Taylor Russell, “Bones and All”
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All” is supposed to be a gruesome, chilling cannibal movie, and while, yes, it has its share of the terrifyingly grotesque, what makes it so touching and powerful is that it’s really mostly a romantic story about outsiders. In the film, Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell are outcast “eaters” who find themselves on the road. Essentially afflicted with an unquenchable desire for human flesh, they will never belong and never fit in. While Chalamet is great too, the film is seen through Russell’s character’s eyes, an innocent young girl abandoned by her father. Russell’s doe-eyed performance is transfixing. She just wants to fit in and be loved, but she’s a monster at heart. Ultimately, “Bones and All” is terribly melancholy, tragic, and full of heartache, something Russell seems to convey in every quietly introspective moment she radiates. This kid is a star. – RP (Our review of “Bones and All”)
Jenny Slate and Isabella Rossellini, “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”
Has voice work ever been this intimate, this sensitive, and this touching? Director Dean Fleischer Camp’s phenomenal stop-motion feature centers on Marcel, an adorable one-inch-tall shell who lives a fulfilling life with his grandmother and pet lint. But when a documentary filmmaker discovers them in an Airbnb, he discovers the sad story of a community of shells that have been lost and displaced from Marcel and Grandma. Jenny Slate voices Marcel, and Isabella Rossellini, the grandmother, and this affectionate, warm, melancholy, but life-affirming film just wouldn’t be the same without them. Years from now, when this cult indie becomes a beloved classic, all anyone will ever talk about is how Slate imbued the film with wonder, curiosity, and child-like joy and how Rossellini took the cliches of elderly anxiety and transformed them into something so poignant and profound. – RP (Our review of “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”)
Tilda Swinton, “The Eternal Daughter”
With her duet of films “The Souvenir” and “The Souvenir Part II,” writer-director Joanna Hogg mined her coming-of-age to present a story of an artist coming into her artistry. As Rosalind, a surrogate for Hogg’s mother, Tilda Swinton brought a delicate balance to the extreme emotions of protagonist Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne). Her latest film, “The Eternal Daughter,” returns to Julie and Rosalind, this time with Swinton playing both roles. A meditation on the inexorable connection shared by mothers and their daughters, Swinton builds on her own daughter’s performance as a younger Julie while simultaneously expanding Rosalind. This is a chamber piece, with Swinton reacting to herself, to the haunting sounds of a Gothic manner, to her dog Louis, and to the memories that live within and all around us. The result is a raw nerve of a film, filled with humor and pathos, and an exquisite serenity, all resting squarely on the power of Swinton’s transcendent talent. – MG (Our review of “The Eternal Daughter”)
Tang Wei and Park Hae-il, “Decision to Leave”
South Korean auteur Park Chan Wook’s fantastic murder-mystery romance centers on a detective investigating a man’s death (Park Hae-il), who then meets the dead man’s mysterious wife (Tang Wei) in the course of his dogged sleuthing. She then becomes his prime suspect. It’s a thorny, coiling movie about a knotty web of deceits, but it’s also about obsession, longing, and desire. Park’s insomniac detective soon becomes enamored with Tang Wei’s suspicious, mysterious character, and while she’s manipulating him, it’s much more complicated than that. A toxic co-dependent infatuation, secrets that must be guarded in case, complicity in crimes, and romantic haunting, there’s so much aching tension in “Decision to Leave,” and the duo—one shattered, the other enigmatic—is just mesmerizing together. – RP (Our review of “Decision to Leave”)
Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
One of this year’s most exquisite love stories comes from Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, blasting through endless versions of their characters and finding each other again in the process. In the first universe in which we see them, they are a married mother and father who own a laundromat and are on the verge of divorce. But they both have a blast with the story’s multiverse-jumping acrobatics of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Quan suddenly changes from demure to confident Bluetooth-headset-wearing ass-kicker right before her eyes; Yeoh’s emotional journey warmly depicts a person embracing their inner weirdo and loving themselves in the process. But while the movie is rife with fantasy and slow-motion fight scenes, Yeoh and Quan give the film its grounded heart, presenting two souls reconnecting after years of one reality have made them solely business partners. They have a climactic scene directly inspired by the longing romance of Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” and while echoing the elegance of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung’s characters in that movie, they illuminate the sentiment of this one: “In another life, I would have liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.” – NA (Our review of “Everything Everywhere All at Once”)
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