Movie, music and TV reviews by Matt Neal, a Rotten Tomatoes-accredited ABC Radio film critic (also an author, musician, journalist and all-round okay guy).
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on October 13, 2022.
(M) ★★★★
Director: Brett Morgen.
David Bowie: sucking stars through his nose.
A truly great music doco or biopic captures the essence of an artist. This is why Rocketman was so impressive, but Bohemian Rhapsody less so. It's why Morgen's Cobain: Montage of Heck and Asif Kapadia's Amy are so brilliant. It's tough to match the subject matter to the delivery, to drill down into the core of the musician and excavate the truth in a way that befits them, but it really separates the masterpieces from the mediocre.
Moonage Daydream, an hallucinogenic collage that examines the life and career of David Bowie, is almost a masterpiece, and it works largely because it understands its subject in a deep way. Through a fascinating mixture of style and substance, the film captures the essence of the polymath born David Robert Jones.
Covering Bowie's career from Ziggy Stardust to his electronica-infused work of the late '90s, it explores some his key eras through an interweaving series of interviews and musical interludes. All the while, it blends its chronology with restless visuals - live footage and talk show appearances are interspersed with snippets from silent films and psychedelic animations, while Bowie's own artworks sit alongside candid snaps and never-before-seen clips from his archives.
The key weapon here is Bowie himself and his surprisingly open and self-analytical nature as an interviewee. These chats provide cutting insight into each of his phases and characters, allowing Bowie to tell his own story from beyond the grave. It's fascinating that these interviews exist, given Bowie's reputation for being enigmatic and elusive. It seems that wasn't actually the case, and collected here, they make for a frank self-assessment of a remarkable career and a mind that was always searching and creating.
The thoughtfulness and creativity of Bowie are the essential ingredients at the heart of Moonage Daydream. Like the artist himself, the film bounces from style to style, from one idea to the next, endlessly inventing and finding new ways to share the art at its core.
Coupled with the music - an often explosive mix of songs and sounds from his stunningly diverse back catalogue - the film is wonderfully immersive. It's like wandering around the David Bowie Is exhibition on a mild acid trip, with Bowie himself in your headphones, narrating your visit.
The only thing holding Moonage Daydream back is its pacing. It either needs to be half an hour shorter or three hours longer. Moments of repetition become aggravating - there's a surprising amount of footage that appears more than once in the film. This makes some segments drag on, and given its visual eccentricities, the doco could have packed more punch in a more concise runtime. Having said that, it opens up a fascinating insight that leaves you begging for more. Bowie did so much in his lifetime that the film makes you feel like untold riches lie between each costume change and musical reinvention.
For this reason, Moonage Daydream won't be the last word on Bowie that we see on the screen. But it certainly sets the bar high.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on August 18, 2022.
(MA15+) ★★
Director: Anthony & Joe Russo.
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Billy Bob Thornton, Jessica Henwick, Regé-Jean Page, Wagner Moura, Julia Butters, Dhanush, Alfre Woodard.
Unfortunately for Ryan, the whole room was wearing the same colour.
Imagine you're 16 and you're writing a script for an action movie. There will be shootouts, fireworks, fist fights, car chases, explosions, a plane crash, daring rescues, cool locations, and the hero will be utterly unflappable. Sounds cool.
The Gray Man is that movie. Written with all the panache, wit, depth and characterisation you'd expect from a 16-year-old (sorry teens), The Gray Man is the filmic equivalent of an airport novel - perhaps not hugely surprising because it's based on one, the first in a series written by Mark Greaney. So the film is at least true to its source, and that makes it successful in one sense.
In another more accurate sense, The Gray Man is little more than a loud noise - it will distract you for a bit, then its gone, leaving nothing but a ringing in your ears. Yeah, it's fun while it lasts, but only in a "I've got nothing better to do" kind of way.
The fast-paced plot centres on Sierra Six (Gosling), an ex-con-turned-assassin, who becomes the target of every assassin in the world when he stumbles on the dirty secrets of a crooked government official.
Netflix has splashed US$200m on this spy flick, hoping to kickstart their own Bond or Bourne franchise. The money is certainly there on the screen - the set pieces are massive, the effects are huge, the cast is top shelf, and the globe-trotting action doesn't let up. But it's an A-grade budget trying to wallpaper over a B-grade script.
Part of me wonders if that's the point. The Russo brothers have given us four of the best films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as contributing to the all-time-great TV shows Community and Arrested Development, so it seems they know what they're doing. Maybe they set out to make a brains-off, hold-on-tight actioner that harks back to the big shoot-em-ups of the '80s and '90s, but with a modern look and zero depth.
This seems a legit possibility and could give the film a pass, but it's also sporadically clunky and nowhere near as cool as it aims to be. The one-liners don't zing like they should and the tone shifts uneasily between its dark and threatening moments (centring on Evans' too-charming bad guy) and its goofy delights. There's also a weird flashback snuck in early on to set-up a relationship between our hero and a kidnapped girl, after the girl has already been kidnapped, like an afterthought to make us care.
But with so little going on in the character department - despite the best efforts of a very talented cast - it's hard to care. Maybe that's the point though - maybe this is meant to be a very expensive empty vessel that makes a lot of noise and that's it.
If so, bravo Russo brothers. But it's hard to see how enough people will care enough to come back for the inevitable sequels.
Sigur Ros Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne August 13, 2022
I have no idea what Sigur Ros' songs are about. I don't know the words to them - hell, I barely know any of the titles.
Maybe this makes me a bad fan. Or maybe it's acceptable because I don't speak Icelandic (or their made-up language of Hopelandic for that matter).
But I don't care because Sigur Ros' music moves me in a way that no other band does. To me, it's the most beautiful music I've ever heard a "rock band" make. In fact, seeing Sigur Ros live is a somewhat jarring experience because it reminds you that this beautiful music is actually made by living breathing humans and not in fact created by sticking a microphone on an Icelandic glacier and recording the sound it makes as it slides slowly across the landscape.
Not that the band betrayed their humanity in any real way. The only time frontman Jonsi spoke to the crowd was 19 songs into their 20-song set, when he thanked us for coming. The rest of the time, he looked like a sorcerer, hunched over his guitar, wielding a bow like some kind of magical staff, eliciting phantasmagorical sounds from his instrument.
But as jarring as it is, and as inhuman as they seemed, seeing Sigur Ros live is thing of beauty. The songs hit as a wave of emotion, without silly things like words and meaning getting in the way. It may as well be instrumental, with Jonsi's voice just another instrument.
Their set was split in two with an intermission, where brave souls dared to line up for fresh drinks, only to mostly miss Glósóli kicking off set two. With no new album from the band in a decade, they leant into their big albums and their "hits", with half the gig dedicated to tracks from () and Takk. Two new tracks - apparently titled Gold 2 and Gold 4 - got an airing, as did a couple of b-sides. It all sounded great.
The darkness of Kveikur was a highlight, as was all-time favourite Svefn-g-englar, but really there were no dud tracks. The grandeur, the beauty, the utterly indecipherable epicness of it all was breathtaking. I'm sure everyone present had their personal moments, where the songs spoke to them in a tongue they didn't understand (seriously, how many Icelandic speakers were there likely to be in a gig in Melbourne? A dozen? 20?).
But that's the beauty of Sigur Ros. Surely I'm not the only one who feels like their music speaks to them unlike any other band's, despite not understanding a single bloody word of it?
Archie's family has given permission for his name, image and music to be used.
The last time I saw Archie Roach perform was in March. It was in one of the big tents at the Port Fairy Folk Festival - the same year that a stage was named in his honour.
As we listened in awed silence to the stories he told between his songs, the sound of his oxygen pump hissed through the PA system, amplified by the mic. He spoke in a frail, halting way, his voice trembling under the weight of the health problems that had plagued him for the last decade.
But when he sang, his voice came from another place. It was rich, powerful and strong, soaring in that beautifully distinctive wide vibrato he's famed for, belying the image of the man before us who had to sit to perform and relied on a contraption to help him breathe.
This image of Archie sticks in my mind because it's the best analogy I can think of right now for the man he was. He was a man who fought against adversity to share his message. No matter what life threw at him - and it threw a lot - Archie kept going. When he got knocked down, he got back up and sang his song. Even as his health faded, he worked even harder to share his truth, to inspire us all, to leave a lasting legacy of hope through song and story.
Every performance Archie gave was a deep experience, but some have taken on mythic status. The one in 1990, where he played just two songs opening for Paul Kelly at the Melbourne Concert Hall, his perhaps the most legendary.
The second song was Took The Children Away - a song that never fails to make me cry, and is his best known track.
"When the song finished, there was dead silence," Paul told Double J in 2019.
"(Archie) thought that he bombed and just turned and walked off stage.
"As he was he was walking off, the applause started to build and build.
"The audience had been so stunned that it had taken them a while to respond."
It was the birth of a legend. Later that year, Archie would work with Paul Kelly and Steve Connolly to record Charcoal Lane. The following year he won two ARIA Awards. And so his legend grew.
The other performance that looms large in his legacy came at the Port Fairy Folk Festival in 2010, where he was booked to perform alongside his wife and soul mate Ruby Hunter.
Less than a month before the gig, Ruby passed away. She was just 54.
Archie was devastated. He and Ruby had met nearly 40 years prior as homeless teenagers and been inseparable ever since. Archie told me Ruby's passing had felt like he'd lost a part of himself.
Ruby's funeral was held on March 5. Despite the enormous grief that weighed on his heart, Archie turned up at the Folkie the following day and performed, with an empty stool and mic stand set up next to him where Ruby would have been.
"You'll have to bear me up, I can’t do this without you," he told the audience.
"I need you today."
The concert became a tribute to Ruby, with Archie breaking down during River Song, a song he wrote with Ruby during a camping trip. He left the stage to a standing ovation that lasted long after he was gone, and was followed by a minute's silence for Ruby.
Later that year, Archie suffered a stroke, and the following year he was diagnosed with lung cancer.
But nothing could keep him down. He had a message to deliver to the world and wasn't going to rest until he'd delivered it. As soon as he was able, he headed into the studio to make Into The Bloodstream, one of many incredible albums in a back catalogue full of great records.
In July 2012, I got a phone call from my friend Lyn, inviting me to be an extra in Archie's new film clip. It was being filmed at the Crossley Hall, just up the road from the house where Archie would spend the last decade or so of his life.
Lyn neglected to tell me I was supposed to dress in old-style clothes circa the '40s or '50s. I turned up in my t-shirt and Converse. The costume lady rolled her eyes at me, and thrust a jacket into my hands. "Put this on," she said, before whisking herself away to more important things.
In between takes and set-ups, I sat at a table in my borrowed jacket with Archie, Jack Charles and Shane Howard, feeling unworthy and out of my depth as I interviewed them all for the paper where I worked. Archie told me about how his recent turmoil and triggered an expansion of his philosophy.
"A lot of my music just dealt with pain and sorrow - now it’s about joy and getting on with life," he said.
I barely made the cut in the clip, probably because of my Converse. That's me, bottom left-hand corner at the three-minute mark.
But I got to spend a lot of the afternoon watching Archie standing on the little Crossley Hall stage in his dapper suit, lip-synching to Song To Sing. Every time the camera rolled, it felt like I was in church, and Archie was the minister delivering a sermon.
"When you are down, and you're feeling lonely,
"You've just got to breathe, you've got to believe,
"Just get up off the ground,
"You know you're not the only one down on your knees,
"Asking to be free from all your pain,
"Well come on everybody, you've got a song to sing."
After our scenes were done, Lyn came up to me. "You can sing," she said, "come with me."
Still wearing my borrowed jacket from Wardrobe, Lyn led me into the neighbouring church, St Brigid's, where Archie's producer Craig Pilkington had set up his recording gear. Before I knew it, I was part of a makeshift choir of south-west locals, adding our voices to Archie's soon-to-be-released album. Singing along to those songs, in the resounding reverb of that church, is an experience I'll never forget.
Today, listening back to those songs, and indeed much of Archie's back catalogue, I'm struck by a singular thought - almost every song now sounds like a self-penned eulogy. Archie was so focused on sharing his story, whether it was about life on the mission or on the streets or just life in general, that he imbued the majority of his songs with his truth and his message.
And that message was one of hope, usually amid sadness. His songs are often about finding a way through the darkness and the adversity, or about an acceptance of things we endure, and how those heavy hammer blows can make the sharpest sword. Archie was stolen, then homeless, and then a teenage alcoholic living on the streets. He suffered at the hands of prejudice and racism and a system stacked against him, but he rallied, turned his life around, and became a treasured Australian musician and an icon, not just for indigenous people, but for everyone. Later, he lost the love of his life and half of one of his lungs, but still he battled to tell his truth.
In the final decade of his life, he released more albums than he did in the previous three. In the last few years, he also wrote a book, put out a live compilation, started a foundation to support young indigenous musicians, toured as much as his health allowed, and even began a YouTube series called Uncle Archie's Kitchen Table Yarns. It was as if he saw the end approaching, and realised he still had too much left to achieve; he had too many songs left to sing, too many stories to tell.
What he seemed to be trying to achieve was to leave behind a legacy of stories and culture to influence generations to come. It's a goal he achieved, and then some. He was working to inspire people with his message; a message present in so much of his music, but perhaps best exemplified by the title track from his 2016 album Let Love Rule.
"Let love rule
"Let it guide us through the night
"That we may stay together
"And keep our spirits calm."
Rest in power, Uncle Archie. I truly hope you're back with Ruby in the Dreamtime now. Your legacy will live on. Thank you.
Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Tessa Thompson, Taika Waititi, Russell Crowe.
The judges of American Idol had been through some shit.
Apparently this is an unpopular opinion in some quarters of MCU fandom, but I desperately want to see Taika Waititi direct a third Thor film.
His take on Thor, in cahoots with the God of Thunder himself Hemsworth, has been a far funnier, wackier Odinson than what had been seen before. The tone of the films was in line with Waititi's own Kiwi sense of humour, but Thor also became a more comedic character, to the chagrin of some fans.
I like it. In Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Endgame, the Thunder God is a profoundly affected by his time among humans and from suffering loss - something he's not had to reconcile with as an Asgardian. He's absorbed humanity like a virus and doesn't fully understand how that sits with his godhood. Humility weighs unevenly on his immortality, and his profound power is ill-at-ease alongside the traits he's picked up from his Midgardian acquaintances.
Thus Love & Thunder finds him in search of himself and his place in the universe. Having set off with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of Endgame, he roams space, bouncing from one distress call to the next, smiting evil with his mighty battleaxe, and winning the day.
But it all feels so hollow and empty. He's missing something in his life - and that something is Jane Foster (Portman), his ex-girlfriend. But when he sees her again, he's in for a massive surprise.
Combining the Mighty Thor comic series with the God Butcher series is a masterstroke from Waititi and co-writer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. We get great arcs for Jane Foster as she becomes the Mighty Thor and uses that persona to battle her own demons, and we get Gorr (Bale), who is a worthy villain with a worthwhile backstory, cut from the same potentially understandable cloth as Thanos or Ultron or Scarlet Witch. Portman and Bale relish the extra depth in what could easily have been thin characters, and help make the whole thing work.
The humour is a fine balance amid the bleaker elements of the story; as he did with Jojo Rabbit, Waititi manages to work a deft line between the morbid moments and the hilarity. It something he excels at - just watch his breakthrough films Boy and Hunt For The Wilderpeople and note the darker realities lurking below the surface, and how comfortably-yet-uncomfortably they sit with everything else.
The same thing is on display in Love & Thunder. Cancer and mortality mix with the futility of life itself, while heartbreak and love battle it out. The whole thing is a damning diatribe against religion when looked at from Gorr's angle, a sad story of the inevitably of death when looked at from Jane Foster's side, and an examination of the devastations of lost love from Thor's perspective. The idea that Waititi has made the Thor films throwaway comedic fluff is nonsense.
Waititi's perfect use of Guns N' Roses is also to be commended, while there are visual flourishes (a fight in the Shadow Realm in particular) that are impressive. Some of the battles and action sequences feel a bit samey, as is to be expected 28 films into a saga, but there are moments where you can see Waititi is striving to bring some flair to the long-running party.
Waititi deserves a third film to close out his own Thor trilogy. If anyone is going to end the Thor saga, should Hemsworth want to hang up his cape, it must be Waititi.
This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio across regional Victoria on July 7, 2022.
(M) ★★★
Director: Baz Luhrmann.
Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Kelvin Harrison Jr., David Wenham, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Luke Bracey.
"Ladies and gentlemen, here's a little song called Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down."
Baz Luhrmann certainly has a style, and his visual flamboyance and love of a red curtain spectacle would appear to put him in good stead for this attempt at being the definitive Elvis biopic.
But Baz is his own worst enemy. For every moment of welcome flair in this lengthy drama, there are half a dozen of style-over-substance. The film's first hour is packed with so many unnecessary camera moves, cuts, edits, and crossfades, that it's like being on an out-of-control carnival ride. It's like an explosion at both the bell and neighbouring whistle factories.
It's only in the second half, when Luhrmann calms down, that the film truly engages, and Butler's stunning performance is able to shine through and become more than just a caricature.
Told partially from the point of view of Elvis' manager Colonel Tom Parker (Hanks), the film hits every big checkpoint in the Elvis wikipedia page - his early breakthrough with It's Alright, Mama, his controversial early TV and stage performances, joining the army, marrying Priscilla, his Hollywood stint, the comeback special, and through into the Vegas years and his untimely death, aged 42.
Elvis, its directorial tics aside, is a solid potted history of its subject. Diehard Elvis fans may be disappointed, and if you're looking for a deep dive into what made The King tick, this ain't it, but the film is at least a board overview of his world-changing career.
In a tough role, Butler excels. He captures the stage mannerisms and vocal particulars perfectly, but really flies in the latter half of the film as the troubles settle in. Butler makes Presley human, even as the shopping list of plot points whirls past in a blur of camera tricks and pointless editing stunts.
Equally impressive is Hanks as Parker. Hanks, in one of his few villainous roles, brings layers and complexity to a character that, like Presley, could have ended up being a caricature. In a film where so many characters are mere ciphers, the glue of Presley and Parker - of Butler and Hanks - holds proceedings together.
But for every clever line, such as Parker's manipulations, there is a naff one, usually involving Presley's family or to describe what Presley thinks and feels instead of showing us. For every awesome musical moment (and there are many) there is a saccharine score to beat you over the head, practically yelling at you to feel a particular way. For stunning moment of production design to recapture the era, there's a directorial move with the camera or in the editing suite or in the special FX department that is present for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
Luhrmann's kookiness and over-egging style as a director can have its moments, but his latest film is laden with the same problems that beset his previous one, The Great Gatsby. The movie works best when Luhrmann stops showing off, and gets out of the way of the story and the actors. The constant distractions of direction suck the emotion out of the film, bloat its storytelling, and quickly infuriate.
It's only the work of Butler and Hanks, and a mid-film chill pill for Luhrmann that make Elvis a decent overview of one of modern history's most important figures. Luhrmann's stylistic tics mean the film avoids some tropes of the music biopic genre, and there is an admirable boldness to his approach, but the definitive word on the King of Rock 'n' Roll is yet to be filmed.
Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, Wendell Corey, Judith Evelyn, Ross Bagdasarian, Georgine Darcy, Sara Berner, Frank Cady, Jesslyn Fax, Irene Winston, Rand Harper, Havis Davenport.
The binoculars confirmed it: the man was not wearing flesh-coloured pants.
"Let's start from the beginning again, Jeff. Tell me everything you saw, and what you think it means."
- Lisa Fremont
When you get down to it, making movies is about two key questions: "what's the story?" and "how will you tell it?".
In the case of Rear Window, the first answer is nothing special - it's a murder mystery. Man kills wife, nosy neighbour pieces together clues to solve it.
What makes this an exceptional film is how the story is told. And this is where the genius of Alfred Hitchcock comes into play.
"I think I'm more impressed by how Rear Window was made rather than the end product," reviewer The Incredible Suit notes in his ranking of Hitchcock films, "but it's undeniably unique filmmaking (if you don't count the Christopher Reeve remake)".
Indeed, Rear Window's superlative skill is to put you alongside the protagonist unlike any film has done so before or since. Almost every shot is filmed in or from the apartment of LB "Jeff" Jeffries (Stewart) - a photographer laid up with a broken leg, who finds himself with nothing to do but watch his many neighbours go about their lives in their apartments across the courtyard.
By placing the camera next to Jeff, we became complicit in his increasing voyeurism. We join him as he enjoys the music from the pianist's apartment, empathises with Miss "Lonely Hearts" at ground level, grins knowingly at the newlyweds behind the pulled blind, and finds it hard to look away from Miss "Torso" as she does her ballet warm-ups in her underwear. We're also drawn into the slow-burn mystery building in the apartment of Lars and Anna Thorwald at the same pace that Jeff is, as we see what he sees.
As noted in The Wordsworth Book of Movie Classics, the "restrictions" of trapping the film's hero in one room - and the audience with him - allowed "the viewer to feel the claustrophobia of his predicament and share his voyeuristic impulses".
There's that word again: "voyeur". Rear Window's key theme is voyeurism - within 90 seconds of the opening credits finishing, we see a woman drop her bra, then bend over in her pink underwear to pick it up. There's a very real "male gaze" thing going on here, but this titillation also goes to show the unimpeded view Jeff gets of his neighbours and their private lives. It also helps, rightly or wrongly, give us a gradual acceptance of Jeff's voyeurism - if everything is so openly on display, then what harm is there in looking, right? And if someone's life is on the line, then perhaps the right thing to do is look, right? Right?
French director François Truffaut suggested the film was an analogy for films themselves - "the courtyard is the world, the reporter/photographer is the filmmaker, the binoculars stand for the camera and its lenses," he wrote in 1954. The Incredible Suit agreed, calling it "a film about films, full of tiny cinema screens".
The film is also about neighbours and the perceived dying days of community. Jeff watches his neighbours, but never interacts with them. A dark twist involving a dead dog sparks a rant about what makes for good neighbours: "You don't know the meaning of the word 'neighbours'! Neighbours like each other, speak to each other, care if somebody lives or dies! But none of you do!". The rant, which is bellowed to the world at large, is startling, coming out of nowhere. But it aptly sums up the film's voyeurism in a different way, while articulating that classic yet misguided belief of every era - that society was better in the previous one, and that the current era has gone to the dogs (so to speak).
Rear Window is also, oddly, a film about love. Through the windows into other lives we see newlyweds at it like rabbits, the bickering married couple, the young lady fighting off suitors, the lonely lady dreaming of a partner, and the older lady content in her singledom. And then there's Jeff and his perfect girlfriend Lisa (the perfect Grace Kelly).
Jeff wants to break-up with Lisa because she's "too perfect", which is his way of saying she's out of his league and social bracket, but also because he sees their lives going in different directions, and he views marriage as a kind of curse. This crisis of commitment makes sense in the context of their obvious but unspoken age difference, which makes this May-December relationship far more palatable than Kelly and Gary Cooper in High Noon, or Stewart and Kim Novak in Vertigo.
Stewart's Jeff is a man on the edge of curmudgeonism and driven to distraction by his boredom. In a nice metaphor, his eyes are always on the horizon, chasing the next story, which happens to be taking place outside his window, and not what's happening in his own apartment. He struggles to see how Kelly's Lisa fits in to that, and Stewart nails his frustrations, fears and fervours in one of his best performances.
Kelly is also at the top of her game in a "surprisingly carnal" turn, as Joshua Klein put it in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Her wounded moments hurt, yet she's also convincingly strong and daring, making the varying levels of her character feel like a real person. Jeff laments her "perfection", but by the gods, she does indeed seem perfect.
Thelma Ritter as the nurse Stella is great comic relief, bringing some sass to her sidekick role, while across the way a brooding Raymond Burr is a great mix of quiet and shady, fuelling the possibility Jeff may be mistaken for long enough. And when Burr finally gets his big moment, he delivers.
Quick fact: that's Ross Bagdasarian AKA David Seville as the frustrated pianist providing much of the film's diegetic score. He's best known for inventing The Chipmunks AKA Alvin, Simon and Theodore.
And while it's the "how" of the story that sells Rear Window, the screenplay is an under-appreciated gem of the genre. The mystery unfolds in a way that rewards repeat viewings, while there is an equally potent and important slowburn happening in our complicity with Jeff's growing voyeurism. The way characters around the courtyard are built without dialogue is also some nifty storytelling.
There are other fascinating factors at play that help sell the drama. There's the remarkable set, the biggest ever built at Paramount Studios at the time, featuring running water and electricity in every fake apartment, and a complex drainage system to handle the fake rain ("Watching it is like watching a living, breathing ecosystem," Klein notes in 1001 Movies).
There's the perfect pacing which winds the tension tighter and tighter, a sublime sense of mood conjured by the use of music and lighting, an excellent cast, and, as is often the case, Hitchcock making all the right moves at the right times.
As William Bayer put it in his 1973 book The Great Movies, Rear Window "comes very close to being the perfect Hitchcock film, the one that illustrates nearly all his major strengths". Bayer cites Hitchcock's love of voyeurism, his passion for a technical challenge, the multi-layered narrative, the strong visuals, and the common Hitchcockian motif of "an extraordinary thing happening in an everyday situation to an average person".
It's true. Psycho may be more daring and thrilling (and ultimately better), and Vertigo certainly has its fans for its unique stylings and deep themes, but Rear Window is the quintessential Hitchcock film.
