Category: 2020s

Guillermo del Toro | 1hr 57min

It is no surprise that Guillermo del Toro’s take on Pinocchio is a darkly tragic reframing of the original fable, adding the boy puppet to his collection of sympathetic monsters he has amassed throughout his career. Nor is it uncharacteristic of him to choose a wartime backdrop for this thoughtful consideration of oppressive fathers and approval-seeking sons, given the similar settings used in Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. What is truly astounding is just how morbidly existential this interpretation is, even by his own standards, separating Pinocchio’s desire to become ‘real’ from Disney’s metaphor of sharpening one’s moral judgement, and instead attaching it to his gradual acceptance a limited, mortal life.

Del Toro’s foray into stop-motion animation is also perfectly suited this allegory of marionettes and blind followers, not just literalising Pinocchio as an actual puppet, but every other character in this story as well. Almost all of them are serving masters of some kind, driven into their arms by the senseless violence of World War I, and it is only by untethering themselves from those cruel leaders and willingly facing up to the world’s dangers on their own that they are able to transcend their own nature as mere puppets.

It is apparent simply from these creative visuals that Pinocchio is a passion project for del Toro. This is a director who has frequently invented his own fairy tales throughout his career, and yet it is only for the first time here that he is going straight to the source of his interests with a direct adaptation. This renewed focus allows him to dig even deeper into mythological archetypes of ancient Greece than ever before, as he sets Pinocchio out on an epic odyssey across fascist Italy and its surrounding waters. In place of sirens, there is Count Volpe’s promise of fame with his travelling theatre. Legendary sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis become the monstrous Dogfish, eating whatever creatures are unfortunate enough to pass by it. Even Mussolini makes a cameo as a godlike dictator, aiming bullets at a defiant Pinocchio where Zeus might have thrown lightning bolts.

The most existentially concerning of all the obstacles encountered through the film though is the eerie underworld guarded by Death, taking the form of a Chimera. The sentience granted to Pinocchio by her sister, the angelic Wood Sprite, did not make him fully mortal, and so while he cannot properly pass into the afterlife, each visit to this uncanny limbo will be longer than the last. Tilda Swinton does well in lending an authoritative voice to both these supernatural creatures, laying out the greatest stakes of all to this boy as he slowly comes to terms with the curse of immortality.

Filling out the rest of this immensely talented voice casts is David Bradley, Christoph Waltz, Ron Perlman, and Cate Blanchett, though it is Ewan McGregor’s turn as Sebastian J. Cricket that stands out among them, giving Pinocchio’s insectile conscience a pompous Scottish brogue. The home he makes in a pine tree destined to be chopped down and turned into a marionette positions him right where the boy’s heart would be, though rather than becoming an objective voice of reason, he too is given his own emotional development in learning the virtue of selfless generosity.

In fact, del Toro spends a commendable amount of time building out resonant arcs through many of his supporting characters, frequently embodying one of two archetypal journeys – fathers learning to accept their sons, and sons learning to live without their father’s approval. Along the line of the former, Geppetto is given his own heartbreaking backstory that frames his parenting of Pinocchio as a second chance, though one which he approaches with shame and uncertainty. Along the latter, del Toro offers immensely rich characterisations to smaller parts such as Spazzatura, Count Volpe’s monkey assistant, and Candlewick, the son of a fascist government official, both of whom move past their initial rivalries with Pinocchio and find a likeness in their struggles for acceptance. On a broader scale, the constant patriarchal talk of serving the ‘Fatherland’ places these individual stories in a very specific political context, offering those who do as they are told false assurances that they will find fulfilment in their duty.

The historical detail that del Toro painstakingly imbues in his world is only outdone by the vivid tactility of its aesthetic design, carving deep indentations into every distinctive character feature from Geppetto’s tufty beard to Pinocchio’s wood grain. With so much attention poured into the rough cracks and worn edges of his figurines, perhaps there is some power lacking in his visual compositions, seldom possessing the sort of carefully staged arrangements present in his greatest works. Neither does Alexandre Desplat’s score inspire the same sentimental evocations as his previous collaboration with del Toro, The Shape of Water, which is especially disappointing given the movie-musical format.

Still, there is no arguing against the meticulous artistry of del Toro’s animation, carrying all the trademarks of his distinctive style over into an entirely new medium, while pushing it even further with some brilliantly inventive designs. Quite remarkably, he expresses an incredible amount of personality and emotion through these figurines, resonating Geppetto’s “terrible, terrible joy” across each character who ends up finding both value and sorrow in parenthood, independence, and mortality. It is ultimately only by moving past their immature, self-preserving instincts that any of them, whether human, animal, or puppet, discover what it really means to be “real.”

Pinocchio is currently streaming on Netflix.

Alejandro Iñárritu | 2hr 39min

More consistent than the regularity with which Alejandro Iñárritu has released new films over the past decade or so is the insurmountable ambition which guides them, and there is certainly no understating that aspect of Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. Here, the darkly comic self-criticisms of Birdman meet with the surreal awe of The Revenant, and together sprawl out across an introspective examination of Mexican culture, history, and politics. As a result, this film is both an intimately spiritual experience and easily his most inaccessible yet. Iñárritu has effectively carved out his own narrow niche in the arthouse cinema landscape, turning the indulgence and extravagance he is so often criticised of into Bardo’s greatest strengths, and thereby lulling us into a lucid dream that seeks some unity in the metaphysical absurdity of his complicated life.

Mexican documentarian Silverio Gama acts as a character surrogate for Iñárritu here, and there is barely a second of screen time in this expansive, wandering film that doesn’t centre him. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Lucia, and his son, while his daughter lives out of home. It is the spectre of a third child, Mateo, who has the most impactful presence of them all though, constantly lingering in the background of family conversations. His introduction comes in the first few minutes when we find ourselves in the hospital where Lucia is giving birth, though in an amusingly surreal twist of circumstances, the doctor announces that the baby has told him that he never wanted to come out to begin with.

“He says the world is too fucked up.”

Naturally, it is back into the womb for Mateo, who will remain eternally young without ever knowing a full life. The scene is played for laughs, ending with Lucia’s umbilical cord grotesquely trailing after her and Silverio as they leave down the hallway, but it only barely conceals the tragedy lurking beneath. It isn’t until over an hour later that we learn the truth of Mateo’s existence, which lasted a mere 30 hours before he passed away and consumed his family with an anguish that they haven’t yet learnt to let go of. His scattered appearances throughout the rest of the film intermittently come at the unlikeliest times, but such is the nature of his memory that those who loved him most will often find ordinary activities disturbed by their unresolved grief.

“Mateo’s just an idea now. Not a person.”

The liminal space that Mateo lingers within between life and death thus gives the film the first part of its title – what Buddhist philosophy calls ‘bardo’. So too can it be applied to the experience of the film as a whole, contextualising Silverio’s endless wandering between dreams and memories as the existential thoughts of a man facing down his own mortality. Through Iñárritu’s persistent, wide-angle lens, Silverio is distanced from the world around him, whether he is intimately framed right up against the camera away from his environment or pushed off into the distance of gigantic set pieces. Daniel Giménez Cacho’s versatile talents as an actor are well-suited to this off-kilter aesthetic too, seeing him command the screen with expressive dance moves to an acapella rendition of ‘Let’s Dance’, and conversely lash out at critics who disparage his work as “pretentious and pointlessly oneiric”.

Therein lies the reasoning behind the second part of the film’s title, with False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths being the name of Silverio’s latest movie – an autobiographical piece of docufiction not unlike what we are watching. In fact, Iñárritu’s screenplay even goes so far as to single out specific scenes from earlier in the film as the target of the friend’s scathing evaluation, putting both himself and Silverio in an awkward, defensive position that only reveals their own bitterness. Perhaps Silverio is right in calling out the hollow sensationalism of their work in the media industry, though it doesn’t make him any less out-of-touch with a modern world that he laments “slips through our fingers.”

In conducting such a personal examination of his art and how it is shaped by his difficult relationships with others, Bardo lives beneath the giant shadow of 8 ½, paralleling Federico Fellini’s comically surreal journey into his own mind on multiple levels. The characters of Guido and Silverio are themselves quite similar in the fanciful, existential musings that disconnect them from reality, though an entire ocean separates their respective cultures. In place of Italian paparazzi and Catholic guilt, Bardo is soaked in references to Mexican politics, history, entertainment, and social issues that few films have addressed before with such intensive focus. Although some familiarity may be handy in understanding the world that is inherently part of Silverio’s identity, Iñárritu does not set this up as a prerequisite to absorbing oneself in his emotional journey.

Instead, it is the sheer power of Iñárritu’s visual imagery and symbols which engage our understanding of Silverio as a man whose complicated relationship with his nation can’t be simplified into a single talk show interview. Early on as he debates the U.S. ambassador on the matter of the Mexican-American war, he conjures a full-scale re-enactment of the Battle of Chapultepec right on the grounds where they meet, emphasising the patriotic bravery of the outnumbered soldiers that legend has named Niños Héroes. This scene additionally showcases some of cinematographer Darius Khondji’s finest work, fluidly pivoting the camera from a simple conversation to largescale warfare, and subsequently flying through the precisely choreographed action in long, dynamic takes.

Metaphor and spectacle are woven even closer together later in more explicitly surreal interludes, at one point seeing Silverio wander around an empty, rundown city that gradually springs to life in a lengthy, parallel tracking shot. The woman in the crowd who suddenly drops to the ground goes ignored by everyone but him, and when he investigates, she informs him “I’m not dead. I’m missing.” What follows is a disaster of apocalyptic proportions, seeing every other citizen except for Silverio fall one by one, joining the statistics of Mexicans who have been killed or kidnapped by organised crime rings, and eventually leaving the city silent once again.

With the sun rapidly sinking below the horizon, it is a fluent transition into Silverio’s next vision set in the Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, where Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, sits atop a mountain of Indigenous bodies, reciting passages of Octavio Paz’s poetry. There, Silverio spills out the complicated feelings that many Mexicans today hold towards the man who laid the foundations of their civilisation through genocide, though such weighty scenes are never so burdened by dense dialogue as to grow tedious. All through these Fellini-inspired sequences, Iñárritu’s direction is as graceful and hypnotic as the seamless transition from one dream to the next, building out a stream-of-consciousness structure that just keeps on revealing new depths to this filmmaker’s insecure, troubled mind.

Tying all these historical diversions back to Silverio’s relationship with his nation is the contradictory nature of his own patriotism, making him just as likely to praise Mexico’s proud heroes as he is to express his shame over its rampant crime. Much of his stance at any given time depends on who he is speaking to, in one instance correcting his son that their home country is not “poor”, just “unequal,” though as an immigrant choosing to live a life of privilege in the United States, he is still vilified for “kissing gringo ass.” A quiet curiosity that often emerges in such interactions is speech that comes from closed lips, suggesting some obstacle of communication between characters, though never being tangibly explained besides a few throwaway lines that ask others to “Talk with your mouth.”

This is undoubtedly a project of immense passion and ambition for Iñárritu, and easily his most avant-garde, touching on the extensive range of worldly influences that have shaped him into an adventurous filmmaker, grieving father, and sceptical Mexican expatriate. If Fellini’s artistic inspiration was there in the film’s opening with a point-of-view shot flying up into the air above a desert and falling back to Earth, then it is even more present in the brilliant climax that returns to the arid wasteland, gathering the various loved ones in his life for a final celebration. Even the marching band from the Battle of Chapultepec re-enactment is present, underscoring Silverio’s journey through the transitory ‘bardo’ afterlife with a bright, brassy melody, more than a little reminiscent of the closing music from 8 ½. Iñárritu’s bold abstraction of one man’s fading life may be cynical and even absurdly funny at points, but in bridging the gap between material and immaterial worlds, it is also a deeply spiritual work, building a mountain of rich visual metaphors to deliver one of the most formally complex cinematic achievements of the past few years.

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is currently streaming on Netflix.

Luca Guadagnino | 2hr 10min

Though marketed as a cannibal movie and drawing vampiric parallels to its characters’ secretive feeding habits, Bones and All invents its own term to describe these people driven by a strange, grotesque compulsion – ‘eaters’. Despite possessing an attuned sense of smell that lets them sniff each other out, they are lonely hunters, mainly keeping to themselves or occasionally pairing up with others of their kind. Abandoned by her father and believing her mother is dead, this is path that Maren takes when she meets fellow eater Lee. From there, both set out on a nomadic journey across the United States which tenderly transforms this horror-tinged premise into a coming-of-age tale, a sweet romance, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, a sensitive, queer allegory.

It is that final reading which may be the most fascinating aspect of Bones and All’s screenplay, underscoring its character dynamics with inferences of sexual exploration and self-loathing. This subtext is altogether missing from the novel it is based on, but it feels entirely appropriate to Guadagnino’s empathetic vision here, emphasising the transgressive nature of eaters in Reagan’s America where anything outside the conservative norm is considered not just taboo, but entirely evil. Other metaphors that have wrestled with similar subject matter might have nailed the sociological angle, but in drawing it back to cannibalism, Guadagnino creates something quite distinctive and possibly even controversial with its first-person perspective. We are inside Maren’s head every step of the way through Bones and All, fully empathising with her shame over what she and so many non-eaters perceive as an innate, psychological defect.

“We don’t have many options. Either you eat, you off yourself, or you lock yourself up.”

Guadagnino’s insight into young, queer relationships has been a persistent thread running through his filmography, and in a way Bones and All feels like a capstone to many of them. It is not as ambitious as Suspiria, but neither is it as heavily flawed, delivering its social commentary with a defter hand while maintaining the same visceral horror. Meanwhile, the unspoken understanding between young adults exploring their sexuality is reminiscent of Fraser and Caitlin’s friendship in We Are Who We Are, and it is hard not to see the connections to Call Me Be Your Name given Timothée Chalamet’s role in the 80s-set romantic drama. Bones and All still sits a few rungs below the latter as an artistic achievement, but it is certainly at least more consistent than his other efforts, thoroughly building an unhurried pace that sees Maren mature from a frightened, insecure teenager into a woman in harmony with her carnal cravings.

Integral to the lyrical tempo of Guadagnino’s storytelling is his inspired editing choices, bridging transitions from close-ups to landscapes with beautiful long dissolves, and occasionally zooming into points of focus with a rapid series of jump cuts. Every so often, he also inserts aggressively haunting montages which sit somewhere between dreams and flashbacks, revealing fragments of Maren and Lee’s deepest insecurities that are rooted in childhood traumas. In this way, he sets up their parents’ failures as primary influences on both, coming to a head in Chalamet’s tearful monologue recounting his father’s abuse, and even more prominently when Maren’s mother enters the story with a heartbreakingly disturbing cameo from Chloë Sevigny.

The eater culture which Maren and Lee encounter during their travels can’t quite be described as a community given broken up it is, but they do discover a certain commonality among them. Many of them remember their ‘first’ quite vividly, often a family member or babysitter they attacked as a child, and when the two lovers share these memories with each other, what once was a point of shame brings them closer together. Suddenly, Maren doesn’t feel like such an outcast for her curious cravings, and it is with this compassionate understanding that these friends navigate unfamiliar territory together, both literally and metaphorically. As they sit in a barn contemplating the cows below them destined to become meat, Guadagnino gently tracks his camera towards them in a long take, and as they finally kiss and seal their romance, he brings it to a rest on their faces, smiling brighter than ever.

It is a relationship that many other eaters can only dream of, and with the unsettling presence of the homeless, wandering Sully persisting throughout the film, we are constantly reminded of how such soul-crushing loneliness can damage the minds of society’s outsiders. Mark Rylance’s soft, drawling accent, bizarre fashion sense, and third person speech projects an awkward figure, but being an older man whose contact with other humans has been severely limited, he also carries a great deal of sadness. Though his appearances throughout Bones and All are sparse, each of them leaves an eerie mark on Maren’s journey as a reminder of the miserable loneliness that comes with this life – almost in direct opposition to the great joy and freedom that Lee conversely embodies.

Like Bonnie and Clyde or Badlands’ Kit and Holly, Maren and Lee effectively build new, self-made lives for themselves on the road, though in contrast to those other young, criminal lovers, the threat of being caught by authorities does not feel significant. Rather than running from danger, they introspectively seek a reconciliation between their consciences and cravings, offering their stories and bodies to each other as sources of great comfort. Only by seeing their identities reflected in the outside world can they make any real connection with it, but in Guadagnino’s morbidly nuanced characterisations, we can see how building rich relationships with others equally lets them finally embrace themselves.

Bones and All is currently playing in theatres.

Mark Mylod | 1hr 47min

Within the exclusive, isolated restaurant Hawthorne, Chef’s menu is the bible. He has gone to painstaking lengths to ensure the extravagant experience is delivered it exactly as intended, not as products to “eat” in the traditional sense, but rather as intellectual exercises to “Taste. Savour. Relish.” So too is this the manner in which his wealthy clientele appreciate his genius, abstracting ideas and deeper meanings from each course. To superfan Tyler, he is more than a cook – he is a storyteller with seemingly no limits to his genius. On this special night, the chef’s table he is attending along with his companion, Margot, and nine other lucky guests is promised to be an unforgettable experience, though the menu that Chef has prepared proves to his darkest and most avant-garde yet.

In The Menu’s gradual descent to gastronomical madness, Mark Mylod crafts a biting horror satire of up-class foodie culture full of all its recognisably niche archetypes. Restaurant regulars, obsessive devotees, and snooty critics sit among tech bros and celebrities whose immense wealth funds their side interest of fine dining. Each deservedly get their time in Chef’s spotlight as the targets of his derision and torture, and binding them all together is a conceited attitude towards food that in some way strips it of what Chef views as its truest pleasure – though what that might be is something he forgot a long time ago. Dedicating one’s life to cooking food for the top 1% who have lost touch with its purpose has drained the perfectionistic Chef and his burnt-out staff of all their passion, moulding them into a cult of sorts who live and work as a single, machinelike unit.

As such, Midsommar exerts a significant influence over The Menu’s characterisations, set pieces, and even its shimmering score composed by Colin Stetson, each coming together to paint a conflict between a hivemind community and their obnoxious visitors. Caught in the middle is a woman with sympathy for the former but allegiance to the latter, standing out in a way that is immediately noted by Chef’s right-hand lady and maitre d’, Elsa. Where Florence Pugh brought a traumatised melancholy to the equivalent role in Midsommar though, Anya Taylor-Joy is caustically sceptical of the entire experience, offloading exquisitely outlandish meals onto Tyler’s plate and hitting back at Chef’s criticisms of her etiquette.

Between these two men, Mylod strikes gold in his casting. Nicholas Hoult has built a respectable career on playing arrogant fools, and as the offensively pretentious Tyler he continues to dial up the pomposity here, waxing lyrical praises of Chef’s ability to “play with the raw materials of life itself.” Even as his fellow guests start losing fingers and their secrets spill out in humiliating food-themed reveals, he remains utterly engrossed by it all, right up until the point that he is singled out as potentially the worst of them all. Ralph Fiennes may outdo anyone else in this cast though, delivering his best performance since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel as the soft-spoken, intensely focused Chef, putting us on edge at the start of each course with his unnervingly loud claps. His versatility is also on full display, commanding the screen with twisted monologues that are as equally menacing as his vaguely sinister threats.

“You will eat less than you desire and more than you deserve.”

Most of all though, Chef carries the miserable weight of a life utterly drained of passion and love, bled dry by an unjust service industry that dehumanises its workers for the exorbitant pleasure of its consumers. As a result, the delightfully macabre sense of humour that he possesses seeks to turn the tables on those whose capitalistic demands represent the ruin of his art, testing their acceptance of substandard meals such as the amusingly paradoxical “breadless bread plate.”

As the courses grow progressively darker, so too does the sky outside the restaurant’s giant glass wall, settling an ominous gloom over the mind games and murders that build towards the much-anticipated dessert. By turning these courses into their own chapters, Mylod instils a formal rigour in his storytelling reminiscent of the daily menus in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, associating each new development in the narrative with a specific dish marked by a drily sardonic description. These cutaways land with gentle elegance to the sound of a gong, lingering on dishes exquisitely designed by French chef Dominique Crenn, whose unique integration of poetry and cuisine is hauntingly manifested in Hawthorne’s highly conceptual yet divinely beautiful meals.

The punchline that comes with the final menu description makes for an amusingly morbid pay-off to all of this, though The Menu does not end without a satisfying recognition of what sparks one’s passion for food to begin. Through the intersection of Margot and Chef’s emotional arcs, a touching sweetness can be found within the bitterly pointed satire, underscoring the surprising similarities of their respective experiences, and anchoring us to reality by way of Margot’s refreshing pragmatism. As we collectively plunge into the depths of Chef’s resentful, twisted mind though, even her sharp wits may not be enough to save her fellow consumers and service industry workers from his menu, nor the disturbing consequences of capitalism’s arrogant, commercialised pretension.

The Menu is currently playing in theatres.

James Gray | 1hr 54min

Early on in Armageddon Time, a conversation unfolds around the Graff family dinner table touching on the horrors experienced by Jews in the Holocaust. For grandparents Aaron and Mickey, the memory of Nazis and concentration camps is just as raw in the present as it was during World War II, imparting them with a sensitive wisdom and offering a compassionate counterpoint to the social and political divisions of 80s America. Twelve-year-old Paul’s inability to grasp the horrific reality of their adversity is more revealing of his childlike innocence than any purposeful ignorance, though over the few months that he befriends and gets into mischief with his African American classmate, Johnny, surprising parallels of survivor’s guilt begin to emerge in his own life. For James Gray, this is a deeply personal story of his own pre-adolescence in Reagan’s conservative America, learning to recognise where privilege and injustice intersect across boundaries of class and race.

The first suggestion of some imbalance between the treatment of the two boys comes on the first day of sixth grade. Both are troublemakers, but where Paul’s mucking-up comes from a lightness of spirit, Johnny’s indicates a wearied disillusionment with authority, leading him to deliberately antagonise the teacher who has forced him to repeat a school year. When they are each called up to the front of the class to clean the blackboard, Paul’s silent disruption of the class is caught by the eyes on the back of the teacher’s head – except it ends up being Johnny who cops the blame.

Thus begins a troubled friendship between these young boys, the tone of which is set by their initial interaction. Later when they are caught smoking weed in the school toilets, the adults in their lives attempt to pull them away from each other, though the fact that one simply ends up at a strait-laced private school while the other becomes homeless says it all. Gray walks a tricky line here in validating the experiences of both children while recognising the inherent inequality of their troubles, though this does not simply become another reductive tale of white people learning about racism. Instead, Armageddon Time is an act of atonement for Gray, recognising the Jewish experience of escaping an awful fate that others ultimately fell to, whether by sheer luck or one’s own inherited privilege.

With teachers at school beating prudish moral standards over Paul’s head, and his own parents safeguarding the entitlement that keeps him from facing any real consequences, it often seems like Aaron is the only presence in his life who sees the system of oppression for what it is. “The game is rigged,” he laments to his grandson, all too familiar with how prejudice can overrun cultures and destroy an entire race of people.

The coldness that Anthony Hopkins displayed in his earlier film roles has given way to a gentle warmth in more recent years, and it is upon that kindness which Gray pivots Paul’s journey, driving him towards an empathy and self-awareness that so many others around him lack. Beyond the archival footage of Reagan, Fred and Maryanne Trump also make appearances in cameos from John Diehl and Jessica Chastain, and with role models like these influencing an entire generation of America’s children, it would be too easy to send a child like Paul down a similar path of selfish individualism.

Given how much his home life conforms to the typical image of an affluent 80s New Yorker family, this seems like a very real possibility as well. His parents may be Democrats with a loathing of conservative politics, but they are far more likely to participate in those stifling institutions which benefit their social status than question them, and around them Gray’s production design forms a bubble of opulent, indulgent hypocrisy. The patterned wallpaper, old-fashioned lamps, and electric chandeliers that shed a gorgeous yellow light across retro interiors may not reach the stylistic heights of his previous period pieces, but the lavish curation of such splendid décor tells its own story of class disparity when juxtaposed against Johnny’s homelessness. In exteriors, Gray lends a light, sepia filter to scenes set against authentic New York parks and buildings, infusing these landmarks with a sentimentality that can only exist in the eyes of a child as spoilt and sheltered as Paul.

What Armageddon Time ultimately adds up to is a battle over the souls of America’s children, set right on the eve of a presidential election that would dictate the culture of an entire decade. The world may be more complex than Paul can comprehend at this age, but such staunch class divisions are nothing new for older generations of Europeans who have seen it all before. Prejudice is not an anomaly in human nature, but rather cycles in waves throughout history, and by reflecting on this moment of realisation in his own childhood, Gray remorsefully reaches out to those whose hardships he passively let pave the way for his own privilege.

Armageddon Time is currently playing in theatres.

Ryan Coogler | 2hr 41min

Upon the tragic passing of Chadwick Boseman in 2020, a Black Panther-shaped hole opened up in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Hollywood’s wider film culture. How a studio so reliant on its storytelling formulas could pivot one of its most lucrative pieces of intellectual property in such a sombre direction would seem to be a tricky task for any of the usual directors-for-hire, though there was little concern going in that Ryan Coogler would pull off anything less than a sincere eulogy for his late friend. As a result, the outpouring of grief felt in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever feels refreshingly untethered from Marvel’s common wisdom that solemnity must either be undercut by a quip or justified as a climactic, heroic sacrifice. Life can be cruel, and in purposefully reflecting the messiness that comes of its adversities, Coogler composes one of the most heartfelt comic book movies we have seen in years.

It is apparent that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever belongs among the greatest artistic efforts to emerge from Marvel Studios, but it is still a little disappointing to consider its flaws that place it a tier below the first film, especially considering the potential of the hugely talented filmmaker at the helm. In place of tight, propulsive story, we get a few extraneous subplots that serve nothing but the setup of future movies, dragging the film out to an overlong 160-minute runtime. The setting of some of these far outside the realms of Wakanda and Talokan, the newly-introduced underwater empire, means that they don’t even have the benefit of Coogler’s richly curated production design to back them up, leading to set pieces like one particular car chase that is so generic it could have come from any modern action movie.

Where this sequel ends up flourishing is in its extension of the accomplishments from the first Black Panther film. The sophisticated world-building Coogler carries out here in introducing new parts of Wakandan culture and the hidden kingdom of Talokan is rife with a visual majesty unparalleled by virtually every other Marvel director. The white textiles worn by the mourners at T’Challa’s funeral distinguish their grieving rituals as a celebration of the life that was lived, gently catching the sunlight beneath delicate veils and swaying loose garments to tribal dances in soulful slow-motion, though Coogler’s vision takes an even greater step up with the introduction of Talokan. Where Wakanda’s costume design is explicitly inspired by African tribes, this oceanic civilisation draws on a Meso-American influence of Aztecs and Mayans, mixing their elaborate designs of precious metals and gemstones with hammerhead shark skulls, lionfish fins, and marine plants.

Those scenes that submerge us underwater entirely easily stand as some of the strongest set pieces of the film as well, basking in the blue glow of the sunken city’s phosphorescent sea creatures and architecture, or otherwise peering up at the refraction of sunlight through the ocean’s rippling surface. In effect, Talokan is visually established as an aquatic cousin of sorts to Wakanda’s vibrant earthiness, united by the resource upon which both advanced societies build their prosperity – vibranium.

Once again, it is the ownership and control of this powerful metal which sets up the primary conflict of the film. Though T’Challa had previously promised to share it with the world, his mother and royal successor, Queen Ramonda, has cautiously backpedalled, wary of exposing Wakanda’s weaknesses. As such, foreign nations have sent out their own scientists and explorers to mine it for themselves, which puts them on the doorstep of Talokan, much to the dismay of its king, Namor. An ultimatum is thus put forward: unite both nations against the rest of the world, or go to war with each other.

As the antagonists of the piece, Namor and his fellow Talokanils make for formidable enemies, wielding impressive powers that call back to the winged sandals and hypnotic sirens of Ancient Greek mythology. Just like Killmonger, they are also entirely sympathetic in their misguided endeavours, wishing to protect their culture from the colonising nations who stripped thriving civilisations of their valuables and left them struggling as third world countries. With T’Challa gone, Wakanda is particularly vulnerable, leaving Shuri, Ramonda, and Okoye to pick up the reigns while still grieving their lost loved one, and to navigate a way forward without a Black Panther.

Within this small ensemble, it is Angela Bassett as the utterly broken and heartachingly furious Ramonda who asserts herself as the most powerful screen presence, revealing in moments of helplessness how much this anguish has aged her into a weary widow of a dwindling family. There may not be as many character arcs as there were in Black Panther, but beyond Ramonda’s exasperation, Wakanda Forever additionally spends time examining Okoye’s identity outside her loyalty to the Dora Milaje, and the restless, burning anger that stands in Shuri’s way of stepping into her brother’s shoes.

The brief appearance of a specific character towards the end of the film may be one of Marvel’s most well-earned cameos in this aspect, edging away from gratuitous fan service to instead underscore Shuri’s desire for vengeance and drive her towards bitter retaliation. She does not possess the kind of nobility which T’Challa embodied and that the mantle of Black Panther necessitates, though this consideration of what makes a leader is at the aching heart of Wakanda Forever, recalling what was lost with Boseman’s passing. Shuri and the sequel that she leads may live in the shadow of their remarkable predecessors, but in realising the difficulty of following up such brilliance, both still manage to recapture pieces of that greatness with sincere, touching reverence.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is currently playing in theatres.

Gina Prince-Bythewood | 2hr 14min

One might almost think while watching The Woman King that they are revisiting the 1990s or 2000s cinema culture where such films as Braveheart and Gladiator dominated the box office and awards seasons. Perhaps what separates the response to Gina Prince-Bythewood’s grand, historical epic from its predecessors does not so much lie in the artistry as it does the cultural shift away from the genre, making it look increasingly unlikely that this film will take hold of audiences in the same way. This should not be considered a reason to write it off though – the setting of West Africa’s Dahomey Kingdom in the early 19^th century offers her story a beautifully rich backdrop of sweeping battles and ancient rituals, allowing it to narrow in on the tribe’s all-female warrior unit, the Agojie. Though this form of storytelling carries on classical narrative traditions, Prince-Bythewood updates it with a lens far more sensitive to historical female perspectives, interrogating the familial bonds that form among these warriors and their mentors.

For a director who has previously subjugated cinematic style to deeply personal subject matter, it is refreshing to see Prince-Bythewood integrate the two so seamlessly here, using the culture of the Agojie warriors as a springboard into epic set pieces pitting Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, and Lashana Lynch among others against the cruel Oyo Empire. Davis especially asserts herself as a sturdy presence in the role of General Nanisca, drawing a fierce anger from her past trauma as she throws her body into combat with Oyo men, though in the rapport she builds with Mbedu, we find another actress with the screen presence to match her beat for beat. Capitalising on her success in Barry Jenkins’ epic miniseries The Underground Railroad, Mbedu brings a vibrant physicality to orphaned warrior Nawi, who passionately joins the Agojie women in their gruelling training.

In the dusty courtyards where they spar, extras are staged across the frame’s entire depth of field, building a world that feels just as alive beyond the main characters as it does within their immediate storylines. There is also a tangibility to the red clay and coarse textiles of the Dahomey tribe’s visual design, especially within the walls of King Ghezo’s palace where fires flicker against walls and carry through through the earthy warmth of Prince-Bythewood’s sunlit landscapes, though the full scale of her achievement here is not felt until her epic battle scenes. As guns and swords are drawn on both sides and the Agojie warriors’ ululating war cry echoes out across the sandy terrain, we are lifted into the air with majestic crane shots, awed by the ferocious wave of women charging towards either defeat or victory. Prince-Bythewood’s veneration of classical filmmaking pays off in these gorgeously executed set pieces, stripping back the CGI to a minimum and letting them breathe with a marvellous, tactile practicality.

It isn’t terribly surprising to see the two women at the centre of this story, Nanisca and Nawi, move along parallel character arcs towards positions of historical greatness, but bringing emotional depth to these journeys is the mother-daughter connection that forms between the two, complete with moments of rebellion, reprimand, and support. Just as Nanisca embraces her student’s independence and strategic thinking, so too is Nawi inspired by her mentor’s fortitude and physical capability, filling holes in each other’s lives that Prince-Bythewood probes in a moving yet unexpectedly twisty subplot. The story of The Woman King rests on the relationships formed between its women, building each other up through bonds far tighter than anyone could guess, and within this historical setting of emboldened African warriors and awe-inspiring battles, these sisterly and motherly dynamics feel viscerally alive.

The Woman King is currently playing in theatres.