The three days we spend within freshman Jake’s microcosmic college bubble seems to stretch out in eternal bliss, a period which Richard Linklater delights in with richly defined characters lightly treading the line between hedonism and intellectualism, evolving Everybody Wants Some!! into an unhurried study of Generation X masculinity in all its youthful idealism.
Where Ingmar Bergman saw severe austerity in the landscapes of Fårö, Mia Hansen-Løve discovers optimism and fantasy, and in weaving those tones deep into her layers of storytelling around a filmmaking couple coming to the island in search of inspiration, Bergman Island becomes an affecting examination of originality and influence in art.
Preston Sturges’ confrontation of early Hollywood “message” movies in Sullivan’s Travels is a complex balancing act of conflicting tones, playing in the realms of slapstick, irony, and meta-humour to craft a screwball comedy unlike any that has come before.
It is an unassumingly bold move from Todd Haynes to dig deep into the antiquated conventions of classic Sirkian melodramas in Far From Heaven, as through gentle long dissolves and saturated autumnal colour palettes he delicately expresses the emotional sensitivity of his middle-class characters quietly rubbing up against the racial prejudices, homophobia, and class structures of 1950s suburbia.
Paolo Sorrentino weaves a light Christian mysticism into his autobiographical coming-of-age piece, The Hand of God, threading a theological sense of destiny and exquisite visual artistry through its narrative parallels of Italian folklore, sporting legends, and cinema culture.
Within the Prohibition era of Scarface where Tony Camonte reigns supreme, violence is conducted with secrecy and treachery, intermittently rupturing Howard Hawk’s patient, brooding narrative with bursts of brutality.
It is in the dingy, yellow lighting and deliberately hazy camera focus of The Batman that Matt Reeves crafts an entirely new vision of Gotham City and its morally ambiguous vigilante, thoughtfully examining notions of vengeance as a corrupting force within the tight grip of its magnificently thrilling narrative.
Ex-chef Rob’s ability to evoke emotions so powerful that he can move hearts with a single dish may seem like the basis of a ludicrously sentimental character, but the patient honesty of both Nicolas Cage and director Michael Sarnoski sells every tender minute of his quest to recover his stolen truffle-hunting pig.
In transposing classical storytelling traditions onto a 1940s New York crime family in The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola effectively crafts an epic piece of American mythology for the twentieth century, unravelling one of the greatest pure narratives put to film with monumental ambition in its sheer economy and compellingly tragic characters.
There is something playfully novelistic about the way Joachim Trier lays The Worst Person in the World out in a series of chapters around our young protagonist, Julie, guiding us through her messy mistakes and complicated relationships with a superbly formal structure, and thoughtfully constructing what might as well be a coming-of-age film for those approaching their 30s.
