Memory is the only projector that Hollywood celebrity Jay Kelly willingly surrenders to in his twilight years, and as he watches those frames of his regretful past unspool, Noah Baumbach composes a bittersweet reflection on the fragility of selfhood beneath the glare of stardom.
Six-year-old Apu may revel in the bright innocence of his rural childhood, yet the sacred cycles of Satyajit Ray’s natural world persist, holding memories of joy and sorrow within Pather Panchali’s timeless, primordial pulse.
There is no reading of Shakespeare’s plays more intimate than that which considers his grief over his son’s passing, and as Chloé Zhao lyrically visualises this transmutation of pain into poetry in Hamnet, the very act of storytelling bridges the chasm between life and death.
As James Cameron continues to forge his epic saga of spirituality and survival through the elements, Avatar: Fire and Ash tests the threads of tradition which binds its clans together, drawing dangerous new alliances that ignite a crucible of faith, fury, and primordial spectacle.
So intricately woven are the layers of deception in The Handmaiden, the cons that masquerade as plot become part of its very structure, staging a seductive dance between cunning swindlers and discerning victims that Park Chan-wook choreographs with masterful precision.
Bong Joon-ho’s faceless serial killer may represent some abstract embodiment of moral corruption, but this violent perversion is clearly rampant in Memories of Murder, stranding us with a pair of under-resourced detectives navigating landscapes of mud, rain, and bureaucratic failure.
Nora’s scepticism towards reconciling with her estranged father may be justified in Sentimental Value, yet the power of healing through artistic collaboration is not to be underestimated, as Joachim Trier peels back layers of generational trauma to expose the tender vulnerability beneath.
Through Pier Paolo Pasolini’s formal severity and exacting aesthetic, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom stares unflinchingly into the repellent darkness of humanity’s soul, tracing the systematic torture of young captives subjected to the relentlessly sadistic games orchestrated by four fascist overlords.
Through operatic mythologising and cinematic splendour, Guillermo del Toro magnificently elevates Frankenstein into a rueful, elegiac meditation on kinship, condemning both father and son to the same corrosive cycles of paternal cruelty, maternal absence, and a hunger for love that no creation can satisfy.
Gus Van Sant does not strive to make sense of the senseless school shooting in Elephant, but rather attaches his tracking camera to the various perspectives of victims and perpetrators as it unfolds, delivering a chilling vision of violence that arrives without warning, logic, or resolution.
