outsider cinema

Film Category: Thriller

  • One Battle After Another

    One Battle After Another

    Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film One Battle After Another is as political as a film can be (especially for PTA), early on it concerns itself with a couple within a far-left revolutionary group calling themselves the ‘French-75’. The start reminded me heavily of How To Blow Up a Pipeline (Goldhaber, 2022) in how it positioned the audience within the guerrilla movement that only had their perspective to follow. Both films share a youthful exuberance, wanting to create change to world where facism is intrinsically ingrained in society.

    Like a lot of PTA films, the genre the film starts in usually gets turned on its head. Here is another example of this where the film becomes more of a mainstream blockbuster the further the story goes on. This isn’t to put the film down by saying that a revolutionary film turns into a mainstream thriller. The reason it does this is to follow the life changes that happen to the main character in Bob (Leonardo DiCaprio). After the capturing of his girlfriend (Teyana Taylor) he has to flee in exile with his daughter (Chase Infiniti). This is where to becomes a cat and mouse chase thriller with him and the authorities. The film doesn’t become a thriller because it necessarily wants to be, it heads in this directions because of the outcome to the main character. In many ways it’s cinema without boundaries, a film shouldn’t be defined by just one genre because life doesn’t always work out that way and this is the prime example of that.

  • The Usual Suspects

    The Usual Suspects

    This year marks the 30th anniversary of The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995). I watched the film for the first time over 8 years ago when I first started getting into watching films as a hobby, of course picking to watch it because it was in many films of ‘must watch movies’. One of the key attributes that I see as making a film part of these lists and how The Usual Suspects manages this is that it manages to capture a time and a place, but also have the retrospective appeal that still makes it relevant to audiences today.

    This film achieves this timeless classic in the way it mixes genres, along with time and place. At times it conveys the classic noir film where you follow the journey of the narrator to uncover a criminal case where the victim is not yet known. It also manages to become a heist film as the concept for the final part of the film unfolds. But most importantly it is a well-worked thriller during the scenes that create suspense, creating a refreshing break from the long scenes of dialogue. If a film copies this today it will of course not have the same appeal. The reason it worked so well for this film was because how unique it was at the time. The twist could in the modern age be seen from a mile off, but the use of untrustworthy narrator or time-shifting narrative is something that was fresh for the Hollywood blockbuster.

    My favourite part of the film is an edit at the start where one of the suspects throws a towel at the camera which also coincides with the end of scene and an edit away to another character. This to me indicates from early on that it is these suspects are in charge of the narrative shown on screen, not the audience, officers or even it feels like the production team. This becomes the truth by the end of the film where one of the suspects own made up narrative is what creates the story we have seen throughout, thereby determining the narrative we have seen for the last couple of hours.

  • Caught Stealing

    Caught Stealing

    Caught Stealing is the latest film from Darren Aronofsky. It concerns Hank (Austin Butler) who gets himself inadvertently involved in a multi-million dollar drug feud. It has been a few years since the release of The Whale from Aronofsky, and this couldn’t be further in style and many could see going back to his roots of psychological inner turmoil. The film sets itself in 1998 which is also the year of his first feature length film Pi. As I will go on to highlight, you get the feeling that if he actually made the film in 1998 it would’ve been a lot better than making it today.

    It first Darren Aronofsky film I have struggled with on first viewing so the first thing I ask myself is to what the usual successful formula for his movies is. They deal with obsession and isolated characters where through tapping into their psyche, we can gain a deeper understanding of our own existence. You see this here in Caught Stealing: it concerns a troubled character, who has his own addiction issue, it also seems to be an analogy for his own internal issues and more importantly it all descends into chaos. Its a tricky formula to get right which Aronofsky has managed in the past, whereas here it feels like he’s taken on too much. There is little cohesion between all these important elements and ends up feeling like a generic crime film.

    I haven’t read the original book but I’m sure it is a good read, like all Aronofsky films he always picks good source material. The issue here is how its being presented on the big screen. Austin Butler has more than proved himself by this point, its only been a week or so since I seen him in Eddington (Aster, 2025) which he excelled at portraying a conspiracy theorist. Here it feels like hes been cast in the wrong movie. Either the writing has let him down or its not the right role for him, but there is no scale to his inner turmoil which feels more like he wants this to happen rather than something he is trying to escape from. The only half-decent portrayal came from Matt Smith as Russ the token cockney for the film. You do feel that he really liked playing the role, even if it was just another stereotypical Londoner in New York who also calls the band IDLES, ‘The Idles’ which really wound me up.

    I enjoyed the soundtrack to the film but at the same time, I only enjoyed it because I was a fan of the music. It served its purpose by reminding us that it was set in 1998 and not the modern day but didn’t create any feeling towards what was being shown on screen. In fact it brought us closer to the modern day when you feel Aronofsky was trying to make it seem was set in a long forgotten past. It at times made out that the plot was concerned with the results of gentrification yet kept abandoning this under conceived idea. Its meant to show this pivotal point in New York history with these different characters from all walks of life playing off each other, yet it felt more like a superhero spin off where all these factions have been forced to share a storyline with one another.

    If you look at the poster for the film or the trailer full of spoilers for the whole plot of the movie, you could tell it was going to be a standard genre crime film with no surprises. The biggest surprise is when you know who directs it. The film still deserves three stars but the reason why this has been so negative is because you’d expect so much better from him. A director well known for a unique style of cinematography where close ups or the angle of shots illustrates the deeper meaning of a movie. Yet here there is none of that. Requiem For A Dream was the first film I seen of his and it felt so fresh, like nothing I’ve seen before. Caught Stealing, you could just watch the trailer than you’ve seen the whole film.

  • Jaws

    Jaws

    When people talk about the cinematography in Jaws, most point towards the dolly zoom which was influenced heavily from Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958). I think what is so key to this scene and other uses of cinematography in the film is how they purvey their own emotion onto the film. This certain camera shot shows the sense of dread that has just been bestowed upon Brody (Rob Schneider), and also the uncertainty of whats just happened as we the audience are unstabilised by whats just happened. Scenes at the beach position the audience right in the middle of the stampede of people as they rush away from the water, suffocating the audience and preventing them from getting a moment to breathe. In other scenes the camera submerges itself in the water which acts calming as it falls silent and nothing can be seen, but this in itself is what creates the suspense as the silence doesn’t necessarily bring safety. At some points the camera floats in and out of being underwater like it is itself drowning and along with it destabilising the audience. These scenes don’t just purvey emotion of characters, they create emotion in themselves. A great thriller like this film brings the audience along with the emotions of the characters. This can’t be just achieved through narrative and acting, but needs cinematography that creates these emotions for the audience watching.

    As highlighted with its influence from Vertigo, the film clearly takes influence from others. Every crime thriller needs a killer and most of the time the audience gets a glimpse of the killers point of view which is also seen here. We see multiple shots from the sharks perspective as it approaches the humans it hopes to munch upon. These shots in themselves always contain a certain amount of voyeurism – they position you in the killers self which brings with it dread but also excitement as you wait for, in this case, the shark to strike again. It creates the juxtaposition of the dread seen from the beach goers as they try to escape, then you a thrown into the perspective of the shark which has no care to any human emotion and is just thinking about their next meal. Even a film he made a few years earlier seemed to have a big influence on this one. Steven Spielberg made Duel in 1971 which is a simple concept about a tanker chasing down a car for pretty much the full running time of 90 minutes. It shows how Spielberg can create great suspense out of the most unlikely of situations, which in itself draws heavily from The Birds (Hitchcock, 1963) that uses an every day scenario and pushes it to the max to create unnerve from the idea of the worst possible situation. At the point of Jaws, Spielberg is more than capable of making the last half an hour of the movie just about the ‘final battle’ of the three main characters against the deadly shark. It takes the full length of this time for the shark to be defeated but throughout it you are gripped and never feel like it is dragging on. A shark attacking three humans feels like it is bringing on the end of humanity, it brings in the emotions of the characters to represent something bigger than itself in the same way The Birds does.

  • Eddington

    Eddington

    The film is set in 2020, one of the most hostile and uncertain periods of time in living memory, and the film deals with all of this in what seems to be the pressure cooker of Eddington, New Mexico where it is set. The backdrop is that of the coronavirus crisis where wearing masks and protecting others create the main early grudge between Sheriff Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) and Mayor Garcia (Pedro Pascal). This then becomes overshadowed when race movement and conspiracy theories start to get more of a grasp on the storyline that creates deeper ructions within their community. This in itself is a perfect potion to make a satire from, a community in turmoil where the clashing of political and ideological beliefs leaves all paranoid of each other. This is one of the main strengths of the film that it is a heightened satire which never takes sides. It doesn’t prod the audience what side to be on through narrative but allows the characters to dig their own graves and lose track with reality.

    The film follows the Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) style of anti-hero. Sheriff Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is morally inept from the start, but through the hardship that he faces you end up backing their corner by the end. The pathos we feel for him leads this charge where in what becomes the final battles, it is no longer about politics, and more about this individual on a humane level. The sheriff is also one of a few characters where you actually visualise their emotions in the film. Cinema is all about spectacle so when a character offers this in return, you of course gain more of a connection to the character. This is in comparison to Mayor Garcia (Pedro Pascal) whose role requires him to underplay any emotions, he is still a hostile individual but knows exactly how to push the Sheriffs buttons.

    The film manages to be this satire, which delivered well on the laughter. More than this it becomes a successful thriller film that subverts the audiences preconceptions from the start. Ari Aster started his directorial career making horror films, but here he creates the greatest moments of suspense that he has done throughout his career. This either comes from subverting the moments of battle to when you start to feel less tense, or through cinematography where in one of the final scenes the camera doesn’t follow the sheriff directly but pans around to empty scenery that adds to the tension.

    Making it as satirical and political as it is, it can be seen as Ari Aster’s closest film to reality to date. But the apocolypictic way in which the story decends into chaos bring the story back into the shared space along with all the other great pieces of work from his paranoid mind. It manages to descend into chaos, and create all these detestable characters, but throughout you still feel a great connection with the narrative and the redemption of feeling towards the Sheriff is something that can only be achieved in the best of anti-hero films.