The blockbuster film of the last few years has achieved a synthesis of these two trends: color-rich saturated imagery, hammer on the head straightforward storytelling. I think that the actual visual pleasure offered by these new films is such a breath of fresh air that they disarm people’s critical faculties (See also: Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Banshees of Inishiren, Saltburn). What has emerged reminds me most of the USSR’s most maligned aesthetic legacy, socialist realism.

Image Without Metaphor - Vicky Osterweil