A tale as old as time, how much can true love transcend? Is it simply an intertwining of attractions or is love something more, something so inherent to our very being that we’ll find our way back to it under even the most dire of circumstances? These are questions Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze poses, if never really answering, in What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

The swinging sixties, it’s a decade we look back on for its neon glow, over the top style and cultural influences. In film, we remember it as a decade in which Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman were at the peak of their powers, when the French New Wave was taking over. Gather together what box office information you can from the time and what got people out to the theaters was still Disney musicals (The Jungle Book), Eastwood’s spaghetti western trilogy and a handful of James Bond Movies.
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​The past is never just the parts we choose to remember from it. The best stuff survives and the rest gets swept under the rug. Today, in an era of film dominated by big franchise features, Edgar Wright — set aside that brief flirtation with directing Ant Man — is one of the handful of directors bucking the IP trend and taking swings on mid budgets and original ideas. He takes influence from the music, atmosphere and genre storytelling of the past to make something totally new.

​“Faces from my past return” croons Billie Eilish over the opening credits of No Time to Die in her signature haunting tone. Both lyric and singer feel wholly appropriate for a Bond (Daniel Craig) himself haunted by his past misadventures. Portraits of Judy Dench’s M overlook MI6, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) continues to color the decisions of 007 and even Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright) reappears for one final mission. No Time to Die spends so much time unpacking the history of our longest tenured Bond, yet the film’s lasting legacy may be what it portends for the future of the franchise.

When it won the Palme d’Or back in 2019, on the way to total awards season domination, Parasite began the process of dismantling popular perception of what an awards film could be. Decidedly genre yet nearly unclassifiable as a whole, Bong Joon-ho’s thrilling masterpiece was a far cry from the period drama or stuffy biopic that often garners attention late in the year. If the 2019 Palme d’Or winner blurred the once rigid lines of how we contextual i each film, the 2021 winner completely blew them up.

**TW Suicide is referenced in Dear Evan Hansen and in this review as well**

Humans are social creatures and will go to great lengths to connect with one another. For some that process is easy and natural, but for others connection is a bit tougher. For others still, like the titular lead of Dear Evan Hansen, true human connection can only be forged by gaslighting the family of a deceased classmate.

Getting old is a long and often lonely road, one that Clint Eastwood knows well. More than fifty years have passed since the spaghetti westerns that made Eastwood a household name and nearly twenty since his last Academy Award. Now 91 years old, far closer to the end of that road than the beginning, Eastwood is still making movies. With Cry Macho, like The Mule before it, the cowboy of old Hollywood is starting to grapple with his journey coming to an end.

Anyone who had seen Paul Schrader’s existentially dreadful First Reformed had a pretty good sense that his newest effort would be anything but breezy. Man’s struggle against punishing oppression and his culpability for society’s sins has been the defining feature of Schrader’s long, illustrious career. With The Card Counter, it’s Oscar Isaac’s turn to grapple with the dark corners of his past.

It’s a special Throwback Thursday this week and for the rest of September as Spinning the Reel embarks on another Decades Project. This time we are covering the 1960s on the podcast and right here on the blog. First up is my pick for the month: Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7.

One of the most common, and most often lazy, pieces of film criticism asks “Who is this movie for?” Usually the answer is self apparent and traces back to some studio’s desire to make money quickly. Every so often though, a movie comes around that so violently antagonizes every potential audience that its very existence comes into question. Forgive me for asking, but who is He’s All That for?