Jacques Audiard is no hack, and there is some merit to the outlandish ambition of this pulpy, musical melodrama about a cartel kingpin’s transition, yet its constant misfires keep Emilia Pérez from ever settling on a coherent direction.
The unity of art and politics was not exactly a new concept in the 1960s, but Bob Dylan’s refreshing brand of celebrity that is both radically outspoken and mysteriously private inspires awe in A Complete Unknown, soulfully capturing the countercultural icon’s elusive, inscrutable essence.
As we traverse Brady Corbet’s epic saga of a Hungarian-Jewish architect forging a new life, his ties to both America and his homeland intertwine, yielding complex artistic fusions born of bitter nostalgia, soured dreams, and deep-seated cultural trauma.
What unfolds behind the closed doors of the Sistine Chapel in the wake of a pope’s death makes for a tantalising source of intrigue in Conclave, yet Edward Berger brings a solemn gravity to his staging of this suspenseful political thriller, exposing the secrets and moral weaknesses of those who vie for that newly vacant position of power.
Sean Baker captures the whirlwind marriage between a New York stripper and wealthy Russian bachelor with spontaneous realism in Anora, colliding two worlds in euphoric, chaotic romance, and dragging it through the disenchantment of even messier heartbreak.
Count Orlok’s carnal voraciousness is more heightened than ever in Robert Eggers’ meticulously handsome remake of Nosferatu, underscoring the shameful, psychosexual desire which exposes each character to the vampire’s disturbing pull, and manifesting an archaic horror that feeds on our guilty hearts.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s fixers require a certain independence to get their criminal work done, so when their reluctant partnership threatens to steer a job off track in Wolfs, a snarky buddy dynamic emerges that pulls them through the seedy underbelly of Manhattan.
Featuring a vast array of natural locations and rich characters, Kevin Costner announces a project so majestically bloated in Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 that it threatens to dilute its own focus, yet which still etches out a sprawling, Western mythology refusing to be defined by a single perspective.
Through an attempted escape from corporate servitude and an unnatural distortion of biology, Alien: Romulus disturbingly examines the treacherous magnitude of human ambition, as well as the inhumanity which ironically threatens to cannibalise us in the process.
The splendid combination of musical and cinematic talents behind Wicked effectively claims its iconic cultural status within cinema as well as theatre, expanding this whimsical fable of friendship and prejudice to elaborate, epic proportions fitting of its grand narrative stakes.
