Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 24 April

All of Us Strangers (Haigh, 2023)

I felt sure that I had reviewed All of Us Strangers here earli­er on this year but that turns out to be a mirage.

I did give it a bit of a rave for RNZ’s At the Movies, though, maybe that’s what I was think­ing about.

The whole review is over 700 words so I’m not going print the whole thing here. Instead, here are some high­lights and you can listen to the whole thing via the RNZ audio play­er (7m56s):

Andrew Haigh’s new film, All of Us Strangers, presents early on as a kind of ghost story but as it con­tin­ues it gets stranger, deep­er – defy­ing lit­er­al inter­pret­a­tion – refus­ing to provide stand­ard story answers until it reaches a cli­max that is so beau­ti­ful and sur­real and pro­found that it takes your breath away.

It’s also a sur­pris­ingly spir­itu­al con­clu­sion for a writer and dir­ect­or who has pro­fessed his athe­ism in the past but the divine sense that we are all just star­dust form­ing and reform­ing and nev­er really leav­ing each oth­er I found deeply moving.

…

Andrew Scott is Adam, a screen­writer with writer’s block, holed up in an apart­ment block listen­ing 80s pop tunes, try­ing to write about his child­hood. The build­ing appears to be almost empty but one neigh­bour – Harry played by the amaz­ingly gif­ted Paul Mescal from Aftersun – might be flirt­ing with him and sug­gests a night­cap, which Adam declines.

For inspir­a­tion, Adam takes the train to his sub­urb­an child­hood home where, to all of our sur­prise, he meets his long-dead par­ents (played by Jamie Bell and Claire Foy). They died in a car crash when he was twelve so there’s a lot for them catch up on, not least Adam’s sexu­al­ity which they have very 80s con­cerns about.

…

But I think, ahead of that, it’s about loneli­ness. The cor­ros­ive long term dam­age that loneli­ness does to a human. Yes, his par­ents are gone, but Adam’s clear when he talks to them that he was a des­per­ately lonely, sens­it­ive, little boy – afraid of loud fire­works but afraid of people, too. And afraid of who he was and what that might mean for his life. 

Also reviewed in that edi­tion of At the Movies was Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, which I enjoyed but was a little less enthu­si­ast­ic about.

Where to watch All of Us Strangers

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and UK: Streaming on Disney+

USA: Streaming on Hulu

Further reading

One of my favour­ite loc­al film fest­ivals is the Resene Architecture & Design fest­iv­al which opens in Auckland on 2 May. They gave me three titles to pre­view for RNZ and they were all excel­lent, although Skin of Glass abso­lutely blew me away.

And, in case you were won­der­ing why I haven’t reviewed Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver on Netflix yet, after hat­ing the first part so much, there’s no amount of money that any­one can pay me to go back there.

Editor’s note

Tomorrow is a pub­lic hol­i­day in Aotearoa New Zealand (Anzac Day) so there will be no 3.15pm update. Thanks to all the new paid sub­scribers. There’s been a pleas­ing flurry of activ­ity in that area and you really do encour­age me to keep going.