This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Oh so this is what y'all were talking about... the magic of cinema! I did the Somerville Theater ~experience~ and will be hanging the complimentary poster up in my apartment, in part because, well, I like the way it looks.
It's totally fair that this did not land with many people. Indeed, this is probably what the film expects. Van Buren's reaction to the library is a kind of paradigm case. He doesn't find it beautiful, but "nothing stands without…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I wouldn’t say I liked it—after all, surely they could’ve shot it using something other than the iPhone portrait lens—but hopefully this film will be for 50 shades-loving liberal feminists what Barbie was for normals. That is: a (too) quiet and (too) respectful plea to wake the fuck up.
BDSM-y stuff—here really just submission and humiliation—walks a fine line between corny and rapey, and unfortunately most who find it sexy are thinking of the latter. The temptation is to think…
This was predictably excellent---strange and haunting and beautiful. I've never seen anything like it, and I have no current takes on what would be a fitting interpretation. Some scattered thoughts:
I hate it when fiction is overtly didactic/message-laden etc., but this veers so far in the other direction it sort of feels reactive. (Surrealism doesn't always feel this way to me: Kafka comes to mind, for instance.)
That there isn't a clear distinction between what's more real and what's less…
I liked this! Aesthetically, and especially visually (though also sonically), it was absolutely captivating. I also found it quite funny; though I'm told that was absolutely not Eggers' intention, I've never been much for the view that that sort of thing matters anyway. The ritual scenes in particular struck me as campy and theatrical in this dark, extremely earnest way I found deeply enjoyable.
Beyond all of that, the acting was pretty good, though I never came even close to…
