After finishing The Return in the summer of 2023, I had this tab open for over two weeks. Every day I sat down and tried to put into words to what extend it genuinely felt like my entire brain chemistry had been altered. I strung together a couple of sentences, deleted them, started again. And again and again. Finally I gave up. Sometimes you encounter a piece of art so singular and so deeply moving to you that all words,…
"Ich habe damals zum ersten Mal alles ernst bedacht: Vergangenheit und Zukunft, einander gleich und ebenbürtig an Undurchsichtigkeit, und auch an den Zustand, den man auf Konsulaten Transit nennt und in der gewöhnlichen Sprache Gegenwart. Und das Ergebnis: nur eine Ahnung - wenn diese Ahnung verdient ein Ergebnis genannt zu werden - von meiner eigenen Unversehrbarkeit."
- Anna Seghers, Transit
Cinema Purgatorio.
The AI age gets its first legitimate horror treatise. Hit a point where I thought no way will they be able to wrap up any of this in a satisfying way, and then they kind of immediately did, through the course of no more than five (?) shots. Like, damn... okay? Sorry for having doubts. Saves its eeriest image for last, too. There are stretches (and entire performances tbh) that didn't really click for me, but I've also not been…
"These metaphors are exhausting."
Lowery leans into what we've come to recognize as the A24 house style to such a degree here it almost bends all the way back into camp: pompous and yet confined, explicit and yet vague. Its irritating glibness is both what kept me on the outside and made me refuse to give up on it. Like red fabric emerging from a chest wound, at least it seems to come straight from the heart.
There are few directors whom I enjoy watching so much as they find new ways to utilize long-time (or at least returning) collaborators as Petzold. Matthias Brandt as a gruff, quietly grieving car mechanic and Enno Trebs as his equally broken large adult son? Why yes, of course. None of that was conceivable a minute ago and yet suddenly there it is up on screen, not as an act or an inside joke the audience is being let in on,…
At its best when it's just the Predator and Elle Fanning, who is absolutely delightful here, working themselves through a digital Ray Harryhausen picture, so basically Disney's PWSA's Monster Hunter. Everything else just gets in the way, really.
Maybe I'm being too mean to this one, but giving the Predator the whole found family treatment, including a silly little alien guy to make toys out of, feels like a misstep to me, not because it's a betrayal of the character's…
