First Love
There aren’t many directors who can celebrate making 105 films and still have many years ahead of them; one of the few names on that list is Takashi Miike. He came to global prominence from 1999-2001, making around 15 movies. Those movies tended to be subversive, dangerous and the work of a true gonzo creator. In the years since Miike has gone on to make more mainstream movies with bigger budgets, however, the thing that many of his fans with overlook when idealising his halcyon era is that Miike has grown as a filmmaker. What this results in, for me, is the best of both worlds of Takashi Miike. This violent crime thriller in which an entire crime world violently collapses because of the greed of one young footsoldier and a pair of young lovers brings the vim and vigour of a young, angry filmmaker and presents it with the seasoned talent and skill of a veteran filmmaker. Miike has rarely felt this vital. Lets put this another way, this is Takashi Miike’s Wolf of Wall Street. Rob Simpson
The Forty-Year-Old Version
Attempting to re-invent herself as a rap artist, a middle-aged schoolteacher desperate for a breakthrough finds herself hit with a wave of inspiration. Radha Blank directs, stars, and writes her way through a promising debut, one that highlights the broad strengths she has both in front of and behind the camera. A real treat, light enough to engage with rather easily, but with a strong, detailed message at its core. Treading through some New York City tropes, Blank offers a comfortable piece, innovating where and when she can. Those innovations come thick and fast, and picking out just one of the many brilliant moments would be a near-impossible feat. Ewan Gleadow
Les Miserables
The French film that everybody was talking about in 2020 with Portrait of a Lady on Fire (or 2019 depending on where you are in the world), however, it was pipped to the post for France’s nomination for the Best Film in a foreign language Oscar – that honour was claimed by Ladj Ly’s directorial feature debut, Les Miserables. Not to be confused with Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name, the only connection it shares with that oft-adapted classic is that events take place in the same Parisian suburb as those in Hugo’s 1862 novel. Ladj Ly’s film plays much, much closer to the likes of La Haine and City of God. In it, we negotiate a byzantine gangland landscape and a three-man police unit who fall somewhere between peacekeepers and instigators. Les Miserables is one workday in the french ghetto and the maelstrom of chaos that kicks off after a lion cub is stolen, also, the film ends with a 15-minute segment that can only be described “a social realist [the] raid”, this is already a third-hand joke, one which perfectly sums up the tumultuous conclusion to this firebrand modern French classic. Rob Simpson
