Kelly Reichardt uses the same method to steal genre movies as J.B. does when stealing paintings because she works with stealth and determination until the missing elements become apparent. The Mastermind presents itself as a heist movie but it actually functions as an anxiety dream that uses corduroy as its outer layer. Josh O'Connor slouches […]
Sally Hawkins has made a career playing women who beam kindness, so naturally the Philippou brothers cast her as a psychopath. Actually, wait. That's not entirely fair. Laura isn't simply a psychopath in Bring Her Back. She represents a more tragic case because her grief has consumed her completely which turned her into a disgusting
Indigo. The whole thing drowns in indigo, right from the opening frames. The film director Coogler presents Mississippi as if the state's blue essence flows through every part of its body during the first forty minutes of the movie. The camera displays Jordan standing by weathered wood planks while Ruth E. Carter dresses him in
People develop unusual behavior during autumn season. Always has. And Alain Guiraudie gets this, which is why he drops Jérémie into a damp November village where everyone seems to want him but nobody knows what to do about it. The chestnut trees display their golden colors when Jérémie reaches the location. Guiraudie and cinematographer Claire
The ice planet scenes hit you with this washed-out grey-white that Darius Khondji clearly spent hours calibrating. Watch the entire performance even though the first scene appears hazy because of the fogged glass effect. Look, Pattinson playing two versions of himself works. Mickey 17 shuffles around in beige jumpsuits Catherine George designed, all patched and
Eggers uses shadows as his main artistic tool to create absence which becomes a powerful visual element when he uses it to depict Victorian wallpaper through his claw-like silhouettes. The film Nosferatu achieves complete darkness which most contemporary movies avoid because they fear its intense power. The director spent five hours lighting candles for each
There's a particular kind of restlessness that settles in around 2 a.m. when you're lying next to someone you love but cannot reach. The distance isn't physical. It's something else, something that lives in the space between what you perform and what you actually feel. Halina Reijn's Babygirl understands this distance intimately, even if the
The brown corduroy jacket catches my eye first. Not Chalamet's performance, not the period Greenwich Village streets, but this one jacket that appears in three scenes and each time it's buttoned differently, worn differently, like it's aging with Bob or maybe Bob's aging into it. Brown corduroy in winter New York. Who makes that choice?
An upside down statues of liberty is memorable. The film by Corbet begins with László Tóth stepping into Ellis Island while he views the inverted Lady through his eyes. The opening visual effect shows potential to be a gimmick but the following three and a half hours maintain their focus on disorienting the audience. The
A silence which settles over a room when someone enters at exactly the wrong moment. Not dramatic silence. The other kind: when you were just beginning to feel like yourself, alone, and now you have to rearrange your face. It is the silence of being caught mid-thought, mid-dance, mid-becoming. Shuchi Talati's Girls Will Be Girls
