On the rare occasion that a film is accurately described as one-of-a-kind, the world is usually gifted with a 2001: A Space Odyssey, Eraserhead, or Persona, pushing the boundaries of cinema pushed to new frontiers. Now in 2024, Francis Ford Coppola also accomplishes something quite unique in Megalopolis, though only to the extent that a chef who throws one hundred arbitrary ingredients into a dish might claim it to be truly original. There are drafts of compelling ideas floating around here, but when it comes to developing any into a coherent storyline or motif, this bewildering, regal mess is hindered by its own fanciful digressions.
On Megalopolis’ most conceptual level, its fusion of Ancient Rome and modern America into the setting of an epic Shakespearean fable is promising, and it is no wonder that Coppola held onto it for so many decades as a passion project. This anachronistic dystopia is so chaotically debauched, one might almost believe that Federico Fellini’s spirit has possessed him with demented visions of Roman fashion shows, chariot races, and spectacular circuses, paving the way for another Satyricon. The cityscape glows a golden luminescence that delivers some astoundingly surreal sequences atop towering clockface platforms, and abstractly considers the state of urban decay through living, monolithic statues physically bearing its brunt.
Even the notion that architect Cesar Catilina possesses the ability to freeze time is set up as a fascinating metaphor for all-encompassing power, though like every other conceit that passes through Megalopolis, Coppola is quick to discard it for whatever comes next. From a sex scandal, to a cataclysmic disaster, to an assassination attempt, there is barely a set piece here that carries weight beyond the moment it unfolds, often disappearing as quickly as it emerged. The visual style is also brimming with inconsistent flourishes of split screen montages, canted angles, and spinning camerawork, but these too give the impression of rambling experimentations more than a specific, coherent vision. As for the much-promoted ‘live fourth wall break’, Coppola delivers little more than an empty gimmick, facing a movie theatre employee towards the screen for half a minute while pre-recorded dialogue gives the unconvincing illusion that they are speaking to Cesar himself.
The deeper into Megalopolis one gets, the more it becomes apparent that Coppola simply can’t figure out the right rhetoric to express the ideas he has harboured for so long. “Only two things are difficult to stare at for long: the sun and your own soul,” his characters ponder, reaching for philosophical insight via awkward soundbites that lose meaning the more one thinks about them.
It doesn’t help either that the impressive gravitas Coppola occasionally manages to summon up is drastically offset by his campy attempts at humour. Given the talent present in this cast, it is hard to believe that Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and Jon Voight all happen to be botching line deliveries of their own accord, and so we must look to the director here as the guilty party. The death of a key player in the final act is especially diminished by this tonal jumble, robbing them of the send-off they have earned in its power struggle.
For the first time in Coppola’s career, we can’t fully blame his failures on not having the resources on hand or studio compromise. Megalopolis is inimitably the work of a filmmaker whose interests have always lied in the mad ego of man, though the precision and focus that he once poured into The Godfather and Apocalypse Now is completely absent here. In its place, we get a dazzling glimpse into the mind of an artist freed from commercial constraints and cinematic convention, yet tangled in his inability to carry a single line of thought through to completion.
The television shows of our childhoods hold a special place in our memories. Quality is entirely irrelevant – to innocent minds, these flickering images are tactile, complex worlds inhabited by vibrant characters we subconsciously mould ourselves after. This is a common experience shared by millennials, and from within it I Saw the TV Glow extracts an unsettling horror, casting a Lynchian surrealism over the lives of two teenagers bonding over the same 90s young adult show.
The Pink Opaque is not for kids, Maddy defiantly claims, and Owen quietly bristles against his father’s passing insult that it is for girls. It feels “more real than real life,” allowing an escape from the insecurities of adolescence and the resulting malaise. They can see themselves vividly within the show’s telepathic characters and glimpse representations of their nightmares in its monsters, each manifesting as grotesque, Eraserhead-style abominations trapped behind a thin mask of lo-fi video grain. It is not the malformed Ice Cream Man or the bearded, lumpy-faced creep that poses the greatest threat though, but rather the largely unseen Mr. Melancholy, who warps time and reality with his mystical powers.
Beyond the titular glow of the screen that softly casts fluorescent magentas, greens, and teals across Maddy and Owen’s faces, Jane Schoenbrun weaves a psychedelic luminescence through their home and school, colouring in this world with shades of their favourite show. Along with the dissolve transitions and elliptical pacing that skip through years at a time, this lighting palette infuses I Saw the TV Glow with an eerie, dreamy quality, whimsically obscuring the boundaries between reality and fiction. Like our two leads, the source of our discomfort remains difficult to pinpoint for some time, until Schoenbrun gradually turns our focus to the truth of their identities.
For Maddy, this is first touched on when she explicitly states she likes girls and reveals her intention to run away from home. When she probes Owen on the matter of his own sexuality, he can’t quite pinpoint the word to describe his specific brand of dysphoria – nor does he seem to want to. Admitting that he feels out of place in his body and the world at large would be to accept that his entire life thus far has been a lie. While Maddy seeks to expose the mind-bending conspiracy behind The Pink Opaque, he shies away in fear of what its implications might be, despite understanding on a deep, intuitive level the exact feeling of imprisonment and disorientation that she is describing.
From there, Schoenbrun’s allegory for the trans experience flourishes, teasing out the horrifying effects of self-denial which keeps Owen from embracing the confidence and spirit of his actual self. His suffering is figuratively akin to being buried alive, forcing wheezing breaths from his chest that might easily be dismissed as asthma, and eroding his physical being into a pale, emaciated shell of his younger self. It is a poignantly clever use of voiceover that appears here too, granting Owen some subconscious awareness that he exists in a fictional world as he speaks to us through the fourth wall, even as he resists fully crossing that barrier.
Where the Wachowskis once called this simulated reality the Matrix, Schoenbrun labels it the Midnight Realm, both essentially representing the same false construct of identity within their respective genres. It is clear that I Saw the TV Glow prioritises its otherworldly atmosphere above all else, though perhaps Schoenbrun could have taken a few more lessons from Lynch in this respect, developing their overarching metaphor to completion while lingering in its ambiguous, wearying anxiety. Nevertheless, the psychological horror that is crafted here from distorted 90s nostalgia makes for an intoxicating examination of those artificial personas thrust upon society’s most vulnerable, and the insidious illusions of self-autonomy that maintain them.
I Saw the TV Glow is currently playing in theatres.
When spoiled heir Dickie Greenleaf catches Tom Ripley trying on his expensive clothing, the assumption that his new friend might be gay is only half-correct. Queer readings of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley are nothing new, and Steven Zaillian is not ignorant to them in his television adaptation, though the icy contempt and admiration that are wrapped up in Tom’s repression also paint a far more complex image of class envy. Tom does not wish to be with Dickie, but to become him, and the depths to which he is willing to sink in this mission reveal a moral depravity only matched by his patience, diligence, and cunning.
Of all the qualities that vex Tom about Dickie, it is his complete lack of personal merit that is most maddening, deeming him unworthy of the lavish lifestyle funded by his wealthy father. While Dickie admires the cubism of Picasso and even proudly owns his artworks, his attempts at recreating that distinctive, abstract style fall short, just as his girlfriend Marge displays little talent in her writing and his friend Freddie is no great playwright. Money might buy the bourgeoisie false praise, yet no amount of riches can endow upon them the ingenious intuition that history’s greatest artists naturally possess, and which Tom nefariously manipulates to earn what he views as his unassailable right.
Tom arrives in Dickie and Marge’s life as a looming shadow, ominously cast over their bodies relaxing on the beach.Few television series in history look like this – Zaillian draws on the expertise of cinematographer Robert Elswit to capture these magnificent visuals, making for some of their best work.
It takes the sharp, opportunistic mind of a con artist to conduct a scam as multifaceted as that which Tom executes here, murdering and stealing Dickie’s identity while carefully navigating the ensuing police investigations. Though Tom adopts his victim’s appreciation of Picasso for this ploy, Zaillian also introduces another historic painter as an even greater subject of fascination in Ripley. The spiritual affinity that Tom feels for Baroque artist Caravaggio is deepened in the parallels between their stories, both being men who commit murder, go on the run, and express a transgressive attraction towards men. Though living three centuries apart, these highly intelligent outcasts are mirrors of each other – one being an artist with a criminal background, and the other a criminal with a fondness for art.
A graphic match cut deftly bridges historical time periods, bringing Tom and Caravaggio’s formal connection to a head in the final episode.Gothic expressionism in the Caravaggio flashback, revealing the murder which has tainted his name.Caravaggio’s artworks are strewn throughout Ripley, most notably drawing Tom to the San Luigi dei Francesi cathedral where his three St. Matthew paintings are on display.
At the root of this comparison though, perhaps Tom’s appreciation may simply stem from the aesthetic and formal qualities of Caravaggio’s paintings, portraying biblical struggles with an intense, dramatic realism that was considered groundbreaking in Italy’s late Renaissance. When Tom gazes upon three companion pieces depicting St. Matthew at the grandiose San Luigi dei Francesi cathedral in Rome, they seem to come alive with the sounds of distant, tortured screaming, blurring the thin boundary between art and observer. With this in mind, Zaillian’s primary inspiration behind Ripley also comes into focus, skilfully weaving light and shadow through his introspective staging of an epic moral battle as Caravaggio did four hundred years ago.
Though the rise of cinematic television in recent years has seen film directors take their eye for photography to the small screen, one can hardly call Zaillian an auteur. This is not to take away from his impressive writing credits such as Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York, and The Irishman, but the spectacular command of visual storytelling in Ripley is rare to behold from a filmmaker whose directing has often been the least notable parts of his career.
An Antonioni approach to photographing Italian architecture, using wide angle lenses to frame these shots that raise structures far above the tiny people below.Immaculate framing and lighting in the canals of Venice, trapping Ripley in a labyrinth built upon his greatest fear – water.Tom’s wandering through labyrinthine Italian cities offers both beautiful mise-en-scène and excellent visual storytelling, applying a photographer’s eye to the detail of each shot.
Robert Elswit’s high-contrast, monochrome cinematography of course plays in an integral role here, rivalling his work on Paul Thomas Anderson’s films with superb chiaroscuro lighting and a strong depth of field that basks in Italy’s historic architecture. Elswit and Zaillian’s mise-en-scène earn a comparison to Michelangelo Antonioni’s tremendous use of manmade structures here, aptly using the negative space of vast walls to impede on his characters, while detailing the intricate, uneven textures of their surroundings with the keen eye of a photographer. The attention paid to this weathered stonework tells the story of a nation whose past is built upon grand ambition, yet which has eroded over many centuries, tarnishing surfaces with discoloured stains and exposing the rough bedrock beneath worn exteriors.
Lichen-covered brick walls fill in the negative space of these shots with visual tactility, giving each location its own distinct character.Visual majesty in the cathedrals that Ripley ventures through, captured with astounding symmetry in this high angle.History is baked into the discoloured stains and weathered stonework of Italian architecture, dominating these compositions that push Tom to the edge of the frame.
Conversely, the interiors of the villas, palazzi, and hotels where Tom often takes up residence couldn’t be more luxurious, revelling in the fine Baroque furniture and decorative wallpaper that only an aristocrat could afford. The camera takes a largely detached perspective in its static wide shots, though when it does move it is usually in short panning and tracking motions, following him through gorgeous sets tainted by his corrosive moral darkness.
Baroque interiors designed with luxurious attention to detail, reflecting the darkness that Tom carries with him to each hotel and villa.Divine judgement in the unblinking gaze of these historic sculptures, following Tom all through Italy.
In effect, Ripley crafts a labyrinth out of its environments, beginning in the grimy, cramped apartment buildings of New York City and winding through the bright streets and alleys of Italy. Zaillian’s recurring shots of stairways often evoke Vertigo in their dizzying high and low angles, with even the flash-forward that opens the series hinting at the gloomy descent to come as Tom drags Freddie’s body down a flight of steps. Elsewhere, narrow frames confine characters to tiny rectangles, while those religious sculptures clinging to buildings around Italy direct their unblinking gazes towards Tom, casting divine judgement upon his actions.
Tom emerges from the cramped apartments in New York City – a cesspool of grime and darkness before he heads to the bright, sunny coast of Italy.Zaillian’s stairway motif arrives as a flash-forward in the very first shot of the series, which returns in its full context four episodes later.Dizzying high and low angles of stairway litter this series, forming spirals out of rectangles, hexagons, and arches.Distant doorways and windows place Dickie and Marge under an intense, microscopic lens from Tom’s voyeuristic perspective.Precision in Zaillian’s framing, trapping Tom in confining boxes.
As oppressive as these tight spaces may be, they are where Tom is most in control, though Zaillian is also sure to emphasise that the opposite is equally true. The only place to hide when surrounded by vast, open expanses of ocean is within the darkness that lies below, and Tom’s phobia is made palpable in a visual motif that plunges the camera down into that suffocating abyss. This shot is present in nearly every episode of Ripley, haunting him like a persistent nightmare, though Zaillian broadens its formal symbolism too as Tom seeks to wield his greatest fear as a weapon against others.
The dominant aesthetic of static shots is broken up by this sinking camera motif, appearing in most episodes as a persistent nightmare of drowning.The dark, churning water beckons Tom as he sails between destinations, threatening to pull him into the abyss.
Most crucially, Tom’s murder of Dickie upon a small boat in the middle of the ocean marks a tipping point for the con artist, seeing him graduate to an even more malicious felony. Zaillian conducts this sequence with taut suspense, entirely dropping out dialogue from the moment Tom delivers the killing blow so that we may sit with his discomforting attempts to sink the body, steal Dickie’s coveted possessions, and burn the boat. From below the surface, the camera often positions us gazing up at the boat’s silhouetted underside with an unsettling calmness. Equally though, the sea is also a force of unpredictable chaos, threatening to drag Tom into its depths when his foot gets caught in the anchor rope and knocking him unconscious with the out-of-control dinghy.
Zaillian’s execution of Dickie’s murder is cold, calculated, and passionless, the entire sequence unfolding over 25 patient minutes.Daunting camera placement from deep within the ocean, calling upon Tom’s phobia at the peak of his brutality.
Even when Tom manages to make it out alive, his continued efforts to cover his tracks bear resemblance to Norman Bates cleaning up after his mother’s murder in Psycho, deriving suspense from his systematic procedures of self-preservation across 25 nerve-wracking minutes. Within a two-hour film, a scene this long might otherwise be the centrepiece of the entire story, yet in this series it is simply one of several extended sequences that unfolds with measured, focused resolve.
Unlike most commercial television, there are no dragged-out plot threads or over-reliance on dialogue to push the narrative forward either. As such, Zaillian recognises the unique qualities of this serial format in a manner that only a handful of filmmakers have truly capitalised on before – Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage comes to mind, or more recently Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad. By structuring Patricia Highsmith’s story around roughly hour-long episodes, each scene unfolds with a patient attention to detail, unencumbered by the constraints of limited run times while maintaining a meticulous narrative economy.
Zaillian borrows this use of colour from Schindler’s List – a film he wrote – leaving behind evidence of murder in these red, bloody paw print, and breaking through Elswit’s severe, black-and-white photography.Exposition is brought alive as letters are read out directly to the camera.
Specifically crucial to the development of Ripley’s overarching form are Zaillian’s recurring symbols, woven with sly purpose into Tom’s characterisation. The refrigerator that Dickie purchases in the second episode is a point of contention for Tom, representing a despicably domestic life of stagnation, while the precious ring he steals is proudly worn as an icon of status. After Freddie starts investigating his mysterious disappearance though, the glass ashtray which Tom viciously beats him to death with becomes the most wickedly amusing motif of the lot, laying the dramatic irony on thick when the police inspector visits the following morning and taps his cigarette into it. Later in Venice, Tom even goes out of his way to purchase an identical ash tray for their final meeting, for no other reason than to gloat in his deception.
Tom eyes Dickie’s ring off early, and from there it becomes a fixation for him, representing the status he seeks to claim for himself.An unassuming ash tray becomes the murder weapon Tom wields against Freddie, and continues to appear in these close-ups with sharp dramatic irony.
This arrogant stunt speaks acutely to Andrew Scott’s sinister interpretation of Tom Ripley, especially when comparing him against previous versions performed by Alain Delon and Matt Damon. Scott is by far the oldest of three at the time of playing the role, and although this stretches credulity when the character’s relative youth comes into question, it does apply a new lens to Tom as a more experienced, jaded con artist. He does not possess the affable charisma of Delon or Damon, but he delivers each line with calculated discernment, understanding how a specific inflection or choice of word might turn a conversation in his favour. He realises that he does not need others to like him, but to merely give him the benefit of the doubt, allowing enough time to review the situation and recalibrate his web of false identities. After all, how could anyone trust those onyx, shark-like eyes that patiently scrutinise his prey when they aren’t projecting outright malice?
Andrew Scott’s take on Tom Ripley is far from Alain Delon’s and Matt Damon’s, turning in charisma for sinister, calculating discernment.
Scott’s casting makes even more sense when considered within the broader context of Zaillian’s adaptation, leaning into the introspective nature of Tom’s nefarious schemes rather than their sensational thrills. The question of what exactly constitutes a fraud is woven carefully through each of Ripley’s characters, mostly centring around Dickie’s class entitlement and Tom’s identity theft, though even manifesting in the police inspector’s passing lies about his wife’s hometown. The rest of society wears false masks to get ahead, Tom reasons, so why shouldn’t he join in the game?
It is no coincidence that the disguise he wears when pretending to be the ‘real’ Tom Ripley so closely resembles the representation of Caravaggio that we meet in the final episode. If anything, this is the truest version of Tom that he has played thus far, and Zaillian’s magnificent conclusion brings that comparison full circle with a dextrous montage of mirrored movements and graphic match cuts. Our protagonist is not some demon born to wreak havoc on the world, but rather a man who has always existed throughout history, seeking to climb the ladder of opportunity with a sharpened, creative impulse and moral disregard. As Ripley so thoroughly demonstrates in studying the mind of this genius, there may be no profession that better captures humanity’s enormous potential than an artist, and none that sinks any lower than a charlatan.
Zaillian sticks the landing with this tremendous montage of match cuts between Tom and Caravaggio, their weapons, and their victims, clearly inspired by The Usual Suspects while integrating his own sinister flair.Tom’s disguise as the ‘real’ Tom Ripley bears striking resemblance to Caravaggio, authenticating the connection between artist and criminal.
The premise of a pop concert being one enormous setup to catch a serial killer is inherently absurd, but M. Night Shyamalan is nothing if not bold with his high-concept thrillers. Even more importantly, Trap strings together its set pieces with taut, suspenseful purpose, even overcoming some stilted dialogue and pacing issues with a refreshing creativity that his weakest films fail to properly develop. Here, the thrill isn’t just in navigating the narrative through the eyes of the murderer, now rendered a vulnerable target. It is that this man’s secret identity as a dorky, affable dad is so credible that we too find ourselves believing in the complete sincerity of the love he holds for his family.
Trap does not follow the template of multiple personalities like Psycho, and yet we fully believe that there are two minds who reside within one body, both working in unison. On one side we have Cooper Adams the father and firefighter, enthusiastically taking his teenage daughter Riley to a Lady Raven concert, cracking dad jokes, and defending her against bullies. On the other, there is the Butcher, a sadistic serial killer who imprisons his victims in the basements of empty houses and tortures them. It is eerie watching this sort of cognitive dissonance in play as Josh Harnett smoothly switches between both personas, forcing us to constantly question our own desire to see him either succeed or fail in his escape mission.
Following Shyamalan’s similar success last year with Knock at the Cabin, it appears that he is not only developing his skills as a writer, but also as a visual storyteller bearing closer resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock and Brian de Palma than ever before. Deep focus and split diopter lenses often divide the frame right down the middle, staging Hartnett in the distance as he eyes off the FBI profiler leading the manhunt, while the editing between his point-of-view and reaction shots silently key us into each plan unfolding in his mind.
Carrying over from Knock at the Cabin as well is his penchant for shallow focus close-ups – a technique too often abused by lazy filmmakers, yet which have enormous impact when wielded with the uncomfortable intimacy that Shyamalan does here. The fourth wall breaking stares are right out of the Jonathan Demme playbook, studying every worry line and strained smile that crosses Hartnett’s visage, while Shyamalan’s zooms and low angles alternately turn him into a warped, sinister figure. Most inventive of all though is the framing which slices his face right down the middle, displaying only half of it onscreen as a visual representation of his hidden dual identities.
Just as Trap is starting to grow stagnant, the unexpected perspective shift which moves to Lady Raven picks the pacing back up. Here, the Ariana Grande-inspired popstar starts earning Shyamalan’s close-ups instead, highlighting a fine film debut from his daughter Saleka whose enormous, expressive eyes dominate the screen. As she takes charge, our alliance begins to shift, and the walls finally begin to close in on Cooper – though we have learned by now he is not one to be underestimated. Even when he is cornered in the tightest of spaces, his ability to stealth his way out is equivalent to that of an escape artist, straining credulity by the final act.
It is during these last few scenes that Shyamalan shifts our perspective again to a third character, though one who enters the film far too late to earn its climactic payoff. This also coincides with the sudden disappearance of Lady Raven from the narrative – another significant formal misstep that denies her arc a proper resolution. That Shyamalan fumbles the landing is no great surprise, but it is nevertheless disappointing given the relative strength of his storytelling throughout the rest of the film. As much as its tantalising final seconds somewhat make up for this, Trap works best when it is drawing a captivating divide down the middle of Cooper Adams and the Butcher, grappling with the internal, antagonistic pairing of a father and murderer as unlikely partners in crime.
It was only a matter of time before Deadpool’s gimmick of irreverent, self-referential superhero gags would grow thin. For his greatest critics, it happened back in 2016, though at least that first movie injected a fresh burst of cynicism into the genre. The 2018 sequel shook up the stakes with a mission to save a young boy from a villainous future, and hilariously satirised superhero team ups. The greatest development that Deadpool & Wolverine has to offer is a surprisingly sincere examination of Logan’s legacy after Hugh Jackman’s ‘retirement’ of the character, but as a matter of coherent storytelling, this movie jumps between half-baked ideas with all the awkwardness of Marvel’s disjointed multiverse.
In fact, it is this attempt to tread the line between paying homage to Fox-owned Marvel properties and bringing Deadpool into the Marvel Cinematic Universe which keeps Deadpool & Wolverine from focusing its narrative. Its countless cameos may service the franchise’s most loyal fans, but most bear such little impact that they could easily be swapped out for any other retired Marvel character, with only a single exception bearing sizeable weight on Wolverine’s arc. This interaction produces one of the film’s most touching scenes, honouring the character that Jackman has spent over two decades exploring. Even in his repartee with Ryan Reynolds, the two actors hit on a buddy comedy dynamic that carries us through an array of contrived plot beats.
Still, their star-fuelled charisma can only take Deadpool & Wolverine so far. By the time we get to a second hand-to-hand fight between our titular antiheroes, we are left to wonder where the stakes are in a duel where neither superpowered combatant can be properly wounded. Of course, the easy answer to this is that the film cares more about cheap wisecracks and shocking audiences that ‘they went there’ than building a solid story – not that this possesses the subversive edge of The Boys, The Suicide Squad, or even previous Deadpool movies.
In the grand scheme of superhero movies, Deadpool & Wolverine is far too caught up in its throwaway nods to Marvel’s history to escape its own fourth-wall breaking criticisms of the genre, whether those be needless paragraphs of exposition or stale clichés. We only need to look at its development of Wolverine’s legacy to see how digging up old IP does not need to be a mindless, gratuitous exercise in moneymaking, and can enrichen long-established archetypes with fresh perspectives. Within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this alternate Wolverine may be one of the most singularly effective uses of the multiverse conceit. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of Deadpool & Wolverine’s overstuffed narrative.
Having rolled in the mud of 70s indie horror in X and the probed the underlying darkness of classical Hollywood in Pearl, Ti West suffuses the final part of his trilogy with sensationalist glamour, only barely masking the cutthroat violence of 1980s America. Here, the Satanic panic is rife among conservative Christians who believe the Devil has possessed their youth through modern entertainment, while those who lust for the lifestyle of the rich and famous delight in its hedonistic, consumerist culture. Stoking the flames of this division further are reports of the mysterious Night Stalker, who has infamously been targeting the young people of Los Angeles and branding their faces with occult symbols. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that so many of them have ties to B-grade porn star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx, though the police detectives who are on the case certainly don’t see it that way.
MaXXXine may be West’s take on the 80s slasher movie, but his cinematic homage also transcends that era of cheap kills and thrills. Vibrant lighting, black leather gloves, and the stretched mask worn by the Night Stalker directly call back to Italian Giallo films, while Psycho is held up as a paragon of horror filmmaking by industry professionals, worshipping Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy on their visits to Universal’s Bates Motel set.
The emulation of Brian de Palma’s pulpy, extravagant style from films like Dressed to Kill and Body Double shouldn’t come as surprise then either, given his own reverent adoration of the Master of Suspense. Split screen montages set the scene of Hollywood’s nightlife, teeming with costumed street performers, prostitutes, and vivid neon lights, while wipe transitions between scenes playfully indulge in the dynamic artifice. West’s editing is even sharper in scenes of mounting tension, cross-cutting between Maxine reviewing the screenplay for her debut horror movie and her friend’s brutal murder at the hands of the Night Stalker, while cutaways to gory practical effects revel in his visceral, grotesque torture.
Much like X and Pearl, the relationship between moviemaking and celebrity culture is at the core of MaXXXine, once again granting West the freedom to explore the American Dream through a satirical, metafictional lens. Mia Goth returns as the vessel through which this merciless ambition manifests as well, picking up Maxine’s story five years after her escape from Pearl’s bloody massacre in X, and now standing on the verge of stardom as she prepares for her debut screen performance in slasher sequel The Puritan II.
It is no coincidence that director’s goal of making a “B-movie with A-movie ideas” is also a self-comment on MaXXXine, nor that her description of the lead character as “a killer but not a villain” could just easily apply to Maxine herself. Though the young actress has been deeply traumatised, she is well-equipped to deal with all sorts of danger, as she proves in one violent confrontation with a Buster Keaton street performer in a murky alleyway. On some subconscious level, there is truth to the lurid narratives that the storytellers of Hollywood deliver to their audiences. Desensitised, self-serving cruelty is the only way to get ahead in this industry after all, sacrificing pieces of one’s humanity to stay in the game and beat the equally ruthless competition.
Goth’s acting here is anything but weak, but it is no coincidence that her best performances in this trilogy have been as the older and younger versions of Pearl, embodying a tragic derangement that is a little more diluted in Maxine. The hallucinatory presence of Pearl here only really serves to carry through the series’ formal comparison of their stories – one being of crushed dreams, and the other of dreams coming true at enormous cost – yet this is one of many narrative threads that fail to find its resolution in a messy final act.
By spending so much time on disconnected subplots, West doesn’t entirely earn his eventual subversion of the film’s Satanic horror, which he may have pulled off with greater setup. In true Hitchcockian fashion, his staging of the film’s climax beneath the Hollywood Sign stains an iconic landmark with seedy, bloody corruption, but even here the opportunity to end the story on a relatively strong note is missed with an unnecessary epilogue. Unlike X and Pearl, MaXXXine spreads itself a little too thinly across a large ensemble, setting, and narrative, yet there is nevertheless something amusingly ironic about a film that ambitiously falls prey to the same shortcomings as many of its influences. In spite of these missteps, West adeptly puts his own spin on the pulp and splatter of 80s horror, ending his three-part interrogation of the genre’s bloodstained history with intoxicating, gaudy spectacle.
For a few eerie minutes in the prologue of Longlegs, Nicolas Cage’s grotesque visage only manifests through a handful of discomforting clues – strange cuckoo noises, a thin, reedy voice, and the bottom half of a partially-concealed face. When he suddenly descends into the frame, we cut away so quickly that we barely register his features, and yet a deep, discomforting terror lingers in its wake. The face of Satanic evil is not easily forgotten, leaving its psychological imprint on both us and the doggedly persistent Detective Lee Harker long after it has faded from view.
The mystery of Cage’s disturbing prosthetic transformation has been so strong in the leadup to Longlegs that it has taken a life of its own online, driving a guerilla marketing campaign inspired by the tactical success of The Blair Witch Project. The creative decision to keep him largely offscreen for roughly half the movie also abides by the found-footage film’s playbook, recognising that implicit horror is far scarier than explicit. As a crime procedural unravelling the mystery of an infamous serial killer though, the influence of David Fincher is far more present, methodically tracing Lee’s investigation on a granular level as she pieces together the patterns of Longlegs’ murders.
Perhaps most intriguing of all is the fact that these homicides would easily be solved if Longlegs wasn’t specifically claiming credit with his calling cards. In each case stretching back thirty years, a seemingly ordinary father snaps and brutally massacres his entire family, usually on or around his daughter’s 9th birthday. In some cases, they too commit suicide. In others, they survive long enough to be arrested. When the dust has cleared though and investigations have settled, there is nothing else to suggest that Longlegs has ever even met these victims, let alone been present to harm them. So how can one possibly catch a murderer whose guilt cannot be substantiated beyond his cruel taunts?
Perhaps it takes a police officer whose fate is already mystically intertwined with Longlegs’ to capture him, and particularly one such as Lee who exhibits signs of clairvoyance. Maika Monroe is our silent vessel for large portions of the film, fastidiously poring over occult symbols, algorithms, and Zodiac-like ciphers that link him directly to Satan, while seeking to escape his apparent omnipresence in her life. Disturbing visions and memories haunt her deeply, gradually becoming more aggressive in smash cuts that formally deviate from Osgood Perkins’ otherwise measured pacing and long dissolves, and each time returning us to a boxier aspect ratio that drastically narrows our field of vision.
The red tinting that is often attached to these hallucinations make for an admirable stylistic achievement for Perkins as well, echoing the infernal glow of Longlegs’ workshop where he handcrafts sinister, life-sized dolls. Outside of these instances though, he far more frequently returns to dim, yellow light sources that suffuse each setting with its own kind of dread, deepening the Fincher comparison. In Lee’s log cabin home, his camera follows her down warm, wooden corridors, suspensefully waiting for the uncanny presence she feels outside to reveal itself. Golden sunbeams similarly filter through windows of a darkened barn she later investigates with her colleague, while even the police station where she works is saturated with a murky ambience from fluorescent lights.
It is in the interrogation room of that final location where the much-anticipated meeting between Lee and Longlegs finally takes place, borrowing visual cues from The Silence of the Lambs as the camera forges an intimate connection with Cage. Perkins no longer obscures his face, but rather frames it peering right back at us in close-ups, unlocking the mystical connection which binds our protagonist and villain together in spiritual damnation. Evil may dwell in the dark corners of society, but as Longlegs carefully paints out, humanity’s greatest horrors can easily breach the sacred boundaries that we draw around own homes. Maybe it is a freak possession which will one day prompt our loved ones to suddenly destroy us, or perhaps that malice has always lurked under an innocent façade, justifying its existence through a hideous, corrupted sense of self-preservation.
Whatever affection the title Kinds of Kindness promises to explore in its three surreal fables can only be considered ‘kindness’ on its most shallow, depraved level. Given how scarce a resource it is in Yorgos Lanthimos’ bleakly absurdist world of abusers and manipulators, perhaps the provisional security they offer is the best that any individual lost in the senseless void of existence can hope for. After all, when order lapses into anarchy, what is there to cling to but the unyielding directives of one’s employer? Where can love be found outside of one’s spouse, and what is purpose without a divine imperative guiding one’s life?
Gone is the whimsy of Lanthimos’ most recent films The Favourite and Poor Things, and replacing it is a familiar deadpan bleakness that harkens back to the early Lanthimos of Dogtooth and The Lobster. In the absence of his intricate period sets and fisheye lenses, Kinds of Kindness marks a disappointing step down visually, though this is not to say his world-building is any less bizarre. The rules that these characters live by are completely alien, forcing each to submit their agency to powers that we struggle to wrap our minds around, yet which they must never question for fear of greater ramifications.
Kinds of Kindness marks a return to the bleak, muted visuals of Lanthimos’ early films, using a wide-angle lens to stretch out this handsome shot here of Robert standing in the corner of his office, as if about to topple from security into oblivion.
The first chapter in Lanthimos’ anthology may be the clearest rendering of this social critique, observing a toxic relationship that holds corporate businessman Robert under the thumb of his boss, Raymond. Every aspect of his life is minutely controlled, from the books he must read right down to his weight-gaining diet. In return, he is given a large house, a wife, and a collection of valuable sports memorabilia – all handpicked by Raymond of course. Meanwhile, Robert’s comically petty acts of self-harm manifest as small rebellions, giving him a chance to whine for attention and take ownership of something beyond his employer’s grasp. When Raymond demands he commit vehicular homicide by recreating one of his staged car accidents though, Robert expresses doubt for the first time and risks losing everything.
Cutting social commentary by way of absurdist narratives and settings. Lanthimos is a Samuel Beckett or Eugène Ionesco for modern cinema.
He shouldn’t feel guilty over this, Raymond assures him, as the intended target has agreed to this proposition. Going by the embroidered monogram on the victim’s shirt, his name is R.M.F – the same initials which appear in the title of all three chapters. He is a passive enigma of a character, barely taking up a few minutes of screentime in each tale, and yet his role is always pivotal. The foreshadowing is apparent here in the first chapter ‘The Death of R.M.F.’, though later when Lanthimos plays out the second and third chapters ‘R.M.F. is Flying’ and ‘R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich’, the relevance grows increasingly oblique.
Those trying to penetrate the deeper symbolism behind R.M.F. will either conjure up some fantastic theory or be left sorely disappointed. Because he is fatefully tied to Lanthimos’ eccentric main characters and even takes precedence over them in chapter titles, we might expect him to represent some grand, metaphysical concept. Ultimately though, he is little more than a mundane peculiarity in this outlandish world – and quite ironically, it is exactly that which makes him stand out, further defining his environment as one of incongruous chaos.
At least when he appears in the second chapter ‘R.M.F. is Flying,’ he takes somewhat of a heroic role, rescuing marine biologist Liz from a desert island after she and her colleagues are shipwrecked. Unfortunately, her husband Daniel is not so ready to welcome her home. This new Liz is different, having apparently been replaced by a doppelganger who smokes, no longer fits her old shoes, and suddenly has a very active libido. Bit by bit, Lanthimos shifts the perspective of this story until Daniel’s role as a delusionally unreliable narrator comes into focus, and we begin to consider whether he is simply unable to comprehend his wife’s sudden psychological trauma.
Jesse Plemons’ deadpan presence is a perfect fit for Lanthimos’ understated humour, playing outlandish character beats with comical nonchalance.
Fulfilling her husband’s requests of self-mutilation appears to be the only way that Liz can prove her authentic love, and thus this chapter moves into some of the most viscerally disturbing scenes of the film, revealing its grotesque metaphor of toxic dependence. She has felt the horror of true isolation, and so this abuse seems a small price to pay for the security of marriage, even if it erodes the physical substance of her being.
In one key monologue elucidating a dream she had on the island, we can at least find a partial justification for this in her mind, imagining a world where dogs and humans have swapped places while the rest of society remains unaffected. It is not the first time Lanthimos has likened people to animals, contemplating the narrow divide between civil order and savage chaos, though here the metaphor explicitly pays off in a short epilogue revealing this off-kilter alternate world – dogs relaxing with friends, driving over human roadkill, and hanging themselves to death.
Black-and-white dreams and flashbacks are where Lanthimos’ surrealism takes off, especially in the closing of the second chapter where we witness Liz’s dream of dogs and humans swapping places.
There is evidently a prophetic power to dreams throughout Kinds of Kindness, especially given how closely they are bound to characters’ memories, with prescient visions and flashbacks being consistently depicted in black-and-white. These interludes may exist purely inside their minds, and yet they frequently manifest in their lives later on like eerie echoes, sometimes even right down to the identical repetition of shots as we observe in Robert’s dreamed and actual confrontations with his boss in the first chapter. As such, the use of ‘Sweet Dream’s by the Eurythmics makes for a fitting theme song, lyrically contemplating the toxic behaviours of Lanthimos’ characters.
“Some of them want to use you,
Some of them want to be used by you,
Some of theme want to abuse you,
Some of them want to be abused.”
Indeed, “everybody is looking for something” in Kinds of Kindness, and bit by bit we begin to wonder whether their cryptic dreams are the key to finding it. Specifically in the third chapter, devoted cultist Emily is haunted by a nightmare of her hair being caught in a pool drain, until another woman sets her free – a visual metaphor which later manifests in her mission to find a foretold Messiah figure. Believing that bodily fluids hold the essence of human corruption, she and her brainwashed peers fall naively under the sway of their leader Omi, whose twisted, manipulative love holds the ultimate judgement over whether or not they have been “contaminated.” Once we witness the abuse Emily suffered back in her old home life though, we at least come to understand her desperate need to find belonging at whatever humiliating expense, even if it means a complete dedication of one’s soul and body to an unhinged belief system.
A mission to find a Messiah figure with the ability to perform miracles is tainted by the utter disregard these characters have for true divinity, destroying it to heal their own loneliness.
As we should expect by now, the divine is not something to be exalted in Lanthimos’ self-serving society, but to be drugged, kidnapped, and traded for the arbitrary approval of others. Its power is transcendent, yet it is ironically degraded by those who hold it up as an icon of spiritual glory, committing sordid acts in its name. Whatever hope or salvation may have been found in religion is lost the moment it is fashioned into a tool for simple, worldly desires.
Emma Stone’s performance as Emily in this final chapter may be the most memorable of the film, leaving a distinct mark in her copper-coloured suit, auburn hair, and flashy purple sportscar. As a totality though, it is the revolving cast through each fable which makes even more impactful formal statement, additionally featuring Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and Hong Chau in multiple roles. Through the connection of R.M.F., we understand that they all exist within the same world, though perhaps one which is more akin to a Kafkaesque purgatory trapping souls in various forms of psychological torture than a logical, organised civilisation.
Emma Stone shakes and thrusts to ‘Brand New Bitch’ in her copper-coloured suit, as her drugged victim slumps in the background – she is the clear standout in the third chapter.
Further lifting Kinds of Kindness beyond the realm of reality is Jerskin Fendrix’s minimalist music score, setting shrill, discordant piano melodies against deep, pounding chords, while acapella male choruses sing ominous Greek hymns and sustained warnings of “No…”. These might as well be vocalisations of our own internal thoughts, watching these poor souls degrade themselves to earn the conditional love of employers, spouses, and religious leaders, yet only ever finding cold, empty embraces at best. For Lanthimos at least, the period to grieve this total loss of self-worth has long passed. By the time each tale in Kinds of Kindness has run its course, we inevitably realise that the only reasonable response to our own inhumanity is pitying, sardonic laughter.
Kinds of Kindness is currently playing in cinemas.
Girl-next-door Kathy Bauer was simply not meant for a life of marriage to a gangster, and as one of the few voices of reason in The Bikeriders, it is apparent that she was never going to shed her outsider status. Still, her wide-eyed innocence is no match for Benny’s rugged good looks, cool swagger, and romantic persistence, seeing him patiently wait outside her house all night until her boyfriend packs up and leaves out of frustration. The peril that comes with his membership in the Vandals Motorcycle Club is inconsequential – he is the type of man she never believed she would date, yet who has somehow tapped into a deep, primal lust for danger.
At first glance, it appears that this is Jeff Nichols’ take on an S.E. Hinton novel, exploring the nuances of 1960s greaser subculture with equal parts sensitivity and scepticism. Theirs is a community that looks out for its own people, fostering a rare kind of male bonding that cannot be found in mainstream society, even as they put up tough facades. The framing device which keeps returning to photojournalist Danny Lyon’s interviews lends itself far more to distant rumination than immersion though, and covers a greater span of time than Hinton’s coming-of-age stories. These are not teenagers railing against a conservative older generation, but adults realising that their glory days are slowly seeping away, while younger gangsters emerging in the scene threaten to push them out.
If that wasn’t enough to separate The Bikeriders from Hinton’s work, then the busy Chicago setting takes this story far away from the small-town decay of Tulsa, Oklahoma, being notably marked by an array of glaring vocal transformations. While Austin Butler slips easily into a Midwestern dialect and Tom Hardy mumbles his way through a nasally Marlon Brando impression, Jodie Comer fully adopts a Fargo-style accent, imitating the real Kathy from the historic photobook upon which the film is based. Her role as narrator across eight years of a tumultuous marriage fully justifies this daring commitment – in those stretches where she is present only through voiceover, it is evident that she is a misfit among misfits.
It would take someone who has never seen Goodfellas to miss the endless allusions to Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic here, with this narration being just the first of many. When we are first introduced to Benny in a brawl, the freeze frame which lands half a second before a shovel strikes the back of his head heavily evokes our first meeting with Henry Hill, and our sudden launch into a pop-rock soundtrack and voiceover only confirms the parallel. Following a jump back to the early days of Kathy and Benny’s relationship, the camera floats around a hazy bar as she lists the names of his biker friends, before the narrative eventually catches back up to the opening scene and reveals its dangerous consequences.
That The Bikeriders treads dangerously close to being derivative of a far greater influence is no reason to disregard what is otherwise an admirable film though, standing well on its own merits. Nichols shows flashes of visual inspiration around the motorcycles themselves, turning them into icons of liberation cruising along in slow-motion and piercing the darkness with bleary headlights, while the patterned period décor of Kathy’s home frequently grounds us in a far humbler, more ordinary life. The cast he gathers here including Michael Shannon and Norman Reedus also fills out the ensemble with magnetic personalities, building a lively community within the Vandals that will inevitably fall to its own recklessness.
For some members, the end arrives with a devastating motorcycle accident, while Kathy’s patience runs out after a harrowing sexual assault at a party. Most of all though, it is simply the nature of a culture that constantly renews itself that threatens to end the “golden age of motorcycles,” supplanting these middle-aged men with younger, cockier replacements. Beyond this fraternity at least, there is another type of freedom to be sought which tears away the stoic front of the strongest man, letting them finally express their stifled anguish and shame. Those who live fast and die young may be immortalised in The Bikeriders, but perhaps the true winners are those who live long enough to find their own peace, holding gratefully onto what little they have left.
The concept of self is “a construct, an act, an illusion,” college professor Gary Johnson informs his students in the opening act of Hit Man. One could almost imagine this passage being spoken by any number of other Richard Linklater characters being carried away by their own intellectualism, though unlike those haughty young adults, Gary does not believe he has anything to prove. Instead, this lecture serves as meta-commentary, woven through a montage introducing the characters he adopts in his second job. As an undercover police contractor, Gary uses his extraordinary skills of deception to convince would-be criminals that he is an assassin for hire, before unleashing the full force of the law.
The attention to detail that Gary applies to these sting operations go beyond merely fulfilling his duty. He relishes the challenge of truly fooling others, tailoring fresh hitman personas to each client who comes his way. Patrick Bateman-style psychopaths in business suits, creepy Russian mobsters with crooked smiles, gun-toting rednecks lusting for violence – Linklater swiftly moves through every archetype in the book, studying the rapport that Gary builds with his clientele before cutting to their guilty mugshots. Each job is his chance to become someone else, constantly shedding his dweeby professor image until even he begins to question whether that is merely another act in his extensive repertoire.
It is a tough sell for Glen Powell to play so drastically against type, though like Gary, he is clearly having fun adopting the idiosyncrasies of each hitman character. Perhaps his ill fit in this role is also partially the point, as when he takes on the persona of suave hitman Ron to charm his newest client Madison, Powell immediately falls back into the charismatic leading man archetype that he has built his career upon thus far. His spur of the moment decision to sway Madison away from killing her abusive husband is the first small rebellion to foreshadow the rise of the aloof, rule-breaking Ron, who certainly at least feels a lot more in tune with Powell’s natural talents than Gary’s self-conscious mannerisms. The chemistry that Ron has with Madison is instant, and so it isn’t hard to see why Gary betrays his better instincts to pursue a dangerous romance with this woman who believes he is totally different person.
Hit Man is not so much a drift away from Linklater’s indie character dramas than it is a commercial diversion, joining his list of more straightforward comedies including School of Rock and Bernie. He revels in the black humour here, exposing Gary’s disturbingly intimate knowledge of how to dispose a body, as well as his playfully insensitive attitude towards matters of life and death. That much at least he has in common with Ron, leading to risky, even violent behaviour when his new relationship is complicated by Madison’s jealous husband Ray, as well as rival police contractor Jasper.
The name of Gary’s cats Id and Ego are no doubt a glaring clue to the psychological drama that lies beneath Linklater’s comedy, eventually rendered explicit in our protagonist’s class on Freudian psychoanalytic theory and its parallel editing with an impassioned sex scene. These lectures essentially become formal markers of Gary’s development, touching on some of history’s greatest thinkers until he inevitably arrives at the nihilistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. “The truth is created through the integration of different points of view, and there are no absolutes, either moral or epistemological,” he ponders aloud to his students.
“If the universe is not fixed, then neither are you, and you really can become a different and hopefully, better person.”
The question of where Gary ends and where Ron begins is essentially meaningless in Hit Man. There is freedom to be found in recognising the artifice of each persona one presents to the world, abandoning hope of true self-discovery, and thus adopting whatever identity allows a life of passion and abandon. Linklater is not blind to the darkness that lies in this existentialist outlook, sinking Gary/Ron ever further into an amoral void where good and evil are equally unrewarded and unpunished, yet Hit Man’s resolution would not be nearly as bleak if the dubious journey there weren’t also so recklessly enticing.
