Ari Aster returns to take audiences on an epically wild and decidedly weird guilt trip with his third feature, Beau Is Afraid. Big, bold, and ballsy, this three-hours long Freudian epic is ostensibly Aster’s very own Magnolia; an expensive, stylish indulgence that finds him wholeheartedly swinging for the fences at the risk of alienating his audience for the sake of art. Results will vary, but it’s a total winner to us.
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Writer/director Todd Phillips brings a rich and complex character study to the comic book film with Joker, a gritty and grounded standalone origin story about Batman’s most iconic villain. Equal parts despicable and human and adorned with a phenomenal career-defining performance from Joaquin Phoenix, Joker causes us to see aspects of ourselves and our world in the tragic flaws of its protagonist, which makes his tumble down the rabbit hole of madness that much more real.
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Jacques Audiard’s first English language film, The Sisters Brothers, is a lighthearted Revisionist western with a brutal streak and an aim as sharp as its wit. It embraces the conventions of the genre while gleefully subverting expectations, promising action, comedy and solid performances from Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed.
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Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot chronicles the life of irreverent cartoonist John Callahan as he struggles to give up alcohol and accept his unfortunate situation after a drunken car crash lands him in a wheelchair. Adapted for the screen and directed by Gus Van Sant, this biopic (based upon Callahan's memoir of the same name) is littered with great performances, affecting sequences, and inspirational pep.
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Six years after the masterfully tense psychological thriller We Need To Talk About Kevin, Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay marks her return with You Were Never Really Here, an enigmatic slow burning neo-noir, based off the novella of the same name by Jonathan Ames. Ramsay, who is more concerned about the man behind the hit than it is the hit itself, delivers a wickedly dark character study veiled as an action film that still manages, despite its efforts to deny the gratification typically found in an action thriller, to be a unique, viscerally gripping cinematic experience that will hit you with the blunt force of a ball-pein hammer.
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