In 1997, cut off from foreign financing by new regulations, Zhang Yimou broke with all the big budget period dramas of his previous oeuvre in favor of the blackest of comedies set in contemporary Beijing. The dialogue is relentlessly funny, and the numerous plot twists give the movie a kooky, slightly unhinged quality, which is accentuated by the handheld camerawork, lurid color palette and jagged jump cuts. What most distinguishes the movie, though, is its acute social commentary, capturing as…
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The Hand of God 2021
A wrenching family tragedy bisects this autobiographical film into two halves. The first half is an evocative, raucous tribute to the director's extended family, set during his adolescence in 1980s Naples and suffused with affection and nostalgia. So much happens in the first half, in a world so vividly rendered, that when tragedy strikes and turns that world upside down, we are as mortally stricken as our protagonist. The film's second half, however, never quite lives up to the promise…
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The French Dispatch 2021
Welcome to Andersonville: that maddening, claustrophobic world where cheerfully blasé postmodern pastiche leads nowhere but to emotional dead ends. The fictional setting of the film, the city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, translates to Boredom-on Jaded. How fitting a description of the film itself.
Anderson has always been a relentless stylist from the beginning: but in early films such as Rushmore there are still glimmers of real feeling. By the time we arrive at The French Dispatch we have reached the logical apotheosis…
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Drive My Car 2021
This is, at its simplest, a road movie, but it is more so a journey into the heart, and director Ryusuke Hamaguchi has an uncanny eye for the heart’s subtlest tremors. The opening third of the movie begins with our protagonist and his wife in quiet scenes of domestic tranquility, but the camera trains us to be more attentive, alerting us to the complex cross currents that lurk just beneath the surface. There are past traumas and present tensions, which…
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