review
Mārama
I really wanted to like this both as an anti-colonial critique and as a 'good for her cinematic universe' revenge story but unfortunately the more I think about it the more it comes apart at the seams.
liberal
11 entries tagged liberal
review
Disclosure Day
Spielberg skillfully plays with a lot of genre conventions of both conspiracy spy thrillers and golden age sci fi, making for a fun and visually impressive watch that is unfortunately too often interrupted by naive messaging about the compatibility of religion with the existence of extraterrestrial life, mankind on the brink of WW3 collectivity needing to touch some grass and stare at the universe, and milquetoast statements about not being bigoted I guess.
review
The Lost Bus
As a stand alone film it is a classic formulaic natural disaster film, but given that we shape out understanding of reality through the consumption of media, the realistic depiction of the devastating horror of wild fires (an issue only getting worse as we head deeper into the climate crisis) is handled quite well.
review
Project Hail Mary
Charming feel-good fun (with perhaps a bit too much goofiness coming from Gosling's character), but also constantly felt overly reminded that I was watching a Hollywood product optimized for affective impact and mass appeal.
review · Berlinale
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Entertaining and pretty much what I had hoped Mickey 17 would have been, even if it's at times just a modern reimagining of Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys.
review
The Long Walk
While the plot twists are mostly predictable, and this Mark Hamell / Stephen King joint project is also, unexpectedly, rather liberal in its understanding of contemporary politics in terms of individual evils over systems and structures, I really did enjoy this quite a bit.
review
Civil War
Essentially a Last of Us-style zombie roadmovie, a genre that is already practically one layer of abstraction away from what this film explores, Civil War is a provocative film, but ultimately too shallow.
review
Poor Things
Fundamentally a Hero's Journey reimagination of Frankenstein, Poor Things explores themes of the human condition, patriarchy, and ideology through its subversion of the overplayed 'born sexy yesterday' power fantasy trope of oversexualized, childlike women.
review
Barbie: Not Actually Kenough
Barbie is brazenly feminist, but it is a white, liberal, gen-X type of feminism that neglects any form of intersectionality or class-analysis.
review
Triangle of Sadness: Expected an Ocean and Landed in a Puddle
A shallow, borderline offensive attempt at art-house film and social criticism.