Empires rise and fall; every dog has its day. The increased awareness of and need for diverse voices – together with the series-driven streaming revolution – has made Hollywood less relevant now than it has been at any time since the industry colonised Southern California's orange groves. Even stars have become an endangered species.
I enjoyed Licorice Pizza, The Fabelmans, and Bullet Train (until its awful last scene), but the films listed below speak with an urgency avoided by American mainstream movies with their escapist imperative – She Said being a grave, classy exception. Though Petrov's Flu slipped under the radar in the UK, Kirill Serebrennikov’s phantasmagorical evocation of ghost-ridden post-Soviet Russia – based on a 2016 novel but invoking Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Bulgakov – felt to me like the epicentre of everything, cinema included.
Aftersun announced the arrival of a filmmaker, Charlotte Wells, whose spare style serves the kind of volcanic emotions that erupt without warning over the course of a life. It was revelatory. So was Earwig's long day's train journey into night – a sequence I can't get out of my head.
1. Petrov's Flu
2. Aftersun
3. Three Minutes: A Lengthening
4. Nitram
5. Corsage
6. A Chiara
7. Hive
8. Earwig
9. Living
10. Benediction