Sara Watches Stuff

I Saw Atomic Blonde And All I Got Was This Overwhelming Urge To Write and Inconclusive Review, but on a t-shirt or something. The internet has not been able to shut up about Charlize Theron and Atomic Blonde for months. It's from David Leitch one of the directors of critical darling John Wick - full disclosure, I've not seen it, for lazy reasons I'll explain later - and is based on a series of graphic novels called The Coldest City , and by all accounts both of those things are extremely obvious in the movie. It's got that graphic novel feel to it, ultra slick and stylised with extreme attention to visual detail and use of colour. Charlize Theron plays Lorraine Broughton, a spy in 1989 Germany, in her pursuit to retrieve a list of intelligence information.  Most obviously, it's an attempt to subvert the tropes of the male dominated spy genre. Lorraine is every bit as suave and mysterious and her counterparts, and far better dressed. She tears through opponents i

It's hard to talk about movies that you end up just sort of watching to kill some time, but this one is a favourite of a close friend so it felt like something I really needed to get to. It's a pretty great exercise in watching pre-"political correctness gone mad" world (if I ever use that phrase in earnest, it's an invasion of the body snatchers situation) movies because you don't have to constant excuse it - "It was a different time", "It was okay to say that then". The First Wives Club stands pretty strong in 2017 as a story of the ins and outs of female bonding and empowerment and finding balance. It's not without flaw, but I didn't feel grimy watching it in the way I do when I watch a lot of 90s movies casually fling around slurs. The cast of the movie is naturally its biggest drawcard: even the minor rolls are recognisable faces, with the whole plot kicking off as Stockard Channing - the erstwhile Rizzo - commits suicide, t

The “strange” part of the name really says something about this movie. I remember very little of it, other than the overwhelming sense of discomfort I felt while watching it. Strangerland tells the story of a couple in a small Australian town whose children go missing. This is a drama wearing that wants to get psychological, so it is naturally not that simple. Nicole Kidman, an actress who is often criticized for being difficult to lose in a role, was pretty the highlight of this movie. It was captivating to watch her character come apart at the seams as the movie went on. The kids were…not horrible, which is nice for child actors, and the characters all felt pretty broken and destructive. That aspect really worked. The other thing that worked spectacularly was the small-town Australia evocation and imagery. The contrast of desert vastness with the claustrophobia and insulation of small towns was done really well. Some of the cinematography was breathtaking, particularly whe

I feel like I speak a lot about psychological thrillers set at dinner parties. It’s easy to see why they're so popular, and I've written about before - they're an easy and effective set up, with minimal exposition, that throws our characters into a situation together and allows for the weird shit to go down. In  Coherence,  a comet is passing overhead, and weird shit goes down. It’s hard to talk thoroughly about this movie without going into spoiler territory, but I’d say that if you’re a fan of when movies get a little pseudo-science and quasi-cerebral, you'll probably get into Coherence . I'm trying to draw comparisons: the most obvious comparison is to another recent dinner party thriller, The Invitation , which I haven't posted my review for yet. It also very strongly evoked the movie Triangle for me, which you'll probably like if you get into this one or vice versa. It's like a time travel movie for people who don't want to watch a time trave

With that whole niche subgenre that has evolved from Dinner Party Thrillers having often been to my tastes - think  Coherence ,  The Gift ,  The Invitation  as modern iterations -  I’d had this David Hyde Pierce vehicle recommended to me a bunch. This is definitely a more charismatic take with a home invasion set up - our dinner party guest is a career criminal taking refuge in Niles-From-Frasier’s house, but of course the night does not go as intended.  It’s largely a piece that just lets the character interactions speak for themselves, which I really appreciated. It does become a little unhinged as it races to the finish line, and I could have done without the overreliance on flashbacks, which I didn’t feel clarified the story. You’ve also got to accept that it’s going to try to get twisty on you, and if you’ve watched enough of these kinds of movies, you’re not going to be surprised by anything that happens. The supporting cast do well and Hyde Pierce carries the whole thing with

When Julia Ducournau's Raw   was first released, it gathered a lot of hype thanks to its reputation in regards visceral imagery and pretty confronting cannibalism story. I was worried that I would watch it and be let down, because reviews seemed generally positive and I'm always here for horror tinged plots driven by female directors and female protagonists. On finally watching Raw , I can tell you that it is barely a horror movie and barely a cannibalism movie at all: it is a thinly veiled allegory for burgeoning sexuality alongside themes of sisterhood and coming of age, all wrapped in the skin of cannibal tropes past. I loved it.  The story of Raw is not anything revolutionary. Someone (in this case, a first year vegetarian veterinary student named Justine played by Garance Marillier) gets forced to eat meat, and develops a taste for human flesh. There is nothing subtle in the way it is told - Justine's cravings for meat evoke a sexual awakening and echo her transform

If you haven't watched Ghost Ship , it might be a surprise when I tell you that Ghost Ship is a surprisingly good Ghosts-on-a-Boat movie. The opening scene of Ghost Ship is one of my favourite opening horror scenes of all time, and there's a reason it's so deeply beloved online. Turns out there's more to the movie than that! It came as a surprise to me when I first watched Ghost Ship  that a movie called Ghost Ship  could strike the near-perfect balance between being ridiculous and unnerving. From that spectacular opening scene to the next-level nonsensical murder madness is splashed throughout the film in a way that is hard not to enjoy. There were times when I found myself feeling genuinely jumpy because the atmosphere was so eerie. Put a murder mystery on a boat and stick in some ghosts and a whodunnit element and I'm all in, all the way. The cast also knocked it out of the park - Julianna Margulies was great, and it’s always nice seeing Emily Browning in th

They made a whole movie about evil genetically modified crops! At least it’s not angry trees. The fact that this movie is about THE CONSPIRACY OF GM made it a little hard for me to take seriously - it would have been fine for switching off my brain, until they got to the end and started urging me to join them in the fight against GM crops. I don’t know. Your movie should stand on its own without needing to actually put messages in at the end.  It follows, mostly, a mother (Zoe Lister-Jones, who is the highlight of the movie with her gradual unraveling) whose son has started getting sick, and in desperation for an answer she traces the genetically modified food conspiracy. The strongest bits of this movie are when it focuses on the Lister-Jones’ character’s history with mental health problems and how this plays into her struggle to get to the bottom of her son’s ailments while separating real from delusion and paranoia in an increasingly unbelievable spiral. I wish the whole movie ha

Ever wanted to peek back in time and glance at what life was like in the late 00s? You might think "Hey, I'll watch Picture This starring Ashley Tisdale!" As someone who vividly remembers 2009 in spite of desperate attempts to repress it, I can conclusively say that this is not what life was like in the late 00s. This movie is garbage. The only explanation I can think of for this movie is that it takes place in an alternate universe. Nothing makes sense. It’s high school, but it’s a weird version of high school where Ashley Tisdale is the Total Loser (she wears glasses! Only nerdy losers wear glasses!) and popularity is defined by wealth. Sure, except Ashley Tisdale’s Mandy is supposed to be on the outs and her house is comically large and her father showers her in expensive gifts? There are so many dark things hinted at that get zero explanation: a side character’s mother has a severe drinking problem, there is casual witchcraft, lost children, and the tiny fact that

Everything in me wanted to outright love this movie, and it kept slipping just through my fingers. Sadly, it's more than six months on, and I can remember next to nothing about it. I remember enjoying Jermaine Clement! That's no shock. Here's what I wrote initially: I have nothing but good will for Jemaine Clement, who is tremendously charismatic and manages to play a deeply flawed character while keeping you endeared. Really, the performances are never a problem - from core to supporting actors, everyone does great work with the material.  The problem is with some of that material. The story itself, of a man trying to course correct a year after his relationship breaks up while balancing new entanglements and custody arrangements over his children, is usually something that would have me rolling my eyes. It’s very simple and isn’t attempting to reinvent the wheel, but it’s incredibly comforting how messy and awful the characters and their situations are.  Unfortunat

Every instinct I have is telling me to call this a "fun movie about teenage witches", but it is absolutely not . There is very little about this movie that is fun, unless you really enjoy teenage girls tormenting each other relentlessly. In fact, this has all of the things that worry me in a movie: active racism, rape and vivid self harm imagery. I'm torn, because it genuinely is a pretty interesting movie and I love teenage witches. The Craft:  it's complicated. The cast of this movie is amazing. It's a veritable who's who of people-who-were-in-90s-high-school-movies! From Skeet Ulrich to Neve Campbell and Robin Tunney and Breckin Meyer who apparently spent a solid twenty years playing high school boys, there's no denying that everyone in this was having fun and almost solidly kicking it out of the park. There are definitely some stunted performances, and most of the time I chalked that up to the high school setting, but everyone is either playing it

While I’m not usually one for the grand biopic style of movie and lack strong ties to these particular historical figures, I found myself curious about Natalie Portman’s much-discussed performance in it as Jackie Kennedy following her husband's assassination. As a movie, it seems pretty standard for movies of this style. If you like this sort of thing, it will no doubt be up your alley - it is well shot and fairly seamless in its historical integration. I guess that I'm just not the target audience for this kind of movie, because I found myself drifting out of it. I had the same issue with it that I have with a lot of Natalie Portman films (a possible exception in  Black Swan ), where the union of her distinctive style with whatever her role is - in this case, a very distinctive historical figure - made it impossible to loser her inside the film. It felt, the entire time, like Natalie Portman AS Jackie Kennedy. Perhaps the inconsistency of accent was to blame, or perhaps it

There is absolutely no doubt that Anna Biller, who wrote and directed  The Love Witch  (and edited, and composed, and costumed, and did the set work and art direction and some of the makeup and produced and made this thing from top to bottom), did something visually breathtaking and completely singular with her labour of love. Beyond that, it becomes hard to sit on objectives: fans of film as a whole will appreciate it for its composition as a love letter to the exploitation films of the 70s, but beyond the novelty factor, I suspect that this movie will quickly wear thin on a lot of viewers. It follows the story of a new-in-town witch whose desperation to find her ideal man sees weaker men getting twisted up in her web of sex and love and spell-casting, and a trail of bodies starts to build up. The slightly stilted delivery and just parallel to reality action feels straight out of those 70s films - I draw a lot of Argento comparisons, mostly due to the use of colour, and stand by my