May December (2023)
Director: Todd Haynes
Screenwriters: Samy Burch, Alex Mechanik
Starring: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton, Gabriel Chung, Elizabeth Yu

Todd Haynes’ films are hard to pin down. Ever the subversive, the renegade of the new queer cinema movement has a proven track record of destabilizing conventional wisdoms surrounding everything from sex to gender to celebrity to domesticity and the American nuclear family. Unafraid to wear his influences on his sleeve, and to subject them to satire and scrutiny, Haynes wields homage, melodrama, and allegory in his deconstruction of the social, political, and aesthetic contexts in which his characters dwell. His is a cinema of transgression that gets its teeth from a sort of reflexive formalism, for his films frequently call attention to their own artifice. 

Take 2002’s Far From Heaven, for example. In many ways, the film, which centers on a 1950s suburban housewife whose secret affair threatens the sanguine domestic lifestyle she is expected to uphold, is a straight-up remake of Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows, complete with all the soap and glitziness that defined Hays Code-era Hollywood. The catch is that Haynes’ film is, nonetheless, thoroughly modern in its details—by peppering in subject matter that would have been considered too taboo back in the 50s (even for Sirk, who was considered a rebel in his time), namely interracial and homosexual relationships, Haynes turns the entire genre on its head. Films such as Far From Heaven demonstrate Haynes’ unique ability to firmly situate his work relative to established cinematic traditions—and to then boldly defy them. In this way, Todd Haynes is a filmmaker who always seems to have his finger on the pulse, his films conversing with the past to illuminate the present. 

The present unto which May December, Haynes’ latest, arrives feels particularly elusive—and, fittingly, so does the film. Written by Samy Burch and loosely inspired by the public scandal surrounding Mary Kay Letourneau, the screenplay orbits three central characters: Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), a suburban pariah who was once the subject of a tabloid frenzy surrounding her predatory sexual involvement with a 13-year-old boy; Joe Atherton-Yoo (Charles Melton), the boy, now in his 30s and married with children to Gracie; and Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), a B-list actress who comes to study Gracie and her family in preparation to play her in a movie about the scandal. 

On first glance, such a premise seems tailor-made for the Netflix-patented true-crime-content-machine; and yet May December cleverly co-opts these vapid true-crime precepts, and our twisted attendance to them. Where Far From Heaven leverages melodrama to challenge the genre’s largely sanitized depiction of domestic life in the 1950s, May December weaponizes viewers’ learned appetite for sensationalism to unravel the tabloid mythologies that form around deviant crimes and their perpetrators—and which often exploit the victims. 

Portman’s Elizabeth is the doorway through which Haynes instantly implicates the viewer. Her morbid curiosity to get to the bottom of Gracie and Joe’s strange dynamic largely matches our own. However, as she ingratiates herself among the family, it quickly becomes clear that Elizabeth’s intentions are far more perverse. As Gracie’s mask begins to slip, so too does Elizabeth’s, revealing her obsessive, megalomaniacal fantasy of coveting, or perhaps recreating, Gracie’s and Joe’s lived experience. The ensuing dissonance, heightened by the melodramatic register in which the film operates, not only makes for an unnaturalness that is often quite funny (Marcelo Zarvos’s ostentatious score is a big part of this), but it also makes space for thorny ethical questions surrounding spectatorship, representation, autonomy, and consent—none of which feel overly didactic. 

Instead, in true Haynes fashion, ambiguities stay ambiguous, and the viewer is left to dwell in the gray areas. Neither patronizing nor flattering these characters, Haynes complicates prevailing assumptions surrounding Gracie and Joe by lending them both a degree of agency, and in doing so undermines whatever vague suggestion is made toward a simple sociological explanation for their relationship (e.g. personality disorders, abuse begetting abuse). Actors and outcasts alike, these are characters whose identities are defined by performance, whether of normalcy, security, sincerity, or innocence. Like the many mirrors Haynes frames them in, Portman, Moore, and, perhaps most impressively, Melton reflect and belie their characters’ superficial personas. 

May December comes at a strange moment in time when the popularity of true-crime content feels at odds with flattened conceptions of moral goodness and badness in popular media. What makes the film feel particularly incisive and contemporary—infinitely more so than the titles it is destined to be algorithmically paired with on the Netflix home screen—are the ways in which it converses with this moment and indeed the viewer. Haynes’ latest is, once again, hard to pin down; but it is even harder to forget. 

Score: 22/24

May December is nominated for 4 Golden Globes.

Written by Connell Oberman

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The director’s films are said to be “connected by destructive dreamers” and are often interpreted as being representative of the less glamourous side of the American Dream, and though their challenging contents have never been far from controversy or divisiveness, they have also more often than not been received with immense praise from critics and film industry professionals, Aronofksy a BAFTA, César and Oscar nominated director.

Always artistic and often critically praised for their pacing, Aronofsky’s movies are arguably some of the best independent films that the US has produced since the turn of the century. In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are taking a look at all eight of them and judging each in terms of their artistic merits, cultural significance, thematic coherence, and overall importance to the form, to bring you Every Darren Aronofsky Directed Film Ranked (from worst to best).

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

8. Noah (2014)

In perhaps the only major misstep of his directorial career thus far, Darren Aronofsky moved away from his psychological ruminations and explorations regarding the pursuit of the American Dream to tell his imagining of the bible’s Noah’s Ark story.

Any take on the bible is always going to ruffle a few feathers, but when this project was announced in the immediate aftermath of the director’s double Oscar pushes with Black Swan and The Wrestler, few could have anticipated how much of a universal bomb this 2014 film was going to be.

Noah ended up regaining its losses in the domestic market at the international box office, but it was critically maligned as boring and with a message much less clear and intricate than any of the director’s previous work.

Perhaps Aronofsky saw the old testament tale as intrinsic to the American way and sought to unravel that connection, or perhaps this was just a first step into confronting religious material and his own connection to it (with Mother! yet to come), but the potential of this project far exceeded what was actually put to screen, Aronofsky’s all-star cast of Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Ray Winstone and Anthony Hopkins buried under the weight of expectation and Aronofsky’s first truly self-involved cinematic offering.

7. Pi (1998)

Aronofsky’s now timeless stamp on the film industry was first illustrated in his debut feature Pi, released in 1998.

Choosing to shoot the movie in black and white gave the film a timeless feel in a literal sense, but also lent itself to the sensibilities of Film Noir and thus emphasised the tense nature of the script, making for as unique of a thriller as the 90s could offer and becoming another piece from the American independents to proudly adopt the styles of foreign filmmakers from previous generations.

Perhaps the most accurate illustration of Aronofsky as an artist due to its low budget and truly independent production, Pi is a must-see for any fan of Aronofsky’s work and absolutely astonishing in many ways. While it may not be the most popular or indeed the best of Darren Aronofsky’s career, Pi is still a noteworthy and much-adored entry in the director’s filmography.

Even so, 2022 has proven to be the first non-pandemic year since 2017 to not enter a comic book adaptation into the billion dollar movie club, and has reportedly been tumultuous for the genre behind the scenes at almost every studio. As we press into 2023, Marvel continues its pursuit of longer form storytelling on its multitude of direct-to-streaming series and has come under criticism for building a cinematic universe in which everything must get bigger and bolder to remain satisfying to those who’ve already seen it all, while Sony succumbed to an internet meme to re-release Morbius without understanding that they were the butt of a joke, and DC most publicly of all faced scrutiny for late-in-the-year decisions regarding the future of the DC Extended Universe (now to be without Henry Cavill as Superman only weeks after his return) and a public falling out with the world’s highest paid actor, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, regarding his long-gestated DC film Black Adam.

Following 2021, a year of memorable debuts and the ultimate in superhero movie fan service, the comic book genre was forced to diversify in terms of its styles of storytelling in 2022, and as such offered everything from a David Fincher-tinged detective thriller to a horror master’s take on a superhero dealing with issues of the mind, from shallow children’s television-esque nonsense to deep ruminations on grief.

In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are comparing each of the 9 major superhero movie releases (not including direct-to-VoD features like Teen Titans Go! & DC Super Hero Girls: Mayhem in the Multiverse) in terms of their quality, their impact on our culture, their importance to the genre, and their attempts at evolving comic book adaptations beyond their previous limitations. These are the 2022 Comic Book Movies Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

9. Black Adam

For a passion project from a former professional wrestler who earned his career and reputation for being one of the most charismatic men on the planet, it was utterly nonsensical that Dwayne Johnson would play the role of a superhero completely absent of personality. The man formerly known as The Rock, who’d regularly brag about holding the “millions… and millions” in the palm of his hand, was essentially playing a narrative trigger rather than a character, a floating and invincible agent of violence who’d be better named as Mr. Anti-Charisma than the titular Black Adam; his self-serious (but not in a funny Peacemaker way), angsty and hyper-aggressive presentation proving a vacuumous presence that sucked the life out of what was already an uninspired mess of a movie.

With visuals that look like they were taken directly from a mid-2000s historical fantasy film, Black Adam was surpassed visually by even The Rock’s poorly presented Hercules (2014) and the black and blue drabness of fellow 2022 comic book release Morbius. Worse still, Black Adam himself was barely present for large periods, his role in the film taking a backseat throughout the 2nd act as a lengthy list of side characters went in their own directions, each equally as lacking in any kind of truthful essence.

With a narrative filled with conveniences and utterly illogical character decisions, a yellow hue over the entire presentation, a backstory twist that is among the most poorly presented in the history of cinema, and enough poorly generated CG-scapes to take even the most hardened of superhero moviegoers out of any given moment, Black Adam was among the worst superhero films of the decade and must certainly be considered the worst comic book film of 2022.

Recommended for you: DC Extended Universe Movies Ranked

Please note that this article contains spoilers for the films Men, Annihilation, and Ex Machina.

On its most basic level, Alex Garland’s newest movie, Men, tells a fairly simple story. Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a woman whose husband James (Paapa Essiedu) has recently died. This happened while they were in the process of divorcing (on her initiative, not his): during one of their arguments, James struck Harper, and she kicked him out of their apartment. James then slipped and fell to his death while trying to break back in. Now, Harper isn’t sure whether James merely slipped (it was raining) or whether he “let himself go,” as she puts it, since he’d already threatened to kill himself if she went through with the divorce. (He also said that he would haunt her, and that she would have to live with his death on her conscience). With all of these thoughts weighing heavily on her mind, Harper leaves London, looking to get away for a couple of weeks in order to find some measure of peace. But James’s ghost continues haunting her (as tends to happen in Gothic horror stories, which Men explicitly invokes), and the young widow winds up experiencing a long night of the soul, at the end of which she directly confronts James’s spirit. The film then ends somewhat ambiguously, though I think we’re meant to believe that Harper has found the peace she’s been seeking (but more about that below).

Part of what makes Men an unusual film is that, while its story may be simple, its presentation isn’t; rather, it plays out like various European art films of the 1960s and ’70s. Watching it, I was reminded of movies such as Repulsion, Persona, Hour of the Wolf, Suspiria, and Possession. I was also reminded of Andrei Tarkovsky’s work in general, and if Annihilation was Garland’s response to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Men would seem his response to that man’s other science-fiction movie, Solaris (which features a dead spouse who keeps returning). A lot of what we see onscreen isn’t always literal, the movie’s events being filtered through Harper’s perspective. Garland also makes extensive use of associative editing, periodically interrupting the story with flurries of other images. (For example, when Harper sits down to play the piano, Garland cuts to shots of nature, which we’re meant to associate with Harper’s music; they may even represent what Harper is thinking about while she plays.)

And that’s not all. Complicating both these elements is the fact that Men does something unusual with its casting: all of the men in the village where Harper is staying appear to be the same man, or at least strongly resemble one another. That’s because all of the men that Harper encounters—her landlord Geoffrey, a cop, a petulant little boy, the local vicar, the pubkeeper and his two customers—are played by the same actor, Rory Kinnear, a feat accomplished through costumes and make-up, and a little CGI. On the one hand, this aspect of the film is something of a sly joke, a droll observation of how in some small towns, everyone looks the same because they’re related, and we should remember here that what we’re seeing is from Harper’s point of view. (This is another way in which the Irish Harper is made to feel out of sorts, since she’s the outsider, both to the countryside and the country.)

But Garland is up to more than just that. Each of the characters that Kinnear plays represents a different aspect of patriarchy, or institutionalized male authority; in that way, they are, on a structural level at least, all aspects of the same otherwise invisible cultural force. Harper, whose relationship with her husband was fraught to say the least —flashbacks show him alternately pleading with her, threatening her, warning her, striking her—can’t find respite in the village because, wherever she goes, she finds reflected back to her on a larger, societal level all the same problems that she experienced in the waning days of her marriage. (Other elements of the countryside also trigger strong memories—e.g., dandelion spores drifting through the air recall the dust motes that were swirling around her apartment at the time her husband died.) To put this point another way, while the men that Harper encounters in the village aren’t the same person, and aren’t the same person as her husband, they’re all products of the same system that birthed James (and her), and the grieving Harper sees all these men as embodying, individually and collectively, the same manipulative behaviors that James manifested during her time with him. (This is true regardless of whether the character is gently and unintentionally patronizing, as is Geoffrey, or downright sadistic and cruel, as is the young boy who curses out Harper when she refuses to join him for a game of hide-and-seek.) Harper experiences all of these encounters as an accumulating series of intrusions and disturbances, even as others try to tell her that nothing worrisome is happening (e.g., a female police officer dismisses the naked homeless man who trespassed at her house as being harmless), and their collective emotional burden intensifies until, by the end of the long night, she concludes that there really is no escape from James’s ghost. (As she says early on to her friend, “this sort of thing is going to keep happening for the rest of my life.”) This realization leads her to directly confront her memory of the man, in an attempt to learn what she must do in order to lay his spirit to rest.

But that still only scratches the surface of what Garland’s doing here, because he is using the genre of the Gothic horror film, the formal devices of the European art film, and the theme of patriarchy to explore one of his favorite concepts, which is what’s known in philosophy as “the problem of other minds.” Put very simply, this is the problem that there’s no way for any of us to tell whether other people have minds similar to ours, capable of thinking and feeling the same way that our minds do. (Related to this is the problem that there’s no way for us to empirically prove that the world is actually real, and we aren’t instead programs running in a computer simulation, or as older philosophers put it, ideas in the mind of God.) All three of the films that Garland has directed revolve around some version of this problem. In Ex Machina, Oscar Isaac’s Nathan invites Domhnall Gleeson’s Caleb to his home in order to help him judge whether or not the A.I. that he’s created, Ava (played by Alicia Vikander) is self-aware, or merely a clever computer program that’s pretending to be self-aware. In Annihilation, husband and wife Lena and Kane (played by Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, respectively) reunite after having ventured inside an alien phenomenon known as “the Shimmer” (which refracts information the same way a prism does light), only to wonder if they’re still themselves, or whether they’re both now duplicates, clones produced by the alien. (They also aren’t sure whether the alien is self-aware, working according to an intelligent design, or mindless, the way that nature is mindless, acting according to happenstance.) In Men, Harper’s most immediate problem is that she’s unsure what to make of her husband’s behavior (almost as though he were an A.I. or an alien entity): was he a lying, manipulative bastard who would say anything to prevent her from divorcing him (and who did in fact kill himself, just as he threatened he would), or was he sincere, a troubled and unstable person who nonetheless wanted to save their marriage (and who slipped, accidentally falling)? At the end of the film, Harper confronts James’s ghost head-on, asking him what he wants, to which he replies, “Your love.” But even this answer isn’t clarifying, due to the problem of other minds: has the ghost returned in order to speak the truth? Or is this yet another attempt by James to manipulate the woman he’s been haunting?

The problem here, as Garland knows full well, is that there really isn’t any way to tell (which is why other minds are a problem in philosophy). And I don’t think that Garland is trying to solve this problem via his films so much as he’s representing how this dilemma manifests itself not only in things like A.I. research and marriages and patriarchy (and other cultural institutions), but also in art. (Garland is the product of a family of scientists and artists, and I assume he’s fascinated by how both art and science wrestle with alternate versions of this problem). Accordingly, each of his three directorial efforts see Garland seizing on a central artistic image that embodies the problem of other minds, and which functions as a metaphor for the whole film—that stands in for the film in miniature, so to speak. In Ex Machina, this image is the Jackson Pollock painting that Nathan keeps hanging in his home; Nathan asks Caleb whether he thinks Pollock produced the painting by accident, just flinging paint at random, or whether the man was in full control of what he was doing as he dripped paint on the canvas (as Nathan claims that Pollock was). In Annihilation, the image is the invading alien entity, the Shimmer, which is certainly up to something, rearranging nature in unsettling, unusual ways, but whose true intention (if any) is difficult to discern; is the Shimmer, like Pollock, self-aware and in control of what it’s doing, making something deliberate? Or is it all just one big accident, an alternate natural logic, a mindless entity that’s invaded our own like a virus, refracting and warping the landscape willy-nilly, spreading wherever it can?

In Men, the central image that unites art with the problem of other minds, as well as Harper and James’ individual marital problem with the broader institution of patriarchy, is the baptismal font that Harper encounters in the village church, and which then recurs throughout the film (appearing at various places and times, including at one point in Harper’s London apartment). That stone basin is adorned on opposite sides with two different but related pagan fertility symbols: its Western side is inscribed with an image of the Green Man, a being who’s essentially half-man, half-plant, and who is perhaps best known today from his appearance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (which just formed the basis of another A24 film), while its Eastern side bears an image of the Sheela Na Gig, a woman who is holding open her vulva. The Sheela Na Gig is less well known than the Green Man, presumably because people throughout the ages have considered that image more obscene—and Garland is clearly interested here in why the Green Man has become the more dominant of the two.

The Green Man / Sheela Na Gig pairing recurs throughout Men (it really is the movie’s central image), and we should note how the icons on the stone are facing away from one another, peering in opposite directions. Perhaps as a result of that, the relationship between the two figures turns out to be unequal in the movie, with the male figure usually dominating the female. Even in the church, the Green Man icon is positioned to face the celebrants, with the Sheela Na Gig turned away from them and hidden (seen by only the vicar). And even before Harper stumbles upon the baptismal font, she goes for a walk in the woods, where she encounters a former railway tunnel, a large stone hole cut through nature that resembles the pagan stone. Harper enters the tunnel and starts singing, using the space to construct a song (another unification of science and art). But in doing so, she disturbs a naked homeless man, who is lying at the opposite end of the tunnel. That man, which the film associates with the Green Man (he’s later seen adorning himself with leaves) lurches to his feet, then starts running down the tunnel toward Harper, shouting, forcing her to retreat. And this is but one example; throughout the film, Harper finds herself on the opposite side of structures—windows, doors—from men who are peering at her, reaching for her, struggling to break in. Even the film itself is bookended by two versions of the same folk song, “Love,” written by Lesley Duncan, and while she sings the first version that we hear, as Harper drives out of London, it’s Elton John’s cover that plays over the closing credits (and is the version that follows us as we exit, humming).

Part of what Garland is doing here is pointing out how when Christianity arrived in the British Isles, it appropriated and repurposed pagan concepts like the Green Man and Sheela Na Gig; like a religious version of the Shimmer, the early Church absorbed and rearranged those icons into the story of Christ’s death and resurrection, refashioning them into a new artwork and cultural institution. (That’s why the stained glass window of Christ looms over the pagan stone in the church, bathing it in its “miraculous” light every morning.) The Church also privileged the Green Man over the Sheela Na Gig (being a patriarchal institution). Accordingly, Christ and the Green Man become bound up over the course of Men: when James dies, one of his arms becomes impaled on a fence spike, recalling the Crucifixion, and the man’s wounds later appear on the Green Man, and all of the men in the film. Watching the movie, I couldn’t help but think about how there are more than a few Green Man icons in the vicinity of my apartment, just like there are more than a few Christian churches; meanwhile, the Sheela Na Gig has slipped into relative obscurity.

Given the strong thematic connections between Alex Garland’s films, we should read the ending of Men in light of the endings of his other works. In Ex Machina, is Ava truly self-aware? In Annihilation, are Lena and Kane still themselves, or clones who can’t tell the difference? We can’t say; the problem of other minds defeats us. In the case of Men, we see that Harper has survived her long night of the soul, her encounter with the ghost; she also seems to have found the peace that she came to the countryside seeking. Certainly, the closing imagery is idyllic, Gothic horror giving way to the pastoral: the flowers surrounding Harper have all transformed from blue to pink, matching the clothing she wears throughout the film, and she’s smiling as she holds up and studies a leaf, a fragment of the Green Man. Perhaps the Sheela Na Gig has reasserted herself, dominating the Green Man? Or perhaps those two forces have been put back into balance? Or maybe Harper has merely chosen to deceive herself, submitting to James’s last lie? Whatever the case may be, we can’t really say; only Harper knows what she’s thinking.

Written by A. D. Jameson

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)
Director: Taika Waititi
Screenwriters: Taika Waititi, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe, Jamie Alexander

In 2014, Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman introduced to Marvel Comics the Mighty Thor, a female wielder of Mjolnir, and secretly Dr Jane Foster gaining a reprieve from terminal cancer through Asgardian magic in one of the best comic book runs of the last decade. Natalie Portman, aside from a single scene without dialogue in Avengers: Endgame, hasn’t been seen in the MCU since 2013’s Thor: The Dark World but now she’s back, likely because this time Jane gets to be a superhero. Thor himself is back as well of course and treading some familiar ground in his latest adventure.

After playing his part in saving the universe from Thanos, God of Thunder Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has got his god bod back and is off adventuring with the Guardians of the Galaxy. His world is turned upside down when former paramour Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) reappears in his life now bestowed with Asgardian powers, and a dangerous new foe emerges in the shape of Gorr (Christian Bale), a being who carries a weapon capable of slaying any god.

In a typically Waititi off-kilter choice, this is a rom-com between two exes and their jealous hammers. It’s so gratifying for fans of the Jane Foster Thor run to see Mjolnir and Stormbreaker given such vivid personalities, an idea that became prominent in that era of the comics. You expect there to be some form of resolution to Thor and Jane’s prematurely ended relationship, but their chosen weapons being anthropomorphised as the third wheels in this love story is just such a lovely absurdist touch. 

Natalie Portman getting to be both a kick-ass action hero and the emotional heart of the film makes her the undoubted highlight, but props to Christian Bale for playing his role with as much deranged commitment as any of his Oscar-nominated work. Gorr the God-Butcher is easily the most frightening and magnetic antagonist of the Thor franchise, as well as being (like Black Panther‘s Killmonger) another Marvel villain whose worldview is very difficult to not empathise with. 

The gods are all going to be killed, but since most gods are shown in no uncertain terms to be bastards, would that be such a bad thing? The very first thing we see in the movie is Gorr’s origin story; having his faith crushed by a pitiless and cruelly mocking god, and pretty much every non-Asgardian divine entity we see is some shade of awful.

Enter Zeus (an entertainingly over the top Russell Crowe with a thick Greek accent), the bastard-god to beat all bastard-gods. He holds court at the gleaming, hedonistic Omnipotence City, and is far more concerned with human sacrifice leaderboards and daily orgies than heeding Thor’s warning of a deity serial killer or offering assistance in the upcoming fight.

The script by Waititi and TV writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson could definitely have been tighter. Most of the film’s flaws become apparent in the first hour, which is, to be blunt, a mess. Thor latches on to the Guardians of the Galaxy like a blonde limpet and they keep trying to shake him off to get on with the next film in their own franchise. And, just like Shrek, the God of Thunder is out to re-learn the exact same lesson he learned in his three previous movies. For the ogre it was “be yourself”, and for the Asgardian it’s “be worthy of being a hero”. 

Perhaps the most pressing question is: why does some of this look so cheap? The big VFX-driven extravaganzas (including a golden blood-drenched god brawl and a late scene involving empowering the powerless) are all dazzling enough, but why do our heroes spend so much time standing around in their plastic armour in big empty rooms or featureless backlots with a vaguely fantastical projection behind them in a $250 million blockbuster?

Such moments are all the more glaring when Waititi can create sequences of such a striking aesthetic as when our heroes go to confront Gorr in the monochromatic Shadow Realm. Battling Bale’s character and his shadow monsters on a black-and-white planetoid with superpowers brightly illuminating and cutting through the greyscale makes pretty much everything else in the film look terrible in comparison.

Waititi sometimes needs to rein himself in a little. He’s a funny guy but didn’t need to lean so heavily on the screaming goat meme (which is funny precisely once) nor make his rock man Korg as prominent with his constant stream of innocent misunderstandings instantly diffusing any character tension. On the one hand you have the undeniably amusing sight of a Kronen (Korg’s rocky alien race) with a handlebar moustache, but on the other he gives his character not one, not two, but three “gather round and let me tell you a story” scenes that become less funny through repetition.

Once it works out what film it wants to be and especially when our attention is on Portman or Bale, Thor: Love and Thunder is ace. When it tries to do justice to the rest of its colourful ensemble, including its titular character, it is a bit more inconsistent. Tessa Thompson’s alcoholic warrior Valkyrie, a highlight of Thor: Ragnarok and now crowned King of New Asgard, gets token references to her sexuality and a few memorable action beats but often feels like an afterthought, even to the extent of one shot that looks suspiciously unfinished, like she’s jumping down from a box rather than from her winged steed.

There’s fun to be had with Thor: Love and Thunder, but it’s far too inconsistent to trouble the best of the Marvel movies, even Waititi’s own previous effort. 

Score: 15/24

Recommended for you: Every MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked

In this edition of Ranked, we’re looking at all six of these Best Picture nominated horror films and judging each in terms of individual quality, contextual importance and audience longevity to decide which is the best horror ever nominated for Best Picture and, first, which is the worst.

Why don’t you let us know your order in the comments? And be sure to follow us on Twitter.

6. Black Swan (2010)

This is a classic horror film, but all the films on this list are classic horror films and this is arguably not even Darren Aronofsky’s best horror – that honour instead going to Requiem for a Dream – so Black Swan starts off our list.

The elements of body horror subtly woven into the fabric of this psychological horror-thriller make for some of the very best cinema of the 2010s, and Aronofsky’s intelligent telling of the story of famed ballet “Black Swan” in an allegorical movie like this is nothing short of genius. Natalie Portman is exceptional, the cinematography incomparable on this list, the score appropriately pulsating, and its Best Picture nomination absolutely deserved, but in the context of the horror genre there are dozens of more memorable releases that didn’t even earn a Best Picture nomination and five more memorable and impactful movies that did.

Recommended for you: Every Darren Aronofsky Directed Film Ranked

The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Director: Wes Anderson
Screenwriters: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman
Starring: Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia, Natalie Portman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray

“Yes, the past happened. But it’s over, isn’t it?” – one of the many very poignant lines in Wes Anderson’s emotionally charged The Darjeeling Limited.

Made in 2007, The Darjeeling Limited was Wes Anderson’s fifth feature film and included all of his now well known tropes, whether they be in the story, the visuals, or the soundtrack. This beautiful showcase, centered on the mourning of a loved one, is encased by a vibrant presentation of Indian culture that makes for not only one of the most typically Wes Anderson offerings of the filmmaker’s career, but a truly stunning film in its own right.

A year after the death of their father, three brothers – Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) – meet in India in order to go on a spiritual journey together by means of the Darjeeling Limited train. From the get-go it is clear that the three brothers have trust issues, and thus begins conflict by means of secrets and fights. Along their journey, the trio are kicked off the train, attend a funeral, have a few near misses of going home, briefly visit their mother, and finish their journey on a new train, all to cast off their father’s prized baggage. The tale is, of course, told in the screenwriter-director’s familiar idiosyncratic style.

Wes Anderson is a true auteur, particularly when it comes to visuals, and The Darjeeling Limited is no exception. From the opening scene, the film bombards you with Indian culture, starting by zooming through the streets in a rickshaw, then filling each frame with colour once on the titular train – the uniforms of those on board being particularly detailed and bright – and later juxtaposing the colour palettes of two funerals to create a genuine sense of catharsis. This is a tale of learning to grow after experiencing loss, and the colour palette is just as important to this journey as much of the dialogue. In Wes Anderson’s films, it is usually pointed out how unnatural the dialogue is between characters, and in this case this is notably used to create a world that feels slightly apart from our own, as if the characters are fulfilling an otherworldly obligation to their father and themselves. Filling such a well built and realistic setting with seemingly emotionally flat people makes the film all the more intriguing.

It is, of course, difficult to reference the visual style of Wes Anderson’s work without making note of his unique camera movements and framing. Here, every shot is carefully framed and filled with necessary information, the only camera movements seeming to come in harsh, notable zooms that reflect realisation or growth, or indicate comedy, with even tracking shots being kept to simple, steady presentations of information. Anderson has an unmistakable visual style, but in The Darjeeling Limited and the director’s other critical hits, the most memorable aspect of this style is how it always works to emphasise the people at the heart of his stories, the characters often being at the centre of frame, the workings of set, colour palette and other elements of visual design operating together as merely a backdrop.

The soundtrack of The Darjeeling Limited follows this aesthetic very closely too, mostly utilising traditional Indian music to ingrain the audience deeper into the setting of the film and emphasise the fish out of water aspect of the protagonists’ journeys.

The Darjeeling Limited, despite featuring the now iconic disconnected acting and far from naturalistic visual style, is an incredibly emotional journey for both the audience and the characters. Each character is going through their own private struggle as Francis is still healing from an almost life-ending car accident, Peter is coming to terms with becoming a father, and Jack is still getting over his break up from a toxic relationship, yet they each share the universal pain of losing a loved one; Anderson making the characters, their problems, and their coping mechanisms very relatable and their journey all the more riveting for it.

Wes Anderson’s fifth offering remains, even now at over a decade old, a truly beautiful film in every aspect. It is hearty, filled with visual splendor, offers a bittersweet aftertaste in conjunction with the filmmaker’s usual style, and is one of the best releases of his notable career. The Darjeeling Limited is a great film in every respect, one that can be enjoyed by people from all walks of life.

21/24

For this list, we’ve analysed the contemporary era of cinema (1970 and beyond) for the very best rom-com ensemble casts that came to define eras, surprise audiences and ultimately sell their film, whether the picture could be considered good or not.

As a rule, we’ve avoided films that are firmly attached to other genres, such as musicals like Grease and La La Land or dramas like The Silver Linings Playbook and Shakespeare In Love (all of which have rom-com elements), and have judged all casts based on casts alone – beware, there may be some seriously trash movies in the list ahead!

In no particular order…

1. No Strings Attached (2011)

Starring that year’s Best Actress Oscar winner Natalie Portman and arguably the decade’s most trustworthy go-to rom-com leading man Ashton Kutcher, this early 2010s offering from Ivan Reitman, the director of Ghostbusters (1984), featured a stacked cast of future industry leaders including Oscar-nominated director Greta Gerwig and multi-time Emmy nominee Mindy Kaling.

Oscar winning actor Kevin Kline played Kutcher’s father, meanwhile Lake Bell, Ophelia Lovibond, Ludacris and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’s Jake Johnson offered their two cents in some of the film’s smaller roles, filling No Strings Attached to the brim with some of the decade’s most influential and recognisable names.

Cast: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell, Cary Elwes, Greta Gerwig, Olivia Thirlby, Ludacris, Mindy Kaling, Jake Johnson, Ophelia Lovibond

2. You’ve Got Mail (1998)

The 2nd half of the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks rom-com double bill, You’ve Got Mail, also directed by Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally), peaks its older sister to this slot due to each of its stars (particularly Hanks) being even closer to the top of their game, with the supporting cast being nothing short of a who’s who of top class late 90s names.

Leading male Tom Hanks had won two Oscars between Sleepless In Seattle and You’ve Got Mail (for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump) and was about to win his 3rd for 1998’s Saving Private Ryan, while the supporting cast featured that year’s Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Greg Kinnear, award-winning comedian Dave Chappelle, Steve Zahn, Parker Posey and even Chris Messina in a small role.

Cast: Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Greg Kinnear, Parker Posey, Dave Chappelle, Steve Zahn, Heather Burns, Jean Stapleton, Chris Messina

Remember, remember,
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Every autumn, the people of the United Kingdom light bonfires and spark fireworks in a time-honoured tradition commemorating the capturing of Guy Fawkes, a York-born man caught guarding a selection of explosives intended for parliament and particularly King James I in 1604. Whether Fawkes was a murderer, a terrorist or a revolutionary is a question that has been pondered for over 400 years, so when Alan Moore’s comic book series V for Vendetta sought to explore the story in its own near-future fictional universe, fans clamored for a theme driven text that went down in history as one of the best selection of stories ever put to print in the comic book realm, and would eventually be adapted to the big screen by the Wachowskis (The Matrix, Cloud Atlas) and their director James McTeigue. Starring Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman and John Hurt, the movie became a cult phenomenon, with masks of its main character, V, becoming a symbol of revolution the world over.

Revolution: a forcible overcoming of a government or social order, in favour of a new system.

This is precisely why we at The Film Magazine have chosen to present the 10 most notable moments from V for Vendetta in this very post. Disagree with us? Make sure to leave a note in the comments!

10. V’s Introduction

Saving Evey (Portman) from the oppressive state, V’s introduction can be summed up in his opening dialog: “Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the “vox populi” now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.”

9. Evey Is Reborn

Evey walks right out of the prison she’s been tortured in only to discover that it has been V who has been torturing her. Angry and upset, she confronts the masked vigilante and runs to the same roof V first took her to for some fresh air. She screams out as the score lifts, and we are all invited to witness her becoming of a martyr for V’s cause. As she is shown to understand the truly personal nature of oppression, we too feel it through her.

8. The Story

Meeting with the men tasked with finding you was always risky and V even got away with it wearing this costume! What’s not to love?! In terms of the meaning of the movie itself, we were finally given the backstory we had long since craved regarding our protagonist, and as such could satisfactorily declare that he was a “good guy”, ensuring that we began to feel the righteous presence of the character just as the people of the UK were doing within the universe of the movie at the same time.

7. “I Killed You 10 Minutes Ago”

In the midst of a V killing spree, we see a more intimate and caring side of the character and we, importantly, hear the story of those on the other side of the war to our key protagonists.

Delia: You’re going to kill me now?
V: I killed you 10 minutes ago while you slept.
Delia: Is there any pain?
V: No. 
Delia: Thankyou. Is it meaningless to apologise?
V: Never.
Delia: I’m so sorry.

Writer-Director Terrence Malick’s famously avant-garde style of filmmaking took a look in on itself with a substantiated reflection of the glamour of Hollywood in Knight of Cups (2016), a film that was more linear and consistent in its presentation than some of his more recent pictures but lacking in the real magic that he’s managed to create alongside Director of Photography Emmanuel Lubezki over the past decade or so.

Knight of Cups is a Terrence Malick picture in every sense that a film can be: its limited dialogue is filled with existentialist questions, the camera moves freely and seemingly without focus throughout many if not all of its scenes, the lighting is completely natural, and the characters are muffled behind the story the camera is so effectively telling. The ways in which it is a Terrence Malick film are unmissable and thus the experience of watching the movie becomes partly moving and almost entirely awe-inspiring.

The ways in which Malick and his crew manipulate the camera and specifically the sound of his pictures give each of his releases an other worldly feel that is so special that the films of this famously reclusive man remain some of the most hotly debated and immensely respected pictures ever released. The Tree of Life was perhaps the pinnacle of this, and the movie was critically acclaimed as a result, but the film was also perhaps the least linear and most experimental of his career, something Malick reined in for the much less successful To the Wonder and has reined in even further for Knight of Cups. This makes each of the latter releases easier gateways into this filmmaker’s hugely individualistic visions of cinema and Knight of Cups specifically has much more Hollywood appeal than that of its two predecessors due to its cast that is as talented as it is popular and the ways in which the film focuses on the immensely popular Hollywood lifestyle and its East Coast setting.

Christian Bale leads the film with a character that is somewhat ambiguous. All we know of him is that he is a screenwriter much like Malick, and that he has come from the East, much like Malick did at the beginning of his career in film when he left New York for Los Angeles. Rick, the character Bale plays, is a man who is lost for words despite his profession and this is something that Malick seems to attribute to his lowly self-indulgence and lack of real commitment towards so-called ‘higher’ or ‘more spiritual’ ventures like blossoming romance and deep-routed love. As such, the camera follows Rick almost exclusively, yet the floaty dialogue is presented mostly by secondary characters such as Rick’s father and his host of partners, played by Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Teresa Palmer, Imogen Poots and Natalie Portman. Each of these partners is dispersed throughout the movie that, in keeping with Malick’s other work, diverts from the typical three act structure and, in this case, actually presents ‘chapters’ to sections of the film in a manner much like those of the silent era of cinema. It is in this dispersion of characters that a real confrontation between the filmmaker’s intentions and the audience’s reception of the movie occurs because it truly is difficult to remain empathetic towards a character that is so indulgent and ultimately flawed as Rick is, and yet so incredibly successful both within his career and with regard to his romantic pursuits. This is a disconnect on a level so critical that Knight of Cups, for all of its beauty and intricacy, finds great difficulty in overcoming.

The visual work of both Malick and Lubezki is of the absolute greatest quality currently witnessed in cinema anywhere across the globe, and their combination in Knight of Cups is certainly something to marvel at. The purity in which the camera presents each of the actors makes every one of them feel more real and therefore more easy to connect with or understand. For as little focus on actors’ performances as there is in recent Malick films, and the limited time each of them is seen on screen, the camera and its related elements (lighting etc.) work seemingly effortlessly to ensure that each moment is as stocked with pure, raw, realism as is possible, and that each actor is seen as naturally if not more naturally than throughout the rest of their career, adding a distinctive and identifiable aura to the movies as a whole, despite how other worldly the floating camera and choices of lens can make the films feel at times. Even so, the beauty of the picture and the raw emotion of the camera’s presentation of seemingly above average performances from Natalie Portman and Teresa Palmer in particular in this movie, do not really contribute to detracting from the ultimately self-indulgent nature of the film.

Knight of Cups, much like The Tree of Life in particular, is an ultimately personal movie. The character of Rick is like Malick in many different ways but most notably in how he is a screenwriter new to Hollywood and how he has also had one of his brothers die too young. Personal isn’t necessarily bad, and is actually almost always good in terms of this particular filmmaker’s output, but in Knight of Cups this personal presentation seems privileged in a way that has the film lacking the heart of its predecessors. The central character’s relationships anchor the film but they are not important for how they start or end, they are only important in how they existed at all, and this paints Bale (who is thought of as a representation of Malick himself due to the comparisons Rick has to Malick) as unlikable. Unfortunately for Malick and his fans, this also paints the movie as using female characters and relationships as plot devices and/or emotional devices for enhancing the film’s central character with not much more offered, which is hugely different to that of his work in every other film he has made, and comes across as cheap and almost even lazy, something I’m sure would be an impossible criticism towards any of this director’s six other movies.

Somewhat more in line with the legend of Malick however is how the quality of editing really helps to rein in some less interesting moments and present them as important parts of a larger puzzle that seems to be representative of memories and the ways in which the mind wanders between thoughts. This is, in of itself, interesting, but once it’s linked with the visual presentation of the shots (that are much like dreams or memories, too), it becomes truly mesmerising in the most truly Malikesque way possible, saving the seemingly below expectation script and the self-indulgent themes from destroying the movie.

Heading into 2016 it seemed unusual that Knight of Cups’ release date was pushed further and further back given its 2015 festival debut, but upon watching the film, it seems more obvious as to why it was never quite trusted by distributors to be released in and around awards season and was never lauded by critics upon its eventual (limited) distribution between March and May 2016. Lacking the spirit of its predecessors and straying close to parody in terms of its self-indulgence, Knight of Cups was a film that seemed to be far removed from the quality of the rest of Malick’s work and was only saved by some sensational editing and the aura that each Malick film brings with it; that of being dream-like and other-worldly. If you are to watch a Malick film with the intention of having your socks blown off then Knight of Cups certainly isn’t the one for you, but for any Malick fan or fan of cinema in general, this has to be a must-see because as self-indulgent as it may be, this movie is still a Terrence Malick movie in every sense that it can be and is therefore something to be treasured among film watchers, scholars and critics. This famously different director may have swung and missed in so many ways with this one, but it’s still a pleasure to see something new from a man of such genius.

18/24