Monster (2023): When the Truth Is Not in the Telling but in the Seeing
Not every silence is empty. Some are filled with things too heavy for words.

On the same day, Andrei's wife Nina asks for a divorce, his colleague Natasha tells him she's attracted to him, he's assigned a new project under the direction of Philip (a well-dressed, authoritative, and even arrogant stranger who keeps touching him), and he fights a gang of homophobes to protect a young gay man, Oleg. The next day, Philip takes Andrei away from the office on an odyssey into a space that is charged with spirituality and homoeroticism. Philip is no businessman, and the disclosure of who he really is forces Andrei into a series of choices that involve Natasha, Nina, belief, and love.
Not every silence is empty. Some are filled with things too heavy for words.
This groundbreaking summer blockbuster proves that diversity enhances the action genre.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song distinguished itself from Hollywood films of its time by introducing New Wave cinema storytelling methods into Black cinema.
These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.
Kate Winslet and Saorise Ronan deliver stellar performances in a film that doesn't live up to its potential.