Film Junction

‘Certain Women’ is about women’s fraught, potent relationships to their environments. Set in a flat Montana of hard blue skies and jagged horizons, ‘Certain Women’ is a different kind of modern Western; one where confrontations are deflected and firearms feel impotent. ‘Certain Women’ demonstrates writer-director Kelly Reichardt’s gift for telling the stories of ordinary people with uncommon empathy and skill. The silence speaks volumes in Kelly Reichardt’s films. Her less-is-so-much-more approach is again on display beautifully in the movie, a series of three barely interconnected stories in which the empty spaces are pregnant with meaning and resonance. Every small moment feels thoughtfully considered, fully lived-in.

‘Certain Women’ is unabashedly feminist, telling stories of both hope and devastation, ones which swerve between surprising optimism and depressing reality with the same deft power.

Featuring expert minimalist performances from the likes of Laura Dern, Lily Gladstone, Kristen Stewart and Michelle Williams, the film seeps into the skin and expands in the mind.

Tim Burton provides such a distinct look, feel, and texture to every one of his films - regardless of how you might feel about them - that he’s very much a genre unto himself. Tim Burton’s latest high anticipated adventure fantasy film is an adaptation from the New York Times bestselling book of the same name by Ransom Riggs. For his latest effort, ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’, the eccentric director gets to do what he does best: play in his macabre sandbox with endless whimsy and delight at his fingertips. The director’s unique visual style and playful sense of morbidity is present throughout the story and whilst there are a few hiccups in the film, it’s still engaging and engaging enough to look past the cracks. Quirky, unusual and delightfully creepy, ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ is a fun watch and, undoubtedly, a wonderful addition to Burton’s already magnificent repertoire

The Fits, an independently made film by first time feature director, Anna Rose Holmer, is a stone-cold victory. The Fits is an immaculately conceived and executed flick. It’s a captivating, mesmerising, and remarkably painful journey into adolescence and independence. The film is about a young African-American girl named Toni ( Royalty Hightower) who, while living in Cincinnati’s West End, spends her time working out at a local boxing gym with her brother, even as she increasingly finds herself drawn to the championship-winning dance team that practices in the same facility. Using a lot of real-life West End of Cincinnati dancers and athletes in the cast lends the film an authentic feel without ever feeling amateurish while the specificity of Toni’s story resonates outward. The film is more than just a coming-of-age saga; it’s an expressionistic snapshot of a young girl trying to transcend her estrangement, define her identity, and find a place for herself in the world.

A luminous, heartbreaking performance from Olivia Cooke shines through every frame of ‘Katie Says Goodbye’. The debut feature from writer/director Wayne Roberts is a surefooted, discreetly handled tale of a young woman struggling to bridge the gap between her sweet dreams and the hard-knock realities of life. Katie is a naive young woman - polite, well-mannered and respectful. Katie also harbours dreams of leaving her dusty New Mexico backwater, heading to San Francisco and studying to become a beautician. In order to fund those dreams, she has turned to prostitution but seems to attract the nicest, gentlest clientele, including kindly truck driver Bear (Jim Belushi). Olivia Cooke is just terrific as she captures all the various facets of the waif-like Katie from the vulnerable to the neurotic.

Katie isn’t an easy watch, to be sure, but it’s very well executed and deeply felt. And it’s always a joy to see a film where the director is so obviously in love with his lead character.

‘Jackie’ is a searing and intimate portrait of one of the most important and tragic moments in American history, seen through the eyes of the iconic First Lady, then Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (Natalie Portman).

‘Jackie’, one of the best and most ambitious films of the year, is not a conventional biopic. Working from an intricate screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, Chilean director Pablo Larrain (‘Neruda’) conjures a multifaceted portrait of a woman under the influence of politics, celebrity and grief. Far from the surface image of Jackie Kennedy as stylish fashionplate arm candy that history has boiled her down to, Portman’s Jackie is a woman who finds her power in tragedy, angling to secure her husband’s legacy. Larrain deftly balances mainstream moviemaking with an art-film sensibility, which is all the more impressive considering that this is his English-language debut.

This sweetly tender movie from Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is superbly unforced and unassuming, finding delicate notes of affirmation and optimism and discreetly celebrating the beauty of nature and family love. The sweet and sentimental journey that is ‘Our Little Sister’ is the story of three sisters who bring a half-sister to live with them in contemporary Japan.

Three sisters Sachi, Yoshino and Chika live together in a large house in the city of Kamakura. When their father absent from the family home for the last 15 years dies, they travel to the countryside for his funeral and meet their shy teenage half-sister. Bonding quickly with the orphaned Suzu, they invite her to live with them. Suzu eagerly agrees, and a new life of joyful discovery begins for the four siblings. ‘Our Little Sister’ is a beautiful drama with comedic undertones about the tension between the comforts of family life and the vast possibilities beyond it. In adapting a story by graphic novelist Akimi Yoshida, director Koreeda has created an insightful film that bears comparison to the work of British directors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. Don’t be put off by the need to read subtitles. Rarely has a film more eloquently captured the universality of human experience.