Kristin Stewart. What can I say? Yes, she makes for an easy caricature, with the angsty slouch, hipster sweaters, autonomously expressive eyebrows, and short, choppy dialogue, but let’s face it: she is it and this is her best work to date.

Still stinging from the disappointment of director Olivier Assayas’ much hyped The Clouds of Sils Maria last year (I had an advance copy, the critics loved it, and I was excited to debut new content at MovieNight, but the movie was, well… bad), I was intrigued to see whether he had regained his focus.  I will say this: “Phew! Saved by Stew”… it’s hard not to be glued to a screen inhabited, almost without pause, by Ms. Stewart (clothed or not), but beyond that Personal Shopper is a rather shallow vehicle which perhaps aims to exploit her Twilight appeal… it’s punctuated by rather banal visits from the “other side”. I wanted to be scared, but it just didn’t happen.

MovieNight was packed this week, and even if Personal Shopper didn’t get applause (as most of our features do), it certainly entertained. The real star of the evening, though, was our pre-movie short, YLVIS, in which astronauts from earth travel through the galaxy, encountering alien creatures, and extolling the virtues of the human male genitalia. See it here.

More about this film on IMDb