I’m in awe of how this spends its first half setting up all these monetary motives for the murder, only to disregard them all by the end and unexpectedly reveal a simpler, piercingly emotional motive that gives the arch proceedings a soul. And it’s crazy because this has such a huge ensemble and the two characters that turn out to be most important (Parks and Wilson) are given relatively little screentime compared to others. But their tragic non-relationship is what I’m going to remember most from this. Remarkable!
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Hard Truths 2024
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I was surprised when the big emotional catharsis came around the midpoint, rather than the climax like in Secrets and Lies and other Leigh movies. It felt like an interesting subversion of expectations that the movie was going to deal with the aftermath of that cathartic moment in the graveyard and her breakdown at the get-together, rather than just end the movie there. The problem is...said aftermath isn't all that interesting or satisfying and feels like it's straining to find…
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The Brutalist 2024
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The comparisons to There Will Be Blood and The Master are understandable, as Corbet applies a similar visual style and pace here to staggering effect. But he doesn’t graft his Big Ideas (Assimilation, Capitalism, the American Dream) onto interesting character dynamics or plot points as successfully as PTA did in those two. Van Buren’s exploitation of Toth should be the core of this, but until it’s disturbingly literalized in the rape scene in the last act, that dynamic is under-explored…
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