Forty Guns draws significantly from the cultural mythology around lawman Wyatt Earp’s restoration of order to the town of Tombstone, though in Samuel Fuller’s eccentric visual expressions and complex characters, touches of bitterness and sensitivity are brought to this refreshing, female-centric revision of the Old West.
In Bellissima’s unconventional blend of Italian neorealism and comedic satire, Luchino Visconti takes sharp aim at the ludicrous glorification of the entertainment industry, identifying an authentic connection between one effusive show mum’s pursuit of stardom for her daughter, and her struggles of post-war poverty.
Paul Thomas Anderson creates an ambitiously enigmatic work studying symbiotic opposites, Christopher Nolan ends his Dark Knight trilogy with kinetic style, and Sam Mendes delivers the most inspired James Bond film to date.
Leading the peak of the Romanian New Wave, Cristian Mungiu turns his government’s historic oppression into the pervasive, unseen antagonist of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, haunting the dangerous attempts of two women to secure an illegal abortion with a passive cruelty that lingers in long takes, and holds us in its tight, uncompromising stranglehold.
Ingmar Bergman guarantees the loss of youthful innocence in Summer with Monika as sure as seasonal changes, contrasting the light nostalgia of a gleeful escape against the demoralising fatigue of contrived, urban living by studying the expressive contours of his young lovers’ faces, poignantly recognising what modern society has so cruelly stolen from them.
Terrence Malick delivers a landmark of transcendental cinema, while Béla Tarr and Lars von Trier both impress with heavy, philosophical films contemplating two different apocalypses.
Unforgiven is not a new story for men like ex-outlaw Will Munny who are so capable of pitiless murder, but in Clint Eastwood’s brilliantly cutting genre subversions and sensitively layered performance, it emerges as a horrific reminder of what lies dormant beneath America’s glorified history, incisively undermining the lies of the Old West’s mythology.
Todd Field remains at a chilly distance from the casually cruel subject of his interrogation in Tár, unleashing the full, daunting force of a gifted yet abusive musician with Kubrickian precision, and tracing her psychological disintegration to the depths of a painstakingly formal study in unchecked power, exploitation, and highbrow art.
Aaron Sorkin pens the greatest screenplay of his career with David Fincher, Christopher Nolan blows minds with his most visually inventive film to date, and Darren Aronofsky crafts a horrifying character study of ambition and obsession.
Just as Babylon writhes with excitement at cinema’s potential during the early years of its formation, so too does Damien Chazelle eagerly tease apart the connection between artistic genius and debauchery in its first pioneers, swinging as hard with his decadent maximalism as the modern empire of insurmountable, ruinous ambition at the centre of it all.
