Rebecca Hall’s shallow focus and hazy black-and-white cinematography in Passing takes a dreamy hold over this interrogation of racial assimilation in 1920s New York, bringing together two old African-American childhood friends whose strikingly divergent lives lead to a reunion over thorny questions of identity and prejudice.
No doubt there are plot points in Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar which don’t quite cohere with everything else, but with a screwball commitment to absurdly inventive visual gags and dialogue, the inspired collaboration between Josh Greenbaum, Kristen Wiig, and Anne Mumolo pushes the film’s narrative logic in hilariously unexpected directions.
Perhaps there is a leaner version of Drive My Car out there than the three-hour version Ryusuke Hamaguchi presents us with, but that would simply not do justice to the long journeys of healing lived by the complex characters at its heart, delicately forming a quiet limbo of endless self-reflection for those whose loved ones have passed on.
The personal evocations of Kenneth Branagh’s own childhood in Belfast endows this memory piece with a certain level of authenticity, but it is also the emotional nuance that he finds through his elegant camerawork and staging that fully consumes us in young Buddy’s journey, giving endless thanks to those who planted seeds of growth within such inhospitable environments.
Through the volatile performances of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, the imposingly austere sets, and ghostly greyscale cinematography, virtually every minute of The Tragedy of Macbeth feels as if it is teetering on the brink of mortality, attacking existential questions of destiny, chaos, and violence with an artistic precision that remains remarkably in tune with Joel Coen’s own fatalistic fascinations.
Besides Michael Showalter’s occasional stylistic flourishes of freeze frames and glitzy titles, The Eyes of Tammy Faye is largely a showcase of one remarkable performance from Jessica Chastain, embracing the wholesome perspective of the unorthodox 1970s televangelist brought down by the moral and spiritual failings of her fellow Christians.
In the stretches of time spent watching Princess Diana quietly unravel in her search for an escape from the British royal family’s country vacation over the course of a few days in 1991, Pablo Larraín crafts a tragically surreal portrait in Spencer of a woman who has not yet died, but who has already departed those worlds she once inhabited.
The captivatingly eerie atmosphere that Guillermo del Toro builds through his delightfully expressionistic aesthetic in his psychological thriller Nightmare Alley is a wonder to behold, luring us into a haunting underworld of carnies, con artists, and psychics in 1940s America.
In Mikey Saber, a charismatic, manipulative ex-pornstar on a steady path of self-destruction, Sean Baker paints out a perfect image of vapid coastal elitism shamelessly pre-empting a victory that will never manifest, as well as an authentic foundation for the social satire that Red Rocket conducts with great humour.
Just as Richard Williams is patient with his young daughters, Serena and Venus, so too is director Reinaldo Marcus Green patient with him in this character study of holistic mentorship, peeling back the layers of a father whose guidance of two future star tennis players is both frustratingly stubborn and gently self-assured.
