Tenet (2020) - Movie Review

After diverting from his usual illusionist ways in 2017 with Dunkirk, writer/director Christopher Nolan seems to be back on his cerebral shit. In fact, he seems to have gone right back to Inception, as his latest is another example of high-concept complexity wrapped up in the kind of mainstream bombast that has allowed Nolan a foot in both houses for so much of his career. While I’d argue, both for subjective and objective reasons, this doesn’t quite reach the same dizzying heights as Inception, I’d also argue that this film has more than enough of its own finesse to succeed.

The Lighthouse (2020) - Movie Review

I didn’t know what to expect from the sophomore release of Robert Eggers, who gave us the quite fantastic The Witch a few years ago. I don’t even think it’s possible to expect anything from this, either from the viewpoint of someone trying to pick something to watch or as someone in the cinema seat with their ticket in hand. It legit got to a point, around the point of this film’s final reel, that I found myself giving in to the weirdness. I stopped trying to rationalise what I was seeing and just let it all wash over me… and then I made the trip back home. Time for another deep dive as I try and put down on paper why this film is so fucking brilliant.

High Life (2019) - Movie Review

Well, this is certainly a change of pace from what sci-fi space flicks have been lately. Writer/director Claire Denis’ first step into English-language cinema finds her looking at all the monumental idealism baked into features like Interstellar and The Martian, and questioning whether such things would really play out that way. The result of that is a very different, very moody, very fucking depressing take on the isolated-in-space thriller.

The King (2019) - Movie Review

There’s something off about this movie. The latest from Aussie director David Michôd is an adaptation of the Henriad, the classic canon of Shakespearean works focusing on King Henry IV and V… and yet, it is a remarkably loose adaptation. Written by Michôd and Joel Edgerton, you’d have to strain to hear any of the original prose in here. Even considering the lengthy history of adaptations of the Bard, including Ophelia from earlier this year, this seems like a backwards move. Why would you bother adapting a work of fiction, which itself is based on historical fact, and leave behind the writing that is the main reason why Shakespeare’s work survives to the present day? Well, thankfully, there are quite a few answers to that, and all things considered, I think these guys took the right approach.