Review: THE INVISIBLE MAN

Cecilia quietly escapes her abusive husband one night and leaves their designer home through the back way through his bizarre looking laboratory and runs to freedom. Freedom is tough as the PTSD still grips hard, even after news of her tormentor's suicide comes through. He's left her a lot of money with attached legal and sanity clauses. She starts to feel watched in her new home which starts to act like a poltergeist has moved in. No one believes her and she grits her teeth and bears it until the stakes are raised horrifying levels and she has a life or death cause to prove.

Meanwhile, the presence of the thing in her house that follows her everywhere grows nastier with behaviour breaking into some hard physical violence. It's the kind of violence that her ex might well escalate to if he knows that not only can he get away with it but that no one will believe his victim when she talks about it. This tough representation of domestic violence which packs in both physical assault and gaslighting on a massive scale might quickly run its course but Leigh Whannell in his difficult second album keeps the helm steady through surprisingly deep waters. Surprising because as co-creator of the Saws and Conjurings we're more used to him coming up with toy horror movies with stopwatch-timed jump scares and Halloween costume ghosties. This is as deep a plunge into real social issues as you can get before you crash through the mainstream wall and get into Ken Loach starkness. But it's a tautly constructed thriller with a sci-fi garnish that doesn't waste a second of its two hours on screen.

Part of why we don't mind spending the time, apart from the expertly handled action, lives in the casting of Elizabeth Moss in the lead. From the white-knuckled fragility of the survivor of abuse to the incredulity at a life again hit by abuse to the fury she must muster for the pushback, Moss goes through everything she has. Magnetic and powerful she owns her every scene (almost every one in the film). One second act moment is worth a note: she has resolved to believe that her abuser is invisible and in the house and sits, armed at the end of her room. She imagines he is in the doorway and addresses him in tones that she only now, her back literally against the wall, can find. The silent reverse shots of the doorway threaten to reveal something sudden and violent and we get the sense that the strength of her gaze, her words and voice alone are stopping the antagonist who, unable to conceive of them, hasn't planned on them and is surprised into his silence.

I have to note, also, the pleasure of a solid electronics-led score that can turn a scene from safe to weird and lightless in seconds and so dominate that its almost visible. The great bursts of real orchestra at key scenes didn't bother me as it might as this other choice was made and demonstrates the value of choosing a composer and letting them have at it. I'll be noting the future work of Benjamin Wallfish.

Leigh Whannell has done what few do in prising himself from a partner role in self-avowed popcorn cinema into use of the mainstream rules to speak of serious things. It reminds me of how the 2014 horror film It Follows used a trope of old slasher movies (sex=death) to broaden it out into a greater question of shared responsibility. A similar trek has happened here as H.G. Wells's fable of corrupting power has been brought into a tightly framed adaptation of a true life horror that fills the news. Yes, it breaks into battle in the third act - it is and must continue to be a mainstream movie - but along the way we have been shown again that even popcorn can teach us something about our tastes.

Review: THE LIGHTHOUSE

Willem Dafoe (this is true) in a speech about
his cooked lobster.

A novice and an old hand travel to a lighthouse on a rock somewhere off the coast of North America. The young man is quickly disabused by the elder of the possibility of him tending the light. Instead, his duties will be menial. The older man takes the opportunity to establish the distribution of power. This will keep happening and each time it does the performance of the pushback will be greater, more flamboyant and harsher. It's a living and it's only for four weeks and he's here now so at worst it's a few stories in the pub down the line.

But it's hard and only gets harder. His chores are difficult and he's given little instruction. Left to himself he finds the eroticism of a carved mermaid he found in his mattress a distraction and even powerful nourishment for his imagination. And on the island with the pushiest seagulls in the seven seas he has a vent for his frustrations. Above him, in the lighthouse gallery, the old wickie keeps an eye, chastising him over dinner for poor work or inviting bad luck by attacking the gulls.

The development of this relationship occupies almost all of the running time and for much of it the thought occurs that like the young man's lumping of his lot we are in for the kind of buddy movie that Samuel Beckett might have imagined. However, we are only given enough to follow as, piece by piece, a genuine narrative arc will appear and be fulfilled. All I'll say of that is that the ending will make sense to you if you have a passing knowledge of Greek mythology. My own is not more than glancing but I did get it and if it is giving you trouble plug a keyword description of what you see in the final shot into Google and you'll see, too.

Robert Eggers shoots in deep monochrome in a frame closer to a square than academy ratio, keeping the action and scenes breathless and claustrophobic. His two strong main cast maintain a near constant wrestle, verbal or physical, and we have so trouble understanding the powerplay. It's important here as without such concrete character establishment we would soon be lost in the increasingly interwoven fantasy images served us. Almost all of these are from the younger man and can render mermaids from the spray or turn the wickie into Poseidon with death ray eyes. Eggers isn't trying for an updated Eraserhead nor the camp of Guy Maddin but something I'll call the A24 universe. What I mean by that is that every significant release from the A24 studio is what with varying degrees of cringe is called elevated horror or, more accurately, horror adjacent by which narratives can veer as close as they like to horror cinema without ever having to commit to the genre. You can see this in Midsommar and It Comes at Night both of which find extra texture and flavour with a pinch of genre. Eggers' own The Witch (which I found disappointing) is happy to stretch into pure genre while still (mostly) keeping its feet on the ground as a gritty period drama.

My initial feeling on leaving the cinema was that Eggers had stuck his point early and indulged himself in too much repetition, restating the conflict between the two men and the puerile depths it could sink to. Enough, already. But letting the ending absorb changed my mind. The younger man reveals a secret while drunk which returns with consequences. His ambition toward the light will also have a payback. When these tiles fall into place we really have seen something extraordinary. However alienating the constant harshness is, the literally dazzling climax will cover all that with balm. And then we get the closing image. And then I think: no, this works.

Review: BOMBSHELL

We begin on the surface as Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly takes us for a tour around the Fox News offices. It's a world-wise but client facing monologue, just enough public professionalism, just enough sassy cynicism to make it feel human. So far it feels like The Big Short, the sprawling media-savvy epic of the GFC from a few years back. But we're not in for that kind of movie, this one is far more along the road of nuanced powerplay where films like All the President's Men live. Changes in the balance of power happen slowly and subtly as a result of out of office meetings or overhead phone conversations, of legal meetings where little is said directly and private consultations which can lead to downfalls.

In 2016 a lawsuit was brought against Fox CEO for sexual harrassment by a number of female staff. Each one of the plaintiffs stood to lose their jobs at Fox and perhaps all of US broadcasting as a result. It's a kind of Me Too origins episode.

The capsule moment in this film happens when young and ambitious Kyla sneaks a face to face with the CEO and ends up twirling before him and raising her dress until he sees her underwear. This has been done by such tiny degrees that she has hardly had time to notice the situation skidding out of her control. The moment I'm thinking of is when starts to reveal her legs, feels compressed and awkward and lets out a small embarrassed laugh and does a kind of squirming dance move. She has no other way of coping. Roger the Hutt is just doing it all by remote from his office chair and she's almost leaving her body. After a cinematic caesura she returns to her desk ashen and numb.

That tiny gesture feels like the last call for protest before her path is cast and it is pointedly twice performative being Margot Robbie understanding Kyla to the point of embodiment. Seldom has an onscreen sexual violation carried such weight. The only one I can properly compare it to is the scene in Neil La Bute's In The Company of Men where Chad demands to see the balls of a lower-rung staffer. There's an intensely uncomfortable creepiness about both but the Kyla/Ailes' scene wins (if that's the word) for its extra commitment. It's the only time we'll have to see this in the film. Other instances are either told in shorthand without need to be explicit or given a different approach (there's a strong inner monologue vs spoken response scene that works to a different effect but deserves mention).

The story is told as a triple stream converging in the final act. It concentrates on Megyn Kelly's story as she is at the peak of her power but the parallel tales of Gretchen Carlson and Kyla Pospisil are given distinct arcs that tell of one anchorwoman being edged out of her career and the third only starting hers. The title Bombshell and poster art triptych of Theron, Kidman and Robbie takes a ride on the notion of the blonde bombshell but the bombshell is one of litigation and the charging anger that fuelled it. For once the teaser for a current film is actually a teasing thing, making use of the confusion of the title. Clever. No, really, genuinely clever.

Theron's Megyn Kelly is all American Patrician, controlling her voice and expression according to the proximity of mics and cameras, in poised control but with the wily alertness of a lawyer. Theron uses the lowest register she has and the effect is less of perfect diction than continuously packaged information. Kidman as Gretchen Carlson plays for controlled frustration, building a case methodically, biting her lip at setbacks and keeping it cool in front of her kids. It's an actively still performance, possibly the hardest one to pull off but she does. Margot Robbie is at least free of a true life point of comparison as her character is a composite. From her scene described above she moves and speaks with a gathering wisdom. As Roger Ailes John Lithgow is a mesa of entitlement brought to physical dependency by a life of others' service, not without a supportive acknowledgement or his own wisdom. His uncontrolled sexual hunger in the scene with Robbie tells us he still thinks he's about seventeen.

Bombshell works and works against expectations that it might be more of a flamboyantly cynical satire like something by Sidney Lumet or Robert Altman but that opening tour is there to establish the status quo, not to unseat it, that comes later. It does beg your patience to follow leads that might not thrill but will form a pattern of behaviour that will form a massive tapestry of privilege and abuse and how the response to it had to work. It's single sides of phone calls, glances, meetings with closed shutters and unwritten rules writ large upon the light. This might be the tale of food fights at the carnival end of the news spectrum but it describes the heart of the Murdoch Modor, lightless and throbbing under the natural-look surface, without which wars might have been clipped by diplomacy and presidential candidates might have been buried under stadiums that rang with mockery. So, it matters. It's also bloody effective.

Review: 1917

Lance Corporals Blake and Scofield are woken from their slumber in a field by a sergeant who orders them to the general's tent where they are given a written order to be delivered through an extremely hazardous route. If they get through they will save thousands of lives. They set off through the British trenches to the point where they have to leave the protection of their own troops and go cross country.

That's the plot of the film. Thin? Well, it's war torn France near the end of WWI and the journey is the thing. Also, there's a plot point that my refusal to reveal severely limits my giving further detail. With a run time of a single minute under two hours, what is there left to say?

The look and landscape of WWI has been so well served throughout the history of cinema that refreshing it for a contemporary drama might seem unlikely. What Sam Mendes has chosen to do here is to suggest wars beyond it and even, perhaps, before it. The uniforms and haircuts are all correct. The bi-planes that buzz through the air can be done with CG. There's even a British Mk 1 tank upturned in a trench. However, the prospect of survival, moment to moment, and any scene that digs into the noise and destruction of warfare might as well be Crimean or Roman. The approach is not so much to present The Great War but to suggest war itself.

This can be overreached. There are decisions made by characters that need post hoc reasoning by audience members rather than flow from the circumstances. The course of this film could at several points be mistaken for a feature length theme park ride and at several other points resembles a first person shooter game more than a tough cinematic epic. But there we venture into one of the swamps of contemporary cinema: is a film lessened by its resemblance, however briefly, to another form or might that just be an expansion into greater culture. As an example outside of this one, I detest the previous decade's trend in mainstream horror to present a series of evenly timed jump scares. When I came to understand that this had been arrived at to cater to a young audience as equally engaged with their phones (and the wider connection through them) as they were with the film blaring and jolting in front of them. To understand is not necessarily to forgive (I still hate those films) but becomes indispensable. So, when we drop from a shooty-tooty bombed out village to a white water rapid rush we have to remember not to be too flat in our response. That can be a good thing as it just means that a movie is a movie and that can and should mean anything.

It surprises me that the "single take" trope has been paraded out for this one in the publicity as the experience of it is efficient and correctly unremarkable. When this became a trend in the 00s and beyond (e.g. Irreversible) we were instructed to marvel at it. Well, it was a feat, even if it really was (with very very few exceptions) one of good camera choreography and expert editing. Here, it adds an immediacy and sense of alertness and readiness to shift gear on a two cent piece. It's done so seamlessly and is so appropriate that this egg who notices editing forgot about it as a feature.

So, why make a movie about a war from over a century ago? Because war is war and whether its fought with dirty bombs or sticks and stones we will probably never shake it. 1917 is careful to let us know that notions of heroism are best left for the officers and media and that one journey through a constant threat of annihilation is the same as a million others when you're going through it. Some might well find some of the final scenes played for an emotional singalong but they struck me as controlled anguish. (But, really, go and watch Paths of Glory, sit through the final scene and tell me you didn't well up ... just a bit.) The final image is one of exhaustion which, as history has it, always seems to be war's last word.

Review: LITTLE WOMEN

Jo, Meg, Amy, Beth are ready to take on the world with their talents and ambition and they would were it not for the fact that they are poor (if genteel) and live during the American Civil War: prospect grim but for astute marriages, a point made the centre of Jo's meeting with a publisher. This film is about girls making choices, squandering them, being robbed of them by life or having them made on their behalf. For them the world is corsetted, crinolined and parloured where a girl's talents might grant them points on a marriage resume but, as with all their politics, tastes, joys and anger, are to be kept in place as "parts" rather than pursued as careers. As the 19th century source novel by the highly motivated and political Louisa May Alcott observes this as an expectation it also allows voice to the ambition. After Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig could not have made a choice more apt for her next feature.

The novel is a classic of American literature and beloved enough to have generated film adaptations from the silent era to now. Most of these concentrate on the girls' pursuit of marriage and the closer we come to this one, more of the undercurrents emerge. Gerwig's approach is to push the latter to the foreground, keep the marital stakes important but leave the weight of them to the other attempts for further discovery. This allows her to enhance the episodic nature of the source by managing the timeline according theme or character rather than a linear reading more appropriate for literature than cinema. At first this can be puzzling but only lightly so and as soon as you get the hang of it you relax into it and enjoy the episodes. The sense of an overall arc builds and the shifting of the time zones is deft rather than just stylistic.

Casting is key, as always. Saoirse Ronan as Jo shines, bringing fire and intellect (and frequent visits from Dublin in her accent: but with an actor this fine I just don't care). Meryl Streep clearly relishes the role of the grand dame Aunt March, adding sharp character to her patrician haughtiness. Emma Watson (whose accent also falters intermittently) brings a subdued suffering to her role and a sense that her character's strength lies in maintenance of the fragility of the humbleness she grows into. Laura Dern as the girls' mother, is the grown up version of that, endlessly supportive but feels every blow in private. It is Florence Pugh as Amy who I wanted to see more of, though. Amy's story struck me as a tougher battle, accepting her limitations as an aspirant artist, living as second best to Jo but biting on the bitterness to claim herself. It might be the performance that suffers her character's fate in the long run but for me it was the one I constantly waited for when it wasn't on screen. After the similarly thankless turn in Midsommar this year this just shows her growing fast as an artist. With all that Timothee Chalamet might well be trampled into obscurity but the easy aristocratic charm that hides his own frustrations at the world's constraints.

Gerwig is careful to balance the look and feel of the setting without giving in to the period drama wash which is why her parlour scenes always have a touch of claustrophobia to them. The shot of debutantes climbing the stairs with their hooped skirts creating a kind of traffic jam is funny, beautiful and mindful of the culture that demands it. The relief of the outdoors is palpable and a scene on a cold beach with Jo comforting the ailing Beth with the sand lifting in the wind in silvery wisps could have come from a Tarkovsky movie. This is a bitchy thing to say but in two features Gerwig has completely outclassed the entire output of her life and oft times creative partner Noah Baumbach. If he had done this it would have been hipsters in crinolines. Gerwig just makes it work.

My Teens: 2010 - 2019 in Cinema

Some Thoughts:

'Nother decade, huh? I'll have to confess that the last one changed without my really noticing. I was reminded earlier this year that I'd started the film night that created this blog ten years ago. As 2009 ended I'd spent the best part of  a year programming screening sequences by the half season, writing up the selections and even editing trailers for them. I'd turn up every Friday evening, shamble up Smith St and into Milos' place, checking the projector and av receiver, run a little of the feature and support and then wait with a coffee and noodle at the piano until people turned up, if they did. Things were different then but they were already changing.

The arthouses, whose demise had happened in the mid-00s, had not come back and there were only a few of us trying to address the gap in the inner city. We didn't yet have streaming video and the few US cable shows that were easily available on free to air tv were being shunted to difficult timeslots that meant we saw them as recordings rather than at the same time. Blu-ray was available but wasn't going to take DVD over as it meant getting a new machine and possibly replacing a whole collection. I was still sourcing the selections through a lot of international online retailers and even other means.

Few remain now and all power to them but cinema ain't what it used to be as far as how you get in front of it goes. Plenty of style changes, too, but that distribution disruption has done the most, and it's not all damage. Social media expanded with the continued monetisation of arenas like YouTube. Wince all we like, it has meant more content available of new voices with instant access and the resurfacing of obscurities worth our attention. This is almost the same as the local introduction of video on demand streaming which has brought the same kind of thing as YouTube but at a guaranteed audiovisual quality and often surprising creative tone. The adoption of it by rising names in cinema as well as old stagers like Scorsese will keep this going.

That has meant, though, that free to air tv which long abandoned movie marathons and strong new programming is all but unwatchable and on the death spiral. We're still waiting for Shudder (and Ozflix only works with Chromecast) but Disney, Amazon Prime and other interests have either moved in or are soon to. Too much choice? Probably, considering that none of these is free outside of the tv channels demand viewing resources and oddities like TubiTV.

Arthouse cinemas starved to death in the 2000s and much of their content went into streaming but this still means that there is a potential ocean of it that is even harder to discover without going off the map, now. Parasite has proved a stayer at Melbourne cinema Nova and maybe, just maybe, something like a swell of interest in filmmakers like Takeshi Miike or Hong Sang-Soo could be organised. Then again, Hoyts in Melbourne at least is screening good presentations of Chinese and Indian films in response to the local market so who knows?

And there are new names to watch. Ari Aster for his own brand of strong psycho drama that can spin off into outright horror or remain within the realm of fable while still appearing to be naturalistic (after a fashion). Jordan Peele brings his comedy scholarship to social commentary in movies that inform but forget not to entertain. Justin Benson and Aaron Morehead are building a kind of shadow Lovecraftian universe quietly in Mumblecore Corner and it's taking. Jennifer Kent stunned us with The Babadook and proved there was more in there with The Nightingale.

An unannounced wave of magical realism from south of the US border began making itself felt in the festival circuit with titles like the extraordinary and devastating Tigers are Not Afraid. A wave of meanspirited horror remakes dragged the genre down to the gutter, missing the point of the originals and going for big reveals. The Conjurverse gave us the jumpscare fests and bled into nearby galaxies to create likeminded rubbish like Sinister or the 2012 version of The Woman in Black. I hated every one of these violations but had to admit that their success led to funding for more genre output. I had no interest in the Marvel Comic Universe but also had to admit its clout and shook my head when Scorsese and Coppola both declared the films uncinematic. Of those old masters I had to admit I preferred the Scorsese exhibition to any of his output in the decade, being unable to muster interest in seeing a story about Christian missionaries in medieval Japan.

I enjoyed the transition of found footage as an aesthetic to a broader lo-fi field with some intriguing results like Yellow Brick Road, Banshee Chapter, the Creep movies, Unfriended, until productions like the surprisingly sombre and effective Satanic managed to make a fair tilt at mainstream clean light with some genuine original horror. The unsung hero of low-means film production was the drone, allowing for aerial shots on a budget. Elsewhere, the creation of online folkore through Reddits and video platforms bore intriguing fruit with creepypastas and the like which had a shivery homemade authenticity. On the outer verges, yes, but this, too, is cinema at least by intention.

Strangely, we also saw the revival of stable film production like Val Lewton in the '40s or Roger Corman in the '60s. A24 gave us a number of intriguing pieces that used genre as a tone or colour but provided solid social commentary like MidSommar, It Comes at Night or A Quiet Place. This gave rise for the silly description of elevated horror but that didn't harm the films themselves. Blumhouse seemed to take a throw it out there and see if it works approach resulting in a mixed bag that was interesting rather than tiresome.

Before my final ten, here's a grab bag of wondermints from the era just going:
Satanic, Sorry to Bother You, Tigers Are Not Afraid, Evolution, The Artist, Tabu, Climax, anything by Hong Sang Soo, The Invitation, The Reef, Banshee Chapter, Beasts of the Southern Wild, End of Animal, Spring Breakers, Why Don't You Play in Hell, The Sound of My Voice, Planet of Snail, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Snowtown, Amy, Son of Saul, Fear Itself, Kedi, Hereditary, The Nightingale, What We Do in the Shadows, Wounds, Unfriended, Under the Skin, Snowpiercer, Blue Valentine, In Fabric, A quiet Place, The Shape of Water, Thoroughbreds, Tragedy Girls, Tully, Lucky, Excision, The Hole in the Ground, Borderlands, A Gentle Creature, Mother!, A Ghost Story, Hard to be a God, Moonlight, Raw, Ingrid Goes West, It Comes at Night, Ich Sehe Ich Sehe, The Unknown Girl, I, Daniel Blake, The Forbidden Room, Birdman, Ex Machina, The Lobster, Wadjda, Predestination, Nightcrawler, The Bling Ring, Rhino Season, Martha Macy May Marlene, Chronicle, The Master, Uncle Boonmee who Can Remember His Past Lives, The Woman, Killing Ground.

And all this is still just surface scratching. I probably went to the cinema more regularly in the last ten years than any other decade and that was supplemented by streaming services. We're doing ok. I declare the 2010's to be a great decade of cinema.

The following, one from each year, are not necessarily what I might consider the best but all of them have stayed with me. I won't include lowlights except to say that Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson and James Wan and cronies should stop making films.

2010

Black Swan - Darren Aranofsky makes a muscular paranoia fantasy out of ballet. Can't want more than that. Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis? Ok, maybe that much more.








2011

The Turin Horse - Bela Tarr bows out of cinema with an apocalyptic piece so patient and intense it's difficult to return to but so impressive that it never leaves your mind anyway.







2012

Berberian Sound Studio - The first Peter Strickland film I saw and it made me what I believe will be a lifelong fan. Start in an imagined genre world and then mix it up with razors on your fingers. Beautiful. Powerful.





2013

Blancanieves - Who says silent cinema can't engage? This extraordinary late entry doesn't just engage, it enchants.









2014

The Babadook - A marvellous if brutal exploration of grief, exhaustion and guilt and the monsters they create.








2015

It Follows - Not as claimed at the time a regression to the teenage sex=death equation, this retro-toned horror brought us a far scarier protean threat borne of responsibility.







2016

Under the Shadow - A kind of porting of Dark Water to an even more oppressive cultural situation as a mother and daughter struggle in the theocratic dictatorship of the Ayatolla's Iran. Inside is danger but outside is hatred.






2017

Get Out - social satire woven deep into science-horror from the mind that successfully rebooted the Twilight Zone. He did it again this year with US. He will do it again. I will be in the queue.










2018

The Favourite - From Greek Weirdcore to the edge of the mainstream, Yorgos Lanthimos has beat a steady path. With this tale of ambition and shifting empathy he shows us why all that struggle was worth it.









2019

Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Sublime, deep and heavily affecting, this tale of love on a clock and the importance of moments could not be a better means to round off ten years of great cinematic change.









That's it. Time for a nap. See youse next decade,

PJ

HiMidLo 2019

A rich year at the dark house where even the middling and low points had something to offer (well most of them). MIFF was fun (if its overengineered series of daytime solo screenings bordered on misanthropy) but the best, pleasantly, were from the normal schedules. The last time a year at the cinema was so rich was twenty years ago.

The High

The Nightingale - for having the courage to introduce difficult themes and then to follow through with complicated responses. Far more than a revenge movie.





Portrait of a Lady on Fire - a love story that yet manages to comment on the process of portraiture, make poignant use of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and so strongly insist on the importance of moments that its final shot is of a face changing by the second as it relives each one.

Parasite - Sociopolitical fable of wise down and outers gaming the system with a mix of comedy and dark drama that only the likes of Bong Joon-Ho can provide.

Midsommar - a break-up story set in an allegorical explosion that involves paganism, dance, ritual, extraordinary violence and wondrous hallucination to achieve its final, hard-won smile.





In Fabric - Peter Strickland takes swatches from everything he has encountered and quilts them together in a tighter knit than all the post-modern popsters of the '90s put together. Adding warmth to technique he presents something very funny and often genuinely eerie.

Border - so intense that this is a once only view (currently viewable on SBS on Demand, at the mo) this powerful piece about identity and self-acceptance is like nothing else you have seen this year (and chuck in next year and any other bloody year)

US - Get Out was not a fluke. It was a well-crafted first step into cinema by an accomplished comedian and storyteller. Jordan Peele's reboot of The Twilight Zone had its issues but US avoids them in a show of profound WOW.




Pain & Glory - I prefer Almodovar when he is self-reflexive to his giddy sex comedies. Does that sound obvious? Well, it shouldn't: the latter formed a solid bridge from the lightless oppression of the Franco years and work perfectly well as funny movies. But every time he gets more seriously autobiographical he seems to hone his skills' blade.

Something Else - mumblecore breakup story complicated by what might be a monster of imagination or something far more real. Same universe as that of the rising talents Benson and Morehead



Mrs Lowry & Son - Tim Spall and Vanessa Redgrave shine in a tale of a complex mother and son bond that compresses yet allows for strong personal vision.

The Swallows of Kabul - like a folktale but in the reality of Taliban Afghanistan lifted by entrancing animation and a breezy pace and no shyness from showing atrocity

Jojo Rabbit - improves massively in retrospect as the whole picture has formed and the expectations of the misleading trailer are dispelled. Wonderful fable of ethics from Taika Waititi






Middle

The Day Shall Come - Chris Morris comes through with more subtlety than his last feature (Four Lions) and the ending kills but maybe too much meandering in the second act.

Ready or Not - unsubtle and mostly two dimensional, this us vs them black comedy is lifted into glory by its dizzying central performance.






Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood - too long but continuously enjoyable.







Stan and Ollie - Dug deeper than the average biopic but retained a little too much of what bothers me about them.

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote - instead of "is that all there is?" after all this time we might rather say "well, that works fine". So it does. As well as Brazil or Fear and Loathing did.




The Long Shot - potentially subversive rom com never quite breaks out of pleasant

The Realm - fine political thriller of manners from Spain takes us effectively from sympathy to a fascinated antipathy as a bad guy is shunned and then threatened by worse guys but needed trimming

Rocketman - music biopic makes one good decision to be a musical first and biography second so that the famous songs match the life lesson rather than the timeline. Some thrilling setpieces but eventually falls into serving the timeline rather than the idea

The Keeper - efficient tale of a struggle for acceptance in the face of mass hostility could have afforded to be a lot harder than it was.

Animals - joys and infuriations of friendship well served by good casting and writing but felt overlong







Low

Knives Out - decent whodunnit promises extras that it doesn't quite deliver






Judy & Punch - great idea shoots itself in the foot at the end of the first act and never quite recovers

Joker - like an efficient cover version of '70s Scorsese with a startling lead vocal








Marriage Story - Noah Baumbach almost breaks through the quirk barrier with some well-nurtured performances from Scarlett Johanson and Adam Driver and doesn't return to the atrocity levels of Frances Ha but it almost feels like this screen divorce is happening in real time. Not for me.



Palm Beach - constantly embarrassing reunion tale of privileged Australians misses every single mark





Brightburn - a dark anti superman tale with surprising gore doesn't exceed its routine approach








The Lodge - horror by numbers constantly annoys with obvious revelations and unremarkable twists. Couldn't care less.