Vampires, Assassins, and Romantic Angst by the Seaside: Takoma Reviews

Yeah, there are many times that at work kids or parents say pretty nasty things to me (though I know some teachers have it much, much worse). But you know it's worth it, so you just put up with it and try not to take it personally.

That's partly why I think it's important that Lazarescu is almost certainly---even if he'd received top-notch care from the get-go---dying. It's not about saving him, it's about being there for him as a human being and not objectifying him or discarding him.

At Play in the Fields of the Lord, 1991

Martin (Aidan Quinn) and his wife Hazel (Kathy Bates) and their son Billy (Niilo Kivirinta) arrive in Brazil as part of the Christian mission to bring their religion to the indigenous Niaruna people of the deep Amazon rainforest. They are joining fellow missionaries Leslie (John Lithgow) and Andy (Daryl Hannah), who have promised a local police commander (Jose Dumont) to “pacify” the tribe in the face of encroaching seizure of land by the government. Complicating their mission is an explorer named Lewis Moon (Tom Berenger), half American Indian, who decides to join the Niaruna as one of their own.

An interesting examination of a multi-factor culture clash is a bit overstuffed.

First, this movie was a lot better than I remembered from having watched it in high school. Perhaps that’s because this time around I wasn’t watching it 40 minutes at a time over the course of a week on a crummy VHS tape, suffering through the endless commentary of teenage male classmates seemingly unable to get over the novelty of female nudity in the classroom.

I think that the best thing about this film, with its sprawling scope, is the way that it captures the various complexities behind the reasons that mission work takes place around the world. Through the various characters, we witness the power dynamics at play, and the contradictions in how indigenous people are seen by their supposed saviors. All of the characters in the film, no matter their motives, have selfish reasons for their decisions, leading to an inevitable disaster.

Martin is perhaps the most “pure” of the characters we meet, aside perhaps from his son, Billy, who takes to indigenous ways and quickly makes friends. Martin is religious, yet, but he also has an anthropological interest in the tribes and their way of life. His wife, Hazel, is the opposite. She is disgusted by what she sees as “evil” lifestyles and their potential corruption of their child. Leslie is the more overtly superficial of the missionaries, seeing the souls and lives of the indigenous people as more akin to points on a scoreboard than as something innately of value.

The film is at its best when it demonstrates the inherent folly and outright corruption in the process of “pacifying” the Niaruna. Even Martin, who does seem to genuinely care about the Niaruna people, doesn’t actually grasp the scope of what his preaching is doing to the tribal dynamics. There’s a sequence where Hazel tries to force the Niaruna women into modest dresses and bras, which they respond to with a sort of baffled acceptance. This scene is perhaps the best analogy for the whole operation. Martin dunking the Niaruna in the river to baptise them isn’t too far away from putting a dress on someone who doesn’t need or want it.

Further from those good intentions are the actions of Leslie and the commander. Leslie wants the mission to succeed so that they can “win back” those who may have been converted by a Catholic mission that failed when the priest and nuns were killed by the tribe. The commander, meanwhile, knows that gold hunters and others are encroaching on the Niaruna land, and wants to avoid clashes that would make his management of the area look bad. Religious conversion and assimilation are not being done out of care, but as a “nice” way to steal the land and resources of the Niaruna.

Overall, the film looks good, and it’s interesting that it was all shot on location in the Amazon. The jungle feels like a jungle, and the sense of isolation is effective. The family are clearly a very long way from South Dakota.

I did struggle with a few aspects of the film. The female characters are woefully underwritten, despite Kathy Bates doing her best to inject a sense of humanity into Hazel. Daryla Hannah seems to mainly be in the film to be lusted after by all characters, culminating in a nude swim in the river and then a cheesecake sequence of sitting against a tree. This part of the film sticks out like a sore thumb because it’s in such contrast to the way that the indigenous women have been filmed and because a woman going swimming alone, naked, knowing that women in this exact area were raped and killed and there are currently hostile feelings on the part of the tribes is so very stupid that it dings that suspension of disbelief. An indigenous woman named Pindi (Ione Machado) is never even given a single line of dialogue, despite being Moon’s wife and having his child.

And despite its efforts to be even-handed in the treatment of the indigenous people, there are some moments that just don’t feel right. When Andy tells Martin that a man came up to her during her swim, Martin is disbelieving that she wasn’t raped. By way of explanation, she tells him that it was Moon. The logic that she wasn’t raped because the guy she encountered was really white/”civilized” seems to be not just Martin’s framing of the situation, but the film’s framing as well, and that didn’t sit too well with me. We’re given a handful of moments looking at tensions within the tribe about how to deal with the white interlopers, but I wanted to see much more of the complexity of that situation.

Overall, I wish that this film had spent more time with the tribe and in deepening Moon’s journey. It seems to me that there were just too many plot points and character dynamics here, and that the end result is a sense that despite a three hour plus runtime, many aspects get a too superficial treatment. Certain characters, like Moon and Hazel, seem to go from a point A to a point B in a jump and it doesn’t totally make sense. There are also parts of the character arcs---such as Martin seemingly having a crisis of faith---that aren’t followed through on.

I’m glad to have revisited this film, and I thought that the performances were very good.

Trap 2024

Cooper (Josh Hartnett) takes his daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a huge concert for smash pop star Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan). But what should be a father daughter bonding opportunity takes a turn when Cooper realizes that the heavy police presence at the event is all for him . . . because Cooper is a serial killer known as The Butcher who has been terrorizing the local community and who currently has a victim detained in an unknown location.

A fun premise sinks under uneven execution and strange pacing.

The worst disappointments aren’t just movies that are bad, but rather movies that could have so easily been better/good. This movie falls firmly into that category for me, and it’s actually kind of baffling to me how badly the film squanders everything it has going for it.

To start with, the stadium is a great variation on the “locked room” type setting. It’s big enough that the characters can move from location to location, but small enough that characters run into each other again and again, and we can feel the claustrophobia as the officers block each entrance.

The cast is also a perfect fit for this kind of film. John Hartnett has an easy charisma but with those dark eyes that make him perfect as a man hiding a dark secret and masking his evil with charm. Donoghue isn’t given much help from the script, but she does well with her role. Saleka Shyamalan might be overt casting nepotism, but I really enjoyed her as the pop star. I’m a firm believer that Alison Pill makes everything better, so I was thrilled to see her show up in the second half of the film, bringing a much-needed grounding presence.

There are moments--all too rare--when the film hits a really nice dark comedy vibe. In an early attempt to draw the police away from an exit, Cooper casually pushes a woman down the stairs. For the most part, Cooper tries to get his way via charm and bluffing, but in the rare moment that we see his sociopathy casually pop out, it’s fun and seems to promise a build to a demented ending. What we do see of the concert is very visually interesting, with really nice costuming and staging. Cooper’s yellow jacket provides for some nice visual moments setting him aside from the rest of the crowd at the concert. A scene late in the film between Hartnett and Pill (doing an admirable job of playing as close as the script will let her get to the straight woman) speaks to a nicely low-key unhinged energy that the film could have used much more of.

But boy does the movie fail to capitalize on nearly any of this. Hartnett is a naturally charming person, and so having him play up that aspect takes it into an almost shrill territory. He can do exactly this kind of role, and showed it over and over in the Penny Dreadful series. I’m also not sure I bought Hartnett and Donoghue as father and daughter, but a lot of this is due to how manic and disconnected the writing is. Riley’s character is reduced to a lot of “Dad, what’s going on?” when he excuses himself from their seats for the eighth time. There’s a strange amount of runtime spent on Cooper running into the mother of a former friend of his daughter’s, something that neither moves the plot forward nor leads to any kind of resolution.

This movie needed to take a huge hit of inspiration from The Stepfather and it’s look at a man splintering under the pressure of keeping up a suburban dad facade to cover his horrible crimes. Instead, that dynamic only really comes to the fore in the last act. The closed feeling of the concert venue is the best thing the film has going for it, and the decision to move the action away from there is catastrophic.

The movie did hold my interest until the end, but just barely. It starts out looking like it could be stupid fun, but the longer it goes on the more the fun part retreats and the stupid really comes to the forefront. (In a life-threatening situation, would you choose to dial 911, or text someone and ask them to dial 911 for you?).

In what feels like something of a Hail Mary, in the last act the movie gives us Hartnett in a form-fitting SWAT uniform and then another sequence where he takes his shirt off. I mean, thanks movie, but too little too late. (The shirtless scene IS the best scene in the movie, but not because of the cheesecake element). There are also several attempts to introduce twists and surprises that fall mostly flat and just serve to amp up the dumb. In the last 5 minutes the film totally runs out of steam and just gets annoying.

Good for a mindless watch, and I suppose for any fans of Hartnett (though this isn’t his best showing) and Pill.

I did not care for this movie when it came out. Even at 19 years old I thought there was a lot of pandering to white savior audiences, even though the film is ostensibly about white saviorism being a failure. And even though I was a great age to enjoy Daryl Hanna reclining nude against a tree... it felt like the only reason they cast her or that her character existed almost. Which, even at 19 felt like it cheapened the movie. I really thought this movie fell flat on its face, in a way being just like its characters, preaching but somehow missing the exact point of its preaching.

There are some good ideas in here (like how it draws a clear line between resource hoarding/colonialism and missionary work) and I liked the performances, but I agree that despite some good intentions, it can't escape the prejudices its ostensibly criticizing.

The Tribe, 2014

Sergei (Hryhoriy Fesenko) arrives at a boarding school for deaf, only to realize that the school is home to a ruthless gang of students---and some teachers--who commit a range of crimes for profit. Several of the teenage students are forced to do sex work at a local truck stop, and Sergei falls for one of them, Anya (Yana Novikova). But as the power dynamics in the gang shift, things become volatile among the students.

A compelling setting and concept fall prey to exploitative tendencies.

When it comes to art, the term “novelty” carries a negative connotation, but I don’t think that it’s always a bad thing. In the cast of this film, the novelty is that there are no subtitles for the Ukrainian Sign Language, and scenes using only the sign language constitute something like 90% of the film. This means that we are forced to rely on body language and facial expressions to puzzle out what is happening between the teenagers.

Another effect of the sign language being so prominent is that intense sequences, some of them literally life or death, are carried out in silence or near silence. There’s a painfully suspenseful moment when a reversing truck moves slowly toward a totally unsuspecting teenager. In another sequence, a young woman has no idea that someone is breaking down her door.

The performances are pretty strong across the board, with Novikova and Fesenko being the standouts. All of the actors are actually deaf/hearing impaired, and this is reflected in their very natural use of the sign language and the facial expressions that accompany it.

But as foreign and engaging as this world is, as the film goes on, it slips and slides its way into bleak misery porn territory. And as with too many films, the brunt of the misery is placed squarely on the shoulders of the young women. At one point, one of the characters becomes pregnant and must get an abortion. The sequence showing the abortion is long and harrowing, but I wasn’t sure why. If the film were more centered on Anya and Svetka (Rosa Babiy) it would make more sense. Instead, what happens with the young women is largely used as motivation for Sergei’s actions, which makes the movie’s extended time in the abortion scene all the more baffling. (And, no, Sergei is not there to witness it).

The film does speak to the way that under the care of adults who are indifferent or, worse, complicit in corruption, terrible things can happen to young people. It’s realistic in the sense that the characters don’t have “arcs”, per se, and instead are ruled by their impulses because they are young and in a volatile environment.

That said, I wish that the film had more of a direction or something more to say about its young people than “wouldn’t want to be them!”. Especially as more and more cruelty is visited on Anya, the lack of a direction makes the violence and degradation feel more sensationalist than meaningful. The very last scene is shocking and impactful, but it doesn’t quite bring together what’s come before it.

Definitely worth checking out, but also feels a bit like a missed opportunity.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, 2020

Various groups of protestors show up to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Months later, Abbie Hoffman (Sasha Baron Choen), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong), Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne), Rennie Davis (Alex Sharp), David Dellinger (John Carroll Lynch), Lee Weiner (Noah Robbins), John Froines (Danny Flaherty), and Bobby Seale (Yahya Abdul-Mateen) are charred with inciting a riot. Under the watch of an obviously biased judge (Frank Langella), prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) begins to lose faith in the righteousness of the prosecution.

A tepid take on a compelling true story.

I didn’t dislike this film, despite being disappointed by it. I would say that everything ranges from fine to pretty good. The real strength of the film is simply the incredible story that it is portraying, and the unabashed abuses of power that dog the characters from beginning to end.

The actors are all good in their roles, though Michael Keaton as a government official who is no longer working and therefore more than happy to spill some very interesting beans is a highlight. Abdul-Mateen brings a powerful, deep disgust to his role, despite the film not knowing exactly how to handle his plot arc, and his exclusion from the final act of the film is a real loss. (Yes, I get that what happened happened, but he is still very much missed in those last 20 minutes!). John Carroll Lynch is always good, and considering how often he’s played creeps or murderers I kind of love it when he plays a nice guy. In this case, his character’s gentle pacifism is a nicely grounded presence when the conversations get heated.

Something that I also appreciated in the film was simply the lesson it gives about the different reasons that people can come together in protest. In the documentary [b]Crip Camp[/B[, it was neat to learn about how the Black Panthers supported the wheelchair users in their protests at the City Hall. Likewise, we here see the various backgrounds of the protestors, and watch as they navigate the difference in their philosophies.

The film gets the most heft out of simply unfolding the events of the trial. Outrageous moments like Seale not having a lawyer, yet the judge allowing the trial to continue anyway, or the two most sympathetic jurors being dismissed in suspicious circumstances.

But where the movie falls down is simply in trying to be a movie. The writing sometimes serves up a nice quip or moment---and the actors do their best with the dialogue---but too often it sounds like something that is trying to be clever. This can make sense when one of the men is giving a speech. After all, having a way with words is a big part of being a leader of a social movement. But in their day to day conversations, it feels contrived.

And on a similar note, I wasn’t a fan of the way that the movie tries to create story beats where they don’t naturally exist. Late in the film an audiotape is produced and it’s meant to be a huge bombshell. The problem is that it’s a tape of a character yelling something into a microphone that was heard by hundreds of people, including the police and undercover agents. What is on that tape would have obviously been mentioned in testimony much earlier. Likewise, the moment that the film builds to as its finale felt a bit rote.

Lastly, look, I am highly sympathetic to the main characters in this film. But the movie seemed to contort itself at times to absolve them of mistakes or any intentional malice. It is very human to say things in anger when provoked, and some last minute wordplay that alleviates responsibility from a character by insisting that what he MEANT was this other thing feels manipulative.

As with so many films of this kind, I felt myself pining for just a really well made documentary.

Keep an Eye Out, 2018

A man named Louis (Gregoire Ludig) is brought into a police station for questioning after finding the bloodied body of a man outside of his apartment building. Interrogated by the hostile Buron (Benoit Poelvoorde), Louis finds himself justifying his admittedly odd actions on the night he found the body. Things go from strange to stranger when Buron’s one-eyed colleague, Philippe (Marc Fraize), arrives.

This quirky comedy holds your interest by continuing to escalate the absurdity.

There is a subgenre of comedy which is this sort of deadpan, quirky energy, and it can get old pretty fast. Thankfully, this movie keeps things moving, both by not overstaying its welcome and understanding the need to neither get too shrill nor let the escalation of weirdness plateau around the middle.

Ludig makes for a great straight man to Poelvoorde’s eccentric detective, and yet the film gives his character dimension by making him an odd guy in his own right. Like most of us, Louis has sometimes done things that are a bit weird, or aren’t the “ideal” choice. What this film taps into is the social (and legal!) horror of having to explain our actions to someone else. It evokes the fear that comes with being recognized as different, and the fact that when you are at the mercy of the justice system, your differences, even benign ones, could change the whole trajectory of your life.

And what the film also shows us is that people in power are allowed to have those quirks and there are no consequences. Buron and Philippe are weird guys! Weirder, by far, than Louis. But because they are in a position of authority---even Philippe, who we learn is a novice---they are not put in the hot seat or forced to answer for their differences.

To discuss where the film goes in its last third would be to tread way too far into spoiler territory. But I do feel comfortable saying that the movie does not simply stagnate and fall into the trap of replaying the same dynamic over and over in the interrogation. There is a message in the movie’s finale, despite its outlandishness, that leaves a somber impression.

Also, today I learned that the director of this film, Quentin Dupieux, is the same person who is behind Mr. Oizo. I watched the “Flat Beat” music video all the time as a kid and my mind is slightly blown.

This one is a good time, and at a brisk 78 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome as it goes to some odd places.

Fanfan la Tulipe, 1952

The dashing Fanfan (Gerard Philipe) takes one too many rolls in the hay with a farmer’s daughter and finds himself headed for a wedding to the young woman. He is “saved” by Adeline (Gina Lollobrigida), the daughter of a recruiting officer, who promises him that if he joins the military, he is destined to marry the King’s daughter. Fanfan joins, but his feelings for Adeline begin to complicate his desire to win over the princess.

A handful of action sequences elevate a cartoonish plot.

It’s hard to say too much about this film, as it’s one of those movies that immediately began fading from memory the moment I finished it. The strength---and probably also weakness---of the film is that it plays out like a cartoon. It’s very episodic in nature as Fanfan gets into a series of adventures that show off his charm and physical prowess. Philipe is certainly mostly very endearing in the lead role, and the chemistry between Philipe and Lollobrigida more than sells their romantic arc.

I also liked the overall arc of the plot, whereby Fanfan believes he has a destiny and a mix of coincidence and scheming brings him closer and closer to it. For example, he saves a woman in a carriage who is being attacked by bandits, only to later find out that she is the King’s daughter. There’s a fun combination of good luck and the main character making his own luck.

On the down side, I never connected all that strongly with the characters. I suppose Adeline was the most sympathetic to me. One of the very first sequences in the film involves Fanfan talking pretty cruelly about the young woman he just slept with in a way that publicly humiliates her, and that put up a wall between me and the character that never dissolved as the story went on.

A slight, breezy adventure romance good for low-key viewing.

I remember literally nothing about Fanfan de Tulip. Not even where or when or how I watched it.

Every now and then I think "I should probably rewatch that to review it properly".

Then I just read the Wikipedia summary until I remember it a bit better and write up what I can.

Because I am not watching Fanfan la Tulipe again.

The Rule of Jenny Pen, 2024

Stefan (Geoffrey Rush) is a judge who, after a debilitating stroke, is put into a care facility. But soon Stefan’s physical and mental recovery isn’t his biggest problem, as he realizes that the care home is basically ruled over by a demented resident, Dave (John Lithgow). Stefan’s roommate, Tony (George Henare), is a particular target of Dave’s cruelty, and when Stefan refuses to give in to Dave’s bullying, he steadily escalates his assaults.

While a bit overlong, this claustrophobic horror makes the most of a great cast and a haunting premise.

There are a handful of go-to characters that will evoke sympathy in most viewers: kids, animals, and the elderly. All of them have in common a degree of vulnerability, and the fact that in the real world we frequently hear of examples of abuse enabled by the powerlessness of the victims.

Where this film is interesting is that the main antagonist is not the expected: a sadistic nurse, a malicious doctor, or a greedy relative hoping for a generous inheritance. Instead, the villain of the piece is one of the residents. And while Dave himself is vulnerable in many ways---mental and physical disabilities---his strength of mind and body relative to his fellow residents makes him something like the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.

In lesser hands, this could have been a pretty forgettable film. Instead, however, it is held more than aloft by engaging performances from all three lead characters. Rush is just really good in the lead role, portraying a man going through a multitude of experiences. Even before he experiences the terror and harassment at the hands of the demented Dave, Stefan is hit with the sudden loss of power. A man who once held a courtroom rapt and handed down life-changing decisions is now reduced to having his meals, his bathing, and all other intimate aspects of his life ruled over by cheery-but-indifferent residential staff.

Worse, Stefan is dealing with serious mental health side effects from his stroke. He often has what he calls “blips”, gaps of lost time. His visual perception is also skewed, and he is not totally able to grasp the degree to which his understanding of the world around him has been altered. We spend almost all of our time in Stefan’s point of view, but a handful of times that we step out of this perspective, we can see that he is not a reliable narrator of his own experiences.

Lithgow’s character is pretty over the top, and the gimmick that he constantly wears a baby doll puppet on his hand could have gone really, really wrong. But somehow, I don’t know, it just works. Lithgow is fully committed to the character, and his behaviors keep us guessing as to just how much his mental illness is genuine or faked. There are a lot of parts of the film that are totally outlandish---such as Dave repeatedly singing and dancing to the old timey song “Knees Up Mother Brown”---but the intensity of his performance mostly overcomes any silliness and keeps him firmly in the lane of menacing. His contempt for his fellow residents, and his delight in harming them and causing them distress, is so deep and demented that it’s hard to watch.

Finally, Henare’s performance as the tormented Tony gives the film a solid heart. Tony is a former professional athlete, and so his physical decline causes him intense embarrassment. He would rather allow himself to be tortured than let his loved ones know how vulnerable he has become. The complicated relationship that develops between Stefan and Tony adds weight to the movie and a more serious sense of stakes.

There are also some harrowing moments that have absolutely nothing to do with Dave, and simply explore the horrors of being helpless in an institution. Left alone by an attendant, Stefan nearly drowns in a bathtub when he slips and doesn’t have the strength to pull himself upright. In the most visually disturbing moment, for me, an entertainer comes into the facility wearing a garish red-lipped face mask. It’s hard to describe, and I can’t find a screen shot, but trust me: pure nightmare fuel. While it’s true that the residents are not mentally sound, it’s so hard to watch their fears and complaints be condescendingly dismissed.

There are two main issues with this film. First, it’s simply too long. It’s adapted from a short story, and you can see the strain of stretching it to feature length. Once we know Dave is a menace, there are a handful of scenes that feel like they are just repeating themselves. I also didn’t fully buy that a facility like this wouldn’t have security cameras. At the very least, you’d want a way to track residents, and there would be cameras at the entrances and exits, if not also in the hallways.

Worth checking out.

Timestalker, 2024

Agnes (Alice Lowe) is a woman who is destined to live her life again and again---across different times and places---always feeling as if something is missing from her life, and always inevitably drawn to Alex (Aneurin Barnard). And seemingly also inevitably, whenever Agnes finally makes contact with Alex, she dies a horrible death. Can Agnes ever find happiness and keep her head?

This reincarnation romp gets good mileage out of a game cast, but gets mired a bit in its own story.

You know what you’re in for in this film almost right off the bat, as an enamored Agnes watches in dismay as Alex, a persecuted preacher in this incarnation, is set to be tortured to death. As she attempts to wrangle her misbehaving dog, Agnes trips and faceplants straight onto an axe.

It feels like the last 15 or so years have been filled with “groundhog day” style narratives where our protagonist gets attempt after attempt at getting it all right. What sets this film apart is its focus on the way that Agnes mythologizes her own journey, blind to the clues she gets over and over about who really cares for her.

It might not be apparent from the first sequence, but it becomes very quickly obvious that Alex is something of a loser and kind of a jerk. Because he is a fixture of her reincarnations, and because she always recognizes him, Agnes is convinced that being with Alex is the key to the happiness that has evaded her all these years. For his part, Alex is barely tolerant of Agnes, and often indifferent to her physical or emotional suffering.

What works really well in the film is that Agnes is not totally helpless, but nor is she willing to take a step back and consider anyone other than herself in her various schemes and adventures. She hits that sweet spot of a frustratingly flawed protagonist who you still root for, though in this case you’re not rooting for her to find a happy ending with Alex, but rather to break the hold he somehow has over her.

Agnes and her single-minded pursuit of Alex leads her to thoughtless and sometimes intentional cruelty toward Meg (Tanya Reynolds), a friend who also follows her through all of her incarnations, and who has romantic feelings about Agnes. When Meg, in the 80s, works up the courage to declare this to Agnes, Agnes waves her off, declaring “I’d rather be a slave than a lesbian.” The movie shows us a very familiar trope in some of the earlier incarnations: Agnes as a woman trapped in an abusive marriage to a brute of a man, George (Nick Frost), but in every incarnation makes sure to remind us that Agnes always has some degree of power, be that through her race, her wealth, her social standing, her job, etc. Agnes can never appreciate the things she does have going for her because of her romantic obsession. She also repeatedly falls into the trap of a relationship with George as a rebound situation when things don’t go well with Alex.

Rounding out the cast of recurring characters is Jacob Anderson as Scipio, a man who advises Agnes in all her incarnations, always pushing her to action, declaring that she is a “revolutionary”. Anderson brings a wry humor to his role, and it’s not always clear if Scipio is genuinely there to help or hinder Agnes.

Overall I really enjoyed the humor of the movie. I liked the nature of the time jumps, which are not always chronological. Acknowledging up front that Alex is not worthy of Agnes’ love means that the focus can be more on character growth than just the mechanics of the plot. I find this type of low-key sci-fi/fantasy very appealing visually and plot-wise. In this movie I see echoes of films like Orlando (a personal favorite) or the recent She is Connan.

I do think that the film spins its wheels a bit in the last act. Agnes realizing that Alex is not actually some sort of soulmate is a long time coming, and I didn’t think the film totally stuck the landing in that regard. I do think, however, that the last 5 or so minutes are pretty great.

Overall, I’d recommend this film. It did manage to surprise me and I thought the actors were all pretty fun in their roles.

Poor Things, 2023

Bella (Emma Stone) is a Frankenstein-like creature brought to life by eccentric scientist Godwin (Willem Dafoe). Searching for a sense of self, she is lured away from home by the lecherous Duncan (Mark Ruffalo), but Bella’s strong personality soon leads her on a variety of misadventures.

A frustratingly limited worldview turns strong cinematic elements into narrative weaksauce.

I’ve avoided writing this review for literally months because this movie just fundamentally annoyed me in a way that makes me not even really want to talk about it. I love talking about movies I love, I love talking about movies I hate, and I adore talking about movies that feel like they were on the cusp of greatness. But this? All I can imagine is that people who liked it will want to (politely, I’m sure) rebut what I’m saying about it and I’m exhausted already.

To start by stating the obvious, Emma Stone is an incredible actress and she has an irresistible knack for physical comedy and a killer line delivery. Willem Dafoe brings his signature oddness to the role of Bella’s father/creator. Mark Ruffalo, as a man driven mad by a woman being more sexually liberated than he is, is funny and over-the-top and he makes his character’s suffering absolutely delectable.

The costuming and set design all makes a big impact. I didn’t like the fake look of the world in this film, but it was well-made.

But fundamentally, at its heart, this movie seems to be about a brand of rich white woman “feminism” that I found borderline repulsive. In the framing of this film, sexual repression is the worst thing about being a woman. And, ladies, if you just shake that patriarchy off, you can totally be happy! Just have sex with whoever you want! If your possessive partner doesn’t like it, don’t worry! It’s not like women are ever the victims of violence at the hands of their boyfriends/lovers. Also, great news, you can venture off on your own and never have to worry about sexual assault.

I know what you’re thinking: what if I don’t have enough cash? Well great news again: if you’re, like, enlightened about sex, then sex work is just a whimsical, sometimes even boring job that you can do to rake in cash. Violence? Pregnancy? Sexually transmitted infections? Incarceration? With a plucky attitude, none of these things will ever be a problem!

Now, are there women out there living in poverty experiencing violence, sexual assault, repression, and so on? Of course there are. So make sure to take, like, 3 minutes to look down on them from your cruise ship before making an ultimately ineffectual monetary gesture and then never think about them again. After all, they’re just anonymous poor people. And we can’t take a second more of screentime to worry about them when we could be enjoying yet another sex scene.

But here’s a question: should I feel uncomfortable watching someone have sex with a child? I guess so. But fortunately we put her in an adult woman’s body, so that we can enjoy looking at the child naked, watch the child have sex with adult men, and even get the giggles when the child does kinky sex work. Still feeling uncomfortable? Don’t worry: we’ll have her show a range of developmental stages all mushed together. Is she 6? 16? 26? No one knows, and so no one can PROVE she’s just a little kid, even though she lacks basic grammar skills. Having plausible deniability about the age of the person whose naked body you’re looking at is a real lifesaver.

So yeah, not a fan.

Also, how do you get an actor like Christopher Abbott and totally squander him? Criminal.

I know that's just an aside, but I remember being pretty disappointed with how Christopher Abbott was used in that film after looking forward to seeing him in it.

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I didn't know he was in it, and so my journey was like:
"Oh, hey! Is that . . . ?!"
"Oh, what is happening?"
"Well, that was disappointing."

I liked it, a lot, but I don't see any value in trying to rebut the way something made you feel, politely or otherwise, so I'll spare you the exhaustion.

I will sidestep even the concept of rebuttal by expressing only why I did like it so much and only say that I like it so much because, as I've said elsewhere, I don't care about the message (or story) or if there even is one, I care about the art and the art of this film is excellent if not downright elite.

If by the art you mean the costumes, settings, the way it was shot, the acting then for me those were all somewhere on the scale from fine to pretty good.

If the movie didn't feel so much like it was trying to say something---and seemingly so smug about what it was saying--I probably wouldn't have been so irked. But this movie is in that particularly irritating (for me) category of movies about women that were so obviously written by a man and the messaging is both so in your face and so clueless.

I could see the, like, aura of why people would like this film. But I thought it was such a let-down.

By art I do mean the design, directing, cinematography, choreography, editing, acting, lighting, costumes, etc., as well as the execution of the film in general.
I didn't feel the message the way you did. I didn't think it felt so much like the movie was trying to sell something, it was the story of this bizarre creation and her bizarre journey. I certainly didn't think Bella was ever implied to be a proxy for all women or women in general, I felt every moment of the way that it was a story about this one woman who is a Frankenstein monster, and therefore never felt that the film was suggesting that Bella's liberation should be extrapolated to women in general. And I felt like if that was the case then Stone wouldn't have done it.

I didn't take the film's political/feminist messages seriously and I agree the film wouldn't work well if I did. Like Wooley, I mainly just loved the technical elements of the film, though I can certainly understand why that wouldn't suffice for other people.

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