★★★★
For his latest snippet of understudied America, Sean Baker has switched coasts; he’s travelled from the orange sunsets of Los Angeles in Tangerine the Orange County for The Florida Project. He’s also gone from filming on an iPhone to production in 35mm, with a budget twenty times bigger. A technological leap this might be, The Florida Project remains a treasure by virtue of its simplicity and, vibrantly cinematic, authenticity.
★★★★
Perhaps it’s the promise of a ‘brawl’ in the film’s title? Or maybe it’s the sheer, immediately iconic, presence of a head-shaven and cruciform-tattooed Vince Vaughn in the barren wastelands of suburban America? Whatever the root, there’s something about the opening to S. Craig Zahler”s latest work that brims with the tension of suppressed fury from the off. With this broiling tone established, a glacial pace proves the perfect foil to one deeply grisly plot in an exploitation feature of consistently surprising empathy.
Continue reading Brawl in Cell Block 99 | Review
★★★★
By the time the opening titles of Loving Vincent come to a close, and the film itself begins, somewhere in the region of 1500 hand painted oil canvases, produced by professional artists and animators over the equivalent of perhaps 15-20 months will have glanced and glimmered across the screen. The result is, simply put, astonishing.
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