Anderson: Licorice Pizza (2021)
Licorice Pizza is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest hymn to the San Fernando Valley. Many Hollywood directors have filmed in the valley, but it holds a special place in [...]
McKay: Don’t Look Up (2021)
Adam McKay’s latest release, Don’t Look Up, seems to have had an impact – for the last week, Google has showed trending searches about asteroids; their size, their [...]
Cameron: The Terminator (1984)
It’s quite astonishing to look back at The Terminator and see how much James Cameron did with such a small budget – or at least such a small budget compared to his later [...]
Bezucha: The Family Stone (2005)
As the mid-00s arrived, and it became harder for Hollywood directors to tap into the feel-good spirit of the romcom 90s, a whole new second wave of films emerged – films [...]
Hanson: L.A. Confidential (1997)
Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential, an adaptation of the third novel in James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, was one of the high points of neo-noir. In a sense, it was less [...]
Cameron: Titanic (1997)
The disaster movie was well out of vogue by the time that James Cameron released Titanic in 1997, thanks to the endless parodies of the 80s and early 90s. In response, [...]
Villeneuve: Dune (2021)
My biggest concern, going into Dune, was that Frank Herbert’s novel seemed too attuned to Denis Villeneuve’s directorial style. Dune was always waiting for Villeneuve to [...]
Dey: Failure to Launch (2006)
Failure to Launch was one of the high points of the neo-screwball revival of the mid-2000s – a collection of films that, in retrospect, feel like the silver age of the [...]
Shyamalan: Old (2021)
Like The Visit, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film is a study in agesploitation – the way that ageing can become a form of horror when compressed and condensed. Both films [...]
Campion: The Power of the Dog (2021)
Jane Campion’s latest film is an adaptation of The Power of the Dog, the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage. It’s a masterclass in storytelling, establishing character first, [...]