Category: 2020s

Scott Cooper | 2hr 8min

The resurgence of murder mysteries in recent years has been undeniable, especially with the popularity of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series, Kenneth Branagh’s revival of Hercule Poirot, and several other standalone whodunnits gaining traction including Bodies Bodies Bodies and See How They Run. In The Pale Blue Eye, Scott Cooper jumps on the trend with a detective tale that at once calls back to the genre’s western roots in 19^th century literature, and yet which also possesses more modern sensibilities in its historical revisionism.

Edgar Allen Poe is still a young cadet in the United States Military Academy here, not yet a famed writer of Gothic poems and short stories, yet still consumed by an obsession with the macabre. In effect, this is his fictionalised origin, laying out the pieces of inspiration which would later drive him to write about guilty consciences, cryptic puzzles, and grisly murders. He is not our primary protagonist though – Detective Augustus Landor is the one sought out by local authorities when bodies of cadets start turning up with their hearts mysteriously cut from their torsos. It doesn’t take long for him to join forces with a sharp-minded, inquisitive Edgar, who has taken a morbid interest in the cases. As the chilly mist clears across white, frozen landscapes, a mysterious conspiracy of occult horror and dark family secrets emerges, revealing a devastating anguish that resides in heroes and villains alike.

It is far easier to settle into the bleak frigidity of Cooper’s desolate style than his lethargic narrative, which often seems to oscillate between listless inertia and eerie intrigue. Most notably, the stray attempts to offer Augustus a pained backstory by way of distracted flashbacks never quite feels one with the film until the end, leaving us to wonder just how much of this 128-minute run time could have been shaved down to a tighter film. Even a drawling, scenery-chewing Harry Melling as Edgar and Christian Bale’s gloomy detective aren’t enough to pull us through these patches. That said, Cooper’s casting doesn’t go entirely to waste – both stars mix well in this ensemble of famous faces, making allies and suspects out of Timothy Spall, Toby Jones, Gillian Anderson, Charlotte Gainsborough, and Robert Duvall.

Regardless of how connected they are to the central murders, darkness infects the hearts of many of these figures, and radiates out into the frosty atmospheres that encompass them. Cooper often keeps us at a distance from his characters in his handsome long shots, emphasising the negative space left behind by snowy fields and foggy forests, and later he drives up the tension with an unnerving pair of high angles teetering us on the edge of an icy cliff. The only shelter from these harsh elements comes in equally cold interiors, lit by thick candles dripping with melted wax and bearing sinister Gothic designs.

Given that the film’s final act almost seems to be on the verge of fizzling out, it is particularly fortunate that Cooper manages to ultimately stick the landing. Just as the horror and evil of Edgar Allen Poe’s writing exists to conceal its deeper layers of melancholy, so too do the ugly actions of Cooper’s characters arise from their obscure emotional wounds. For them, the only way to fight a cruel universe is to arm oneself with even greater cruelty. As flawed as its storytelling may be as, The Pale Blue Eye does not hold back on its grotesque thrills, constructing the sort of enigmatic, disturbing world that we can only imagine gave birth to such a morbid literary imagination.

The Pale Blue Eye is currently streaming on Netflix.

Olivier Hermanus | 1hr 42min

The mountainous structures of files that British bureaucrat Mr Williams has spent his life building is virtually a fort for him, keeping out those distractions he deems insignificant, and insulating him in a state of lifeless passivity. These paper towers crowd out his office in the local council’s Public Works department, forcing him to the edges of the frame and obstructing our view of him with Oliver Hermanus’ delicate shallow focus. The social etiquette and conventions which govern 1950s London’s middle-class may be rigidly defined, but Mr Williams’ grounding in a firm sense of self is not – that is until a terminal cancer diagnosis forces a personal reckoning. Perhaps it is this fresh setting and polished aesthetic which most tangibly sets Living apart from the film it is adapting, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, even if it is overshadowed in virtually every other aspect.

When remaking such elevated source material and deciding how faithful it will be, there is great risk along either path. Sticking too close to what already exists compromises creativity, as is often the case in Living’s familiar narrative structure. Straying too far on the other hand will almost certainly lose much of what gave the original film its power. Hermanus’ addition of the bland Mr Wakeling character serves little purpose, and his removal of several key flashbacks also incidentally develops Mr Williams into a less complex character than his counterpart in Ikiru.

Still, there is a revitalising novelty to Hermanus’ clean, polished direction, steering clear of Kurosawa’s deep focus photography and instead relying on his own filmmaking instincts. His production design’s period detail is as beautifully refined as his staging, sending slow-motion crowds of suited men across bridges and into office buildings against the elegant flourishes of a lush piano and strings score. “Not too much fun and laughter,” one of them warns their newest colleague, and it could almost be their motto. The melancholic joy of Living comes through when Hermanus loosens his style even further, breaking up his predominantly muted palettes with a flash of golden lighting in the bar where Mr Williams ventures beyond his comfort zone, or filling his home with memories that fade from monochrome into colour.

Most significantly though, it is Bill Nighy’s tremendously subtle performance that drives the pathos of the film, sinking into a weary depression when answers cannot be found in the hedonism of London’s nightlife, before letting a sly charm start to break through his lethargic demeanour. Maybe if Hermanus sat a little longer in his most spell-binding moments it would have been an even greater acting achievement, as we move on from Nighy’s impromptu, melancholic rendition of the Scottish folk song ‘The Rowan Tree’ just a little too quickly.

Living might be best appreciated as a standalone film, as although our protagonist’s last minutes onscreen pales in comparison to the marvellous dolly shot of Ikiru, it remains an affecting scene on its own terms. While Nighy sits in the children’s park he has spent the last few months of his life building, a bleak, powdery snowfall encases him in freezing temperatures, and yet not even that can dull the poignant spark in his musical reprise of ‘The Rowan Tree.’ Hermanus effectively carries out a cultural transplant in his adaptation, shifting this mid-century tale of one dying man’s passionate enlightenment from Japan to London, and imbuing it with a whole new context of soul-sucking social customs and routines. If anybody is only going to watch one version of this story, Kurosawa’s masterpiece is the clear winner, but as far as remakes of classics go Living holds up surprisingly well.

Living is currently playing in theatres.

Ti West | 1hr 42min

Shot in a secret back-to-back production with Ti West’s grindhouse horror pastiche X, Pearl pulls back the curtain on its predecessor’s decrepit, murderous villain, and centres her in the shining spotlight of Hollywood’s earliest days. Set roughly fifty years before the events leading to her demise, this prequel couldn’t be more distinct in its saccharine tone and vibrant style. Pearl herself is essentially this movie’s darker take on Dorothy Gale, longing to escape the confines of her rural Texan ranch and fly somewhere over the rainbow – or at least to the Hollywood hills, where she can make a name for herself as a chorus girl. Much like the visible influences of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in X, West wears his inspirations on his sleeve in Pearl, inviting us into a Technicolor dream where traces of The Wizard of Oz sit alongside seedier references to silent, pornographic stag films.

These pulpy renderings of two very different eras of cinema are ripe for some rich cultural comparisons, as the wannabe independent filmmakers of X approaching their ambitions with greater grit, practicality, and compromise than Pearl’s blatantly unrealistic aspirations. What they do have in common is unabashed ego, setting them all up for inevitable disappointment. “One day the whole world’s gonna know my name,” proclaims the enthusiastic young woman, echoing the words of Maxine Minx from X. Like the aspiring porn actress, Pearl comes from humble origins, though with her husband away fighting in the war and her German immigrant parents destroying any notion of life beyond the farm, she is also more stuck in the weeds of tradition. How much of her derangement is bred by this conservative culture versus how much is instinctually ingrained in her psyche is something which West thoughtfully teases out, but Hollywood’s bright promises of the American Dream certainly plays a part in exacerbating it.

After Mia Goth’s remarkable dual performances in X, it should be no surprise that she entirely dominates the screen here, playing right into Pearl’s simple-minded naivety and merciless psychopathy. No doubt she also benefits from the film’s refined focus on its intensive character study rather than a larger ensemble, and clearly West knows the talent he’s got at hand with his long takes that linger on her pained expressions and monologues. This is especially evident each time Pearl lands a kill, whether against an animal or human, as he builds solid form in returning to the same low angle of her disturbingly emotionless face. Her journey here is layered with romantic desire, personal ambition, and murderous rage, and through Goth’s skilled handling of each arc we come to realise how much they are all part of a single descent into madness.

Not that Pearl’s true nature is evident to many of those around her. While mother and father deny the terror that lies behind her innocent façade, her sister-in-law Mitsy and the projectionist she flirts with at the local cinema remain blissfully unaware, feeding her idealistic fantasies. West too is fanciful with his visual stylings, building a similar tension between his stylistic impersonation of old Hollywood movies and the festering degeneracy which lies beneath. With his gaudy wipe transitions, black-and-white interludes, and a classic orchestral score that swells with sentiment, Pearl is just as much an homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood as X is to the American New Wave of the 1970s.

Most accomplished of all though is West’s flamboyantly colourful cinematography, announcing itself from the very first shot that pushes us through a dark doorway not unlike Dorothy’s first steps into Oz, and into a picturesque composition of lush green lawns, a bright blue sky, and a freshly painted homestead. Recurring long shots of a withering cornfield frequently punctuates Pearl’s ventures in and out of town, and a particularly unnerving long take later in the film sticks us with one of her victims making a nervous, ill-fated getaway. Not only is this engrossingly stylish filmmaking from West, but by pushing well-worn genre conventions into direct conversation with cinema history itself, he layers his horror storytelling with a playful self-awareness. Pearl the film is just as much a warped product of the Hollywood dream machine as Pearl the aspiring actress, murderess, and housewife, relishing the superficial splendour that only barely conceals an uglier, malevolent truth.

Pearl is currently playing in theatres.

Emma de Swaef, Marc James, Roels Niki, Lindroth von Bahr, Paloma Baeza | 1hr 37min

Across three eras of one house’s past, present, and future, a rhyming triplet is formed by their respective chapter titles, taking the form of an old English folk poem.

I – And heard within, a lie is spun

II – Then lost is truth that can’t be won

III – Listen again and seek the sun.

Irish screenwriter Enda Walsh infuses this verse with a dark, mystical ambiguity, hinting at forces in each self-contained story which amass power through deceit and manipulation. As The House teases these individual lines out further, an allegory of whimsical existentialism begins to unfurl in an arresting series of Kafkaesque tales. Bit by bit, this anthology traces the rise of modern consumerism from the class envy it was historically born from, through the image-conscious perfectionism of today’s society, and to its logical end as an apocalyptic, flooded wasteland.

Each chapter is credited to a different director, and yet their creative visions possess an abstract unity, following three sets of characters in the process of moving into, selling, or renovating the titular house, only to be confronted by a collection of outsiders who expose their inner corruption. Like Franz Kafka’s absurdist fables, there is little explanation as to where these disturbing figures come from, nor where they will end up when all is said and done. It is rather the effect they have on these poor, doomed residents which The House chooses to study through its rich metaphors, observing the evils they have welcomed into their home tragically erode their souls.

The first ensemble of characters we follow are a poor family given the opportunity of a lifetime when the inscrutable architect Mr. Van Schoonbeek offers to build them a house free of charge – the only condition being that they leave behind their old home and possessions. Family patriarch Raymond, wife to Penny and father of Mabel and baby Isobel, falls easily into temptation, compelled by his jealousy towards rich, condescending relatives. The sudden manifestation of his dreams in his new abode quickly descends into psychological horror though, drawing comparisons to The Shining in its imposing symmetrical patterns, maze-like interiors, and unsettling strangers lurking in unused rooms.

There is no questioning who makes the food or turns on the fancy electric lights at night-time, nor do the parents push back against the house’s strange hypnosis, forcing them to keep sewing drapes and fruitlessly try to light the house’s fireplace. Very gradually, an uneasy blurring of the lines between these people and their possessions unfolds, each absorbing the other until Raymond and Penny start wearing the upholstery and become part of the furniture. Mabel and Isobel make it out with their humanity still intact, and yet the generational cycles of toxic consumerism have begun, promising an even bleaker future.

With such precious virtue at stake, the stop-motion animation of needle felt puppets brings a childlike innocence to The House, freeing each director up to experiment with anthropological creatures and perverse body horror. In the close-ups of Part I, the detail of these human characters is extraordinary, as the camera sharply focuses on the thin felt fibres of their skin ruffling with each movement like homemade dolls. In the later chapters where animals take over, the character designs remain equally impressive, especially with entry of the creepy, disproportioned rats in Part II.

“We are extremely interested in this house,” they repeat in raspy, wheezy growls, and for a time the Developer struggling to sell it acquiesces to their odd behaviour out of desperation, letting them take up unofficial residence the very same day of the inspection. He is quite literally a part of modern society’s rat race, trying to get a leg up by creating the image of a perfect home, and yet the meaninglessness of such efforts is revealed as it falls prey to the filthy exploitation of these squatters and their unwelcome relatives. Eventually, even the Developer succumbs to the anarchic madness, reverting to his most primal instincts and mirroring the transformation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. An earlier overhead shot of him curling up within the fur beetle infestation doesn’t look so sickening anymore when compared to the absolute ruin which has now torn the house apart, seeing him succumb to the indulgent ruin of his materialistic dreams.

The warmth of Part I’s green and gold palette and the sleekness of Part II’s blues and greys are all but gone by the time the dirty, pale browns take over in Part III. The formal contrast between each setting in these colour schemes essentially tell their own story of the house’s evolution, while recurring shots connect us to the unchanging layout of stairwells and rooms across its lifetime. In this way, The House may even be described as an epic of sorts, covering a huge expanse of time in which the only constant character is that large, hulking construction which promises its inhabitants perfect material lives.

As Part III rolls around, it becomes clear that the squalid mess of Part II’s ending has taken over the world. The house has at some point become a block of studio apartments, sitting on an island in a lonely, flooded city that possesses a barren beauty. Surrounding the building is a light, beige mist creeping through windows, while below we notice crooked powerlines peeking above the surface of the dirty water. We may not notice this chapter’s character subversion right away, as landlord Rosa seems reasonable enough in her attempts to restore the building and secure rental payment from her two flaky tenants. And yet in the context of this apocalyptic society where money means nothing at all, she is the odd one out, believing that people will return to the flats if she were just able to fix them up.

Much like Mr. Van Schoonbeek of Part I and the squatters of Part II, wandering hippie Cosmos sails into the life of our protagonist as a disruptive outsider, though not as a sinister enigma. If anything, he appears frustratingly disconnected from reality, speaking of impractical New Age ideals and tearing up floorboards he needs to build a new boat. In this refreshingly inverted character dynamic, our protagonist has already reached the peak of their self-delusion, and the spell Cosmos casts over Rosa is not one which sinks her further into material obsession, but rather clears her mind to see its futility in a dying world.

With Rosa’s liberation and newfound inspiration to “Listen again and seek the sun,” this final chapter punctuates The House with a far more optimistic ending than those which drew Parts I and II into deep despair. Though disconnected in their narratives, aesthetic, and even character species, each absurdist fable builds on the others to arrive at a broader allegory exposing the lie of humanity’s self-centred, material ambitions. We are animals, The House poetically posits, submitting our minds and bodies to that which brings us immediate gratification. Perhaps only when those pleasures are ripped away from us by means of our own self-destruction can we return to a simpler, wiser, and more fulfilling way of life.

The House is currently streaming on Netflix.

Ti West | 1hr 45min

The divisive culture wars of the Southern United States in the late 70s does not form the primary conflict of Ti West’s slasher film X, but it does make for a fascinating backdrop to the insecure, sex-starved rampage of ageing ranchers Pearl and Howard. From the loins of its dogmatic religious puritanism springs a depraved rebellion, thirsting for the worldly pleasures their patriarchal leaders deny. This metaphor is partly literal, with a late reveal shedding light on the origins of aspiring porn star Maxine Minx, but the inescapable presence of televangelists all through X also weaves in an oppressive formal motif which pushes us to side with her fellow cast and crew against the mainstream. Like those bible-thumping preachers, they are seeking to exploit modern media trends in their own way, leaving behind older generations who have grown irrelevant. The scene is thus set for a reckoning with America’s rotten past that has been left to waste away on the fringes of society, empowering West to deliver on a series of pulpy, tantalising thrills.

The lynchpin that connects scream queen Maxine and the decrepit, homicidal Pearl is Mia Goth, who displays an incredible range and chameleon-like abilities in both roles. As Pearl, the layers of prosthetics all over her face and body render her virtually unrecognisable, but Goth also carries a frailty in her voice and movement which distinguishes her from the younger, saucier Maxine. The acting achievement is somewhat similar to Tilda Swinton’s trio of distinct characters in 2018’s Suspiria, though Goth’s dual performances serve a greater formal purpose than simply a portfolio of talent. “We’re the same. You’ll end up just like me,” Pearl moans to her younger counterpart, offering a warning of the miserable fate which inevitably wears away at the beauty and vitality of youth.

With as decrepit a villain as this haunting the rural farm which Maxine’s crew has hired out for their porn shoot, West pays direct homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, infusing X with the grotesque amorality of its cinematic precursor. More broadly, this is his tribute to that entire era of independent filmmaking, adapting its aesthetic with experimental retrospection. The flickering transitions of Easy Rider are revived here, blending the end of one scene and the beginning of the next in such a way that keeps us from immediately grounding ourselves in new settings. The effect is unsettling, and West keeps pushing his eccentric editing forward during an acoustic cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’ where a split screen contrasts the young filmmakers’ warm comfort against Pearl’s silent lament of her grey, leathery skin.

Perhaps it is in the violently creative murders where West is most comfortable as a filmmaker though. The early setup of an alligator dwelling in a nearby lake originally arrives as a warning of the ranch’s lurking danger, but there is also great narrative economy in its return later, driving up the tension when Pearl corners one hapless victim to the water’s edge. As she hacks away at another in front of his getaway car, the headlights are doused in his blood, consequently drenching the entire scene with a vibrant red hue. Like so many great horror films of the 70s, X thrives in these moments of impossible artifice, pushing our suspension of disbelief in such a way that alerts and torments the senses.

West isn’t treading new ground in his grindhouse pastiche, and yet is a provocative consideration of a specific cultural turning point in American history all the same, pitting the bitterness of ageing against the arrogant idealism of youth. Even beyond Maxine and Pearl, this ensemble consists of well-drawn characters, carefully delineated as archetypes of both the horror genre and the amateur film industry at large. The art-driven cinematographer, the vain actress, the innocent sound recordist roped into her boyfriend’s project – these are people we recognise, and yet who also possess vivid inner lives that we see brutally snuffed out one by one.

X’s ensemble is almost quite literally in conversation with the culture of extreme religiosity that they live in, especially with the omnipresent televangelist punctuating dramatic beats through his own commentary. “Now that’s what I call divine intervention!” he feverishly proclaims when Maxine finally gets a bit of luck on her side, and she also begins indirectly quoting him as she stares down Pearl’s shotgun. Even in this isolated, rural death trap of “sex fiends” and “murderers,” there is no separating the rebellious outsiders from the strait-laced mainstream they have run from. Exploitation runs deep in both, while for those like Pearl though who have been sapped of youth’s greatest indulgences, all that is left is a tragic, vengeful resentment.

X is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Binge, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Amazon Video.

Sam Mendes | 1hr 59min

The staff who work at the fading Empire Cinema in the coastal English town of Kent are a strange assortment of passionless locals. Teenagers who would rather be anywhere else collect tickets, duty manager Hilary has never even considered sitting down to watch a movie, and every day she is called into the office of her apathetic boss to carry out a loveless affair. Still, there are sparks of life to be found in unexpected places. The projectionist Norman, played with gentle spirit by Toby Jones, may be the sole employee who possesses a sincere love for his job and film as an art form. That is, until he is joined by the young, charismatic Stephen, who seeks to draw out the hidden beauty residing in his co-workers and the establishment itself.

As a result, there is a mirroring of sorts that Sam Mendes unfolds between the two main targets of his attention – Hilary, and the abandoned upper floor of the cinema that once shone bright in its glory days. Tragic beauty is instilled in both character and setting, rendered with remarkable poignancy through Olivia Colman’s thorny performance, and Roger Deakins’ marvellously golden-lit cinematography.

The latter especially is gorgeous to behold, shedding a soft, golden glow across the building’s regal red theatres, Art Deco exteriors, and the dusty unused ballroom where Hilary and Stephen frequently escape. Yellow dots of distant light break up the darkness outside its windows, and from its balcony Deakins captures a precious moment shared between the two lovers as they wondrously gaze at the New Year’s Eve fireworks bursting in the night sky. This is their world that no one else can touch, isolating them in a bubble separated from society’s conservative judgements of their age gap and interracial relationship.

And yet Empire of Light is not a romance. Hilary is a far more troubled, complicated figure than she initially appears, concealing her bipolar diagnosis and previous residence in a psychiatric hospital from Stephen until it all comes spilling to the surface. Those mood swings we might initially assume are mere slips in her temper grow more uncontrollable as she falls harder in love, and there is a deliberate awkwardness on Colman’s part which keeps us at a distance, especially when she starts stomping on sandcastles like a sulking child. At the same time, she is also revitalised by Stephen’s youthful energy, allowing her to break from old habits and develop a greater sense of self-worth. Hilary is a woman of many contradictions, lifting her to ecstatic heights as easily as they send her crashing to devastating lows.

The subplot of racial prejudice and violence which lingers on the edges of her relationship with Stephen isn’t integrated quite as smoothly. The skinheads who haunt street corners, throw slurs, and march in nationalistic rallies down main roads are an extension of the era’s conservative Thatcherism, though it often acts more like a parallel story than part of a larger narrative. As hopeful and saccharine as Empire of Light can be at times, Mendes also takes his film to some dark places, and fully understands the differences which keep Hilary and Stephen from fully understanding each other on a truly intimate level. Even when the romance fades though, another kind of love persists – one which is strained in its uncomfortable history, yet persistent in its sincere affection and care.

And then there is the ode to film which wraps all of this up in a setting that is both slightly superficial and entirely charming. Deakins’ atmospheric lighting can’t be separated from this raw cinematic power, but Mendes is also pointed in his references to movies of the era. Billboards advertising musical spectacles The Blues Brothers and All That Jazz ground the story in the early 1980s, right at the time when independent cinema started to give way to blockbusters, and in the very final minutes, Being There underscores a key moment in Hilary’s life. Just like Peter Sellers’ simple-minded Chance the gardener, the depths contained within this seemingly plain, dowdy woman are astonishing. Cinema in Empire of Light is designed to inspire and reframe one’s perspective of an ostensibly ordinary world, and with Deakins’ radiant photography at his disposal, Mendes unites both narrative and style under that warm, rose-tinted thesis.

Empire of Light is currently playing in theatres.

Santiago Mitre | 2hr 20min

By the time Argentina, 1985 starts, the nation’s civil-military dictatorship has already been deposed, and yet the odds are still stacked against public prosecutor Julio Strassera. Senior attorneys are wary of joining him in his efforts given the risk it would pose to their careers and families, thereby leaving him to approach predominantly young, inexperienced law graduates. On top of that, there is good reason for those safety concerns – his own children are made the target of several anonymous death threats, revealing the extent to which fascism still has its hooks in the culture at large.

Argentina, 1985 owes a lot to Hollywood’s 1970s political dramas in its suspenseful, high-stakes reckoning with an entire nation’s deep-seated corruption. Santiago Mitre is at the helm as director here, revealing a confidence in his storytelling and editing that reflects on this historical event as the first time any military dictatorship was convicted by law. As such, there is a concerted effort in this film to reframe Argentina’s political legacy, certainly accepting the failings of a historically oppressive government, though also emphasising the even greater significance of the democratic victory which overcame that tyranny.

On the first day of what would become known as the Trial of the Juntas, a bomb threat is called in which Strassera promptly dismisses as an attempt to postpone the tribunal. Nevertheless, his deputy prosecutor, Luis Ocampo, remains on edge. A briefcase that a spectator in the gallery suspiciously leaves behind catches his eye, and as formal proceedings continue in the background, Mitre’s camera suspensefully lingers on this tiny, potentially dangerous disruption. Eventually this tension is dispelled with a bang on a table sounding uneasily like a bomb, though our relief can only last so long before paranoia starts trickling back in. Argentina, 1985 never quite releases us from its anxiety-inducing grip until its end, leaving a lot of room to wade through the harrowing testimonies of those who suffered under the dictatorial National Reorganization Process.

In total, there are eight hundred witnesses who come forward with personal stories of persecution, introduced by a long take that Mitre skilfully tracks into the courtroom as the first of them takes the stand. Each story is utterly gut-wrenching in its own way, delivered with pathos by actors who rarely get more than few minutes of screen time, yet who still leave their mark. One woman recounts how she gave birth while captive and was immediately tortured after, leaving her to forcibly neglect her baby. Another tells of loved ones who disappeared without warning, and another still recalls watching their family killed in horrific manners. Mitre hangs on these testimonies long enough to let them land with impact, and yet his narrative also keeps propelling forward through montages of superimposed phone calls, newspapers, and archival footage linking it all back to a very real history and its immense scope.

Decades on, “Nunca más” is the phrase from this court case which would stand strongest in the memory of the public – “Never again.” It punctuates the end of Strassera’s closing argument as an assertion of Argentina’s steadfast unity against repeating past tragedies, and is imbued with passionate resolution in Ricardo Darín’s heartfelt delivery. Mitre takes creative liberties in dramatising these events, and yet the sincerity of his direction never wavers, imbuing it into every detail of production from his convincing ensemble to his authentic period décor. From this forthright compassion emerges a fresh, democratic hope for Argentina, striking a fine balance in its rumination over both the nation’s horrific failings and the strength of those who condemned them to history books.

Argentina, 1985 is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Charlotte Wells | 1hr 36min

Childhood memories are often tragically limited in their perspective and accuracy, and yet these are all a grown-up Sophie has to reach some understanding of her father’s hidden struggles in Aftersun. Much of the film is based in these wistful ruminations, set sometime in the early 2000s when the two holidayed together at a Turkish resort to celebrate his 31^st birthday. The home videos Sophie shot on a MiniDV camera are interspersed throughout, providing some tangible documentation of what we can only assume were his final days alive, but alone they are woefully insufficient. As Charlotte Wells’ elliptical narrative drifts by at the comfortable pace of a lazy summer vacation, a broader yet still incomplete picture begins to form of a relationship that Sophie can only make some retrospective sense of twenty years later, now finding herself standing in her father’s shoes.

The character work of Aftersun is built on incredible subtlety, and much of this comes down to Paul Mescal’s marvellously understated performance as Calum. He is a man capable of great warmth, offering Sophie a non-judgemental space to express personal feelings few other daughters would share with their fathers. Of all the ways he could have spent his birthday, it is telling that he chose to celebrate it with her, as within the insulated bubble of this setting she essentially becomes his entire world.

The hints of there being something not quite right though are teased out in restrained dramatic beats that one could easily glance over. Calum’s silent, tortured reaction when Sophie speaks of an emotional low he knows too well, his awkward stoicism when Sophie organises a crowd to sing an impromptu birthday song, and his guilty reckoning with the price of a Turkish rug are inconsequential enough on their own. But when they build to a cold rejection of his daughter’s request to sing karaoke with him and a night spend crying alone in the darkness, we are left to consider how much these stresses are simply the surface evidence of some deeper issues.

Wells’ filmmaking flourishes in these tiny moments of distraction, evoking the frivolity of memories that narrow in on strange, seemingly trivial details. There is a flock of paragliders that is seemingly always suspended in the air above the resort, forming delicate backdrops to Calum and Sophie’s poolside respites, and a later cutaway to the swirling surface of a mud bath brings with it a hypnotic break in the drama. While father and daughter chat on their last night about how they could stay there forever, Wells’ camera gently drifts towards the polaroid photo they just took. It is effectively a moment frozen in time, and as we watch it slowly process, the immense significance that Sophie will one day attach to it begins to settle.

It is ironically through this distance put between us and the characters that Aftersun develops such a formal sensitivity to the tiniest shifts in their emotional states, especially when we are positioned to watch them in the obscured reflections of rippling pools and darkened television screens. That said, there are still signs here that this is the work of a first-time director, at times leaving the emotional heavy lifting almost entirely up to her actors while her camera simply sits back, points, and shoots. It isn’t a damning weakness, but it is possible to imagine a stronger version of this film which weaves in its motifs with even greater purpose and consistency.

There is no criticising the final act of Aftersun though, when the time comes for the holiday to end and Sophie’s mind to return to the present day. It is a culmination of the brief flashforwards effortlessly integrated throughout the film, as well as the mysterious cutaways to a strobe-lit rave where she and her father stand apart. In this dark, subjective space, linear time falls away to a splintered remix of David Bowie and Queen’s ‘Under Pressure’, uniting the past’s trauma with the grief of the present in a melancholy embrace.

The final camera pan which gracefully merges Sophie’s current apartment with the airport where she last said goodbye to her father offers a pensive conclusiveness, once again pulling the two time periods apart at the moment of their intersection. While much of the film is dominated by Wells’ slice-of-life realism, this deliberate shift towards visually representing Sophie’s unsettled psychology makes for an incredibly poignant resolution. It would be impossible to fully grasp the man that Calum was, but through Wells’ deliberate accumulation of subtle character details, we can at least take off the rose-tinted glasses of Sophie’s childhood and piece together a fragmented portrait of his stifled, internal suffering.

Aftersun is currently playing in theatres.

Sarah Polley | 1hr 44min

It is a tough promise to make that a film titled Women Talking will add up to more than the sum of its dialogue-heavy scenes, and yet Sarah Polley is no mere caretaker of weighty spiritual contemplations. Her screenplay is based on the 2018 novel of the same name, which itself was inspired by real events in the late 2000s, where eight men from an isolated Mennonite colony were discovered to have been drugging and raping dozens of their own women in their sleep over the course of five years. Any artistic reinterpretation of these devastating circumstances deserves more than just a straightforward recount, but rather something which cuts even deeper to the emotional and psychological reckoning of those affected. The text that Polley quotes from the novel and uses to open her film thus lays out her intentions.

“What follows is an act of female imagination.”

This wording is partially a nod to the blame that Mennonite elders laid at the feet of the “female imagination” when women started coming forward. The other part is a fantasy of what might have been possible had these women united in discussions over how to properly deal with their abusers. Polley recognises the need for a suspension of disbelief here, especially when considering the internalised misogyny that would have realistically been ingrained in these women by their ultraconservative, patriarchal culture. An early vote immediately rules out the option to ‘Stay silent’, leaving a tie between ‘Stay and fight’ and ‘Leave.’ With the majority of the community’s men away overseeing the bail of their arrested neighbours, the women are effectively given a deadline of two days to decide which course of action will be taken.

Polley puts together an impressive cast here that effectively brings layers of nuance to her screenplay’s conflicting moral arguments. Rooney Mara is cleverly cast against type as Ona, a beacon of hopeful optimism, while Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley both take turns furiously stealing scenes as Salome and Mariche, loaded with the rage of protective mothers and indignant wives. Men are scarce to be found in this ensemble, though Ben Whishaw still makes a sizeable impact as an ally tasked with taking the minutes of the meeting, while August Winter offers a compelling perspective as a trans male member of the community, disillusioned by its corruption and driven to take a vow of silence. If there is a knock against the film here, then it is a little disappointing to see how underused Frances McDormand is given her incredible screen presence, and neither does the retrospective voiceover by young actress Kate Hallett feel entirely integrated into the film beyond its pensive introduction and conclusion.

Despite these issues, Polley’s direction can’t be labelled anything less than confident. The first thing one will note about it is just how much she washes out colours from the fields, homes, and barns of this Mennonite colony, sinking her female characters into a desaturated despair that at times looks entirely black-and-white. Inside the hayloft where they meet in thoughtful deliberations, the darkness is only broken up by strips of sunlight pouring through the gaps between wooden slats, while every so often the giant hay door is opened onto a view of the grey farmlands just outside. The second thing which becomes apparent is just how precise Polley is with her blocking and camera movements, both of which lay out the divisions, commonalities, and idiosyncrasies contained within this ensemble.

It is especially in the recurring overhead shots of different women laying across blood-stained beds that Polley draws their stories together, revealing their shared experiences of a visceral horror. With the sparse floral patterns of their nightclothes matching their sheets, they often seem to disappear into their surroundings, overcome by the bleakness of their suffering. So too are they bound together by the wounds left on their bodies and minds, marking them with evidence of abuse that varies from person to person. An unhealed scar, a blinded eye, missing teeth, and bruises are the most visible injuries which garner empathy, though even among these women there is still a heavy stigma around mental illness. When Mejal is overcome by a crippling anxiety attack, Mariche lashes out, unfairly griping that she is making a bigger deal of her adversity despite having been hurt the same as everyone else. In this collection of complex characters though, Polley makes a fine point of the countless ways trauma can manifest in any given individual, and how it can shape them into entirely different people.

Quite significantly, the diversity of these experiences fuels the film’s open compassion, casting no judgement upon either side of the central debate. As Ona, Salome, Mariche, and others present their own perspectives, we often find Polley cutting away to their lives in the colony, rounding each of them out with backstories that justify their individual moral stances. There is strength in the damning silence of a mass exodus, just as there is power in a united battle for justice. So too though is there a universal uncertainty over what comes next, regardless of which path they choose. Women Talking is no plain retelling of historical facts or attempt at didactic message-making. Under Polley’s sensitive direction, it is a rich allegory of patriarchal exploitation at large, pushed to a terrifying tipping point and promised some form of drastic, unpredictable change.

Women Talking is currently playing in theatres.

M. Night Shyamalan | 1hr 40min

At their weakest, M. Night Shyamalan’s high-concept thrillers fall prey to uneven, contrived plotting before whimpering out with underwhelming twists. Maybe then it is his decision to remain relatively faithful in adapting Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World which makes his most recent psychological horror such an engrossing moral dilemma of apocalyptic proportions. There is a translation that takes place from page to screen here which effectively keeps this single location from growing too inert in its staging, making Knock at the Cabin feel both arrestingly claustrophobic and dauntingly cosmic in its stakes. As a result, this home invasion story also feels entirely fresh in its setup, taking us right to the edge of Armageddon without leaving its surrounding rural forest.

The arrival of four mysterious strangers at the isolated holiday cabin where Eric, Andrew, and their daughter Wen are staying brings with it the ultimate ‘trolley problem’ – to avert the end of the world, one of them must kill another as a willing sacrifice. If they refuse, their small family will be the only ones left alive as the sole survivors. Each time they say no, another plague will be unleashed across the Earth, and though it quickly becomes evident to us that this is not a hoax, these young fathers remain wilfully obstinate.

As both slowly crack under pressure, Jonathan Groff and Ben Aldridge do well to carry the emotional drama of this predicament, poignantly considering the implications it holds for their futures. Even greater still are the performances delivered by the four visitors, each being strangers reluctantly bound together by visions of the future. Rupert Grint is volatile as the gruff ex-convict Redmond, while Abby Quinn and Nikki Amuka-Bird offset his malice in the much kinder roles of Adriane and Sabrina. Dave Bautista quite easily steals the spotlight as the gentle giant Leonard though, leading the crew with pained obligation. At times, that doleful acceptance of his own God-given duty is even more compelling than the central dilemma itself, as in his character we see the inevitable endpoint of both Eric and Andrew’s journeys. If they are men gradually learning to accept responsibility, Leonard is a man who has already been there and shouldered that burden.

Within Shyamalan’s tight framing and low angles, Bautista’s large stature often fills entire shots, bringing an imposing physical presence to his monologues that wistfully consider their destiny and onus as a collective group. In shallow focus close-ups too, he and his co-stars talk right down the lens of the camera, and Shyamalan relishes the opportunity here to push his style in uneasy directions as his canted angles start tilting their faces off-centre. The consistency of this aesthetic is admirable, turning what could have been flatly staged conversations into riveting confrontations, evidently inspired by Jonathan Demme’s intimate direction of the anxiety-inducing meeting between Clarice and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.

When the camera moves out into wider shots, the remote cabin proves to be a marvellously atmospheric set piece too with its giant bookcase and wooden interiors. There is taut tension here built into Shyamalan’s Hitchcockian camera movements and visual blocking alike, using the entire widescreen canvas to play out the nerve-wracking dynamics between victims and captors.

Quite simply, this is easily some of Shyamalan’s best direction, pulling together these elements into a singularly focused tension that rarely slips. Even here though, it is not without flaws. Flashbacks to Eric and Andrew’s past bring little besides additional character information that could have been more succinctly woven into the present-day plotline, and there is still the odd passage of needless exposition present that compromises the narrative momentum.

Still, this makes for a captivating 100 minutes of horror storytelling, getting under our skin with existential threats posed in Bautista’s calm, gentle manner. Between Eric and Andrew, we see two sides of humanity – one that submits to mistrustful cynicism, and a more selfless recognition of the pain that such wilful disbelief may inflict on others. Like so many of Shyamalan’s films, it is an expression of spiritual faith, accepting a greater purpose that is as equally mortifying as it is essential to human existence. By wrapping this up in such a sharply composed style, Knock at the Cabin lets us feel both the wondrous significance and disturbing fragility of human life on a grand, existential scale.

Knock at the Cabin is currently playing in theatres.