Steve McQueen’s dip into the crime genre with Widows shrewdly carries on his style of uncompromising filmmaking, using dazzling camerawork and slick pacing to navigate a sprawling, rolling narrative which sees the consequences of one failed robbery ricochet through Chicago’s gangs, politics, and the grieving wives who soon decide to collaborate on their own grand heist.
In bringing narrative tension to a classic Broadway revue of disconnected musical numbers, The Band Wagon lands as a boisterous examination of failure and success in the entertainment industry, rolling along with zeal while Vincente Minnelli’s exhilarating camerawork brings propulsive dimensions to that which unfolds onstage.
Within A History of Violence’s interrogations of humanity’s ravenous self-destruction, David Cronenberg skilfully crafts a biblical allegory from one humble diner owner’s confrontation with his shameful past, visiting the sins of fathers upon their children with chilling brutality.
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.
Joe Wright’s cinematic interpretation of Jane Austen’s novel brings a stylistic and formal flair to Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy’s swooning romance that we haven’t seen before, efficiently constructing the world of 19th century England in long takes that soar through lavish ballrooms, hallways, and mansions.
