Category: 2021

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.

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.

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.

Reinaldo Marcus Green | 2hr 24min

Though King Richard is a sports film, sports players are not our focus. Instead, director Reinaldo Marcus Green crafts a character study of mentorship – the kind that doesn’t rebuke or harshly punish students when they fail, but rather nurtures them holistically into better people, and not just betters players. High expectations are set, but the relationship is a two-way street. While other aspiring tennis players are berated by overbearing parents and burn out from the stress, teenagers Venus and Serena Williams find the opposite problem. Their father, Richard, fully believes that they will become the best in the sport one day, but in the meantime, patience, family, and education will be top priorities.

There is no hypocrisy to his lessons either, as it is equally when they are not looking that he continues to work tirelessly for them. While the days are spent on their training, he works nights as a security guard to support them beyond mere verbal guidance, and is even willing to put his neck on the line in confronting a group of thugs lurking outside the local tennis courts. Not once in King Richard do we ever doubt that he has anything but his daughters’ best interests at hearts, but the frustrating patience with which he approaches their professional progress drives a tension in the family drama which is not easily resolved. If Venus is growing irritated with the pace at which he is pushing her, Serena is even more exasperated, being the one to live in the shadow of her older sister. But even when tempers are raised, there remains an air of cool collectedness to Will Smith’s performance, giving Richard all the confidence of a man who acts as if he has seen decades into the future.

Or maybe it is just his complete faith in the 85-page plan he wrote in his daughters’ infancy, plotting out their rises to success in careful detail. Though some adjustments are made along the way, his strong principles of humility and patience are rigidly maintained, as is his own detailed understanding of the sport. Most significantly, after he identifies a toxic atmosphere within the junior tournaments, he pulls both of them out and disallows them from competing in matches until they turn professional, aggravating both them and their befuddled coaches.

Time passes and the girls’ talents grow, and Green proves himself to be a particularly good editor in the sharpness with which he moves through it all. A jump forward three years in time lands a graphic match cut precisely on the hit of a tennis ball mid-serve, and these sound effects similarly punctuate transitions between other scenes as well. Montages and slow-motion sequences continue to move through climactic matches with superb tension, though among it all Richard remains a grounding force, as a source of conviction that the future remains bright even at his daughters’ lowest moments. Just as he is patient with them, so too is Green patient with him, peeling back the layers of this kind yet stubborn character whose unconventional choices cannot be fought against, but merely trusted with all the faith one would put in a sturdy, dependable father figure.

King Richard is currently playing in theatres.

Paul Thomas Anderson | 2hr 13min

Even as Paul Thomas Anderson has experimented in period pieces, romantic comedies, and psychological dramas, his fascination in the surrogate families and oddball coupling of unlikely characters has barely wavered over the decades. Often these characters find themselves lost in the turmoil of unpredictable, changing worlds, from the post-war America setting of The Master to the smaller, more contained collision of chaotic plot threads in Punch Drunk Love, and Licorice Pizza is no exception. What does set this apart from anything else in his filmography is just how languid it is, almost like the happy-go-lucky first half of Boogie Nights but with no impending sense of doom, and far less cocaine.

In fact, the rate at which times passes here is entirely unclear. Gary is 15 with confidence of a 30-year-old and the heart of an 8-year-old, auditioning for children’s parts in movies while hustling a few different businesses on the side. Alana is “25”, but you could give or take a few years based on the wavering conviction with which she tells us this. They meet at Gary’s high school on picture day when she comes in to take photos, and then we never see another scene set there again, their friendship instead unfolding over what could be a few weeks, a few months, or a year on the streets of the San Fernando Valley. Neither look like the sorts of movie stars we have come to expect from even the most casual coming-of-age movies, their pimples and crooked teeth letting them blend into crowds of teenagers and young adults with similarly natural imperfections. Even in Anderson’s lesser films, he has never made one that lacks in characterisation, and here, in what may be considered one of his more modest artistic achievements, this remains the case.

How odd it is to call a film of this calibre “modest” though. Licorice Pizza may be possess less stylistic or formal ambition than Magnolia or There Will Be Blood, and yet for virtually any other working filmmaker it may as well be their crowning jewel. The Los Angeles from Anderson’s childhood is recreated in especially loving detail, calling back especially to Quentin Tarantino’s own Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with the brazen commitment to yellows all through the production design, and the attractive matching of colours between period costumes and sets.

Most impressive of all though are Anderson’s tracking shots, lingering by the sides and backs of Alana and Gary as they move through their constantly shifting environments, like a restless search for stability in a world pushing them from one capitalistic pursuit to the next. In one scene set in the 1973 Teen-Age Fair, the camera skilfully weaves through crowds of students and performers where Gary plans to sell waterbeds, though even here his venture is cut short by a hilariously unfortunate case of mistaken identity. Later when the 1973 oil crisis hits, his shrewd business instincts prove to be even more useless against the overwhelming force of economic turmoil.

Meanwhile, Alana carries a sharp insight into social situations that he does not possess, seeing the misogynistic, racist culture they live in for what it is and manipulating it to her benefit. There is little glamour to be found in this memory piece, as those unsavoury parts of eras we have left behind are recalled not with heavy didacticism nor merciful nostalgia, but rather a bitter amusement and heavy acceptance.

Yet regardless of where they are coming from or what blows they have suffered, Gary and Alana consistently find themselves running back to each other, this visual motif carrying with it a desperation to obtain the security which corporate America cannot provide. Alana’s discovery that the mayoral candidate for whom she is working is hiding a homosexual relationship from the public in fear of its impact on his popularity becomes a turning point for her, as it also comes with a realisation that very few people are suited to the mould cut out for them. Definitions around her relationship with Gary don’t come easily either, as although there is an attraction there, it manifests in complex ways. Are they friends? Business partners? Lovers? Theoretically nothing about them should work, especially given the age gap. And yet despite it all, they continue to run, driven by an instinctive need for companionship and mutual understanding that no one else can offer.

And when they are united in camaraderie, Anderson takes great pleasure in peeling back the layers of their flaws, passions, and mannerisms, building their friendship up with each new revelation. Just as Gary playfully points out that Alana often habitually repeats the statement twice in a row, so too does she slyly pick up on his unspoken fetish when he compliments a woman’s painted toenails. Later, she coyly uses that to her advantage while demonstrating how to flirt with potential customers, teasingly putting her own feet up on her desk.

The other vignettes in this seemingly endless summer (or year?) of entrepreneurship unfold with unhurried, comedic naturalism, and yet individually become the sort of memories one might recall years later as funny anecdotes – that time Gary was mistaken for a murderer and arrested, that time we flooded a movie producer’s house just because he was a d*ck, that time Alana fell off a famous film director’s motorbike. “I’m not going to forget you. Just like you’re not going to forget me,” he tells her, and though within that there is an implication that they will eventually set off on different trajectories, so too does it reserve a special place for each other in their individual futures.

But whenever that separation occurs, it isn’t going to be within this bubble of eternity that Licorice Pizza is set inside. In the final minutes as they once again run towards each other, there is the sense that this really is the last time they will ever have to do so, now that they realise where they both stand. While Anderson cuts from one to the other coming from either sides of the frame, he also inserts brief cutaways of them hurtling along sidewalks and fields from earlier scenes, as if everything up until now has built to this one climactic collision. As it is represented in this motif, the tension underlying this film is not predicated on whether they will find romantic feelings for each other – that would be to reduce their connection down to something far too conventional. As they keep on running, heading towards a common point in space, the suspense leading us on is simply the hope that they will find each other.

Licorice Pizza will be coming soon to VOD.

Steven Spielberg | 2hr 36min

In a film culture drowning in adaptations of existing intellectual property, West Side Story is a timely reminder that remakes of beloved movies need not necessarily be considered an attempt to displace revered legacies and treasured childhood memories. Besides the very specific casting choice of Rita Moreno, Steven Spielberg barely references the original at all, making this adaptation just as much a product of his own vibrant artistic vision as the 1961 version was Robert Wise’s. No longer is New York lit like a furnace burning with the passion of lovers and rivals, but it is rather washed out with cold blues and greys, underscoring the scarcity and desperation of this city that can only be pierced by the vibrant cultural expressions bursting forth from the characters’ costumes, blocking, and dancing.

In this cinematic take on the classic musical, scaffolding, machinery, and debris litter the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and Spielberg brings us into this right from the very first shot when he lifts us up into the air in a magnificently long take, sweeping across dystopian demolition sites of torn-down buildings before dropping us into the prologue’s heated balletic clash between Sharks and Jets. Later on in the musical number ‘Cool’, the collapsed shell of an old freight station becomes the tumbledown stage upon which Tony calls the Jets to step down from the planned rumble, visually working in conjunction with the questions of territory roiling around in the screenplay to turn this urban environment into an apocalyptic wasteland ruled by gangs.

Though praise must be given to the editing in those quiet montages of the city that underscore a palpable tension in the air and the precariously balanced ‘Tonight Quintet’, Spielberg’s brilliant camerawork largely forms the foundation of his cinematic achievement all throughout West Side Story. At its most dazzling, he soars his camera over the top of a dance at the local gym, before dropping it to the floor and letting it crawl around the legs of the attendees. In subtler moments it effortlessly integrates with his choreography and blocking, particularly in ‘Gee Officer Krupke’ where the Jets turn the police station into a playground for both themselves and the camera to energetically zoom around in an irreverent mockery of clueless authority figures. This is to say nothing of Spielberg’s creative angles which heighten the forbidden interactions between lovers Tony and Maria through extreme highs and lows on the side of an apartment building, as well as those Dutch tilts which further throw this desolate world dramatically off-kilter.

Beyond Spielberg’s acute visual acumen, his casting similarly astounds right across his entire ensemble, the only weak link being a performance from Ansel Elgort that never quite matches the edgy verve of almost everyone around him. There is little he can do from being blown off the screen by his co-stars Rachel Zegler and Mike Faist, respectively playing Maria and Riff. In Zegler’s performance, the sweet passion of romance manifests in full bloom, shining brightly in her wide, expressive smile, while Faist’s deadpan disillusionment draws out a touching vulnerability in the leader of the Jets. Rounding out the trio of breakthrough performances in West Side Story is Ariane DeBose, whose charisma and conviction as Anita lifts the number ‘America’ to spectacularly energetic heights and brings the tragedy of this Shakespearean narrative crashing to devastating lows.

In smaller characters, Spielberg builds out the social commentary of the piece with minor tweaks, emphasising their attempts to find their place in a society that despises them. On the Sharks’ side, Chino is far more timid than historical representations of him, and as such is equally motivated to earn the respect of the gang as he is to win Maria’s love. Meanwhile, the traditional queer coding of Anybodys manifests here in fully embracing the character’s identity as a trans man wanting to become part of the Jets. This does not exist purely as an adjustment to pre-existing material though, nor does it act as a strained call to modern audiences to appreciate that which came before. Spielberg is one of the truly great pop artists of cinema, and his broad, sweeping style of iconographic filmmaking is well-suited to such classical Shakespearean stories as that which West Side Story takes its own spin on. Above all else, this film is an eruption of creative genius from a master of his craft, flowing with musical excitement, tragedy, and remarkable stylistic ambition.

West Side Story is currently playing in theatres.

Maggie Gyllenhaal | 2hr 4min

The decades that Maggie Gyllenhaal has spent watching and learning from directors on film sets has paid off – The Lost Daughter is one of the more outstanding directorial debuts of 2021, delivering an entirely unsettling take on motherhood that has no inhibitions in peeling back the sensitive and at times ugly layers of what it means to lose yourself in such an overwhelming duty of care. Olivia Colman is in the lead role here as Leda, a woman whose beach holiday in Greece starts to quietly derail after meeting young mother Nina and her small family. The psychological drama that unravels from here is almost entirely internal, depicted in flashbacks that reveal Leda’s own fraught history as a mother of two young girls, and yet there is an anxiety which seems to arise in her immediate environment as well.

Part of this troubled atmosphere can be put down to Leda’s paranoid, erratic behaviour, particularly in her strange decision to steal the doll of Elena, Nina’s child, which gives rise to symbolic suggestions of wishful surrogacy. But then there are those falling pinecones that always seem to target her along the same path home from the beach, and a group of troublesome local men who seem to be everywhere she goes. The uneasiness attached to these threats draw a very thin line between drama and thriller, as does the subtle suggestion that there may be some deeper truth to Leda’s past which she refuses to address. While meeting new people and answering basic personal questions, the hesitancy in Colman’s line deliveries suggests nervous dishonesty even when she is speaking the truth. In actuality, it is what she leaves unsaid that conceals the explanations we are looking for.

The crafting of such persistent ambiguity and disorientation is the basis of Gyllenhaal’s filmmaking strengths here, as in the formal repetition of flashbacks and motifs she builds a character who feels both immediately accessible in her mental state, and yet mysteriously distant in her unsympathetic behaviour. Names are awkwardly misheard and mistaken more than once, and a rhyming couplet that continues to reappear in Leda’s flashbacks with her children brings both an eerie metaphoric significance and a sweet innocence to her fondest memories.

“Don’t let it break, peel it like a snake.”

Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal takes a step into Terrence Malick territory with the creative choice to let conversations run over shots from elsewhere within the same scene where the characters aren’t speaking, sinking us deeper into Leda’s distracted mental state. Seemingly the only thing that she can focus on completely without disturbance is Nina, within whom she sees a version of her younger self. There is certainly empathy in the complex relationship that develops between them, as Leda notices Nina’s troubles with motherhood and her desire to break free of its constraints, but there is also a little bit of jealousy over her still-intact family. Nina has not yet made the same choices as Leda, but it may only be a matter of time before she too finds herself separated from her children.

The film title’s description of a daughter as “lost” may on the surface imply some kind of missing persons narrative, but Gyllenhaal is clearly more interested in where those lost people actually go. Indeed, many things are lost in this film – multiple daughters, a doll, and most of all, Leda herself, who finds herself out of her depth wherever she goes. Back at home she finds herself struggling to raise her children, but then when she is away from them, they dominate her every thought. Certainly parenting isn’t something that everyone can weather, but even in her self-description of being an “unnatural mother” there is a recognition that her daughters are still very much part of her identity, regardless of her actual nurturing instincts. “Don’t let it break,” they continue to whisper to her all throughout the film, and it is within this mantra that Leda finds some hope of reconnection with kindness and understanding.

The Lost Daughter is currently streaming on Netflix.

Lin Manuel-Miranda | 1hr 55min

Since the explosion of Hamilton on Broadway in 2015, it has been nearly impossible to escape the pop culture presence of the playwright behind it. Lin-Manuel Miranda has sung, written, acted, and produced his way into the upper echelons of the theatre, film, and television communities with a joyful passion that has been embraced by most and shunned by others who have deemed his upbeat attitude too corny or intense to be loveable. How fitting it is then that his foray into movie directing centres a figure who once could have inhabited a very similar place as him. In 1996, Jonathan Larson’s rock musical Rent reached similar heights as Miranda’s own decade-defining, hip-hop spin on America’s Founding Fathers, though it was the night before its Off-Broadway preview that he unexpectedly passed away from an undiagnosed illness. Tick, Tick… Boom! seeps with a zest for life shared by both artists that can easily turn off any cynic unprepared for such open embraces of bohemia and playful, self-aware numbers, and yet at the same time Miranda plays out a deconstruction of the artist that may still hold hope of winning over his detractors.

While based off a semi-autobiographical musical of the same name that Larson himself wrote before Rent, Tick, Tick… Boom! also uses a performance of the very show as its own framing device. At the New York Theatre Workshop in 1992, he opens with a monologue. In his head, he has been hearing a ceaseless ticking noise. It is not a technical problem, a musical cue, or a joke, he tells the audience. It is an unstoppable countdown to the moment where he realises his youth, energy, and life has been squandered, and now on the verge of turning 30, he fears that that inevitable ‘Boom’ is close by. We cut to two years earlier, a time when Jonathan has been working on an entirely different project altogether, Superbia, and all throughout the film that ticking comes and goes, a reminder of what waits for him on the other end.

In Miranda’s skilful intercutting between both timelines, an interaction forms between Jonathan’s fiction and reality. Not just in the manifestation of his life in art, but the act of creation itself impedes upon everything else, from his relationships to finances. As we listen to a song comically expressing the complexity of arguing with your significant other, we simultaneously watch such an argument unfold with his girlfriend, Susan, and then just as it seems as if it has been resolved she catches Jonathan’s fingers tapping out a rhythm. Even in the heat of a quarrel, that artistic instinct to transpose real life into music remains. Or is it just an impulsively selfish disconnection from other people? Even then, that song we are watching composed and performed concurrently are not perfect reflections of each other. The resolution found in Jonathan’s musical interpretation is nowhere to be found in reality, but instead becomes a concoction of pure fantasy, embodying the exact kind of detachment that Susan has accused him of.

The power that Jonathan’s songs carry seems to radiate back from these future performances all through Tick, Tick… Boom!, as in one scene we watch the chaos of a busy diner suddenly dissipate in a burst of tranquillity the moment the first chord of “Sunday” is struck. Miranda’s visual aesthetic is at times plain enough to expose his relative inexperience in film direction, and yet his love for theatrics explodes forth in this number where Jonathan lowers the wall of the restaurant to create a stage upon which the figures of his imagination harmonise in a display of choral brilliance.

Given how much of himself Jonathan puts into his work, those sly references to Rent that continue to turn up are a little more earned than the typical piece of fan service. For better and for worse, his art is very much an obsession, and Andrew Garfield takes the composer’s electric, frazzled energy to new heights even beyond those songs that distil his complicated life into purely emotional expressions. It is also in those moments when Jonathan’s creative block keeps him from summoning up a single note that his desperation and frustration spill forth, and that anxiety around being unable to produce anything of worth takes over. The sentimental voiceover that caps Tick, Tick… Boom! might be a little too jolting even for Manuel fans, especially given how far it steps outside its own narrative form without proper setup, but with the fresh perspective of hindsight, Manuel lends the ticking motif an extra edge of poignancy, extending Jonathan’s fear of time running out to an existential fear of one’s own mortality. Death may arrive as a slow decline or a nasty surprise, but just as both Manuel and Larson strongly abide by in Tick, Tick… Boom!, it is also makes everything that precedes it all the more valuable in its fleetingness.

Tick, Tick… Boom! is currently streaming on Netflix.

Ridley Scott | 2hr 38min

It might be a little generous calling House of Gucci “Shakespearean”, but all the hallmarks are there – a conniving Lady Macbeth, the rise and fall of a noble family, fatally flawed antiheroes, and a poetic sense of tragedy in the culmination of remarkable treachery. If not Shakespeare, than perhaps comparisons may be drawn to The Godfather in its unfolding of an epic family saga, where empires built by parents are expanded and destroyed by their own children. The presence of Al Pacino as an uncle who must be cut out to let the younger entrepreneurs flourish is certainly a nod in that direction, though it is largely the strength of this operatic narrative and screenplay that gives House of Gucci such firm grounding in these historical archetypes.

In holding together this colossal historical story, Ridley Scott infuses a strong sense of destiny into its very fabric, most predominantly in the prophecies of Pina who offers counsel to Patrizia Reggiani, First Lady of the Gucci Empire. Though she acts as a soothsayer, she is no doubt a flawed one, often only telling her friend what she wishes to hear and even going so far as to foolishly conspire in her criminal plans. It is through her that Patrizia “sees” the affair going on between her husband, Maurizio, and his mistress, Paola, depicted in a seamless piece of editing that gives the appearance of them all sharing the same space.

The day that Patrizia’s ruthless nature fully surfaces and sets in motion the irrevocable downfall of the Gucci family is also spelled out right from the start, as her voiceover speaks with mournful nostalgia over an apparently ordinary sequence of Maurizio preparing for work. Two hours later we return to that same scene, though this time that narration is replaced with cutaways to Patrizia slyly submerging herself within a soapy bath, anxiously awaiting her dastardly plans to reach fruition. And indeed they do, as Scott brings his narrative full circle in a tragic manifestation of destiny, and the infamous mythology of the Gucci family is set in stone.

For the most part, this cast of bright stars understand and embrace the magnificently dramatic task at hand. In playing these larger-than-life figures whose existences are drenched in wealth and extravagance, their acting styles are suitably turned up to the brink of exaggeration. Some, like Jared Leto, tip over into full-on caricature, while Adam Driver is about as understated as you can be while faking an Italian accent. Lady Gaga is the one who hits the sweet spot in a performance that is certainly heightened, but still fully invested in drawing out the thrillingly dark power plays of the real Patrizia Reggiani. As relationships disintegrate between husbands, wives, fathers, and sons through affairs and backstabbing, there remains an irony to their attempts at upholding the “family character” of their brand that only thinly conceals their own hatred for each other.

True to the film’s operatic tendencies, classical arias and duets from such Italian composers as Rossini and Verdi find their way into House of Gucci, even as much of the soundtrack is dominated by 80s synth pop songs. It is in this blend of two conflicting styles that the duelling identities of the Gucci family are captured, being a family both propped up by tradition and utterly consumed in the hedonism of the modern world. Not every minute of this film is filled with the sort of tight, enthralling storytelling that its dramatic influences clearly possess, and yet Ridley Scott’s decades of experience working with classical narratives and universal archetypes effectively turns this complicated piece of recent history into an epic tragedy of grand destinies and fallen empires.

House of Gucci is currently playing in theatres.