The Fly by Mizmaru Kawahara

Tonebox & Lucy in Disguise - Against the Odds

Magdalena Bay - Paint Me a Picture // Human Happens

Nosferatu

This latest Nosferatu is clearly the work of, in writer-director Robert Eggers, someone re-examining a piece that wields a massive, totemic power in their imagination. Although a basic beat-for-beat structure remains in place from FW Murnau's silent shocker, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (and, of course Bram Stoker's Dracula, the novel it plagarised), the specific detailing or connective tissue are being reconfigured to please the current custodian. There's a fluency on display here, a piece stewarded by someone who has very clearly turned these ideas and images over in their mind until they have become innately enormous and striking. Like Peter Jackson's embellishment of King Kong, Nosferatu's emotional volume is cranked way up in this telling, attempting to simulate the pulverising electrical currents that were sent through Eggers when he was himself a young, receptive viewer. The clearest indication of this specific kind of scrutiny is that although each of the film's characters remain functionally identical, their level of agency - or how they express the power that is innate to them - is completely different. 

Lily Rose-Depp follows Greta Schröder as Ellen Hutter but, unlike her big screen ancestor, Rose-Depp's Ellen isn't a model of Victorian propriety. She argues back, standing up to men who would have her be seen but not heard. She's in command of her sexuality too, able to make demands of her husband, Nicholas Hoult's Thomas Hutter, that surprise and even startle him. Unlike the lovemaking experienced by her dearest friend Anna, played by Emma Corrin, this sex is premised specifically on pleasure rather than dutiful procreation. Comparatively, the 1922 version of the Ellen character was positioned as being antithetical to Max Schreck's wretched, lustful Count: a virginal and uncomplicated woman that is so pure that when Orlok dares to drink her blood he lingers far too long in his feasting, allowing daybreak to touch his flesh then wipe him away, leaving a smoking mess on the rug. In this way 1922's Ellen facilitated an outcome but had very little to do otherwise but fret for her imperiled husband. In Eggers' revision Ellen is something of a psychic, an ability stoked in her by an unusually lonely early life. 

Where Schröder's Ellen suggested a stable, motherly sort of affection (and therefore the basis for a loving family), Rose-Depp's version is intertwined with her ghoul, their union rooted in some strange supernatural connection established years before she met her husband, presumably during her childhood. Bill Skarsgård's Count Orlok is something of a lingering or even vengeful ex then, Eggers rearranging the pieces of Dracula so that the vampire's forlorn affections have purchase within this story beyond the idea that there is an immortal cad who labours under the belief that the wife he knew in his human life has been resurrected then returned to him. Although not as creeping as Max Schreck's verminous, almost pitiful Orlok, neither is Skarsgård's take as resplendently romantic as the Dracula that Gary Oldman played in Francis Ford Coppola's sumptuous adaptation. This Count is decayed and wheezing; his manner obnoxious and impatient. In conversation he wields the demeaning impertinence of those who have lived far beyond any tolerance for self-restraint. Although we are never given opportunity to forget that this mouldering, freshly exhumed hussar is an incredibly old body being animated far beyond its limits, this undying state does not speak to Orlok's power of rejuvenation but to a reluctance within Ellen to let this creature completely fade away. It is the rotten Orlok who is under Ellen's spell then. 

Dedisart - COMPLEX

Kamen Rider Black by Shinji Chibana

Hayley Williams - True Believer

Steely Dan - Dirty Work

One Battle After Another

Over the course of a hurried two hours and forty minutes, One Battle After Another, from writer-director-producer Paul Thomas Anderson, interrogates ideas of infatuation and how, in the long-term, these fizzier or even irrational feelings pale in comparison to the enduring, undefeatable love experienced by a parent who demands to be present in their child's life. We experience both of these clashing wavelengths through Pat Calhoun, a washed-up anti-fascist activist played by Leonardo DiCaprio who, latterly, goes by the name of Bob Ferguson. In his younger years Pat was the explosives guy for an insurrectionist movement who tasked themselves with liberating shivering families from the ICE detention centres dotted around California. Although clearly willing to place himself in incredibly dangerous situations as a way of expressing his personal ideals, Pat's stake in the French 75 revolutionary group does seem to hinge on the participation of Teyana Taylor's Perfidia, a short-lived but beguiling presence in One Battle whose influence extends far beyond her screentime. 

Compared to the rest of her French 75 allies, who all dabble with concealment and disguise, Perfidia is brasher, preferring to operate openly and even outlandishly. While teammates pick at masks, covering their mouths and lower faces, Perfidia delights in revealing herself, demanding to be noted, even admired. She's a whirlwind, whipping up everything she touches and behaving like the centrepiece in a Hype Williams music video. We are shown that her violent, unapologetic approach to activism is intertwined with her sexuality; she practically begs Bob to fuck her when a bomb they have just planted is seconds away from detonating. While Bob is keen to organise their pairing into the stability of a relationship, and everything that comes with that, Perfidia is playing away. Finding herself locked into a dom-sub dynamic with a prissy jack-booter, played by Sean Penn, who she previously attempted to victimise while on an assignment. Turns out that Penn's Colonel Lockjaw gets off on being dominated, specifically, by a black woman and Perfidia is at least somewhat agreeable to serving that kink if it keeps her out of jail, using violent abashment to physically put this authoritarian in his place.

With a child now in the picture - whose onscreen conception can either be attributed to Bob and Perfidia tearing at each other's clothes in a getaway car while a pylon implodes or Perfidia inserting a firearm into Lockjaw's rectum - this new mother retreats from domesticity, sinking into a particularly destructive kind of postpartum depression. While Perfidia pursues an agenda based on a ruthless self-interest, betraying her comrades in the process, Bob flees across the country with their child, settling into paranoid rhythms embellished by substance abuse. Their daughter though flourishes under the tutelage of Benicio del Toro's hilariously calm karate master-cum-community leader, sensei Sergio. Lockjaw, seemingly issued with a blank cheque to rough up and intimidate high-schoolers in a particularly sunken America, is (eventually) hot on their trail, filled with tearful aspirations to impress a ghoulish cabal of white supremacists. To his credit DiCaprio, one of the few remaining film stars able to get non-franchise projects bankrolled based purely on his interest (a trick the actor looks set to repeat in the near future with Michael Mann's Heat sequel), is happy throughout One Battle to take a backseat to his many co-stars. 

Although it's Bob at the forefront of the film's absurdist ad campaign, his character is more of a subordinate presence to both Perfidia and later their daughter, Chase Infiniti's Willa. Bob, armed with a dressing gown and a pair of absolutely gigantic sunglasses, must fight through the depressive fog he has generated in the decade and a half since the mother of his child absconded. Quite unable to focus, Bob is buoyed by sympathetic parties, like Sergio, who guide him step-by-step through these events. Although clearly past his prime, Bob's former life does still inspire respect, with Willa's big cat fixated sensei even referring to him, in conversation with the skate crew about to guide him across burning roofs, as a 'Gringo Zapata'. Throughout the film's many, intersecting predator-and-prey chases then - Anderson thoroughly delivering on the promise of that infamous anecdote about him dropping out of NYU because his screenwriting lecturer denigrated anyone who would aspire to repeat Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Bob is stuck trailing far behind his targets. The beleaguered father never quite arriving on-time to rescue his loved ones, often only able to offer a fleeting distraction or sobbing commiseration. What's important though is that, like Wile E Coyote before him, Bob really does work his hardest to keep up with those who repeatedly exceed his grasp. 

Jackson 5 - Ready or Not (Here I Come)

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Head On

Planet of the Apes by Tony Stella

Magdalena Bay - Second Sleep

Nemesis

If nothing else, director Albert Pyun's Nemesis perfectly simulates the experience of watching bubble-era anime, the type of self-contained shocker sold on video cassettes, after they've been chopped-up and dubbed with an English language track that just so happens to be packed with swear words. No-one seems to be speaking with their own voice; unusual accents and strange cadences are ascribed to recognisable supporting players like Brion James, who otherwise do very little to arrest attention. Plotting is similarly threadbare, Rebecca Charles' screenplay a convoluted back-and-forth between interchangeable factions of treacherous cyborgs as they muddle towards some objective or other. Olivier Gruner, a kickboxing silver medallist and a former Commados Marine in the French Navy, brings a steely detachment to his Alex Rain, a mostly human bounty hunter who jets around the world under the auspices of an unusually hegemonic LAPD. 

Gruner gets to wear his hair at a variety of lengths in Nemesis, from a messianic bob when imprisoned in a seafarer's stockade to a tousled corporate cut when he's on the job. The best of these snips being a close crop that Rain pairs with rounded sunglasses, prickling memories of RanXerox from Heavy Metal, while cooking on a stakeout in Baja. Incomprehensible in repose, Pyun's film bolts upright whenever a firearm is in play. Seemingly every shot in Nemesis' shoot-outs, no matter how fleeting the coverage, has the featured actor holding their finger down like their lives depended on it. Dilapidated buildings, where most of the film's action takes place, are completely shredded by this incessant gunfire. Pyun finding a frequency somewhere between the comedic excess of a Merrie Melodies cartoon and the histrionics of Hong Kong's heroic bloodshed movies. Henchmen load up on the kind of weaponry found adorning a Boeing Superfortress then march forwards, through walls, firing as they go. A cornered Rain is similarly struck by the malleability of surroundings, using his MP5K and a bottomless cache of ammo to blast several successive floors of his flophouse hideout to splinters. 

Alien by Manabu Yashiro

Tame Impala - Dracula

Electronic Visions - Tree Talk

Hard Eight

Like many of the films that the writer-director has made since, Paul Thomas Anderson's debut feature, Hard Eight, is built around human connections that are dramatically premised, at least in part, on clashing emotional or intellectual bandwidths. Anderson using the easily understood language of mentor-mentee relationships here to pick away at his characters, slowly revealing the private motivations that they otherwise keep hidden from each other. John C. Reilly plays John Finnegan, a penniless and presumably homeless gambler, first seen wrapped up in layers of polo shirts and flimsy jackets, spinning yarns about wanting to raise enough money to pay for his mother's funeral. He is approached and treated to cigarettes and a warm cup of coffee by Philip Baker Hall's Sydney, a supernaturally relaxed old timer who takes pity on John, teaching him how to manipulate casino staff into believing you are spending much more money with them than you actually are in order to leverage freebies like comped drinks or an overnight hotel stay. 

We then pick up the story years later with Finnegan firmly ensconced in Sydney's rootless racket, living comfortably and attempting to build a connection with Clementine, a flaky cocktail waitress played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Although cold, hard facts are revealed by the film's conclusion, throughout much of Hard Eight the audience is left to wonder about Sydney's motivations regarding this hopeless pair. Both John and Clementine initially suspect their benefactor of harbouring some sexual desire for them, these speculations clearly informed by grim experience, but Sydney dismisses John's harsh invective and Clementine's frozen, nails-in-thigh shock. An aside about Sydney having a daughter and son somewhere, who he clearly is no longer on speaking terms with, seems to be a more accurate insight into this man's intentions and why he spends a significant amount of time orchestrating, for an infantilised, impulsive protégé, situations and outcomes that do not particularly benefit the older man. Quite the contrary, in fact. On release, back in the mid '90s, the obvious disparities in not just presentation but intelligence between John and Sydney likely raised a few irony poisoned chuckles but, with the benefit of Anderson's wider catalogue now in play, this writer-director's inquiries into these mismatched relationships read as sincere, even tragic. 

The Killer by Michael DeForge

HulkHodn - Now

The Naked Gun

At eighty five minutes, with credits, director Akiva Schaffer's belated addition to The Naked Gun series absolutely breezes by. Liam Neeson squeezes in amongst rapid-fire gags as Frank Drebin Jr, the weepy, equally accident-prone son of Leslie Nielsen's sadly departed Police Squad cop. Neeson, an actor largely known for arthritic action films, is a physically gruffer presence than the oblivious, even childlike Nielsen. Neeson bringing a different sort of energy to this piece then, a slower much more agitated kind of torpor. While Nielsen's Drebin was a straight man tumbling through farcical situations, Neeson's take is closer to a tweak on the sinkhole attention deployed in heavily delayed action movie sequels. He's the ageing but invincible pensioner who is still able to muddle through all sorts of sticky situations. If anything this absurdist take is a lot more honest about the flagrant sort of wish-fulfilment taking place in a movement of films where rickety elder bodies are able to physically crush and pulverise far younger, better maintained physiques. Aside from a spot of thermal voyeurism and some wonderful mime incredulity from Neeson, when asked to consider a glass of fizzing water, much of what lingers about this Naked Gun belongs to Pamela Anderson. The actress not only nailing the tone of her bumbling femme fatale but providing an otherwise flat and photographically unremarkable film with a face that cinematographer Brandon Trost can really pore over. 

Robert Palmer - You Are in My System (12" Mix)

Endless Withdrawal - A Garden Grows Between Us

Revolution+1

Revolution+1, from writer-director Masao Adachi (co-written with Junichi Inoue), takes an appropriately raw approach when recounting the motivations behind the assassination of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe. Soran Tamoto stars as Tatsuya Kawakami, a fictionalised, feedback-haunted version of real-life suspect Tatsuya Yamagami, a middle-aged loner brimming with grievance. You see, Kawakami's father committed suicide and left a successful construction business to his wife and young family, the former of which squandered this nest egg on donations to the Unification Church, a South Korean religious movement that, Kawakami repeatedly reminds us, demands its Japanese adherents live in poverty. This ascetic lifestyle intended as punishment and reparation for the atrocities committed by their home country during the Second World War. In Adachi's film - the director a veteran of experimental documentary filmmaking, softcore pornography, and a former member of the Japanese Red Army based out of Lebanon - Tatsuya Kawakami is presented as an unloved middle child, desperate but apparently unable to make a real, emotional connection with an indifferent mother, played by Satoko Iwasaki. 

Kawakami's mother, who is viewed entirely from the lead subject's aggrieved and icy perspective, is an equally cold even robotic woman, entirely focused on creating a life lived in gruelling penance. This self-mortification extends beyond herself, thwarting Tetsuya's academic aspirations and denying his older, deeply unhappy brother the lymphoma treatment he so desperately needed. As the film begins winding down, with Kawakami readying himself to blast Abe with a homemade shotgun that (disappointingly) this file-shared film does very little to explain the practicalities of, the soon-to-be assassin rents a pleasant car with the last of his life savings and drives to meet his mother. Although it isn't immediately revealed as such, Kawakami imagines a brief interlude in which he is able to approach and even impress his mother with this shiny new purchase. In Tatsuya's fantasies the two enjoy a rapport, his remaining parent eager to dispense with her mindless manual labour and spend the rest of the afternoon with her child. No sooner are things looking up for Kawakami than we are rudely ejected back to reality: Tatsuya sat in his car ignored and alone; watching his frail mother toil from an abashed distance. Adachi's film ruling then that for all of Kawakami's talk of Japanese nationalism or the hypocrisy of highly visible state actors who drum up business for parasitic churches, perhaps what this gunman really (dearly) hoped for was an ability to stake some claim on his mother's attention.

Prince - I Feel for You