Ti West adeptly puts his own spin on the pulp, glamour, and splatter of 80s slasher movies in MaXXXine, satirically examining the cutthroat violence that underlies America’s celebrity culture, and ending his trilogic interrogation of the horror genre’s history with intoxicating, gaudy sensationalism.
The passengers that gather aboard the cruise liner of And the Ship Sails On are an eclectic mix of European aristocrats, each individually targeted by Federico Fellini’s irreverently absurd sense of humour, and together making up a nautical class satire that revels in their splendid merriment and misfortune.
Evil may take the form of a Satanic serial killer in Longlegs, but as Osgood Perkins leads us down an investigation of occult symbols, ciphers, and ritualistic murders, we must also confront the threat it poses to the sacred boundaries we draw around our own homes.
Whatever affection Kinds of Kindness promises to explore can only be considered ‘kindness’ on its most depraved level, yet it nevertheless becomes a common goal across its three surreal fables, as Yorgos Lanthimos’ characters wander an absurdist purgatory where dignity is commonly traded for the abusive love of employers, spouses, and religious leaders.
The outlandish matriarchal society that middle-aged philanderer Snàporaz traverses in City of Women is not quite a grand feminist statement, but rather a self-deprecating cinematic tool for Federico Fellini to pick at his own masculine insecurities, sprouting deliberations on gender and sexuality through a string of surreal, chaotic vignettes.
With Max Ophüls’ dextrous camera manoeuvring the ups and downs of Louise’s affair in The Earrings of Madame de…, it isn’t hard to fall prey to her idealistic belief in romantic destiny, imbuing her precious jewels that miraculously keep finding their way home with a mystical, auspicious significance.
There is a formal poetry to film trilogies which, when in the hands of an auteur, can reveal new dimensions to cinematic, narrative, and thematic interests not fully contained within their individual works. Not all of the trilogies listed here are consistently made up of great films, but they are worth documenting nonetheless.
Those 1960s greasers who live fast and die young may be immortalised in The Bikeriders, yet theirs is also a subculture visibly seeping away, as Jeff Nichols examines the inner workings of one Chicago motorcycle club with equal parts sensitivity, scepticism, and swagger.
Though based on the autobiography of the historical Venetian adventurer and his expansive voyage through 18th century Europe, Federico Fellini’s reimagining of Casanova’s life manifests with demented surrealism, trapping this lonely man in cycles of absurd carnal exploits fuelled by a profound, existential emptiness.
Dweeby college professor Gary relishes the challenge of posing as fake assassins for police sting operations in Hit Man, though beneath the darkly comic romance he strikes up with a client, Richard Linklater applies a macabre, psychoanalytic lens to false constructs of self-image and identity.
