Thursday, December 19, 2024

Queer draws us into Luca Guadagnino's world of desire. It's Mexico City in the Fifties, and we've settled among a collective of outcast American expats, moneyed enough that they can go in search of paradise. Sticky red motel corridors are brushed by the lights of neon signage, the air heavy with casual sex, which seems to rush by with an exhale of breath – intimate, explicit, but somehow elusive. Outside, the night sky looks like spilled ink, like it does in Douglas Sirk's technicolour masterpieces of the midcentury.

Guadagnino has followed up this year's triumphant tennis drama Challengers with a film that would seem miles apart, yet treats desire equally as a kind of supernatural possession. It's often frightening in his work, because its victims are always left with their hearts exposed, an image he treats literally here as he did in his 2018 horror remake Suspiria, and its climactic display of a woman tearing open her own rib cage.

Read the full review here. 

Out this week: 

Cinemas across the land this week will be dominated by one film alone: Disney's Mufasa: The Lion King. 

Written by Clarisse Loughrey

Disney, it seems, is at least open to feedback. While the 2019 version of The Lion King may have been a hit, critics and audiences alike expressed an aversion to the uncanny inexpressiveness of its photorealistic, computer-animated felidae. And so, in its prequel, the lions have all had melted plastic grins slapped across their mouths. Some may prefer this. Personally, it frightened me on a primordial level, as if one of my old rainbow-splattered Lisa Frank pocket portfolios from the Nineties had gained sentience.

The sell here is both the promise of jacked-up anthropomorphism, and the talents of Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins, director of the miraculous Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018). The news that he'd direct Mufasa: The Lion King sparked a minor controversy. Could he really turn what, on paper, seemed like arbitrary franchise mining into something extraordinary?

Unfortunately, finding the Jenkins in Mufasa is like putting a blindfold on in the Louvre and trying to feel your way to the Mona Lisa. Here and there, we can find the faint outline of his genius: a tight closeup on a character's face, confronting the audience with the essence of their animalhood; a protracted take, in which the camera bobs and weaves between dry grasses; shots that simulate what it might look like if you attached a GoPro to a lion cub's forehead. But, ultimately, Mufasa is yet another damning case study of the fragility of the artist's voice in the modern studio machine. Is there anything Jenkins could have realistically done to tip the scales on what a dreary, formless piece of storytelling this is?

The film's promotional cycle has repeatedly insisted we deserve to know why Scar, our original villain, turned out so catty and jealous. Supposedly he was once called Taka (Kelvin Harrison Jr), and was neither dry nor sarcastic, simply British. His antagonism towards Mufasa (Aaron Pierre) stemmed from a ruptured, childhood bond that brought them as close as brothers. Mufasa, torn from his family, is reluctantly adopted into Taka's pride by his royal parents, Obasi (Lennie James) and Eshe (Thandiwe Newton).

Read the full review here. 

A document of where I've gone and the things I've seen 

Saturday, 14 December
As the year winds down, I decided to catch a couple of next year's early, awards-favoured releases. First up, Brady Corbet's The Brutalist. 

Tuesday, 17 December 

And to follow up, RaMell Ross's Nickel Boys. These are both extraordinary films, and I look forward to sharing my thoughts in the coming weeks. 

Wednesday, 18 December 

Oops! My team managed to win Ali Plumb's Untitled Film Quiz Project for a second time. 

Alessandro Nivola and Adrien Brody star in 'The Brutalist' 

The fact Alfred Hitchcock's The Ring (1927) is the only film of his with an original script credited to him alone doesn't ultimately distinguish this early silent (his fourth feature) in an especially meaningful way. It's about a love triangle, a plot device he'd repeatedly revisit, in which boxers "One Round" Jack Sander (Carl Brisson) and Australian heavyweight Bob Corby (Ian Hunter) duke it out for the affections of a woman (Lillian Hall-Davis).

It's treatment of both race and gender make it a difficult watch for modern audiences. Yes, it presents us with a somewhat diverse picture of London in the twenties, but its treatment of and language directed towards its Black characters is abhorrent. And there's little to its lead female character that suggests she's anything more than a materialistic bauble to be coveted and won. We have no idea what she sees in these men, only that she'll sway towards the guy with the biggest pay check and muscles.

Still, it's a useful pitstop in Hitchcock's race to become the "Master of Suspense". Its montage sequences are drawn directly from his years working in Germany, where he was able to watch FW Murnau make The Last Laugh (1924), and absorb all those expressionist techniques. His focus on the snake-headed bangle gifted by Corby to the woman, kept hidden or revealed at key moments, shows a symbolic, near-mythological treatment of objects, and an attention to detail that would become key to his genius.

And though The Ring is no thriller, Hitchcock will still regularly manipulate his audience's awareness in order to keep them on edge. There's a playfulness to how he blocks certain scenes and shots. In the boxing sequences, he might momentarily conceal his combatants using crowds or bodies. We see a hand held up high above a barrier of people's heads, in order to start the mandatory eight count, without knowing who's been knocked down and who's about to walk away victorious. That sense of precision, of utmost control, would only flourish as he explored the worlds of sound and colour.

 The 11 disc Blu-ray box set 'Hitchcock The Beginning' is available now. 

Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk pose during the 80th annual Academy Awards nominees luncheon held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 4, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.

(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

The Studio Ghibli classic Spirited Away returns to UK and Irish cinemas this Boxing Day, 26 December. It's not quite a festive watch, but it's lovely all the same, so I'll be revisiting it next week. 

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