Anna Bogutskaya

There’s more to Japanese movies than Kurosawa, Ozu and Miyazaki. That’s not to downplay their contributions to the country’s cinematic history – or cinema in general. All three are potential GOATs. It’s just that there’s much, much more where that exalted triumvirate came from.  Like the trailblazing silent works of Kenji Mizoguchi. Or the off-kilter pop-art crime thrillers of Seijun Suzuki. Or the bizarrely horrifying visions of Takashi Miike. On this list of the greatest Japanese movies of all time, you’ll find them all, alongside, of course, Kurosawa’s epics, Miyazaki’s soulful animations and Ozu’s powerful domestic dramas – oh, and Godzilla too. You’ll trace Japan’s unique filmmaking history, moving from the silent era to its post-war golden age to the 1960s New Wave to the anime explosion of the ’80s, all the way up to the current renaissance spearheaded by Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Mamoru Hosoda. It’s a lot to take in. But with expert commentary from Junko Yamazaki – assistant professor of Japanese Media Studies at Princeton, whose focuses include post-war Japanese film music and the jidaigeki (period drama) genre – this cinephile’s bible is as authoritative as it is exhaustive. Consider it your travel guide to one of the world’s most creative movie cultures. RECOMMENDED: 🇰🇷 The greatest Korean films of all time🇫🇷 The 100 best French movies ever made🇯🇵 The best anime movies of all time, ranked🌏 The 50 best foreign films of all-time

The movie industry has always been crawling with monsters, and we don’t just mean those old-school studio heads who use to torment starlets. We’re talking about the monsters borne from childhood nightmares, or the deranged imaginations of some very creative adults. We’re talking predatory aliens. We’re talking vampires and werewolves. We’re talking skyscraper-sized apes, sentient globs of carnivorous space goo, interdimensional leather daddies and razor-toothed sewer clowns. In some cases, the monsters of cinema have become as famous as any actor – movie stars unto themselves.  It’s those most iconic beasts, demons and kaiju we’re saluting in this list of the greatest movie monsters of all-time. A few caveats: this list largely follows the same parameters as our monster movies list, meaning that it steers away from non-mutated animals – sorry, Bruce the Shark and the spiders from Arachnophobia – as well as slasher villains such as Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. But zombies? Trolls? Brundlefly? You’ll find them all below.  Recommended: 👹 The 50 best monster movies ever made💀 The 100 best horror movies of all-time🧟 The best zombie movies of all-time👹 Cinema’s creepiest anthology horror movies🩸 The 15 scariest horror movies based on true stories

Television used to be considered one of the lowest forms of entertainment. It was derided as ‘the idiot box’ and ‘the boob tube’. Edward R Murrow referred to it as ‘the opiate of the masses’, and the phrase ‘I don’t even own a TV’ was considered a major bragging right. And for a long time, it was hard to say that television’s poor reputation was undeserved.  A lot has changed. Television is now the dominant medium in basically all of entertainment, to the degree that the only thing separating movies and TV is the screen you’re watching on. Now, if you don’t own a television – or a laptop or a tablet or a phone – you’re basically left out of the cultural conversation completely. The shift in perception is widely credited to the arrival of The Sopranos, which completely reinvented the notion of what a TV show could do. But that doesn’t mean everything that came before is primordial slurry. While this list of the greatest TV shows ever is dominated by 21st century programs, there are many shows that deserve credit for laying the groundwork for this current golden age. Chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult, so we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries.  So don’t touch that dial – these are the greatest TV shows of all-time. Recommended: 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2024 (so far)🔥 The 100 greatest movies of all-time🎬 The most bingeable series on Netflix

There’s a reason Martin Scorsese has dedicated part of his life to championing Italian movies – and it’s not just to keep his nonna happy. It’s the national cinema that gave us Fellini, Visconti, Rossellini, Pasolini, and De Sica – where one minute you can corpse to the slapstick silliness of Commedia all'Italiana capers and the next, have your heart smashed into tiny pieces by a human drama about an old man and his dog. Where dodgy politics spawns angry thrillers and seismic historical events are tackled in sweeping epics. And where Clint Eastwood chewed on a cheroot while dispatching bad guys, and Argento and Bava gave us the lurid shocks of giallo. It’s flamboyant, glamorous, jaded, shocking and sexy – sometimes all at once.  And it’s not just sexy people standing in fountains, either. Rome’s famous old Cinecittà Studios powers on, the Venice Biennale is the world’s coolest film festival (sorry, Cannes), and modern-day moviemakers like Alice Rohrwacher, Matteo Garrone, Paolo Sorrentino and Gianfranco Rosi keep offering up fresh slices of la dolce vita (or its darker sides). With the BFI celebrating the work of the Taviani brothers in February and neorealism in May-June, a ‘Cinema Made in Italy’ season running at London’s Ciné Lumière in March, Rohrwacher’s La Chimera and Garrone’s Oscar-nominated Io Capitano coming to cinemas soon, not to mention a cinema re-release of Rome, Open City in May. There’s plenty of Italian films to sample out there. Allow us to add 50 more to t

Defining what exactly makes a female character unlikeable is a sisyphean task. I know, because I’ve written a book trying to explain what we mean exactly when we brand a character as ‘unlikeable’. Too slutty? Too shrewd? Too intense? A bit much, generally? Film history is rife with characters we’re told are hateable, unlikeable, or in the wrong. Are they though? Here’s ten that were actually in the right all along. RECOMMENDED:🔥 The 100 best feminist films of all time🦹🏻‍♂️ Movie heroes who are actually full-blown villains

タイムアウト東京 > 映画 > 人生で観ておくべき、日本映画50選日本映画には大きな魅力と素晴らしい監督の存在がある。特に黒澤明は、この地球上で最も偉大な映画監督といえるが、日本が生んだ名監督は彼だけではない。小津安二郎や宮崎駿、溝口健二、市川崑ら、映画「東京物語」「七人の侍」「となりのトトロ」など、圧倒的な名作を生み出し映画界に貢献してきた。 サイレント時代から戦後の映画黄金期をへて、パンキッシュで挑発的な1960年代のニューウェーブ、アニメーション作品の爆発的なヒットを生み出した。そして、多くの作品はアメリカやヨーロッパで大きな影響力を持つようになった。タランティーノやスコセッシは、大の日本映画好きで伝達者であり、ゴジラはハリウッドの大作映画としてとどろき続けている。 しかし、あまりに多くの作品があるため、何から観ればいいのか頭を抱えてしまうかもしれない。ここでは、タイムアウトワールドワイドが選んだ「日本映画ベスト50」を紹介しよう。 関連情報『日本で最もセクシーな映画俳優』『日本人アーティストのドキュメンタリー6選』

⭑⭑⭑⭑✩ Al comienzo de Ellas Hablan de Sarah Polley, tenemos una declaración audaz en la pantalla: "Lo que sigue es un acto de imaginación femenina". Las palabras establecen el tono para la poderosa exploración de la ira, la resistencia y el perdón que sigue. Un grupo de mujeres de una colonia menonita, desde ancianas hasta niñas, se reúnen al amanecer para discutir un tema: ¿Qué hacer con los hombres que las han estado drogando y violando sistemáticamente mientras duermen? La película es una adaptación de la novela de 2018 de la escritora canadiense Miriam Toews, que a su vez se inspiró en el caso real de ocho mujeres en una colonia ultraconservadora de Manitoba, Bolivia que demandaron a los hombres de su comunidad por violar en serie a las mujeres. Hay múltiples matices de ira femenina en el guión de Toews y Polley: la ira nociva de Salomé (Claire Foy), que está lista para pelear; la filosófica Ona (Rooney Mara), que está dispuesta a perdonar a sus agresores; y la puntiaguda Mariche (Jessie Buckley), que no ve ninguna solución que no implique sacrificar su piedad. El tono es sombrío. La horrible amenaza de la excomunión se cierne sobre todos ellos. Las conversaciones se llenan de furia a medida que las mujeres avanzan hacia una votación. No hacer nada se descarta como opción. Pero, ¿deberían quedarse, obligadas a perdonar o luchar contra sus violadores, o arriesgarlo todo al irse? A las mujeres, de acuerdo con las reglas de su colonia, nunca se les ha enseñado a leer o escrib

⭑⭑✩✩✩ Abandonada por su familia y sus hermanos cuando era una niña, Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) crece y se convierte en una joven ingeniosa, aunque tímida, a la que le encanta dibujar y pasar el rato en el pantano donde ha pasado toda su vida. Nunca aprende a leer ni asiste a la escuela, y la gente del pueblo se burla implacablemente de ella por ser rara (léase: pobre).  Cuando el arrogante exmariscal de campo Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) aparece muerto, los dedos apuntan a Kya y las pruebas que la incriminan como el asesino comienzan a acumularse.  Basada en el bestseller internacional de Delia Owens (quien ella misma está implicada en un turbio asesinato), esta pegajosa película gótica sureña tiene todos los ingredientes de una película de prestigio y anzuelo para premios. La película cambia entre contarnos la historia de vida de Kya y su juicio por asesinato, con Edgar-Jones haciendo mucho trabajo para mantenernos interesados ​​en lo que, en última instancia, es una película muy insulsa. No hay química entre ninguno de los actores, y no hay propulsión a la historia, aparte de descubrir quién asesinó a Chase, o si fue asesinado.  Los espesos paisajes de los pantanos de Carolina del Norte (en realidad filmados en Luisiana) siempre han sido un gran telón de fondo para el asesinato, pero  Crawdads  pronto se deshace de sus elementos góticos potencialmente apasionantes para un romance  filmado como un brillante anuncio de televisión. Ahogue sus bostezos mientras Kya se enamor

⭑⭑✩✩✩ Libre de las garras robóticas de la franquicia de Transformers y su último thriller 6 Underground, directo a Netflix, Michael Bay regresa a donde pertenece: una persecución de autos en Los Ángeles rodeado de hombres musculosos y sudorosos.  El veterano de guerra Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), que necesita urgentemente dinero en efectivo para pagar la cirugía no especificada de su esposa, le pide ayuda a su hermano adoptivo Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), un criminal de carrera, como último recurso. Abdul-Mateen II es el más arraigado de los dos, mientras que Gyllenhaal nos mira con ojos de loco.Lo que se suponía que era un trabajo fácil se vuelve realmente complicado, muy rápido, y los dos hermanos se encuentran en una persecución policial en todo Los Ángeles con un policía herido en la parte trasera de la ambulancia que han secuestrado. Si muere, sus sentencias serán mucho más severas. La férrea EMT Cam (Eliza González) completa este escenario desquiciado, un contrapeso relativamente cuerdo para la extraña pareja de hermanos mientras intenta mantener con vida al policía.  Ambulancia es una nueva versión de una película danesa de 2005 del mismo nombre. Siempre está sucediendo algo, muy fuerte, y todo el mundo se preocupa por verse muy bien mientras sucede. La mayor parte de la acción ocurre dentro de la ambulancia titular, y gracias a Bay por hacer que se sienta tan apretada y frenética como exige la historia a través de primeros planos sudorosos y bromas lunáticas. Su cá

Alice Lowe knows how to do high concept. In her 2016 feature, Prevenge, she played a heavily pregnant serial killer taking direction from her unborn baby on who – and how – to murder. In Timestalker, she’s a lovelorn woman whose romantic obsession transcends time and space itself.    Once again, Lowe is doing triple duty: writer, director and star. She’s Agnes, a peasant woman in 1600s Scotland, a noble-lady in 1790s England, and a New Romantic groupie in 1980s Manhattan. Plus maybe even Cleopatra, or someone vaguely resembling Cleopatra, because which woman hasn’t been Cleopatra in a previous life? (I definitely have.) All timelines lead Agnes to a handsome stranger (Dunkirk’s Aneurin Barnard) and, inevitably, her doom.Barnard, for his part, is her object of affection and obsession, occupying the largely personality-less role usually reserved for women in these types of sci-fi romps. In chronological order, he is a rebel priest, a robber, and a feckless ’80s pop star, all roles that give the Welsh actor room to indulge in goofery with a bit of edge.  Timestalker creates a time-hopping menagerie of madness The supporting cast boasts national treasure Nick Frost, playing the sadistic husband who’s as obsessed with possessing Agnes as she is with the green-eyed ‘love of her lives’, Interview with the Vampire’s Jacob Anderson as a slimy Svengali, and Sex Education’s Tanya Reynolds as Agnes’s long-suffering handmaiden. Their roles rarely change through their lives, past, present

Tuesday is a film about death. About dying, and about caring for someone who’s dying. Big words for a film where a talking parrot is a main character.  Teenager Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is the kind of sick that doesn’t get a ‘get well’ card. She spends her days like no 15-year-old should: struggling to breathe, negging her nurse, and hoping for a crumb of attention from her mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). The latter spends her days loitering in a park, eating cheese, and looking at other parents with their not-sick kids. Mother and daughter know that Tuesday is going to die soon, but it’s the former that refuses to accept it. So much so that when literal Death (capital D), in the form of a parrot of variable size, arrives, Zora reacts the way one would if confronted with Death with a capital D – by kicking the shit out of it.  Julia Louis-Dreyfus has rarely played a character in so much pain Croatian writer-director Daina O Pusić’s debut opts out of sentimentality, instead anchoring the story in a hard truths: people die, it’s not fair, there’s no opting out. The love between Zora and her daughter is never in dispute, but they are out of sync at the most important juncture of their relationship. Unable to face the reality of her daughter’s pain and impending death, Zora chooses to ignore her altogether, causing even more suffering. Louis-Dreyfus, best known to one generation as the acerbic Elaine from Seinfeld and to another as Veep’s cutthroat politician Selina Meyer, ha

Is there anyone more committed to sharing their love of cinema than Martin Scorsese? In 1995, he gave us A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies. Four years later he explored his own heritage through Italian cinema in My Voyage to Italy. Made In England might not be directed by Scorsese, its narrator, but it’s his lifelong love of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s films that anchors David Hinton’s passionate, wide-ranging doc.  Made in England delivers a loving, access-all-areas tour of the duo’s work that takes in behind-the-scenes pics, stills and archive interviews. And of course, those stunning clips.  There’s plenty of context, too, on how the partnership between the Hungarian and the Englishman took shape: Pressburger as the story-crafter; Powell coming up with images and choreography. Their collaboration, one of cinema’s most fruitful, spanned decades. Made in England spans early wartime successes like 49th Parallel; the establishment of The Archers, the production banner under which they produced The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and other masterpieces; and their failed, contentious attempt to work in Hollywood with The Elusive Pimpernel.  The talents of these two artists were elevated into something close to magic Hinton paints a sweeping portrait of a unique collaboration that elevated the talents of two artists into something close to magic. Scorsese, enamoured with these films since he was a boy, watc

In the cinema of Andrew Haigh, from Weekend to Lean on Pete, characters are often looking for a connection that they’re afraid to ask for. Adapting Taichi Yamada’s 1987 novel ‘Strangers’, Haigh writes and directs an achingly sincere exploration of love and loneliness.  Screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) lives alone in a characterless new build somewhere in London. The city looms beneath him, beautiful and bare, reminding him of his solitude. Adam’s parents died in a car crash when he was just 12, his friends moved away to have gardens and babies. He is the only soul in his building, aside from Harry (Paul Mescal), who turns up at his door one night, drunk and horny. Their chance encounter leads to the cautious unfolding of a love story between two deeply wounded characters, their individual pain tangled up and misshapen. Both Adam and Harry are easy to fall in love with, both of them lonely creatures with a great capacity for love but nowhere to direct it to.  The chemistry between Scott and Mescal is feverish, rapt and tender. They are physically drawn together as if they had been ripped apart eons ago and are now stitching themselves back as they should have been. Harry draws Adam out of his isolation with sex, at first, a ketamine-sprinkled night on the town, but, mostly, with immense care. Adam, in turn, is a validating force for a character with a tendency to dismiss his own pain.  This unexpected love story coincides with an unexplainable event: visiting his childhood hom

German filmmaker Wim Wenders is one of the most creatively curious artists working today. His portrait of the German artist Anselm Kiefer is one of two new films (the other being Tokyo-set drama, Perfect Days) he premiered at Cannes this year. Wenders’ documentary work is fascinated with the creative process – his award-winning odes to Cuban musicianship in Buena Vista Social Club and late choreographer Pina Bausch in 2011’s Pina are standouts. Anselm is Wenders’ first 3D film since the aforementioned Pina. And much like that film, it’s a reminder that true artists use technology to deepen the story, rather than making technology into the story. Wenders deploys 3D like a painter using a certain colour.  There’s a whole subgenre of ‘process’ docs, which are a treat for anyone (like me) who loves to see how the creative sausage is made. Wenders, however, is striving for something bigger, more elemental. Anselm is a vivid portrait of Kiefer, an artist whose work and worldview weave in time, philosophy, history, memory, and myth. Wenders is uninterested in giving viewers a blow-by-blow of Kiefer’s biography or success stories or controversies. His camera watches Kiefer at work, painting, burning, directing and thinking. Reveries and readings, memories and influences, blend together as Kiefer, in his boyish, young man and older forms, guides us through his process. It is art ASMR of the highest order.  It’s art ASMR of the highest order Anselm disposes of linearity to follow the t

Spanish filmmaking great Victor Erice hasn’t made a movie in 31 years. His debut, 1973’s The Spirit of the Beehive, is widely considered to be one of the best films in Spanish film history, so his absence has been keenly felt by audiences, cinephiles and fellow filmmakers alike. His return to the big screen with Close Your Eyes felt like A Big Deal at this year’s Cannes.  Elegantly mysterious, the film’s jumping off point is the disappearance of actor Julio Arenas (José Coronado) from the set of The Farewell Gaze, having completed only two scenes, the first and the last. His friend and director of the film, Miguel Garay (Manolo Solo), has since abandoned cinema and semi-retired to a beachside hut where he keeps a low-profile and survives on translations. But being interviewed on an episode about Julio’s disappearance makes memories resurface, that of their friendship, their work together, and all together more painful ones.  As Miguel – or Mike, as he’s sometimes called – delves deeper into his abandoned project and his memories of who he once was, Close Your Eyes unfolds its exploration of memory, identity and their intersection with cinema. Miguel has made it his business to forget painful elements of his past, and the film gently guides him to remembering himself fully and deeply by sending him on the hunt for his lost friend.  A less eloquent filmmaker would’ve delivered yet another ‘love letter to cinemas’ piece, but Erice’s work operates on a whole different level, he d

American writer Ottessa Moshfegh might be the pre-eminent author of her generation, her books capturing a feral brand of obsession, isolation and entitlement, most notably in her BookTok-friendly novels Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Understandably, then, that the adaptation of her first book, co-written by Moshfegh and her husband Luke Goebel, comes with some hype attached. And the anticipation doubles considering its Lady Macbeth director William Oldroyd behind the camera, making a long-awaited follow-up. Eileen (Last Night in Soho’s Thomasin McKenzie) is a put-upon, laconic administrator at a boy’s prison in 1964. She’s also the reluctant carer of her alcoholic dad, a retired cop whose influence around town still gets him out of trouble. Her life is drab and uneventful, a flimsy edifice propped up by unwanted responsibilities and sharp jibes from most people she encounters. That is, until the electrifying arrival of a new psychiatrist at the prison, Rebecca St John (Anne Hathaway). She’s a Harvard-educated, martini-sipping, rule-breaking hurricane who unexplainably, takes an interest in Eileen.  The film tiptoes around the queer overtones of the protagonist’s instantaneous devotion to Rebecca, and the new arrival’s curiosity in Eileen. Rebecca is a liberating force for Eileen, whose desires have so far been confined to horny fantasies about her co-workers and a secret candy habit. No one writes about the propelling thrust of obsession like Moshfegh. Both on the

At the start of Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, we get a bold declaration on screen: ‘What follows is an act of female imagination.’ The words set the tone for the powerful exploration of anger, endurance and forgiveness that follows.  A group of women from an implied Mennonite colony, from the elderly to the girls, meet at the crack of dawn to discuss one issue: what to do about the men who have been systematically drugging them and raping them in their sleep?  The film is adapted from Canadian writer Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel, which was itself inspired by the real-life case of eight women in the ultra-conservative Manitoba Colony in Bolivia who sued the men in their community for serially raping its female members.  There are multiple shades of female rage on display in Toews and Polley’s script: the noxious anger of Salome (Claire Foy), who’s ready to fight; the philosophical Ona (Rooney Mara), who’s willing to forgive their assailants; and the spiky Mariche (Jessie Buckley), who sees no solution that doesn’t involve sacrificing their godliness. The tone is sombre. The horrifying threat of excommunication hangs over them all. The conversations ripple with fury as the women build towards a vote. Doing nothing is discarded as an option. But should they stay, forced to either forgive or fight their rapists, or risk everything by leaving?  It imagines female emancipation as an honest, raging, caring experience The women, according to the rules of their colony, have never been t

Cannibals in love are uncomfortable but well trodden territory in horror. From Claire Denis' masterpiece of desire Trouble Every Day to the zom-rom-com Warm Bodies. In Bones and All, the cannibals are two young loners feeling their way through desire, love and belonging. Director Luca Guadagnino imbues his adaptation of Camille DeAngelis's YA novel with the same breezy warmth of Call Me By Your Name.   Backdropped against Reagan’s ’80s, it has 18-year-old Maren (Taylor Russell) carrying a burden too large to share at a sleepover. Since infancy, she’s had a barely-contained urge to, well, chomp on human flesh. Everytime it get the best of her and an attack happens, she and her father (André Holland) have had to pack up and move. When we meet them, this routine of self-imposed exile has become too much for him to bear, and he abandons Maren with a small wad of cash, her birth certificate and a cassette explaining why he’s bailed.  Alone – and hungry – Maren sets out on the American road, encountering fellow ‘Eaters’ with the same primal urges as her for the first time. First comes the quirky but menacing Sully (Mark Rylance, chewing scenery); then the willowy, existentially disenfranchised Lee (Timothée Chalamet). Drawn together by circumstance, a shared dietary requirement, and an awkward attraction, they take to the road to find Maren’s biological mother.  Is a heartthrob still a heartthrob if he’s soaked in blood? Here, the answer is yes The film flows like a Joy Division s

There’s a book of essays by Siri Hustvedt provocatively titled ‘A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women’. American filmmaker Chloe Okuno’s debut feature, Watcher, could well be titled ‘A Woman Looking At Men Looking At Her’.  Maika Monroe, who jumped onto the genre scene with two brilliant turns in one year, The Guest and It Follows, has not really made a film worthy of her talents since then. That same year, Okuno released her acclaimed slasher short Slut.  These two talents meet in the Bucharest-set thriller Watcher, where Monroe plays Julia, the quiet (not to be confused with timid) wife of a marketing exec (Karl Glusman), who has been recently relocated due to a promotion. With her husband busy with his new job, and unable to speak Romanian, Julia wanders around and observes. There’s also a serial killer on the loose in the city, as there is wont to be in a psychological thriller. Almost immediately after moving in, Julia notices the shadowy figure of a man looking at her through the window. She is instantly creeped out and asks everyone around her to check in on this, which, to be fair to them, they do. But no one is able to determine who this man is or if he is, really, watching her. It taps into the anxiety of being watched that will be familiar to any woman The anxiety of being watched will be familiar to any woman, and Okuno’s direction taps into it with precision. The film’s atmosphere is oppressive: the grand windows in their flat turn Julia into an open target; sh

Abandoned by her family and siblings as a little girl, Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones) grows up to be a resourceful, if shy, young woman with a love for drawing and hanging out in the marsh where she’s spent her entire life. She never learns how to read or attends school, and is relentlessly mocked by the townsfolk for being weird (read: poor).  When the cocky former quarterback Chase Andrews (Harris Dickinson) shows up dead, fingers are pointed at Kya and evidence incriminating her as the murderer start mounting.  Based on the international bestseller by Delia Owens (who herself is implicated in a murky murder), this sticky southern gothic has all the ingredients of a prestige, awards-bait film. The film shifts between telling us Kya’s swampcore life story and her trial for murder, with Edgar-Jones doing a lot of work to keep us interested in what is ultimately a very bland film. There is no chemistry between any of the actors, and no propulsion to the story, other than finding out who actually murdered Chase, or if he was murdered at all.  With no chemistry between the actors, it’s more aesthetic than film The thick landscapes of the North Carolina marshes (actually filmed in Louisiana) have always been a great backdrop for murder, but Crawdads soon jettisons its potentially gripping gothic elements for a romance shot like a glossy TV ad. Stifle your yawns as Kya falls in love with fellow nature-loving hunk Tate (Taylor John Smith), only to get abandoned again. Where the Crawdads

Nothing much happens in Aftersun, but every moment matters. Divorced dad Calum (played by Normal People’s Paul Mescal) takes his daughter Sophie (newcomer Francesca Corio, so effortlessly cool she never seems to be acting) on a low-key holiday. Set sometime in the ’90s, they hang out in a budget Turkish resort, being easy-going, goofy and enjoying just the right amount of cheesy holiday fun (one hotel staff performance of the ‘Macarena’ will send shivers down the spine of anyone who’s had to behold it). Calum is caring, weird in the way that everyone’s dad is a bit weird, and a goofball who genuinely enjoys spending time with his kid. But there’s a clear sadness to him that Mescal allows to flicker through his face to remind us that no matter how hard Calum is trying, there’s a dark side to him that will soon rear its head. He promises Sophie things he cannot afford, and she calls him out on it. Then one night, unable to handle things, he disappears into the night, leaving Sophie stranded alone. Although he does come back, his guilt is overwhelming.Scottish filmmaker Charlotte Wells, who wrote and directs Aftersun, weaves together memories, home video and dreams in a singular way. It turns out that an older Sophie is remembering these important – and, it is implied, last – moments with her dad as an adult. Wells makes the interplay between these recollections and her piecing together her father’s emotional reality incredibly vivid. Aftersun flows like a fondly remembered memo

I was worried going into Don’t Worry Darling.  The drama surrounding Olivia Wilde’s second movie as a filmmaker has turned it from one of the most anticipated fall releases to a TikTok laughing stock. Her hit debut, teen comedy Booksmart set up expectations soaring for next project. Don’t Worry Darling, a period thriller about the seemingly idyllic micro-society Victory Project, was subject of a bidding war and much hype. But the hype has turned sour. There’s the not-confirmed-but-totally-happening on-set romance between Wilde and her male lead, Harry Styles. There’s the alleged feud between Wilde and the film’s star, Florence Pugh. There’s the firing, or maybe quitting, or maybe something else, of Shia LaBeouf, who was once cast in Styles’s role. The film’s Venice Film Festival premiere was notable not for the glowing reviews (which were thin on the ground anyway), but for the forensic analysis of who refused to stand next to who on the red carpet, Pugh’s glaring absence from the press conference, Chris Pine’s astral projecting in front of the world press, and, of course, the fever dream that was Spitgate. The memes from the Don’t Worry Darling press tour will have us dining out for months. But what about the movie? Will all this melodrama help it sell tickets? Is there a way to watch it without trying to figure out if you can see the feuding happening on screen?  Photograph: Warner Bros.Art imitating life? Florence Pugh as the besieged Alice in ‘Don’t Worry Darling’ Aware