In The Earth (2021) - Movie Review

There is more than one way to dramatise the… interesting situation we’ve been living in over the past two years. Sure, a filmmaker could go the literal route, have a story set during the actual COVID-19 pandemic as a means to connect the fiction to our own reality, but there’s also the less obvious way. Something that can use the veneer of fiction to brush against the thought processes and emotions indicative of this time, but without being as direct about it. And with the latest from writer/director/editor Ben Wheatley, a creative I’ve come to rely on when it comes to interesting material to write reviews for, we have a story that definitely has its cultural specificities, but is aiming for something more cerebral than the likes of Locked Down or Host.

Rebecca (2020) - Movie Review

After reviewing Ben Wheatley’s last film in an official capacity earlier this year with Happy New Year, Colin Burstead (or, under its superior working title, Colin You Anus), I was looking forward to seeing what he’d come up with next. I’m always thankful for movies that give me juicy details to write about, and quite frankly, domestic black comedy retellings of Shakespearean war stories don’t exactly fall out of the sky. So it comes as a heavy disappointment that this film underperforms as badly as it does, to the point where it’s an open question as to why he even made it to begin with. Well, while I can think of at least one reason why he did so, it’s far from enough to explain its worth on its own.