Dive into filmmakers’ oeuvre this summer
Revisit past projects of these 5 with new movies premiering
Revisiting the work of a filmmaker you love — or a filmmaker you don’t love but are trying to understand better — is one of the pleasures of going deeper into movies. Here are five filmmakers who have new movies that premiered recently at festivals or will be emerging in the coming months and whose past work can be readily found on streaming platforms.
Sofia Coppola
Given how often Sofia Coppola is accused of making shallow richpeople movies that reflect nothing more than her own shallow rich-people upbringing, the idea of her writing and directing a Priscilla Presley biopic might seem to play right into the hands of her toughest critics. (Coppola’s “Priscilla” is expected to premiere sometime in the next several months.)
To which this critic can only respond that his two favorite Coppola movies — 2006’s sublime “Marie Antoinette” (multiple platforms), with Kirsten Dunst, and 2010’s exquisite “Somewhere” (multiple platforms), starring Stephen Dorff — are perhaps her most unapologetically insular works, set within near-hermetically sealed celebrity bubbles. They’re also her funniest and most delicately felt movies, although I wouldn’t argue with anyone who places 2003’s Oscar-winning “Lost in Translation” (multiple platforms), her melancholy Tokyo story pairing Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, in the same company.
At her best, Coppola’s filmmaking is so
pinpoint-precise that she can find nuanced new variations in the same pattern, which is why “The Beguiled” (multiple platforms), her artful 2017 riff on Don Siegel’s 1971 Civil War gothic, sounds such a haunting echo of her 1999 debut feature, “The Virgin Suicides” (multiple platforms). To describe them as perceptive studies of female dynamics in close quarters is perfectly accurate, even if it risks bleeding them both of their poetry.
Jonathan Glazer
Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” a disquietingly oblique drama about a Nazi family living just outside the gates of Auschwitz, recently won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released later this year by A24.
An English-born talent who established his strong stylistic credentials with commercials and music videos, Glazer made a splash with his 2001 debut
feature, the gangster drama “Sexy Beast” (multiple platforms). This expertly crafted genre piece gave little indication of the moodier, more ambiguous direction Glazer would take with 2004’s magnificent “Birth” (multiple platforms), a dryly funny, finally wrenching story of love, death and possible reincarnation.
It would be nearly 10 years before Glazer would unveil “Under the Skin” (multiple platforms), his unsettling adaptation of Michel Faber’s novel, starring Johansson as an alien harvesting the bodies of horny, unsuspecting men around Scotland.
Luca Guadagnino
Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” due to be released Sept. 15 in theaters, sounds like a fascinating departure: a romantic comedy that takes place in the world of professional tennis. But Guadagnino has never wanted for versatility.
Horror has been his chief preoccupation of late, starting with 2018’s feverish and cerebral “Suspiria” remake (Amazon Prime Video and other platforms) and continuing with last year’s poignant YA cannibal thriller “Bones and All” (multiple platforms).
His recent body of work also includes short films like 2019’s “The Staggering Girl” (Mubi and other platforms); documentaries like “Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams” (multiple platforms), his 2021 portrait of Salvatore Ferragamo; and a much-acclaimed series, “We Are Who We Are” (multiple platforms).
Taken together, the
2009 romantic tragedy “I Am Love” (multiple platforms), the 2015 thriller “A Bigger Splash” (multiple platforms) and the 2017 coming-of-age film “Call Me by Your Name” (Netflix and other platforms) form a kind of trilogy, a languid three-table buffet of overflowing sensory delights.
Todd Haynes
At the recent Cannes Film Festival, Netflix bought “May December,” Todd Haynes’ new movie starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.
“May December”— a darkly funny story about a headline-grabbing marriage and a self-serving actor trying to turn life into art — is worth seeing after you’ve brushed up on Haynes’ earlier movies, especially his first two major collaborations with Moore — 1995’s “Safe” (Criterion Channel, Mubi and other platforms) and 2002’s “Far From Heaven” (multiple platforms) — and “Carol” (multiple platforms), his 2015 romance starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Like “May December,” all three of these movies are at least partly about what happens when a life of cozy suburban domesticity unravels.
Other Haynes films within reach include
1991’s “Poison” (multiple platforms), a disturbing triptych and New Queer Cinema landmark, and his rock ’n’ roll-themed trio: the 1998 glam-rock valentine “Velvet Goldmine” (multiple platforms), the dizzyingly prismatic 2007 Bob Dylan anti-biopic “I’m Not There” (multiple platforms) and 2021’s authoritative, virtuosic documentary “The Velvet Underground” (multiple platforms).
Steve Mcqueen
One of the strongest movies playing at Cannes this year was also one of the longest: “Occupied City,” a nearly 4 ½-hour cinematic essay on the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam that marks the first nonfiction effort from the British-born Steve Mcqueen. Audiences planning to stream it at home should know that it demands and rewards wide-awake attention.
But then, that’s always been true of Mcqueen’s screen work, starting with “Hunger” (multiple platforms), his 2008 debut feature starring Michael Fassbender as the imprisoned IRA leader Bobby Sands. Fassbender also starred in 2011’s “Shame” (multiple platforms), this time playing a New York City sex addict. I think it’s Mcqueen’s strongest feature to date, though many would reserve that title for 2013’s Oscarwinning “12 Years a Slave” (multiple platforms). A seamless fusion of art-film austerity and classical narrative, it’s one of the most searingly powerful movies about American slavery this country has ever produced.
The film industry proved less receptive to 2018’s “Widows” (multiple platforms), a gripping, sociopolitically charged heist thriller. Mcqueen followed up with 2020’s “Small Axe” (Amazon Prime Video and other platforms), a fivepart work set in London’s West Indian community.