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.
The affliction which plagues one mild-mannered train driver with bouts of rage might as well be a blood curse in La Bete Humaine, and fate does not look kindly on those who tempt the beast, as Jean Renoir delicately lays out the blueprint of corrupted antiheroes and femme fatales in his tragic fable of man’s inner madness.
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.
The greatest female performances of cinema history, from screwball heroines to scream queens.
John Ford’s sentimental mythologising cannot be criticised for a lack of rousing sincerity in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, commemorating the dutiful perseverance of one Old West cavalry troop seeking peaceful resolution to a historic conflict, and basking in the vibrant majesty of the rugged American wilderness.
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.
The struggle to survive in the Siberian wilderness of Letter Never Sent is as psychological as it is physical, swallowing four diamond-hunting adventurers up in its primordial chaos, and forcing us through Mikhail Kalatozov’s daunting camerawork to bow down before its ravaging elemental forces.
Roberto Rossellini’s casting of one trouble marriage against the crumbling, historical ruins of Naples reveals rocky foundations in Journey to Italy, deeply pondering how we let our mortality define our relationships, and the existential loneliness which organically emerges from them.
