John Crowley is carving quite the auteur niche for authentic, emotionally honest and rich romantic melodrama, (this and Brooklyn his best movies, nods also to Boy A), so much of which is owed here to Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, who manage the significant sentimental weight of both exhultation and tragedy with a beautiful, naturalistic touch.
There’s so much narrative potential in Australia’s history of travelling tent-boxing troupes (our own ‘Carnie’ legacy), it’s a shame Kid Snow doesn’t fulfil that possibility, no fault of a really good screenplay, some good performances (Phoebe Tonkin continues to smoulder) and gorgeous lensing, but wow is there some horrible editing, and no apparent trust from Paul Goldman in letting scenes linger - to at least allow air into the drama.
I don't see many people retrospectively acknowledging the auteurist qualities of Happy Feet 2, which is crazy, being how there’s so much love for Mad Max : Fury Road. And I’m sure it’ll remain a critical blind spot, which is crazier, because HF2 is every bit the George Miller creation as his 2015 apocalyptic action darling. Only a whisker shy of Miller’s genre blitzing masterpiece, Babe : Pig In the City, technically, emotionally and energetically, HF2 equals anything from Pixar…
"And no dream is ever just a dream."
Relationship fidelity has endless topicality, philosophic potential and moral dimension, and Eyes Wide Shut might be mainstream cinema's most sophisticated meditation on the subject. Love (the wise option) or loathe him, the genre standard was set by Adrian Lyne with Fatal Attraction (1987), Indecent Proposal (1993), and Unfaithful (2002). Mike Figgis' forgotten One Night Stand (1997) was a tasty addition, Sam Mendes set the Oscars abuzz with American Beauty (1999), and Mike…
