In an effort to feel less guilty about all the blank spaces I have next to a good half-year’s worth of diary entries on Letterboxd, I am endeavoring to write a capsule (and probably more) for all of those spaces. In chronological order of writing (and of last watch).

The World’s End
The cut from Gary’s description of his wild youthful days to him sitting with a slightly bemused, slightly discomfited look on his face in a support group says it all. The World’s End, certainly the most mature of the Cornetto Trilogy, is as self-critical of its hero as it is celebratory. Wright continually walks a tight-rope, using a trip intended to recapture the “good old days” as a journey into both the past and the future. In the almost deliberately unbalanced, unambiguous finale, it is made clear just how much and how little he has changed, in a way that feels both immensely heartbreaking and shockingly heartening.

High-Rise
Especially in the first half, there’s a sort of single-minded blandness to much of High-Rise. Call it my aversion to vicious satire that brands itself specifically as vicious satire, but there’s very little to Wheatley’s sensibility that doesn’t register as on the surface, however fundamental to the text it may be. The slow slide into anarchy, seemingly precipitated in part by the disconcerting dancing of Luke Evans, is rather appreciated, and the flatness of the ending teased in the beginning flash-forward is greatly mitigated by the extraordinary montage set to a Portishead cover of ABBA’s “SOS” and the climactic murders seen through a dazzling kaleidoscope.

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