Sara Watches Stuff

As someone with no interest in being heterosexual, sometimes I just look at a movie poster and think "that's definitely going to be gay". Such was the case with the French 2002 black comedy musical murder mystery  8 Women (or 8 Femmes , obviously in its original French). It's a special extra sense you get in the LGBT+ community - an ability to detect content from a mile off. From the opening of the movie, it was as if I was being specifically catered to: the 50s high femme aesthetic, pastel colour scheme, great lipstick, commitment to saucy plot twists and lighthearted approach to murder mystery felt like a blend of Clue with everything I would want in a movie. Pandering to me aside, this movie has a lot going for it. It was written and directed by   François Ozon as an adaptation of the 1958 play by Robert Thomas, and recreates that theatrical vibe effortlessly with its singular setting and small scale drama but never feels claustrophobic. Most critics write about ...

I read The Glass Castle , Jeanette Walls' memoir, back when my mother read it for her book club in 2008. I thought it was appropriately affecting, and the writing was fine, but it wasn't my favourite book - even though I don't mind media that dwells in its misery, but this particular book didn't strike the balance for me. All that considered, the movie adaptation was...faithful. It was well acted and well executed and a near completely faithful retelling of Walls' novelization of her youth. Whether or not that's a good thing depends on how much you enjoy this kind of story. I'll cop to having a low tolerance for the kind of story that spans a lifetime, focusing in on moments of woe to show the extraordinariness of one person. I wish more focus had been given to the adult characters of Walls' siblings, so it felt perhaps less self-indulgent. Alternatively, I would have enjoyed it much more if the jumps between past and past-present hadn't been so ab...

I have not seen The Lobster; I have not seen Dogtooth . The off-kilter world of The Killing of a Sacred Deer served as my complete introduction to the work of Yorgos Lanthimos, and to say I was hesitant would be an understatement. Nicole Kidman has called this one of her strangest projects yet, and I sat through Strangerland . I had read the spoiler-free reviews that critiqued Lanthimos' employment of a singular acting style, wherein every character is emotionless and near-robotic, and that the allegories were a little far reaching with too little grounding. I think that there is merit to those ideas - and would have to have more experience with the Lanthimos canon to make my own judgement - but on a personal level, this movie really clicked. The Killing of a Sacred Deer , a reference to the myth of Iphigenia which I was in no way familiar with but that does illuminate a whole lot, starts off with an extended shot of close up open heart surgery set to a near-deafening operatic so...

This movie came to me with rave reviews as a part of a curated selection of films. The critic who spoke to me about it - an actual movie critic - talked about the movie's much celebrated subversion of romantic comedy tropes and Rebecca Miller's directorial dedication to the honest, messy depiction of adulthood and romance. They also talked about Miller almost entirely in terms of who her father is and who her husband is, so I wasn't taking the greatest stock in his view of the movie from a critical feminist angle. The story had potential: a woman plans to have a kid on her own, but it's complicated when she falls for a fucking loser of a professor at the university she works for who also happens to be married with kids. While I appreciated those two things - the movie is unwavering in its commitment to the messiness of romantic and familial entanglements, and it is both romantic and a comedy without falling into the rom-com class - I also found the frustration I felt ...

I wrote fairly recently about my favourite horror movies and my twisted love affair with the Saw  franchise. When the movies were still getting released, I never got the chance to share in the Halloween tradition of horror releases, because no one else I knew cared at all. And so at 9:30pm on Halloween this year, I donned a bunch of fake blood and some hastily drawn jigsaw pieces and watched a new goddamn   Saw movie. Upfront and honest: Jigsaw  is not a good movie. It does not stand alone, and you will not enjoy it if you do not enjoy the movies as a whole. There was an obvious attempt made at creating an independent piece that stood apart from the seven films prior but still tied into the mythos, and while the game plan is clear, I wouldn't call it successful because it doesn't really make sense when viewed as a part of the series as a whole. As a reboot, it's just average; as a sequel (an octquel?) it's sub-par.  Jigsaw  is obsessed with creating a ...