Chloé Zhao

Hamnet

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Agnes and William running

Jessie Buckley does the acting and Paul Mescal once again plays Paul Mescal in Hamnet, a biopic of Shakespeare tilting the spotlight towards his wife, Anne Hathaway. Agnes, in fact, pronounced the French way, or that’s the way this sweet and salty adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-seller has it. Mescal, so often in a metaphorical leather jerkin, wears a real one this time around, playing the de-mythologised Shakespeare as stressed, hungover, doubtful of his own talents, a “useless… tradeless” (says his useless father) Latin teacher who meets a weirdo, “the daughter of a forest witch”, while she is out flying her hawk one day. He falls for her instantly, and she for him … Read more

Eternals

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The Eternals group shot

Like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, Eternals is a Marvel superhero movie that’s sketchy, thin, never fully fleshed out. Not bad, exactly, just hard to get a bead on. Is stuff missing or was it never meant to be there? Perhaps its problems lie in the origins of the source material, an iteration of an iteration etc etc. The first of the superhero gangs was 1960’s Justice League (itself a revival of the 1940s Justice Society of America), a greatest-hits compilation of DC Comics’ big hitters – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash and more. In 1963 Marvel responded to the success of the Justice League with its own version, … Read more

Nomadland

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Fern has a cigarette

In January 2011 the US Gypsum plant in Empire, Nevada, shut down. By July of the same year the town’s zip code had been discontinued. Nomadland makes personal a phenomenon that’s been going on for decades but has accelerated since the big crash of 2008. Of displaced older blue-collar workers who lose their homes and jobs and take to the road, travelling around the US working at any job they can, living out of cars, vans and recreational vehicles, a new nomad class. The film is based on the 2018 book by Jessica Bruder, an extended piece of non-fiction reporting detailing the phenomenon, and stars Frances McDormand as Fern – the only person … Read more