Before SINNERS, Kathryn Bigelow directed a bloodthirsty neo-noir vampire western in NEAR DARK (1987). The movie is all brushstrokes of shadows, glittering neon lights, hazy and foreboding sunrises; every image melds into an intoxicating nocturnal style. Tangerine Dream’s electronic score keeps this thriller chugging but Bill Paxton really steals the show as bug-eyed giddy serial killer Severen
Everyone should see this. Director Clint Bentley brings a slow poetic imagery in the style of Terrence Malick to Denis Johnson's story of the disappearing Old West
THE NEW WORLD (2006): malick is a poet who uses natural light, hand-held slow-moving cameras, and poetic voice-overs to evoke the feeling of the sublime. there is very little verbal or narrative meaning transposed onto his images; he simply shows them to us in free verse poetry, an image-language in itself, a transcendent meaning-making in the closest form we’ll get to total cinema. incredible
The first hour of ANEMONE (2025) was probably my favorite movie of the year. The heart of it was the fraught fraternal bond of Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean, two men with heavy burdens from their past. The audiovisuals are an electric fever dream of abstract images and almost alien sounds from British composer The Haxan Cloak. Unfortunately I lost it in the back half as it avoids both a third act conflict and a resolution, but it was still one of the most memorable theater-going experiences I've had in years