London Faust

Dec 12, 2024 | bookandfilmglobe.com | London Faust

“I feel like I’ll never be smart again,” Amy Adams laments in one of this year’s smarter (and stranger) efforts of real filmmaking, Marielle Heller’s domesticated werewolf allegory Nightbitch. It’s full of real ideas both thematic and formal, the most poignant of which at its most abstract is the mental dulling that accompanies adult obligation, particularly motherhood. The film follows new mom and former gallery sculptor Adams. She fears her situation is degenerating her into a dog.

Nov 11, 2024 | bookandfilmglobe.com | London Faust

Robert Zemeckis, once one of the most celebrated filmmakers in America, currently enjoys nearly the exact same “late style” cult as another auteur with a film in theaters, Clint Eastwood; that is to say, an audience charmed ironically by stodginess and sincerely by classicalism.

Nov 11, 2024 | bookandfilmglobe.com | London Faust |Neal Pollack

Robert Zemeckis goes far too back to the future

Oct 22, 2024 | bookandfilmglobe.com | London Faust

From the first image of Anora, director Sean Baker establishes his approach to human relations. Even as bodies writhe in a pan across a row of lap dancers, we zoom into the face of the title character, a dancer herself, as credits spin to a background of blurred sparks and a highly romantic track. There’s no clue to impoverished necessity in her eyes, nor does it ever reveal itself; she’s happy to be the nymph, and Baker understands.

Aug 29, 2024 | bookandfilmglobe.com | London Faust

Rupert Sanders is one of the only remaining unsung “vulgar auteurs” of the original definition: an actual artist striving in the bleak modern studio system. He dredges his entire oeuvre from the IP mines; The Crow marks his second 90s grittied-up cult classic remake in a row, after ‘Ghost In The Shell’. If anyone would appear to be a hack sight unseen, it’d be him. But who is he as an artist? Sanders is arguably the most “dysphoric” of contemporary non-horror directors.