Poor Things (2023) 
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenwriter: Tony McNamara
Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jarrod Carmichael, Margaret Qualley, Kathryn Hunter, Suzy Bemba, Hanna Schygulla, Vicki Pepperdine

Poor Things, adapted from Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s award-winning 1992 novel, is probably Yorgos Lanthimos’ most enjoyable film to date. The maverick director of such distressing work as Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer might still be an acquired taste for many, and he has certainly lost none of his instinctive weirdness here, but this is definitely the most nakedly emotional and laugh-out-loud funny release of his two decade career. 

When brilliant but reclusive surgeon Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) “creates” the remarkable Bella (Emma Stone), a reanimated corpse with the mind of a child, his attempts to gradually teach her about the world in a controlled environment are stymied by the sudden arrival of caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Wedderburn elopes with Bella on a journey around the world where an influx of countless new sensations and experiences allows for the emancipation of her mind and body from the men who would control every aspect of her newfound life. 

The unique tone to be found in all Lanthimos films is something you have to get used to. From the unexplained sci-fi mechanisms of The Lobster to the intentional anachronisms of The Favourite, his worlds don’t quite operate by the same rules as our reality and the sooner you get comfortable with the absurdity of every situation and the darkly surreal turns most character interactions will inevitably take the better time you will have. If you don’t get on with the film’s monochrome first act, which is all queasy fish-eye lenses, gags involving the body and its myriad disgusting functions (including Dr Baxter’s biological need to burp expanding gastric bubbles), and creatures made up of two mismatched animals sewn together leisurely wandering from room to room in Godwin’s mansion, you probably won’t be brought on side by the bizarre sex montages, hallucinatory imagery and gallows humour that follows.

This is a heightened reality that incorporates formal social attitudes typical of the Victorian era the film is set in but also borrows much of its visual language from romantic painting and the carnivalesque films from the birth of cinema. Much like, of all things, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (coincidentally another film about liberation from expectations of your gender) this has a delightfully hand-crafted, sometimes deliberately unreal feel to it with tactile, eye-catching sets representing fantasy versions of different places and cultures with radiant projected backgrounds, like a Georges Méliès extravaganza made with a decent budget and sophisticated modern techniques.

Divided into distinct chapters that mark stages of Bella’s journey across Europe and beyond, each with a unique colour palette and subtly different style of cinematography from Ken Loach regular DOP Robbie Ryan, the film becomes a little more grounded, more magical-realist than surrealist as she gains some understanding about society and her place in it. As Bella’s sexuality is awakened, almost simultaneously her world is thrown wide open and new stimuli rapidly accelerates her from puberty into adulthood and independence.

It’s a nice inversion of the usual tropes established in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” to have the mad scientist be disfigured and his creation be perfect. As full of gravitas as Willem Dafoe is under impressive prosthetics and as entertainingly foul-mouthed as Mark Ruffalo can be with his slightly wobbly accent, this is Emma Stone’s world and everyone else just lives in it. She really is one of the most fearless and versatile actors of her generation, able to perfectly modulate the inherent uncanniness of her character while always remaining sympathetic, funny and heartbreaking. What is acceptable behaviour in the man’s world Bella Baxter is re-born into puts her at odds with how she expresses and enjoys herself. Fatherly authority Dr Baxter (or “God” as she refers to him), his protégé and Bella’s pushover fiancé Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), and the frankly grotesque Duncan Wedderburn all represent points on the scale of patriarchal abuse who all have their own agendas and all – maliciously or not – seek to exert their authority over Bella. 

One theme Lanthimos comes back to time and time again in his work, notably in Dogtooth and The Favourite, is control. Who has the power and the authority over another and when and how can that balance shift? For all that Duncan Wedderburn preaches the joy of dismissing the restrictions of “polite society”, as soon as Bella is embarrassing him in public by talking brazenly about his bedroom antics and refusing to submit to his every whim, he becomes just as much of an oppressor of her freedoms. He also begins to turn against her as her mental faculties catch up and eventually overtake his, threatening his dominance and his need to feel like he needs to protect her. 

From a decidedly unconventional breakfast table masturbation scene onwards, Bella becomes a joyfully sexual and uninhibited creature, always voicing her wants in the moment whether appropriate or not, gorging on the most delectable food and dancing with wild abandon. She is a big fan of “Furious jumping” as much as possible to the extent that on her arrival in Paris she sees the prospect of sex work to pay her way an opportunity rather than an indignity. Lanthimos is unabashed at portraying Bella’s sometimes elaborate sex scenes but they are usually joyous, sex-positive affairs that never feel exploitative. 

Poor Things is a gloriously against-the-grain comic fantasy that skewers 19th Century sexual politics and particularly the inequalities and prudish attitudes that persist to this day. We need a few more Bella Baxters in this world; curious, resilient and determined to break free from the limitations still imposed by our lingeringly patriarchal society. Yorgos Lanthimos and his creative collaborators have together crafted a strange and wonderful twisted fairy tale that makes us question our limitations, our hangups and our treatment of others.

Score: 23/24

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriter: Terence Winter
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Jean Dujardin, Joanna Lumley, Cristin Milioti

What is there to say about Martin Scorsese’s three-hour, instant classic The Wolf of Wall Street that hasn’t been said before? If you were young in 2013, you would understand this film as culture itself. From putting Margot Robbie on the map to introducing the song “Jordan Belfort” to every high school basement party in America, Wolf of Wall Street defined a generation of simultaneously wealth-obsessed and wealth-repulsed youth.  

Scorsese succeeds at a have your cake and eat it too approach to satire. His sprawling biopic of financial criminal and multimillionaire stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is both braggadocious and reflective. On the heels of the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, the film examines America’s obsession with wealth – the good, the bad, and the drug-fueled. Belfort’s lifestyle enthrals us – the mega yachts, three-day parties, even the crime. The film approaches everything with a larger-than-life approach. The score is boisterous, we hear a foul-mouthed Belfort narrating his trials and tribulations with the feds, and everything is dialed up to the nines. 

We do see the eventual fall of Belfort, but it’s as stylized as ever. In perhaps one of the most iconic scenes in modern film history, Belfort is confronted with the gravity of his financial crimes and the eventual ruin of his criminal empire. Just as this realization kicks in, so do the quaaludes that Belfort popped 90-minutes ago. Earlier in the film, Belfort brags about the many benefits of the retro drug but now he has entered a new phase of intoxication: the “cerebral palsy phase.” Belfort drags himself like an infant toward his white Ferrari. We see him crumble to the ground; gone is the the fast lifestyle of a degenerate and in his place lays a helpless man at the mercy of his own hubris. 

The scene is both funny and ironically sobering. We finally watch Belfort answer for his crimes in the most physical sense. Scorsese plays perfectly with tension and humor. We hold our breathe, wondering if Belfort will make it to his Ferrari or drive off into the sunset. We don’t root for him, but we have no choice but to be at the mercy of his storytelling. 

The script functions as a mere skeleton for this ambitious film, making it an absolute treat for any viewer. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers one of his career-best performances. He skilfully adlibs his way through Belfort’s life, adding many a “fuck” or New York slang to make the character feel that much more real. On his first day at a brokerage firm on Wall Street, Belfort goes to lunch with his magnanimous boss, Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey). Like everything they do, the scene is filled with popping pills and downing champagne in the middle of the day. At one point, the two even break into full song in the middle of the restaurant. The best part of the scene? It’s almost all improvised. McConaughey and DiCaprio have an undeniable chemistry that makes the scene impossible to look away from. They play up on each other’s ludicrous energy and take turns trying to outdo the other’s performance, all for the benefit of the viewer. 

More than ten years after its release, The Wolf of Wall Street holds up as an incredibly fun watch and a decisive voice on class in the United States. It underscores how the people at the top will exploit the system until the bitter end and those at the bottom will be forced to pay the price. Scorsese is a master of humor and pacing, making the three-hour run feel like nothing. 

Score: 23/24

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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriters: Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, Janae Collins, Jillian Dion

Is there any greater betrayal than the betrayal of someone who loves you? This is the central question at the heart of Martin Scorsese’s newest epic, Killers of the Flower Moon. Starring the renowned director’s long-time and dearly loved collaborators Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, alongside Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon is an adaptation of David Grann’s explosive book of the same name. 

The book, published in 2017, investigates a series of gruesome murders in Osage County, Oklahoma, following the discovery of large oil deposits on Native American land, alongside the birth of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Although the book is credited as Scorsese’s source material, Killers of the Flower Moon reads more as a companion piece to Grann’s novel, with Scorsese finding a unique perspective from which to access this insidious tale. 

Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour-long true-crime epic finds its footing within the love story between Ernest and Mollie Burkhart. Ernest, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is a newcomer to the small but affluent Osage County. Upon arrival, and with much encouragement from his persistent uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), a man who insists that his friends and family call him King, Ernest meets Mollie (Lily Gladstone, Certain Women). Mollie, an Osage-born native, like several members of her tribe, is a multimillionaire, owing to the plentiful amounts of black gold found upon her family’s land. In antithesis to the barren western town upon which our stage is set, First Nation people ride around in chauffeur-driven cars and wear expensive furs. They appear as the image of wealth and prosperity, although access to their money must be first justified and requested through their white trustees. 

Ernest, fresh from the war, is upfront about his desire for wealth: ‘I just love money’ he declares playfully throughout the film, slowly revealing himself as a man willing to scheme and bend the law to get the cash to flow in his direction. William Hale, a wealthy cattle farmer in his own right, is consumed by a desire for the oil deposit ‘headrights’ on Mollie’s land, the pursuit of which he considers fair game. The only thing standing in his way is Mollie and her family. Hale, well versed in the legal benefits of marriage, encourages his family to pursue the young and stupidly rich Osage women so they might reap the benefits of inheritance should any unfortunate event befall them. One by one, Mollie’s family starts to dwindle: unexplainable illness, murder, and unprecedented explosions begin to plague the family until all of the headrights conveniently rest with Mollie and her husband Ernest. 

Leonardo Dicaprio, who ran from the set of Titanic directly into Martin Scorsese’s arms, gives one of the best performances of his career as Ernest. The melancholy downward turn of his mouth and slow southern drawl indicate a simpleton, incapable of fully understanding the atrocity of William Hale’s plot against his wife and her family. DiCaprio presents us with the enigma of a man consumed with love for a woman he is actively trying to murder. Across from him is Lily Gladstone, who plays Mollie with a steadfast sensibility and awareness of the men around her. She has Earnest and his family pegged from day one, her wry smile and persistent calmness indicating that she is always one step ahead of any danger that might present itself. Yet love, which has the power to hoodwink even the sharpest of minds, gets in her way.

As the murders progress, so does Molly and Ernest’s relationship. In between harrowing scenes of grief and murder, we see them cling to each other desperately for comfort. He takes her into his arms while she struggles with the agony of her grief. He learns her language and traditions, and they parent three children, who they protect and adore fiercely. With each fresh death, Mollie’s circle grows smaller, and Ernest becomes the last man she can trust. How couldn’t she? We watch as he begs and pleads with her to take a life-saving new drug (insulin) that will regulate her diabetes, as if he isn’t the one also spiking the medication with a poison that will slowly kill her. ‘I love this woman’ he tells his uncle sincerely, as Hale explains the uncanny way Osage women never manage to live to a ripe old age.

As Hale, Robert De Niro circles like a vulture, conjuring the same chilling presence he portrayed as Max Cady in Scorsese’s remake of the revenge classic Cape Fear. The potency of his performance bleeds out of the screen, filling all empty space with a feeling of looming threat. Hale has seeded himself deeply into the Osage community as a friend and ally, offering up reward money to anyone who might have information about the suspicious deaths creeping up all around them. Like Jack Nicholson’s Costello in The Departed, Hale is above the law, and he’s become cocky and psychopathically devoid of loyalty and love.

Killers of the Flower Moon is nothing short of a masterpiece from our greatest living filmmaker. Although the film’s stealthy runtime might feel harsh on our bladders, the film is extremely well-placed; the story blooms organically and doesn’t waste a single second. Scorsese’s mastery of filmmaking is apparent in every single frame; he understands exactly where the camera needs to be, and it dances beautifully within the story, offering us an immensely satisfying masterclass in storytelling. This is the first time Scorsese’s two best boys have shared the screen in a Martin Scorsese picture, and the result is electric. The film feels like an extension of their friendship and shared legacy. There is a collective sense that the three men are comfortable enough with one another to experiment and take chances with our expectations. Gladstone, alongside an impossibly talented supporting cast, keep the boys on their toes, taking the iconic trio to unseen heights.

The film’s greatest strength is the unique vantage point from which it approaches the atrocities. Although the crimes depicted on screen happened many years ago, the treatment of the First Nation people throughout America’s vast history is still an open wound. Scorsese, like Grann, approaches his work with the utmost respect and care. To escape the connotations of Westerns and crime dramas, which typically circle the white-lead adventures of cowboys and lawmen, Scorsese dives right into the heart of the truth, presenting Killers of the Flower Moon as a love story. While the great filmmaker still utilises the atmospheric soul of the Wild West, by presenting a more human perspective, he cuts right to the centre of the raw open heart of a woman in love, and we feel the sting of betrayal tenfold. 

Score: 24/24

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The Age of Innocence (1993)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriters: Jay Cook, Martin Scorsese
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Winona Ryder

Martin Scorsese is a prolific filmmaker, known for making movies infused with violence and passion, filled with characters who live outside of the law and the rules of society. From classic gangster pictures like Goodfellas to movies about corruption like The Departed, to the violence of Taxi Driver and the unrestrained wealth, privilege and power in The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese has made a career out of exploring the extremes of human nature, the catharsis of explosion. In a lot of ways, The Age of Innocence, released in 1993, is an outlier in Scorsese’s filmography. It is not about acting with abandon, but about restraint, discretion and control. It is not about the mean, dirty streets of New York and the bowels of society, but instead about high society, about people trapped in very beautiful, gilded cages, desperate to scream, yet unable to. In other ways, The Age of Innocence is, in Scorsese’s own words, the most violent movie he has ever made.

Adapted from Edith Wharton’s classic novel of the same name, The Age of Innocence stars Daniel Day Lewis as Newland Archer, an affluent lawyer caught between his impending marriage to the respectable, mild-mannered May Welland (Winona Ryder) and his desire for her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer). Set in the 1870s, during a time in the United States of great economic growth, industrialization, and a growing divide between the new world and the old often referred to as the Gilded Age, The Age of Innocence explores a world of rituals and class. The film was a great success for Scorsese, proof of his emotional intelligence and range as a filmmaker. It received numerous accolades, including the Oscar for Best Costume Design and the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Miriam Margolyes. In Scorsese’s hands, The Age of Innocence is a masterclass in visual cinema, more than your typical costume drama, one of the best page-to-screen adaptations of all time.

Like the rose that blooms in the center of the screen in the beginning of the film, The Age of Innocence is beautiful – until it draws blood. Scorsese uses the color red throughout the movie as a kind of shorthand for romance, desire, and destruction. It’s bold and searing, much like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948). Red velvet drapes hang from the walls, signifying that a dinner party and a blood bath are essentially the same thing to these wealthy society folk. The color also plays a substantial role in the costuming as well. When Ellen makes her social comeback at a party hosted by the extremely wealthy Van der Luydens (Alexis Smith and Michael Gough), she does so in a form fitting red silk dress. Ellen is the embodiment of the desires Newland tries to ignore. She is unconventional, trying desperately to rebel against a rigid, unforgiving society. In contrast, May is typically dressed in white, highlighting her innocence and her unblemished reputation.

But there is something sinister lurking beneath May’s naïve, soft-spoken exterior. Winona Ryder’s performance is deeply layered and probably one of the most complex in the film, which no doubt contributed to her earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. There is something hidden behind May’s wide-eyed, girlish face, something knowing and intuitive. While Newland continuously describes May as being young and impressionable, Ryder is subtly steering us in a different direction. What she says is not what she means, and Ryder is able to capture that dissonance effortlessly – where her character ends up in the end is the most satisfying bate and switch. Day-Lewis and Pfeiffer are deliciously tragic in their mutual pining for one another. Their obvious romance, their painful longing, puts every modern onscreen pairing to shame. It would be easy to see May and Ellen as mere archetypes rather than real people, and they are to a certain extent, but Ryder and Pfeiffer imbue them with vibrant inner lives.

Though this love triangle is at the center of the drama of The Age of Innocence, Martin Scorsese often moves his camera away from them in favor of the things that surround them. Particular attention is paid to the food, the silverware, the artwork, the furniture – the utter wealth and decadence. Appearances are everything. Things are more important than people. It’s a striking contrast to the laidback, sneakers and hoodies depiction of the uber rich of today. A certain level of spectacle is to be expected in period dramas, but Scorsese uses this spectacle to say something, and that subtext is everything.

Gilded Age New York is a character in the film, and the way Scorsese makes it come alive speaks to his understanding of the novel. The Age of Innocence is an internal story, it is told through stolen glances and near touches and almost kisses. The voice of the narrator is important, and Scorsese opts to keep that narration, beautifully delivered by silver screen star Joanne Woodward. Whole chunks of text are taken right from the novel, and it is delightful because Edith Wharton’s writing is spectacular. It would be a crime to do away with the original text or change it in any substantial way, and Scorsese knows this; The Age of Innocence is quite literally the novel come to life.

Adaptations are tricky and it isn’t easy to figure out how to translate something to screen. Do you keep the story exactly as it is? Is there any fun in that? Or do you move the pieces around so much that you make something completely different and new? There doesn’t seem to be one correct answer, but in this instance, Scorsese and writer Jay Cocks opted to change virtually nothing and it works.

In a 1993 interview with Charlie Rose, director Scorsese described the violence of The Age of Innocence as refined emotional and psychological violence. It is just as powerful and deadly as a bullet from a gun, and because Scorsese understands that, the film is incredibly affecting and devastating. It is a romantic tragedy brought to life by one of the best filmmakers of all time and, thirty years after its initial release, deserves a spot among his most accomplished works.

Score: 24/24

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Past Lives (2023)
Director: Celine Song
Screenwriter: Celine Song
Starring: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro

Two near-identical frames. One of a woman on the edge of the right hand side, sitting at a desk looking down into the lens of her laptop webcam. Another of a man on the edge of the left hand side, sitting at a desk looking down into the lens of his laptop webcam. The film intercuts between them. The framing and the edit creates a closeness between the two subjects, indicating a deep intimacy, while the laptops at the edges of each frame capture love and relationships in the 21st century. Technological devices may connect us all, yet we remain separated by time and space. This scene, with these two intricately designed frames, encapsulate what Past Lives is all about: there is a powerful bond between these two people yet there is always something between them. Will they be able to overcome this obstacle or are they forever destined to be separate?

Past Lives is spread across three decades, and presents the ways in which Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Nora (Greta Lee) have come and gone from one another’s lives (almost like Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy condensed into one movie). Nora tells her partner, and consequently each of us, of the Korean word “in-yeon“, meaning “providence” or “fate”, the idea that if two strangers walk by each other in the street and their clothes accidentally brush, there have been eight-thousand layers of in-yeon between them. A strong connection clearly exists between Hae Sung and Nora, one that could only be described as in-yeon.

Celine Song captures not only the connections of the twenty-first century but also the profound love between any two people. Most of this is done through the gorgeous cinematography of Shabier Kirchner as well as the blocking of actors within scenes, while the location choices and set design are also noteworthy in this regard. There are numerous moments throughout the film – such as the aforementioned facetime scene – in which Song reminds us of the barriers between the two leads as well as the love that damn near transcends it; the two find themselves holding onto a pole on a train, their hands are mere centimetres away from one another yet the pole stands between them. When we see Hae Sung visiting Nora and her current partner Arthur (John Magaro), Song further uses her blocking of the characters to control the dynamic of the three in such a way that it leaves it up to our own perspectives to decide the dynamic we see from frame to frame. For example, the film opens with a shot of the three of them at a bar, a lone lantern sitting between each character, leaving us to question whether the distance between Nora and Arthur is greater than the distance between Nora and Hae Sung or whether the lantern between Nora and Arthur burns brighter than the one between Nora and Hae Sung.

This dynamic is made even more powerful by all three performers, though it is the performance of Grace Lee that the film hinges upon. Where it is always clear that Hae Sung wants to be with Nora and Arthur fears that she may leave him for the other man, it is in Nora’s conflicted feelings that the drama of the film truly shines. The way she looks at either man with longing or with uncertainty, through her eyes or a smile, forces us to question more than what is said, to read more into the story than is present in its straightforward dialogue.

With this in mind, the beauty of Celine Song’s screenplay cannot be overlooked. Song has penned a love story for the ages that could only be rivalled in its sophistication and grace by the works of Shakespeare, Austen or Brontë. By structuring the work in three parts, three separate decades, Song cements the idea of in-yeon into our minds. Not only is it the only explanation for the connection between Nora and Hae Sung, but in seeing these individual decades we are (in a way) seeing their “past lives” together. In doing so, one can’t help but to feel that the two are destined to be together, leaving us to spend the next hour and forty-five minutes begging for it to happen, emotionally swelling up as the film goes on, waiting for a release that may never come.

Ultimately, Past Lives is a beautiful film that is worthy of great renown. Celine Song offers one of the greatest debut features of all time. In crafting Past Lives, Song has constructed an achingly beautiful film that is certain to strike a chord with many, leaving memories and feelings in each of us for what is sure to be a very long time.

Score: 24/24

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The Piano (1993)
Director: Jane Campion
Screenwriter: Jane Campion
Starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Sam Neill, Anna Paquin

Jane Campion’s The Piano begins with a monologue from Ada McGrath, a young Scottish woman who, for reasons that are never fully explained, stops speaking at the age of 6. She cautions us that the voice we hear, the high pitched, lyrical voice of Holly Hunter doing an impeccable Scottish accent, is not her speaking voice, but her mind’s voice. Ada’s father recently married her off to a man she does not know, and she and her young daughter, Flora (Anna Paquin), are being shipped off to live with him on the coast of colonial New Zealand. Her new husband, Alistair Stewart (Sam Neill) says he does not mind her muteness, which Ada says is a good thing. “Silence affects us all in the end,” she cautions.

The Piano, released in the summer of 1993, earned writer and director Jane Campion the prestigious honor being the first female director to win the Palme d’Ore at the Cannes Film festival. 30 years later, The Piano remains one of Campion’s most recognizable and beloved films, revered for its performances – Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin both received Academy Awards for their work – score, and haunting cinematography. It’s a gothic tale of love and lust and the violent ways men seek to control not just women, but the world.

Ada may not physically use her voice to speak, but she is not silent. She communicates in many ways throughout the film using sign language, pen and paper, her piano. For Campion, the piano symbolizes Ada’s voice, and the way the men in the film treat her piano speaks volumes about who they are. Stewart is clearly ignorant and unwilling to truly listen to Ada, to learn to communicate in her way. He disregards her piano, leaving it on the beach, selling it off, and eventually taking an axe to it. In contrast, George Baines (Harvey Keitel), rescues her piano – he gets it tuned for her. He sits next to her as she plays. He learns her language.

The Piano features stellar performances across the board, but Holly Hunter is a particular knock out. She’s practically unrecognizable as Ada, truly embodying this maddening, strong-willed, opinionated woman, changing the cadence of her voice, her face pale and eyes dark. Hunter proves what audiences have known since the silent era – acting is more than just talking, more than just words. You have to put your entire body into it. Hunter’s physicality is loud and demanding – she breaks glasses, she twists her face in anger and disapproval, she signs with passion. The fact that Hunter does all of the piano playing in the movie by herself only adds to how authentic her portrayal feels.

Sam Neill and Harvey Keitel are equally as good as Ada’s possessive husband and her eventual lover, respectively. Neill gives a particularly nuanced performance as a man who takes out is own inadequacy on everyone around him. It is a quiet, burning performance that builds to a fantastic, terrifying explosion of repressed anger and jealousy.

The Piano is fashioned after the classic gothic romance that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, clearly inspired by many of the female voices that dominated the genre. Campion’s films in general borrow heavily from gothic horror and romance. Her films are often beautiful and horrifying at the same time, sex and violence and mystery all tangled up together. As has been pointed out by numerous critics in the past, the film feels deeply literary, an adaptation of a much older tale. In particular, Campion said that Wuthering Heights was one of the sources she drew upon for inspiration. It’s also worth noting that the play the children perform in the movie is “Blue Beard“, the French folktale in which a man murders his wives and hides their bodies away in a secret room in his manor.

While the film isn’t quite that bloody, it is violent and cruel. Stewart is uninterested in nurturing who Ada is. He doesn’t understand her, so he has to break her, to make her submit. Ada may not speak in words, but she is still the kind of woman who must be reigned in and caged. After a particular act of gruesome violence towards the end of the movie leaves Ada bleeding and covered in mud, Stewart says simply, “I only clipped your wing.” Vitally, Campion contrasts this brutality with scenes of gentle intimacy. Touch is a huge part of The Piano, and Campion highlights how in Victorian society merely touching someone through a small hole in their stocking is infinitely erotic. Campion uses the nakedness of her characters to show how vulnerable it feels to show someone that part of yourself. While the nudity in The Piano is by no means excessive, it does remind us of something we’ve lost in modern cinema: the ability to portray genuine intimacy and eroticism. The ability to feel.

While The Piano focuses mainly on Ada and her journey, the film also explores the detrimental effects of colonialism on the environment and its indigenous people, although Campion’s depiction of the Maori has been criticized for playing into racist stereotypes. And it’s true that Campion does not spend much time developing these characters. They are portrayed as simple-minded, sexually suggestive, and unrefined. Reshela DuPuis delves this and more in her essay, “Romanticizing Colonialism: Power and Pleasure in Jane Campion’s The Piano.“

Still, it’s worth noting that Stewart’s treatment of the Maori people is clearly wrong. He tries to take their land, bribing them with everything from guns to buttons. He can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to give up their sacred burial grounds. Just as with his treatment of Ada, Stewart is uninterested in understanding anyone who doesn’t speak his own language, believing them to be unintelligent and inhuman.

In 2013, Campion said that she originally intended for The Piano to have a much bleaker ending. “It would be more real, wouldn’t it?” Campion said during an interview with The Guardian. Perhaps it would be more real. As it stands, the ending is one of the most iconic sequences of the film.

The ending, like the rest of the film, sticks with you. It gets under your skin and crawls around. With The Piano, Jane Campion gives us one of the strongest female characters of the late 20th century, entangled in a story that is as vast, as dark and as deep as the ocean itself.

Score: 23/24

Recommended for you: Jane Campion Films Ranked

WALL-E (2008)
Director: Andrew Stanton
Screenwriters: Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon
Starring: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver, Fred Willard

WALL-E was Pixar Animation Studios’ ninth feature-length movie and 2008’s ninth highest-grossing film. But with worldwide takings ‘only’ a little over $521million, it doesn’t even come close to Pixar’s top-grossing movies – Incredibles 2, Toy Story 3 & 4, and Finding Dory have all raked in over $1billion. While it didn’t hit the top spot in terms of overall gross, WALL-E was the most expensive animated film to be produced at that time. Regardless of cost or earnings, what WALL-E achieved in storytelling makes it an outright classic. Disney, Pixar, or otherwise.

In a not-too-distant future, Earth has been left in an uninhabitable state by humans, so they flee to space while waste allocation robots clear up their mess. WALL-E (Ben Burtt) is one such robot. After countless years of solitude, WALL-E has developed a personality. He is sentimental, cheeky, curious, but most pertinently, he’s lonely. He is programmed to conduct his duty, but he cannot help but observe and collect things – intrigued by the human lives that once ran rampant on the planet he now calls home. He loves musicals and sees beauty in even the inanest of objects. One day, EVE (Elissa Knight) arrives with the simple directive of finding vegetation, thus proving that Earth is habitable again. The robots bond. WALL-E is obviously smitten.

The first half of WALL-E is essentially a silent movie, brimming with slapstick humour, olde time musical numbers and a loveable klutz in the spotlight. WALL-E’s screen presence is as powerful as any Hollywood A-lister. It is incredible how expressive the animators made WALL-E without dialogue, all the depth of emotion emanating from those adjustable eyes and saggy tracks. What they achieved with EVE is bordering on unbelievable. EVE is a sleek white robot with nothing more than arms, a gun, blue LEDs for eyes, and a green blinking light in the shape of a plant. And yet, we are left in no doubt when these two machines are happy, sad, furious, or falling in love. The montage of WALL-E caring for EVE after a brief shut down rivals any chivalrous Jane Austen hero.

How much we eventually become invested in this pair without conversation between them, without much action, is true testament to the skill of the team behind the movie. The small speaking cast of ten (and that includes MacInTalk, a text-to-speech computer programme, and the snippets of Michael Crawford and Marianne McAndrew who appear in the clips of 1960s musical Hello, Dolly! that WALL-E loves so much) allows for breathing space. It allows moments to linger and details to be sewn into the intricate setting.

The second half of the film sees EVE and WALL-E join the humans up in space on a giant ship called the Axiom. Their dalliance amongst the stars is beautiful, using techniques honed in the weightless underwater scenes of Finding Nemo (2003) – also directed by Andrew Stanton. Once aboard the Axiom, action kicks up a gear and it becomes a more typical children’s film. The two robots gather a motley crew of fellow service machines to deliver EVE’s directive and potentially start a revolution.

While centuries living alone made WALL-E self-sufficient and loveable, living in space has made humans lazy and dependant. The backdrop of these useless crowds bobbing along on their chairs amplifies the importance of WALL-E and EVE. The ship’s sort of ambitious captain (Jeff Garlin) realises how important these machines are and becomes the mouthpiece for all the words EVE and WALL-E are incapable of saying.

The film’s themes are broad and adult in nature – consumerism, environmental issues, corporate greed – but they are balanced beautifully with more typical features of a children’s film. Humour, music, a protagonist that isn’t an adult, and of course an animal sidekick. When tackling themes of this nature it is possible to appear didactic or alternatively, lacking in integrity. However, the strength of the storytelling supersedes any of those concerns, and the comparative lack of merchandise, spin offs or sequels linked to WALL-E make the fact that one of the planet’s biggest corporations is telling us about corporate greed just that bit more palatable.

WALL-E is beautifully animated, breathtakingly detailed, and includes all the humour and action we have come to expect from a Pixar feature. It has a moral tale in the forefront but isn’t saccharine or preachy and the message has sadly not become any less relevant in the fifteen years since it was released. But even with the heavy subject matter it is ultimately a film about hope. Hope and robots.

Score: 22/24

Asteroid City (2023)
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriter: Wes Anderson
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawk, Jake Ryan, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park

Wes Anderson has one of the most recognizable styles of any filmmaker working today. Many hallmarks of his work, such as symmetrical composition, the use of pop music from the 1960s and 70s, and quirky characters, are all easily identifiable, leading to countless parodies and homages. Most recently, creators on TikTok have taken to shooting and editing videos in such a way as to imitate his style, with one user going so far as to say that it was easy to do because, “Turns out, it just wasn’t that hard,” implying that Wes Anderson is not that special, actually.

Setting aside the obvious, which is that 2 minute TikToks are not, in fact, movies, this observation, coupled with the decidedly more horrifying Twitter trend of using AI technology to create soulless and uncanny still photos in order to answer questions no one asked, like “what if Wes Anderson made a Star Wars movie”, misses the point. It’s not just what his films look like that makes him such a singular creative voice, it’s how those films make us feel.

If there was any defense for Anderson’s work, it is certainly his latest effort, Asteroid City, which may be his most poignant movie to date. “Asteroid City” is a play written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), and the movie goes back and forth between relaying the technicolor events of the play and showing the black-and-white television production of it, as well as several dramatic re-enactments of the play’s creation.

“Asteroid City” takes place in the fictional desert town of the same name, whose only claim to fame is being the site of a meteoroid crash. Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) arrives in town with his teenage son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), and his three young daughters, along with several others, for the Junior Stargazers convention. But, when Augie’s car breaks down and a UFO sighting causes the entire town to go into quarantine, he is forced to face some difficult truths about life after losing his wife to a long illness.

Anderson continues to do what he does best, rarely straying from his usual path. In that way, Asteroid City is perhaps exactly what you’d expect from him, without much room for surprise or experimentation. Anderson’s usual quirks are all present and, if you are a fan of his work, Asteroid City will be a feast for your eyeballs. His incredible use of color alone is like a shot of dopamine. There is something so pleasing about how meticulous and symmetrical his framing is. Anderson’s visual style speaks to that primal part of human nature that desperately craves order among chaos. However, if his films haven’t been your cup of tea in the past, this one will probably not make you a convert.

The large ensemble cast is pitch-perfect. Everyone is memorable and makes an impression, especially Adrien Brody and Steve Carell, who make the most of their limited screen time. Jason Schwartzman gives a career-best performance. His subtlety and expert control over his physicality, not to mention the depth of feeling hiding behind his eyes, make it seem like he isn’t doing much at first until he suddenly turns you into a sobbing mess towards the end of the film. Scarlett Johansson is also a standout, commanding the screen in a way few contemporary actors can manage. It makes you sigh with relief that her Marvel days are behind her.

Asteroid City is also hilarious and it makes its moments of emotional levity hit that much harder. Underneath all of that style and organization is a deep sense of melancholy, the realization that life is random and impossible to control. The movie is a fascinating post-pandemic movie, as it deals with the feelings of isolation and reflection that have become all too common over the last couple of years.

Though Anderson has used framing devices many times in the past as a sort of meta-commentary on the very nature of storytelling, it’s probably the most effective it has ever been in Asteroid City. There is a moment when the actor playing Augie steps out of the play and runs backstage to find the director because he still doesn’t understand the point of the play. It’s like a dam bursts and all of Augie’s pent-up grief comes rushing out. There are so many questions, not just about the story being told, but about life in general. What’s the point of grief? What’s the point of stories? What’s the point of anything?

“It doesn’t matter,” Green tells him. “Just keep telling the story.”

In a world recently ravaged by a deadly pandemic that upended so many lives, it’s almost a comfort to be told that life rarely makes any kind of sense. Grief is not something that can be solved. It must be lived and felt, day by day, until finally it doesn’t hurt as much anymore.

Score: 23/24

Recommended for you: Wes Anderson Films Ranked

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Director: Nora Ephron
Screenwriters: Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, Jeff Arch
Starring: Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, Rosie O’Donnell, Rob Reiner, Victor Garber, Rita Wilson

One of the most tried and true tropes of the romantic comedy is the meet cute. It’s that pivotal moment when the two leads meet for the first time, usually under humorous or unconventional circumstances, sparking the development of their romantic relationship. Maybe they fall instantly, maybe their love needs time to grow, but one thing is always true: this encounter is the beginning of everything.

But what if this beginning happened at the end? Say, five minutes before the credits roll?

Sleepless in Seattle, directed by Norah Ephron and co-written by Ephron, David S. Ward and Jeff Arch, works not in spite of being a rom-com, but because of it. Upon its initial release, it was revered as an instant classic. In the decades since, it has remained beloved by audiences and critics. The film spawned countless spoofs and homages, and its final scene atop the Empire State Building is one of the most iconic and recognizable images in pop culture. It’s the film that cemented Meg Ryan’s status as ‘America’s sweetheart,’ with several critics quick to crown Ryan and co-star Tom Hanks as the new king and queen of the rom-com. Nora Ephron earned her third Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay following Silkwood (1983) and When Harry Met Sally… (1989). Released 30 years ago, Sleepless in Seattle has endured as a top tier romantic comedy that could turn even the most steadfast cynic into a believer in love, fate, and the magic of the movies.

When architect Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) loses his wife Maggie (Carey Lowell) to cancer, he and his young son Jonah (Ross Malinger) relocate to Seattle for a fresh start. While Sam continues to mourn the loss of his wife, Johan calls into a radio station one night, convinced his dad needs help finding a new wife. While Sam is hesitant as first, he eventually opens up about Maggie live on-air, and thousands of women across the country listen in, including Baltimore journalist Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), who is engaged to Walter (Bill Pullman) and firmly believes that there’s no such thing as fate. But, when Annie hears Sam’s voice that night on the radio, something changes inside of her, leading her to wonder if there is such a thing as destiny.

Though the script was rewritten countless times before Nora Ephron turned in her final draft, three writers are credited with the final product, each contributing an essential piece to the story. Jeff Arch’s sentimentality is utilized best when exploring the melancholy of grief, like in the scene when Sam imagines speaking to his late wife in the living room one night. This occasional heaviness is balanced with Ephron’s trademark wit and humor, and David S. Ward credits Ephron with contributing much of the film’s dialog. Like with When Harry Met Sally…, Ephron uses Sleepless in Seattle to explore the strange world of dating, with all its rules and contradictions, this time through Sam, who is terrified to date again after being married for so long. Rob Reiner’s character’s grim assessment of the dating landscape in the 90s might come across as sexist and outdated to some modern audiences, and it is, but it’s still a fascinating look at the state of relationships between men and women during a time when feminism was facing a severe cultural backlash. It’s especially interesting when Sam tells Jonah how the erotic thriller, Fatal Attraction, “Scared the hell out of every man in America,” showcasing just how much of a cultural juggernaut the film was at the time while exposing men’s obvious anxiety over women’s supposed empowerment.

Throughout Sleepless in Seattle, there is a running commentary on how movies affect our perception of romantic love. Seeing how distraught Annie is about the possibility of never getting to meet Sam, her best friend Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) pointedly tells her, “You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.” An Affair to Remember, the 1957 classic starring Carey Grant and Deborah Kerr that served as the inspiration for Sleepless in Seattle, is referenced several times in the film, bringing more than one female character to tears. What’s the point of movies like that anyway, Ephron seems to ask. That kind of love – the written in the stars, can’t possibly be a coincidence kind of love – isn’t real. But if that’s the question, Sleepless in Seattle itself is the answer. It’s a film that explores the affects that cinema has on our fantasies of love without ever denying its ultimate power.

There is a coziness to Sleepless in Seattle, a quiet contemplativeness, accompanied by a soundtrack packed with Jazz hits from artists like Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket on a cold night, drinking hot cocoa and gazing up at the stars. It feels intimate and grand at the same time. Sleepless in Seattle has long been described as the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, but it also works as a Christmas movie as well. Because the majority of the film takes place in between those two holidays, there’s a magical quality to it that makes it feel warm and inviting.

Watching it now, Sleepless in Seattle feels nostalgic in a way that it probably didn’t when it was first released. It’s the kind of film that couldn’t be made now, considering how far technology has come in the last three decades. 1993 feels like such an alien world, a time before smartphones and Facebook, when someone’s very existence could still be shrouded in mystery – when you had to pay for long-distance calling, when there wasn’t instant messaging, when you couldn’t google someone’s name and 100 search results come up – although Annie’s investigation of Sam does seem an awful lot like a primitive version of looking someone up on Facebook or Google. Sleepless in Seattle transports us back to when we could feel the miles between us, when there was a very real possibility that Sam and Annie would never meet. Because of this, the stakes feel higher and the idea of them actually getting together against all odds does feel a little like fate.

Sleepless in Seattle would not be half as charming and funny if it wasn’t for its strong supporting cast. Watching the movie now is like getting a crash course in who’s who in the 1990s. There’s Rob Reiner, who appears briefly as Sam’s friend Jay, who directed When Harry Met Sally…, The Princess Bride, and the classic 80s coming of age film Stand by Me, all within a few years of each other. Contemporary viewers are sure to recognize him as Jess’s dad from ‘New Girl’. There’s Victor Garber (a few years out from his performance in Titanic) and Rita Wilson, who delivers a monologue about An Affair to Remember that deserved an Oscar nomination on its own. There are also blink and you’ll miss them cameos from Frances Conroy (‘American Horror Story’) and Gaby Hoffman, the latter of whom appears as the younger version of Demi Moore in Now and Then and more recently played Adam’s (Adam Driver) sister on the HBO show ‘GIRLS’.

But really, none of this – the supporting cast, the writing, the direction – would mean a single thing if it wasn’t for Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. They’re endlessly likable, and their chemistry is somehow apparent even though they spend the majority of the film thousands of miles away from one another. Sleepless in Seattle hinges on their relationship. We need to believe that they’re meant to be and, although they have less than 10 minutes to convince us of that, they manage it flawlessly. It’s true that Sam and Annie don’t officially meet until the end of the film, but there is a moment towards the end, when Annie travels to Seattle in search of Sam, when they briefly come face to face with one another. Love at first sight is a tricky thing to accomplish. It relies almost entirely on the actor’s ability to just look at each other, to express a depth of emotion without saying anything at all. Afterward, Sam tells his friends that, “It was like I knew her or something.”

Sleepless in Seattle dares us to believe in the magic and power of the movies, to live for just a moment in a world where everything works out. Where the stars align and fate intervenes, and the person you’ve been looking for has been looking for you too. But the movie continues to endure because of one simple, universal truth: when it comes to love, sometimes you just know. And, if you’re really lucky, a trip to the top of the Empire State Building feels a lot like coming home.

Score: 24/24

Jurassic Park (1993)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters: Michael Crichton, David Koepp
Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello, Wayne Knight, Samuel L. Jackson

Jurassic Park stomped onto the big screen thirty years ago and became an instant classic, loved by adults and children alike. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Titanic cruised into the top spot four years later. Jurassic Park’s setting, humour, John Williams score, all-star cast, and larger-than-life characters made it an unforgettable story. One that boasts the rare accolade of being better than the book it’s based on.

John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has built a wildlife park with a difference. Its inhabitants are bona fide dinosaurs. After an incident with a park ‘attraction’, Hammond needs the safety of the park verified. So, before its grand public opening, he invites respected experts in the field, Dr Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to have a look around. Oh, and his grandchildren naturally. Immediately, things go wrong. It turns out you can control a T-rex about as well as you can a hurricane.

Casting the much-beloved Richard Attenborough as John Hammond was an inspired choice. Hammond is a man seemingly passionate about furthering science and it’s easy to believe that this is his only goal when you look into the kind, open face of the iconic actor. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Hammond is obsessed rather than passionate, to the degree that he would risk his own grandchildren’s lives. He is a man so full of ego and the idea of his own legacy that he is blind to his failings.

The three experts, Drs Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm, are the driving force of the plot. Their childlike wonder reflecting our same reactions. Grant’s interactions with the children (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello) is where a lot of the humour comes from, and Malcolm’s complete incredulity at what is happening is the injection of scepticism that pushes Hammond and the scientists into making more ridiculous decisions. Ellie Sattler is an icon. Whip smart, defending feminism, rocking sensible hiking boots, and willing to go elbow deep in triceratops turd in the pursuit of answers. An icon.

Jurassic Park is not a film about dinosaurs, it’s about these characters and what they come to represent thematically. It is a film about human hubris, about our species’ need to conquer and control. Then it is a film about resolve and humility in the face of mistake and human error. It is a film where nature’s awesome power wins as all the humans can do is retreat hastily into the sunset.

While the T-rex is a formidable foe, and the iconic logo of the franchise, the velociraptors are also worthy adversaries for this ensemble of plucky human characters. A herd of clever girls, if you will. The intrigue lay so heavily with these animals that it is the raptors who play major parts in four of the five subsequent films. Director Steven Spielberg and author Michael Crichton weren’t so interested in an accurate depiction of a velociraptor – Jurassic Park’s popularity means that the cultural version of them seems so much more likely than the feathery death turkeys they most probably were.

Given how iconic such creatures remain after three decades, it remains noteworthy to acknowledge how dinosaurs are only seen on screen for fourteen minutes of Jurassic Park’s runtime. This is a suspense-building technique that director Steven Spielberg perfected in Jaws. The dinos are always waiting just off screen, which adds a delicious level of anticipation and one hell of a punch when they do take centre stage. Furthering this impact is how the animatronics and CGI have aged just as well as the core message. Those one-hundred and thirteen dinosaur-free minutes also help the film adhere to the PG rating that allowed it to become a family favourite.

While Jurassic Park birthed some pretty terrible films, the original remains a must-see. It left a generation of viewers certain that they could explain chaos theory with a drip of water and confident that if they stood perfectly still, they would never be eaten by a T-rex*. In today’s climate when human action is causing catastrophic ripples through the natural world, and billionaires play fast and loose with the planet’s resources, there are many themes in Jurassic Park that continue to resonate as clearly as a metal ladle clanging on the tiled floor of a velociraptor-strewn kitchen.

Jurassic Park’s descendants lack the magic of the original, which is a cliché-avoiding, character-driven, genre-defining rampage. It is iconic moment after iconic moment.

Score: 24/24

*Tyrannosaurs actually had impeccable eyesight so official advice for bumping into a T-rex is to run. Fast.