This is certainly not an average film but, for me, a frustrating one. Before I even offer my critiques, the plausible rejoinders number themselves like eager warriors: the ending's reveal more than justifies, not to mention explains, the formal decisions made to shoot from a (flexible) first- (and, sometimes, close third-) person perspective; there exists an undeniable lyrical quality to the subjectivity of the shot construction, especially the first quarter of the film before the perspectives begin to shift; though…
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The Brutalist 2024
Over-rated, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap. The first half doesn't quite approach the affective range of other flawed, self-conscious epics like Reds, but it at least presents a consistent, handsome vision of an artist, a worthy person, scrounging, climbing, falling through a post-war America convincingly reanimated as a dreary, lonely, in all ways segregated world of dreamers and dreamed-upons. And László, like any American charlatan worth his salt, wants to have it all ways: he is the working class immigrant who can…
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Hard Truths 2024
Leigh is as much of a maestro of visual composition and, crucially, movement, as he is a master wordsmith. 'Hard Truths' is materially low-stakes, but conceptually major. Though Pansy's visits to her doctors were to my mind the only mistep, the only moment when Leigh seemed to indulge the hatred at his character's core, the film's title rises as a shield against cowardly arrows fired from the trees; the real hard truth is not that Pansy's problems exist outside the…
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