The heady mix of giddiness and dread that fuels most of this movie is really finely tuned, and Baker and the actors do an impressive job of keeping everything in balance. I was having fun, for the first two acts and into the third, when I knew I shouldn’t be, because everything was inevitably going to crumble and Anora’s naïveté was going to run up against reality. But the three goons are just Keystone Kop-coded enough to turn that second…
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Prisoners 2013
This would really be a slog without Denis, who is thankfully able to create tension and mood seemingly from out of thin air, every time the script hits pause on the story so we can see a character experience some new variety of physical or emotional punishment.
Jackman’s got the most screen time of this stacked cast and doesn’t really bring the same heat as everybody else. (Though to be fair, I think anyone would run out of ways to yell “Tell me where they are!!!!!!” after twenty or so times).
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Phantom Thread 2017
I almost never rewatch movies…but something about Phantom Thread keeps me coming back.
Of course there’s so much to nourish you on every rewatch—the performances, the one-liners (“Kiss me, my girl, before I’m sick”), the score, the intricacies of Reynolds and Alma’s relationship, the elusive themes to be pulled apart and scrutinized—but honestly more than anything, I come back to this movie just to marinate in its atmosphere.
Tea pouring into a cup. Clattering and scraping silverware. Hard-soled shoes on…
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Evil Does Not Exist 2023
Hamaguchi has such a stylistically light touch for the first two acts — pacing is unhurried, visuals are fairly pedestrian — but slowly, surely turns the dial the entire time, upping the dread and discomfort little by little leading to the end. I was enjoying it as a low-key municipal power struggle, but it slowly reveals itself to be something else entirely. It plays like a parable or a folktale, in which the characters are vessels for an idea.
It…
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