable works, but it’s “1974” that has the real cinematic goods. I should mentally add it to my Top 25 (er, make that Top 26), with apologies — or play by U.S. release date rules, and include it in my 2010 list. Either way, it’s up there.