A really powerful documentary. It centres on the right-to-roam movement, and how their aims come into conflict with the landed gentry of the country. Several landowners pop up and manage to be not-totally-awful human beings, treading a fine line between holding on to their inherited wealth and, somewhat grudgingly, consenting to share it.
The villain of the piece, who’s name I didn’t catch and don’t care to research, calmly looked in all directions and said “I own all that I can see. This is my garden. And it’s a fucking big garden”. He went on to explain how Black people didn’t really belong in the countryside, and how the general public were mostly too “fucking stupid” to appreciate the land. A horrible person, through and through.
The true star of this is Nadia Shaikh, who is both fierce and compassionate, outspoken and humble. She’s prepared to admit that she understands the landowners' very human desire to hang on to what they possess, all the while advocating for change that will benefit those not born into land ownership. An inspiring spokesperson for the movement.
A CEO is kidnapped in small town America. Her conspiracy-theory obsessed captors don’t want money. They want an invite to her mothership. Things get weird. It’s Yorgos Lanthimos. Of course things get weird.
I loved this. Having seen a lot of hostage-and-kidnappers films, this never felt even slightly familiar. It was always going somewhere new and unexpected. Jesse Plemens and Aidan Delbis were astonishing as the cousin kidnapper duo, and Emma Stone is fabulous again.
This is one of those slice-of-life documentaries, which thrusts you into the middle of an under-represented community and just leaves you to draw your own conclusions. We join the mountain shepherds of the Pyrenees. Life seems quite tough. It’s made tougher still by the re-introduction of the brown bear.
The goals of re-wilding and bring locally extinct species back are clearly good. But the shepherds are understandably a little bit pissed off. We follow their work, their lives, their troubles, as they deal with the ever-present threat of the bears. However much they’re told the bears are solitary creatures that rarely attack livestock, the trail of mangled sheep carcasses tell a different story.
As a documentary it was fine. Probably too long. I’d have preferred something like 3 different tails of re-wilding conflicts. Instead, we get nearly two hours on the mountains.
Ooh this one was a bit intense.
Jennifer Lawrence puts in a stunning performance as a new mother, with postnatal depression spiralling into dangerous madness. Her and Robert Pattinson’s sexy, carefree lives have taken an abrupt turn. The ranch of dead uncle Frank has become a prison. The baby is crying. The dog is howling.
Throughout this film Lawrence is absolutely captivating and terrifying. She spins, wild-eyed and cackling from one scene to the next, a frenzied nervous energy always on the brink of explosion.
I nearly didn’t see this - it sounded heavy, more than thrilling - but I’m so glad I did. Absolute edge-of-the-seat stuff, and surely the best thing Lawrence has done so far.
A blood born virus that turns the body slowly to marble. A hospital-ward of slowly petrifying patients. Growing up as an immigrant teenage girl with a junkie uncle. Julia Ducournau’s films always go in pretty hard and this is no exception.
There are obvious AIDs parallels. But the film never really gets too bogged down in the illness (despite the astonishing visuals of the increasingly stony afflicted). This is a film about trauma, worry and loss. It’s bound up in the mother-daughter relationship, as the emaciated spectre of uncle Amin leers and chuckles from the sidelines.
I loved it. I’m not totally sure I understand it. But it doesn’t matter. It was a wild roller-coaster of a film. I had no idea at all where it was taking me and enjoyed every moment of it. Ducournau remains firmly on my “watch anything she makes” list.
Bechdel pass, natch.