Beau Is Afraid (2023) - Movie Review

The more time I spend contemplating the work of writer/director Ari Aster, the more frustrated I get with him. His feature debut Hereditary is a special film to me for a number of reasons. On first viewing, while I was impressed with the film craft and atmosphere, that ending really threw me for a loop. Then I clung onto Nyx Fears’ compelling and thought-provoking take of it as a trans allegory, which not only says something about how convoluted the lore surrounding King Paimon wound up being that that was the more logical explanation, but it’s one of the bigger instances of my flirtings with edgelord optimism; the approach of finding positivity in the midst of emphatically fucked-up ideas and scenarios, in this case being an empathetic view of society’s lack of empathy towards trans people. Or, at least, when viewed through that lens.

All of that makes for one of the more complicated connections I’ve made with a film I’ve reviewed on here, and possibly ever seen beyond that, and those two ideas (fatalistic family tragedy about how we’re doomed to choices beyond our control, or Lynchian psychological portrait of a mother’s rejection of her trans son) are still butting heads in my brain at the time of writing this.

And to think, Hereditary has basically become a running joke among my family, since I really got into the trans interpretation of it and… well, let’s just say that my attempts to convince my parents of the same was less than successful.

My take on Aster’s follow-up, Midsommar, though? Much simpler. It’s a dark break-up movie dressed as a slasher dressed as a Pagan acid trip, and it’s the film that finally got Florence Pugh on my radar as an actor worth looking out for.

Anyway, between those two, I went into Aster’s latest with some trepidation based on past experiences, but still hoping for something good. I mean, after Aster was rather insistent on Hereditary’s story being literal, seeing him go for something properly David Lynch/Charlie Kaufman is at least an interesting direction to take, as is the decision to lean more into his pitch-black sense of humour. However, what ultimately resulted from this is a film that did not work for me.

Pearl (2023) - Movie Review

The prequel to one of my favourite films from last year in X, Pearl serves as the origin story for that film’s surprisingly sympathetic villain of the same name. After how much X wound up impressing me, both as a straight-forward genre experience and as a multi-faceted treatise on the nature of horror, pornography, and cinema in general, I went into this excited but not necessarily knowing what I was getting myself into. And truth be told, I wound up enjoying this even more than X… but not for the reasons I was expecting.

The Banshees Of Inisherin (2022) - Movie Review

 

So, back in high school, I had this friend. We’ll call him… Jay. Around when we started school, me and him were put into a special morning roll call group with a few others, all of whom were neurodivergent in one form or another. We hung around a lot during class breaks, and they were pretty much the only friends I had back then. Sure, I got along okay with the rest of my classmates, more or less, but they were more acquaintances than anything else. These guys, though? Proper mates.

Then Jay decided that that wasn’t happening anymore. One day, he just up and told me to piss off. To not hang out with him and the others during lunch like we usually did. Knowing my often-violent mood swings at the time, I’m not saying that he probably didn’t have his reasons for doing so; just that it came out all of a sudden.

And this wasn’t a one-off thing either; every so often, he would just suddenly decide that I shouldn’t be there anymore, after however many days of us kinda-sorta being cool with each other again. On a random whim, I would get cut off from the only friends I had for however long he felt like. It finally came to an end a little while before we graduated, when he made nice because, and I quote, he “found someone worse” than me. Not exactly the most welcoming apology, but I didn’t hold it against him then or now; at least the merry-go-round ended, and we were able to part on good terms.

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.

Halloween Ends (2022) - Movie Review

I went into this with what I’d consider a reasonable amount of cautious optimism. Halloween Kills from last year still left me hankering to see how this trilogy was going to wrap up, but with the rather glaring flaws that showed up there, I was admittedly worried that it was the sign that things were going to properly bottom out. This would be the trilogy that first blazed its way into cinemas and created a fresh, clean slate that swept away the myriad of messy follow-ups to the 1978 original… only to do its own restocking of similarly wasteful material. I don’t even hate Kills as much as a lot of others seem to, but it still left me with a rather worrying impression, despite how much I got into its meatier subtext.

Thankfully, though, I am happy to report that this properly returns to what made the 2018 film work as well as it did. Although you’d be forgiven for being completely thrown off by what this finale has to offer.

Annette (2021) - Movie Review

So. Now that I’ve gotten a good eyeful of what Sparks tick, let’s take a look at their other big cinematic contribution from this year. Not only have they written the lyrics and music for this musical (yes, 2021 has been a hell of a year for movie musicals), they also wrote what can be considered the book for this musical, all about the turbulent relationship between a stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and an opera singer (Marion Cotillard). It provides another splash of variety to what this year has already had to offer, and it’s also the kind of idiosyncratic and enthralling work that, after watching The Sparks Brothers, I have come to expect from the duo.

Waves (2020) - Movie Review

Trey Edward Shults doesn’t do things small. His last film, the increasingly-relevant It Comes At Night, is one of the finest depictions of social isolation and paranoia of the entire 2010s, and that effect came about through a combination of lung-invading atmosphere and an uncanny eye for acting talent. And his latest is no different, pushing even further in visual ambition and emotional impact to make for one of the hardest hits of the year.

If Anything Happens I Love You (2020) - Short Film Review

Words are limited. For as bountiful as the vocabulary of any given dialect may be, there will always be certain moments, certain experiences, certain feelings, that are utterly beyond the grasp of the written or spoken word to express. The phrase “deafening silence” exists solely as an ironic testament to how the absence of words can say far more than the words themselves. It’s part of the reason why I have such adoration to the medium of cinema, as it’s a form of visual language and expression that can tap into emotions that, for as many words as I devote to any one of them in these reviews, I would be entirely unable to put into words myself. It’s this mode of human emotion, where the unspoken says volumes, that this short film excels at.

Mystify: Michael Hutchence (2019) - Movie Review

In terms of the archetypal rock star, the one that women want, men want to be, and everyone else starts learning their tastes quickly in response to, I can’t think of a better example of Australia’s own crop in that regard than one Michael Hutchence, AKA the lead singer of INXS. And in this tell-all documentary directed and co-edited by Richard Lowenstein, who put together the group’s best-remembered music videos, the narrative of Michael’s life is wrapped around that image.

Stan & Ollie (2019) - Movie Review

Time to take a trip back to the days of black-and-white cinema with a look at one of vaudeville’s most beloved acts: Laurel & Hardy. Vaudeville comedy has had such a tremendous impact not just on comedy but the cinematic medium as a whole that it is quite possible to understate just how important this movement was for the art form. From Charlie Chaplin to the Three Stooges to Abbott & Costello, this field of pantomime performance set a bedrock for pretty much every comedic work that would follow. As such, creating a biopic in tribute to one of these acts requires not only a willingness to respect the greats but also an objective admission of why they are the greats to begin with. And in all of the important ways, this manages to do just that.