Ti West’s horror prequel Pearl is just as much a warped product of the classical Hollywood dream machine as the aspiring actress, murderess, and housewife at its centre, relishing the superficial splendour of lush Technicolor stylings that only barely conceals an uglier, malevolent truth.
Across three Kafkaesque fables set in the past, present, and apocalyptic future of a single residence, The House unfurls an allegory of whimsical existentialism, unnervingly studying humanity’s descent into material consumption, and delicately infusing its absurdism with the childlike innocence of stop-motion animation.
With his staggering aerial sequences and daring set pieces, William A. Wellman turns magnificent feats of engineering into vehicles for exhilarating storytelling in Wings, taking a birds-eye perspective of wartime conflicts and innovation that heightens both as displays of monumental human ambition.
Ti West doesn’t quite tread new ground in his grindhouse horror pastiche X, and yet he considers the religious puritanism and rebellious counterculture of 70s America with pulpy retrospection, examining the exploitation that runs deep in both and leaves older generations to wither away in violent, vengeful resentment.
Wes Anderson dedicates an enchanting piece of nostalgia to old-fashioned print journalists, Denis Villeneuve films an unfilmable science-fiction classic, and Jane Campion conducts a sensitive study of masculinity through the western genre.
There is a tragic, hidden beauty affectingly mirrored between Hilary’s passionless life and her once-glorious cinema in Empire of Light, and with Roger Deakins’ radiant photography at Sam Mendes’ disposal, both are united under a rose-tinted conviction of film’s raw, inspiring power.
Argentina, 1985 takes creative liberties in dramatising the first legal conviction of a military dictatorship, but there is a sincerity baked into its performances and direction which offer its subjects a forthright compassion, reframing the nation’s political legacy as one of democratic victory over fascism.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is running a solid race towards Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards, but only if The Banshees of Inisherin and All Quiet on the Western Front don’t get there first.
There is incredible subtlety and depth to Charlotte Wells’ character work in Aftersun, as one woman’s ruminations over a vacation she went on with her deeply troubled father effectively takes off the rose-tinted glasses of her childhood, and retrospectively pieces together a fragmented portrait of his stifled, internal suffering.
The romantic fantasies that young model Doris and her agent Susanne chase down are blindly hinged on the belief that men are not lazy, mediocre creatures, and Ingmar Bergman delicately maps out the psychological terrain of these compulsive desires all through Dreams, leading both generations of women down parallel paths of inevitable disappointment.
