The Gorge (2024)

Would've been nice to see The Gorge on the big screen, but it's streaming fodder (Apple+).

The leads are charismatic, Milles Teller (Whiplash) and Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa) and they have chemistry, which helps a lot. It's also a loves troy, between two isolated snipers, one burned-out American (Teller), one Lithuanian (Joy) on watch on towers on both sides of a mysterious isolated Gorge.

The story remined me of many films, The Mist, the combo of WW2 films of action and horror with experiments gone wrong (The Bunker, Outpost, Frankenstein's Army, Overlord, Biatlov Pass, etc).

Plus the riff on the corporate evil (Resident Evil;), Sigourney Weaver in an office with the Baku Flame Towers on her back ;) 

Scott Derrickson's (Sinister, Doctor Strange) direction here is good, but I guess it's the story and screenplay that rised the bar (written by Zach Dean). Location helps, gorgeous mountain scenery (in Norway, Wales and Durham County in UK).

Score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, and good songs onto it. Rockin', grooves-The  Watchtower by Devlin & Ed Sheeran, Twisted Sister, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Ramones, The Dead Weather.

afterthoughts, "The Hollow men" and the other creatures in the gorge inspired by Polish surrealist painter Zdzislaw Beksinski. Which art is most fascinating and I suggest you dig further in.

L'amour Ouf (2024)

L'amour Ouf / Beating Hearts in English, Iubire fara limite in Romanian. In competition (!) at last years' Cannes film festival, French star Gilles Lellouche adaptation of a Neville Thompson novel is in Romanian Cinemas now. 

Great on the big screen (widescreen!), operatic, with a superb score and soundtrack, great cinematography, this is the most American French film in a long time, and that's a good thing imo. In Cannes they kinda hated the film -of course, oh la la), way too commercial for them to enjoy it if it's not made by Tarantino or James Grey...

Epic running time: 2h46. 1st cut was 4 hours though.

It's based (loosely) on the 1997 best-selling Irish novel "Jackie Loves Johnser OK?" by Neville Thompson, whose French title is "L'Amour Ouf" ( a pun on the expression "L'Amour Fou", also a film by Jacques Rivette from 1968).

Uneven, pastiche, but highly energetic and frenetic this is not a prefect film, far from it, but I loved the energy, the musical rhythm (greta songs, from The Cure to Billy Idol, to Sirius by Alan Parsons project, cuts from John Carpenter's from Escape rom New York score, closing on Foreigner-Urgent!!!), from the opening lettering and the pulsing dramatic score by Jon Brion (with whom Lellouche worked on his second film as director, Le grand bain/Sink or swim). 

Shades of Tarantino and Wild at Heart. And of course West Side Story. And Scorsese's touch. And maybe Lelouch too ;)

original poster with announcement of coming out in 2023. 

Anora wins PGA/DGA !

Anora might win best pic and best director at this year's Oscars. 

The Producers Guild of America named Anora the best picture of the year at the 2025 PGA Awards. The surprise win came just an hour after director Sean Baker took home the DGA’s top prize — establishing the Neon film as the official Oscars frontrunner for Best Picture. Anora also won Best Picture at last night’s Critics Choice Awards.

The Brutalist (2024)

"The American myth is something that is not frequently undressed, especially in this 'coming to America' fable that we have seen rehashed again and again"

 Brady Corbet

(best director Venice Film Festival 2024 for The Brutalist)

film nominated for 10 Oscars

Vulture: The Brutalist spans 33 years on screen and over three and a half hours of runtime, including a 15-minute intermission at its midpoint. It’s the first film in decades 9NN 61 years to be precise!) to be fully shot in VistaVision, and at the Venice Film Festival, where it had its premiere, it was projected on 70mm.

Real vs. fiction:

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250206-the-brutalist-brady-corbet-and-adrien-brody-on-ww2-jewish-experience-in-the-us

TBC

a great talk between Brady Corbet and Sean Baker (Anora), about cinema, budgets, choices, passion and compromises.

The Brutlist just won 4 BAFTA awards, best director, best actor, best cinematography and best score (Daniel Blumberg), which I think deserve also the Oscar for that category.