Author: SceneByGreen

Michael Showalter | 2hr 6min

Tammy Faye Bakker’s appearance is not one you can easily forget. It is burned into the minds of those who watched Christian television in the 1970s and 80s, and for those of us only learning about her now with The Eyes of Tammy Faye, her permanently lined lips and enormous mountain of hair immediately announce to audiences how she wants to be seen. Beneath the layers of make-up and prosthetics here, Jessica Chastain is virtually unrecognisable. Whether it is her greatest performance or not may be up for debate, but it may well be her most transformational, as she fully inhabits every detail of this extravagant televangelist right down to the squeaky voice and wide, honest smile.

At first it might seem like Michael Showalter is taking a non-linear approach to breaking down the life of Tammy Faye, opening with a montage of newsreels that cover the scandalous downfall of her and her husband, Jim Bakker, before cutting to a scene from years later as she prepares for a television appearance. Here, Showalter hangs in close on her bright blue eyes, heavy with mascara, and as he zooms out we listen to her expressing her great pride in them.

After jumping back in time to her childhood, The Eyes of Tammy Faye unfolds in a more conventional, chronological order, but even as she suffers through mockery and insults on her appearance, we are still often reminded of the self-confidence she expressed at the start. After all, her hair and make-up is her statement of identity, expressing herself as a passionate, fanciful person at odds with the religious culture of austere minimalism she lives in.

Then there is the other side of the ‘eyes’ motif, in which Showalter interrogates the limitations of her own perspective inside this culture that she has dedicated her life to.

“You follow blindly. In the end, all you are is blind.”

When Tammy Faye finds herself neck deep in her ministry work, surrounded by misogynists with no interest in her own welfare, these are the haunting words that her mother delivers with great sadness. And indeed, exploitation and fraud runs rampant within the organisation, keeping her distracted with a steady diet of pills and overly cheery demeanours.

One could accuse Tammy of bearing a similarly superficial presentation, though there is a difference between Chastain’s performance and the others. Andrew Garfield often distinguishes between the version of Jim that appears on television versus the secretive one behind the scenes who she distantly watches engage in quiet conversations, but the childhood entertainer schtick that Chastain takes to playing Tammy Faye never seems to fade, even when she is alone. As saccharine and naïve as she may be, she carries an authenticity that so many of her associates lack. When she interviews a gay Christian minister with AIDS on her show against the wishes of her superiors, it is not done as an act of defiance, but rather out of empathy. She is “in the business of healing”, she claims, not of telling people that they are going to hell, and especially not of politics.

For the most part, this film is a showcase of one remarkable performance, though every now and again Showalter’s stylistic flourishes of freeze frames and glitzy yellow time stamps effectively magnify the flashy charisma its main character to a cinematic level. At a certain point it feels as if this narrative has run its course, and perhaps a more succinct screenplay may have helped tighten up this overlong, tensionless ending, but the loud, brash finale that completely consumes us within Tammy Faye’s mind might just make it all worth it. For all the traditional biopic conventions that shape its structure and writing, The Eyes of Tammy Faye embraces the wholesome perspective that its title implies, empathising greatly with this unorthodox televangelist who unassumingly followed a moral standard she naively believed her fellow Christians could also live up to.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is currently playing in theatres.

Peter Greenaway | 1hr 48min

There is a murder mystery lingering beneath the Baroque façade of this late 17^th century English country manor, though the question is less about who committed the killing, and more how one Mr Neville fits into it all. He is a young artist, commissioned by Mrs Herbert to sketch twelve landscapes of her estate for her absent husband, and in his creative pursuits he demands perfectionism. Each day he repeats in voiceovers the time and place of where he will conduct his work, and clears everyone from the gardens to guarantee clinical consistency. Still, small imperfections begin to slip in here and there. A ladder leading up to a window. A shirt slashed across its front. Gradually each one of these artistic renderings become more like incomplete pieces in a confounding puzzle, disturbing Mr Neville’s measured sensibilities within a plot he can’t possibly grasp.

There is a definite parallel between the painterly ideals of our stubborn protagonist and Peter Greenaway, whose artistic precision emerges in predominantly static tableaux, framing perfectly manicured gardens and meticulously arranged interiors with a similarly painterly attention to detail. Kubrickian seems like a fitting descriptor here, not just in representing the cold distance with which these characters are regarded, but also in our understanding of the film as a descendant of Barry Lyndon’s stylistic lineage.

Greenaway’s depiction of historical British aristocrats surrounded by extravagant period décor especially works to build up the theatrical artifice of their high society, as we observe in the film’s opening where they gather within candle-lit rooms and in symmetrical arrangements around elaborate displays of fruit to gossip among themselves. His artistic perspective is even more evident in his use of Mr Neville’s drafting board as a frame through which his camera observes the Herbert estate, crafting his own picturesque images much like the draughtsman himself.

But for all his mathematical precision, Greenaway is evidently more prepared to wrestle with the inconsistencies of his subject matter than Mr Neville. It isn’t just the strange clues being left around the garden, but often just beyond the view of other characters there lurks a naked man, always painted to resemble either a sculpture or otherwise blend in with his surroundings. Trying to decipher the logic behind this figure’s bizarre actions would be a waste of time, as this would be to submit to the flawed idealism that Mr Neville attempts to impose order upon his surroundings. The living sculpture is rather a human manifestation of chaos, discreet in its appearance, unpredictable in its movements, and impertinently disrespectful to everyone caught up in this high aristocratic culture.

As beautiful as Mr Neville’s sketches are, they do not capture the truth of this mysterious man’s identity or his environment. One would also never realise from his drawings that the residents of this majestic mansion trade snarky barbs that undercut its image of civility, nor that it is housing a sordid affair between Mrs Herbert and the draughtsman himself. In graphic match cuts between his black-and-white drawings and the real landscapes, we see the beautiful colour drained from this setting, though it is clear that Greenaway is also working against Mr Neville’s inflexible artistic methodology. Michael Nyman’s jaunty Baroque score of harpsichords, saxophones, and bass guitars feels particularly in line with his brazen aesthetic, mixing traditional and contemporary instruments as part of a vaguely anachronistic chamber ensemble, which also fits superbly within the film’s mischievous irreverence. It is primarily through this playful aesthetic that the hollow power plays and puzzles of The Draughtsman’s Contract begin to reveal themselves, so that by the end of Greenaway’s obscure murder mystery we may even delight in its final bitter twist of the knife.

The Draughtsman’s Contract is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Otto Preminger | 1hr 28min

Hanging above the fireplace in the apartment of a recent murder victim is a portrait of a woman with a sultry gaze. This is Laura, the young lady whose body was apparently found lying in the doorway with a shotgun blast to the head, and whose visage continues to haunt the place with an ethereal presence. She lingers in the back of shots like an extra character in an ensemble of suspects, as much a part of Otto Preminger’s splendidly staged compositions as anyone else, though it is also through flashbacks that Gene Tierney’s performance builds on that charisma with, as her mentor Waldo Lydecker would call it, “authentic magnetism.”

There are no two better words to describe Preminger’s dynamic camerawork in Laura either. Certainly his ability as a director has always been married to his long takes, moving through sets in majestic manoeuvres as effortlessly as his small but powerful camera motions that shift the tones of entire scenes. But here the repeated choice to continuously track in on Laura’s face from low angles draws us in with it, endowing her with a visual magnetism that is perfectly fitted to Tiernan’s innate charm and the compelling narrative intrigue.

Beyond its fascination with specific people is the camera’s applied scrutiny to objects, moving through apartments and the odd artefacts which crowd them out like an obsessive sleuth. Right after the opening credits play over the portrait of Laura, we fade into the first scene where a sculpture of an Asian goddess stands on a small pedestal, framed on either side by a candelabra and a display case standing in the foreground. Slowly, we drift to the right, observing the precious items sitting on the glass shelves, discovering an ornate grandfather clock, and then finally opening up to the larger apartment where we meet Detective Mark McPherson inspecting ornaments with a similar intensity.

In such a manner, Preminger often draws on a Sternbergian style of cluttered mise-en-scène to obstruct his frames with various pieces of décor, creating a dynamic environment through which his ever-moving camera continues to find new details to absorb itself in. And as we later discover, a few of these turn out to be far more relevant to the narrative than we ever expected. Mirrors also remain significant throughout in Preminger’s meticulous arrangements of actors and mise-en-scène, always keeping in mind those hidden, complex truths which underlie these characters’ motivations.

Lined with a series of shocking twists, this narrative is one that continues to test our understanding of subjective minds and reality, whereby long-gone ghosts are resurrected seemingly through the sheer power of wishful longing. Even McPherson, this apparently neutral force of justice, cannot resist getting caught up in the aura that surrounds Laura. In one scene as he falls asleep beneath her portrait, Preminger slowly tracks in on his face before pulling out again, appearing to bring us into a new world through the detective’s mind that teeters on the edge of dream and reality. The lack of clear motivation in this camera movement immediately puts us on edge, leaving the astounding developments that follow under a cloud of disbelief and apprehension.

This is the film noir atmosphere that Preminger so thoroughly understands and infuses in Laura, gradually destabilising McPherson’s perception of truth and security, though there is also a clearly Hitchcockian leaning to his precision. Much like the master of suspense himself, Preminger’s slow, deliberate camerawork can draw out the painstaking tension of a shot as simple as a door creaking open, inching forward ever so slowly while a clock ticks in the background. As the killer emerges from it and prepares to strike again, their target is listening his disembodied voice read out a poem over a radio broadcast, indirectly describing his own reprehensible motives.

The layers of character work here are impeccable, organically weaving in with the film’s camerawork and blocking so that they may all eventually wind back to that one figure at its centre, whose allure often proves to be more of a curse than a blessing. Whether those forces be good, evil, or purely neutral, even death is no obstacle in their paths to get to Laura.

Laura is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Pedro Almodóvar | 1hr 46min

Like all the best neo-noirs, truth isn’t easy to come by in Bad Education. The way a writer recalls a memory may differ entirely to the artistic rendering of it, and while both might be divorced from reality, unexpected revelations also emerge from the unlikeliest fabrications. This story is further complicated when fraudulent identities come to light, warping the transgressive melodrama of child sexual abuse and corrupt religious authorities into a twisted Hitchcockian tale of murder. Pedro Almodóvar remains as boldly colourful as ever in his patterned wallpapers and vibrant set dressing throughout this film, and yet Bad Education also marks one of his most confident narratives in its leaps between flashbacks, re-enactments, and the present reality.

The reunion of young film director Enrique with old childhood friend Angel (previously known as Ignacio) right in the opening brings with it a torrent of old ghosts from their days at a Catholic boarding school in 1964. The flame that once sparked between them is one such memory, as is Father Manolo, the priest whose molestation of Ignacio is channelled into the screenplay Angel is now asking Enrique to direct, “The Visit.” As Enrique sits down to read it, Almodóvar pulls his camera back from outside the criss-crossed window bars of his apartment, the striking composition punctured by a vivid red lamp sitting on a coffee table, and we dissolve into this smaller story nested within the larger one.

Later when “The Visit” is properly produced as a movie, the production appears almost identical to what we witnessed earlier, minus a few extra dramatisations. Quite ironically though, some of these attempts to embellish the truth wind up closer to reality than expected, and Almodóvar’s great artistic ethos regarding the value of artifice emerges in some of the most acutely affecting moments of Angel and Enrique’s emotional journeys.

It is easy to consistently point to the Douglas Sirk inspiration in virtually everything Almodóvar has ever created, but from film to film there has been significant variation in his influences, and the noirish conspiracy which Bad Education eventually takes a turn towards points quite directly to Double Indemnity. This is the film that two covert lovers and murder accomplices choose to watch to pass time not long after completing their dastardly act. “It’s as if those films are about us,” they fearfully mutter, walking by its poster hanging on a bright orange wall while leaving the theatre. Outside, it is dark and rainy, and Almodóvar fully embraces the noir convention here as his characters descend into paranoia, their relationship beginning to crumble.

It isn’t simply in spite of Almodóvar’s magnificent strokes of colour that Bad Education’s murky noir narrative flourishes, but rather because of it, as it is through his extravagant interiors that these elaborate plot developments become utterly believable. Venetian blinds are very much present here in his backdrops and framing of characters, serving a similar purpose to those more classic entries into the genre in creating an uneasy tension in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, bursts of reds in towels, deck chairs, and ornaments continue to spill forth an intense passion throughout this film, like expressions of the rich, inner lives of its characters. This painstaking curation of mise-en-scène rivals the old masters of cinematic expressionism, though the uniquely Almodóvarian trademarks are all there. Through its dazzling swings of tone, plot, and colour, there is a thrill to picking apart Bad Education’s elaborate representations of truth and fiction, and in its self-referential examinations of these very concepts the Spanish auteur’s lovingly artificial cinematic style feels more at home than ever.

Bad Education is not currently available to stream in Australia.

William Friedkin | 1hr 41min

There is a lot resting on the detective instincts of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. If we had any less faith in his assumptions, he might come off as a far more incompetent character than he is. Even though he proves his resourcefulness right from the very first scene in getting the information he seeks from a suspect, we still harbour some reservations around his methods and the extreme lengths he will often go to. At his loudest and most persistent, he will speed down a busy highway, destroying several cars and risking his own life to hunt down a dangerous assassin, though he is also just as willingly to stand patiently outside in the freezing cold for hours on end, waiting to catch sight of a suspect. There is no spectrum of possibility or effort in his work – everything is either a lead worth following to its bitter end, or not worth his time at all. 

All it takes is one of those hunches for Popeye to latch onto a $32 million shipment of heroin arriving in New York in a few weeks’ times, and then he’s off, spinning himself up in a cat-and-mouse chase with a drug syndicate led by French mobster Alain Charnier. Around them is a vision of America’s most populous city grounded in raw cinematic realism, flooded with stagnant puddles of muddy water and coated in at least a few layers of grime. Working in the same vein as the French auteurs of the 1960s who moved their films beyond artificial studio sets to shoot on location, William Friedkin takes to the streets of New York to capture a level of authenticity that cannot be replicated anywhere else, right down to the steam billowing out from underground vents. Its instantly recognisable cityscape looms tall in backgrounds, and he often washes it in a natural blue light which, while certainly beautiful at times in its softness, more frequently works to encase these detectives and criminals in the harsh frigidity of the New York winter. 

It is also a city of remarkable disparity though, and we can gage a lot about where these cops and criminals stand in how Friedkin works to contrast them in his editing. While Charnier is fine dining with associates in a high-end restaurant, Popeye is staking out the building with his partner, Cloudy, standing outside for hours on end, eating nothing but greasy pizza and coffee. At another point while Charnier stands atop skyscrapers overlooking magnificent views, Popeye remains down on ground level, barely allowing himself any time off the job to relax. Where Charnier’s dialogue is refined and mannered, Popeye proves himself to be a true New Yorker in his fast-talking mix of shouts and mumbles, offering a magnificent Gene Hackman the chance to improvise entire sequences with extraordinary vigour and naturalism.

Where the two sides of this city are bound together is in their incredible intelligence and patience, relying on their wits to outsmart each other in this complex dance of crime and justice. Popeye is methodical in his manipulations, shifting his tactics to either befuddle, intimidate, or give his suspects false confidence depending on what the situation calls for, and though this works for low-level crooks who lack judiciousness and restraint, Charnier makes for a fairly equal match in his crafty machinations. In a sequence of pure tension and visual storytelling, Popeye stalks the mobster through the streets and underground stations of New York, and in Don Ellis’ grumbling staccato underscore of cellos and double basses he accompanies each glimpse of Charnier’s silver umbrella with a metal clang. Friedkin’s editing jumps lightly between both men, matching the movements of their legs as if racing the two against each other, and finally ending this dance when Popeye falls a second behind, letting Charnier make his getaway.

A similar juxtaposition is also set out in one of the greatest car chases committed to film, where we see a hitman run onto a train in the chaotic aftermath of a failed assassination, and Popeye defiantly driving after him beneath an elevated railway. It is a great feat of editing, not just in the fast-moving action of his destructive pursuit along the crowded avenue, but also in the intercutting of his target’s actions on the train, growing steadily more desperate until he commits a fatal error in drawing attention to himself. Friedkin achieves a thrillingly tight balance here, once again pitting Popeye against yet another criminal, though one significantly less competent than Charnier.

Outside these high-intensity scenes of life and death, Popeye is playing a game of patience. The same patience is asked of us in Friedkin’s meticulous teasing out of this narrative, with the inbuilt promise that there will eventually be some sort of reward for it, whether that be a victory for the police or the drug traffickers. It is certainly the case in each stake out, as well as the meticulously detailed sequence of a suspicious car being dismantled part by part to discover where the bags of heroin might be hidden, though it also one that Friedkin turns on us in the film’s final minutes, when we find ourselves waiting for the biggest pay-off of all. As we approach the denouement, Popeye’s success in busting the drug operation is abruptly soured by his own need for personal vengeance, chasing after Charnier through a dilapidated warehouse where he inadvertently shoots and kills a colleague. This might as well be a footnote to the rest of the scene though, as the detective barely stops to ponder his guilt before moving onto the next room over. Meanwhile, the camera hangs back, as if finally exhausted by his stubborn persistence.

In this moment, there is no resounding climax where Popeye or Charnier finally face off and decide who dies. Instead, a series of title cards simply informs us of their relatively unspectacular futures, both making it out alive though with nothing to gain or celebrate. In any earlier era of Hollywood filmmaking, The French Connection might have once drawn out this bitter feud to a poetically fateful ending, though in this thrilling tense narrative of sharp, biting cynicism, Friedkin chooses to finally separate us from Popeye’s obstinate need for closure, and instead allows us to simply sit in the disappointment of his demoralising personal failure.

The French Connection is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Guillermo del Toro | 2hr 20min

There are no supernatural monsters or contemporary fairy tales to be found in Nightmare Alley, though this isn’t exactly a significant change of pace for Guillermo del Toro given the layers of human corruption that underly his grimy, expressionist production design. But where Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water celebrated the fantasies we hold onto at our lowest points, here del Toro indicts them as nothing more than sly manipulations, upholding those power structures which distract us from harsh realities. He has often used historical wars as backdrops to his stories, and here it is World War II that lurks behind the disillusioned American culture on display, transforming it in the ideal environment for an opportunistic con artist like Stanton Carlisle to make a name for himself.

Bradley Cooper’s effortless charm has rarely found a better fit than it does here in the role of this film noir antihero. Stan spits out lies with ease, shifting his accent from a natural Southern drawl to a theatrical, clipped elocution when he is up onstage, but he is also evidently patient in learning his craft. His introduction is surprisingly silent for such a verbose character, as we first meet him burying a dead body in a rural house and burning it down without a word, before taking a job as a carny and quietly observing the work of more experienced performers. The transition between these worlds is sudden, as on his bus ride the lighting suddenly shifts from a warm, yellow glow into a murky green, leading us down a dark path into a strange new setting.

The captivatingly eerie atmosphere that del Toro builds through his delightfully expressionistic mise-en-scène is a wonder to behold, and although it manifests all throughout, from the dim copper lighting of a psychologist’s office to a ghostly, snowy cemetery at night, it is the carnival that proves to be his greatest set of them all. True to the film’s noir influence, rain and lightning pour across this landscape of funhouses, carousels, Ferris wheels, and wooden stages, each one adorned with dim lightbulbs that hazily illuminate the grime and grease. In those moments where Nightmare Alley’s narrative slows down, it is his luxurious cinematography that whisks us away instead, letting us bask in the stunningly moody imagery of the piece.

Perhaps just as dominant yet not quite as immediately apparent is del Toro’s constantly moving camera, traversing these environments with equal parts caution and intrigue. There is always a restlessness to these tracking shots, from longer takes that manoeuvre through the carnival to simple conversations where a push in on a character’s face invites us into their world. Paired with this is a dogmatic dedication to low angles, forcing us to gaze up through wide-angle lenses at these oppressive sets and the shady figures which inhabit them, striking us with a sense of awe and majesty. Even in the establishing shots, del Toro’s horizon is consistently situated right near the bottom of the frame, accentuating the foreboding grey clouds hanging over the carnival.

It is in this unearthly setting where Stan picks up on the rules of mentalism with ease, enthusiastically embracing the “dos” and rejecting the “don’ts”. The first of these codes is a warning against turning performances into spook shows, where one pretends to be in contact with deceased relatives of audience members. The second cautions against falling into the trap of “shut eye”, in which a mentalist begins to believe their own deceptions, blinding themselves to the dangers of exposure. When Stan falls in love with fellow performer Molly and decides to head out into the real world with their own double act, he is all too happy to break the first of these laws, convincing himself that he is offering a valuable service. People are desperate to be told who they are, he reasons, thereby also submitting to a “shut eye” of a different kind, convincing himself that he cannot fail.

Stan’s character development abides quite closely by the traditional film noir protagonist arc, whereby a fatal flaw brings about a downfall written into their destiny from the start, but there is also a wonderful formal consistency in the motif of alcoholism representing a loss of dignity. As far as Stan is concerned, those addicts who are entirely dependent on booze are the lowest form of humanity, and the recurring flashbacks to the first scene progressively reveal little pieces of his past that offer reason to this burning resentment.

Later when he joins up with the carnival, Stan discovers what exactly happens to those people with nowhere left to go, many of them being enlisted as “geeks” who bite the heads off chickens and are kept compliant with a steady supply of moonshine. This is the closest to a classic del Toro “monster” that Nightmare Alley gets, though in mirroring this scene between both ends of this narrative, it achieves a poetic circularity, drawing these bestial qualities back to a very human brand of cruelty. Cooper’s remarkable transformation finally hits with its full astounding weight in the final scenes, leaving us haunted by the prospect that a single man has the potential to carry such extreme multitudes in his being, though perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising. That viciousness has always been inside him. The only difference now is the carnival act through which he publicly expresses it.

Nightmare Alley is currently playing in cinemas.

David Cronenberg | 1hr 55min

It isn’t always easy to commiserate with this tragically co-dependent pair of twin gynaecologists, Elliot and Beverly Mantle, whose inhuman eccentricities prove to be far more than simply character quirks. The steely greys and blues that make up their ice box of an apartment in Dead Ringers effectively ward off such open displays of sensitivity, and if that wasn’t enough, the shockingly aggressive punctuations of red in the mise-en-scène finish the job, creating some truly jarring visual compositions. Given the relative scarcity of Cronenbergian body horror to be found here, it is often these extreme hot and cold colours which end up serving the same purpose that the director’s famously grotesque imagery might usually stand in for, mirroring the twins’ own psychological duality in a striking visual dissonance.

Right from the start of the film, there is an acute discomfort expressed by both Elliot and Beverly towards the human anatomy. Perhaps it comes down to the personal uneasiness they feel with their own bodies, which do not reflect the unity of their souls and psyches. In their minds, the splitting of the zygote in their mother’s womb should have never happened, as the result has created an imbalance in their individual identities – the smooth but cynical Elliot, and the shy, sensitive Beverly. The point and counterpoint in David Cronenberg’s characterisation of these twins makes for a stunning formal achievement, right down to the feminine naming of Beverly reflecting his softer traits in opposition to the callousness of the more masculine Elliot.

In the physical world the twins share virtually everything, from sexual partners to living spaces, and in public they fluidly swap identities like two parts of one man. Visually, it is difficult to tell them apart, though it is remarkable that through Jeremy Irons’ duelling performances we gradually key into the subtle distinctive mannerisms distinguishing them from each other. It might be strange speaking of chemistry between two characters performed by one actor, and yet Irons is utterly convincing in this connection, letting their opposing differences balance out each other to deepen this eerie, spiritual bond.

Indeed, the Mantle twins are two puzzle pieces that fit together almost too well, and in one dream sequence this is literalised in a fleshy bodily protrusion joining them together through their navels, like an overgrown umbilical cord. This harmonious albeit disturbing symbiosis only starts to deteriorate when it is interrupted by a third, exterior force – a woman, who Beverly starts to fall for. It is a transgression beyond the brothers’ boundaries that attacks their minds like a disease, and begins to erode the very foundations of their sanity.

And yet in this wedge being driven between them, there is also an inverse, almost subconscious reaction to counter it. As their dissatisfaction with being separate entities grows stronger, a general frustration with the natural human body similarly intensifies. It has been teased since the very first scene set during their childhood where the two brothers consider the possibility of asexual human reproduction, thus erasing the complexities of sexual intimacy, and maintaining their relationship as a self-contained unit. In the present as Beverly continues to mentally decline, once again does he begin to imagine alternate, mutated versions of the human body.

The bizarrely warped contraptions which he fashions from metal and dubs his “gynaecological instruments” are all part of this delusion, as he conceives of mutated female bodies that he considers more natural than the more regular alternative. As he prepares to operate on an unsuspecting woman using these devices, his red-clad assistants dress him in similarly bright red scrubs, visually transforming him into a pagan priest ready to sacrifice an innocent to some dark god of science and blood. It is in this operating room-turned-chapel that he believes he possesses the power to twist carnal flesh into whatever image he desires, though fortunately for his patient he is torn away before causing any long-lasting harm, maniacally proclaiming his firm belief in the anatomical flaws of the human body.

“There’s nothing the matter with the instrument! It’s the body! The woman’s body was all wrong.”

Such alien contraptions were simply not meant for ordinary humans. The bodies they are designed for are those which are not reflections of the minds trapped inside – some may even call them mutants, as this is certainly how Elliot and Beverly begin to perceive themselves in their deep-seated dysphoria. Together they ponder legend of Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker who died mere hours apart, serving as a devastating ideal towards which they fatefully strive. In turning his surgical instruments on his brother, Elliot is by proxy turning them on himself, and begins to manifest their mental deterioration upon their physical bodies.

Dead Ringers may be a uniquely Cronenbergian film in its visual style and psychological drama, and yet its roots in such literary horrors as Frankenstein and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde provides a strong foundation in Gothic storytelling. Here, the fatal flaw is an inescapable co-dependency, and the result is as tragic as any of its literary influences. In a montage of long dissolves across the Mantles’ chaotic laboratory of bloody instruments and machines as it comes to an end, Cronenberg finally settles on their cold corpses, lying in each other’s arms. In death they are inseparable and indistinguishable, and for the first time since they shared a womb, they are well and truly one.

Dead Ringers is not currently available to stream in Australia.

Sean Baker | 2hr 8min

Red Rocket unfolds over a few weeks set in the summer of 2016, though we don’t need time stamps to tell us this. It is clear enough from the MAGA billboards populating this industrial Texan town, and the television excerpts playing out moments from those Republican and Democratic National Conventions where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton secured their parties’ presidential nominations. Politics is never discussed by any of its characters, though there is a parallel tension in Mikey Saber’s invasion of this working class region. This is his hometown, but he has since shed his Southern accent and sensibilities ever since moving to Los Angeles to find fame as a porn star, and now as he returns with nothing else to fall back on, he sticks out as an unabashed oddity. This is a man on a steady path of self-destruction, though much like the rest of America in 2016, he just doesn’t know it yet.

Sean Baker’s first step outside the realm of neorealist cinema that Tangerine and The Florida Project rigidly abided by is not that huge a leap given the improvisational style of the dialogue and performances, as well as his documentary-style of handheld camerawork. Shot on 16mm with the sort of film grain that gives a rough texture to every shot and that perfectly melds with the natural lighting, Red Rocket is infused with an authenticity that finds the melancholy beauty in the rows of transmission towers, industrial buildings, abandoned storefronts, and empty concrete lots spread all throughout Texas City. To Mikey though, it is a rundown wasteland towards which he holds a quiet disdain, using his boisterous Californian charm to manipulate ex-lovers, neighbours, and strangers into doing his bidding, all with one goal in mind – to get out of this hellhole and back to Los Angeles.

As shameless as this Trumpian con artist often is, the rowdy performance which Simon Rex delivers draws us in with horrified fascination. Mikey’s shtick is transparent to anyone who isn’t a bright-eyed idealist, but just like so many of these characters, we can’t help but hang around and indulge him a little just to see what happens. He carries his history of adult film awards like credentials that will earn immediate respect, and not long after arriving back in Texas he convinces himself that he has found his way back into the good graces of the Hollywood porn industry through a 17-year-old donut shop worker.

Strawberry’s relative naivety makes her a prime target for his grooming. Naivety should not be taken to mean stupidity though, as she proves herself to be more perceptive than Mikey could have ever guessed, even if there is a lack of maturity in her understanding of the world beyond Texas City. The pastel cottage which she lives in stands out in this industrial landscape almost as much as Mikey himself, though even more surprising is her hidden musical talent that adds another layer of tragedy to her exploitation.

The tune she performs on her electric piano is “Bye Bye Bye” by The Backstreet Boys, but this isn’t the only time the piece of music makes an appearance in Red Rocket. This is the one song that makes up the film’s soundtrack, manifesting in different variations that run an undercurrent of humour in its contrast to this stark environment. As such, it also becomes a perfect anthem for Mikey’s show business antics, right up until it spitefully turns on him in the last few minutes of the film.

The hypocrisy of this man who holds anything of substance with such little regard is astounding, as while he is happy to lie and bend truths to his own will, he will also happily chastise those he catches out doing the same, asserting his own moral disgust. Though Baker remains committed to the social realism of the piece, his satire is painted out with great detail and humour in these moments, right down to Mikey’s patriotically star-spangled joints.

Red Rocket may initially feel like a jump back in time to an era when western civilisation didn’t know what was about to hit it, but just as we do not see the outcome of the 2016 election hinted at in the film, we are also led to contemplate where Mikey goes after reaching an all-time low. If the past six years are anything to go off though, we can trust that even after suffering the worst kind of humiliation, he we still continue to find new people to exploit, and news depths to plunge.

Red Rocket is currently playing in theatres.

Alejandro Iñárritu | 2hr 34min

Amores Perros opens in media res with a car speeding through the streets of Mexico, a wounded dog bleeding to death in the backseat, and a yellow truck right on its tail. At this point in time, we know nothing about the men in the front seat, Octavio and Jorge – who they are, where they have come from, or where they are going. And then all of a sudden, just as we get our bearings in this frenzied chase, there is glass shattering, metal splintering, and smoke filling the air.

The places that Alejandro Iñárritu takes his debut film from here goes far beyond the immediate questions we might have about this car accident. Its effects spread out to strangers from across class boundaries, and bit by bit a landscape of violence, disloyalty, and abuse begins to form in this urban ecosystem of decay and moral depravity.

Though it is structured around three separate narrative threads, Amores Perros is not as rigidly segmented as one might initially assume. Iñárritu certainly makes good use of titles bearing the names of his characters to open new chapters where our focus dramatically shifts, but bits and pieces of each plotline also obtrusively bleed into the others. In the first, “Octavio y Susana” which follows an affair between a man and his sister-in-law, it is not immediately clear who the haggard, bearded man is that pursues and kills a stranger without hesitation, nor do we understand why Iñárritu keeps cutting to Daniel, a magazine publisher cheating on his wife with a supermodel. In time, the justification for the inclusion of both will be revealed in their own chapters, within which Octavio and Susana will appear in reduced capacity. But for now these two subplots remain unsolved mysteries, running beneath a more dominant narrative set in a working-class neighbourhood and an underground dog fighting ring.

When it comes to those depictions of animal abuse, Amores Perros proves itself to be a particularly confronting experience. Sure, there is a lot of vicious imagery to flinch at all across the board, especially in one shot where Iñárritu’s camera closes in tightly on a splash of fresh blood aggressively sizzling across an open grill. But the torture which is continuously inflicted upon dogs through all two and a half hours of its run time is truly testing, and much of the moral substance of these characters can be gaged by who we see inflicting it, who is trying to fight it, and who can do nothing but simply empathise with their pain.

In Octavio’s decision to let his dog, Cofi, fight another, Daniel’s choice to leave Valeria’s dog trapped beneath the floorboards, and her selfless attempts to rescue it, we witness this running metaphor become the source of some brilliant character work. Especially when considering canines not just as representations of innocence, but also as symbols of loyalty, a broader picture begins to form of a city that places such little value in any of these, with affairs and betrayals running rampant in virtually every relationship.

In reflecting this urban hellhole, the grittiness of Iñárritu’s rapid-fire editing and grainy visual style feels almost entirely inverse to those films from later in his career, Birdman and The Revenant. Both those movies flow smoothly in long takes even as they wrestle with similarly existential questions and, in the case of The Revenant, viscerally violent imagery. The masterclass of filmmaking in Amores Perros is of an entirely different kind though, in which he presents us with an environment of utter chaos, and then dedicates himself to sorting through the madness to find some sense in it. A skilful balance and wide scope is achieved not just in editing between each of the three main storylines, but even in the skilful parallel cutting contained within these individual strands, contrasting Octavio and Susana’s affair with the one her husband, Ramiro, is simultaneously conducting with a co-worker.

Through these constant juxtapositions between plot threads, Iñárritu constructs a pattern of deterioration brought about by selfishness and cruelty, which continues to reverberate outwards. Even Valeria, one of our most noble characters, is not immune to this, as her efforts to counteract Daniel’s malice simply worsens her condition, right up until she hits rock bottom with a leg amputation, cutting short her illustrious modelling career. In poignant correspondence, her perfume ads stuck up high on billboards around the city are similarly torn down, her fall from grace writ large in this wretched environment.

And then as Amores Perros reaches its finale act, “El Chivo y Maru”, there is an unexpected shift in Iñárritu’s pattern in the place we least expect. Where Octavio and Valeria are involved in the car crash out of pure bad luck, hitman El Chivo is simply a witness, and chooses to involve himself in rescuing Cofi from the wreckage. The bond that forms between the two is unlike any other human-pet relationship we have seen yet. Like El Chivo, Cofi has been trained to kill, though it is not in his nature – it is a learned instinct as a result of an environment that has told him it is the only way to survive.

From the great sorrow that El Chivo feels for this corrupted creature there emerges an indignant anger, but also a huge amount of remorse. Unlike Valeria, his deliberate reaction against the decay of the world is not directed outwards in attempts to fix it, but rather inwards to his soul, so that he may fix that which is broken in his own life. After all, it is from there that we have seen reverberations ripple outwards, dictating the paths of lives beyond these characters’ immediate understandings. And with just one extra force of goodness out there in this city, Iñárritu pensively leaves us with some shred of hope for its future.

Amores Perros is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon Video.