Alright folks, settle in for the Week in Review! Once again, the fact that I’m already writing about all the anime I’m watching elsewhere means we’ll be diving into non-animated attractions this week, as I run through David Lynch films, wuxia dramas, and a novel new war epic. I’ve got a whole film canon to catch up on, and though my journey may be rambling, I’m committed to marching through it all. Without further ado, let’s explore some new movies in the Week in Review!

Continuing on my Twin Peaks-inspired David Lynch kick, I watched Wild at Heart this week, which I was able to convince my housemates to watch largely due to the presence of Nicholas Cage. As it turns out, Cage and Lynch are a very effective combination – Cage is one of those actors who is always very clearly playing a highly affected, utterly unreal version of humanity, and Lynch tends to treat his actors more like props or satirical devices than human characters, so the two worked together beautifully.

At its best moments, Wild at Heart is able to find great humanity in its weirdness and tongue-in-cheek style; Cage snapping his fingers and prompting a thrash metal band to back up his lounge serenade of Laura Dern, or the moment where the two of them come across a car crash they are helpless to assist with, and through doing so are made painfully conscious of their own fragile mortality. These moments cut through the sturdy narrative structure and consistency of reality that often set stories apart from lived experience; they felt messy and heartfelt and true to life, echoing the chaos and personal dreamscapes of life as it is lived.

That said, Wild at Heart is itself a messy film, and its adherence to road film convention felt at odds with its occasional trips into the weird and sublime. I’d be interested in seeing a Lynch work that feels genuinely “sincere” – both Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart seem framed from an amused and frequently ironic distance, with their biggest emotional beats seeming to reflect more our soap opera-tinted media perceptions of human connection rather than the genuine article. His characters express consistently convincing vulnerability, but I’ve yet to see them express convincing love; whether that’s a quirk of my viewing order, or a standard feature of Lynch’s dry social commentary and interest in tone over character, I’ll only discover by (eagerly) watching the rest of his work.

I also watched Shadow, the latest wuxia epic by the director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers. As a piece of visual art, Shadow is an absolute marvel. Reduced to an almost entirely black and white color palette, the film feels like a transmutation of the beauty and grace of traditional calligraphy into cinematic form. Wuxia battles often feel more like dance than combat, and Shadow takes that inclination to utterly jaw-dropping extremes, as umbrellas spin and rain droplets are flung by spears and swords, creating a stunning ode to the beauty of bodies in motion, and the value of aesthetic minimalism.

Unfortunately, Shadow’s narrative is far weaker than its cinematography. The first half’s focus on court intrigue is simultaneously overly convoluted in its execution and simplistic in its fundamental structure, and rather than building up characters through formative scenes or illustrations of their values, most of the cast simply monologue their motivations directly to the audience. It’s clear the film is going for theatrical melodrama, but even melodrama demands a human element, and Shadow’s lack of that made it impossible to emotionally invest in its tale. That said, it’s a visual wonder either way, so wuxia fans should probably still check it out.

Finally, my theatrical experience of the week was 1917, a tightly constructed and consistently gripping war drama. 1917’s conceit is that it’s filmed essentially as one continuous cut – there are obviously a lot of places where it sneaks in scene breaks, but in theory, the camera unwaveringly follows two young men as they’re forced over the trenches and behind enemy lines, in a sort of high-concept version of Gallipoli. In spite of its theoretically limiting gimmick, 1917 is a gorgeous film, and its unflinching focus on two helpless, barely grown soldiers really conveyed their powerlessness in this situation. Lacking any scenes that might contextualize their actions as crucial parts of a larger effort, 1917 frames war as something that is simply, senselessly inflicted on individual soldiers – and with its recurring motif of two characters clasping hands and lifting each other to their feet, it firmly emphasized that in a situation like this, all the virtue we can hope to embody is fulfilling what we owe to each other. If you’re not amenable to war films, this won’t convert you, but it’s an impressive achievement and engaging film all the same.