Some of my recent cinema trips:
- American Fiction: God, this is good. The trailer makes it look like a knockabout comedy but there's so much more going on. At heart, it's a portrait of a dysfunctional family with some biting satire and observations on race. Also blisteringly funny. Jeffrey Wright is as good as ever, but Sterling K Brown steals the show, he's great.
- The Zone Of Interest: This is an incredible technical achievement, and as a study of the banality of evil, it can't be beaten. The Hoss family go about their day to day lives - go on day trips, read stories to their children, tend to their garden. All normal enough, expect that the head of the family works at the Auschwitz concentration camp, and they live right next door. So, thanks to the incredible, immersive sound design, there's a constant background of anguished screams, gunshots, the ominous sound of a train chugging past, and all the while, the smoke rises from the chimney next door. You never see what's happening (thank god) but your imagination fills in the gaps. A film where the horrific becomes mundane, where evil is everyday. I saw this last night and can't stop thinking about it, but I never, ever need to watch it again.
- The End We Start From: Jodie Comer is as brilliant as ever in a disaster movie that's all too relatable. It's not a film without flaws (there are several plot holes, and the post-disaster scenes just make it look as if the country had suffered a slight storm) but Comer makes this a must-see.
