KEITH UHLICH
The Killer
film roundup
The Killer (Dir. David Fincher). Starring: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell. Perhaps surprisingly, this Netflix adaptation of a French graphic novel is the best of director David Fincher’s movies. It’s a leanly structured, thematically complicated thriller about a career assassin (Michael Fassbender) who kills his way up the criminal food chain after a botched hit. With rare exception, we’re near-entirely in the purview of this eponymous killer, who hilariously pontificates via a self-regarding voiceover (written by Andrew Kevin Walker, Fincher’s collaborator on his early serial killer thriller Seven) that almost always contradicts the actions onscreen. The ways in which the character’s inner and outer lives fail to mesh should resonate with anyone who’s crossed middle age. What do you do when Keith Uhlich is a NY-based writer published at Slant Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Time Out New York, and ICON. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. His personal website is (All (Parentheses)), accessible at keithuhlich.substack.com. 14
ICON |
J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 4 | I C O N D V. C O M
you realize you’re past your prime? How do you regain control? Can you regain control? These are just a few of the questions the movie raises as it winds its way through several brilliantly staged setpieces (some dexterously verbal, others densely visual), building toward a sublime anti-climax that captures the simultaneous pleasures and horrors of a life lived in anonymity. [R] HHHHH All of Us Strangers (Dir. Andrew Haigh). Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy. Adapting a novel by Japanese writer Taichi Yamada, writer-director Andrew Haigh (The North Water) emerges with a gently told queer ghost story that lingers in the mind the longer you think about it. Once and forever “Hot Priest” Andrew Scott plays Adam, an introvert British screenwriter who crosses paths with one of his neighbors, a younger gay man named Harry (Paul Mescal), after a false fire alarm. An attraction blossoms, though this ocC O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 2 6