A solid gem from my homeland. I hope this will be released at some point… it’s too good to stay in the closet.
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Category Archives: Movies
Elle. Tough stuff with moments of mirth.
Paul Verhoeven likes to stir things up, and stir things up he did “bigly” with his latest movie, Elle. I knew that some of you just wouldn’t be able to countenance the idea of a rape victim’s attachment to her attacker, and I get that. Still, Isabelle Huppert nailed that role – no shock there – and made it seem twistedly plausible.
The remarkable thing to me was the number of genuine laugh-lines in this black comedy. This is audience manipulation at its finest.
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Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Post-election tonic.
As Manohla Dargis wrote in her New York Times review, Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople “takes a troika of familiar story types” the plucky kid, the crusty geezer, the nurturing bosom” and strips them of cliche.” This charming Kiwi feature (Waititi also directed the hysterically funny What We Do in the Shadows), served as a spirit-lifter following Tuesday’s shocking election result. Not enough to last four years, but…
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The Handmaiden. Sex sells. Lesbian Asian sex really sells, apparently.
We were excited to screen Chan-wook Park’s latest offering, The Handmaiden, but we hadn’t anticipated how excited you all would be, dear MovieNight audience! Cushions on the floor, and the “Smokers’ chairs” brought in from the hallway allowed everyone to be comfortable for this gorgeous movie. As MovieNight attendance goes, this was right up there with our first showing of The Cranes are Flying. It’s so hard to predict what will draw such a crowd… not that that it’s so important to have a room so crammed full of people, but I must admit… it feels good.
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Carrie. Still scary.
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Certain Women. First world problems.
In Kelly Reichardt’s haltingly beautiful Certain Women, three seemingly disparate stories play out in Montana. The self-absorbed protagonists (and by that, I mean the central characters) of each story “struggle” with issues that are more-or-less inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Contrast the “hardships” of their lives with those of hard-working Native American Jamie, played so beguilingly by newcomer Lily Gladstone, and it’s difficult to feel much sympathy for them.
In my favorite of the three stories, Kristen Stewart’s character, Beth, is particularly devoid of empathy. She teaches a weekly evening law class in a rural school, which lonely Jamie sits in on, for the lack of anything more interesting to do. The two form a “friendship”, which consists mostly of Jamie listening adoringly to Beth telling her how awful her life is, and how much she hates making the long drive to teach the class. After Beth fails to turn up to teach her class, Jamie ekes out the time from her hard-scrabble farm routine, to drive the same distance to find her. A heartbreaking (mine) encounter ensues. Jamie: “I don’t mean to keep you from getting to work or anything… I just know if I didn’t start driving, I wasn’t going to see you again. Didn’t want that.”
Reichardt drills down keenly on the lack of connection these three contemporaries seem to have with the people around them, and fittingly, brings the three stories together in a way is neither connected or important.
Not for those with limited attention spans, admittedly… that’s one problem I don’t have. This is Indie cinema at its gorgeous best.
Another problem I don’t have? An unappreciative MovieNight audience 🙂
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