I do think that The Force Awakens leans a little too heavily on the mythos of the first trilogy, almost repackaging the journeyman hero elements of A New Hope and sending it out to us as though it were a shiny new product. Look, it tells us, we’ve got a female heroine sensitive to the Force! We’ve got a likable black…
Cate Blanchett plays over a dozen characters, takes on half as many accents, gets to wear some great (and not so great) wigs.
Weerasethakul’s modus operandi seems to require being as oblique as possible, but here I did not mind it so much. If nothing in the diegetic world makes sense to the characters, then I don’t expect the audience to be blessed with revelation.
Tanna has an elemental beauty that is difficult to resist, and the lives and rituals of the Vanuatuan tribes are captured with a superb degree of fidelity and sensitivity.
Just imagine these men—some just boys—crouched on the sand, poking for explosives, nervously deactivating them, knowing that one wrong move will be their end… imagine that, and you will also accurately represent this incredibly tense film.
A Man Called Ove is exactly as advertised: a funny, feel-good piece that is safe and agreeable (and nothing more).
The Lure is part-fairy tale, part-Bildungsroman, part-trippy rock opera, and a whole lotta ‘80s glitz and glam wrapped into one twisted, salacious treat. Except, it’s an incredibly messy one, so the experience is not as exceptional as I’ve made it sound.
