I spent my middle school years in Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach, a very Russian part of Brooklyn. The scene of Anora and Ivan wandering around a deserted Coney Island was pretty much what my friends and I did too, minus the copious amount of drugs.
Despite my biases toward this movie, I’m not sure it really came together. The initial romance is seductive but I got a bit bored in the search for Ivan. Mikey Madison commits in her…
A monument of cinema or an epic folly?
Hard to say with this film. Brody as emigre architect Laszlo delivers a superb performance: full of wonder, pain and bitterness. The psychosexual dynamics between him and his “patron” power much of the plot, juxtaposed against his longing for and eventual reunion with his niece and wife (the real hero imo). Also shoutout to Joe Alwyn as a creepy, slightly deranged little tyrant.
But the subplots do not add up. The Zionism,…
Horny, deranged and a bit obvious, Egger’s Nosferatu ticks the boxes and was truly frightening at moments, but didn’t quite work. Nicholas Holt does terror quite well and Lilly Rose Depp delivers a fantastic and demanding physical performance, but the Count is just too gross for their relationship to add up. The costumes and set design are superb, adding to the dreamy/creepy atmosphere, but the second half is too concerned with plot, grinding inexorably to a predictable conclusion. The goths sitting next to me in the theater seemed to enjoy it, though.
