There is a radical passion to Paul Thomas Anderson’s storytelling in One Battle After Another which matches the unruly spirit of the characters themselves, hurtling revolutionary chaos and reactionary absurdity towards impact on a dizzying rollercoaster, and sending one washed-up activist on a desperate mission to save the only family he has left.
Where a better Spike Lee film would consistently swing hard for audacious set pieces, Highest 2 Lowest teases us with glimpses of the Kurosawa adaptation that could have been, settling for a bland remake of a once-thrilling crime plot and moral dilemma that severely flattens whatever tension remains.
If all the world is a stage, then A Big Bold Beautiful Journey sensitively understands the roles we must play to uncover hidden truths, channelling Kogonada’s immense imagination through the romantic, metaphysical odyssey that two strangers undertake into each other’s memories.
Armed with a sharp wit and touching sincerity, Eva Victor skilfully keys into the quirks and foibles of modern companionship in Sorry, Baby, composing a fragmented study of sexual trauma and healing over many years of one academic’s life.
The Roses is evidently far more a showcase for Tony McNamara’s crackling writing than its bland visual direction, yet this darkly funny autopsy of a dysfunctional marriage wields wit and cruelty with surgical precision, exposing the combustible tensions that drive vengeful lovers to self-sabotage.
As Bring Her Back draws a pair of stepsiblings into an abusive foster home, Danny and Michael Philippou unravel a conspiracy of ritual occultism and necromancy, probing the demonic depths a grieving mother will pursue to mend her broken heart.
Loyalties flicker with slippery inconsistency in the grimy urban decay of Caught Stealing, as Darren Aronofsky drags one New York bartender into the city’s violent underbelly, and masks familiar genre tropes beneath a tone that is equal parts sardonic, kinetic, and unapologetically chaotic.
What initially begins as a portrait of masculine rivalry in Eddington gradually reveals a study in reactionary control, capturing a microcosm of America’s tumultuous political landscape in one rural town, and cynically submitting to Ari Aster’s combustible, existential chaos.
While Alex Garland brings procedural precision to Warfare’s depiction of an ill-fated military operation, Ray Mendoza draws on his own firsthand experience to imbue it with an immersive, tactile realism, mounting tension through the real-time evolution of its descent into chaos.
Matt Shakman’s vision of the The Fantastic Four: First Steps may gesture towards greatness in its retro-futurist production design, but ultimately retreats into hollow grandeur, leaving behind a world rich in style for a superficial simulation that never dares to challenge its own utopian ideals.
