Some may find it tedious, but Escalante’s modest feature debut showcases the cinema of the mundane—it portrays the quiet, unexciting daily life of a couple, and through it, reveals what is psychologically tormenting and unsaid.
Eggers’ third film is maximalist filmmaking to a fault—it may be his most ambitious, but also his weakest in terms of storytelling where it offers the requisite thrills and action, but little in the way of deeply-resonating themes or characters.
Scott’s follow-up to ‘Prometheus’ is a full-scale R-rated blockbuster that will thrill mainstream adult audiences, maybe even fans, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the sheer filmmaking prowess of the first two ‘Alien’ films.
A young Swedish woman travels to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming a porn star in this sexually explicit if eye-opening dramatisation of professionalism, as coded by pleasure, pain, power and submission.
There are two Robert Kleins (one’s a Jew) in WWII Nazi-occupied France in this slow-burning, finely-tuned Kafkaesque wrong identity mystery-thriller, starring a paranoid Alain Delon.
Stanley Kwan’s gay drama, set in 1980s Beijing, feels more impressionistic than a deeply-felt journey with its characters, though the performances are compelling enough to overcome its rather lean narrative.
As per tradition after the Oscars, I will give out imaginary awards to the films that I love most or hold in high regard from the preceding year.
Continue reading →
It goes through its storytelling beats without fuss but also without invention, though all that becomes insignificant when you are in the cockpit of a fighter jet in what could be the most immersive blockbuster to be shot aerially since Dunkirk.
Joachim Trier’s debut feature is still his most striking work—a youthful, frenetic immersion into the intellectual and emotional psyches of two best friends who hope for a big break as authors.
It’s not easy to do a documentary about the life and work of arguably the world’s most extraordinary film composer, but Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore just about makes it work as it captures the sheer breadth and range of the maestro’s legacy.
