Beau Is Afraid (2023) Another deeply twisted exercise in degradation and despair from Ari Aster, but with an accompanying runtime that makes Midsommar look well-disciplined. Beau Is Afraid is Aster’s pitch for a sickly horror psych-out comedy, yet the most horrific part is how indulgent it is. Which is to say, no part of it isn’t, so if you enjoy spending 3 hours in Aster’s dungeon of a mind, this will probably be quite the rewarding experience. Otherwise, it’s torture. I haven’t looked into Aster’s standing in the scheme of things. Distasteful preoccupations don’t necessarily signify a disposition towards
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Russian Doll Season 2 Russian Doll’s first season started off going great guns, before failing to stick the landing. This unnecessary – in as much as nothing about the original demanded more, beyond it proving something of a hit for Netflix, not least critically – second run doesn’t have that problem, mostly because it never even clears the runway. Nadia: Well, inexplicable things happening is my entire modus operandi. If in doubt, revert to a Quantum Leap/Back to the Future time-travel premise, by way of… er, that Nicholas Lyndhurst series (Goodnight, Sweetheart). This time, Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan (Charlie Barnett) find
It Couldn’t Happen Here (1987) “I think our film is arguably better than Spiceworld” said Neil Tennant of his and Chris Lowe’s much-maligned It Couldn’t Happen Here, a quasi-musical, quasi-surrealist journey through the English landscape via the Pet shop Boys’ “own” history as envisaged by co-writer-director Jack Bond. Of course, Spiceworld could boast the presence of the illustrious Richard E Grant, while It Couldn’t Happen Here had to settle for Gareth Hunt. Is its reputation deserved? It’s arguably not very successful at being a coherent film (even thematically), but I have to admit that I rather like it, ramshackle and studiously aloof though it is. Lowe: Where are
Youth (2015) I greatly enjoyed Paolo Sorrentino’s last feature, The Great Beauty (or, La grande bellezza), in spite of its overt debt to Fellini, a director I’ve never really gotten on with. That same devotion is also evident in Youth, marked as it is by a series of surreal interludes, culminating in moviemaker Harvey Keitel surveying a field of starlets (all very 8½). It also exhibits the kind of beautified, musically sumptuous, existential sogginess of recent Terence Malicks, however; there’s a desire to grasp at the flighty meaning of it all, whatever that all may be, and thus all it ends up revealing is
Enemy (2013) If Enemy is anything to go by, Denis Villeneuve is an ideal choice to direct Blade Runner 2 in the place of Ridley Scott. Not because he has the auterish visual sense of Scott at his zenith, because he has an equally incontinent grasp of narrative. The excuse of Enemy, which its defenders would likely summon, is that, as an exploration of its protagonist(s)’s subconscious, a formally coherent plot can be thrown out the window. Unfortunately, that leaves the film open to anything and everything and leaves the viewer with a shrug of “Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter”. Enemy does have a lot
Twin Peaks 2.1: May the Giant Be with You The ninety-minute Season Two opener finds Twin Peaks back in the finest of form, following a slow glide to normalcy during the last part of the first season. It can in no way be coincidental that the freakish fingerprints of David Lynch are all over the episode; he shares a story credit with co-producer Mark Frost (who wrote the teleplay) and also directed. This has everything one would want from the show; instructive giants, singing lawyers, bizarre poetry, uncanny dreams, and, of course, Bob. There’s even a Three Stooges reference, and from the most