Screening Room

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

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

BORDERLANDS

August 9, 2024

Words by JAMES MOTTRAM

From Queen Elizabeth I to Bob Dylan in his electric era to The Lord of the Rings’ ethereal Galadriel, two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett can do no wrong. And so she proves again in Eli Roth’s Borderlands, a rambunctious adaptation of the popular videogame series from Gearbox Software.

It’s not often that the chameleon-like Australian star graces blockbusters, although she was glorious as a Russian villain in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Hela in Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok. Here, guns at the ready, she’s Lilith, the red-haired anti-heroine at the heart of this madcap sci-fi that owes a lot of its energy to another MCU title, Guardians of the Galaxy.

Ariana Greenblatt, Borderlands, Cate Blanchett, Edgar Ramírez, Eli Roth, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart

Set in a decaying futuristic far-away world, Lilith is a lone wolf bounty hunter who gets hired by Atlas (Édgar Ramírez), the head of a sophisticated weapons company, to find his daughter. Affectionately known as Tiny Tina (Barbie’s Ariana Greenblatt), this girl has been kidnapped by one of his own men, Roland (Kevin Hart).

After a little arm-twisting, Lilith jets off to the dilapidated Pandora, a planet she knows from her own murky past, where she soon locates her target. Trouble is, Tina doesn’t want to go home – what with her father desperate to use her to help locate something only known as The Vault.

With Lilith, Tina and Roland joining forces, they’re accompanied by a robot named Claptrap (voiced by Jack Black) and the musclebound Krieg (Creed II’s Florian Muneanu), as they progress through Pandora. Much in the way a gamer might pick their way through levels, there are keys to collect and puzzles to solve.

Director Roth (Hostel, Thanksgiving) and his team do a fine job of recreating Pandora in all its grimness, a planet that is over-populated by marauding psychos and creatures known as Threshers. There’s even an appearance by Jamie Lee Curtis as a scientist who lends a helping hand, as this ragtag group look to survive this hot toxic mess.

Along the way, there are some exhilarating action scenes – not least one race through Pandora’s rocky roads that puts a new definition on the phrase ‘monster truck’. Intriguingly, comic star Hart plays it straight as the hardcore action hero, something he pulls off with aplomb, while Greenblatt has a field day as the explosive, dynamite-chucking Tiny Tina. Best of all, Blanchett is on fire as Lilith – yet another killer role to add to her considerable collection.

Borderlands is in cinemas now

Screening Room

DÌDI

August 2, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

In 2008 Fremont, teen Chris Wang (Izaac Wang) is living his summer before he starts high school in a liminal space; vacillating between friendship groups, loathing/loving his older sister, desperate/terrified to have his first kiss, rejecting his heritage but ultimately comforted by it. As he negotiates his world via MySpace, his flip phone and house parties, Chris tries on identities. He’s ‘Dìdi’ at home to his mother and grandma, ‘Wang Wang’ who ‘Wu-tangs’ his spliffs to his bros, a boy who likes chick-flicks to the object of his affection, ‘Asian Chris’ to a skate group he attempts to befriend as a videographer and all manner of hateful names to his screaming sis who’s about to leave home for college. All he really wants from his summer is for his mum to stop being ‘so Asian’ and his crush, Madi (Mahaela Park), to be his girl. But inopportune erections, friendship wipeouts and drunkenness are going to cause acute embarrassment and failure…

dìdi, izaac wang, joan chen, sean wang, shirley chen — Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / Talking Fish Pictures LLC © 2024 All Rights Reserved.

Developed by writer/director Sean Wang as part of the Sundance Institute film programme and winner of the audience award at this year’s festival, Dìdi is a semi-autobiographical confection loaded with equal parts nostalgia and cringe. Based on Wang’s own upbringing (his real-life grandmother plays Dìdi’s), it’s a study of teenage awkwardness through a lens of compassion that evokes comparisons with Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. But it’s also a film that explores the immigrant experience in America via Chris’ interactions with his mom (played with beautiful subtly by Joan Chen). A woman bringing her children up alone with a judgey mother-in-law and broken dreams of her own, Mrs Wang reacts to everyday racism where Chris does not, eats her Big Mac with a knife and fork despite his admonishments and delivers a heartfelt, tender affirmation of him at his lowest point that recalls the tear-inducing speech from father to son in Call Me By Your Name. In this way, Wang’s film absolutely sings to those who will recognise the signifiers of Chris’ specific time and place (Livestrong wristbands, indigo braces, AOL, watching Superbad at pool parties) but will also chime with parents who have endured the cruelties of bratty teens in any era. Equally, the visceral feeling of self-consciousness and angst as an adolescent is one that is (painfully) universal.

Sweet and salty in equal measure, Wang’s expertly curated time-capsule serves as a poignant reminder to parents and children alike that everyone of every generation is simply trying their best to grow into their own approximation of a decent adult. And that that journey is a life-long one.

Dìdi is in cinemas now

Screening Room

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

July 26, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds have been playing social media frenemies since their characters met in 2009’s X-Men Origins so it was only ever a matter of time before the duo did their faux sniping and trash-talking on the big screen. Obviously, since X-Men, Deadpool and Wolverine have been through the wringer, both narratively and corporately – with the ‘Merc With The Mouth’ staging a rebirth driven by Reynolds and Wolverine popping his clogs in James Mangold’s elegant send-off Logan in 2017. Now, Deadpool’s shepherd, Reynolds, is going to assume audiences rocking up for a third instalment of R-rated humour and violence will be up to speed in Disney’s takeover of Fox, comic book lore and the personal lives of its stars – ‘I’m telling Blake’ he says of his real-life wife, and makes cracks about Jackman’s divorce. Like Deadpool himself, this mash-up is fast, loose and takes no prisoners.

deadpool & wolverine, emma corrin, hugh jackman, ryan reynolds, shawn levy, hollywood authentic — © 2024 20th Century Studios / © and 2024 MARVEL. Jay Maidment

So where do we find Wade Wilson this time around? In a pre-title sequence that sets the tone, Deadpool is digging up Wolverine’s grave, breaking the fourth wall and swearing up a storm when he only finds his adamantium skeleton. This soon leads to bloody hell and an explanation; in an exposition-heavy flashback (which Deadpool naturally acknowledges) we discover that the TVA (seen most prominently in the Loki TV series) are messing with timelines again, forcing Deadpool to try to set the universe right by hopping the multiverse and interacting with variants in each dimension. That means multiple versions of Wolverine (all grumpy and soused), Deadpool (Dogpool, Lady Deadpool and more) and alt-universe superheroes cameoed by famous faces. At the heart of the matter is the timeline junkyard, ‘the void’, presided over by Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova – a baddie with links to Charles Xavier, the ability to stick fingers into brains and a kick-ass wardrobe. Unwillingly, Wolverine must accompany Deadpool on a journey that takes in forgotten superheroes, self sacrifice, ironic needledrops, slo-mo team-ups and a lot of dick jokes to find peace.

Though the uninitiated might struggle to get every in-joke zinger and easter egg, Marvel fans will enjoy the ride, perhaps obeying Deadpool when he instructs them to use their ‘special sock’ for some of the frenetic action set pieces. No spoilers, but the cameos are genuinely thrilling callbacks, a fight in a minivan is a cracker (complete with a Greatest Showman hat-tip), Matthew Macfadyen is Tom Wambsgan-witheringly excellent as a TVA suit, the chemistry between Reynolds and Jackman genuinely heartwarming and the end credits BTS and EPK footage a true nostalgia hit. And though there’s numerous digs about Jackman coming out of Wolvie-retirement, the gravitas and soul he brings to proceedings is the true heart of the piece and warrants the grave robbing. (Of course, any tear in the eye is dissipated by Deadpool criticising an oiled up, topless Jackman for getting out his ‘greasy tits’.)

Juvenile, daft, irreverent and sentimental, Deadpool is a messy riot. As the boy themselves say; ‘Let’s f***ing go!’

Deadpool & Wolverine is in cinemas now

Screening Room

TWISTERS

July 18, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

The latest retro refit of a beloved blockbuster taps into the wins of Top Gun: Maverick – not least in harnessing the star wattage of Hangman himself, Glen Powell, to fuel a sexy, entertaining big screen ride designed for the IMAX wow-factor, that you won’t regret spending cash on.

Capitalising on the verve he also displayed in Hit Man, Powell arrives on-screen as a fully formed movie star here – all cocky swagger, dazzling smile and palpable chemistry with Daisy Edgar-Jones – as a cowboy (literally and figuratively) storm chaser, Tyler, who pops fireworks into the eye of tornadoes for his YouTube channel. He’s as loud as his Western shirts and seems to have little care for the destruction and danger these weather events pose to the inhabitants living in their shadow in Oklahoma. He’s the nemesis of a sober scientific team led by Javi (Anthony Ramos) who has co-opted his former classmate, Kate (Edgar Jones) to help in locating twisters in order to study them. Kate’s in a spin of her own having survived a deadly T5 tornado five years earlier which killed her partner and friends in the process of trying out an experiment to stop the storm from raging – but she’s also preternaturally gifted at sensing where and when a twister will land.

As the two teams (hedonistic youtubers vs ethical scientists) try to outsmart each other to get tornado gold, a love triangle forms between Tyler, Javi and Kate, and a film that on the surface is about thrilling audiences with big stunt pieces and effects, begins to explore who the real victims are of cynical capitalism and lack of investment in economies and communities in the path of destruction. A neatly executed bait’n’switch shows the bad guys aren’t necessarily who we might think…

anthony ramos, daisy edgar-jones, glen powell, lee isaac chung, twisters

Minari director Lee Isaac Chung takes up Jan De Bont’s baton from 1996’s Twister (though no flying cows in this one), bringing a gentle authenticity to the Oklahoma people he sketches and a no-holds-barred approach to the action. Like Maverick, Twisters succeeds in landing the emotional journey and investment in character as well as the heart-quickening set pieces that are so furious it’s like spending time in a tumble dryer. Each action sequence ups the ante until a moment set in a cinema (Ha! Of course!) leaves both cast and audience hanging on by their fingertips – breath snatched by the physical and CG effects, but also caring for the outcomes of the characters. It’s a disarming and polished combination that seems to buck the algorithm and gives Twisters the edge on being just another big budget disaster blockbuster cashing in on legacy IP.

Twisters is in cinemas now

Screening Room

MAXXXINE

July 5, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

‘In this business,’ reads the opening quote by Bette Davis, ‘until you’re known as a monster, you’re not a star.’ In Ti West’s slasher trilogy closer (which began with X and continued with Pearl), that correlation between audience appetite for depravity and the ruthless ambition required for climbing the Hollywood ladder is explored via eighties video nasties and lurid headlines. Seeing the two previous films West has made with his star, Mia Goth, isn’t a requirement to get into the scuzzy, febrile vibe of this installment but there are delicious easter eggs and call backs for those who’ve made the multi-era journey.

charley rowan mccain, maxxxine, mia goth, simon prast, ti west

For the uninitiated, X followed a 1979 porn shoot gone bloodily wrong when Pearl, the elderly owner of a Texas farm preys on the cast and crew including Maxine Minx (Goth). Pearl tracks the titular character in her youth (Goth), transmuting from WW1-era farm girl to killer. Now, we reunite with Maxine (Goth) trying to outrun her past in 1985 Hollywood where moral panic about movies and music is at a hysterical high, and serial killer the Night Stalker casts a violent pall over the city. Hoping to transition from adult to mainstream movies, Maxine auditions for a horror sequel directed by Elizabeth Debicki’s helmer just as a venal PI (Kevin Bacon) starts tailing her and her friends begin to be butchered…

The most gleeful and self-reflexive of the trilogy, Maxxxine is filthy-gorgeous and neon-drenched, loaded with Hollywood hat-tips to movie lore and iconic flicks. Theda Bara, the Hollywood sign, Chinatown, Psycho, Mann’s Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Universal’s backlot, the good cop/bad cop, psycho-biddy and the last girl tropes… all are woven into a winky, trashy celebration of the dream factory and the VHS era. The horror is squelchy, lurid, daft (balls are skewered, heads popped), the performances equally ripe.

Bacon is a hoot as a Jake Gittes-lite gumshoe with a Southern accent oozing molasses (who later oozes in a mischievously horrible way) while Debicki and Lily Collins lean into cliches of ballbusters and starlets. But the film belongs to Goth, strutting through every scene with a killer wardrobe and attitude for days. A woman with ‘monstrous’ ambition who talks about fame in terms of simply working hard, Maxine is a trope and a timeless truism. Those background billboards asking for the ‘X Factor’ and the nods to tinseltown cults, audience prurience and the career-making power of scandal are as relevant today as they were in ‘85. It’s a film like the one Dibicki’s director is making: A B-movie with A ideas.

Maxxxine is in cinemas from 5 July

Screening Room

THE BIKERIDERS

June 21, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

Jeff Nichols taps a certain type of Americana with his tactile, evocative films, and his adaptation of Danny Lyon’s seminal photo-essay book, The Bikeriders, is an artistic collaboration that quickens the pulse as much as the guttural rev of a classic Harley Davidson. Lyon tracked a group of bikers in 60s Chicago and readers could practically smell the engine oil and hair grease in his black-and-white photos of meets and the outlier community formed around them. Nichols has taken that aesthetic and run with it, crafting a screenplay that explores identity, social tribes, loyalty, lust and the thrill of the open road in a love triangle formed between three stars operating at full wattage.

Seen through the eyes of Kathy (Jodie Comer) as she looks back on her romance with maverick Benny (Austin Butler), this patchwork of moments straddle a decade as biker gang, the Vandals, grow from a grassroots outfit to a State-wide, and increasingly violent, operation. As Kathy tells it – in a brawny Chicago idiolect Comer has expertly lifted directly from Lyon’s own interviews with the real woman – she must share Benny with the road and gang leader, Johnny (Tom Hardy, doing some of his best work). The process of trying to tie him down parallels the difficulty of halting the brutal evolution of the vandals: Benny is a man who is all feral instinct and doesn’t want to be anything to anyone, the gang cannot remain as ‘riding club’ as Johnny first conceived it without a tough new kingpin. As Kathy tries to pin Benny down to domesticity, Johnny tries to woo him to leadership…

tom hardy, austin butler, jodie comer, the bikeriders, jeff nichols

Adam Stone’s cinematography echoes Lyon’s cool pictures as a stellar cast breathe intricate life into snapshots of characters in the gang. Michael Shannon is alpha hurt as Zipco, a man who hates ‘pinko college kids’ but smarts from being rejected by the army. Boyd Holbrook exudes zen (and the art of motorcycle maintenance) as Cal, the gang’s mechanic. Norman Reedus does bad teeth and hippy impishness as Funny Sonny, a California big-hair. Building on his menace in Babyteeth and The Royal Hotel, Toby Wallace brings chaos energy; and Mike Faist, Emery Cohen and Damon Herriman make impressions despite practical cameos.

But the film belongs to a trifecta of charisma. Hardy, a reluctant hardman with a soft core and a gut-punch of a narrative arc. Butler, giving a bad boy heartthrob emotional depth while understanding his role as an archetype. Comer, flexing her considerable skills and more than matching her on-screen partners. When the trio interact the atmosphere crackles and glows like the embers of the numerous cigarettes they smoke. A meet-cute between Kathy and Benny and a conversation between Benny and Johnny are matched in their erotic charge, and the space between their silences speak volumes. And when they’re riding gleaming chrome bikes into the vanishing point of midwest roads as vintage needle-drops play…

It’s the sort of character-led cinema Hollywood would have you believe is as consigned to the past as a ‘65 panhead Harley. That textured, gritty storytelling that immerses audiences in a specific world without spoon feeding. And a showcase for artists onscreen and off (that cinematography, Erin Benach’s precise costumes, Chad Keith’s period perfect production design) who will surely be shortlisted come awards season.

Be warned, it will make you want to buy a bike…

The Bikeriders directed by Jeff Nichols staring Tom Hardy, Austin Butler and Jodie Comer is in cinemas now

Screening Room

THE SHROUDS

May 23, 2024

Words by JANE CROWTHER

David Cronenberg’s latest is a riddle about grief, loss and mortality wrapped in a whodunnit so twisty you may well have to watch again the minute it ends. It focuses on Karsh (Vincent Cassel) a widower who provides hi-tech graves to wealthy Toronto dwellers. Instead of simply burying their dead, clients buy a sci-fi digi ‘shroud’ that maps every rotting detail of their loved one’s corpse and transmits to the screen in their headstone as well as to an app on their phone. He’s also opened a gourmet restaurant in the graveyard where a blind date is understandably put off by his obsession with the recently deceased, most particularly his wife Becca (Diane Kruger), who perished after numerous procedures to battle breast cancer.

Plagued by dreams of his wife (always nude, her body incrementally more mutilated by medicine), Karsh also toys with living women; Becca’s identical sister Terri (also Kruger) who is aware that her likeness to her sibling creates a frisson, and a mysterious blind client (Sandrine Holt), who’s own partner is succumbing to cancer. Throw in to the mix a vandal attack on the graveyard, Terri’s shambolic ex, Maury (Guy Pearce) and the possibility of a conspiracy that could involve protestors, the Chinese government or Karsh’s AI assistant Honey (also voiced by Kruger) and The Shrouds gets deep into issues of AI, spyware, fidelity and sorrow in Cronenberg’s trademark clinical style.

A deeply personal film for the director (his own wife died in 2017 and Cassel’s look seems borrowed from the auteur), The Shrouds explores the bewilderment and paranoia of grief while staring death in the face via decomposition and with no easy resolution. Is it pure Cronenberg? Yes. Does it have answers? No. And that will be a thrilling/frustrating experience depending on your taste.

david cronenberg, the shrouds, vincent cassel, diane kruger

David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds starring Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger played at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will be released in cinemas later this year

Screening Room

DISCLAIMER

August 30, 2024

Screening Room

MARIA

August 30, 2024

Screening Room

ALIEN: ROMULUS

August 9, 2024

Screening Room

BORDERLANDS

August 9, 2024

Screening Room

DÌDI

August 2, 2024

Screening Room

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

July 26, 2024

Screening Room

TWISTERS

July 18, 2024

Screening Room

MAXXXINE

July 5, 2024

Screening Room

THE BIKERIDERS

June 21, 2024

Screening Room

THE SHROUDS

May 23, 2024

All photographs by Greg Williams

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