While his contemporaries sought to bring out the beauty and nobleness of the everyday, Antonioni’s films seem to carve through their characters and audience, hollowing us out to leave an impression that echoes long after the film is over.
While apathy, confusion, and even apparent nihilism stalk Monica Vitti through this film, Antonioni doesn’t vilify her or her world. Part of her appeal comes from her demeanor. She isn’t angst filled, complaining about being misunderstood. She wants to escape, realizing…

Ostlund's previous two films were a nice warm up jog towards his more accomplished work, Triangle of Sadness. Force Majeur was strong but was like a train ride, going from point A to point B, taking longer than you thought, but with nice scenery. The Square, while also full of strong scenes, stumbled here and there in its charge at the bourgeoisie, never driving its lance home. Was it skwereing the pretentious art world, the hypocrisy of upper class liberals,…

This film was billed as a personal, retrospective look at the director’s childhood, but somehow felt canned. Stock plots like a first crush, family money troubles, and a larger than life father figure put this film in a weird limbo. It ended up somewhere between historical drama and slice-of-life, without enough of either to elevate the film out of nostalgia.
The forced folksiness patronized the people the film claimed to represent. For example, Buddy’s uncle cooking up an “Ulster fry”…

Arthouse darling or solid B movie? I had a hard time deciding between the two and apparently so did the director. Much of the praise surrounding this film seems to be in relief that it’s not, “John Wick: Pig Version.” The rest of the praise is lumped upon Cage for his performance. He fully deserves it, it's a great role, but it's not a good sign if people's positivity towards something begins with “It was actually pretty good.”
In fairness,…