3 Anya Taylor-Joy movies to watch after The Queen's Gambit
If you're a fan of The Queen's Gambit on Netflix and weren't previously familiar with the star, you're in luck.
Welcome to the first edition of Jason’s Movie Club! Each week, I plan on writing a bit about one of my favourite topics: movies. I’ll sprinkle in bits about books and music - and maybe the occasional thing unrelated in any way to pop culture - but it will primarily be centered around movies.
Initially, I was planning on the first post being about a double-feature of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) and Mank (2020) when the latter came out. I mistakenly thought Mank was coming out in November, but it won’t be on Netflix until December.
Then, with the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit striking it big, I thought of an alternative. I have yet to watch the series (I know, I know), but I’ve heard only good things and intend to rectify that. Anya Taylor-Joy, its star, is quickly becoming a household name. And while The Queen’s Gambit may be her mainstream breakthrough as an actor, there are several titles you must check out if you’re a fan of her work as chess wizard Beth Harmon. I’ll share with you my three favourites and where you can find them.
Emma. (2020)
Earlier this year, before the world shut down, Taylor-Joy appeared in the newest adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. I was never much of a fan of period pieces or costume dramas or comedies growing up or even into my early adulthood, but I’m willing to admit when I’ve been wrong and writing off an entire genre without any good reason is certainly ridiculous. Emma. is a delightful movie with sharp wit and gorgeous costume and set design. Visually, it’s a sumptuous experience reflecting the opulence of the obliviously wealthy at the heart of the movie.
Taylor-Joy is wonderful as Emma, able to convey so much with a single tilt of her head or a side-eyed look at someone coming around the corner she’d very much prefer not to speak with. She’s also silver-tongued and used to talking people into almost anything. Her hubristic quality is her overconfidence, but the stakes are all relatively low in what’s generally a whimsical tale of bored rich folk and their relationships. While that may sound undesirable, I think director Autumn De Wilde and her cast do a fantastic job of not taking these people all that seriously.
Where to watch: Emma. is currently streaming on Crave and available for digital rental.
Thoroughbreds (2018)
Taylor-Joy doesn’t only do period pieces. And while there aren’t many connections between Thoroughbreds and Emma. this does offer a scathing dissection of the rich, though in much darker fashion.
Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and Lily (Taylor-Joy) reconnect after drifting apart in their younger years. Amanda has an unspecified mental disorder that results in her not feeling any emotions. She point blank asks Lily if she’s ever considered murdering her setp-dad Mark, whom she hates though he may simply be a garden-variety asshole. When Mark enrolls her in boarding school, Lily turns to Amanda to see if they can hatch a plan to kill him.
Did I mention it’s a comedy? It’s pitch black but fantastic if you’re into off-kilter and cynical comedies. Director Cory Finley has since had another movie, Bad Education (2020) with Hugh Jackman, hit HBO. While that one is also pretty wild in the twists it takes - and it’s true to boot - the unpredictability of Thoroughbreds puts it a step above. It was also the final film role of late actor Anton Yelchin who tragically died in an accident in 2016.
Where to watch: Thoroughbreds is available via digital rental. It was on Netflix for a while, but it appears to be gone now.
The Witch (2016)
Robert Eggers’ debut feature film is not going to work for everybody, but is right up my alley as an esoteric period horror film that looks at the hubris of religious piety. Eggers, who later went on to direct The Lighthouse (2019), is perhaps more interested in being true to the time period than anything else but his stylistic vision really works for me in both films.
The Witch takes place in 1630s New England where a family is cast out of a puritan colony and settles near a forest. Thomasin (Taylor-Joy) is looking after her youngest brother, baby Samuel, when the child disappears. The perpetrator is believed to be a forest-dwelling witch and Thomasin is ultimately accused by her own family members of practicing witchcraft. In addition to being a thematically dense horror film - and not a particularly visceral one - it uses tone and vibe to ratchet up the anxiety and paranoia within the family unit. Yes, there may be a witch in the woods, but the real monster may be the oppressive father or the extremity of the religion being practiced.
The colour of the film is almost washed out - lots of pale shades and few dynamic colours other than the occasional orange and yellow flame - to the point that I often forget that it wasn’t actually filmed in black and white like Eggers’ follow up.
The dialog is designed to be period accurate and it has been described as difficult to follow or even hear. If you find this to be the case, I encourage you to turn on subtitles.
The Witch probably features my favourite Anya Taylor-Joy performance, though she hasn’t delivered a poor one yet. Even in movies I haven’t particularly liked (Split and Marrowbone) she’s always a highlight.
Where to watch: Digital rental. I believe it’s also available on CBC Gem, as well.
As for what’s next for Taylor-Joy, she is in Edgar Wright’s new film Last Night in Soho, which was supposed to be released this fall but was pushed back due to the pandemic. She’s in the process of filming The Northman, the next movie from Eggers that costars Nicole Kidman, Willem Dafoe, Alexander Skarsgard, Ethan Hawke, and Bjork.
What Else Am I Watching, Reading, and Listening to?
The format I plan on using for these may evolve, but I’d like to have a few quick hits at the end so I’m not just writing about one topic. I consume a lot of pop culture, so I plan on sharing as much as I can.
Before our son Wyatt was born in late August, Megan and I were warned to get our movie watching in before his arrival because we won’t have time afterwards. Well folks, this has proven to be incorrect. At first, sure, we were running ragged for a few weeks trying to just get through each day. Once we established a routine, things got easier. We have been remarkably fortunate that Wyatt adapted to sleeping for long stretches through the night relatively early on and for the last several weeks it has been commonplace for him to sleep from 9 or so through to 6 or 7. He’ll wake up occasionally, but it’s rarely an issue. He sometimes takes a while to initially go down (we start the routine shortly after 7) but once he’s out, he’s out.
Once he’s asleep, Megan and I will normally retire to the basement and watch a movie (we have the bedroom camera hooked up to our phones and receive alerts any time a movement or sound is detected). This weekend, we watched a couple stone-cold classics that Megan had not seen that I adore and another we both love but hadn’t watched in some time.
The Exorcist (1973) holds all the way up. I hadn’t seen this in about 15 years, and it’s still as unnerving as it ever was. I love how much of a slow burn it is to begin with, but once Regan is under Pazuzu’s control it just doesn’t let up. I was surprised by how little I remembered. It was pretty much “the power of Christ compels you!” and the iconic shot of Father Merrin arriving in silhouette outside the apartment before the exorcism. I’ve heard it criticized for being “too serious” but I like that approach in this case as forcing levity would undermine the severity of the horror and it would perhaps render some of the more vicious and crude lines spouted by the possessed Regan as more silly than they actually come across.
Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Burt Lancaster has become one of my all-time favourite actors over the last year or so, but one of the few movies of his I had seen years earlier was this, and it’s one of the absolute best movies I’ve ever seen. It’s grimy and cynical with acid-tongue dialog. When J.J. Hunsecker (Lancaster), a powerful New York newspaper columnists, tries to tell publicist Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) that he’s through, he says “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” It’s a noir without guns where death comes in the more metaphorical sense. Falco is fighting to preserve the life of his career, and he’s willing to slime his way to the top and that means cozying up to Hunsecker any way he can because he’s something of a kingmaker. The movie shows how people are so easily compromised in the face of personal gain. They choose power and status over relationships and innocents often get caught in the crossfire. It’s extremely funny, but the protagonists are no heroes. Sometimes it’s fun to get lost in the muck.
Night of the Hunter (1955). There is a pretty solid triple-feature of religious horror in this blog post. Night of the Hunter follows The Witch and The Exorcist, and is similarly suspicious of unyielding faith, particularly with how someone’s beliefs can be weaponized against them. Robert Mitchum is chilling as Harry Powell, a man who stylizes himself as a verbose, traveling preacher when he’s really a serial killer who preys on widows. This was the only film Charles Laughton directed, and it was roundly dismissed at the time of its release but has long since been rehabilitated as one of the best of its era. It has an almost surrealist look to it much of the time with very sparse interiors and heavy use of shadows and silhouettes. It was apparently heavily influenced by German Expressionist silent films, which isn’t surprising if you’ve seen The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
As far as I know, these three movies are available for digital rental or to be purchased on Blu Ray.
Follow me on Letterboxd.
Music!
I’m currently going through a phase of revisiting the 2000s. I want to put together my personal top 100 albums from that decade at some point down the road, so I’m trying to listen to as much as I can. I’m curious about what the finished product will look like because my taste is quite different now than it was when I was finishing high school and subsequently in university. I imagine my list will be a mix of both - stuff I loved then and records I’ve fallen for more recently.
One rule I will abide is only one album per band/artist. This will prove difficult in some cases like Beck (Modern Guilt/Guero/Sea Change), Radiohead (In Rainbows/Kid A), TV on the Radio (Dear Science/Return to Cookie Mountain), and countless others. But that’s the fun. I’m open to any and all suggestions/reminders.
Follow me on Spotify.
Books!
Since Wyatt was born, I really haven’t been able to find much time to read. I haven’t really tried, though. I can never predict how much time I’ll have to myself, and it’s easier to pause a video game or movie than to go in and out of a book.
Still, I would like to make a point of forcing myself to read more going forward, especially as he is napping more regularly (fingers crossed this continues). This means finishing the four books I’ve had on the go for months (or years in some cases).
I finished the first two parts of Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings and just haven’t had the opportunity to jump back in. It’s an incredibly dense and rewarding read that features several chapters written with Jamaican dialect/vocabulary that is tricky if you’re unfamiliar with its nuances. Hopefully I’ll get back into it soon.
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann is a non-fiction book being adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese starring Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. It is about several murders of Osage Native Americans in the 1920s and apparently explores the formation of the FBI. I’m not very far into it, but can’t wait to dive deeper.
I’ve periodically been reading John Cheever’s Complete Stories for three years. No real rush. They’re great and often deal with the malaise and boredom facing upper middle class whitey in the 1950s and 60s. They’re way better than that sounds, I assure you.
Finally, I was about halfway through Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum on my honeymoon in 2018 but lost my copy shortly thereafter. I have yet to replace it, which I regret.
Thanks for reading my first edition. I doubt they’ll all be this length. Before I go, I’ll share the inspiration for me starting this newsletter. Megan and I were visiting home for a wedding in mid-2019 and we were chatting about movies and television with our friend Amy. I think we were rattling off a number of titles and Amy asked if I ever considered doing a newsletter to share my recommendations. Until then I hadn’t really thought about it, and while it took me over a year to actually follow through…I still did. Hopefully you find something new through my writing or revisit a loved work that you hadn’t seen or experienced in some time.
Cheers,
Jason