-- a selection of short-form reviews of the films I have watched this week --
I, Tonya (dir. Craig Gillespie, 2017)
✭✭✭✩✩
A ferocious, enthused performance from Margot Robbie leads this mockumentary biopic of American figure-skater Tonya Harding – a prodigy of the sport, winning (and later stripped of) her 1991 and 1994 championship titles – whose rise into the national limelight was as reviled and tempestuous as her own public profile. Composed out of faux interviews, I, Tonya flirts between the pre-fame kid-on-the-block and the kinetic, fame-entranced star of the present. In style and approach a love letter to early Scorsese classics (cue: breaking the fourth wall, charged rock and roll music (ZZ Top, Supertramp)), I, Tonya is an electric romp through the politics of American class and sport, unafraid to stomp or cut its way forward. Anti-princess, with a face stricken by joy, showbiz and a perpetrator’s guilt, I, Tonya is a blaze.
A ferocious, enthused performance from Margot Robbie leads this mockumentary biopic of American figure-skater Tonya Harding – a prodigy of the sport, winning (and later stripped of) her 1991 and 1994 championship titles – whose rise into the national limelight was as reviled and tempestuous as her own public profile. Composed out of faux interviews, I, Tonya flirts between the pre-fame kid-on-the-block and the kinetic, fame-entranced star of the present. In style and approach a love letter to early Scorsese classics (cue: breaking the fourth wall, charged rock and roll music (ZZ Top, Supertramp)), I, Tonya is an electric romp through the politics of American class and sport, unafraid to stomp or cut its way forward. Anti-princess, with a face stricken by joy, showbiz and a perpetrator’s guilt, I, Tonya is a blaze.
Halloween (dir. David Gordon Green, 2018)
✭✩✩✩✩
Jamie Lee Curtis returns yet again to the inexhaustible Halloween franchise, now headed by David Gordon Green (acclaimed indie-director of George Washington), in what constitutes a self-conscious, blundered retelling of the 1978 slasher. None of the original terror and flourish is regained in translation, Carpenter’s masochistic tract here indulged – with the exception of its gratuitous nudity – to a baseless, uninventive outcome. Laurie Strode’s post-trauma from the events of Myer’s prior excursion is, however, uniquely confronted – the violence of the past realised in her fortified, alcoholic isolation. Halloween, despite ignoring its ten prior incarnations, leaves itself open for more (as of course, it would) but there is little left to inspire, or renew, and perhaps it too would be safer ignored.
The Sisters Brothers (dir. Jacques Audiard, 2018)
✭✭✭✭✩
Audiard delivers a nuanced and quietly-intelligent western in The Sisters Brothers – his first work in the English language, yet filmed entirely in Europe – chronicling the joint career of cowboys Eli and Charlie Sisters, poignantly acted by John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix. Out of time, loose figures of the landscape, the brothers signal a portrait of America that is fast-slipping into the past, where in California flushing toilets and toothpaste supplements register a shift in worldly ideals. Quick wit finds itself balanced against numbing violence in Audiard and Bidegain’s adaptation of Patrick deWitt’s novel, yet over the course of its narrative – a brutal quest for the chemical designs of gold-enthusiast Hermann Warm – the film achieves something far more profound, an emotional subtlety cradled at the heart of two, fragile men (as if Hemingway-esque, they are men without women, cold and loveless). Unexpectedly beautiful.
Audiard delivers a nuanced and quietly-intelligent western in The Sisters Brothers – his first work in the English language, yet filmed entirely in Europe – chronicling the joint career of cowboys Eli and Charlie Sisters, poignantly acted by John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix. Out of time, loose figures of the landscape, the brothers signal a portrait of America that is fast-slipping into the past, where in California flushing toilets and toothpaste supplements register a shift in worldly ideals. Quick wit finds itself balanced against numbing violence in Audiard and Bidegain’s adaptation of Patrick deWitt’s novel, yet over the course of its narrative – a brutal quest for the chemical designs of gold-enthusiast Hermann Warm – the film achieves something far more profound, an emotional subtlety cradled at the heart of two, fragile men (as if Hemingway-esque, they are men without women, cold and loveless). Unexpectedly beautiful.
Phantom Lady (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1944)
✭✭✭✩✩
Classic film-noir tropes craft a “wrong man” narrative in this Hollywood jewel, a monochromatic peer into the corrupt doings of contemporary New York – led by a killer whose ordinariness is the ultimate, shrouded charm. Siodmak’s classic is a highly-wrought, implausible tale of deceit, psychological truth and artifice, navigated by the tireless passions of Carol “Kansas” Richman (enchanted by actress Ella Raines) and an off-beat, police force. Enigmatic and jazz-infused, Phantom Lady is a unique beginning point for the genre.
Classic film-noir tropes craft a “wrong man” narrative in this Hollywood jewel, a monochromatic peer into the corrupt doings of contemporary New York – led by a killer whose ordinariness is the ultimate, shrouded charm. Siodmak’s classic is a highly-wrought, implausible tale of deceit, psychological truth and artifice, navigated by the tireless passions of Carol “Kansas” Richman (enchanted by actress Ella Raines) and an off-beat, police force. Enigmatic and jazz-infused, Phantom Lady is a unique beginning point for the genre.
Ratcatcher (dir. Lynne Ramsay, 1999) and two short-features: Kill the Day (2000), Swimmer (2012)
✭✭✭✭✭
Scottish-born director Lynne Ramsay gives voice to disenfranchised childhood in her debut feature Ratcatcher, set in Glasgow, 1973, a meditative pursuit of the lyrical wonders and cruelty of growing into the world. Mid-90’s shorts – the elegantly photographed Small Deaths, Kill the Dayand Gasman– summon the tone and preoccupations of Ratcatcher’s own, shimmering vision, childhood youth at once an opaque, uncertain station in life, whilst, in other instances, thick with the devastations of quotidian violence. Individual plight and absurdist imagination chime in the masculine presences of Ramsay’s later work – in particular, You Were Never Really Here– where purgatorial existences find themselves rooted in abusive, boyhood trauma. Haunting, anti-pastoral beauty.
Scottish-born director Lynne Ramsay gives voice to disenfranchised childhood in her debut feature Ratcatcher, set in Glasgow, 1973, a meditative pursuit of the lyrical wonders and cruelty of growing into the world. Mid-90’s shorts – the elegantly photographed Small Deaths, Kill the Dayand Gasman– summon the tone and preoccupations of Ratcatcher’s own, shimmering vision, childhood youth at once an opaque, uncertain station in life, whilst, in other instances, thick with the devastations of quotidian violence. Individual plight and absurdist imagination chime in the masculine presences of Ramsay’s later work – in particular, You Were Never Really Here– where purgatorial existences find themselves rooted in abusive, boyhood trauma. Haunting, anti-pastoral beauty.
I Vitelloni (dir. Federico Fellini, 1953)
✭✭✭✭✭
Five post-adolescent, Italian men daydream through sedentary lives in their seaside hometown of Rimini, Northern Italy, trawling vacantly between summertime pleasures and the deep-rooted frustrations of provincial life. Compassionately realised as Fellini’s own, neo-realist self-portrait, I Vitelloni sketches a wide array of troubled, Dionysian youths and their own private odyssey of self-realisation. Tragedy held in the smallest of places.
Five post-adolescent, Italian men daydream through sedentary lives in their seaside hometown of Rimini, Northern Italy, trawling vacantly between summertime pleasures and the deep-rooted frustrations of provincial life. Compassionately realised as Fellini’s own, neo-realist self-portrait, I Vitelloni sketches a wide array of troubled, Dionysian youths and their own private odyssey of self-realisation. Tragedy held in the smallest of places.
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