Category: 1980s

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.

Brian de Palma | 1hr 48min

Less than a decade after newspaper journalists exposed the Watergate scandal, and almost two decades after the Zapruder film became an immortal reference point for the endless probing of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Brian de Palma’s Blow Out examined the growing power of evolving media technologies to expose government-toppling truths. Of course, there are all the usual de Palma watermarks present – gorgeous split diopters, point-of-view tracking shots, dizzying 360-degree camera pans, and a suspenseful, absorbing narrative. But the Hitchcock acolyte has rarely used all of these so perfectly and in tandem with thoughtful colour compositions to deliver such a thrilling interrogation of a uniquely American brand of political corruption.

When sound technician Jack Terry is out searching one night for sound effects to use in his latest movie, his accidental recording of a political assassination literally lands him in deeper water than he had anticipated. Two other tight-lipped witnesses are present at the incident, and Jack’s romantic interest in one of them, Sally, pulls him even further into an underworld of conspiracies and dirty, murderous politics. 
  
In an early scene before the incident, we watch Jack framed in a split screen working on a slasher film, while the broadcast television news plays on the other half of the frame. Two types of stories are being created simultaneously here – one aiming for escapism, the other aiming to inform – and yet as Blow Out progresses there is a sly inversion that takes place. Later as Jack returns to his studio with his recorded evidence, we spend a great deal of time sitting with him as he rewinds, slows down, and marks the audio tape, his artistic methods becoming a meticulous, painstaking search for truth. Meanwhile, the news media covers the event as a freak accident, maintaining the happy illusion that American politics operate on an honourable code of integrity.

Like so many other directors before and after him, de Palma keeps coming back to a red, white, and blue scheme as a representation of his nation’s proud colours. It is there in the décor of a motel room’s bold, patterned wallpaper and the floats of a street parade, but it is even more dominant in his lighting, as it dimly illuminates a bar where Jack and Sally flirt, and later bathes a dingy parking lot in the glow of neon signs. 

But it is in Blow Out’s climax where de Palma combines these patriotic primary colours with some of his most suspenseful editing in a slow-motion chase, and thereby delivers perhaps the greatest set piece of his career. The masses celebrating Liberty Day are unwittingly cast as worshippers at the altar of a giant, American flag, where the political establishment viciously sacrifices its most recent victim in the name of protecting their own interests. De Palma’s camera dramatically circles around Jack as he cradles a deceased Sally in his arms, the parade’s red and blue fireworks simultaneously lighting him up and drowning his anguish in a dazzling display of nationalistic spectacle. 

The tragedy of Jack’s loss comes with his devastating recognition that recorded evidence alone is not enough to expose the bedrock of innocent blood upon which America’s flag-waving “freedom” is built. Media certainly holds some influence in Blow Out, but the truth is easily concealed by mainstream news sources who work alongside the political establishment. Sally’s murderer, the “Liberty Bell Strangler”, is only ever spoken of as some sort of un-American aberration, though of course the cruel irony is that those people who condemn him also rely on his brutal actions to uphold their blissfully ignorant privileges. Those like Jack who survive encounters with such men simply wind up with nothing but the ultimate curse of knowledge – understanding the truth, but incapable of wielding it in any practical way, other than pouring it into their own indulgent, escapist fabrications.

Blow Out is currently available to rent or buy on the Microsoft Store.

Woody Allen | 1hr 29min

He was ten movies deep into his career built on neurotic comedy, riding a wave of popularity defined by his resounding successes Annie Hall and Manhattan, and then Woody Allen made this – a scathingly existential and autobiographical deconstruction of fame and artistic purpose, which came and went in the eyes of the public with little fanfare. Stardust Memories was not what people were expecting from him at the time, though years later he would claim it as his best work, and steadily its reputation has begun to approach its deserved status as one of his most accomplished films.

In its early scenes one might draw comparisons to Sullivan’s Travels in the framing of a comedic director looking to work on something a little more serious and sombre than his traditional fare, though Allen himself has noted he had not seen the Preston Sturges film at the time of making this. A far more apt parallel is Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, not just in its self-referential subject matter, but in its suffocatingly surreal string of images working to trap an overwhelmed director in a culture that has its own mind made up about his life’s trajectory.

And much like the traffic jam scene that opens 8 ½, the first scene of Stardust Memories sticks its own lonely director, Sandy Bates, in a crowded, inescapable vehicle, introducing the underlying metaphor that runs through the rest of the film. As he sits on a train waiting to depart the station, he catches the eye of a woman on a neighbouring carriage, who flirtatiously kisses the window in his direction. The passive, zombie-like stares of his fellow passengers burn into him as he hammers at the doors and windows, trying to reach that woman, all the while the train whisks him away from the target of his yearning desire.

It is clear who these nameless, expressionless men and women are meant to stand in for once we properly delve into the film’s narrative. All around Sandy, fans and journalists clamour over him with bizarre requests, questions, and statements, most of which are impossible to respond to. One man hands him a script his son wrote intended to be a “spoof on jockeys.” Another claims that he “can prove that if there’s life anywhere in the universe they will have a Marxist economy,” with remarkable confidence. “I was a Caesarian,” yet another states quite plainly. “That’s great,” replies Sandy. What else is there to say, really?

Allen continues to return to his first person POV shots all through these scenes, filling them with overzealous crowds peering enthusiastically right down the lens. Even beyond the masses of people, the overwhelming architecture of the Stardust Hotel continues to dominate compositions and obstruct characters, in one scene blocking Sandy out entirely as a man shakes hand protruding from behind a wall.

Allen’s collaboration with cinematographer Gordon Willis has always been an important one, but here in Stardust Memories it is absolutely key to the diminution of Sandy’s stature beneath this constant onslaught of chaos, as well as the slightly more expressionistic divorce from reality than his typical black-and-white film. The subtle darkness of the narrative manifests intermittently throughout the film in the empty silhouettes of its characters, as well as at one point in a montage of critics delivering scathing reviews set against pitch black backgrounds. Sadly, the answers that Sandy craves are not to be found here.

It is rather in the surreal blend of life and art, whereby one represents a larger, heightened version of the other, that he strives to find a common purpose in both. At least in the various women who come and go in Sandy’s life (perhaps mirroring the women of La Dolce Vita) he finds some companionship and understanding. In a flashback to his meeting of a previous lover, Dorrie, he spots her standing isolated beneath a large, overbearing mural, both overshadowed by and reflected in the art around her. Instantly, he recognises a shared pain between them.

In more comedic moments, formal boundaries of narrative logic are pushed to great effect, as in one scene that may or may not come from one of Sandy’s movies where he encounters a group of aliens, and poses them grand philosophical mysteries which they cannot answer. It is ultimately when he arrives at his most pressing question about himself that his own position in a meaningless universe begins to take form.

“If nothing lasts why am I bothering to make films or do anything, for that matter?”

“We enjoy your films, particularly the early, funny ones.”

Perhaps this is what provides the motivation for the final few minutes of the film then, in which personal and professional fulfilment meld together in a reflection of the opening scene, though this time with Sandy willingly riding the train in whatever direction it takes him. Suddenly we cut to a movie theatre audience applauding, having just watched everything we did, and in a starkly contrasted response to their earlier disparaging reactions there at least seems to be more thoughtful discussions.

There may be a slightly capitulation to populist sentiment in Sandy’s creation, though it is somewhat ironic that Stardust Memories is clearly not a film dedicated to audiences looking for easy entertainment. For those artists such as Sandy who place at least part of their self-worth in how much they are loved, the act of creation implies a question of who it is for – a question which Allen beautifully draws out with surreal, contemplative devotion to the act itself.

Stardust Memories is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Woody Allen | 1hr 47min

If Annie Hall was Woody Allen’s most experimentally formal film in its boundlessly creative self-reflexivity, Hannah and Her Sister’s structural ambition acts as a counterpoint to that in its far more naturalistic and composed approach, unfolding like chapters of a novel. The decades of history behind the dysfunctional family relationships that swirl around Mia Farrow’s titular Hannah feel tangible in their organic interactions, and although she is the link through which each narrative thread of this film comes together, she is not our focus. Instead, Allen shifts our attention to three other characters around her – her cheating husband Elliot, her hypochondriacal ex-husband Mickey, and her chaotic, formerly drug addicted sister Holly. Just as her self-absorbed relatives take her bountiful generosity for granted, so too does Allen relegate her own personal issues to the background of each story arc, wrapping us up in the internal voiceovers of men and women who can only perceive the world through their own narrowed perspectives, passing us from one to the next like batons in a race that each character is running only for themselves.

In its bookends of two Thanksgiving parties set 24 months apart, Hannah and Her Sisters is marked by those family gatherings where relatives who might barely see each other throughout the year converge and share in moments of unity, though evidently here that comfort is only found by those willing to open themselves up to lives beyond their own. As Allen’s camera idly drifts around this upscale New York apartment at either end of this narrative, we see these important players brought together in one space, their personal arcs laid out clearly by the contrasting dynamics of both celebrations.

Of course, it is Hannah who is responsible for running these events, remaining the one constant in the lives of those around her who fluctuate and change. This image of poise and altruism that she projects may stir some gratefulness on occasion, but it also inspires insecurity. “I need someone I can matter to,” whines Elliot when reflecting upon the growing distance between him and his seemingly perfectly wife. Worsening the situation is that his secret lover is Lee, another of Hannah’s sisters, whose abuse of her sibling’s trust just piles onto the stack of characters who cannot reconcile their love for her with their own sense of value. She might agree with Elliot that “It’s hard to be around someone who gives so much and needs so little in return”, but it is barely a reasonable excuse for either of their philandering. Even so, it remains quite extraordinary that in Michael Caine’s performance we can still find sympathy for this kind of egocentric self-doubt.

Meanwhile in Mickey’s storyline we find a man wading through the murky philosophical waters of existentialism and mortality, his apprehensive medical check-ups played out in comical montages of contraptions and wires winding all over his body. Like Elliot, he too is plagued by insecurities that overwhelm his own perception of reality, in one scene hallucinating his doctor’s sombre delivery of the news that he has cancer, right before the doctor actually walks in and informs him that he is clear. In one harsh cut, he leaps out onto the streets of New York, dancing with glee to the tune of loud band music, before suddenly stopping dead in his tracks as he nihilistically reminds himself that he will still die one day.

Driven by his mid-life crisis to find the answers to life’s big questions, Mickey considers converting to different religions as casually as one might research a holiday destination, though it is only when he embraces the unknowability of his existential queries and when his story collides with Holly’s that he finds his way back into the folds of the family as a place of acceptance. She lives perhaps the messiest life of anyone else here, moving between acting, a catering business, and television writing, and struggling to find success in any of these ventures. It is clear in her thoughtless use of Hannah’s personal life as a subject for her screenplay that like the others, she doesn’t give much regard to her sister’s feelings, though in finally turning her pen inwards in self-examination she finds both love and professional success with Mickey.

Through the complex tapestry of vignettes, flashbacks, and plot threads that make up Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen keeps returning to chapter breaks and philosophical quotes, structuring the film like a piece of literature concerned with the bearing of human thought and ethics on small lives. “The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless,” Allen’s text displays, quoting Tolstoy as a means to contextualise Mickey’s search for purpose, while titles like “The Abyss”, “The Audition”,and “The Big Leap” mark new episodes over the two years this story is set across. Allen further splits up his characters by associating them with specific musical genres, underscoring Elliot’s scenes with opera, Mickey’s with jazz, and revealing Holly’s love of rock in one particular flashback that also divulges it as a historical point of conflict between her and Mickey.

Even with such fantastic formal ambition in its divisions, Hannah and Her Sisters flows remarkably smoothly in its organic character drama and dialogue. When all three sisters meet for lunch in a brief collision of plot threads, Allen fluidly circles his camera around their table, letting Hannah and Holly converse over the latter’s career struggles while focusing predominantly on a silent, guilty Lee. Back at home, their discussions and volatile arguments move through different rooms of the apartment, and Allen’s camera continues to pan and drift along with them, framing these family members in doorways and against walls that confine them to claustrophobic spaces. Through their quarrels there is seemingly always some domestic chore or task for them to perform, maintaining that impression of a world beyond their own immediate issues, while keeping up a restless energy in their ongoing interactions.

How fascinating it is though that in this ensemble of magnificently complex and flawed characters, the one who we might assume would be the lead is the least developed of them all. She too might have her own hilarious and poignant anecdotes to tell, but Hannah and Her Sisters is primarily intrigued by those more selfish lives which branch out from her own, undergoing emotional arcs that come to decisive resolutions. For someone as kind and giving as Hannah, whose life is dedicated to the endless pursuit of helping others, a tidy, gratifying ending is simply an unfathomable prospect.

Hannah and Her Sisters is available to rent or buy on iTunes.

Woody Allen | 1hr 22min

The story of The Purple Rose of Cairo is so simple it might as well be a fairy tale, or perhaps a fable for twentieth century America. In such dire times as the Great Depression when jobs were being lost and poverty was widespread, the escapism of the movie theatre could let that all fade away for a few hours. Down-on-her-luck waitress Cecilia is no exception. Hollywood gossip is her matter of expertise, and the cinema is where she falls into a dreamy daze, consumed by fantasies acted out by stars who never acknowledge her in return. That is at least until she catches the eye of archaeologist Tom Baxter, a character from the other side of the silver screen. All of a sudden he is walking out of the frame and into reality, much to the shock of her fellow theatre patrons and his fellow movie characters.

At this point in Woody Allen’s career, The Purple Rose of Cairo was about as childishly whimsical as he had gotten, but as much as he indulges in the fanciful imagination of the piece he is also in complete control of this delicate balance of conflicting tones. It is namely the incongruities between reality and fantasy that come to a head as Cecilia herself tries to sort one from the other, painfully considering how she can live a life of bright idealism while trapped in an abusive marriage. The touching vulnerability that Mia Farrow summons up in this role is of an entirely different kind to that which she displayed in Rosemary’s Baby. It is both naïve and disillusioned, seeing the world as it is yet choosing to turn away from it to absorb another where people are “consistent and always reliable.” How crushingly magnificent she is as well in simply sitting and letting her reactions tell entire stories, moving between smiles and tears as Allen dreamily dissolves between her face and the movie screen, forming a bond between the two that cannot be destroyed by anything that happens outside that darkened room.

But at the end of each movie session the lights inevitably turn back on and Cecilia must once again return to a life where happy endings are rare, and where the most one can really hope for is a bittersweet reconciliation with misfortune. As she discovers, the idealism of fiction can provide an aspirational standard that may inspire positive values and self-confidence, but this is not always enough to wrestle with any issues of real substance. “Where’s the fade out?” Tom asks as he and Cecilia begin to kiss passionately, unfamiliar with a world where sex is not simply implied. His chivalry and romance are certainly desirable, but his claims that he only possesses those since they were “written into my character” suggest that anything that was not instilled in him at conception is not something he can grow to understand.

In this self-aware layering of film conventions within other film conventions, Allen’s comedic writing and directing is simply superb, and demonstrative of the depth of his talent even when not crafting an all-time great screenplay such as Annie Hall. Fourth walls are broken in the most literal manner possible, characters within the ‘fake’ movie reference their own artificial existence, and then every so often he punctures the lightness of the story with a stab of black comedy, addressing the potentially disastrous consequences of both real and fictional worlds meeting. As we learn at one point, the black-and-white characters up on the movie screen are damned back to an empty void of nothingness each time the projector is turned off, and in a narrative twist further along the actor who plays Tom also gets tied up in the farce, complicating the matter with cases of mistaken identity.

This rather simple premise doesn’t outstay its welcome either, as within the film’s brief 82-minute run time Allen keeps the narrative moving in exciting directions, turning his lovingly stylistic construction of a classical black-and-white Hollywood movie into a transgressive artistic choice when the fourth wall is spun around and Cecilia enters Tom’s fictional world. The film grain and slightly tinny sound quality is authentically rendered in detail, but even greater is the montage of their “night out on the town” that affectionately plays into silent film techniques in tremendous ways, creating gorgeously layered collages through multiple exposures. The Purple Rose of Cairo is just as much an ode to the world of movies and moviemaking as it is a fable warning against the temptation to use them as a replacement for living, though it is through its intelligent, enthusiastic screenplay and one of Farrow’s most touchingly sweet screen performances that it transcends its already imaginative premise.

The Purple Rose of Cairo is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Terence Davies | 1hr 25min

Memories flow like water in Distance Voices, Still Lives, swirling around in the basin of human thought, gliding from one to the next through intuitive connections and tangents. Its plotlessness should not be mistaken for a lack of form, as Terence Davies effectively builds visual and thematic motifs based around cultural tradition which run through almost every scene. Chief among them is his use of tableaus, many of which bear striking resemblance to those composed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, in which groups of characters stand or sit in structured formations without making eye contact. This lack of connection hints at an isolation between them, yet the flashbacks these images segue into illustrate the equally traumatic and nostalgic memories which bind them all together.

Distant Voices, Still Lives is also heavily autobiographical for Davies, who paints a moving portrait of a working-class family in wartime and post-war Britain. In troubled times, their community gathers at the local pub to savour the few scraps of escapism that they can conjure. Alcohol is an important part of this, especially beverages such as ‘rum and pep’ and ‘mackies’, names which almost seem as if they belong to an entirely foreign dialect.

Even more important than the drinking culture is the songs they sing in moments of quiet reflection and boisterous joviality, ranging from folk to jazz standards. As many of these characters lack formal education they are not especially eloquent with their words, and so it is rather through their soulful renditions of popular, period-appropriate music that they communicate their deepest feelings, even as they hear the bombing of their city outside.

Though the quaint mannerisms and habits of these characters belong to a different era, there is a universality to the complexity of their pain. The first half of this film, titled Distant Voices, opens on the funeral of the Davies family’s patriarch. While his wife and children grieve, they simultaneously recognise the conflicted emotions that come as a result of their loss.

In flashbacks we see dimensions of the man who could not possibly be captured in a five-minute eulogy. He was troubled, angry, and abusive, clearing preferring one of his daughters above his other children. But at times, there was a sensitivity that shone through when he thought no one was watching. The children would climb up to the stable loft just to get a glimpse of him content, singing to himself as he brushed the horses. It is the small moments like these that linger decades later, leaving the impression that these memories aren’t long forgotten tales, but are rather just as vivid as the present day. The cumulative effect of each recollection continues building to form a nuanced, poetic impression of the Davies family as a whole.

The second half of the film, Still Lives, was filmed two years after the first and moves past the funeral, opening with the baptism of Eileen’s baby girl and ending with Tony’s wedding. While the rest of Distant Voices, Still Lives is made up of small, seemingly insignificant memories, the events that are considered truly consequential are religious ceremonies, emphasised further by their placement at the start, midpoint, and conclusion of the film. These Catholic traditions are the bedrock of the family’s faith, giving them a sense of stability through life’s harshest trials. Towards the end, a gorgeous composition of black umbrellas huddled together in the rain reflects the Davies family’s own ethos in a single image, collectively keeping the woes of life at bay through their tight formation.

Distant Voices, Still Lives moves so seamlessly with match cuts, long dissolves, and fades to white that it is easy to wind up lost in its timeline, not realising where the past stops and the present begins. This smooth editing, paired with Davies’ immaculate frames, brings a photobook quality to the film, blending the family’s memories to the point that we stop caring about their chronological order. Instead, all there is left for us to do is lose ourselves in this nostalgic, poetic ode to the love and struggles of Davies’ old-fashioned, working-class family.

Distant Voices, Still Lives is currently available to stream on Tubi.

Martin Scorsese | 1hr 37min

There is a version of After Hours which might play out more as a straight farce or screwball comedy, as we follow corporate yuppie Paul Hackett along a twisted journey through a bad night that only keeps getting worse. He has two simple objectives in mind: get home, and, if he can find the time for it, get laid. He wanders through the apartments, clubs, and streets of New York, ingratiating himself with strangers who might offer him solutions to one or both of his goals, though oftentimes when we get our hopes up, they are quickly dashed by some extraordinary turn of events, each one more utterly absurd than the last. After Hours is truly Kafkaesque down to the very fabric of its premise, dragging us through an oppressive nightmare that erodes our faith in a chaotic universe that only ever cooperates with itself at the worst possible times.

But Martin Scorsese’s pointed critique is not aimed at some metaphysical force that exists entirely beyond the control of humans. This trap which Paul has worked himself into is one devised by industrial America, setting up an inefficient system that rejects nuanced judgement in favour of clumsy, automated assumptions. Of course, much of After Hours takes place outside the sterile offices where such bureaucracies are created, but beyond those walls, corporate culture continues to shape urban life in its own awful likeness. It is omnipresent and inescapable, even when the lights are turned off and everybody has left the building. For Paul, there is no existence outside work – there is simply eight hours of soul-sucking fatigue, and then another sixteen hours of the same thing.

As such, it isn’t the setting of New York that feels like its own character so much as it is the society, made up of artists, bartenders, businessmen, cab drivers, and burglars. The extent to which coincidences underlie each of Paul’s interactions with these people is rigidly formal in its development, as unrelated misunderstandings and minor accidents from early on later interweave in a series of increasingly unlucky diversions, to the point that it isn’t just the whims of fate holding Paul back from getting home, but the active efforts of an angry mob operating under the misguided belief that he is a criminal who must be brought to justice. Even as After Hours traverses dark territory including suicide and drugs, Scorsese’s screenplay remains wickedly funny, particularly as Paul grows self-aware of his own ridiculous situation, and at one point, after witnessing an entirely unrelated murder, bleakly muses:

“I’ll probably get blamed for that.”

Early on a horrific plaster sculpture evoking Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ is used to foreshadow the sort of torment nightmare that awaits Paul, but by the end of the film this comparison is fully literalised as a shell within which Paul is trapped, unable to move, speak, or even scream out in pain. It should be no surprise that the woman who moulds this sculpture around him is just another false ally in a long line of them, and yet her betrayal does pack an extra sting given the moment of tender understanding the two shared. “I just want to live,” he tells her honestly, cutting through the miasma of confusion that pervades the streets of New York outside the bar where they slow dance to Peggy Lee’s hauntingly existential rendition of ‘Is That All There Is?’

The subtext is potent all through the film, but in this moment as Paul becomes objectified in the most literal sense of the word, Scorsese’s metaphors rise to the surface in an overwhelming wave, washing over and incapacitating the young upstart. It only makes sense that with his eventual escape from his physical encasement comes the rising sun, and an all too convenient drop-off out the front of his workplace just as his colleagues file in. With no other choice but to sit back down at his desk and start another day of work, he remains a feeble commodity, lacking any ability to achieve his most basic personal goals. In a mirror of the very first shot, Scorsese’s camera hurtles through the office at a breakneck pace, frantically turning corners with no destination in sight, damning Paul back into the crowd of suits he came from. There is no end to the modern-day nightmare that After Hours so dismally paints out – it is defined by the absence of anything that gives life meaning, isolating Paul in a limbo with no partner, no friends, and no home.

After Hours is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Michael Mann | 2hr 2min

As an urban parable constructed out of criminal archetypes and moral dilemmas, Thief does not present us with an overly complicated narrative, and yet it is in this relative simplicity that Michael Mann provides a compelling canvas upon which he maps out a neo-noir world of clean-cut, towering skyscrapers and dingy neon clubs. In the light of day, thieves and gangsters run their criminal fronts inconspicuously, scoping out the architecture and layout of the city from a distance, formulating their covert schemes. And then each night when a cloak of darkness is thrown over the sprawling metropolis and the dim, downtown lights flicker on, these men silently gather to execute their plots with meticulous precision, their apparent insomnia fuelling both a bleary-eyed fatigue and a hyper-alert, mental focus.

Mann’s commitment to expressing both these psychological states in his patient editing and moody lighting in dark environments is beyond remarkable – it is the stylistic lynchpin upon which this morose, unpredictable world is fleshed out in all its complexity. His dedication to soaking the city streets between each take so that the neon signs, street lamps, and car headlights would bounce off its wet surfaces pays off massively in its aesthetic impact, giving the tarmac a metallic sheen much like the reflective windows and cars of the city. The radiance of these lights doesn’t go terribly far, but they do illuminate the grime of their surrounding environments which might otherwise go unnoticed under the bright light of the sun.

Meanwhile, the mesmerising pulses and drones of Tangerine Dream’s 80s synths fill the soundtrack with an electronic ambience, pulling us into the same groggy, sleep-deprived state of exhaustion that haunts these characters. Perhaps this dark, mangy setting is a result of the people who inhabit it, or perhaps they have been shaped by the sordid, corrupt cityscape of Chicago – but either way both are crooked extensions of each other.

Caught up in the centre of this world is Frank, an ex-convict who, like the rest of his associates, is a total professional when it comes to conducting high-stakes jewel heists. He is loud and brash, and yet he possesses a dissatisfied, unresolved tension between his hyper-intense lifestyle and his desire to settle down with a wife and kids.

On one hand, he knows he is good at what he does. One can’t help but be reminded of the heist from John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle in the sheer focus and precision of these sequences, as Mann similarly details each intricate step, displaying the precariously thin line that is drawn between success and total failure. The editing is also thoughtfully paced here, emphasising the laser-focused expertise which pierces through the fatigue of their world. Even later when Frank’s activity takes a louder, more violent turn, his concentration doesn’t sway from the task at hand, as explosions and shootouts are drawn out in stunning slow-motion.

And then there is his relationship with Jessie. “I don’t mix apples and oranges,” he states matter-of-factly, believing he can compartmentalise such disparate areas of his life. But the darkness of the world outside is consuming, continuing to remain in the background during a pivotal conversation in a diner roughly a third of the way through where he commits to a life with his lover. This proves to be anything but a clean-cut break.

The direction that Thief goes in would return in later films as a major fascination of Mann’s, but here in his debut his artistic voice comes out bold and fully-formed, a rarity for any first-time filmmaker. In his examinations of the battle between law and crime that rages on inside the psyches of morally grey men, crowded urban spaces play an important role as settings for such characters to gather and conduct their schemes. In a more hopeful film, one might optimistically think that these environments could even inspire some form of comradeship. And yet as Mann sketches out so poignantly here in Thief, sprawling cities are not conducive to such healthy lifestyles. To escape these haunting metropolitan landscapes might bring some peaceful resolution, but such an effort may very well destroy you first.

Thief is currently streaming on Stan and The Criterion Channel.

Spike Lee | 2hr

On a sweltering summer day in a tight-knight Brooklyn community, tensions are brewing. A small argument erupts between pizza deliverer Mookie and his girlfriend, Tina. Police patrol cars coast slowly down the main road, suspiciously eyeing off a Greek chorus of middle-aged men who casually philosophise about the world around them. Mookie’s verbose friend, Buggin’ Out, takes issue with the Italian-focused ‘Wall of Fame’ at the local pizzeria for its lack of African-American representation. Many of the conflicts we witness spark into embers, but are quickly doused by diplomacy or mutually silent disdain. But by the end of the one day which much of Do the Right Thing takes place over, some of these fires will spread through the community, continuing to escalate with neither side backing down. It certainly doesn’t help that this is the hottest day of the year, as almost every character present in Spike Lee’s ensemble seeks out shade or water to escape the burning sun. And with Lee himself stoking the flames in his frenzied cinematography and intensely warm colours, an all-consuming, fiery conclusion only seems inevitable.

Though controversy that has frequently accompanied Lee’s public appearances and films over the past thirty years, there is little that has topped the controversy that was ignited by Do the Right Thing upon its release at Cannes Film Festival in 1989. It is important to recognise though that his major breakthrough is as brazenly artistic as it is political, confidently wading into the murky waters of morality to pick apart the frustratingly tricky details of what “the right thing” actually is when it comes to addressing the horrific injustices perpetuated by the police on Black citizens.

For a film that deals with such complex issues as these, Do the Right Thing is surprisingly unafraid of indulging in humour. In fact, one might compare its first two acts to a Shakespearean comedy, complete with an ensemble of vibrant characters who trade barbs, play with contemporary slang, and deliver off-the-cuff soliloquys, with each one taking ownership of their role and status in this community.

Da Mayor, the cheery town drunk, is wiser than he appears, and gradually works his way into the heart of Mother Sister, a peevish woman who watches the world go by from her apartment window. Sal, the owner of the local pizzeria, is one of the few white men living in this predominantly Black suburb, but carries out his work with pride even as he mediates tensions between his bigoted sons and clientele. The mentally disabled Smiley walks around town selling pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Radio Raheem carries a portable radio blasting “Fight the Power” wherever he goes, local DJ Señor Love Daddy is our narrator providing a running commentary from his broadcast studio – this community is alive and breathing, and Lee doesn’t hold back in his unabashed visual experimentations that turn even ordinary brownstone apartments into bright red architectural expressions of urban living.

At times, long tracking shots move between close-ups and wide shots of city streets, keeping an energetic momentum in the movement of Lee’s camera, but then just as we feel we have tuned into this pacing, we jump into montages and conversations made up of harsh cuts between canted angles coming from every direction. Even on the rare occasion that the camera is completely static for long stretches, there is always movement in the shot, whether it is the rotating shadow cast by a ceiling fan over an intimate encounter between Mookie and Tina, or character interactions spread across layers of the frame, with each of these boldly creative decisions bringing a restless joy to the mundanity of everyday living.

And yet when all is said and done, Do the Right Thing is not a comedy. It is the tension between its dualities of drama and humour, fire and water, and right and wrong where Lee’s central thesis emerges, and which is most accurately captured in Radio Raheem’s “right hand/left hand” monologue. His speech isn’t the first direct address to camera we have seen in this film, but here Lee demolishes the barrier between passive spectator and participant in swinging his camera round from a third-person to Mookie’s first-person perspective, then takes the time to let Raheem deliver his allegory of the battle between love and hate, where love ultimately wins out. If each of the characters in Do the Right Thing are grounded in some sort of fictional archetype, then Raheem is a vessel of innocence who believes that such clean dichotomies can be upheld with a clear victory of good over evil.

But such easy definitions and clear-cut conflicts have no place in the reality of this Brooklyn neighbourhood. Though there are characters and sequences which may make us laugh, Lee is not building this narrative to a comical punchline, but rather a climax which holds a dark mirror up against everything that has come before – the blessing of water from a fire hydrant in an earlier scene is inverted as a high-pressure hose blasts gathering crowds, the climbing temperatures throughout the day manifest as a vicious fire ripping through Sal’s pizzeria, and worst of all, Da Mayor’s rescue of a young boy from being ploughed down by a speeding police car is turned on its head when America’s forces of corruption, violence, and racial prejudice bring down the hammer of injustice upon the sweet, soft-spoken Radio Raheem. With this devastating loss of life, Lee lays all his cards out on the table, revealing Do the Right Thing to be a fatefully foreshadowed Shakespearean tragedy above all else.

The matter of how one reacts to this devastation is another issue altogether, and one that Lee realises is just as complicated as the web of relationships within his sprawling ensemble. As Mookie picks up a garbage can and smashes it through the window of the pizzeria where he works, his face bears the look of resignation, with no resolute conviction of whether he is doing the right thing at all. As a result, this act of violence becomes something entirely pure: an unadulterated outpouring of rage and grief that renders all moralising irrelevant.

If the one day which much of Do the Right Thing unfolds over is a microcosm of contemporary American society, then the day which comes after is just a small glimpse of what lies beyond – a long, difficult healing process that may never erase the scars left behind by this sudden loss. A loss which might initially seem at odds with Lee’s stylistically bombastic colours, compositions, and rhythms, and yet which effectively becomes part of the fiery, expressive clash between righteous anger and profound joy, both of which will continue to burn in this community for a long time into the future, defining the lives of these rich, eclectic characters.

Do the Right Thing is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel, and available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

David Cronenberg | 1hr 36min

It feels a little odd to separate the “pop art” end of David Cronenberg’s body horror spectrum from the other extremity which might more aptly be labelled “high art”, but it is not hard to see why The Fly ended up being his most commercially successful film when compared to something as cold and pensive as Dead Ringers. The terminal illness metaphor is not wasted in the subtext of this intelligent screenplay, nor does Cronenberg ever falter in intelligently picking apart the mad scientist’s disturbed psyche, yet in binding The Fly’s narrative so closely to the gripping, visceral decay of Seth Brundle’s body, it becomes a film that sticks in the mind for the sort of brazen, kitschy ugliness one can’t tear their eyes away from.

Also integral to The Fly’s status as piece of pop horror is how much it is in conversation with more classical entries into the genre, itself being a remake of the 1958 B-movie of the same name. The story of a scientist’s transformation into a human-fly hybrid after an experiment gone wrong is grounded in archetypes stretching back to 19^th century Gothic literature, when Dr Victor Frankenstein broke all laws of nature to create an ungodly creature. The 1931 movie adaptation of Frankenstein might be the better comparison to draw here though, especially given how much its mechanical laboratory set is evoked in the machines, steam, and pipes crowding out Brundle’s warehouse apartment. Howard Shore’s daunting symphonic score of dissonant strings and majestic horns feels especially evocative of classical Hollywood horror films, and in similar fashion to other such great mad scientist stories as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Brundle becomes his own test subject, mutating his body in a gruesome manner to expand the boundaries of scientific knowledge.

And yet for all its grounding in familiar narrative and genre conventions, The Fly is unmistakably a sickeningly stylistic effort from Cronenberg to leave his imprint on pop culture. An early scene that sees one of Brundle’s experiments inadvertently turn a monkey inside-out is stomach-turning, but it is simply a warning for what is to come, as the plot continues down a path of escalating confrontations with conventions of good taste. Jeff Goldblum’s body is a canvas for Cronenberg’s own experimentations, as well as those of special effects artist Chris Walas and make-up artist Stephan Dupuis, who together visualise Brundle’s malignant decay through lumpy, discoloured prosthetics. Images of the scientist’s fingernails slowly peeling off and his acidic vomit dissolving food for consumption are scrutinised up close in tight frames, but such an intimate shooting style also allows us to look past the make-up and behold the disturbed sensitivity of Goldblum’s tragic performance.

Because yes, beyond all its practical effects and upsettingly visceral imagery, The Fly is ultimately a tragedy. This malevolent force is not only taking over Brundle’s body, but his mind as well, robbing him of everything that made him such a brilliant, intelligent scientist, and replacing it with something abhorrent, cruel, and selfish. Everything we witness, from the twitching to the hair falling out, is simply a manifestation of an internal deterioration taking place, and therein lies Cronenberg’s frighteningly primal reflection of terminal illness. In a largely silent finale of pulsating lights and atmospheric smoke, the frail vulnerability of the human body is on full display, as this flesh-obsessed director rips it apart to reveal the mutation’s final, repulsive form – the ‘Brundlefly’.

As Shore’s orchestra reaches a powerful climax, and the repugnant creature we see before us crawls pathetically along the ground, we recognise an agonising loss that has taken place. The loss of a great mind, a potential romance, and a passionate scientist, reduced down to a pale imitation of nature that can barely sustain its own existence. There is no need for any kind of wistful epilogue to follow up the abrupt, violent conclusion of The Fly, as in these final few minutes, Cronenberg ambitiously reaches into the jaws of disgust, and from its nauseating depths remarkably draws out pure, desolate heartbreak.

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