Col. Kusanagi by Matías Bergara

Michael Giacchino - Suite New Day

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Tom Holland's web-slinger, by now the surest bet in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, returns with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, an atypically well-crafted superhero film that dispenses with the flat virtual backlots and insincere humour that has come to define these later, less-successful phases. Director Destin Daniel Cretton, whose previous Marvel feature Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings seems to have been condemned to the continuity black hole that swirls at the centre of the Disney series, takes the reigns from Jon Watts, who steered Sony's previous three instalments. Although Watts started strong with Spider-Man: Homecoming, his follow-up episodes stumbled largely thanks to intractable demands placed upon this property. Spider-Man's newcomer position within a wider, exploding brand tracked into an insistence that the queasy militarisation of Iron Man was mapped onto the otherwise working class Peter Parker. The chopped-up, off-putting simulacrum of Covid-era filmmaking hasn't helped either.  

Despite lingering Starkism, Cretton's take is refreshingly distinct from its immediate predecessors. The director's most obvious contribution then is that this Spider-Man sequel plays like an event unto itself rather than a prolonged reassessment of past glories or a carefully rationed prologue for the next team-up. Quite the feat considering the amount of guest players that appear in Sony's tentpole: Jon Bernthal's lunk-headed Punisher intrudes, making a lot more sense when paired with Holland's bright and assured Spider-Man (Castle, driving around in an armoured van and blasting bazookas is surely a nod to a similar appearance in the 90s Spider-Man: The Animated Series); Mark Ruffalo's increasingly savage Hulk represents a worst-case scenario for Peter's mutating superpowers; while Sadie Sink, as an emissary of The X-Men, is utilised first as a terrifying new enemy, later as an unlikely confidant. If anything then, this new Holland episode appears to have inherited the care, not to mention the billion dollar machinery, that the Japanese electronics firm marshalled during their tenure with Daniel Craig's shaken but not spared take on James Bond. 

Naturally, we're not skipping from continent to continent like 007, but there's a level-headed confidence in how the clashing tonal bandwidth of computer-assisted vehicular pile-ups and more personal, human drama are navigated that speaks to a piece designed for a slightly more discerning audience than the usual Marvel staging. Although credited to series regulars (and future Avengers: Doomsday scribes) Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, stars Holland and Zendaya have eagerly shared that this draft was treated to a transformative, and uncredited, rewrite by director Cretton as well as Challengers and Queer screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes. Spider-Man: Brand New Day, as released, then not only gives Zendaya's workforce ready MJ more to play with than simple scowling, it also raises Marissa Tomei's sadly departed Aunt May to new heights of sainted, maternal radiance. Her flickering presence is presented throughout the film as the core, positive memory of a deeply depressed superhero. So powerful is this recollection though that it is able to be transmitted to others; to allow them to step into Peter's shoes and know what it is to be truly adored by a loving mother. 

Madonna - Drowned World/Substitute for Love // Blur - Tender // All Saints - Pure Shores

The Avalanches - Can't Get Over Losing You ft. Portraits Of Tracy

Havoc #4 by Barry Windsor-Smith

Open Mike Eagle x Kenny Segal - She Swear I'm Colorblind feat. billy woods

Chinatown

Jack Nicholson stars as JJ Gites a private investigator in 1930s Los Angeles who, despite both his sleazy profession and the fact that he's the spitting image of Alexandre Cabanel's The Fallen Angel when captured in a similarly defeated repose, is completely above board. In fact, Chinatown - written by Robert Towne and directed by a despondent Roman Polanski, following the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate but before he fled to France with a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor hanging over him - cannot unfold quite the way it does if Gites isn't unusually committed to uncovering the truth. This gumshoe doggedly picks at LA's rapacious ruling class as a way of reconciling his own part in a cruel hatchet job. Hired by a middle-aged, moneyed woman to trail after her husband Hollis Mulwray, who she believes is having an affair with a much younger woman, Gites dutifully complies. The paparazzi-style photographs that the PI hands off quickly find their way into a local newspaper, much to Gites' consternation.  

The trailed husband, the Chief Engineer at the Department of Water and Power as it turns out, is found dead in a storm drain; meanwhile Faye Dunaway has arrived at Gites' office claiming to be the real Mrs. Mulwray. Better experienced than described, Chinatown is a guided tour around a powerful, emerging metropolis and the spectral forces who wield both appalling wealth and act with an unconscionable barbarity; power brokers who are, quite apparently, immune to the legal and moral laws that govern everybody else. Dunaway's Evelyn Cross-Mulwray, who would seem to be a manipulative femme fatale, an archetype inextricably linked with film noir, is instead a deeply tragic character. What we learn of her relationship with her much older husband and her father, John Huston's Noah Cross, conjures up despair rather than reassurance. Evelyn's life a commodity that has been traded back-and-forth between men who would presume to own, basically, everything. As Gites presses closer to understanding why Los Angeles is experiencing a manufactured drought, he demands of the creaking Cross what more he could possibly want in this life. The elderly millionaire's answer, delivered and repeated in haste, is that he wants to own the future. And, watching his enormous, arthritic fingers curl greedily around a screaming child's face, you believe him. 

Jerry Goldsmith - Love Theme from Chinatown (Main Title)

Cinema Noir by Bendik Kaltenborn

Mai Yamane - Tasogare

The Return

The Return, director Uberto Pasolini's adaptation of The Odyssey, forgoes mythical beasts and seafaring voyages, preferring to interrogate ideas of permission in fraying, familial relationships. Ralph Fiennes stars as Odysseus, the Ithacan king who washes up naked and newborn on his homeland's shores twenty years after abandoning his wife and child to go off to war then, according to the whispers that precede him, live with another woman. Posing as a beggar, Odysseus slowly circles his former household as unruly noblemen take full advantage of his absence. Trapped in the palace are Juliette Binoche's Queen Penelope and Charlie Plummer's Telemachus, the mother and son being pulled in different directions by the presence of these greedy suitors. Penelope is tired and wavering, apparently at least somewhat taken with Marwan Kenzari's Antinous, a ringleader among these slavering dignitaries who is proving to be the least boorish of a bad bunch. 

The would-be couple's dealings, which largely revolve around Antinous promising to divert attention away from Penelope's twilight deceptions, are suggestive of a much more equitable relationship than perhaps the Queen has been used to. With Antinous as her husband Penelope could expect to be a partner rather than a beloved subject, it seems. Comparatively, Telemachus, who has never known his father, boils with resentment; speaking to his mother with a level of reproachment that hints at a possessive, even sexual jealousy. He calls her a whore for transgressions that exist only in his head then, later, demands to be part of the contest that will decide Penelope's new husband. This unusual, even Oedipal arrangement of the young prince is underlined when, following Odysseus' resumption of rule, Telemachus leaves on his own adventures, declining to stay with his newly complete family. Odysseus, for his part, welcomes this absence. 

Before he's back in his marital bed though, the disguised and dawdling Odysseus must reckon with the idea that, actually, he isn't welcome home at all. Speaking to Penelope as a transient claiming to know her husband, Odysseus is pressed to answer questions about the sack of Troy. Did the King of Ithaca kill women and children? Did he give his men permission to pillage? Did Odysseus join in with these outrages? Did he indulge himself in rape? Odysseus' stunned silence here speaks volumes. Pressed to act only when the squatting noblemen make an attempt on Telemachus' life, Odysseus reveals both his identity and a gnarled, tightly knotted physique. As indirect and circuitous as the preceding 90 minutes have been, Pasolini's description of the climactic archery contest is thrilling. Odysseus' approach to the stringing of the bow he left behind demonstrating not just his physical strength but a thoughtful expertise when handling an uncooperative weapon; while his cold-blooded, almost mechanical murder of the defenceless suitors offers an alarming insight into how the Ithacan King may have dealt with the cowering citizens of Troy. 

keio けいお - Satisfaction [bump]

Dredd Good vs Evil (for Gosh! Comics) by Mike McMahon

ALISON - Alpine

Fleaureque - Kosmos

Possession

We are assured, repeatedly, during Andrzej Żuławski's audio commentary for Possession that this film is, as horrifying as it sounds, autobiographical in nature. The piece a spitefully arranged reaction to the dissolution of the writer-director's marriage to actress Małgorzata Braunek and the blame that he, and Żuławski isn't afraid to share this, apportioned to her. On the same track, which is really more of an extended interview with film scholar Daniel Bird, a combative Żuławski even goes as far as detailing the marital difficulties experienced by cinematographer Bruno Nuytten and lead actress Isabelle Adjani. The pair, he implies, grew apart during the film's emotionally gruelling, low budget shoot. Aside from any interest prickled by ancient gossip beamed-in from a bygone era, this detail feels critical to understanding the hypnotic appeal of such a savagely candid film. It isn't enough that Adjani's doe-eyed Anna is, despite her obvious and sustained mania, stunningly beautiful. She is portrayed as actively intoxicating to orbit. 

An interlude in which Anna's husband, a sad sack former spy played by Sam Neill, is sent a short reel of film shot by her guru-cum-affair partner, Heinz Bennent's Heinrich, neatly encapsulates the tensions experienced by an audience wavering between rapture and revulsion when beholding Adjani's performance. In this clip Anna, presiding over a troupe of young ballet dancers, prowls the room, moving from girl-to-girl. She barely acknowledges her students, maintaining eye contact with the camera - knowing that she is the subject of this short and drawing power from being so permanently considered - while she harshly manipulates a shrieking girl's limbs. Nuytten's hand-held camera pushes in on this scene, the frame filled with Anna's pleading, mock innocent stare and that of a wailing, distressed child. We are being asked, directly in this moment, not to focus on the genuine horror that Anna is almost casually creating. We are to look past the sobbing face of an innocent and focus only on the woman, the trusted teacher, who is very deliberately conducting these would-be ballerinas with scathing words and physical pain. 

This confrontational approach to deceit is crucial since Anna shares many of her scenes with men who she is attempting to emotionally manipulate in some way or other. Be that her husband; their long-suffering child, Bob; the heartbroken Heinrich; or the pair of snoops who turn up, unannounced, to the rotting hovel in which Anna shelters her darkest, bloodiest secret. Adjani's Anna is, we discover, constructed in layers, with each of these men only able to access a particular level of attention or information which always leaves them wanting more. None are permitted to possess a complete understanding of Anna or her actions. She withholds, violently at times. Equally though, Anna's hold must extend beyond the figures dancing on a flat, two-dimensional screen to the viewer themselves. Nuytten and Żuławski's startling camera work makes our involvement explicit. Our perspective is essentially voyeuristic: a prowling, encircling presence that sweeps at and around these hysterical figures as they bite and claw at each other. Possession rubs our faces in domestic neglect and an escalating, apocalyptic sense of violence. The viewer is incriminated then, judged as a participant for daring to peak into these lives. Perhaps, since we're privy to scenes and sequences outside of the experience of Neill's Mark, we can delude ourselves (at least for short spell) that we have a more complete view of this relentlessly complex woman but, as Italian special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi's presence in the opening credits begins to take shape, it becomes clear that we're just as clueless and susceptible to manipulation as the rest of the people that Anna gleefully deludes. 

Kazuki Tomokawa - Doushita

The Odyssey by Dani Torrent

The Avalanches - Blue Shadows ft. Karen O