American HoneyOn release from 14th October
Filmmakers have always been obsessed with young women. It’s rare, though, for a film to show not so much the spectacle of the female (filtered through commercial cinema’s male gaze) as what it actually feels like to be a young woman.
Two directors are currently pre-eminent in this field: France’s Céline Sciamma and Britain’s Andrea Arnold. In American Honey, her first feature in the United States, Arnold gives us Star (Sasha Lane) who dodges an abusive family to join a gang of youngsters. Crammed into a van, they drive from state to state selling magazine subscriptions. Management is a mean-eyed hustler (Riley Keough) chauffeured by her sidekick. He’s what passes for employee of the month, a chancer with a dodgy pigtail (Shia LaBeouf, all too plausible). What has Star got herself into? True crime? True love?
Be prepared for two and three quarter hours on this road trip. Does the film justify that length? It’s strong on mood rather than events. It revisits familiar tropes of kids-on-the-run movies—open road, wild love, nature as metaphor, yet cinematographer Robbie Ryan frames Great American Vistas so they seem like discoveries, just as he captures the intimate scenes without voyeurism.
The pleasure here seems more transient than transformative. When the young crew pump themselves up for the sales drive by singing along to E-40’s “Choices (Yup)” their options look second-hand and discounted. American Honey, though, holds its value after the final frame.
My Scientology MovieOn release from 7th October Louis Theroux takes on the secretive religion in this typically mischievous but thoughtful investigation of Scientology. Denied access to current members, Theroux makes his own feature film, which means casting an actor as Tom Cruise, for example. To get some of the jokes, prime yourself with either Lawrence Wright’s book or Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. It helps to know your Sea Corps from your Engram.
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World On release from 28th October For 40 years, Werner Herzog has pondered the poetic strangeness of human aspiration—from the depths of the jungle to pre-historic caves. Here he tackles the internet. In encounters with experts and pioneers including Elon Musk, he considers its oddities and extremes, whether magnificent, ludicrous or eerie.
Two directors are currently pre-eminent in this field: France’s Céline Sciamma and Britain’s Andrea Arnold. In American Honey, her first feature in the United States, Arnold gives us Star (Sasha Lane) who dodges an abusive family to join a gang of youngsters. Crammed into a van, they drive from state to state selling magazine subscriptions. Management is a mean-eyed hustler (Riley Keough) chauffeured by her sidekick. He’s what passes for employee of the month, a chancer with a dodgy pigtail (Shia LaBeouf, all too plausible). What has Star got herself into? True crime? True love?
Be prepared for two and three quarter hours on this road trip. Does the film justify that length? It’s strong on mood rather than events. It revisits familiar tropes of kids-on-the-run movies—open road, wild love, nature as metaphor, yet cinematographer Robbie Ryan frames Great American Vistas so they seem like discoveries, just as he captures the intimate scenes without voyeurism.
The pleasure here seems more transient than transformative. When the young crew pump themselves up for the sales drive by singing along to E-40’s “Choices (Yup)” their options look second-hand and discounted. American Honey, though, holds its value after the final frame.
My Scientology MovieOn release from 7th October Louis Theroux takes on the secretive religion in this typically mischievous but thoughtful investigation of Scientology. Denied access to current members, Theroux makes his own feature film, which means casting an actor as Tom Cruise, for example. To get some of the jokes, prime yourself with either Lawrence Wright’s book or Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief. It helps to know your Sea Corps from your Engram.
Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World On release from 28th October For 40 years, Werner Herzog has pondered the poetic strangeness of human aspiration—from the depths of the jungle to pre-historic caves. Here he tackles the internet. In encounters with experts and pioneers including Elon Musk, he considers its oddities and extremes, whether magnificent, ludicrous or eerie.
