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The Quiet Man (1952)
The craggy mountains, verdant pastures, and mossy stone walls of rural Ireland burst with vibrant effervescence in The Quiet Man, where John Ford sets breathtaking backdrops for the return of one American immigrant to his old family farm, as well as the ensuing drama which results from his courtship of the local bully’s sister.
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The Substance (2024)
The black-market drug which reverts users to their younger selves is an appealing prospect in The Substance, though its side effects reveal a horrifying underside to such desires, seeing Coralie Fargeat compose a disturbing allegory for the physical deterioration of our ageing bodies and the destructive self-loathing which comes with it.
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes may not possess the rich character work of the other prequels, yet Wes Ball’s development of this majestic, tribal world through the legacy of its ancestors is admirable, examining splintered ideological factions that exploit sacred doctrine for their own selfish purposes.
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Megalopolis (2024)
Francis Ford Coppola’s conceptual fusion of Ancient Rome and modern America into an epic Shakespearean fable is promising in Megalopolis, though the precision and focus that once defined his storytelling is completely absent here, tangled up in its inability to carry a single line of thought through to completion.
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Lincoln (2012)
With a witty, grandiose screenplay and a camera that cleanly navigates political battlefields, Steven Spielberg uses the final months of Abraham Lincoln’s life to examine the messy game of American politics, carefully observing his tactical orchestration of congress to pass the slavery-ending 13th Amendment.
