Tennis may be a relationship according to the grand metaphor of Challengers, though by exploring the complicated entanglement of love, lust, and loathing between three rivals, Luca Guadagnino uncovers an even more sensual desire for intimate connection that can only be found in the midst of heated competition.
It is necessary for any photojournalist to maintain a level of remote objectivity in the face of visceral trauma, and yet as Alex Garland sets media crew on a gruelling odyssey across a dystopian, divided America in Civil War, it seems that the camera lens is but a fragile filter keeping them from total psychological collapse.
It is a rare thing to witness a first-time director meld such handsomely stylised action with mystical symbolism, yet Monkey Man proves Dev Patel to be just as skilled behind the camera as he is in front of it, crafting a Hindu allegory that envisions one underground fighter’s righteous delivery of divine justice upon India’s corrupt political landscape.
As a string of bodies stacks up in the sordid rustic town of Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass sinks us into a twisted rural noir of drug abuse, bodybuilding, and gun smuggling, following the uncontrollable careening of queer lovers Lou and Jackie into a seedy underworld of treachery and murder.
Wim Wenders’s smooth weaving of one toilet cleaner’s daily routine into the narrative structure of Perfect Days is not only a testament to his own formal attentiveness, but also warmly invites audiences into a collective meditation, finding contentment within the unassuming patterns and details of a modest, dutiful life.
By subverting the archaic legends that pass down prejudices from one generation to the next, Nimona recognises the freedom that lies in open-minded acceptance, uniting a fugitive knight and a chaotic shapeshifter against a conspiracy that threatens to destabilise their futuristic, medieval kingdom.
Lee Cronin brings a refreshing creativity to Sam Raimi’s demonic horror in Evil Dead Rise, as he allegorically twists the image of a loving family into that of dysfunctional household, and lays into the terror of seeing one’s mother transform into a hideous, abusive creature.
It is a cruel twist of irony that sees writer Monk Ellison’s parody of exploitative Black novels exalted as a serious piece of literature in American Fiction, and one which Cord Jefferson wields impressive self-awareness over, sharply satirising the liberal elite’s attempts to assuage their white guilt by gleefully consuming African American trauma in media.
Denis Villeneuve’s extraordinary adaptation of Frank Herbert’s unfathomably vast imagination incidentally demonstrates his own in Dune: Part Two, further developing his elemental worldbuilding and biblical iconography through the darkly subverted monomyth of a prophesied Messiah, and pushing the parable’s cinematic spectacle to astonishingly creative lengths.
The working-class lovers of Fallen Leaves may be set back by personal flaws, but the string of unlucky coincidences playing a greater cosmic joke on them can’t be ignored either, as Aki Kaurismäki’s minimalist comedy-drama stubbornly seeks romance within the deadpan mundanity of downtown Helsinki.
