Inspired by Simone De Beauvoir's writings Stephanie Beroes' film Recital addresses the state of 'woman in love', a situation fraught less with ecstasy than with risk and pain. Recital is a highly structured film. Each section involves a woman, situated in some external local, reading a letter or other text. It is clear that the women are not the authors of what they read. The first text is a letter expressing the pain of unrequited love, the abyss of frustrated passion, however read in a monotone with no peaks of feeling. This pattern of love letter reading is repeated with several other readers: one breaks up laughing when she comes to a passage: 'Oh, yes, I love you, I love you.' Clearly the subject is not one of true comedy, particularly since the letters recited are ones Beroes once earnestly composed. Beroes' goal, however, is a kind of distanced deconstruction of the experience, in an attempt to view it with the lessons of knowledge and time.
'Hollywood Stargirl' (2022) is a teen romantic drama film that centers around the title character's experiences in Los Angeles. This film serves as the sequel to the 2020 film 'Stargirl', but unlike the previous film, the events in this movie are shown from the title character's perspective instead of Leo Borlock's.
Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.
Even now, the well-established Snyder has yet to learn this as he continues to allow misguided decisions to convince him that his projects hold the same kind of intelligent and emotional weight. Army of the Dead is a tonal mess, one that never decides what it’s trying to be, and, for all we know, doesn’t want to decide.
This incarnation of Animal Farm is filled with the generic plot points, immature humor, cardboard characters and visual flaws that you have come to know from today’s lesser children’s films.
'Yuri!!! on Ice' turned queerbaiting on its head and gave me hope when I needed it the most.
Four more classic horror films that are entertaining even if occasionally absurd.
