Still looks incredible: not just the mixing of animation and live-action elements but the period 1940s LA production design and the animation itself. It’s an ode to a period of animation before Pixarification flattened the goal of animation into verisimilitude and realistic physics. Here there’s cartoon physics, distortion of space and time, quasi-Surrealist visuals and it all looks terrifically dynamic especially in the opening Baby Herman cartoon. All the actors are smashing it, particularly Bob Hoskins and Charles Fleischer as Roger Rabbit. Simply the best film about how the corrupt judicial systems of the United States deliberately undermine and destroy reliable public transportation systems.

Jam’s nice.

No horror film builds dread in quite the same way as idly noticing from a date in a brief shot that this film starts in 2019. For most of the documentary, Covid-19 looms on the horizon, surely portending doom for this small movie-making club and its eccentric, mostly elderly, members. This bittersweet sense of steadfastly continuing to do what you love infuses the documentary and portrays the intense meaningfulness of this small club to its members (similar to Detectorists). A charming portrait of the importance of artistic expression outside of the usual cultural centres.

An exploration not just of the Sackler family and their role in the opioid crisis and the art world but of how alternative communities live, thrive, and survive. The film uses Nan Goldin’s work and her life as exemplars of alternative communities—queer communities, sex worker communities, activist communities—and shows the importance of friendship groups and artistic communities as alternatives to the suburban American family. Laura Poitras skilfully weaves together the threads of Goldin’s life, work, and activism towards a conclusion that just falls short of pointing at the nuclear family as a specific locus of structural oppression but very clearly gestures in that direction. Whether Sackler or Goldin, the family controls and suppresses ways of being and gets away with murder.

“And there’s this feeling, once you leave where you grew up, that you don’t totally belong there again.” When I was a kid in the ‘90s, we’d go on family holidays to resorts in places like Majorca and Malta. But as I got older, I didn’t like heat and I didn’t like suncream and all the family time felt claustrophobic. It’s on these holidays that you start to realise your own preferences and start the painful process of becoming your own person. But also Dad would hold my hand and I’d walk along a small wall and we’d sing Walking On Sunshine.

PRIMAL FEAR contains some of the understated hallmarks of ‘90s thrillers: an obsession with property development; corruption that goes up to the highest levels of local government; questionable treatment of mental health issues; women that exist only in the orbit of men. The cast appears absolutely stacked from a current perspective but this is primarily because of how successful several of them became years after filming this like Frances McDormand (FARGO came out one month before this), Andre Braugher, and Terry O’Quinn. Richard Gere leads doing his same old Richard Gere-thing but the real draw is a stellar performance from Edward Norton in his first film role who is so good here that it seems like a shame he couldn’t play Brad Pitt’s role in FIGHT CLUB alongside himself.

A West German B-movie horror, the best part of which is the interesting production design from the paintings influenced by Hieronymous Bosch to the locations evocative of Dark Souls. ‘The Deserted Forest’ where the trees have human limbs extending from them could be straight out of a FromSoftware game. The original German title, ‘The Snake Pit and the Pendulum’, is much better but puts a lot of pressure on the third act’s setpieces which take up respectively two minutes and six minutes of movie time.

Hen won’t share obvious excess with grotesque pig.

Quiet devastation erupts in discrete moments of an otherwise drawn-out trial. Alice Diop shows the processes of institutional justice in all their long, slow, and wordy reality with long shots on one person talking, defending herself, and repeating her life story for the court. But like being on an actual jury, being in court is more boring than you might imagine. It feels like the documentary form might have been better for this kind of exploration of structural racism, France’s treatment of African immigrants, and challenging preconceptions. That said, there are moments of emotion that burst through the trudge of a jury trial: when two Black women share a glance and a smile in the midst of everything. Maybe that’s the whole point.

These days, a huge amount of money would be spent on special effects to make the boat chase actually look like it’s taking place in Venice. Steven Spielberg correctly intuits that it’s enough for an audience to watch boats going fast and makes no attempt to disguise the dockyard (presumably in California) where it’s actually filmed. Such is the strength of Sean Connery’s performance as Henry Jones Sr. that as a kid I thought every third film in a series should introduce the main character’s parents. Perhaps one too many action scenes for me these days but the three trials before the Grail are really tense and masterfully edited. Spielberg is such a safe pair of hands as a blockbuster director that it’s a real comfort watch.