Sara Watches Stuff

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 ...

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...

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 movi...

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...

The Rezort  is…Most Dangerous Game, but people pay to hunt virus induced zombies on the island rather than still-breathing humans, and it does that plotline decently.  The acting is not going to win any awards and the exposition throughout the movie is clunky as all hell, and my god, there is a lot of it. I did, however, enjoy the ways they tried to integrate exposition to break the monotony, despite not having a lot of success. I liked some of the ideas that were touched on, but felt that the best ideas - mainly linked to HUMANS BEING THE REAL MONSTER (you may notice a theme of that being one of my favourite horror tropes) - were not given enough care and were barely explored. Zombie style movies are so ripe for exploration of ideas - look at 28 Days Later , for example  - that it just felt even more lazy than usual. If you have the ideas, at least express them. Don't just mention them and then act like you've done your job. If you want to invoke some kind of social c...