Almost Famous rolls along with all the thrust and exhilaration of a rock concert, as steeped in 70s pop culture as Cameron Crowe himself, and showing off a skilful tonal balance that ties each comedic and tragic set piece together into a nostalgic reflection on a musical era as joyfully uninhibited as it was potentially soul-destroying.
As recovering drug addict Anders drifts between vestiges of his old life on his first day out of rehab, Joachim Trier unfolds a battle in his mind between the future and oblivion, submitting Oslo, August 31st to the cycle of time that poignantly fades away sentimental memories into a mournful recognition of their widespread irrelevance.
In adeptly translating the inert feeling of grief into a gradually accelerating narrative pace that sees time frustratingly slip away, David Lowery transforms the material world into a quiet limbo of poignant self-reflection, playing out a meditation on loss, history, and existence from the perspective of A Ghost Story’s titular spectre.
For all the beauty of its hypnotic neon sequences and the intrigue built around a mysterious sleeping sickness that is infecting soldiers, Cemetery of Splendour goes down as one of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s more modest efforts, though still effectively crafting a mystical political allegory for the historical subjugation a half-conscious nation under the Thai monarchy.
Although Happy End never quite escapes from under the cloud of Michael Haneke’s previous films, its derivative narrative threads do eventually congeal into a greater point around the suppressed misery and hidden depravity of the bourgeoisie, chillingly hidden behind stoic expressions that only isolate them further from the rest of the world.
In bringing narrative tension to a classic Broadway revue of disconnected musical numbers, The Band Wagon lands as a boisterous examination of failure and success in the entertainment industry, rolling along with zeal while Vincente Minnelli’s exhilarating camerawork brings propulsive dimensions to that which unfolds onstage.
Jacques Tati’s bizarre, elaborate vision of Paris in Playtime is an intricately stacked construction of modernist architecture and comedic set pieces, sending up the soulless conformity of commercial society with a cinematic vision as monumentally ambitious as it is methodically delicate.
In drawing a series of parallels between humans and their primate cousins in Planet of the Apes, Franklin J. Schaffner exposes both our inherently primitive psychology and our unique propensity for self-destruction, though not without framing his anthropological questions within a richly constructed world of great mysteries and thrills.
Like a folk ballad that keeps returning to the same chorus, Inside Llewyn Davis moves in destitute cycles, as its titular character endlessly searches for musical success and self-sabotages relationships, forming the nomadic foundation of the Coen Brothers’ beautifully tactile portrait of adversity.
The constant struggle between one paroled prisoner’s moral compass and his desire to be seen as a moral person permeates A Hero with a provocative ethical ambiguity, and through Asghar Farhadi’s flair for searing realism and a wonderfully thorny screenplay, it sprouts a complex drama that sees a simple plan to regain honour veer off in unexpected directions.
