Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths (2022) - Movie Review

Alejandro G. Iñarritu, who we last checked in with way back at the start of 2016 with The Revenant, now joins Branagh, Gray, and Spielberg in releasing a film this year that comes with a heavy dose of autobiography. I can understand how wanky this can come across to some people, having a filmmaker devote so many hours to their own story (with varying degrees of varnish), but as an auteurist, there’s something I find quite fascinating about these kinds of productions. They take the idea of film as a personal form of art (ignoring how each and every film is the result of collaboration in one form or another) about as far as it can go while still being in the context of a work of fiction. And with this film, we find the director… well, in a pretty dark place.

Millie Lies Low (2022) - Movie Review

Just as Australians know their crime dramas and Italian know their Westerns, New Zealanders sure know their cringe comedies. Only this example is a bit different than what I’ve looked at before. Its depiction of a woman who, after a panic attack, has to miss a plane to New York… but goes to increasingly bizarre measures to try and convince everyone that she didn’t miss it, certainly fits in with that social cringe spectrum, but it’s a lot more anxious this time around. There’s a definite Safdie brothers pace to it, gradually escalating just how much worse things can get for the main character, and with its fixation on social media and social pressure, it fits in with the recent trend towards influencer thrillers.