Kubrick: Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Samuel Delany once suggested that the healthiest and happiest state of affairs was to be in a loving long-term relationship with a rotation of anonymous sexual encounters on [...]
December 2020
Kubrick: Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Seven years had elapsed between The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, and during that time Francis Ford Coppola had exhausted the high-concept Vietnam film with Apocalypse Now. [...]
Howard: Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
You might not think that Ron Howard was the most obvious choice to direct Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance’s account of growing up in suburban Ohio and rural Kentucky, but in [...]
Meyers: The Holiday (2006)
Nancy Meyers’ romcoms get stranger as they proceed, but The Holiday still stands as a pinnacle of weirdness – the last breath, perhaps, of the 90s romcom impulse that [...]
Boyle: The Beach (2000)
Although Danny Boyle directed A Life Less Ordinary in the interim, The Beach is the true spiritual sequel to Trainspotting, which ended with Ewan McGregor’s character [...]
DuVall: Happiest Season (2020)
Clea DuVall’s Christmas film Happiest Season is one of the most beautiful and tonally complex queer films I’ve seen in a long time – so complex that it forces you to [...]
Eubank: Underwater (2020)
Claustrophobic thrillers reached their zenith during the 1990s, reflecting the last great self-contained cinematic spaces but also the possibility of a new viewing experience [...]