Film
What Anora's Ending Pays For
Sean Baker's Brooklyn fairytale won five Academy Awards on the strength of two minutes of silence in a parked car. The film is more interested in what that silence costs.
Lena Ashworth·6 May·6 min
BYLINE
Lena Ashworth
SENIOR CRITIC
Lena writes long-form essays on the films that will still be talked about in a decade. Previously at a defunct monthly whose name we do not speak.
BEAT
Prestige film, auteur cinema, awards-season retrospectives.
FILED
55 pieces
Film
The Substance and the Body Horror Renaissance
Eighteen months after Coralie Fargeat's prosthetic-heavy fable drew both Oscar nominations and walkouts, the strange alchemy of The Substance has only clarified. The film is less about Hollywood than it looks, and more about what we're allowed to say with bodies on screen.
Lena Ashworth·28 Mar·5 min
Film
Nosferatu: Eggers' Gothic Masterwork
Eggers' remake was received with admiration rather than fervour, a proper film from a proper filmmaker. Sixteen months later, it looks like the serious piece the year needed, and the one we were too cool to love properly at the time.
Lena Ashworth·20 Mar·5 min
Film
The Brutalist: In Defence of the 3.5-Hour Epic
A year after The Brutalist swept its technical categories and divided audiences, its length has stopped looking like a gamble and started looking like the point. An argument for the long film in a short-film decade.
Lena Ashworth·11 Mar·6 min
Film
Anora's Best Picture Win, Defended
A year after Sean Baker's fourth feature took five Oscars including Best Picture, the predictable backlash has arrived on schedule. Here's why the Academy, improbably, got it right.
Lena Ashworth·2 Mar·5 min
Film
Small Things Like These: Murphy's Quiet Indictment
Tim Mielants's adaptation of the Claire Keegan novella was reviewed as a modest Cillian Murphy vehicle. The careful reading is that the film's restraint is the indictment, and the restraint is harder to film than the indictment would have been.
Lena Ashworth·16 Dec·6 min
Film
Warfare: Mendoza and Garland's Real-Time Iraq
Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland's second collaboration rebuilds a 2006 Ramadi engagement from the memories of the men who survived it, and the film's claim on attention is its specific refusal to shape.
Lena Ashworth·19 Nov·7 min
Film
Black Bag and the Return of the Competent Genre Film
Steven Soderbergh's ninety-four-minute spy thriller is the specific kind of mid-budget adult drama American studios have stopped making. Its existence is the argument. Its execution is the reward.
Lena Ashworth·18 Nov·7 min
Film
Hard Truths: Leigh's Return to Pansy
Mike Leigh's first film since 2018 reunited him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste for a character study of sustained anger. The argument is that the film is one of his best, and the conditions that produced it are the ones his method has been waiting to find.
Lena Ashworth·12 Nov·6 min
Film
Thelma: June Squibb's Late-Career Lead
Josh Margolin's debut feature gave June Squibb her first leading role at 94. It was not a stunt. It was a film.
Lena Ashworth·4 Oct·5 min
Film
Nickel Boys: Ross's First-Person Adaptation
RaMell Ross adapted Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel through a first-person camera almost continuously across two hours. The argument is that the formal gamble is the adaptation, and the adaptation is, so far, the film of the awards year.
Lena Ashworth·2 Oct·6 min
TV
Andor Season 2: Tony Gilroy Finishes the Sentence
Tony Gilroy's second and final season of Andor is the most disciplined piece of franchise television anyone has produced. It is also an argument about what franchise television could have been.
Lena Ashworth·30 Sep·8 min
Film
Maria and Pablo Larraín's Closing Argument
Pablo Larraín's third and probably final entry in his trilogy of distressed-woman biopics is the most formally certain of the three, and the one least willing to flatter its subject.
Lena Ashworth·22 Sep·7 min
Film
Queer: Guadagnino's Burroughs and the Case for Tenderness
Guadagnino's second film of 2024 was the quieter one, the one with the more difficult source material, and the one that has settled, a year later, as the more specifically strange.
Lena Ashworth·18 Sep·5 min
Film
Dune: Part Two and the Anti-Hero Blockbuster
A year and a half on from the sequel, the case for Dune: Part Two is less about its scale and more about its refusal. An argument for the blockbuster that does not entertain.
Lena Ashworth·10 Sep·5 min
TV
Say Nothing and the Problem of Adapting a Book That Cannot Be Filmed
Joshua Zetumer's FX adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe's Troubles-era book is a better television show than many people expected. It is also a book that perhaps should not have been adapted at all.
Lena Ashworth·25 Aug·8 min
Film
Kinds of Kindness: Lanthimos Unplugged
A year on from Lanthimos' three-part anthology, the film reads cleaner than the reviews made it sound. An argument for what happens when a director stops worrying about being liked.
Lena Ashworth·20 Aug·5 min
Film
The Seed of the Sacred Fig: Rasoulof's House Film
Mohammad Rasoulof shot the film in secret, fled Iran during post-production, and arrived at Cannes with a three-hour domestic thriller about a judiciary father and his protesting daughters. The retrospective argument is that the long cut is the cut.
Lena Ashworth·12 Aug·5 min
Film
Hit Man: Richard Linklater's Star Vehicle for a Non-Star
A year on from Hit Man's Netflix release, the film is a quieter argument than it first appeared. Richard Linklater made a star-launcher for someone he knew would not, in the end, need launching.
Lena Ashworth·12 Aug·5 min
Film
Nickel Boys and the Camera That Remembers
RaMell Ross adapted Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer novel by refusing the one thing most literary adaptations insist on. The camera is the character, and the choice changes what the film can do.
Lena Ashworth·2 Aug·6 min
Film
Babygirl and the Return of the Corporate Erotic
Halina Reijn's erotic drama returned a genre the American studios had given up on, and gave Nicole Kidman the kind of role the mid-budget adult film had stopped being able to produce.
Lena Ashworth·30 Jul·7 min
Film
All We Imagine as Light: Kapadia's Bombay Nocturne
Payal Kapadia's Cannes Grand Prix winner was received, on its US release, as the decade's strongest import from Indian indie cinema. The re-reading is that the film is even stranger, and more formally considered, than the initial reception allowed.
Lena Ashworth·18 Jul·6 min
Film
Past Lives: Celine Song's Quiet Argument About Time
Two Oscar nominations, a slow-burn awards run, and a second viewing at home. Celine Song's debut keeps revealing itself. An argument for the film that refuses its own climax.
Lena Ashworth·12 Jul·5 min
Film
Emilia Pérez and the Genre Problem Jacques Audiard Made For Himself
Jacques Audiard's Spanish-language narco musical swept the Cannes awards and collapsed in the awards season that followed. The collapse had less to do with the controversies than with the film's formal failure to decide what it wanted to be.
Lena Ashworth·28 Jun·6 min
Film
Wicked: What Jon M. Chu's Part One Gets Right About Musicals
Jon M. Chu's Wicked was the studio musical that worked, and the reasons it worked are specific to the form. A year on, its choices look like a template.
Lena Ashworth·18 Jun·6 min
Film
The Room Next Door: Almodóvar in English, Finally
Almodóvar's first English-language feature is the film he has spent his whole career preparing to make. A year later, the patience was worth waiting for.
Lena Ashworth·18 Jun·5 min
Film
La Chimera: Rohrwacher's Ghost Story
Alice Rohrwacher's 2023 film about a British grave-robber in 1980s Italy is the kind of quiet, strange, specifically rewarding film that the American art-house circuit was once built to deliver. It still can.
Lena Ashworth·15 Jun·5 min
Film
The Zone of Interest and the Sound as Argument
Jonathan Glazer's Holocaust film works by almost never showing us the Holocaust. Two years out, the sound design is still one of the most radical formal choices of the decade.
Lena Ashworth·5 Jun·5 min
Film
Monster: Kore-eda's Tripled Narrative
Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2023 film, released in the US in late 2023 and on streaming through 2024, is a specifically disciplined three-act structural experiment. Also, quietly, one of the most important queer films of recent cinema.
Lena Ashworth·30 May·5 min
Film
Blitz: Steve McQueen's Crowded Home Front
Steve McQueen's first feature since Small Axe attempts a sprawling wartime mural of London. The mural mostly works. The boy at its centre is the reason it sometimes does not.
Lena Ashworth·14 May·7 min
Film
Fallen Leaves: Kaurismäki's Deadpan Romantic
Aki Kaurismäki's 2023 film, out of retirement and better for it, is one of the shortest great films of the decade. An 81-minute case for the romantic comedy as serious cinema.
Lena Ashworth·9 May·5 min
Film
The Last Showgirl and the Patience of Pamela Anderson
Gia Coppola's third feature hands Pamela Anderson a role that asks almost nothing performative of her, and asks everything else. The restraint is the thesis.
Lena Ashworth·6 May·7 min
Film
The Outrun and the Recovery Film Told in Weather
Nora Fingscheidt's adaptation of Amy Liptrot's memoir arrived in autumn through Sony Pictures Classics. It is a recovery film that keeps reaching past the recovery, out into the weather on the islands.
Lena Ashworth·4 May·7 min
Film
The Taste of Things: Tran Anh Hung's Culinary Romance
Tran Anh Hung's 2023 film, released theatrically in February 2024, is the best film about food and cooking since Babette's Feast. It is also a deeply disciplined romance in disguise.
Lena Ashworth·22 Apr·5 min
Film
Nightbitch and the Limits of Literal Metaphor
Marielle Heller's adaptation of Rachel Yoder's novel arrived through Searchlight in December, and the thing it cannot decide is how much of the dog to show. The indecision is the film.
Lena Ashworth·18 Feb·7 min
Film
Saturday Night and Jason Reitman's Real-Time Origin Story
Jason Reitman's compressed account of the ninety minutes before the first SNL broadcast is the rare backstage film that trusts the chaos to be its own argument.
Lena Ashworth·4 Feb·7 min
Music
Nilüfer Yanya's My Method Actor and the Uses of a Third Record
Nilüfer Yanya's third record arrived in September 2024 as the specific consolidation work a third album is supposed to do, and the consolidation has produced the strongest writing of her career.
Lena Ashworth·28 Jan·7 min
Film
The Wild Robot: Animation, Still
Chris Sanders' adaptation of Peter Brown's novel is the best animated feature of the year and an argument for DreamWorks doing specifically what Pixar has stopped doing.
Lena Ashworth·24 Oct·5 min
Film
Megalopolis: Coppola's $120 Million Argument With Himself
Francis Ford Coppola self-funded his first film in thirteen years. It is nearly unwatchable in specific places and almost-great in others. The project is the point.
Lena Ashworth·18 Oct·5 min
Film
Inside Out 2: Pixar Figures Itself Out Again
Pixar's ninth sequel turns out to be, surprisingly, one of the studio's best films in a decade. An argument for the animation that grew up with its audience.
Lena Ashworth·12 Jul·5 min
Film
Perfect Days: Wenders, Tokyo, and the Discipline of Noticing
Wim Wenders' film about a Tokyo toilet cleaner is the quietest great film of the year. An argument for the discipline of the ordinary.
Lena Ashworth·20 Jun·5 min
Film
Evil Does Not Exist: Hamaguchi's Quietest Provocation
Ryusuke Hamaguchi's follow-up to Drive My Car is the quietest major film of the year. An argument for the patience the film requires and rewards.
Lena Ashworth·25 May·5 min
Film
American Fiction: Cord Jefferson's Double Movie
Cord Jefferson's debut feature is two films trying to be one. The surprise, two months into its run, is that both films work.
Lena Ashworth·12 May·5 min
Film
All of Us Strangers: Andrew Haigh's Ghost Story for Survivors
Andrew Haigh's film is a queer ghost story, a family reconciliation, and a grief piece. What it does with all three in 105 minutes is astonishing.
Lena Ashworth·2 Apr·5 min
Film
Poor Things: Lanthimos Unleashed
Emma Stone's performance as Bella Baxter does something almost no leading actress is allowed to do in a studio film: she becomes less polite, less articulate, less easy to root for, and the film rewards her for it.
Lena Ashworth·15 Mar·4 min
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