Sara Watches Stuff

Inevitably, we come to the time of year where the big awards are being handed out and the Oscars are upon us and it turns out I have not seen any critically acclaimed movies this year. Well, except Get Out , which I am so happy to see getting the recognition it deserves. There's a whole rant brewing about social commentary being dismissed by horror fans (because scariness is all that matters) and not being taken seriously by the broader community (because it's just a scary movie) that totally disregards the excellent direction and writing and overall work in a movie like that. My other favourites from the year were a little left of centre: Raw  deserved something for Foreign Language but it was one of the more visceral horror films around and  Colossal  was technically screened at TIFF 2016 and it was pretty weird. I do tend to make it a mission to see films with lots of buzz, because I want to be educated before I make any sweeping statements on them. While trailers ...

It's the end of the year, and the film snobs of the world are reflecting on their years in pop culture. As one of the gang - now with my very own bogus DMCA notice! - I figured I would jump on in. Of course, there are lots of caveats to that. I live in Australia, where several of the last quarter films with award potential have their wide release withheld til the next year. I don't go to previews, with the exception of the occasional rubbish horror movie, and I am not drawn to a lot of wide release movies. Dunkirk ? More like...um... done-urgh . A lot of it is to do with my exhaustion with male narratives and a lot of the industry's treatment of women and anything non white or heterosexual, both real and in fiction. I love the art form, but it's been a tough year for trying to avoid content that would make me extremely angry in a very real way. As mentioned previously, I haven't seen any new releases - it's been the busiest time of the year in my sector - so ...

It's that magical time of year...where Love Actually plays on television at least once a week.  There is nothing to be said about Richard Curtis' personal masterwork on the magic of love that someone on the internet hasn't already said. I'm partial to the Christmas countdown of daily Love Actually watches by Courtney Enlow at Pajiba , personally. Christopher Orr at The Atlantic offers what came to be a pretty standard modern response to the movie, in that it is a piece of junk depiction of romance. Lindy West at Jezebel broke it down. On the 10th anniversary of Love Actually , the world learned to hate it. Michael Koziol penned an interesting piece in defence of the movie at The Gaurdian; also at Pajiba, Joe Starr with one of my favourite hot takes entitled " Love Actually is a problematic movie and ugh who f*cking cares?" .  Let's focus on the more important things, people! Were we really all still wearing turtlenecks in 2003? There is not nearly e...

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 ...