Although the silent protest of two young boys in Good Morning is aimed at their parents’ refusal to buy a television set, their frustration also extends to the small talk exchanged between grownups, marking an unusual comic turn for Yasujirō Ozu in his satire of everyday, superficial communication.
If all the world is a stage, then A Big Bold Beautiful Journey sensitively understands the roles we must play to uncover hidden truths, channelling Kogonada’s immense imagination through the romantic, metaphysical odyssey that two strangers undertake into each other’s memories.
Within the messy entanglement of power and status, Yasujirō Ozu’s formal mirroring of fathers and sons in I Was Born, But… reveals the conflict at the root of our common insecurities, as well as the sweet, liberating affirmation we never stop pursuing from infancy through adulthood.
Between Donald Trump’s rising star and his overshadowed mentor Roy Cohn, there is an almost Shakespearean dynamic to the dual character arcs in The Apprentice, transcending mere parody and painting a surprisingly fresh portrait of a culturally dominant, larger-than-life figure.
If there was ever a supervillain to leap into the movie-musical genre, then it is surely the one whose schtick is highlighting life’s senseless absurdity through colourful, extravagant theatrics, and not even the inconsistencies that plague Todd Phillips’ direction of Joker: Folie à Deux can completely detract from such vibrantly unhinged madness.
The passengers that gather aboard the cruise liner of And the Ship Sails On are an eclectic mix of European aristocrats, each individually targeted by Federico Fellini’s irreverently absurd sense of humour, and together making up a nautical class satire that revels in their splendid merriment and misfortune.
The outlandish matriarchal society that middle-aged philanderer Snàporaz traverses in City of Women is not quite a grand feminist statement, but rather a self-deprecating cinematic tool for Federico Fellini to pick at his own masculine insecurities, sprouting deliberations on gender and sexuality through a string of surreal, chaotic vignettes.
As a string of bodies stacks up in the sordid rustic town of Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass sinks us into a twisted rural noir of drug abuse, bodybuilding, and gun smuggling, following the uncontrollable careening of queer lovers Lou and Jackie into a seedy underworld of treachery and murder.
Wim Wenders’s smooth weaving of one toilet cleaner’s daily routine into the narrative structure of Perfect Days is not only a testament to his own formal attentiveness, but also warmly invites audiences into a collective meditation, finding contentment within the unassuming patterns and details of a modest, dutiful life.
It is in the anarchic rejuvenation of animation itself that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem fully embraces the rebellious spirit of its outcast heroes, emulating the sort of colourful scrawls and grungy imperfections that might be found in a teenager’s sketchbook, and vividly manifesting the coming-of-age tale which underlies its kinetic superhero action.
