There’s a part of me that wonders if An American Pickle takes place in an alternate timeline where the Holocaust never happened.
This is not the same thing as saying that it takes place in a world free of anti-semitism. Anti-semitism — the reality of it and the fear of it — is a driving force behind much of the action in the movie. Cossacks start a pogrom during Herschel and Sarah Greenbaum’s wedding (hiiii Fiddler on the Roof), and…
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Here's what I wrote for the Dissolve FB group this week.
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The central mystery of the television series Twin Peaks (or at least the central mystery of the original two-season run) is Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), the blonde homecoming queen found dead and wrapped in plastic by the water. The pilot quickly establishes that, even before Laura’s mysterious death, everything about her was already a mystery. She was the girl everyone knew, without anyone actually knowing her well. Half…
Ever have a movie on your mental to-watch list for so long that by the time you decide to watch it you're certain you've built it up too much in your mind, but then you watch it and it actually catches you by surprise and exceeds your expectations?
Yeah. Wow. I'm still swooning.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I’ve spent nearly the entire day sitting with this movie and trying to articulate why it didn’t work for me. So let’s see if I can write it out in a coherent way.
Cassie is drawn thin, intentionally so. It seems apparent that what she represents is more important than who she is, because this isn’t the story of one campus rape, it’s the story of the epidemic of campus rape and the culture surrounding campus rape and the overwhelming…
Look, I was all in for the Gemma Arterton/Gugu Mbatha-Raw historical lesbian romance, but wow this did not work at all.
The elements to Alice's character were all interesting and great, but they never came together in any kind of developed or cohesive way. Her motivations never made much sense, and her relationship with Frank was fine but dull.
The Alice/Vera flashbacks are really weak. They are shot beautifully, but there's no time spent on developing the relationship, so when…
