“Marty Supreme,” Darius Khondji
If Josh Safdie’s hustler-with-a-rocket-engine drama runs on velocity, Darius Khondji’s images are the grease and grit that keep the thing from turning into a glossy period postcard. The film’s formal charge comes from its “engineered frenzy,” a sense of motion that’s controlled, not chaotic, and Khondji responds by shooting with purposeful grime, leaning into “weat, harsh light, and lived-in texture like the camera itself is chasing Marty’s self-mythology down an alley at full sprint. The result isn’t nostalgia; it’s sweat equity. Every frame feels earned, scuffed, slightly feral—an ambitious drama photographed like it’s happening right now, in real time, on borrowed luck and bad decisions. – RP
“Sirât,” Mauro Herce
If Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât” is a movie about moving forward even as the world starts quietly coming apart, Mauro Herce photographs that forward motion as if it’s both a pilgrimage and a panic attack. Shot on 16mm, the images have a tactile, sunburnt grit—dust and heat rendered as texture, not backdrop—while the desert roads become long, hypnotic ribbons where vehicles look tiny, doomed, and strangely graceful in formation. There’s a reason the film’s most transporting passages are basically convoy cinema: Laxe and Herce make the act of crossing terrain feel like its own kind of belief system, a trance you can surrender to until reality catches up. And when it does, that same sensuous beauty hardens into something harsher—space stops feeling liberating and starts feeling indifferent, even predatory. To quote our review, the visual high isn’t “pretty desert” postcarding; it’s the way the camera turns travel into tension, and the horizon into a threat you can’t outrun. – RP
Honorable Mention:
“Hamnet” (Łukasz Żal), “The Testament of Ann Lee” (William Rexer), “The Smashing Machine” (Maceo Bishop), “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” (cinematography led by Bradford Young), “The Love That Remains” (Hlynur Pálmason), “The Phoenician Scheme” (cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel), “Urchin” (cinematographer Josée Deshaies), “The Chronology of Water” (Corey C. Waters), “Bugonia” (Robbie Ryan).
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- Andrew Crump
- Andrew Crump
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
- Rodrigo Perez
