Screening Room

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 2

September 7, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Kevin Costner’s sweeping saga charting the disparate lives intertwined through the often brutal expansion of the 19th century American west continues to focus on the experience of women on the frontier. Picking up events and storylines immediately after the first film (viewing that is required to understand the interwoven narrative threads), the tale of desert town Horizon is told via the wagon trains, cowboys, first nation tribes, pioneers, chinese tradespeople, sex workers and the moneymen in Chicago selling plots of land – and dreams – in an unknown region. Graves are prominent in every story…

ella hunt, horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, kevin costner, sam worthington, sienna miller

Having been widowed in the first chapter, Frances (Sienna Miller) navigates a new life for her and her daughter, understanding that though she is resilient and resourceful, it is the protection of men that will inform their future. Meanwhile, on the dusty wagon train plodding across dangerous territory, snobby Brit Mrs Proctor (Ella Hunt) discovers both the venality and usefulness of male companions as she makes her way solo, her priggish ways broken into a new kind of defiance. Three put-upon sisters working for their Pa test the limits of their independence, while the on-the-run sex worker (Abbey Lee) helped by Costner’s stoic Hayes Ellison continues to evade the Sykes brothers. And the matriarch and granddaughter of a Chinese lumber company and teahouse are instrumental in building a settlement from canvas dwellings to a homestead community.

horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, sienna miller

horizon: an american saga – chapter 2, sam worthington

Costner and other male stars are integral to events but designed as it is (a planned four-part saga), their stories will have room to develop in later instalments. While Hayes Ellison was key in part one, he takes a back seat here, keeping his counsel at a horse breaking camp until his temper frays to thrilling effect with a bar room shootout. As a rich tapestry of tales destined for the long haul, Chapter Two could feel unresolved to some, but if viewed as a halfway point in a robust series, it hits emotional highs. The story of Mrs Proctor is particularly affecting as she is terrorised by Douglas Smith’s Sig, her despair galvanising in the cool waters of a river – a baptism for a new life and attitude. Miller also makes an impression with two key speeches; one explaining the options open to her to Sam Worthington’s cavalryman, another parsing the need for sisterhood in a cruel climate.

Costner’s shootout aside, it’s a quieter, more contemplative instalment, setting up high plains wagon chases, skirmishes with first nations and dead shots from the backs of horses (seen in the end reel preview of Chapter Three). And the scenery… lensed with a sweeping score, Costner understands the lexicon of Westerns and provides numerous moments that will make aficionados’ hearts soar.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2 will be released later this year

Screening Room

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX

September 4, 2024

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

Four primary-coloured umbrellas: the first sign that Joker: Folie à Deux is going to be different. Very different. The sequel to Todd Phillips’ Joker, the film that radically reinvented Batman’s nemesis from the DC Comics universe, this continues the story of Arthur Fleck, the wannabe stand-up who winds up on a murder spree in Gotham City. Now in Arkham Asylum, he’s being transported across a rain-drenched courtyard when up pop the umbrellas, held by the guards. Singin’ In The Rain? Well, they soon will be.

Reinventing the film as a musical, Joker: Folie à Deux takes old standards like ‘That’s Entertainment’ and The Carpenters’ ‘Close To You’, slipping them into the narrative, as Arthur shifts, in his mind at least, from comedian to all-round entertainer. Joining him centre stage is Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), better known to fans as Dr. Harley Quinn (traditionally, the Joker’s love interest in DC lore). Here, she’s been committed to Arkham by her mother for arson; she even sets a communal prison room on fire, allowing her and Arthur to get some brief alone time to spark their obsessive romance.

joaquin phoenix, joker: folie à deux, lady gaga, todd phillips

Lee is obsessed by Arthur, his murderous actions inspiring her just as they do the thousands of deranged followers that line the streets with ‘Free Joker’ posters – ‘he’s not sick, he’s perfect’ she insists. With the title a French-language reference to a shared mental insanity, the film is something of a twisted love story, as an affection-starved Arthur goes looking for love. Complementing this, the narrative also follows Arthur as he stands trial, his lawyer (Catherine Keener) using the defence that he has a “fragmentation” in his personality, that Joker is entirely separate from Arthur. To dodge the death penalty, Fleck needs to convince that Joker does not lie just below the surface, but with a baying mob outside and Lee feeding his alter-ego, which aspect of him will triumph?

Back in the role that won him an Oscar in 2020, Phoenix once again fully inhabits the part, physically and emotionally. Just the sight of his protruding shoulder blades, gaunt face and cadaver-like chest will make you shiver; but more than that, it’s another masterclass in conveying trauma and mania. The flourish of Joker is incrementally hinted at with the twirl of a jacket or a barking laugh, later unleashed to full tap-dancing, snarling bravado in colour-pop dream sequences and desaturated courtrooms. Alongside him, Gaga further cements her status as a performer of note; not only does she handle the songs adeptly, as you’d expect, but she gives a resonant turn as a woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

Once again, Phillips conjures a grim, grimy and grey Gotham, a world so dirty you feel like scrubbing your hands afterwards. And while the film may boast less fiery intensity than the first, the bold choice to twist a prison movie and courtroom drama into a Hollywood Golden Age musical has to be admired. In the words of Al Jolson, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM
Joker: Folie à Deux releases in cinemas 2 October

Screening Room

QUEER

September 3, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino returns to another beloved book with an intense gay romance at its centre with Venice Film Festival buzz-generator Queer; adapting’ Beat icon Wiliam S Burroughs’ unfinished autobiographical novel tracking his time in Mexico City and South America during the fifties. Starring Daniel Craig as ‘gentleman of independent means’ and heroin addict, Lee, as he wrestles with love for a young man (Drew Starkey) who ‘obliges’ him with sex, Guadagnino puts his particular swoony stamp on Burroughs’ raw, explicit prose.

Divided into chapters and crafted from Queer and other Burroughs’ works as well as aspects of his real life, Queer begins with Chapter 1: How Do You Like Mexico? – a portrait of crumpled, mezcal-swilling ex-pat Lee as he looks for love in gay scene bars alongside his unlucky friend Joe (Jason Schwartzman, a rumpled delight) and the so-called ‘green lantern boys’. While outwardly he seems to be having fun as he lurches from bar to bar and picks up men, Lee searches for something more profound. As he listens to the hapless Joe’s misadventures with hook-ups, Guadagnino has him flicker transparently like a ghost, becoming insubstantial, incomplete. He wanders the streets in slow-mo soundtracked by Nirvana’s ‘Come As You Are’ (linking Lee’s sensitivity to Cobain’s as well as their shared drug of choice) and takes one night stands back to a seedy motel that looks like a Hopper painting.

daniel craig, drew starkey, jason schwartzman, luca guadagnino, queer

It’s during these boozy wanderings that his eyes meet over a cock fight (of course) with handsome ex-US serviceman Allerton. An experienced cruiser, Lee is tilted off-balance by Allerton – a man whose sexuality he struggles to read and who makes him a blushing, awkward, giggling suitor. The duo hang out, watching Jean Costeau’s Orpheus and drinking until Lee can bear the tension no more. In a speech lifted directly from the text, Lee confesses his ‘proclivities’. Allerton, as slinky as a big cat, agrees to accompany him home and a complex love affair begins that starts with an erotic sex scene and travels to Ecuador and the Amazon jungle for hallucinogenic drug trips and dark nights of the soul.

That Daniel Craig can do more than Bond is well established but his performance here might startle those most comfortable with him in impeccable suits seducing women – and Guadagnino gives him a couple of cheeky vodka martinis to sip on in a nice nod to his famous role. But this is Craig flexing all his career muscles; sozzled and soulful, vulnerable and nuanced, he paints a universal portrayal of the lovelorn, the disconnected. There’s a delightful pathos and humour he brings to scenes where he begs Allerton to meet him halfway in running headlong into love and lust. And in sexual moments he radiates a tenderness and yearning that gives greater depth to scenes tabloid newspapers will no doubt have a field day with.

Building out on Naked Lunch’s centipede as a motif, the drugs trips of The Yage Letters and the author’s thoughts from his Last Words, as well as incidents from his real life (his wife’s accidental shooting is represented in party tricks and dream sequences), screenwriter Justin Kuritzes and Guadagnino create a lurid study of one man’s interior life. Filmed entirely at Cinecittà Studios, the locations are rendered in a vintage postcard feel that’s like a memory and the anachronistic soundtrack takes in Prince and New Order to give further elasticity to the idea of reality. This is a just a version of a fifties moment in time, intended to be like the magic mirror in Cocteau’s Orpheus or the high promised by Lesley Manville’s feral botanist who provides Lee and Allerton with the yage cocktail deep in the jungle; a reflection. ‘It’s not a portal’ she tells them. The same is true of Queer – it’s a comedy, a love letter, a travelogue, a heroin withdrawal account, a trip, a study of an artist… depending on your own proclivities.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Queer is in cinemas now

Screening Room

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

September 2, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature length film boasts his expected vibrant reds, strong female performances and a discourse on life/death; but in transposing his signature style to a chilly New York there’s a fresh austerity and overt Sirkian sensibility also at play. The result is a vibrant and life-affirming treat as well as a battle cry against climate change.

alessandro nivola, esther mcgregor, john tuturro, julianne moore, tilda swinton, the room next door

Inspired by Sigrid Nunez’s novel What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar explores our relationship to death (both personally and environmentally) via two old journalist friends who once painted the town red as magazine writers and who reconnect when author Ingrid (Julianne Moore) learns war reporter Martha (Tilda Swinton) is terminably ill. Suffering from stage 3 cervical cancer, no-nonsense Martha has tired of her gruelling treatments and is now at peace with the idea that she ‘deserves a good death’. Ingrid, by comparison, has just written a novel exploring her terror of dying, so when Martha asks her to be in ‘the room next door’ of a gorgeous rental house when she commits euthanasia, she’s both honoured and horrified.

Within a soaring melodrama score and colour-pop production design, Moore and Swinton discuss the pleasures of life (books, writing, birdsong, movies), shared experiences (John Tuturro plays the eco-warrior lover both women have shared) and the depletion of self caused by the ravages of illness. As Martha reaches her end, she looks back to her past – to the war experiences that have shaped her and the conception of the daughter she’s estranged from, told in flashbacks with a luminous Esther McGregor playing young Martha.
There are moments of great visual beauty as expected from an Almodóvar film; pink snowflakes drifting over a Manhattan skyline, Moore and Swinton lying side by side on pistachio-green and cherry-red sun loungers, the lush tones of an autumn garden. And in the hands of such accomplished actors, the emotional magnificence also gleams; Swinton reciting poetry and the dialogue to John Huston’s The Dead as a tear slips from her eye, the way Moore reacts to a closed red door. Though Swinton playing her own daughter may jar for some, it works in a film that champions the idea of leaving the world with the next generation in mind, and reminds us all to be grateful for the small wonders of everyday life. After watching this the world may look all the more vivid on leaving the dark of the theatre…

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Room Next Door releases in cinemas later this year

Screening Room

WOLFS

September 1, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

When a married New York DA (Amy Ryan) finds herself in a sticky situation – a dead hook-up in a penthouse suite – she calls the number of a man whose function is clean-up jobs. As the body of the boy she’s picked up in the lobby lies among shattered glass after bedroom hijinks, the voice on the line assures her he’ll take care of her problem.

Enter George Clooney’s nameless lone wolf, an anonymous man with a body bag and a grumpy demeanour. ‘Nobody can do what I do,’ he insists. As he sets about his task, there’s a knock at the penthouse door: Brad Pitt’s fixer has also arrived. Dressed similarly and touting the same skill set, it seems Clooney’s not the only hitman in town – and now both of them are mixed up in a mess that reaches further than the luggage trolley of a high end hotel.

amy ryan, austin abrams, brad pitt, george clooney, jon watts, wolfs

The whys and wherefores of plot are immaterial in a film that understands the main attraction is seeing real-life buddies zing off each other as two grouchy middle-aged mystery men forced to work together when a standard job takes an unexpected turn. Suffice to say, drugs, cartels, shootouts, gangster weddings and a dopey business student (Euphoria’s Austin Abrams) are involved as the duo try to unravel a conspiracy overnight and in the process discover a grudging respect for each other.

Written and directed by Jon Watts as an amiable Ocean’s II, the appeal of Wolfs is the built-in chemistry between Pitt and Clooney as they banter and bitch through Chinatown foot and car chases, Croatian dance routines, and an interrogation in a hideous rent-by-the-hour hotel room. Their overlapping chatter plays like jazz, the result of years of off-screen friendship and the experience to inhabit these roles effortlessly. Both actors have fun with their age, leaning into gags about bones cracking, needing Advil after some strenuous gunslinging and struggling to read pager messages without their glasses. Clooney’s car playlist is also a nice boomer dig; he listens to Sade’s Smooth Operator as he drives to a job.

It’s a tough gig for Abrams to steal any focus as the third wheel, a daffy teen who fancies a bit danger and ends up with the equivalent of a two killer dads (who might ice him but will also tell him to eat with his mouth closed), but he makes a lively impression – not least in a practical effect when he leaps over a moving car in tighty-whities and tube socks.

Clooney and Pitt clearly had a hoot making the film and the door is left open for more of the same if audiences also have a laugh. Abandon plot logic and Wolfs is daft fun with a rat pack vibe..

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Wolfs releases in cinemas 20 Sept before transferring to Apple TV+

Screening Room

THE ORDER

August 31, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Justin Kurzel adds to his cinematic rebel poems with another gorgeously-lensed look at a real-life disruptor and his skewed ideals. After tackling outliers in The True History Of The Kelly Gang and Nitrum, the director turns his attention to Bob Mathews, an eighties white power leader whose rhetoric in Reagan-era America threatened to metastasize to civil unrest and polarisation. Like his previous historical films, Kurtzel’s latest boasts a disquieting pertinence to current events and cultural leaders…

justin kurzel, jude law, nicholas hoult, tye sheridan, the order

Focusing on Mathews (Nicholas Hoult) as he tries to build a white supremacy army in 1983-4 via bank robberies, bombings and assassinations as well as the broken FBI agent, Terry Husk (Jude Law) tracking him, The Order shows two men who are only divided by the law in their obsessions. The radical offspring of a hate-preacher, Mathews is charismatic, unfaithful and blinkered in his pursuit of an Aryan America as he recruits and seduces. His wife and mistress are secondary to the excitement he feels carrying out his six-step to domination, his bank robberies (thrillingly executed in nail-biting interludes) a high. Husk is damaged goods – a chain-smoking, gum chewing blunt instrument with a drink problem, he’s survived an incident in New York and has transferred to the quiet of Idaho in the hopes of ‘putting back the pieces’. His wife and children are secondary to his quarry, silently admonishing via unanswered phone calls he makes as he digs into white power in the state. When the local nous of a deputy sheriff (Tye Sheridan) links a couple of leads, Husk realises he has a bigger case on his hands and brings in a bureau former colleague to start a manhunt. As the film toggles between Mathews and Husk, it becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller – with Mathews getting sloppy and Husk getting (literally) messy as old injuries plague him.

It’s a retro presentation; the eighties production design, costumes and lensing recalling numerous previous examples of the genre. And that’s no bad thing. Law’s Husk is straight from the Popeye Doyle school of big swings and delicious to watch, even his constant gum-chewing informs his characterisation. Sheridan is the heart of the picture providing an emotional moment that hurts, and Hoult nails the blue-eyed fanaticism of a man who may tell his mates to stop burning crosses but can’t see the inevitability of his actions. Jed Kurzel’s thrumming score soars as high as the camera, swooping above stunning Idaho and Washington state vistas to show the beauty of the country Mathews is fighting so hard to control.

End credit notes tell us that the text used by Mathews has been utilised repeatedly since by far-right groups as a blueprint for their activities – including the most recent storming of the Capitol. It’s a stark reminder that though this picture plays like a slice of vintage filmmaking, the beliefs at the centre of the story are very much still relevant. As an audience, Kurzel asks us which side of the ideological line we choose to stand on. Powerful stuff.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Order releases in cinemas later this year

Screening Room

BABYGIRL

August 31, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Halina Reijn’s erotic drama has caused a stir at Venice thanks to its frank, female-gaze portrayal of desire and the nuances of power. Though it shares some similarities with Secretary, Fatal Attraction and even Fifty Shades Of Grey, Babygirl is buzzy because it unflinchingly explores the ‘orgasm gap’ between men and women, and paints a picture of a complex, contradictory middle-aged woman’s lust without anyone’s bunny being boiled.

Nicole Kidman stars as tech CEO Romy who has it all together: a loving theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas), two lovely daughters, two sprawling houses (a Manhattan apartment and a country mansion), the respect of her colleagues and pots of money. A glass ceiling breaker and ballbuster, Romy has no problem asking for what she wants in boardrooms or cosmetic clinics but struggles to do so in bed. Opening on her climaxing astride her spouse, Romy sneaks off to another room post-copulation to masturbate over Daddy kink porn. There, in the darkness, on the floor, her feral orgasm is different and real compared to the performance she has put on for her partner. What Romy presents to her family and the world is very different to what she wants, and even then she’s not entirely sure what that is. Which is why new intern, Samuel (Harris Dickinson) intrigues and shocks her when he seems to instinctively sense exactly what she might need. A bold, self-assured young man who can control a raging dog in the street and tells her ‘I think you like to be told what to do’, Samuel whispers ‘good girl’ to her in a restaurant when she glugs a full glass of milk that he sends over to her table.

Romy is a strong, powerful woman who loves her husband, but she’s also a product of her commune upbringing, horny and looking for validation of some of her darker fantasies. Both personas coexist, the spectrum of sexual need explored as the CEO and the intern embark on a push-pull affair tinged with BDSM but is also vulnerable, protective, needy, greedy, bashful and silly. Romy may kneel to lick a sweet from Samuel’s hand or milk from a saucer at his feet, but she will also cling to him as they sway to George Michael’s Father Figure and cuddle like family in a hotel suite bed. When he gives her her first non-masturbatory orgasm the growl she lets out into a grubby carpet is one of liberation and discovery.

The traditional assumption in this kind of cinematic trajectory is that someone will lose their life (literally or figuratively), that danger is associated with such unfettered hunger. But Reijn confounds expectation by metering out no punishment. Rather the protagonists discover something of themselves and use their individual power to move forward – whether that’s the ambitious exec assistant Esme (Talk To Me’s Sophie Wilde), a collaborative Jacob or Romy herself. The only person getting shafted in this tale is a predatory exec who tries to leverage his power for sex. As Samuel says at one point to another character; ‘that’s an outdated view of sexuality’.

Modern, sex-positive and optimistic, Babygirl is sure to prompt post-credit discussion and possibly even small revolutions in marital beds.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Babygirl will release in cinemas later this year

Screening Room

DISCLAIMER

August 30, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Alfonso Cuarón’s dark seven-part thriller exploring victim blaming, the madonna/whore complex and the toxicity of trauma gives audiences a warning straight off the bat that they should question what they see. As feted documentarian Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) receives another award to add to her collection, the host of the ceremony touches on narrative and form and warns that they can be used for manipulation. Narrative and form are certainly used to skewed and smart effect in this elegant adap of Renée Knight’s 2015 bestseller as three stories are interwoven across decades.

cate blanchett, leila george, sasha baron cohen, kodi smit-mcphee, louis partridge, alfonso cuarón

In one strand we follow Catherine Ravenscroft as she receives a parcel from an unknown source containing a book that seems to unravel carefully held secrets from her past. The story at the heart of the novel sends her spiralling, impacting her marriage to stuffy lawyer Robert (Sasha Baron Cohen) and estranging her even more from her 25-year-old wastrel son, Nick (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Meanwhile Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline pulling off a perfect befuddled Englishman in the vein of Jim Broadbent) is mourning the loss of his son two decades previously, as well as his wife Nancy (Lesley Manville) more recently. Bereft, Stephen has nothing to live for but embittered revenge. And in a third story, horny inter-railing teen Jonathan (Louis Partridge) can’t keep his eyes off a beautiful young mother (Leila George) on an Italian beach. Grief, betrayal and brutality are bound for all the characters – but the how and why is disquietingly spun across the episodes to a gut-punch denouement that will make audiences question their own assumptions, gender bias and acceptance of narrative. The truth at the heart of this bleak tale is something that is lost repeatedly in the retelling of it, depending on who is crafting the story and what information (or lack of it) they are working with.

It would be churlish to provide any more narrative detail – the pleasure really is in the unpackaging of it – but this onion-layered story of perspective is delivered beautifully by Cuarón as writer/director, and his cast. Blanchett is a known powerhouse but she is immense here; by turns frantic, self-absorbed, rageful and ultimately incandescent as a woman being judged. George as a younger version of Catherine is a revelation in a star-making turn as both a vamp and a victim. She and Partridge generate serious heat in explicit scenes that cleverly make viewers complicit in judgement, while Kline and Manville create a blindsiding and heartbreaking portrait of grief that is hard to see past. Each of their narratives twist and turn to a barnstorming final episode that will likely prompt audience introspection about personal and public perception, society and social media’s hurry to punish without due diligence and the way we castigate women for being sexual beings. Knowing what we know at the end might also inform repeat viewing to understand the clues that were there for us to see – if only we weren’t so blinkered. A masterful binge watch that asks pertinent and uncomfortable questions.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Disclaimer premieres on Apple TV+ on 11 October

Screening Room

MARIA

August 30, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Pablo Larraín’s latest portrait of a woman struggling under a media lens (completing the triptych with Jackie and Spencer) is his most linear and conventional approach to teasing out the pain, trauma and self doubt intrinsic to being a famous female figure in the 20th century – but it’s also his most emotionally resonant. That’s perhaps because Angelina Jolie, as opera diva Maria Callas, brings her own life experience of press obsession to the role in a performance that will certainly be in the awards conversation.

angelina jolie, kodi smit-mcphee, maria, pablo larraín, pierfrancesco favino, valeria golino, hollywood authentic

Written by Spencer scribe Steven Knight, Maria follows a 53-year-old Callas in the last week of her life in 1977 Paris, wrestling her artistic and romantic demons as her diet-ravaged body fails. An imperious, self-confessed ‘tiger’ who has weathered scandal (her affair with Aristotle Onassis), and criticism (from her mother and the media), Callas pops pills and sees visions from her life as her faithful butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) and housekeeper (Alba Rohrwacher) watch on. Split into four distinct acts, Callas explores the guilt, shame, pride, triumph and sadness that has coloured her career from being a shy girl in Athens singing for German officers for cash to the feted beauty ‘La Callas’ who has lost her magnificent voice. Hooked on sedatives, Maria invites a film crew into her life to document her last interview led by Kodi Smit-McPhee (pulling double duty at the Venice Film Festival on this and Disclaimer). ‘Is the film crew real?’ Maria’s butler asks doubtfully, gently, as he dutifully heaves her grand piano around her apartment on her daily whim. Maria is, at this stage, a glacial, imposing primadonna experiencing hallucinations who claims that ‘there is no life away from the stage’ yet tells a fan of the pain – both mental and physical – of performing. Taking her last bow, she crafts an emotional autobiography of sorts, a ‘human song’ of her life.

Knight carefully plots a path that allows opera buffs to enjoy parallels between Callas’ life and her roles while also informing the uninitiated of the key beats of the star’s career – taking in other famous faces including Onassis, Marilyn Monroe and JFK. In a pleasing full-circle moment with Jackie, Callas and Kennedy have a breakfast table conversation about love that elegantly illustrates the commodifying of famous women and Maria’s sharp wit that netted her a reputation as ‘difficult’.

Beautifully filmed and costumed, Maria is as operatic as any of the arias sung during the runtime and the supporting artists are a delight (Valeria Golino shines in a key moment as Callas’ sister who suggests that her sibling closes the door on the pain of letting music so destructively into her life), but the main event in every way is Jolie. The way she inhabits any space, moves with the elegance of a cat and talks in Callas’ precise, cool diction is mesmerising. And when she sings – the older Maria moments are mostly her own voice while the younger Callas is the diva’s real vocal – the emotion, drama and effort she brings to the music is genuinely impressive. Jolie trained for months to inhabit Callas and the results recall the lived-in performance of Cate Blanchett in Tar – a Volpi cup winner at the festival and gong magnet throughout the year. Jolie will likely be on the same trajectory.

Words by JANE CROWTHER
Maria will release on Netflix later this year

Screening Room

ALIEN: ROMULUS

August 9, 2024

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

Much like Disney + show The Mandalorian immerses you back into the Star Wars universe, so Alien: Romulus is a film that deep dives you into the world that began with Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece Alien. Directed by Fede Álvarez (Don’t Breathe), this takes place between the events of Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens, as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation deal with the fallout of the creature that wreaked havoc in the Nostromo ship, killing all but warrant officer Ellen Ripley in Scott’s original movie.

Here, Álvarez selects a young cast as his leads, led by Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny, who plays Rain, a young woman entombed in W-Y’s Jackson Star’s Mining Colony. With her is Andy (Industry’s David Jonsson), an android she treats as her brother. Rescued by Rain’s father, Andy’s only directive is to keep Rain safe. But things change when youngsters Tyler (Archie Renaux), his sister Kay (Isabela Merced) and fellow renegades Bjorn (Spike Fearn) and Navarro (Aileen Wu) approach Rain with a plan to escape the colony.

isabela merced, cailee spaeny, archie renaux, fede alvarez, alien: romulus

Desperate to jet off to a faraway planet, the gang can only do it with the help of some cryogenic pods that will put them to sleep for the 9-year journey. Fortunately, a nearby derelict space station that’s just been found has the requisite equipment. But it just so happens that this giant vessel, with its bays named ‘Romulus’ and ‘Remus’, is overrun with facehuggers – the skittery, spider-like blighters that use humans as incubators to give birth to the Aliens. Soon, this heist becomes a terrifying matter of survival.
Álvarez doesn’t just offer up another tale of extraterrestrials devouring their prey, although there is plenty of that, including one spellbinding scene involving gravity and the creatures’ acid blood. Instead, the script expands on the universe first conjured by Dan O’Bannon in his script for the original Alien, notably exploring the ruthless machinations of “the company”, who will go to any lengths to research these creatures – the so-called “perfect organism”.

A resourceful Spaeny is a marvellous alternative to Sigourney Weaver, who played Ripley across the first four Alien movies. But alongside her, the cast is fresh and exciting, particularly Jonsson, who plays Andy superbly (going from timid to something more sinister). Visually, the film neatly captures the worn-down look of the Alien films, thanks to production designer Naaman Marshall, while Benjamin Wallfisch’s throbbing score is propulsive. The best blockbuster this summer, Alien: Romulus is also the best Alien movie in nearly forty years.

Alien: Romulus is in cinemas now

Screening Room

HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA – CHAPTER 2

September 7, 2024

Screening Room

JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX

September 4, 2024

Screening Room

QUEER

September 3, 2024

Screening Room

THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

September 2, 2024

Screening Room

WOLFS

September 1, 2024

Screening Room

THE ORDER

August 31, 2024

Screening Room

BABYGIRL

August 31, 2024

Screening Room

DISCLAIMER

August 30, 2024

Screening Room

MARIA

August 30, 2024

Screening Room

ALIEN: ROMULUS

August 9, 2024

All photographs by Greg Williams

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