LFF 2017: Last Flag Flying

dir. Richard Linklater, USA, 2017

Richard Linklater hasn't finished musing on the male bonding process just yet guys, so if the cripplingly macho / faintly homoerotic undertones of Dazed And Confused and Everybody Wants Some!! left you cold then maybe give Last Flag Flying a wide berth. That would be a shame though, because there's much more going on here than just three quinquagenarian males busting each others' balls for two hours, even though that in itself is enormously watchable.

A loose companion piece to Hal Ashby's 1973 Jack Nicholson-starrer The Last Detail, Last Flag Flying is adapted from a novel by the same author (Darryl Ponicsan) and explores similar themes of military fraternity through the prism of a road trip fuelled, as The Last Detail's was, by beer and frustration. This time round, though, the protagonists are two decades older, wearing those years on their faces like battle scars and trying to forget what their younger counterparts had yet to experience.

It's December 2003, and Steve Carell's subdued Vietnam veteran brings together Bryan Cranston's directionless alcoholic and Laurence Fishburne's reformed pastor when it transpires that they're the only friends he has who might help him cross the country to bury his son, a soldier who recently died in Iraq. The trio haven't seen each other in nearly thirty years, and their reunion is as bittersweet as anything you'd expect Linklater to lay out before you.

Bryan's fishing stories were becoming increasingly improbable

That premise might lead you to expect a catalogue of road movie clichés, but this is Richard Linklater we're talking about, so expect the unexpected. Expect a restrained performance from Steve Carell, who makes you feel his character's pain without a single moment of actorly showboating; expect mountains of dialogue tossed off with such effortless charm by the three leads that two hours fly by; expect a rigorous treatise on the concept of military heroism and the lies required to reinforce it, thereby feeding the war machine with an infinite supply of young men and women willing to lay down their lives for a flag.

Last Flag Flying is a film about comradeship in peacetime as much as in war, and while it has plenty to say about the abyss between what goes on in a warzone and how much of that filters through to the public's eyes and ears, it never stoops to preaching. Linklater is passionate about respect for others' beliefs, principles and wishes, and that respect is both championed and questioned throughout his film. His preoccupations with notions of masculinity are given a thorough workout too, with each of the lead characters displaying all the pros and cons of a range of archetypes: at one point, Fishburne and Cranston are almost literally the angel and devil on Carell's shoulders, leading you to wonder how they might possibly get through the film without killing each other.

Thought-provoking without being didactic despite a clear anti-war stance, this is Linklater in a melancholy but stirringly intelligent frame of mind. It's funny when it needs to be (a scene involving a discussion of Bryan Cranston's penis is eye-watering) and everyone is firing on all cylinders to ensure you won't be bored, but there are depths to Linklater's script that deserve your consideration. Incomparable with, yet intrinsically connected to, his Before trilogy, his college-based comedies or the epic sprawl of Boyhood, Last Flag Flying is the work of a director still capable of surprising with familiarity.

LFF 2017: Filmworker

dir. Tony Zierra, USA, 2017

While starring as Lord Bullingdon in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, Leon Vitali became so smitten with the filmmaking process that he gave up acting to become The Kube's assistant and dogsbody for the rest of the director's life and beyond, and his fascinating story is clumsily told in this maddeningly haphazard documentary.

Visible in all those behind the scenes featurettes on The Shining that you really should have seen by now, Vitali played a major role in casting terrifying toddler Danny Lloyd and looking after him on set, and from there went on to provide invaluable assistance to Kubrick on and between each of his films. A career at the side of one of cinema's greatest artists (and, as is quite evident, most hair-tearingly difficult people) eventually evolved into something much less enviable, as Vitali became Kubrick's all-round bitch, physically and mentally suffering under the weight of his boss's increasingly unreasonable demands.

And that's why he had Kubrick shrunk and stuffed.

Vitali is an undeniably compelling subject for fans of Kubrick's work, but Tony Zierra's film about him is so hamfistedly edited that it's not until roughly the halfway point that you realise exactly why all these contributors are speaking so effusively about him. Zierra takes so long to explain just what Vitali did and how badly he was treated that for the best part of an hour he comes across as something of a chancer, improbably exaggerating his role in bringing some of the greatest films ever made into being. It's a critical error, because you end up warming to Vitali way too late in the game, lessening the emotional impact of the latter stages.

Once you've collected all the pieces of the puzzle and mentally rearranged them in a way that makes sense (which was essentially Zierra's job), the overall picture is a sad one: a picture of a man who sacrificed too much to do what he loved without the credit or respect he deserved. And when you realise Vitali's story is typical of hundreds of poor, unsung buggers in the film industry - in any industry, in fact - the story takes on a universal significance.

To Zierra's credit, he sneaks in a lot of terrific non-Vitali titbits for Kubriphiles to lap up (the story of Full Metal Jacket's door gunner is heartbreaking), but he fails at the simple task of coherently telling the story he sets out to, making Filmworker one for fans only, and patient ones at that.

Blade Runner 2049

If further proof were required of the need for Ridley Scott to step away from directing more entries in Ridley Scott-instigated franchises, the Denis Villeneuve-helmed Blade Runner 2049 is it. I mean Scott's Prometheus should have provided sufficient evidence for this argument but that didn't stop his Alien Covenant happening, and look at us now: adrift in a once-beloved series of films which is now 67% vomit.

Anyway I'm not here to shit on the Alien franchise or Ridley Scott. God knows Blade Runner 2049 reeks of him in all the best ways and few of the worst, enhancing and expanding upon the mud-thick mood and atmosphere he conjured up in Blade Runner 2019 (why Warner Home Video haven't renamed it that and re-released every available cut of it is a marketing mystery). Villeneuve's epic, almost comically grandiose vision reaches into every nook and cranny of the sequel but it couldn't exist without everything Scott - alongside cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, production designer Lawrence G Paull and "visual futurist" (sure) Syd Mead - achieved in the original.

The original Blade Runner. You've probably never heard of it.

While the Hovis-peddling Geordie came up with the idea for 2049 then graciously took a back seat, the 1982 vintage's splendidly-monikered writer Hampton Fancher is back after 35 years in semi-wilderness, and he's turned out a much more satisfying script this time despite being aided by Michael Green, whose past triumphs include, uh, Green Lantern and - yep - Alien Covenant. Example: the original Blade Runner is often criticised for Deckard's (Harrison Ford) rubbish detective skills (to be fair he isn't actually a detective, he just has a magic box that can see round corners in photographs), but the sequel features a thoroughly thought-out trail of breadcrumbs for new replicant-retirer K (Ryan Gosling) to follow, and it's a mystery you'll be unpacking for hours post-viewing.

Officer K's odyssey carries him through a panoply of cosmically stunning-looking interiors and exteriors, envisaged by Villeneuve and executed by Roger Deakins and Dennis Gassner (replacing Cronenweth and Paull respectively) with alternately nightmarish and divine genius. The Neo-Tokyo look of Ridley Scott's 2019 version of LA has been amplified and compounded into an oceanic sprawl of densely-packed tower blocks that just about allow room for the crass neon advertising (Pan Am are doing surprisingly well in 2049) and little else, while calmer spaces offer an incongruous serenity offset only by the bristly, unpredictable characters who inhabit them. Meanwhile the score - an imposing, unsettling combination of Vangelis' original themes fused with Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer's thundering chords - leaves you in no doubt that this is a colossal, earth-shattering journey we're on.

Except... it isn't. I've spent this long wanging on about how technically wondrous Blade Runner 2049 is (and forgive me, I haven't even mentioned Renée April's eyeball-strokingly fit costume design) mainly because I don't want to give away any of the plot, but also because what there is of that plot is kind of, well... low-key. Not so much as the original, but given how big Villeneuve goes with everything else here, the core mystery feels microscopic in comparison. Bigger consequences are threatened in the event that Officer K fails to successfully run his blades, but never to a point where you really, really need him to win. It's a bit like having a Bond film where the villain's plan is, say, to restrict access to clean water: clearly undesirable, but not particularly cinematic.

"Please don't make this about Bond"

And so we're left with those themes of artificial intelligence, identity and slavery that coldly mooch about in the original Blade Runner without ever threatening to stir the emotions, and which do much the same here. The existential angst Officer K endures is welcome, given that it was mainly left to Rutger Hauer's pretentious prick replicant to pontificate on the (in)human condition in 1982, but Gosling - as much as I love him - has trouble expressing that angst; the one scene in which he displays anything other than cool detachment hovers a little too close to unintentionally amusing. Sure, he's essentially a stoic noir gumshoe archetype, used to keeping his head down and his mouth shut for reasons I won't go into, but K goes through some serious headfuckery that requires a little more than the trademark blank stare Gosling favours here. At some point Villeneuve should have reminded him that this wasn't a Nicolas Winding Refn film.

In place of genuine emotion, there is at least genuine entertainment, not least from the appearance of one H. Ford, whose cheese-based first line is dangerously daft to the ears of the non-literary-minded among us (hi). Ford pulls off his return to a much-loved role as successfully here as he did in The Force Awakens, and Deckard's first meeting with Officer K is a literal and visual bruiser. But further joy is to be found in the performances of Robin Wright (as K's boss), whose face and hair I could gawp at for hours; Ana de Armas (as K's hologrammatic housewife Joi), who comes closest to evoking sympathy for what is basically an app; and Sylvia Hoek's high-kicking henchbitch Luv. Jared Leto is fine but ineffectual and talks in clichéd ponderous villainese, and Dave Bautista is fucking massive.

Henchbitches gonna hench

Plot holes are inevitable in something so ambitious, and these minor irritations undermine the project's overwhelming pomp to remind you that it was made by humans after all, despite the bafflingly reverential raves you may have read. And needless to say, at 163 minutes it's in dire need of a haircut here and there. If Blade Runner 2049 fails at all it's because where it should be emotionally devastating it's only mildly thought-provoking, but then it is a sequel to Blade Runner: hardly cinema's most overwhelmingly sentimental experience. 2049 is still essential for fans of the original and nigh-unmissable for the rest of us, and whatever its flaws, it's crucial to remember just how bad it could have been. Ridley Scott could have directed it.

LFF 2017:9 Fingers / Good Manners / 1%

Like some kind of annual festival of film based in London, the London Film Festival is once again upon us, promising another selection box of cinematic treats of vastly disparate quality. But given this bewildering choice, how do you know which film is the delicious pink-wrapped fudge and which is the satanically evil coffee cream? Well, don't ask me, I'm the last person you should rely on. Maybe try a proper film critic or something. Anyway let's kick off with three films I sincerely hope you haven't paid good money to see.

9 Fingers

dir. FJ Ossang, France/Portugal, 2017

A low-level gangster gets involved in a bungled heist and eventually finds himself trapped on a cargo ship with almost as little clue about what's going on as the audience, in this aggressively inscrutable ordeal from Gallic provocateur FJ Ossang. What begins as an intriguing modern French noir swiftly degenerates into impenetrable nonsense, with the added frustration that there's almost certainly some vaguely interesting satire going on somewhere within. I say "satire" because a strong whiff of political metaphor permeates the film, but what it's trying to say remains an unsolvable mystery; maybe you have to be French to understand the stream of non-sequiturs that make up the script, but I suspect even that would afford minimal advantage.

Themes of madness, revolution, control and destiny hover vaguely in the film's margins without ever coalescing into anything tangible, and it's a deeply alienating experience. Reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky's π in its low-budget, claustrophobic surrealism - but without any of the promise towards which that film hinted - this is punk filmmaking on a baffling scale.

Good Manners

dir. Juliana Rojas & Marco Dutra, Brasil/France, 2017

Imagine Let The Right One In with a werewolf instead of a vampire, and you've got the very film writer / directors Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra were probably hoping to make with this. Alas, the end product is a toothless horror-drama so lacking in both horror and drama that it'll have you howling for freedom from its near-interminable running time.

Split into two tonally contrasting halves, Good Manners begins slowly and stays that way as Clara, a nanny in São Paulo, is hired by shallow wannabe-socialite Ana to help her around the house in the run-up to the birth of her baby. Things eventually become interesting around the half-hour mark, but it's not until an hour in that events take a turn for the slightly gory but unintentionally silly, when Ana's baby finally bares its teeth. Part two picks up the pace a little, but it's let down by lengthy gaps between exciting episodes and a distinct smell of cheapness when they finally appear. It's interesting to note that no men are seen in the film's first hour, leading you to think that this might be a worthy comment on single motherhood or sororal bonds, but by the time the no-frills CGI is unleashed and the film dissolves into genre schlock you've forgotten all about any potential it may have once held. Plus it's 130 minutes long and literally nobody needs that.

1%

dir. Stephen McCallum, Australia, 2017

Every year, by law, the London Film Festival is required to screen at least one Australian crime drama, and its write-up in the LFF brochure MUST make reference to Animal Kingdom - a connection more often than not justified solely by the fact that Animal Kingdom is also an Australian crime drama. A further clause in this improbable piece of legislation is that the film in question must be nowhere near as good as Animal Kingdom, and in 2017 the film that meets all these legal requirements is 1%.

A testosterone-drenched machogasm about internal rivalries in a biker gang, 1% comes across as Macbeth on motorbikes but never shifts up enough gears to become the Shakespearean Triumph it wants to be. I appreciate that it's tough to make a film in which every character is morally reprehensible and still have the audience care about them, but at this - unlike, say, Animal Kingdom - 1% falls flat on its tattooed face. Literally everyone is horrible, and there's no Ben Mendelsohn to make it OK. Moreover, the potentially gripping power struggle between the nominal protagonist and antagonist (the Vice President and President of the gang respectively, as if it's a fucking country club) suffers from the fact that it's hard to give a shit about either of them given that they're both massive twats.

Writer and actor Matt Nable awards himself the best role, as old-school psycho Knuck (the Duncan to Ryan Corr's Macbeth), and he's the most charismatic presence on screen despite giving himself the worst dialogue: he barks "FACK OFF CANT!" with admirable brio but it's hardly Bard-y. Nable's depictions of the gangs at least feels authentic and researched (their leather waistcoat "colours", which bear their rank and name, are too ridiculous to be made up), and there's an underlying sense of uncomfortable menace throughout. Also of minor interest is the contrasting world views of the leads: one is forward-thinking and inclusive, the other an unhinged isolationist, and they're both too blinkered to spot a mutual threat lurking in the background. In the moment, however, there's nothing memorable about 1% to allow it anywhere near Animal Kingdom in the pantheon of Australian crime dramas; we await 2018's entry with ever-fading hope.

Ten films I'm going to see at the 2017 London Film Festival even if I have to wait until they're on Netflix, goddammit

It's just a few weeks, some days and an hour or two until the 61st London Film Festival takes over literally everyone's lives, and if you're not excited about it then you must be the kind of person who leads a fairly healthy lifestyle. Can we meet up one day and chat about it? A friend of mine needs tips on how to be a better person.

Anyway, because I labour under the misapprehension that someone else might be interested, here are the ten films I'm most tumescent about at #LFF2017, along with some stills from those very films to make this post mildly more interesting to look at. If you're really mental you might even enjoy the reasoning behind my carefully-curated choices, so I've shoved all that shit in too. Enjoy!

78/52

As should be painfully clear by now, I bloody love Alfred Hitchcock. I also bloody love deep dives into tiny but unutterably significant moments in film history, and Psycho's shower scene definitely counts as one of those, I've checked. 78/52 spends 91 minutes looking at the 78 setups and 52 cuts that make up the scene; I would have preferred a ten-part series on the whole of Foreign Correspondent but you don't get anything in life if you don't make it yourself.

Amant Double

I didn't even know François Ozon's latest film existed until the LFF's press launch last week, when Festival Director Clare Stewart calmly described it as channeling Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma. If that isn't enough to make you try and book tickets, which will probably be an exercise in hair-tearing futility if previous booking experiences are anything to go by, then you're a dickhead, bugger off.

Call Me By Your Name

I failed miserably at watching Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash, so am hoping to catch this in an attempt to justify my claims to be a person who knows things about films. Plus if everything I've read about it is true then watching it should feel like going on a nice sunny holiday without the unbelievable stress of packing, so two thumbs up to that.

Downsizing

Kristen Wiig is in it, job done, next

Happy End

I've been schooling myself in the ways of The Haneke over the summer, which has been an absolute LOL riot I can tell you. I don't know if you've ever seen Funny Games but that is a tremendous knockabout comedy to watch with the kids, while Amour is a feelgood romcom for the whole family, especially granny and grandad. So this, which has the word "Happy" in the title, cannot be anything but an equally enormous bucket of sparkly joy.

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer

After The Lobster I would watch anything Yorgos Lanthimos does. In fact I did, I watched Alps, but I didn't like it. Still let's give the fella a chance, he might get lucky again.

Last Flag Flying

I am here for anything Richard Linklater does so this is a total no-brainer. In fact I am so committed to this film that I bought a DVD of The Last Detail (to which this is a loose sequel) off eBay for £6.99 so I could be fully up to speed. A bit pricey tbh but it did arrive the next day, so thanks "jma3691", I will definitely leave you positive feedback even though you haven't left any for me. I mean I paid, like, immediately, so I really don't know what your fucking problem is.

The Shape Of Water

Not terribly sure about this in all honesty, having never actually enjoyed a Guillermo Del Toro film, but it looks kind of weird and Sally Hawkins is in it so you've got to give it a go haven't you. Pretty sure the trailer gives away a major plot point though, and if that proves to be the case it will only strengthen my anti-trailer stance, which is already pretty solid. So WATCH OUT, HOLLYWOOD MARKETING TYPES!

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Having said all that about trailers, the one for this features Frances McDormand swearing her face off and it's very funny and probably convinced me to see the film, so maybe trailers are OK after all? Man, it's hard being committed to a strong personal belief these days.

You Were Never Really Here

I literally know nothing about this except Lynne Ramsay made it, and if you've seen We Need To Talk About Kevin then you'd better be queuing up for this too, otherwise you're a steaming poo with poo for brains and poo coming out of your mouth and ears and probably your eyes too.

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The 2017 London Film Festival runs from the 4th to the 15th of October (2017, obviously) and you can see even more exhaustive information than you've just read about it here. Goodbye!

A slightly above average weekend at the cinema with Detroit and Logan Lucky

Oh hi. So, I guess you're after a recommendation for what to see at the cinema this weekend? You probably fancy something that's, like, quite good but not too good? I mean, maybe you even want to do a double bill of films that don't really have a lot wrong with them but at the same time will only really stay with you for an hour or so at best? Well, I suppose you're in luck because this weekend sees the release of Detroit and Logan Lucky, both of which really are absolutely, completely fine. Also out is American Made; I haven't seen it but all indications are that it's equally worthy of three and a half stars out of five, so you really are spoiled for choice.

"Norwich. One. Adult. Afternoon. Detroit. No. Detroit.
No. DETROIT. NO. DEE-TROIT. *sigh* No. Detroit. No."

Detroit is the one to go for if you want to get absolutely boiling with rage at some indescribably reprehensible racism that actually happened but to then have that strength of feeling tempered by some curious storytelling choices. (Why you might actually be looking for that exact experience is beyond me, but it takes all sorts.) The 1967 'Algiers Motel Incident' is an ugly chapter of US history that everyone should know because it's not even history; this shit is still going on somewhere right now. Kathryn Bigelow is pissed off about it and makes sure you will be too, ably assisted by John Boyega doing probably his best work yet as a desperate peacekeeper struggling to maintain his composure and dignity in the face of staggering injustice.

Bigelow realises the drama with stifling tension and palpable horror, but is let down by a script that never quite seems to get going. After half an hour of meandering scene-setting, the entire middle act sees the Incident unfold in real time as one protracted, claustrophobic scene, and while the intention is no doubt to keep us trapped in that motel with those people, the feeling that's achieved is closer to frustration than fear. And when - just as you think it's winding up - a courtroom drama suddenly starts to unfold, you wonder if this is the same film you started watching nearly two hours ago.

Bigelow's casting hampers proceedings too: although Boyega is terrific and most of the supporting cast are solid, Will Poulter is too young to convince as the nails-hard bastard cop intimidating the likes of Anthony Mackie, and his eyebrows are hella distracting. Meanwhile Jack Reynor, a fellow racist asshole police officer, comes across like Father Dougal in a different uniform, and John Krasinski's sudden appearance in the finale pulls you right out of the film. The young black cast do a great job though, especially Algee Smith as a frustrated soul singer thrust into an unimaginable nightmare. Important and effective, then, but Detroit ultimately feels like a flawed filmmaking experiment. So, y'know, see that if you like.

"Sounds slightly above average. Anything else on?"

Less politically explosive but equally fine, I suppose, is the movie that marks the end of Steven Soderbergh's comically short-lived retirement from filmmaking, Logan Lucky. Soderbergh, the undisputed master of making perfectly adequate films that nobody ever needs to see twice, has worked his slightly above average magic on this heist movie which has marginally more going for it than against it.

Channing Tatum and Adam Driver - as the brothers who plot to knock off the vault at the local Speedway stadium during one of those NASCAR race things Americans seem to enjoy so much - are almost casually great, but it's Daniel Craig's turn as explosives expert Joe Bang that nudges Logan Lucky from a mere 6 out of 10 to the giddy heights of a 7. There's a distinct sense of Craig deliberately getting as far away from Bond as possible here, and it feels like as much of a cathartic experience for him as us.

Soderbergh directs with characteristic slickness, David Holmes' score is perhaps his sexy-funkiest since Out Of Sight, and Rebecca Blunt's script pulls off a splendid Game Of Thrones gag amongst its satisfyingly-plotted heist shenanigannery. But it all feels a little empty: there's an early sense that Blunt might be going somewhere with her tale of just-about-managing blue collar everymen in the South Atlantic states, fucked by the system and committing a crime where the only victims are giant corporations, but that's as far as it goes. And while Tatum's Jimmy Logan isn't a dunce (despite the North Carolina accent, which is generally movie shorthand for 'Inbred Redneck Halfwit'), his plan is so suspiciously complex and foresighted that he could easily get work as a Hollywood scriptwriter. Still, Daniel Craig does say "Ah'm about ta git nekkid back hee-er" in an Inbred Redneck Halfwit accent, so there's that.

So that's an exhaustive rundown of everything that's quite good at the cinema this weekend that I've seen. It may interest you to know that A Ghost Story is still out there and is utterly brilliant, so, you know, think about it is all I'm saying.

A Ghost Story

Fresh off the scaly back of Disney behemoth Pete's Dragon, director David Lowery tossed off this tiny but cosmically breathtaking drama in roughly the amount of time it would have taken Weta to animate one of Elliot the dragon's footsteps. Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play a couple forced into somewhat difficult circumstances when Affleck suddenly becomes inconveniently dead, and his subsequent sheet-shrouded attempt to process this turn of events (while doomed to spend the afterlife stuck in his house) drives an exquisitely eerie and refreshingly original film right into the pit of your soul.

I'll be honest, I was ready to give my heart to A Ghost Story when I realised it was shot and presented in a vignetted 4:3 aspect ratio. Evoking the aesthetic of a movie shot via Instagram (suggested filter name: Spectral), Andrew Droz Palermo's cinematography beautifully captures the caged ennui of Casey Affleck's ghost, trapped for eternity in a single location and unable to escape the confines of the camera's restricted frame. Lowery takes the boldest of decisions with his image, too: one unforgettable, static shot lasts a full four minutes, during which almost nothing at all happens apart from the consumption of a large pie. It's wonderful.

Woooooo-ney Mara

The Pie Shot, as I suspect it will soon come to be known, epitomises A Ghost Story's narrative technique. It's a film with very little dialogue (besides an incongruously verbose key sequence in the middle), relying instead on Affleck and Mara's body language to convey much of the emotion. Daniel Hart's gorgeous score helps, constantly amplifying the sense of unease, but without ever telling you how to feel. And though Lowery tells his tale sedately, time becomes an irrelevance as the story progresses. The passage of time dilates and compresses to incomprehensible extents around Affleck's ghost - as haunted as he is haunting - and his featureless countenance (save for two impenetrably black eyeholes) becomes a literal blank canvas, on which you find yourself projecting your own feelings about what it might be like to be forevermore undead and helpless to do anything about it.

After a while the film's Big Question is posed in a slightly jarring monologue from a motormouth smartass credited only as 'Prognosticator', and Lowery's preoccupations become clear. What is it that endures when everything tangible crumbles into dust? Is it love? Is it hope? Is it art? Themes of mortality and the remorseless march of time coalesce around a poor dead bastard in a blanket, as such titanic achievements as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony are weighed up against the simplicity of a short, private message between lovers for their respective universal significance.

All the while, Casey Affleck sports one of the most simple but effective costume designs since Borat's mankini. The childlike sheet-with-eyeholes idea is bold but comes layered with meaning, and like all iconic costumes it even gets its own origin story. As the afterlife extends beyond all practical context, it seems that the sheet lengthens too, becoming an ever-more unbearable burden on the spook's shoulders, and even the eyeholes appear to elongate with sadness as infinity takes its toll.

That's the spirit

Lowery jokes that he pitched the film as Beetlejuice remade by Apichatpong Werathesakul; it brought to my mind an arthouse version of Ghost minus all the fucking pottery, but neither description does it justice. There are moments in A Ghost Story that will stay with me forever. Two of them occur during two separate conversations between two ghosts: tiny, fleeting instances of heartbreaking beauty that stunned me by quickly and surgically reaching inside me and flicking a switch that no other film has for years. Maybe it won't have the same effect on you, and if not then that's fine, but I'm sorry to report that you're as dead inside as Casey Affleck's wretched wraith.