“I still think and I still stand by this: The Matrix is a stand-alone film,” proclaims Mark Kermode, resident film critic at BBC Radio 5, in his disenchanted assessment of Lana Wachowski’s latest film, The Matrix: Resurrections.
He’s not alone. A quick perusal of any review aggregating site will reveal that, for many, the film’s fatal flaw is that it’s not The Matrix. But critics who proudly flaunt the 1999 original film’s unimpeachable status as a blockbuster masterpiece as a…
It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that the penultimate film from a director who has predetermined he will only be making one more is about legacy. From that of a stunt man who forms the unseen working class backbone of the film industry, to the comparatively vain status anxiety of a fallen celebrity who feels inches away from immortality (or at least an antidote to existential dread), to the reactionary legacy of Hollywood’s ‘slain virgin’ Sharon Tate, ‘Once Upon…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
The way Kaufman applies male/female dynamics here to his main interest in solipsism is not so much an exploration as a footnote operating as a red herring. Jessie Buckley’s non-character basically exists to lampshade the idea that an interest in solipsism may be rooted in male-ness, so that he can indulge in it anyway. Even so, her presence in the film even as a non-character makes it more watchable, and also was maybe the reason it was more effective for…
‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ brings voyeuristic thrills to the excitement of creating a relationship of total equality in a romance which plays like an edge of your seat thriller through eye contact alone. A period film which paradoxically suspends time, it is an emotional reconstitution of women’s history centred on the possibility of all forms of self-expression for women rather than its impossibility due to historical oppression. Without needing to resort to anachronism, it insists on beauty which,…
Bong Joon-Ho’s brand of filmmaking is often talked about for the way in which his genre analogues sublimate political themes. In ‘Parasite’ however, he turns them to the task of conducting a social autopsy, with two families who represent their entire class strata in his most violently political film to date. An amalgamate of genre elements including dark comedy, thriller and melodrama, Parasite’s generic choices have the rare effect of almost cancelling out their own extremity by emphasising the lack…
