Two men and a woman are in the midst of an existential crisis. We meet them through their stories. The woman works in a small ballroom dancing group, while the men are a painter who has been in prison and an unfulfilled filmmaker. The glimmer of hope that emerges at a certain point is the desire to make a short film. But everything is destined to fail.
This is not a slavery story, it is a freedom story. The viewers only see Harriet as a slave for the first few minutes of the film. To me, it felt like watching the origin story of a superhero…which is both good and bad.
The Bluff unravels its mystery slowly, opening on the capture of a ship captain named Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the swift execution of his entire crew. Then, viewers are treated to a tranquil British settlement in the Cayman Islands in the 1850s, where a mother bakes a coconut birthday cake for her son in a house suspiciously rigged with makeshift tripwires and burglar alarms. As it turns out, that mother is Priyanka Chopra’s quick witted and resourceful ex-pirate Mrs. Ercell Bodden, and her husband’s captors are on the way to the island to hunt her down for abandoning them and stealing their loot. The pirates of the Libertas land on the beaches of Cayman Brac, and the scenes that follow show a Viking-esque slaughter of half the island.
This film manages to be simultaneously topical and timeless. Without being preachy, it highlights society’s flawed relationship with tech; insights into the complex ideas of family struggle are expertly dispersed among a perfectly paced and balanced story.
Few movies deal with aging (particularly aging women) with as much compassion as Relic does. Yet it’s not sickly sweet and not a soapbox rant against ageism. Relic simply is, allowing the horror to seep in quietly and carefully.
The Suicide Squad's Polka-Dot Man aka Abner Krill, played by David Dastmalchian, helped me come to terms with my own issues of anxiety.
Endgame not only did not drop the ball, but it delivered for fans so much that it went on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time!
