See cinema differently
Director: Ridley Scott Stars: Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Salma Hayek Ladies and gentlemen, the charcuterie is open. Though octogenarian Ridders has vocally blamed millennial apathy on the poor performance of The Last Duel just last month (shit, this year feels long), I'd wager the real culprit was the blink-and-you'll-miss-it promotional campaign and non-existent theatrical run …
Year: 1973 Director: Shunya Ito Stars: Meiko Kaji, Yayoi Watanabe, Reisen Lee A while back I covered my myriad reasons for loving the second entry in the Female Prisoner Scorpion series (a film that, if anything, I've grown to love even more - it's presently in my personal all-time top 10). But a recent re-watch …
Continue reading "Why I Love… #144: Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable"
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi Stars: Hideotoshi Nishijima, Tôko Miura, Reika Kirishima Yûsuke (Hideotoshi Nishijima) and Oto (Reika Kirishima) are a married couple in contemporary Japan who both work in the arts. He as an actor, she as a writer of alluring fiction, both short stories and screenplays for television. They are a couple connected by - …
Director: Andreas Fontana Stars: Fabrizio Rongione, Stéphanie Cléau, Carmen Iriondo There are few films in recent years that have felt as slippery and evasive as Azor. Considering I have a somewhat high tolerance threshold for obtuse and mysterious cinema, you can take that as your first warning. However, if these are qualities that tend to …
Director: Mike Mills Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Woody Norman, Gaby Hoffman America is uncertain. Between the omnipresent ills of climate change, class disparity and race relations, it is a nation that seems strung-out, worried, over-caffeinated and quick to anger. Mike Mills' latest film acts in the main like a small and personal human drama, which it …
Director: Robert Greene An anonymous double-garage with its wide door closed. Slowly it opens, sliding up to reveal... boxes. Boxes atop boxes. As high as the ceiling, as deep as the garage goes, so it seems. These are case files. Sexual abuse case files. The Catholic church's unending connection to pedophiliac horror stories isn't funny …
Director: Céline Sciamma Stars: Joséphine Sanz, Gabrielle Sanz, Nina Meurisse Skip over her illustrious last film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, for just a moment and the cinema of Céline Sciamma has been defined by her keenly attuned sense of the interior lives of children. In Water Lilies this manifested in a tale of …
Director: Clint Eastwood Stars: Clint Eastwood, Eduardo Minett, Natalia Traven Now 91, it's somewhat remarkable that Clint Eastwood is still making movies at all, let alone making them with such irrepressible regularity. Not only that, but he's taken to appearing in front of the cameras once again, doing double duty as each brings the prospect …
Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green Stars: Will Smith, Demi Singleton, Aunjanue Ellis Was Will Smith bored? Is that why this has happened? Did the man see his acting career becoming mo-cap, voice work and cameos, and did it send a chill down his spine? Was he wandering the halls of his mansion like a lost Quentin …
Director: Rebecca Hall Stars: Ruth Negga, Tessa Thompson, André Holland There's a scene in Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir in which young prospective filmmaker Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is grilled on her desire to make a film about Sunderland dockworkers. She is questioned on why she has chosen a subject so alien to her own experience. One might …
Director: Pablo Larraín Stars: Kristen Stewart, Sean Harris, Sally Hawkins Today, 5th November 2021, marks the UK release of Pablo Larraín's frosty Princess Diana biopic with Kristen Stewart in the lead role, but it also marks the release of Kid A Mnesiac; a grouping of Radiohead's two signature 2000/2001 albums which were originally released a …
Director: Jeymes Samuel Stars: Jonathan Majors, Zazie Beetz, Regina King Arriving on Netflix following a negligible cinema release, Jeymes Samuel's warm and handsome western begins with a card acknowledging that the story it tells is not true, only to follow this with the affirmation that, nonetheless, "These. People. Existed." The western has always been the …
Director: Scott Cooper Stars: Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T Thomas, Keri Russell The small coal mining town of Cispas Falls, Oregon has fallen into economic decline, breeding a sickness of poverty and addiction that manifests strange and terrible beasts here in Scott Cooper's Antlers. Presented in a washed out, wintry palette that chimes with the sense …
Director: Wes Anderson Stars: Bill Murray, Lyna Khoudri, Léa Seydoux I'm a sucker for the tangible and the tactile. A wardrobe in my bedroom is given over to physical media - rows of boutique blu-rays - and there are vinyl records... everywhere. Similarly, I'm far more inclined to delve into a deep-dive article in print …
Director: Edgar Wright Stars: Anya Taylor-Joy, Thomasin McKenzie, Diana Rigg At the beginning of Lewis Allen's 1944 haunted house picture The Uninvited, Ray Milland's Roderick Fitzgerald advises us just why the Cornish seem so preoccupied with eerie tales and superstitions, "not because there are most ghosts here than other places, mind you. It's just that …
The Lost Highway Hotel 