With its staggering set pieces and consequential narrative stakes, John Wick: Chapter 4 ends this series on a majestic cinematic high, not just confirming Chad Stahelski’s well-earned position among our great modern action directors, but also his talents as a storyteller communicating through striking theological symbolism.
Even rarer than seeing a woman take the lead in a classical Western is the choice to set her against another woman as the equally compelling villain, as Nicholas Ray projects a feminine sensitivity upon the male-dominated genre in Johnny Guitar with magnificently complex characters and vibrant colourful expressions.
Through one young assassin’s pursuit of vengeance against a cult, Len Wiseman offers a worthy addition to the John Wick franchise in Ballerina, reframing its world of contractual violence as a system to be navigated rather than escaped.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist odyssey ventures into the surreal heart of womanhood, Chad Stahelski lifts the John Wick franchise to transcendent new heights, and Barbenheimer draws crowds to the cinema for a double feature of conflicting blockbusters.
Hell is a condition of being for souls lost to compulsion in Ballad of a Small Player, and one that Edward Berger blurs into a gilded convergence of superstition, lighting up the global gambling capital as a dazzling, ghostly underworld of endless consumption.
The best cinematographers of the last ten years, from IMAX pioneers to monochrome nostalgists.
Robert Eggers exhumes the rotting corpse of a legendary vampire, Hollywood’s beauty standards are grotesquely warped in a thrillingly repulsive body horror, and Steven Zaillian’s calculated take on literature’s most famous con artist elevates television to cinema.
Patience, discernment, and cunning are virtues embodied in veteran Terry’s violent pursuit of justice in Rebel Ridge, and as he fights to save his imprisoned cousin and expose a corrupt police force, so too are they superbly carried through in Jeremy Saulnier’s tense, brooding storytelling.
David Leitch’s satirical tribute to Hollywood’s most undervalued profession is clearly a labour of love for the former stuntman, as The Fall Guy leads one such daredevil into a conspiracy laden with fights, chases, and pyrotechnics, and celebrates that especially resilient breed of performer with a wry tinge of self-awareness.
It is a rare thing to witness a first-time director meld such handsomely stylised action with mystical symbolism, yet Monkey Man proves Dev Patel to be just as skilled behind the camera as he is in front of it, crafting a Hindu allegory that envisions one underground fighter’s righteous delivery of divine justice upon India’s corrupt political landscape.
