Through the volatile performances of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, the imposingly austere sets, and ghostly greyscale cinematography, virtually every minute of The Tragedy of Macbeth feels as if it is teetering on the brink of mortality, attacking existential questions of destiny, chaos, and violence with an artistic precision that remains remarkably in tune with Joel Coen’s own fatalistic fascinations.
Alfred Hitchcock’s flawed but fascinating unravelling of one of his greatest characters in Marnie weaves a suspenseful mystery of powerful visual motifs through her erratically compulsive behaviour, leading us deeper into her mind to discover what sort of repressed trauma is at the source of it all.
Orlando may be a being of fluidity in their physical appearance and identity, and yet through the centuries of human history that Sally Potter so effortlessly flips through, they are also ironically the only constant, forming a compelling character that might as well have been designed for Tilda Swinton’s strikingly androgynous presentation.
Besides Michael Showalter’s occasional stylistic flourishes of freeze frames and glitzy titles, The Eyes of Tammy Faye is largely a showcase of one remarkable performance from Jessica Chastain, embracing the wholesome perspective of the unorthodox 1970s televangelist brought down by the moral and spiritual failings of her fellow Christians.
It is through Peter Greenaway’s playful irreverence and painterly tableaux that the hollow power plays and puzzles of The Draughtsman’s Contract begin to reveal themselves, building out an obscurely Baroque murder mystery that disconcertingly envelops our titular artist in a plot beyond his comprehension.
In the stretches of time spent watching Princess Diana quietly unravel in her search for an escape from the British royal family’s country vacation over the course of a few days in 1991, Pablo Larraín crafts a tragically surreal portrait in Spencer of a woman who has not yet died, but who has already departed those worlds she once inhabited.
“Authentic magnetism” are the words used to describe the late Laura Hunt, the target of a tragic murder, and even in death they remain truer than ever, as Otto Preminger’s methodical camerawork and staging continues to raise her up as the beguiling source of our utter fascination.
The reunion of young film director Enrique with old childhood friend Angel at the start of Bad Education is complicated when fraudulent identities come to light, warping Pedro Almodóvar’s transgressive melodrama of child sexual abuse and corrupt religious authorities into a twisted yet vibrantly colourful neo-noir of elaborate lies and murder.
Around the hair-raising cat-and-mouse chase between detective Popeye Doyle and French mobster Charnier, William Friedkin constructs a gritty vision of New York City flooded with stagnant puddles and coated in at least a few layers of grime, melding narrative and setting to deliver a biting, authentically cynical crime thriller in The French Connection.
The captivatingly eerie atmosphere that Guillermo del Toro builds through his delightfully expressionistic aesthetic in his psychological thriller Nightmare Alley is a wonder to behold, luring us into a haunting underworld of carnies, con artists, and psychics in 1940s America.
