Edgar G. Ulmer savours every demented moment of conflict between Bela Lugosi’s creepy psychiatrist and Boris Karloff’s prowling Satanist in The Black Cat, painting over its uneven narrative pacing with a macabre expressionism that makes for a darkly mesmerising occult horror.
Nicolas Winding Refn’s enigmatic odyssey through a criminal underworld of sex traffickers, drug lords, and vampires demands a patient willingness to fall under its neon-soaked trance, as Copenhagen Cowboy invites us to traverse the psychological terrain of its stoic, otherworldly protagonist through a mesmerisingly surreal quest for vengeance.
If Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara represents the Old South in Gone with the Wind, then her selfish vanity paints a pricklier portrait of this historical culture than one might expect, deserving nothing less than the sweeping Technicolor grandeur of what may be Hollywood’s most ambitious historical epic put to film.
Dr. Moreau’s twisted biological experiments are brought to disturbing, expressionistic life in Island of Lost Souls, immortalising H.G. Welles’ classic sci-fi story onscreen as a horror fable complete with fearsome prosthetics, treacherous villainy, and a tightly-plotted script cautioning against the dangers of interfering with nature.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s bold artistic statement on the eternal struggle between fascism and socialism comes full circle in his period epic 1900, echoing formal patterns across the lives of two friends from opposing sides of the class divide, and landing the full weight of their intrinsic connection as operatically as the decades of Italian interwar history they represent.
There are whodunits which may be more sophisticated in their construction, but See How They Run still makes for a visually adventurous and hilariously fun meta-study of the genre, borrowing a great deal from Wes Anderson’s stylistic repertoire to break down and assemble its conventions into a sharply witty mystery set in 1950s London.
Marie and Henrik aren’t the first lovers in an Ingmar Bergman film to be brutally torn apart, but they are first to be developed with such visual splendour and warmth, as Summer Interlude dreamily calls back to those nostalgic, youthful vacations that seemed to go on forever, flourishing in the tiny tensions and pleasures of one’s first romance and heartbreak.
Martin Scorsese’s vibrant filmmaking meets both the luxury and thrills of the gangster lifestyle with a spirited energy in Goodfellas, pushing its brisk pacing forward through kinetic editing and dynamic camerawork, and in his construction of such a transcendently compelling narrative on top of this, he brilliantly stands it up among the finest of its genre.
Each time we are convinced that the luxury cruise vacation in Triangle of Sadness has hit rock bottom, Ruben Östlund torments his eccentric ensemble of millionaires, influencers, and service workers with yet another horrific development, satirising the extravagant worlds of the ultra-wealthy with a darkly subversive wit and explosively foul set pieces.
Ingmar Bergman’s tribute to artistic expressions that speak directly to the human soul resonate loudly all through To Joy’s visual and musical orchestrations, each one harmonising to pinpoint the intersection of love, tragedy, and wistful longing shared by two married violinists and their perfectionistic, fatherly conductor.
