Queen & Slim (2020) - Movie Review

I feel like I haven’t given the medium of music videos its fair due in these reviews. Yeah, I stick by my labelling of editing-and-soundtrack-reliant horror as ‘music video horror’, and I’ve covered quite a few filmmakers trying to transition from the playlists to the big screen, but I don’t want any of that to take away from the medium’s place as a genuine art form. Hell, some of the biggest heavy-hitters in cinematic history got started with music videos; names like David Fincher and Spike Jonze owe a lot of their aesthetic to where they started. I bring all this up because this film, the feature debut of Melina Matsoukas, might be one of the most successful transitions between media I’ve covered on here.

Lizzie (2020) - Movie Review

This is a cinematic pairing that is so blindingly obvious that it really should have happened before this point. Kristen Stewart and Chloë Sevigny: Both indie darlings, both internationally seasoned, both chaotic queer in presence, both utter joys to see in just about anything (hell, even hindsight gives Stewart’s Bella a certain ironic pleasure). And when paired up for a rather iconic piece of gory American folklore, along with a director who got his feature-length kickstart with backing from Spectrevision… hell yeah, am I excited that this finally got a release over here.

The Snowman (2017) - Movie Review

 

While the reigning school of auteur theory may argue against this, directors don’t always have complete control over their work. Sometimes, it’s down to studio interference like with Walking With Dinosaurs; sometimes, it’s down to a rotating list of creatives attached to a single film that can lead to a major case of too many cooks in the kitchen like with Jane Got A Gun; and sometimes, it’s down to just poor planning. A lot of work goes into every single film I have covered so far and will ever cover on this blog; even the worst pieces of crap I’ve talked about involved dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people working together. There’s all sorts of room for error in that kind of situation, from stunt work that goes hideously wrong to constant re-writes in the middle of production that put the story out of whack.

 

Then there’s what went into today’s film, which is objectively unfinished. I feel somewhat bad for even writing about this in the first place, but as I’ll get into, the production issues aren’t nearly enough to excuse how… baffling this turned out.