It’s Not Me (2024)
Where’s it on? Institute of Contemporary Arts
Getting an off-circuit release at the ICA from today, It’s Not Me is the latest work from Leos Carax, the idiosyncratic French director behind such one-of-a-kind projects as Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) and Holy Motors (2012). We last heard from him with the Adam Driver/Sparks/puppet-baby musical Annette in 2021. Running just 42 minutes, It’s Not Me is both a rumination on his career to date and an affectionate pastiche of the late style of his idol Jean-Luc Godard, complete with a collage aesthetic, over-saturated colours, allusions to the traumas of the 20th century, and a gnomic, deep-voiced narration. Hermetic it may be, but it’s carried off with great flair and occasional transcendence – not least during a final sequence of Carax fan service involving Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’.
Juggernaut (1974)
Where’s it on? Blu-ray
Coming in between his two colourful musketeers movies, Richard Lester’s Juggernaut – new to Blu-ray this week courtesy of Eureka – is a tense highlight of the 1970s disaster movie cycle. Inspired by a real-life bomb-threat against the passenger ship Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1972, it sees a terrorist demanding a huge ransom lest he detonate the explosives he’s planted on a luxury transatlantic liner. Richard Harris leads the bomb disposal unit, Omar Sharif plays the steely-nerved skipper, and – in proper disaster movie fashion – the supporting cast is packed with familiar (mainly British) faces, including Anthony Hopkins, David Hemmings, Ian Holm and Michael Hordern.
Days (2020) / Afternoon (2015)
Where’s it on? Blu-ray
Although he’s among the world’s most critically acclaimed filmmakers – his 2003 film Goodbye, Dragon Inn nearly broke the top 100 of the 2022 Sight and Sound Greatest Film of All Time poll – the Malaysian-Taiwanese slow-cinema master Tsai Ming-liang is very poorly served on Blu-ray in the UK. All hail then for this two-fer bringing together his sublime 2020 feature Days, featuring regular star and muse Lee Kang-sheng in another of Tsai’s aching ruminations on loneliness and desire, with his 2015 documentary Afternoon, a lengthy and revealing conversation between Tsai and Lee, who have been working together since Tsai’s 1992 debut feature Rebels of a Neon God.
Layla (2024)
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide
After premiering at Sundance at the start of the year and subsequently opening BFI Flare in the spring, this vivacious romance from debut feature director Amrou Al-Kadhi is set amid the east London drag scene. Newcomer Bilal Hasna plays the eponymous drag artist – a non-binary British-Palestinian performer who is a raucous presence at the clubs, but much more reserved among friends and at home with their traditional Muslim family, who don’t guess at Layla’s stage persona. Then Layla meets Max, an advertising exec, and a passionate affair begins, although the pair are headed for disagreements about their attitudes to queer identity.
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
Where’s it on? 4K UHD and Blu-ray
Starting with an impromptu barroom demonstration of the movement of celestial bodies (one of the all-time great movie openings), this entrancing 2000 film from the now retired Hungarian maestro Béla Tarr hinges on the events occurring in a remote community after a circus of attractions brings the body of a whale into town. Composed in black and white and Tarr’s trademark, hypnotically slow-moving tracking shots, Werckmeister Harmonies is a bleak yet bewitchingly atmospheric vision, such as no one else but Tarr could have made. It’s also the perfect entry point to his work, for anyone too shy to attempt his much celebrated seven-hour masterpiece Sátántangó (1994). Curzon’s 4K UHD and Blu-ray editions feature some vital extras, chief among them Tarr’s early feature Autumn Almanac (1984).
