david-meldrum

It's taken me a long time to get to this entry in the Coens' catlogue, but I really enjoyed it. Criticisms of formlessness seem empty to me - the story of a week in the life of a struggling folk singer in 1960s New York, desperate to stay afloat financially, professionally, and socially is charming, melancholy and laced with wry humour. Oscar Isaac's central performance is excellent, and his singing is really something. The film has a laid back lyricism that beguiles and worms its way into the viewer's consciousness. Like many in the directors' canon, it should repay repeated revisits. Not their best - but well up there.

Rebel Ridge is a rare thing - a crime thriller that mostly eschews violence in favour of menace, threat, and the sense of something awful lumbering in on the horizon. The plot feels like it wouldn't be out of place in a Jack Reacher novel (I mean that as a complement) - a man is trying to stand bail for his brother and runs into a steaming pile of small-town police corruption. The direction, screenplay, and camerawork is all terse and intimate - the camera is all about the foreground, the running time isn't short but the dialogue is all clipped and brief. It all makes for a thriller that hums with tension and a terrific climax and the idea that what lurks beneath is always more awful than the surface appearances.

Lupita Nyong'o is a terminally ill hospice patient with a cat and a suicidally strong desire for pizza stranded in New York as the Quiet Place apocalypse hits the world. The first forty minutes or so of the film - with pre-alien arrival set-up and the initial chaos of the attack - are brilliant, with breathless, excruciating tension and well-staged set-pieces. Whilst the film never quite recovers that, this is a high concept series with jump scares and genuine tension baked into the premise, and the film does by and large make the most of that, even if the desire for pizza, though explained, doesn't quite ring true. The British law student she comes into contact with initially feels like a misstep, but that relationship leads to some genuinely moving moments, and having a seriously ill black woman - who is neither helpless nor hopeless - at the drama's centre makes for a refreshing and interesting dynamic in a series that will never quite recapture the brilliance of the first film but nevertheless remains interesting and creative.