Around the hair-raising cat-and-mouse chase between detective Popeye Doyle and French mobster Charnier, William Friedkin constructs a gritty vision of New York City flooded with stagnant puddles and coated in at least a few layers of grime, melding narrative and setting to deliver a biting, authentically cynical crime thriller in The French Connection.
The captivatingly eerie atmosphere that Guillermo del Toro builds through his delightfully expressionistic aesthetic in his psychological thriller Nightmare Alley is a wonder to behold, luring us into a haunting underworld of carnies, con artists, and psychics in 1940s America.
Given the relative scarcity of body horror to be found in Dead Ringers, it is often David Cronenberg’s compositions of extreme hot and cold colours which instead build out a world of severe psychological distress, using this striking visual dissonance to mirror the co-dependent duality of the Mantle twins who begin a slow, mental decline when their inexorable bond comes under threat.
In Mikey Saber, a charismatic, manipulative ex-pornstar on a steady path of self-destruction, Sean Baker paints out a perfect image of vapid coastal elitism shamelessly pre-empting a victory that will never manifest, as well as an authentic foundation for the social satire that Red Rocket conducts with great humour.
Within a remarkably ambitious narrative structure exploring the collision of three strangers’ lives in a devastating car crash, Alejandro Iñárritu dedicates Amores Perros to sorting through the subsequent chaos, its violent effects rippling outwards in an urban ecosystem of disloyalty, cruelty, and decay.
After two pairs of men and women suffer strikingly similar twists of fate in Talk to Her, twin storylines of comatose hospital patients and their carers intertwine, through which Pedro Almodovar’s expressive melodramatic touch offers a sensitive, complex examination of the thin line dividing love and obsession.
In the sleepy, yellow glow that bathes this small, 1970s Michigan town in the sentimentality of nostalgia, Sofia Coppola might initially seem to be participating in the patriarchal worship of the Lisbon sisters, but it is in those moments where they are brought down to earth as humans looking for connection that The Virgin Suicides evolves into a poignant recognition of pain, longing, and overwhelming grief.
Just as Richard Williams is patient with his young daughters, Serena and Venus, so too is director Reinaldo Marcus Green patient with him in this character study of holistic mentorship, peeling back the layers of a father whose guidance of two future star tennis players is both frustratingly stubborn and gently self-assured.
Brian de Palma’s dizzying, suspenseful style works perfectly in tandem with an absorbing narrative of neo-noir conspiracies in Blow Out, delivering a thrilling interrogation of uniquely American political corruption, and the power of modern media to both cover up and expose its lies.
As movie director Sandy Bates sorts through the onslaught of scathing criticisms and bizarre requests from his fans, existential questions of life, fame, and art arise in comically surreal contemplations, effectively marking Stardust Memories as Woody Allen’s most autobiographical film to date.
