10 Essential Movies You Need To Tick Off Your Bucket List

7. High Life

naomi watts mullholland drive
A24

Cerebral sci fi is an evergreen genre, but few films in living memory have combined quite so many things to dwell on as Claire Denis’ 2018 English language debut. The French auteur’s most prominent film to date is bold, mysterious, at times pretty gross, and ultimately somehow uplifting.

Continuing his reinvention as an arthouse fave, Robert Pattinson turns in one of his finest performances to date as Monte, one of a gaggle of criminals sentenced to hard space labour on an experimental spaceship. Juliette Binoche, a long time Denis collaborator, is wildly sinister as the ship’s doctor with a dark past.

The nonlinear film takes some getting used to, spelling little out, but its vision of an interplanetary future is entirely original, striking and inventive. There are moments of violence and horror, but beauty too.

This isn’t an easy going film by any means and features some intense psychosexual business at points (one scene in particular can cause some serious red faces depending on who you watch it with), but aside from all that, it pushes the boundaries of what serious sci fi can do.

In this post: 
La Haine
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Yorkshire-based writer of screenplays, essays, and fiction. Big fan of having a laugh. Read more of my stuff @ www.twotownsover.com (if you want!)