I just kind of like anything with Rachel Zennot.
Low key not that good of a movie overall, but it was interesting and refreshing to see sexual assault handled by a female director. It’s been so overdone in things like Game of Thrones that it starts to feel normalized, but this film gave both the assault and the PTSD aftermath the depth they deserve, making it a more realistic and necessary portrayal.
Pablo Larrain and Angelina Jolie’s magical realism take on the last days of Maria Callas’s life is a gorgeous twist on the often boring biopic genre (imo). The film builds in tension like a symphony - blurring adolescent trauma, emotionally abusive romance, pharmaceuticals, and performance art. Every single shot is chic as hell, just be careful to protect your heart.
Shoutout Sundance for the Q&A afterwards with the director and the lead actress. Learning more about the origin of Cinderella in the Grimm tales and the overall message of the film definitely deepened my appreciation for this movie. I loved the director’s personal, feminist critique of beauty standards as well as these kind of shallow Disney fairy tales we were all raised with. It made me wonder how much I had been brainwashed about beauty standards and romance. Lower rating because body horror is not for me unfortunately ;)
This film has the close up style that induces anxiety, and in this case only captures a fraction of the real life stress of navigating immigration in the US. The short film focuses on the common ICE practice of arresting people at their green card interviews. It exposes the deliberate cruelty and impossibility of immigration here - drilling down on how overly bureaucratic and inhumane it is. Low key had me in tears at the end.
