Category: 2021

Adam McKay | 2hr 25min

After his exhilarating take on the Global Financial Crisis in The Big Short, and his slightly more polarising study of Dick Cheney’s political career in Vice, Adam McKay is tying off what he has labelled his ‘Freakout trilogy’ with his broadest satire yet in Don’t Look Up. What exactly his target is here is difficult to pin down – self-serving politicians, exploitative tech billionaires, nationalistic hero worship of soldiers, and vapid media personalities all come into play, though the catalyst for these send-ups is all-encompassing. The end of the world is on its way, as the discovery of a comet coming to obliterate Earth begs for immediate, cooperative action, particularly from those who hold social and political influence. Astronomists Dr Randall Mindy and Kate Dibiasky only barely slide into that category, though it is a strong current of blatant ignorance, arrogance, and nationalism which they are swimming against. 

Those who were only onboard with The Big Short for its sharp insight and incisiveness may be disappointed with the blunt approach with which McKay approaches his contentious subject matter here. Those who appreciate his irreverent wit and zippy, fast-paced editing as a means of crafting an entirely different kind of statement will still find value in Don’t Look Up, even if it is troubling in its formal inconsistencies. His efforts to break past the polished, conventional aesthetic on display to let his more familiar documentary style breathe are largely successful in his handheld camera, voiceovers, and comically harsh cuts away from intense scenes mid-conversation, though some oddly placed jump cuts and cutaways don’t fare so well, and neither does one strangely isolated fourth wall break. The flashing of some text over a freeze frame early on to inform us that the Planetary Defense Coordination Office is indeed a real organisation within NASA is the sort of self-aware, playful gag that gave The Big Short and Vice such distinctive humour, and yet given the lack of recurring acknowledgement of the story’s own fictionality from this point on, its insertion simply makes for poor film form.

While keeping all these flaws in mind though, there should still be no hesitation in pointing out McKay’s idiosyncratic and playful use of montages to imbue energy and texture into his work. His editing in Don’t Look Up doesn’t quite touch the heights of Damien Chazelle or Edgar Wright, but the great strength of his stylistic achievement here comes back to those mosaics of insects, cities, animals, babies, temples, riots, sex, planets – everything that encompasses the micro and macro experiences of human life in all its beauty and terror. The sheer velocity with which he flits through these images only ever allows us short, sharp glimpses before snatching them away in an instant, keeping us from appreciating the scope of humanity beyond its overwhelming transience. It is only in the weighty moment which this film eventually winds towards that he slows his footage right down to a snail’s pace, expanding milliseconds out to what seems like an eternity, and finally letting the humanity of the piece linger as each central character discovers the value in their fleeting lives.

Certainly McKay’s star-studded cast is yet another characteristic stamp of his that turns up here, and this too pays off on multiple levels. For Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, the gravity of the situation is fully realised in angry outbursts, panic attacks, and their characters’ eventual despairing turns to hedonism, keeping the centre of the film grounded as almost every other plot thread spins off in wild directions. In smaller parts, McKay does well to keep casting big names in amusingly appropriate roles – Ariana Grande as a parody of the kind of superficial pop star the world believes her to be, as well as an especially gruff Ron Perlman playing a grim-faced Colonel who is more than willing to unnecessarily sacrifice his life for his country. The satirical parallels are often all too plain, especially when it comes to Meryl Streep’s self-serving Trumpian President, and yet McKay has no pretensions about his style of low-brow humour. Don’t Look Up is an act of political catharsis more than anything else – provocative, contemptuous, and hilariously bleak from start to finish.

Don’t Look Up is currently streaming on Netflix.

Paul Schrader | 1hr 52min

In a motel room where each piece of furniture has been wrapped tightly in white sheets and all decor has been stashed away, a man sits at a desk and writes. This is William Tell, a small-time gambler as skilled at card counting as he is restrained in flexing this talent. His routine is rigid – move from city to city, win modestly, and then depart without leaving so much as a blip on anyone’s radar. It is a level of dogmatic dedication equal only to Paul Schrader himself, whose flair for constructing formally rigorous character studies of brooding, isolated men stretches all the way back to Taxi Driver, and which has manifested more recently in his theological meditation on human greed and corruption, First Reformed.

Schrader doesn’t falter here in The Card Counter either. With a slightly narrowed aspect ratio, a consistent voiceover meticulously expounding the tricks of each casino game, and a deeply internalised performance from Oscar Isaac, the film becomes a wholly focused examination of regret, self-discipline, and atonement. Having lived a troubled life as both an ex-soldier and ex-convict, William is as complex a figure as any Schrader protagonist. Sin has implanted itself so firmly in his soul that profiting off it is the only way he knows how to survive, but as long as he keeps it quiet and modest, there may be some hope that his environment remains untainted by his presence. In wrapping his motel rooms up in sheets, he similarly ensures that no trace of his inherently iniquitous existence is left behind, and denies himself any chance of worldly pleasure by turning them into bare chambers of his own self-punishment.

Such minimalistic austerity suits Isaac tremendously, whose quiet, grim performance stands monumentally among the best of the last few years, and certainly in the upper tier of his own career. He is discreet, logical, and observant, gazing out at the world from beneath heavy lids with an intense, unblinking focus. In nightmares and flashbacks that let us into glimpses of his days conducting enhanced interrogation techniques for the US military, Schrader filters the environment through ultra wide-angle lenses that catch everything within a 180-degree field of vision, putting every inch of pain and suffering on full, hyper-sensitive display. “This isn’t about following a manual. It’s about getting answers,” William’s superior, Major John Gordo, instructs him, and within this line Schrader draws a clear distinction between their attitudes towards codes of conduct as means to keep one honest. Though Willem Dafoe is not onscreen a lot in The Card Counter, the weight he carries in this role is substantial, especially as Major Gordo’s presence continues to hang over William as a reminder that his past sins are still very much alive and unatoned for.

Notions of forgiveness, revenge, and redemption all swirl around each other in Schrader’s screenplay, particularly as William begins to engage with two new associates who each draw out pieces of his identity he has been trying to suppress. In Cirk, the young, rash son of one of William’s former army comrades, he finds the temptation to dredge up the past as a means to destroy it entirely. In La Linda, a gambling acquaintance, he finds the chance to absolve himself of his own sins, and to once again interact with the world without putting up physical and emotional barriers. There may seem to be a conflict between both goals, but there is also a tenderness to the small, oddball family that forms between them. As William and La Linda wander through the Missouri Botanical Gardens through tunnels of colourful lights on a date, the two are illuminated in a warm glow of love and redemption, and there is similarly something spiritually transcendent in Schrader’s sweeping camera movement upwards, revealing the expanse of this bright, shining corner of the world.

The casino is where William feels most at home though, centred as the one in charge through recurring back-of-head tracking shots that follow him around the space. He haunts the space like a ghost, influencing it just enough to make a difference but never enough to draw attention to himself. The world beyond the poker and roulette tables is ruled out-of-bounds, though when he finally does violently breach that gap Schrader makes the intelligent choice to keep the camera removed, leaving us only to listen to the grisly developments from the next room over. That barrier between William and the rest of the society is no doubt a tough one to break, but Schrader touchingly recognises in the final minutes of The Card Counter that there is still hope even as it remains intact. Sometimes all it takes is a simple recognition from someone on the other side, both parties reaching out in a mutually affectionate gesture of acknowledgement and appreciation.

The Card Counter is currently out in theatres.

Jane Campion | 2hr 5min

“What kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother?” ponders young aspiring veterinarian, Peter Gordon, in the opening lines of The Power of the Dog. He is an image of masculinity not often found in westerns like these – thin, effeminate, intelligent, and standing out drastically among the loud, boisterous farmhands who sneeringly make jabs at him. The only reason he has ended up on this farm in the first place is because of his mother, Rose, whose recent marriage to wealthy rancher George Burbank has forced him into close quarters with his step-father’s particularly nasty brother, Phil. Several times through the film Jane Campion shifts our perceptions of who exactly is the main character here, which although at times leads to a little unevenness in the storytelling, is crucial to the final crack of the whip landed in the final scene, forcing us to reconsider our notions of what sort of men held real power in this period of pioneering American history.

It might have looked like Campion was done with making feature films after her 2009 film Bright Star, but The Power of the Dog marks one of the more remarkable career resurrections of this century. As a director with a flair for unhurriedly building out the inner worlds of rich characters, there are many times during this film that we might assume her wandering focus on seemingly irrelevant aspects such as Phil’s careless disregard for wearing gloves or Pete’s surprisingly clinical attitude towards dissecting animals are simply there to flesh them out in fascinating detail. This purpose is certainly served, and very effectively at that, and yet the macabre manner in which the pieces all fall into place within this deliberately paced plot lends it an almost Hitchcockian bent.

Until this moment though, The Power of the Dog simmers with mesmerising tension between each of our four main characters, pushing their interactions agonisingly close to boiling point before letting them cool back down with some new shift in dynamics established between them. Benedict Cumberbatch often acts as the oppressive force in these situations, delivering what will go down as one of his great film performances in the role of the cruel, brow-beating Phil. This is a man who tauntingly calls his brother “fatso”, maliciously burns the delicate paper flowers that Pete designs, and in one scene, silently intimidates Rose in a musical duel between their instruments. Unlike him, she is not as refined a musician, and to him her lack of confidence becomes a prime target. As she plays her piano and Campion’s camera drifts forward, we begin to catch onto the quiet sound of a banjo expertly mimicking her melody from upstairs. Each time she stumbles, the camera and banjo both similarly pause as well, the latter purposefully mocking her own insecurity. Without so much as a word, Phil continues to make his terrible presence known until she gives up entirely, and even then he continues to play forcefully through the empty space previously occupied by her music.

The depth with which Campion eventually grants this cruel character isn’t quite an act of empathy, but rather one of understanding, using him as a vessel through which she can pry into the history, customs, and fabrications of American masculinity. Phil’s nostalgic yearning for an era where “real men” ran society is not so much an assertion of specific gender ideals as it is a wistful longing after one particular man, Bronco Henry, whose heavy presence still hangs over the farm. The suggestions of some sort of romance between Phil and his once-mentor are more than implied, especially when he tries to set himself up as a similar sort of idol and takes his antagonistic relationship with Pete in a new direction.

Such vulnerable depictions of the Old West and its masculine “protectors” play right into Campion’s strengths in capturing stunning, wild vistas in soft natural light. Though The Power of the Dog is set in 1925 Montana, the South Island of New Zealand is her choice of shooting location, and indeed this film belongs among the most beautiful shot in this nation’s crisp, picturesque landscapes. Her majestic establishing shots are certainly worth marvelling at, but it is those images caught from the dark interior of stables looking out upon the flat planes and rolling mountains that truly astound in their compositional magnificence, calling back to The Searchers in the elegant framing of characters within bright, open doorways and windows.

It is the struggle for dominance over this delicate beauty that lies at the heart of The Power of the Dog. Just as pioneers tame and cultivate the land, so too do they assert control over the society that lives off it, but it is also those with tender hearts and practical minds who carry the power to destabilise that authority. Within the mesmerising power plays between brothers, musicians, ranchers, and family members, Campion paints out duelling images of the Old West, neither of which clash in violent shootouts so much as they quietly manipulate each other according to their own visions of America’s future.

The Power of the Dog is currently available to stream on Netflix.

Wes Anderson | 1hr 48min

In English, the quaint French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé translates to ‘Boredom on Apathy’, a wry suggestion that this may be the last place in the world a journalist would want to work. Yet it is here where the foreign bureau of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper is stationed, led by editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), and where its team of American reporters are tasked with finding stories that may be of some interest to the general public. The subjects of these articles often go about their business with all the deadpan indifference that the name of the town would suggest, and so it is entirely up to the correspondents of The French Dispatch to find life in its streets and buildings. Wes Anderson has surely closely identified with his protagonists before, but never has he tied his ethos as a storyteller so closely to characters who similarly view their profession as an opportunity to offer a jaded world their fresh insights into its own unique, distinctive beauty.

In structuring The French Dispatch as an anthology film served up in three separate episodes and a framing device concerning Howitzer’s death, Anderson reveals that he is far less concerned with any individual plot as he is with the people and culture of Ennui which these stories make up. As the newspaper nears the end of its run, there is also the nostalgic feeling that an integral part of this community will be lost, and from now on will only live on in the words of the men and women who believed in the rich history of this ordinary town. Much like the layers upon layers of flashbacks that frame The Grand Budapest Hotel, the multitude of narrators in The French Dispatch maintain an ironic detachment from the events that take place, as it is through lectures, columns, and talk show interviews that these journalists let us into worlds that one would have never otherwise expected to exist in this small, quiet corner of France.

When it comes to Anderson’s artistic construction of this town, his connection to the cinematic masters of architectural mise-en-scene and physical comedy has rarely been so pronounced as it is here. It goes without saying that all his usual stylistic idiosyncrasies are on display – the rigorous symmetry of his cinematography, the short, sharp camera movements, the heavily-curated pastel colour palettes – but when he chooses to let us sit in a wide shot to observe a man ascend multiple flights of stairs, only allowing us glimpses of him through the tiny windows scattered across the face of a diorama-like building, one can’t help but point to the use of the exact same visual gag from Jacques Tati’s French comedy Mon Oncle. In spite of these direct homages though, there isn’t much of an argument to be made that The French Dispatch comes from any filmmaker but Anderson, especially when his dogmatically formal aesthetic turns experimental in its switching between black-and-white and colour schemes within each featured article.

The first of these, ‘The Concrete Masterpiece’, is orated by J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) and follows a prisoner, Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro), whose abstract nude paintings of a guard (Léa Seydoux) capture the attention of fellow inmate and art dealer, Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody). ‘Revisions to a Manifesto’ is the second, and sees journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) engage a little too closely with the young leader of a student revolution, Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet). Reporter Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) narrates the third, ‘The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner’, in which the son of the Ennui police force’s Commissaire is kidnapped by a notorious gang leader (Ed Norton), and resorts to sending in legendary police officer and chef, Lieutenant Nescaffier (Stephen Park), to save him.

The greyscale palette which dominates these retrospective vignettes builds even further on the nostalgic distance with which Anderson interprets these stories, and yet his occasional flashes of vibrant colour reveal small breaks in this wistful demeanour, whereby the past is brought transcendently into the present and affectionately embraced in its immediate, tender beauty. There are no firm rules dictating when exactly these switches occur, but there is a consistency in the emotional beats with which they are presented – an awestruck wonder when gazing upon Moses’ paintings, facing Zeffirelli’s bright-eyed idealism, or visually feasting upon Nescaffier’s delicacies. While the black-and-white newspaper format dominates much of these flashbacks, such vivid bursts of rich hues indicate the presence of some magnificent splendour that each journalist is particularly enchanted by and may have printed in colour, or otherwise playfully depict in amusing animated sequences representing back-page comic strips.

As perfectionistic a director as Anderson is, he equally delights in the quaint imperfections of his characters and their odd fascinations, absorbing these peculiarities into his own effervescent style. Several times in The French Dispatch does he choose to freeze a scene mid-action and catch it in an immaculately staged tableau, though as he tracks his camera across it we notice the small tremors of his actors trying to remain deadly still, as if re-enacting the moment for a publicist to photograph. His love for the artifice of print journalism is only outdone by his love for the artifice of film itself, both being bound together by the passion of writers and stylists for discovering parts of the world otherwise deemed ordinary, lifting these up on public platforms for others to appreciate, and embellishing them with some modest spark of creativity. After all, no matter how tethered to the truth they are, no storyteller can resist letting a small dose of artistry creep into their work – or, if you are Wes Anderson, an enthrallingly sizeable measure of imagination.

The French Dispatch is currently available to stream on Disney Plus, and available to buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Video.

Denis Villeneuve | 2hr 35min

It is no coincidence that those literary classics considered unfilmable often make for some of the greatest displays of narrative put to screen. Peter Jackson proved the filmic potential of The Lord of the Rings in letting its dense story breathe over a 12 hour series, the Coen Brothers did the impossible in effectively adapting a Cormac McCarthy novel with No Country For Old Men, and now after multiple directors’ failed attempts to give Frank Herbert’s epic space opera Dune the cinematic treatment, Denis Villeneuve succeeds on a grand scale, digging into its Greek mythological archetypes as a compelling canvas upon which he paints out intricate civilisations, landscapes, and worlds of historic and futuristic significance.

On this level of raw narrative and visual metaphor, the impact of Francis Ford Coppola’s classical filmmaking is particularly evident. Certainly Herbert must receive the credit for conceptualising the intricate political conflict that springboards his story into the tale of a son rising to the role of family patriarch and a “Chosen One” grappling with responsibility and ego, but Villeneuve’s recognition of the power behind such archetypes allows for some especially rich visual connections back to The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. In its potent use of spiritual symbolism rooted in legends as ancient as Homer’s Iliad or the Succession Myth, Dune measures up to such cinematic classics that similarly harken back to more traditional forms of storytelling.

At the centre of Dune’s grand narrative is Paul Atreides, a young hero whose great potential is evident in his mysterious, clairvoyant abilities, and his practicing of a form of mind control known as the Voice, though at this stage of his development he does not yet wield a steady power over either. Villeneuve does well to keep his exposition to a bare minimum in this setup, a tough feat in itself given the complex mechanics of the world he is adapting, and as such it is almost entirely through his efficient visual storytelling that his majestic artistic take on Herbert’s source material reveals itself. We don’t need to be told that the mosquito-like hunter-seeker poses a lethal threat to Paul when it invades his home – the silent, nail-biting tension that accompanies its arrival is enough, just as Paul’s decision to remain deadly still to evade detection indicates its motion sensor-based functionality. In more action-heavy scenes, Villeneuve refuses to risk letting the key details of these characters and their environments disappear in the frenzy of battle, choosing to colour-code their shields to effectively indicate whether a blow has penetrated their defences.

Just as significant as Dune’s efficient narrative progression is its measured, deliberate pacing, which carries the enormous weight of the world-ending stakes at play and allows intensive attention to the development of each character and their relationships. In more energetic scenes Villeneuve bounces several subplots off each other in skilful displays of parallel editing, but otherwise he takes his time soaking in awe-inspiring establishing shots of massive ensembles, sloping dunes, and the imposing, geometric architecture that defines each location.

In House Atreides’ castle on the ocean planet of Caladan, the synthetic, pitch-black décor and costuming of its people carries an air of Gothic expressionism about it, particularly in one scene set in the dead of night where wraith-like nuns of the Bene Gesserit religious order march through an ethereal fog. In stark contrast, the planet of Arrakis is a glaring, spacious desertscape brilliantly lit by a blazing sun, throwing bright shades of yellow and white across a vast, dusty wasteland and flashing dazzling lens flares across the frame. Upon these worlds, gigantic spaceships descend from skies and rise from oceans like concrete leviathans, and yet even these manmade structures cannot stand up against the natural terrors which haunt the planes of Arrakis. Monstrous sandworms tunnel their way through its earth like water, turning these great desert vistas into unpredictable, rippling seas, threatening to swallow up humans and spaceships alike. “The desert isn’t kind to equipment,” Dr Liet-Kynes puts quite mildly. “It isn’t kind to humans either.”

Returning to collaborate with Villeneuve from Blade Runner 2049 is Hans Zimmer with his most experimental score yet, and also undoubtedly one of his best. If turning down working with Christopher Nolan on Tenet meant that this could be written, it was a worthy trade (especially given Tenet’s already fantastic score from Ludwig Göransson). In his blending of otherworldly sound effects, Tuvan throat-singing, tribal percussion, and Middle Eastern harmonic scales, Zimmer crafts a soundscape that effectively underscores the tension between the historical and futuristic conventions at play in the film, and stretches the scope of the film even further than what its commanding narrative and cinematography can achieve alone.

Though Dune ends on somewhat of an open-ended cliff-hanger to leave room for future sequels, it does not come with the feeling that we are being cheated out of a complete story. There are pay-offs to plot and character arcs here worth savouring, especially in Paul himself whose chilling turn down a dark path in the final act coincides with a leap in his own ego, as he edges ever closer to becoming the prophesied Messiah figure so often teased. The world of Dune may have originated in the mind of Frank Herbert, but this cinematic interpretation of it comes solely from Villeneuve, whose command over blockbuster spectacle carries both the substance and artistry so often lost in this tier of epic moviemaking.

Dune is currently out in movie theatres.

Julia Ducournau | 1hr 48min

The first two feature films from French body horror devotee Julia Ducournau are very much parts of a whole, as here in Titane she effectively backs up her own credentials as an auteur with an interest in carving out her own cinematic niche of feminine sexuality, carnal violence, and acutely affecting metaphors. The use of identical character names between both films does not so much indicate a mirroring of specific traits as it does suggest a common underworld of dark secrets shared by her female characters. But where the lead of Raw, Justine, finds herself gradually being consumed by ravenous cannibalistic urges, Alexia from Titane follows a messier journey that is harder to pin down. With her protagonist’s intense attraction towards cars, her string of cold-blooded murders, and a fraudulent identity to be upheld, Ducournau sketches out a portrait of a character as unpredictable as she is brutally misanthropic, and who prefers the cold sheen of metal over the soft touch of a human.

The car collision that opens Titane and sees a young Alexia get a titanium plate fitted into her head feels strangely fated to happen. Was it she who beckoned this accident in existence, as if to bind her soul to the motor vehicle? Or was it the car who called out to her, and then sent her back into the world with a part of its own metallic substance forever grafted into her head? Either way, organic and inorganic matter are fused into one being, and even as she dances provocatively at motor shows as an adult, she maintains a steely-eyed hatred about her, detesting all things human. In a backstage shower, we watch as her hair gets caught in another woman’s nipple piercing, this knotted union of biology and steel only being resolved by Alexia forcefully ripping herself away, much to her co-worker’s physical pain.

It is also in these early scenes that Ducournau puts on her own great show of visual artistry, as she weaves her camera seductively through the show room where exotic dancers thrust and grind against the shiny surfaces of cars, conflating the objectification of women with the humanising of vehicles by lingering lustfully equally on both. Similarities may be drawn between this device and a similar long take in Raw, as both hit these cinematic highpoints rather early on and then let this aesthetic commitment fall by the wayside as they progress further.

This isn’t to say that Titane lacks style – beyond the shocking body horror of Alexia’s vehicular pregnancy and motor oil bodily fluids, there is the infrequent split diopter shot, neon-lit interior, or slow-motion dance that briefly pulls us into Alexia’s own fragmented mental state. There is also Ducournau’s glorious sound design, where clanging metal noises play out irregular beats and deep, choral vocals reverberate in stiff minor chords. But the French director’s strength is clearly in developing subtext-loaded narratives, and letting them play out in unpredictable, explosive encounters.

That said, there is an unexpected softness to Titane which only reveals itself late in the game, as Alexia finds unexpected companionship in a man she has developed an unusual relationship with. To a certain extent, this connection is founded upon a mutual self-deception – his wilful conviction that she is actually his son, and her hopeful belief that he doesn’t secretly believe otherwise. In the confusion of where they both stand with each other, there is also a common recognition of each other as lonely souls uncomfortable in their flawed human bodies. Where flesh and metal meet, both find moments of ecstasy in its cold, hard perfection, though it is in the messy, twisted bond that they form over this that they are ironically tied even deeper to their own inexorable humanity.

Titane is currently playing in theatres.

Justin Chon | 1hr 52min

The American immigration system of Blue Bayou is a particularly cruel beast. Antonio LeBlanc was adopted from Korea as a three-year-old by Southern parents, and though his life up to this point has been troubled to say the least, he has found a stable home in New Orleans. With the wages of a tattoo artist and a nurse supporting him and the small family he has married into, they just barely scrape by. That he was never officially naturalised as an American citizen when he was a child may not seem like a significant issue, and yet it is within this tiny loophole that US authorities happily stick their fingers and pry open into a gaping pit, within which lies a devastatingly uncertain fate back in a country he barely remembers. Needless to say, this is a crushing story that swings hard for heavy, almost melodramatic emotional beats, and yet Justin Chon grounds it well in a realist style of handheld cameras, 16mm film stock, and symbols of corrupted innocence.

Judging from the very first shot of Blue Bayou, one might expect an entirely different, and dare I say more jaw-droppingly beautiful film. We watch from a distance as a woman rows down a calm river, framed by beautiful pink florals and trees draping down around her, the relevance of which emerges over time as we revisit Antonio’s infanthood in dreamy flashbacks, revealing the painful ties that bind family members together even as time wears on. A swampy bayou that lies just outside the city of New Orleans where he lives in the present day is often the catalyst for these delicate leaps into the past, as the tranquillity of this environment inspires a deep a sense of connection with both his daughter and mother who he barely remembers. It is within these waters that he reaches his lowest point twice over, facing his own inadequacy and mortality, but as we see in an expertly edited sequence that brings the past and present full circle this is also a site of great healing and redemption, where he is inspired by the love of his family to continue his fight for his life and freedom.

The dreaminess of these formal breaks that look into his past are welcome counterpoints to the tone of much of the rest of Blue Bayou, which often sinks into outright despair and anguish at the prospect of a life being destroyed by an inefficiently bureaucratic system. Even if the world around Antonio at times lacks nuance in its construction, Chon’s performance of a man who is slowly losing his grip of it is poignantly complex, especially in those moments he lets his fear and shame override his commitment to openness with his loved ones. While others talk around him about his own fate, the camera hangs on his face, and micro-expressions as small as an eye twitch reveal a slowly disintegrating composure.

Paired with Chon is Alicia Vikander having a particularly good 2021 with confident performances both here and in The Green Knight. As Antonio’s wife, Kathy faces her own dilemma between loyalty and stability, and in one gorgeous scene she holds our attention entirely with a beautiful rendition of Linda Ronstadt’s country ballad ‘Blue Bayou’. This may be a heavy, gut-wrenching ordeal for all these characters, and yet the flashes of beauty which emerge in moments of serenity lend a quiet joy to their relationships, underscoring the significance of family ties that cannot be broken by time, distance, or institutional forces beyond their control.

Blue Bayou is currently out in theatres.

Edgar Wright | 1hr 56min

It’s not the first time Edgar Wright has played in the sandpit of horror, but where his previous homage Shaun of the Dead was a straight send-up of George Romero’s zombie flicks, Last Night in Soho treats its Italian Giallo roots with a little more earnestness and urgency. Its setup of a young woman moving to a new city to study her artistic passion even mirrors that of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror film Suspiria, but the comparisons don’t end there. What follows is a pulpy, neon-tinted nightmare, isolating and disorientating our young female protagonist in a romanticised foreign world with a dark, angry, and bloody heart.

And with as bold an artistic stroke as the one Wright paints with here, it isn’t too surprising that there are some disparate elements which don’t quite stick, especially in the final act when a sudden character swing lacks the proper foreshadowing that might have allowed it a little more finesse. Such flaws are easily forgiven though as Last Night in Soho otherwise handles its tonal shifts with great confidence, especially as it begins to edge into Hitchcockian territory in its shocking narrative turns and perverse fascination with murder as a psychological weapon. More specifically, Wright engages with the cultural exploitation of women that pervades historical eras we are all too happy to filter through rose-coloured glasses, emphasising the shifts in perspective it takes to properly examine these historical injustices.

By endowing Ellie, a young, aspiring fashion designer, with the unique gift of clairvoyance, these points-of-view are very much literalised in the film. With this ability she is able to glimpse deceased loved ones in mirrors and, when she moves into an old London apartment, adopt the identity and perspective of Sandie, a gorgeous, blonde nightclub singer who resided in the same room back in the Swinging Sixties, through her dreams.

While Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy fully inhabit their own characters, they are also up to the challenge of shifting their performances ever so slightly in reflections of the other, especially as both represent two separate generations of women who have moved to London with big dreams, only to find gendered obstacles in their way. Wright delights in letting his fluid, kinetic style flow naturally through the duality of these identities, as both Ellie and Sandie switch in and out of each other’s positions in deftly choreographed sequences and find their reflections taking on their counterpart’s appearance, all while pieces of both identities are gradually absorbed into the other.

Mirrors are crucial to Wright’s formal ambitions in expressing this relationship, but they also prove to be integral in his stylistic statement as they distort and multiply characters in twisted compositions, become frames through which his camera moves, and force us to question our very understanding of Ellie’s physical reality. It doesn’t take long for him to entirely erode that sense of geographical space either, as the London of Ellie’s dreams gradually turns into an ever-shifting labyrinth of unpredictable doorways that throw her across the city’s clubs, alleyways, and buildings. Wright’s usual hyperactive editing style may not be entirely present here, but Last Night in Soho is still identifiably from the mind of the director whose inspired transitions and camera movements shape our perception of time and the manner in which it flows around his characters.

Wright has never been a slouch behind the camera, but Last Night in Soho may be his greatest effort in mise-en-scène to date, especially in his intensely expressive colour palette of reds and blues that emerge through lens flares and vivid neon washes, flashing through the windows of Ellie and Sandie’s apartment where the past and present converge in a gruelling, sensory nightmare. Though there are horrific figures that stalk and chase Ellie through her dreams and visions, the real threat here goes beyond any one monster – it is the violent, misogynistic exploitation filling every corner of this culture that poses real mortal danger to both women. Without a corporeal figure to pin this terror down to, it is instead in Wright’s haunting, disorientating atmosphere that we feel these physical worlds break down, and are led into the frightening liminal space that is left by the absence of such conveniently clear-cut divisions and identities.

Last Night in Soho is currently out in theatres.

Pedro Almodóvar | 2hr

A young woman fearing motherhood, a middle-aged woman embracing it, and a mix-up of babies at the hospital – Parallel Mothers might at times look like a setup for an all-out farce, especially given Pedro Almodóvar’s familiarity with the genre from a handful of his earlier films. He at least doesn’t shy away from the comedy of the situation, particularly as Janis, the older mother, goes on denying her baby’s Asian appearance in spite of her and her sexual partner’s very non-Asian heritage. But above all else, Almodóvar is a lover of melodrama, and humour is simply one tool in his arsenal to draw out the expressiveness of such rich, colourful lives, letting the joyous peaks and devastating dips in these characters’ emotional journeys speak for themselves.

And where else would Almodóvar’s style of melodramatic pop art fit better than within an examination of motherhood itself? A sequence of playful intercutting between both Janis and Ana giving birth early on in the film sets up the two polarities of their attitudes, and indeed in certain areas the two might seem like opposites, but this is about as tidy as it ever gets in drawing distinctions between them. Once these women actually hold their babies in their arms, their lives and behaviours begin to shift. For Ana, her child signifies a way she might be able to break free from a traumatic past, and prove that her own mother’s self-admitted lack of a “maternal instinct” was not inherited. Meanwhile, Janis’s growing doubts about her baby’s parentage threatens her own desire to prove she can be a successful single mother, much like her own.

Many of the truly disturbing directions that Parallel Mothers moves in threaten the very foundation of motherhood for Ana and Janis, as for all of the differences between them, there is a shared suffering in the disconnection they feel with their babies. Penelope Cruz, Almodóvar’s long-time muse, is trusted with a great deal of emotional weight here, and in bringing such an affectionate maturity to Janis’ maternal pride and struggles she delivers one of her best performances in years.

Beyond her characterisation as a mother though, Janis is also a woman intrigued by her own ancestry, and thus Almodóvar ties Parallel Mothers into a larger examination of heritage, how we relate to those who came before and after us, and the inevitability of those connections surfacing over time. Although this subplot bookends the film thematically, it doesn’t always feel as integrated with the rest of the narrative as it should be, especially since there is a long stretch of time spent in the middle without so much as a mention of it.

While Parallel Mothers does briefly set its sights beyond the confines of domestic spaces in this counterpoint, it is within its contained, homely realms that Almodóvar allows himself to indulge within his colourful filmic artifice. As a long-time devotee of those masters of melodrama from before his time such as Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Almodóvar isn’t afraid to adopt their delicate sensibilities into more outrageously gaudy set pieces, using the pretence of bright, block colours in his mise-en-scène to bring to life these feminine worlds which, by more conventional cinematic standards, might be considered dull.

In a hospital room that would be entirely white in the hands of any other director, Almodóvar renders its walls in pale greens and yellow. Back at home, there is a distinct feel of a soundstage to the interiors, as he matches costumes to the curtains, couches, and walls in loud block colours. And then beneath it all is a perky, playful strings score, rising to our attention in what is a fairly dominating mix with the dialogue, matching the plot in its sheer ludicrousness. Absurd as Parallel Mothers may get at times, the pathos which spills forth from its comedic setups is sincere, as the Spanish auteur with a love of colourful femininity delivers his own personal ode to all those wide-ranging, meaningful, and unpredictable experiences of motherhood.

Parallel Mothers is coming to theatres in Australia on January 27th, 2022.