Matt Thrift

Paul W. S. Anderson is beaming a boyish grin when I log into our video call. Salt-and-pepper hair aside, you wouldn’t guess that the B-movie maven was turning sixty on the day of our chat. “I’m actually getting to spend my first birthday in three years with Milla,” he says by way of preamble while I fumble with my recording device. Anderson is cinema’s preeminent wife guy, and the Milla in question is Milla Jovovich, mother to his three daughters and star of seven collaborations.

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide Released in cinemas the day after it clocked up 10 Oscar nominations, Brady Corbet’s epic new drama is an imposing Great American Novel in cinematic form. John Dos Passos might have dreamt it up, but in fact it’s an original screenplay, which Corbet co-wrote with Mona Fastvold. Adrien Brody plays the Holocaust survivor and visionary architect who emigrates to the New World in the post-war era.

Having clocked the parallels between construction and filmmaking – a small army of craftspeople labour months and perhaps years, at great cost, to realise an individual’s vision – filmmakers have long seen the architect as analogous to the movie director. However, the movie architect – often brilliant, independent-minded and more than a little self-involved – is rarely ever content to design anything as mundane as a mere habitable space.