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?

Fingernails (2023) - Movie Review

Back in 2015, I reviewed a film called The Lobster. It was early days for this blog, and indeed one of the first reviews I’ve put together that I would describe as a proper ‘deep dive’, and… yeah, it is very much a snapshot of where I was at that point in time. As a writer, it showed me still figuring out my own style and being able to break down my own thoughts regarding film, but as a person, it was from when I was both single and still trying to figure out where exactly my sexuality landed on the broader spectrum. Writing about love when you have limited and contentious experience with it comes across pretty damn clear, or at least it does for me reading it back nowadays.

Men (2022) - Movie Review

I love fucked-up movies. To me, there are few feelings I love more than when I’ve just finished watching a movie, and my first instinct is to scream “What the fuck did I just watch?!” while sporting a massive grin on my face. I’ve looked at quite a few films on this blog that have genuinely gotten that reaction out of me, like The Greasy Strangler, Malignant, Where The Dead Go To Die, and Titane, and the experiences I had watching them for the first time are memories I hold onto quite closely. But when the latest film by Alex Garland, whose last two films were certified sci-fi king hits, popped up in a cinema close(ish) to me, I can’t say I was expecting it to join that illustrious collection. But sure enough, here we are.

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.

Misbehaviour (2020) - Movie Review

What is feminism? With how easy it is to caricature basically any and all political movements (even the ones you personally support), it’s just as easy to lose sight of what a given movement stands for when it seems like everyone has their own idea of it. And not all of them are exactly accurate. Feminism especially has this problem in the popular consciousness, encompassing everything from equal rights to #killallmen. Of course, it’s also one of those catch-all terms like Satanism or post-modern Neo-Marxism or The Left™ that gets thrown around by people who basically want to lump everything they don’t approve of into a single category. So it comes as something of a surprise when a mainstream feature like Misbehaviour comes out, which manages to clear the air in rather bracing fashion.