This 2006 Swedish film flirts with a storytelling problem traditionally very difficult to solve: namely, how to dramatize tedium without becoming tedious yourself. It’s been solved successfully a number of times, mostly in comedies. I think this film manages it as well, but your mileage may vary. A man arrives via bus at a desert […]
Just yesterday I saw Colossal (2017), a terrific little female empowerment fantasy that happens to hinge in part on its white American heroine’s personal problems writ large as giant rubber-suited monsters rampaging through downtown Seoul, South Korea. I returned home to the discovery that some find this premise infuriatingly racist, and in the particular words […]
Recent discussion of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, in the context of the TV miniseries FEUD that retells the story of their considerable personal conflict, brings up thoughts of Crawford’s signature movie, MILDRED PIERCE (1945). It is remarkable just how much Crawford’s reputation rests, today, on this one film. Sure, she made other famous […]