The Brutalist swept me away right from the start. The stunning upside-down shot of the Statue of Liberty had me almost jump from my seat in excitement and I was fully locked in from that moment onwards. What follows is a towering achievement in filmmaking, a decades-spanning epic that manages to feel both intimate and operatic at once.
The fact that the film was made on a mere $10 million budget and shot in just 30 days is simply unbelievable.…
An explosive cocktail of speedboats, blurred identities, high-stakes machismo and dangerously intense emotions. Miami Vice is less about a story and more a mood piece, where the logic occasionally takes a detour to Havana for a mojito (because why not?) and you’re too mesmerized by the atmosphere to question it.
Dion Beebe’s digital cinematography is downright otherworldly. Grainy, hyperreal, and impossibly sleek, it captures Miami as a shimmering, alien landscape where the night never ends and the thunder never stops.…
Bullet Train on an airplane. Features some of the best CQC choreography I’ve seen in years—chaotic yet easy to follow, with fights that feel punchy, weighty, and genuinely violent. Certainly a massive improvement over the tired “gun-fu” choreo of the last couple of John Wick films. The visuals are pretty rough, though, with loads of CG blood and cheap production design, but the fast cuts, whip-pans, and overall editing are surprisingly well executed. Solid braindead hangover entertainment.
A solid, if somewhat forgettable, spy thriller from Ridley Scott. Features a really strong cast and some compelling espionage action/tradecraft shenanigans, but the script ultimately falls a bit short—especially in terms of the love interest subplot, which once again proves to be largely pointless. Nothing remarkable, yet for some reason, this was probably the third or fourth time I’ve watched this, which does tell you something I guess.
After this, I’m fanboying over Denis Villeneuve as hard as Stilgar did over Paul Atreides.
A brilliantly funny, absurd, creative, grotesque, provocative and thought-provoking exploration of sexuality and self-actualization that sees director Yorgos Lanthimos in his most visually striking and stylized form. The psychedelic steampunk-esque aesthetics, the unique and experimental cinematography, the weirdly endearing feminist themes, the outstanding costume design, the incredibly black and hilarious humour and the sublime performances from Stone, Dafoe and Ruffalo make Poor Things quite comfortably Lanthimos’ finest film to date and a masterpiece of auteur filmmaking. There’s a lot to…
