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Four months into 2024, and it’s already shaping up to be an exceptionally strong year for cinematography, with several standout films that represent the art form at its apex. Perhaps what’s most welcome about these films is their variety, not only in terms of genre and tone but also budget and position in the marketplace. From the studio system, we have Greig Fraser’s extraordinary work on “Dune: Part Two,” which doubles down on the ambition and tactile detail of Fraser’s work on its predecessor (for which he justly received an Academy Award) to create one of the most flat-out beautiful epics since the glory days of David Lean. From the world of low-budget, independent filmmaking, we have “I Saw the TV Glow,” where cinematographer Eric Yue designs a meticulous and expressive visual corollary for his protagonist’s inner state.
Somewhere in between “Dune” and “I Saw the TV Glow” in terms of resources, “Civil War” captures both epic sweep and internal agony in its portrayal of journalists trying to survive as America battles itself; Rob Hardy’s cinematography alternates between realism and surrealism, horror and poignancy, and clarity and confusion as he finds the precise visual language to convey the emotional and physical chaos of both his fictional world and our real one. Also in the independent realm but operating at a very different emotional and visual register, Rose Glass’ “Love Lies Bleeding” reunites the director with her “Saint Maud” cinematographer Ben Fordesman and proves that their debut collaboration was no fluke — theirs is a partnership as artistically fruitful as the one between director Wim Wenders and cinematographer Robby Müller, the latter of whom is a clear influence on Fordesman’s eerie night exteriors.
This year has also brought us the equally enchanting and brutal action of “Monkey Man,” with Sharone Meir’s layered cinematography adding depth and texture to Dev Patel’s directorial debut, not to mention extraordinary foreign imports in the form of “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” and “La Chimera.”And then there’s Scott Cunningham’s stunning imagery in the nearly unclassifiable “This is Me…Now,” Jennifer Lopez’s self-financed cross between autobiography and fantasy that traverses one disparate style and genre after another as Lopez jumps from settings inspired by science-fiction and film noir to riffs on classic Hollywood musicals and comedies. The only thing these films have in common is that they have nothing in common — aside from their passion for filmmaking and supreme audacity. Christian Blauvelt and Bill Desowitz contributed reporting to this piece.
‘Civil War’
Cinematographer Rob Hardy and director Alex Garland have consistently created some of the most provocative and visually exquisite genre films of our age ever since they began working together on “Ex Machina,” but with this dystopian extravaganza they’ve topped both themselves and just about everybody else. The “Civil War” of the title is largely abstracted from current events and divorced from political particulars, but the parallels and resonances remain obvious and pervasive; the imagery, which is somehow both dreamy and harshly realistic, perfectly conveys the screenplay’s unsettling combination of recognition and dislocation. Hardy’s lighting and lens choices continually walk a fine line between clarity and obfuscation, creating moments of concrete realism that are quickly yanked away in favor of snippets that fail to give the viewer the full picture of what’s happening. Like the movie’s characters, we’re constantly recalibrating our knowledge of the situation — just when we think we have a grip on it, a new mystery arises. Hardy and Garland’s thoughtful choices about where to show us everything and where to direct our eye to the smallest detail in the frame are vital factors in the film’s overall impact; it’s both beautiful and horrifying, something that could be said of each meticulously lit and composed frame. —JH
‘Dune: Part Two’
Greig Fraser won the Oscar for his breathtaking “Dune” cinematography, but that movie was just a warm-up for the epic filmmaking on display here; not since “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago” has the “bigger is better” approach to cinema been so satisfying. Which isn’t to say that this sequel’s pleasures all have to do with scale; Fraser is as detail-oriented as he is broad in his vision, and some of the most striking effects in “Dune: Part Two” are its smallest ones — the way the light hits two lovers’ faces or the creepy black-and-white eyes and skin of the characters in a fascist world. Yet it’s Fraser’s IMAX photography of gorgeous desert landscapes that lingers in the mind; it takes a certain amount of bravery to invite comparison with David Lean, and an even larger amount of talent to actually earn that comparison as Fraser does here. —JH
‘Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell’
Not since the early films of director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom has slow cinema been this visually hypnotic. There is a spirituality and mystery in the way director Thien An Pham and cinematographer Dinh Duy Hung capture the rural Vietnam landscape and villages. Long meditative shots blur the line between documentary and the surreal in part because of an intense beauty that is elicited from hazy, rain images of ordinary life. —CO
‘I Saw the TV Glow’
After cinematographer Eric Yue’s lo-fi mastery on display in last year’s “A Thousand and One” and this year’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” it is not unwarranted to draw a connection to the early Sundance films of cinematographers Bradford Young and Reed Morano. Owen (Justice Smith, Ian Foreman) is painfully isolated, existing in a seemingly fragile cocoon. Yue and director Jane Schoenbrun’s lens choices and compositions create an almost horror-like sense of anxiety and danger, as if Owen’s ordinary suburban surroundings might shatter his fragile shell at any moment. But Yue also wraps the young protagonist in an expressionistic, at times theatrical lighting that supplies a heightened sense of reality and, at times, a glimmer of hope. The emanating glow of the TV and the Day-Glo images that pop against the film’s near-constant state of pre-dawn hazy darkness hint at a dimension on the other side and also dizzying nausea (Yue described it as being like eating too much cotton candy at an amusem*nt park) with its use of colored lights. As sinister and, at times, ugly and uncomfortable as the film is, like the best of David Lynch, there is beauty and mystery in the grainy celluloid images Yue and Schoenbrun have created. —CO
‘Love Lies Bleeding’
After “Saint Maud” and now “Love Lies Bleeding,” Ben Fordesman and Rose Glass are among our favorite new cinematographer-director pairings, with a film that captures the essence of the ’80s crime film by finding the perfect mix of the grungy texture and colorful, electrically charged imagery that matches the film’s violent and sexy energy. Channelling Robby Müller via “Paris, Texas” and “To Live or Die in L.A.,” Fordesman proves up for the task in finding sculpted natural light and mirroring the way sodium vapor pours into the darkness of night. —CO
‘Monkey Man’
Dev Patel’s action-packed directorial debut, in which he stars as Kid, a lowly yet scrappy street fighter who takes on the sinister elite of the fictional Yatana, is like a cross between “Oldboy” and “Man From Nowhere.” For Patel’s avenging angel, he took inspiration from the ancient legend of the Hindu deity, Hanuman, the invincible Monkey God. They filmed mostly in Batam, Indonesia, where cinematographer Sharone Meir (“Whiplash”) had a massive and layered visual landscape to work with. The flashbacks with Kid growing up as a child with his mom (Adithi Kalkunt) in the forests near their rural village are enchanting; the underground fight club scenes where Kid wears a monkey mask and throws matches as a human punching bag are nightmarishly brutal; and the exclusive Kings Club is a model of elegance. It is within the multi-level Kings Club where Meir captures the mythic power and intensity of Kid as the underdog fighter, who transforms into a fists of fury legend. The camera is tight and intimate, always with Kid’s POV, and the shots are often long and chaotic. The standouts are the first bathroom brawl with corrupt cop Rana (Sikandar Kher) and an exploding aquarium, an elevator fight with lots of knives, and the Kings Club VIP bar fight with an army of Rana’s bodyguards. —Bill Desowitz
‘This Is Me…Now: A Love Story’
Jennifer Lopez self-financed this autobiographical fantasy-musical-romance when she couldn’t find any takers among legacy media companies (the film was ultimately picked up by Amazon), and her financial risk was everyone else’s gain; unencumbered by any sort of corporate oversight or marketplace concerns, Lopez created the most deliriously inventive, intensely personal, and downright spectacular synthesis between pop music and film since Prince brought us “Purple Rain” and “Graffiti Bridge.” A cinematic allegory for Lopez’s fraught journey to find love with Ben Affleck (who appears here in a mind-blowing cameo as someone decidelynot Ben Affleck), “This is Me…Now” is essentially a series of breathtakingly elaborate musical numbers in different genres and styles — there’s a sequence straight out of “Singin’ in the Rain,” another that looks like a Wachowski movie on amphetamines, elements of lyrical romantic comedy, violent domestic drama, and so on. Each of these styles is handled beautifully by cinematographer Scott Cunningham and director Dave Meyers, music video specialists who know how to distill the emotional content of any given set piece into the most dazzling visuals possible; this movie looks like it cost about 10 times its $20 million budget, with one jaw-dropping painterly image after another. Cunningham shoots the movie like a cinematic chameleon, facilitating all the excess and ambition of Lopez’s extravagant vision in a glorious collection of self-contained short films that cumulatively add up to the wildest, most entertaining, and most audacious film of 2024 thus far. —JH
