The Power Of The Dog (2021) - Movie Review

The chances of me being able to get into a Western are about as the same as the average person liking Bender’s cooking: Unless there’s something wild and possibly psychedelic is mixed in there, it’s probably not gonna happen. But this is another one of those films that I’ve been hearing a lot of great things about over the last month, and while I’m still going in with a mild disinterest in the genre as a whole, I’m at least willing to give it a chance on its own terms, rather than making it adhere to my own. It coming from a filmmaker as beloved as Jane Campion definitely helps with that, but just bear in mind that I’m not exactly the target audience for such stories. Or, at least, that’s what I thought going into this.

The Beguiled (2017) - Movie Review

The plot: Amy (Oona Laurence), a student of a Virginian girls school during the American Civil War, comes across a wounded Union soldier in the woods surrounding the school. Amy brings the soldier, named Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell), to the school where the headmistress Martha (Nicole Kidman) agrees to bring him in and get him better. However, with Confederate soldiers frequently marching outside their gates, and the girls at the school not being sure how much they can trust the Corporal, they may have to come to a difficult decision about what to do with him.

Hidden Figures (2017) - Movie Review

One of the relatively smaller drawbacks of the Oscar season is that you end up finding certain releases that make a little too much sense in terms of why they were made. Between how space exploration has been framed as an example of where and why humanity should unite under a common cause, and anything involving racial prejudices makes for easy Oscar bait, it’s no wonder that this film exists. Of course, it’s not like I’m not complaining about this; we’re just reaching the end of February and I’ve already seen a handful of films that have pretty much no reason to exist. Films with rather obvious intents aren’t inherently bad things, so long as the people behind them can make those intents ring true in the work proper. So, with all that said, which side of the Oscar bait line does this land in?