Paddy Wilson

Oct 24, 2024 | filminquiry.com | A Traveler’s Needs |Paddy Wilson

Witches starts off like a video essay. Writer, director, editor (and “star”) Elizabeth Sankey talks over clips of films, summarizing what she’ll go onto discuss in greater depth: the cinematic portrayals of witches and their relationship to postpartum anxiety, depression and psychosis. So before the title card, you might think this is going to be a big-screen version of your favorite YouTube culture, film and TV hot-taker. That’s not meant badly. It would’ve been good if it was.

Oct 18, 2024 | filminquiry.com | Paddy Wilson

Understanding our home is crucial to understanding ourselves. In Blitz, which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival, writer and director Steve McQueen presents two different versions of home – the “small” of the family and the “big” of the country – as two warring aspects of identity that 9-year-old George (Elliot Heffernan) has to wrestle with during the larger conflict of World War II.

Oct 13, 2023 | filminquiry.com | Paddy Wilson

Fincher’s back. Three years after Mank, the monochrome biopic of Citizen Kane’s screenwriter, the Fight Club, Zodiac and The Social Network director David Fincher returns with The Killer, a stylish thriller about an assassin (Michael Fassbender) who travels to do some pro bono elimination when the consequences of a botched job come back to bite him. Sounds like Fincher alright.

Oct 12, 2023 | filminquiry.com | Paddy Wilson

He who is tired of London is tired of life, said Samuel Johnson. And he who is tired of the London Film Festival needs more caffeine. Today’s reviews from LFF 2023  feature vampires at Paul Mescal‘s door and devils in David Dasmalchian‘s studio, a divine combination if ever there was one. Another year, another performance by Paul Mescal playing a quietly broken young man in a film about revisiting long-dead parents.

Oct 12, 2023 | filminquiry.com | Paddy Wilson

The Bikeriders is the latest film from writer and director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Loving). Inspired by Danny Lyons’ 1968 book of the same name, it follows the Vandals motorcycle gang across the 1960s and 70s, centered around Kathy (Jodie Comer), a headstrong outsider to the group, and her husband Benny (Austin Butler), a reckless young Vandals member.