...a gripping and unobtrusively intelligent thriller whose conflation of sublime drama and ridiculous comedy is a balancing act worthy of the New Hollywood greats to whom it brandishes its artistic and thematic debt like it’s an American Express card.
Films
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In a moment of darkly comic madness, a primary school teacher gets so frustrated with the one endlessly disruptive pupil in her class that she decides to lock him up in her basement until either he calms down enough to learn, or they forge some kind of ersatz emotional bond.
In this hackneyed psychological thriller, a struggling writer (Dakota Johnson) is contracted to complete the latest novel by a reclusive bestselling author (Anne Hathaway) following her mysterious accident. But when she moves in, and gets sidetracked into researching her employer’s difficult family life, she finds far more than she bargained for.
An open marriage turns out to be more closed than its participants thought when a third wheel screws himself on to their conjoined chassis in this refreshingly sophisticated sex comedy. With gleefully heavy-handed metaphor, the plot is kicked into gear by a literal car crash that brings two couples together and flings their combined marital problems all over the highway.
Jessica Chastain plucks malevolently on her apron strings in a dual role as both goodie and baddie in this one-line pitch of a horror movie about a mother fighting off a supernatural being who competes for her young daughter’s attention by taking on her appearance.
Following the brilliant Barbarian and the even better Weapons, comedian-turned-filmmaker Zach Cregger completes a horror hat-trick by stamping his directorial personality all over this tense and surprisingly imaginative reboot of the barely-mourned franchise based on a popular computer game.
...complex comedy-drama about a film-maker struggling with problems both professional and personal, and all the while another film-maker is figuring out how to tell her story in a way that reflects his own equally difficult life.
Willem Dafoe is in quiet and self-effacing mode in this bittersweet comedy drama based on the Arthur Schnitzler novella about Ed, a long-retired poet rediscovered by a clique of young New York hipsters determined to lionise him until he re-enters their bohemian world by way of writing a memoir.
Claire Foy processes her grief over the death of her father through an obsessive commitment to a Eurasian goshawk in this middlebrow but emotionally affecting riff on Ken Loach’s Kes, which dramatises the popular 2014 memoir of nature writer Helen Macdonald.
Like Werner Herzog before him and Robert Eggers today, Annaud makes great use of his locations, and the faces of those inhabiting them, creating a fourteenth century you can almost smell. It may be a cracking adventure and a fun time at the movies, but you really wouldn’t want to live there.
...metatextual slasher movie about a young film-maker working on a reboot of a 1980s classic, while developing a penetrating relationship with the reclusive star of the original.
An intoxicating mix of vigilante thriller and Poundland superhero movie all set against a social realist backdrop, it not only works in many seemingly contradictory genres, it does it without pitting them against each other, and that’s what makes it such an exhilarating weekend in Hell.
...everyone’s favourite friendly neighbourhood superhero has to contend not only with colourful new villains (and a couple of colourful old allies) but also with body-wide mutagenic changes that are turning him into a brand new kind of Spider-Man.
The stakes are raised to even more diabolical levels in this sequel to the gleefully violent and acutely socially aware 2019 horror hit, in which Samara Weaving’s plucky bride evaded the murderous attentions of her new in-laws. This time, she teams up with her sister (Kathryn Newton) against a whole illuminatum of super-rich families seeking to consolidate their power by any means necessary.
The uncluttered plot has a stronger throughline than in many such superhero epics, demonstrating commendable reluctance to pin the fate of the entire universe on her admittedly invulnerable shoulders.
..this time their epic, sprawling mode of storytelling details a real life – that of Ann Lee, eighteenth-century founder of the Shakers religious sect, whose dramatisation here borders on fundamentalist propaganda.
...operates on a smaller scale than previously, dealing with stand-up comedians as opposed to rock stars (A Star Is Born) or master conductors (Maestro). Thus it feels like a return to the roots, an origin story for an ordinary but talented Joe who gets his break. He’s more interested in the neurotically funny camaraderie of a street-level scene, rather than the curse of individual high-functioning genius.
To their credit, the film-makers at least try to build a more interesting arc for its central character than the simplistic 1980s cartoon ever bothered with; then it blows up his colourful world into three dimensions, telling his tale in a mostly playful register cribbed most obviously from Thor: Ragnarok.