Not to undermine Mike’s critique, which strikes me as entirely reasonable, but, for an alternate take, Vadim Rizov over at Filmmaker Magazine makes a solid case for the movie actually painting a damning picture of Monrovia through the methods it chooses: https://filmmakermagazine.com/106041-nyff-2018-critics-notebook-1…

Maybe Jake Kasdan can use his Jumanji clout to make a Walk Hard 2.0 so that this and the upcoming Elton John biopic don’t go unpunished. “We need to get experimental” and other stuff Jesse describes above would certainly warrant it.

Well this one came outta nowhere - strange that it comes out less than two months after the fall festivals, yet did not play any - and I’m really curious to see it.

I liked Breathe a lot - still waiting for Lou de Laâge to break out big beyond just French cinema - and this looks like an intriguing swerve into another direction, might check it out.

Until we get a concrete answer I’m assuming the latter. If you look at IV’s letterboxd account, he only watched this movie a couple days ago, as did all the other critics presumably.

Definitely, but in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s too many of her choices backfired, with bright spots like Rabbit Hole being few and far between. I still remember everyone making fun of her face, too. That felt like it was never going to end. Good thing that it has.

I don’t love everything from this new stage of Kidman’s career, but I love that she got to have it, and is now showing no signs of slowing down. Rock on.

Not a very good movie but all the performances are on-point, including hers.

The second paragraph almost makes this sound like the costume-drama sibling of Assassination Nation. “Never letting anyone forget on which side of history the film stands” is lame and annoying in any context when it’s privileged above everything else, and it’s apparently infecting all kinds of movies faster than ever.

Ignatiy, you may have left, but I’m glad you stayed.

I wasn’t too crazy about either Son of Saul or any of McQueen’s previous work, but I’m getting unreasonably excited for the first two of these, especially Sunset.

I’d argue that version contains a great deal of on-point caustic commentary on Hollywood, acting, image, etc. It has no qualms about showing it as a ruthless machine. The way it’s counterbalanced by glamour and success and escapism - because Hollywood also is/provides those things - means it only rings truer for me…

Appreciate you giving the shout-out to the Judy Garland version, which for my money is one of the greatest films ever made, and with luck this one will lead more people to it. (I, meanwhile, will try very hard not to be bitter all over again about Warner Bros. circa 1954 crippling that film and denying it the commercia…

If nothing else it’s fun that Bonnie Aarons, aka the bum from Mulholland Drive, got to be the star of her own big horror movie (maybe even franchise) all these years later. This movie basically exists thanks to her face.

All our hopes lie with the Paul Verhoeven movie announced a while back.

His Letterboxd says that he didn’t watch this movie until August 30. Maybe he’s freelancing now. It’s fun to picture him having a Wolf-of-Wall-Street “I’m not fucking leaving!” moment, though

Sounds like a more expansive I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (alluded to in the review), and since I’m one of like five people who loved that movie, and The Innocents is perhaps my favorite horror film, thanks for putting this on my radar.

An HBO movie starring Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon. It wasn’t especially good.

Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy, originally from 1997 but not released in the US till ‘98. My favorite film I’ve seen from him, a breathtaking blend of dark comedy and tragedy with one of the greatest child performances of all time by Eamonn Owens.

Boy, I thought the year’s first Fahrenheit 451 adaptation missed the point of the original, but it’s got nothing on this one.