by
Julien Faddoul
Parasite ***
All unemployed, a poor Korean family takes a peculiar interest in a wealthy and glamorous one for their livelihood until they get entangled in an unexpected incident.
Exemplary, unpredictable, witty satire on class struggles, social mobility and “solidarity forever”, with riveting Hitchcockian staging and excellent performances. Like all Bong films, it is at times heavy-handed, but this is his most thoughtful and arresting film to date.
d – Bong Joon Ho
w – Bong Joon Ho, Jin Won Han
ph – Hong Kyung-pyo
pd – Lee Ha-jun
m – Jaeil Jung
ed – Jinmo Yang
cos – Choi Se-yeon
p – Bong Joon Ho, Jang Young-Hwan, Moon Yang-kwon, Kwak Sin-ae
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam, Lee Jung-eun, Chang Hyae-jin, Park Myung-hoon, Jung Ji-so, Jung Hyeon-jun
The Laundromat *
A woman begins investigating a fake insurance policy, only to find herself linked to a Panama City law firm and its vested interest in helping the world’s wealthiest citizens amass larger fortunes.
Painfully uneven anthology-film-of-sorts on the Panama Papers with broad writing and even broader performances.
d – Steven Soderbergh
w – Scott Z. Burns (Based on the Book by Jack Bernstien)
ph – Peter Andrews
pd – Howard Cummings
m – David Holmes
ed – Mary Ann Bernard
cos – Ellen Mirojnick
p – Scott Z. Burns, Lawrence Grey, Gregory Jacobs, Michael Sugar
Cast: Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio Banderas, Jeffrey Wright, Melissa Rauch, Sharon Stone, David Schwimmer, Matthias Schoenaerts, James Cromwell, Nonso Anozie, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Jessica Allain
Lucy in the Sky
An astronaut returns to Earth after a transcendent experience during a mission to space and begins to go crazy.
Flabby, tepid film based on the infamous case of astronaut Lisa Nowak, which attempts to assert the idea that astronauts begin to lose their grip on reality after an extended period of time in space. It is never clear why this is.
d – Noah Hawley
w – Brian C. Brown, Elliott DiGuiseppi, Noah Hawley
ph – Polly Morgan
pd – Stefania Cella
m – Jeff Russo
ed – Regis Kimble
cos – Louise Frogley
p – John Cameron, Noah Hawley, Bruna Papandrea, Reese Witherspoon
Cast: Natalie Portman, Jon Hamm, Zazie Beetz, Dan Stevens, Ellen Burstyn, Colman Domingo, Jeremiah Birkett, Tig Notaro, Joseph Williamson, Nick Offerman, Pearl Amanda Dickson
The Lighthouse **
A tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
Grimy psychological ghost story (shot in 1.19:1) that feels as if it were a 19th century filmic artifact (or artefact, even) only recently discovered. It disappears up its own creative ambiguity in the second half.
d – Robert Eggers
w – Max Eggers, Robert Eggers
ph – Jarin Blaschke
pd – Craig Lathrop
m – Mark Korven
ed – Louise Ford
cos – Linda Muir
p – Jay Van Hoy, Robert Eggers, Youree Henley, Rodrigo Teixeira, Lourenço Sant'Anna
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman
Zombieland: Double Tap
The group will face a new zombie threat as a new breed of zombie has developed.
Lame, unnecessary sequel; nothing new to offer.
d – Ruben Fleischer
w – Dave Callaham, Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
ph – Chung-hoon Chung
pd – Martin Whist
m – David Sardy
ed – Chris Patterson, Dirk Westervelt
cos – Christine Wada
p – Gavin Polone
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Zoey Deutch, Avan Jogia, Rosario Dawson, Luke Wilson, Thomas Middleditch, Victoria Hall, Victor Rivera, Ian Gregg, Devin Mojica, Rachel Luttrell, John Dixon
A Cottage on Dartmoor ****
Flashback story of a prisoner who has recently escaped from Dartmoor prison to find the girl he whom he obsessively committed the crime for.
For my money, the single most underappreciated film of the silent era, if not cinema history, by a filmmaker no one even speaks of anymore, let alone reveres. Asquith (son of British Prime Minister and Earl of Oxford and Asquith, H.H. Asquith) later developed a bad reputation for indifferent, stagey all-star British theatre adaptations. Made just at the end of the silent era, this film thrillingly and fascinatingly recapitulates all of the devices that were expected of movies at that time (and even includes an extended sequence commenting on the medium’s transition itself). Asquith mixes together the wit of Edwardian comedies, prestige of Hollywood melodrama, the blast of Soviet montage and the compositions of German Expressionism. It is astonishing on every level.
wd – Anthony Asquith (Based on the Short Story by Herbert C. Price)
ph – Stanley Rodwell
ad – Ian Campbell-Gray
ed – Anthony Asquith
p – H. Bruce Woolfe
Cast: Norah Baring, Uno Henning, Hans Adalbert Schlettow
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