Women Talking (2023) - Movie Review

[tw: sexual assault]

In Manitoba Colony, a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia, at least 151 women and children were raped over the course of four-or-so years. An anaesthetic normally reserved for livestock was sprayed in through their windows, knocking everyone inside the houses unconscious. At first, the men of the village attributed the ‘mysterious’ incidents to demonic attacks or possibly being done by Satan himself; in common parlance, once the event broke through the isolated nature of the village and its inhabitants, one name attributed to it was the ‘ghost rapes of Bolivia’.

While this film, and the novel on which it was based, is set with the backdrop of this atrocity, they primarily serve as a dramatic addendum to it. Described on-screen as an “act of female imagination” (a phrase also used to describe the assault itself when the women came forward about a more terrestrial culprit than Christianity's favourite strawman), the story depicts an impromptu council of women from this settlement, who meet up and try to come to a consensus about what they do next. Do they do nothing? Do they stay and fight? Or do they leave?

The Tragedy Of Macbeth (2021) - Movie Review

The Coens have another movie out. Or, rather, a Coen has a movie out. While Ethan is taking a break from movies to try his hand at theatre, Joel is… well, he’s kinda doing the same thing here, with an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Yep, after spending their entire career up to this point working together (albeit without always being credited as a duo, because guild rules are weird like that), one of the leading filmmaking teams is now working apart. Between the separating of the paths, and Shakespeare being all about the staging rather than the writing (which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly how either of the Coens operate), I was certainly curious about how it would turn out, but was willing to accept that things could get a bit shaky. However, nothing of the sort takes place here: Joel can fly solo just as well as he has with his brother up to this point.

The French Dispatch (2021) - Movie Review

This might be the first time I’ve been apprehensive about reviewing a film, not because of the film itself, but because I doubt I’d be able to improve upon what a certain other critic has already said about this feature. And here it is: A piece written by Aussie critic Grant Watson that might be the best review I’ve ever read for any movie. The act of critique is built from one’s unique perspective on art and the environment that fosters it, and while I certainly have my own thoughts on this film, part of me is kind of jealous that I wasn’t able to come up with something that all-encompassing on the subject. So, basically, in addition to forcing this write-up through a haze of molten summer brain, I’m also having to fight back the first time I can recall having writer’s envy over another reviewer’s work. I might as well be a character in a Wes Anderson film myself.

Nomadland (2021) - Movie Review

Wanting to just say “Fuck it”, pack into a van, and go anywhere other than here is a rather common thought nowadays. Even as a functional introvert, I feel as if recent events have been testing my willingness to spend most of my waking hours indoors. So with indie filmmaker and soon-to-be MCU inductee Chloé Zhao’s latest feature, there’s definite timeliness to be gotten out of watching Fern (Frances McDormand) roam America in her RV, and wishing one could do the same in these days of lockdown. Only what’s being tapped into is at once removed from the here and now (taking place in the wake of the global financial crisis), but also informed by events that have been steadily growing worse in the interim.