Unbelievable scenes

The year’s standout set-pieces.

Car chase Extraction

Trust the guy who co-choregraphed Atomic Blonde’s stairwell scrap to nail a tearaway car chase. For action-lug mercenary Chris Hemsworth’s 12-minute extraction of a drug lord’s kidnapped kid, director Sam Hargrave spent four-to-five months prepping the illusion of a one-take, multi-level set-piece. “It was a really intense, technical puzzle to solve,” said Hargrave, who strapped himself to car hoods and dived between vehicles to create seamless transitions of perspective between the inside/outside of cars as they screeched along tight dust roads. The threeminute pay-off is a buffeting example of immersive action precision-staged for maximum clarity – and the foot chases/fights that follow don’t disappoint, either.

Fighting off the Hells Angels pixies Onward

Not since Cinderella threatened to glass someone with her broken slipper in Ralph Breaks The Internet had fairy-tale folk seemed so testy. As questing elf bros Ian and Barley stop at a gas station, “feisty sprites” (says voice star Tom Holland) the Pixie Dusters roll in on Harleys, all leathers and small-assed attitude. Pixar’s devilish way with details delights as the easy-riding, easily offended Dusters go wild with scratch cards, space dust and broken bottles. Chains and air con feature ingeniously in the frenetic choppers-vs-Guinevere chase scene that follows, showcasing Pixar at its fast, funny and furiously finest. Just don’t call them whimsical.

Burning town 1917

Despite its no-cuts pitch, Sam Mendes’ WW1 film did something radical halfway through: as George MacKay’s Schofield is knocked out, it cuts. When he wakes up, the world’s ablaze. Flares strafe the sky, trying to find purchase on the darkness as shadows crawl over a blasted gothic-nightmare landscape. Hallucination of hell on earth, or an expressionist vision of interior dread? Either way, the orchestration of elements astonishes. DoP Roger Deakins and effects supervisor Dom Tuohy worked closely to coordinate the clash of light, shade, and fire, set on-screen to Thomas Newman’s grandiose score. In this sensory assault, 1917 attains a primal, mythic power.

Backwards car chase Tenet

Before filming the highway heist in Christopher Nolan’s 11th film, the crew rehearsed on a disused runway. “We knew it was going to be a handful,” said stunt coordinator George Cottle, clearly a man with Nolan previous. Long after The Dark Knight’s 18-wheeler flip, the result screeches into low-angle view as one of Nolan’s most ambitious exercises in conceptually charged carnage. Nolan closed 8km of Estonian motorway for the shoot, which required 20 stunt drivers and lots of pre-viz to choreograph. Equally impressively, Tenet’s MacGuffin remains in focus amid the myriad distractions of cars hurtling backwards/ forwards in time. Petrolhead thrills for the brain don’t come any more bracing.

The family comes home early Parasite

Director Bong Joon-ho initially thought his Trump-baiting (ha!) Oscar-winner-to-be could work as theatre, until he accepted that his storytelling brain was best “optimised for cinema”. Proof resides in Parasite’s centrepiece, in which the Kim family’s illicit stay in the Park fam’s designer-chic home is compromised by the latter’s early return from holiday. Gliding sinuously between farce and horror, Bong navigates the ensuing panic with a startling command of narrative spaces; he even finds room for a mini ghost story. Between his ballet of high-octane cooking, concealment and covert getaways, Bong’s never-moreoptimised movie brain dazzlingly layers themes, tones and shock plot developments.