I'm Thinking Of Ending Things (2020) - Movie Review

Charlie Kaufman: The hopeless romantic. Emphasis on hopeless. In the midst of his invariably abstract looks at memory, self-loathing, and the capacity of media itself, his depiction of love always feels like it’s being viewed through a neurotic screen. Romantic leads who can’t allow themselves to experience love, and when they do, it only serves to rip the guts out of that feeling being real in the first place. His latest feature finds him well and truly in this mode of storytelling, going even further down the abstract path to deliver one of the single most pessimistic depictions of love I've ever sat through.

Anomalisa (2016) - Movie Review

While I have talked at length before about the nebulous concept of 'Oscar bait', and how this time of year just before the Oscars is usually the big dumping ground for its ilk around here, I fear I may have misrepresented it just a touch. I have usually attributed that term to what most people consider to be prestige pictures: Period pieces usually dealing with the important social issue of the day; bonus points if it’s set during World War II and/or involves Nazis.

Well, only recently by my own admission, I have realised that there is another type of Oscar bait out there: The over-conceptualised, over-cooked 'thought experiments' that are meant to be challenging but, more times than not, usually end up getting slapped with the 'pretentious' label whether it’s warranted or not. It’s the kind of space that arthouse hacks like Malick occupy. Yeah, I more than acknowledge that I may be in the minority on this, but I will not submit when it comes to how much the Academy unconditionally loves that guy and work that feels even remotely like his. Not to say that the hyper-intellectual type of Oscar bait is inherently bad; after all, Academy favourite Charlie Kaufman well and truly fills that gap and he is easily one of the most fascinating, if not always coherent, cinematic minds still working today. Yeah, time to actually put on that film snob hat for once; would be a shame if I didn’t wear it even once.