Landscape With Invisible Hand (2023)

Direction: Cory Finley
Country: USA 

From Cory Finley - the director of Bad Education (2019) and Thoroughbreds (2017) - comes Landscape With Invisible Hand, an offbeat sci-fi romantic comedy drama with fitting social commentary but grappling with an uneven narrative pulse. The film, an adaptation of M.T. Anderson's novel of the same name, ventures down devious pathways, losing track of a potential cinematic provocation due to storytelling veering into self-indulgence and characters who often feel emotionally distant. It’s also visually restrained for a futuristic tale.

While the film doesn't falter on every level, boasting occasional successful black humor and delightful tensions between families, it generally lacks soul and struggles to connect with the theme of an alien seeking entertainment through teenage love. 

The director, concerned with charting trajectories of human subjugation and alien ascendancy, remains on the surface, weaving a crass hodgepodge of elements that don’t fully coalesce. However, respectable performances by Asante Blackk, Kylie Rogers, and Tiffany Haddish were a positive surprise, and that paid off in places.

Bad Education (2020)

Direction: Cory Finley
Country: USA

Cory Finley’s follow up to his well-received debut feature, Thoroughbreds (2017), is this crackling fact-based drama, Bad Education, in which he further explores directorial capabilities by giving the film an adequate pace, structural organization and gradual emotional intensification. 

The film builds its case around the painful truth of embezzlement - the biggest in the American history - occurred in Long Island’s Roslyn High School in 2004, when assistant superintendent Pam Gluckin (the always infectious Allison Janney) and the fake-to-the-bone district superintendent Frank Tassone (a charismatic Hugh Jackson proving he can be more than just Wolverine) have stolen more than 11 million dollars from the district’s public funds.

Although with small branches in the accuracy, the script by Mike Makowsky was found pretty effective, developing with a fine perspective and giving the audiences an inside look on how hedonists operate and think, just as if they were above any regulation or authority. 

Jackson gives a tour-de-force performance, portraying Tassone with incredible alertness and spontaneity. His deceptively practical character fully emerges as his luxurious double life is gradually exposed and his name implicated in first class flights, expensive hotel bookings, fancy suits, facial plastic surgeries, exotic vacations for two, and more, all with stolen money from the school.

The lack of integrity and the disrespect shown by these spenders are outraging, and Finley was able to convey that aspect with lucidity and competence.

Thoroughbreds (2018)

Directed by Cory Finley
Country: USA

The slow-burner drama-thriller “Thoroughbreds”, an auspicious directorial debut for Cory Finley, creates that kind of mood that sometimes attracts and sometimes repulses.

The story finds two childhood friends who reconnect in Connecticut years after losing sight of each other. Emotionally deprived, Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Amanda (Olivia Cooke) have grown into upper-class teenagers of bright intelligence but limited moral principles. Lily boasts a brilliant CV, hates her manipulative stepfather (Paul Sparks), and gets fascinated by the personality of Amanda, a self-trained deceiver who seems perfectly normal but is completely unable to feel joy, sadness or guilt. She is actually a sociopath who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, severe depression, and anti-social behavior after euthanizing her crippled horse with a knife.

The first contact between the two girls is tense due to Amanda’s perfect understanding of Lily’s inner feelings. Not bad at all for someone who is emotionless. After teaching her friend the crying technique, Amanda poses a dangerous question: ‘do you ever think about just killing him?’. The thought of killing her stepfather gains a sharper perspective when Lily is informed by her passive mother (Francie Swift) that the following year she will be attending Brookmore, a strict school for girls with severe behavioral issues. 

They plan the evil act with a helper in mind: Tim (Anton Yelchin), an ambitious drug dealer whom they intend to turn into a hitman. This particular passage felt strained and was the weakest section of the film, feeling more time-consuming than worthwhile. The positive thing is that the story shifts immediately to darker, bringing a few surprises. The poisonous bondage between the calculative Lily and the stoic Amanda is about to be sealed forever with blood. But at what price?

Intersecting the friction of a taut thriller and the biting wit of a dark comedy, Cory Finley proves he has the eye and the talent. He extracts the best acting qualities from Cooke and Taylor-Joy, who totally convince with their odd rebelliousness, coldness, and amorality. Master cellist Erik Friedlander, a modern explorer of sound, was the perfect choice to develop a tense, gripping score, while cinematographer Lyle Vincent, a habitual collaborator of Ana Lily Amirpour, may not be remembered as in “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”, but did a very competent job.