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.
Denis Villeneuve’s optimistic sci-fi ambitions are undermined by a trite, often clichéd screenplay.
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…
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…
Is there anything more reliable in cinema than the crime drama? We have our middle-aged, grizzled police officer. He chain-smokes, drinks heavily, and seems to send his shirts to be custom-ruffled daily. He doesn’t get along with people – he’s taciturn, gruff, and so forth – but, dammit, he gets results. You will be shocked…
My Top 20 films of the year are listed below. For most them, clicking on the title will take you to my review of the film from earlier in the year. One qualifier before I begin: this doesn’t neatly fit into a “films of 2013” from a cinematic release perspective; thanks to film festivals and…
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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