Marriage Story follows the awkward, messy, sometime hilarious and often heartbreaking process behind a couple getting divorced in Noah Baumbach’s most sophisticated and engaging film to date. This is a sincere and moving film about adjusting to enormous practical and emotional upheaval, and rather than oscillating sympathy between the couple, it explores how both perspectives are valid, even when conflicting. We see how rage and bitterness twist the memories of innocent details into arguments to discredit the other, but also how underlying all the pain is sorrow, tenderness and loss.
Martin Scorsese’s epic crime film The Irishman encapsulates so much of what has defined Scorsese over the decades as one of the all time great filmmakers. Both familiar and refreshing, Scorsese uses innovative de-aging visual effects with non-lineal narrative techniques to deliver a classic rise and fall – and then fall further – story about real-life gangster Frank ‘The Irishman’ Sheeran. The result is a captivating, energetic and deeply reflective film about masculinity, family, crime, politics and history; bursting with Scorsese’s distinctive approach to melodrama, violence and melancholia.
While I like a number of Pedro Almodóvar films, I’ve never considered myself a fan as such, so I was surprised by how much I loved his highly self-referential and autobiographical new film Pain and Glory. Reunited with once regular leading man Antonio Banderas in the lead role as an ageing filmmaker looking back at his career, childhood, friendships and love affairs, Pain and Glory is very much Almodóvar’s 8½ as similar to Federico Fellini’s 1963 masterpiece it explores the creative process and how great art comes from artists wrestling with the past and interrogating their own identity.
The French animated feature I Lost My Body is an inventive and moving parable about a disembodied hand trying to find its owner intercut with a story about a young man attempting to find his place in the world while still haunted by the loss of his parents as a child. It’s a film both literally and symbolically about dismemberment, exploring the human desire to have a sense of belonging, but also the need to let go. It is excellent storytelling and a terrific example of using animation to tell a story that live action could not deliver as effectively.
The Senegal-set film Atlantics is a striking debut feature film by actor-turned-filmmaker Mati Diop who manages the films tonal changes and blend of genres with impressive ease and finesse. Central to the story is a woman who has been arranged to marry one man, but loves another: an exploited construction worker. What begins as a serene social realist film about class and gender politics, then goes into bewitching fantasy territory as supernatural elements and magical realism are weaved into the film in a way that feels completely organic and yet strikingly bold and original.
The Report is an excellent procedural drama about USA Senate staffer Daniel J Jones’s work on the comprehensive report on the CIA’s use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (in other words, torture) during the Bush Administration. Detailing the investigative process and the political barriers put up against Jones and his team, The Report is a compelling film that firmly reinforces the known fact that popular culture from Zero Dark Thirty to 24 often forgets, and that is that torture is not only extremely unethical, but it has been widely proven to not produce reliable results.
By the Grace of God is a far more restrained and straightforward film than I have come to expect from François Ozon, who is a filmmaker I’ve often struggled to connect with in the past. But I was won over by this meticulous fact-based account of three men who as children were sexually abused by a priest, and now as adults want to hold the Catholic church to account and bring their abuser to justice. The detailed plotting creates a sense of immediacy behind their actions, while the characterisation of the three men conveys the very different ways individuals experience and live with trauma.
Official Secrets is a dramaticisation of what happened to whistleblower Katharine Gun, a British intelligence agency employee who leaked a damaging secret memo in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Structured and presented as a thriller, it ensures that the potentially more mundane aspects of espionage remain gripping, which is especially important in Gun’s story considering the high states. The film explores the illegality of the war she opposed through the culpable actions of not just UK intelligence, but also the UK government, and hostile lawyers and media.
Doctor Sleep is an impressive sequel to the 1977 Stephen King novel The Shining and its masterful 1980 Stanley Kubrick film adaptation. For the most part it uses the original protagonist Danny (now an adult) and the concept of shining to tell a completely different type of story with its own aesthetic; while The Shining was a confined haunted house parable about domestic violence, Doctor Sleep follows the horrific activities of a group of cruel predators across America. When the new film does lean heavily into paying homage to Kubrick’s film, it does so with the perfect blend of reverence and inventiveness.
Despite knowing next to nothing about American singer-songwriter David Crosby, I was completely captivated by the biographical documentary David Crosby: Remember My Name. Crosby is a generous, candid, humble and self deprecating interviewee and the film is beautifully edited to combine archival footage, music performances and recent recorded conversations with Crosby. Sincere while avoiding grandiosity, it is a great insight into the counterculture scene in Laurel Canyon during the 1960s and 1970s as well as a fascinating portrait of a complex and flawed creative spirit.
Another excellent biopic doc about a singer-songwriter (whom I also knew little about) is the Australian film Suzi Q, which covers Suzi Quatro’s rise to fame, her influences and legacy, and her strained relationship with her family. The film convincingly makes the case that she deserves more recognition as a trailblazer for women rock musicians, which is certainly articulated by interviewees that include Joan Jett, Cherie Currie, Debbie Harry and Alice Cooper. Quatro is a fantastic subject who speaks candidly throughout the film, including discussing her varied activities outside of the music industry.
Posted by Thomas Caldwell 
