Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)
When I first heard about a sequel to Sicario – one of my favourite films of 2015 – my first thought was ‘why does this need to exist?’ Having seen the film, I don’t have a satisfactory answer to that question.
Images on a Wall: Blade Runner 2049
At its best, Blade Runner 2049 is a film about negotiating the notion of identity in the dense lattice of a technological society. Villeneuve amplifies the first film’s themes of complicity in an oppressive society.
Arrival’s Ambition is Undone by its Simplistic Screenplay
Denis Villeneuve’s optimistic sci-fi ambitions are undermined by a trite, often clichéd screenplay.
Drafted Into the War on Drugs: Denis Villeneuve’s Tense Sicario
Trust Denis Villeneuve to take what could have been a fairly conventional drug war thriller and transform it into a hollowed-out horror movie. His latest film, Sicario is, at its core, a scathing indictment of modern American patriarchy. He pulled a similar trick with 2013’s underrated Prisoners, realising an unapologetically pulpy script as a deeply…
Enemy (2014)
Denis Villeneuve’s collaboration with Jake Gyllenhaal has produced two films thus far: last year’s preposterously-plotted yet consistently engaging thriller, Prisoners, and now, Enemy. There aren’t a great many similarities between the two films; the former was literal and methodical while the latter is elliptical and abstract. Prisoners solidly held to genre conventions while Enemy takes…
Prisoners (2013)
On paper, Prisoners seems like its destined to be forgotten as yet another unremarkable thriller. The film concerns the abduction of two young girls and focuses its attention on two men searching for them; Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover – zealous carpenter and father of one of the girls – and Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective…
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