David Katz

Popov is meditating on relevant themes, but what she diagnoses about the superficiality of the self-serving media and fashion worlds is already received wisdom, rather than the lethal satire she’s aiming for.

Pálmason’s overall sincerity has its dividends, even for what it lacks in candidness: the poignant closing shot distills that this is his vision on this eternal topic, open to the risk that its alternating visual modes won’t harmonize.

[Anderson's] made a largely thrilling populist action movie with some of his most spectacular cinematic formalism, and disciplined, linear storytelling, but lacking the dark beauty and profundity of his best work.

MEGADOC elaborates on what we’ve learned from the clearly partial and biased trade reporting that documented its production. Yet it also isn’t a corrective to that run of media revelations; just by visualizing the mayhem that made Megalopolis can we see that those articles (in the Hollywood Reporter especially) didn’t arise from nowhere.

Videoheaven embalms a world of choice, and greater sociality, that was once the cutting edge of modernity and now is history; so it goes. But as the film’s sucker-punch final line confirms, it matters to commemorate it––not because the video “era” was great. It matters because it was a chapter of American life.

Overall, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire shows us how this discourse falls away––or most essential points are refined––when elaborated upon by such voluptuous cinematic form.

Hovering around the prosody of “simp” is the word “sub” — Paul is certainly a proud sub, as we gradually understand his content isn’t solely cheery scroll fodder, but that he’s also happily exhibiting his sexual preference as an “out” kink enthusiast, shining visibility on himself and perhaps others like him to come as the 2020’s continue on.

Ultimately, Two Prosecutors is like a perfect 50-50 cocktail of dread and dialogue, the vodka being whichever you’d choose, making the inevitable feel capable of deferment, before it strikes more devastatingly than you’d even think.

Fuori stands apart as one of the filmmaker’s most vibrant and accessible works so far, able to emphasize the story of a powerful and beautiful older woman — with flecks of a classic melodrama or the “woman’s picture” — beyond the heritage concerns of Sapienza’s role in Italian letters.

Ultimately, it’s a case in point for how an impeccably styled arthouse-grindhouse crossover can feel both dense with signifiers to unpack (although lacking more commonly understood kinds of “depth”), but also fleet, frothy and fun.