Babygirl (2024)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Humiliation. Degradation. Liberation. Erotic thrillers -- hell, even standard award-bait dramas -- rarely traffic in such themes. The rarely grand tradition of erotic thriller is a prurient pleasure of mine, and it's certainly what has made Nicole Kidman my favorite actress over the years. They are almost exclusively hetero-oriented, which perhaps allows me to enjoy them without much by way of personal stakes, but Kidman always lets us in to characters using sex appeal for various (often nefarious) desired outcomes. Crucially, and contrary to most actors who get typecast or even choose to make so many films in a single subgenre, Kidman's characters are always vastly different. And few have been more honest and surprisingly accessible than Romy Mathis.

Romy, the wealthy CEO of a tech company in New York City, is on top of the world. And she's no Miranda Priestly about it; one of the early scenes shows her warmly welcoming a group of interns into her private office to personally answer questions about the company on their first day. She's not a workaholic, though she does answer her phone (that is inexplicably never on silent mode) more than a healthy person should, and in fact is apparently a loving, affectionate, and intentionally present family woman, caring deeply for her theatre director husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas, who is really wonderful in a truncated role) and their two teenage daughters. The astute observer will tell you that Romy's company specializes in robots for warehouses, removing human laborers, and Jacob's current production is Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, about a woman in an unhappy marriage, so really we should know that there is going to be trouble even if we haven't seen the film's marketing.

But the film provides ample context. Its opening scene shows us specifically that their sex life is not one of egalitarian pleasure. Romy dutifully and energetically has sex with her husband, but shortly afterward she sneaks away to finish herself off in secret while watching porn. Specifically, it's porn that includes an offscreen man dominantly telling a woman what to do. It really seems to work for Romy, who psychology might tell us is tired or bored of being in charge all the time. If not Ibsen, Chekhov would certainly tell us that her secret carnal desires will be her undoing, as well as her family's, so we'd better strap in for the tragic ride.

And this is why Halina Reijn's direction and writing is so brilliant in this film. She wastes no time getting to the meat of it, sidestepping the dated tropes of visualizing Romy's perfect life, perfect marriage, perfect kids, perfect house, and perfect job; those are given. Instead, we dive directly into the heat of an enseamed bed, as a notable Danish prince might say, wherein lies the real domestic danger to people with power. Reijn is interested in something far more insightful and real than the destruction of a rich white woman's family due to her voracious, taboo sexuality.

Enter Samuel, played by a mindful and demure Harris Dickinson (Beach Rats, Trust, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Iron Claw, See How They Run). His effortless suavity and confidence oozes from his clenched jaw and slumped shoulders, and Dickinson's unlikely performance only begins there. His unkempt visage and drab habiliments belie calm, firm mannerisms of someone who knows exactly who he is. Under his baggy, likely secondhand clothes and miserably cheap haircut hide piercing eyes, sensuous lips, and a thin, capable body wholly sure of itself. On his first day as an intern in the company, Samuel successfully commands a violent, off-leash dog on the street (which Romy sees and can never quite shake). He brazenly challenges Romy in her own office in front of several impressionable newbies. He declares his intentions for her to be his mentor despite her not being an option. He is the kind of man she's almost never around, someone who sees her as a human on the same level as himself, for whom professional attire and wealthy status and fancy titles mean nothing next to the raw intimate dynamic between two human bodies attracted to each other. He is the kind of man she wants. He is the kind of man she fantasizes about. He is absolutely not a man she can have.

And yet she almost unconsciously finds herself magnetically pulled to him. During their initial mentorship meeting, Samuel quite readily observes that she seems to want to be told what to do. It's a horrifying and deeply erotic moment, one that reveals everything we need to know about these two characters. We've all met someone who not only reads us like a book but speaks that which we cannot ourselves admit. It feels like love, and it is decidedly not love. But Romy chooses to lean in, despite her repeated verbal protestations. Kidman's brilliance is on full display here, as she attempts to disguise her arousal and interest as being shocked and insulted, unwilling to say "no" but unable to say "yes." He's an intern, and as such, the least likely person to perceive her in this way; she has no ready defense for it. Meanwhile, Dickinson isn't being manipulative or predatory; he's shooting straight and calling it like he sees it. Later in the film, he'll describe their affair as if they were children, stopping himself before detailing their trial-and-error adventures in sexuality's darker regions. He's no Christian Grey. This isn't Secretary. If anything, it's more like Little Children.

Romy becomes addicted to their sexual affair, tethering herself to him via cell phone while starting to lose touch with her family and her work. We gather that this kind of sex -- not the sneaking around part, but rather the explicitly consensual and also experimental, kinky parts -- is like nothing she's ever experienced with another man. Samuel literally has to explain consent to her, and one of the most shocking parts of the film is that he's completely right. He is not, in any way, a predator.

Well, "not any way" might be a bit far. After all, it takes two to tango, and he's just as communicative via phone as she is. Perhaps more so, as their explicit dynamic is one in which Samuel dominates and Romy submits. While the marketing of this film will surely interest the masses who think Fifty Shades of Grey is hot (and I'm here to tell you: it's not, and it's not healthy), I'm hopeful that people take Babygirl for what it is and not what they crudely hope it might be. Sex in American cinema has been in a bit of a dry spell for a while now, which I actually appreciate, because I hope it means we've worn out the bad sex and started developing an interest in good sex. This might be unlikely, given the boom in popularity of almost exclusively awful smut in written literature, but this film makes the case for good eroticism on screen. Samuel definitely goes after what he wants, and it doesn't stop him from crossing personal boundaries -- one scene, when he materializes at Romy's house and socializes with her family, is one of the film's most disturbing despite its remarkably tame outcome -- but he's no Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction. 

More importantly, Reijn never lets the film be about sex for the sake of sex. It's never as explicit as I expected it to be, and never crosses any new thresholds of what we've seen before. If anything, its explicit thrills are contained to the close-ups of Kidman and Dickinson as they stare into each other's eyes while playing psychological power games. Dickinson often laughs during their encounters because it's new and weird for him too; Kidman often lurches from angrily indignant to coyly sassy to ecstatically relieved because her character has no mature way to handle the nervous onslaught of her sensations. Samuel treats sex, even with an older married woman, as a fact of life and an opportunity for heightened experience (not for human connection, which is a fascinating character trait). Romy treats sex as an obsessive compulsion to be entertained and controlled before it derails her, which she knows in paradoxical tension it will almost certainly do.

The acting will receive accolades as well as most popular and critical attention. And it is more than worthy. But Reijn's writing and direction deserve just as much, if not more. Romy's residual trauma is implied and never explained, just as Samuel's life is largely left mysterious. There are no frank discussions of what we might call hot topics like sadomasochism, cheating, or even polyamory, and though those elements are clearly present and meant to spur post-screening discussions, they aren't even explicitly depicted in any articulate way. I don't list these observations as the film's failings but as its victories in presenting itself on its own terms without pandering to sound bytes and buzzwords. Reijn trusts us to know what is going on and what to think about it without sharply defining anything for us to easily swallow and regurgitate later. And she even has fun with it, including pointed needle drops with "Never Tear Us Apart" (again, demonstrating that Fifty Shades just got it all wrong) and a laughably sudden but eventually moving moment underscored by George Michael's "Father Figure." If you had told me I'd ever find that song hot, I'd have laughed at you. But Reijn knowingly and playfully engages with us on these metatextual levels while encouraging us to feel all the weird, uncomfortable, and deeply troubling things humans do, can, and should experience in this weird world of bodies and feelings. But mostly bodies.

The Iron Claw (2023)

Score: 3 / 5

It's always a matter of time until the next sports biopic hits cinemas, and wrestling is one of the more popular topics. Showmanship often matters as much as sportsmanship in this sub-subgenre, and these qualities are often dramatized in sharp contrast to the sordid or challenging private lives of the athletes themselves. The Iron Claw, a rare sports biopic from A24, is hardly different from the mold in that regard as it chronicles the real life story of the Von Erich family from Texas. By film's end, you'd be hard-pressed to categorize this story as anything other than tragedy, but what's fascinating is that the film itself stubbornly refuses to lean into any defining aesthetic or intrigue in its approach to the Von Erichs. Which ultimately makes the film indistinct and forgettable, seemingly undermining its purpose for existing.

Protagonist Kevin is the oldest of the five living Von Erich sons (his older brother Jack died at the age of six) and recently decorated Texas heavyweight champion. Zac Efron has beefed up almost alarmingly for the role, which he inhabits with a muscular suavity that makes him at times unrecognizable. Kevin is a good man, level-headed and patient, whose greatest joy in life is spending time with his brothers, in the ring or out. It almost makes him miss out on the romance of his life, Pam (Lily James), who is a fan until they marry and she bears his kids. Their interactions are shallow and one-note, sadly, when compared to much more dynamic scenes with the brothers, and you can feel the actors not knowing quite what to do with each other.

Meanwhile, patriarch Fritz is utterly terrifying as played by Holt McCallany, a former professional wrestler who encourages rivalry and conflict between his sons to push them to be higher achievers than they themselves desire. Despite the heartache (and deaths) his behavior causes, McCallany remains similarly stoic and one-note, which would work wonderfully if the other characters weren't also inert. His wife Doris (Maura Tierney) is rendered practically silent, which is a crying shame, though her gravitas is welcome. The film belongs to the four sons included in the screenplay; real-life youngest brother Chris is omitted entirely by the film, which makes no sense whatsoever, since the whole point of their story is their unwittingly toxic family unit and the joys and dangers of fraternal ties. So much for honoring the source material.

The brothers included, however, are wonderfully realized in the capable hands of their performers. Apart from Efron, who does absolutely everything he can with the dialogue, the brothers are rounded out by Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, and Stanley Simons. White's Kerry is an addict and tends to sabotage himself, though he's palpably better when with his brothers. Dickinson's David is the best on camera and in front of an audience, though he seems to feel bad about upstaging his brothers while deferring to their father's demands. Simons's Mike, the youngest depicted, is a musician and doesn't even want to fight; he's supported in his endeavors by his brothers (especially Kevin), but even their combined willpower cows before that of Fritz. 

Writer and director Sean Durkin (who helmed Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest, both similarly dark and brooding features) seems to have woefully misstepped here, though it's hard to pinpoint exactly what went awry. It's not in acting, despite his flatly written characters and thickly melodramatic dialogue. It's not in production design, which seems overwhelmed by its own nostalgia at times when we're forced to linger on bad '80s hair and clothes and the accoutrements of a Texan homestead. It's not in sound or camera, which coalesce into a muted, somber, steamy atmosphere of sweat-slicked bodies that never seem clean and the counterpoints of roaring crowds in dark arenas and family car rides through sun-soaked plains. It's rather a failure of writing, editing, and over-directing. Durkin leans into the feel of the film and sacrifices its tragic meat, forcing the characters into one-note caricatures their actors then desperately scramble to salvage. He also sacrifices meaningful character development in order to push the plot forward and cover more historical ground, which is almost laughable considering Chris's absence.

See How They Run (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

A uniquely quirky and delightful romp, See How They Run won't be for everyone. It's one of those semi-annoying films that will only really appeal to a particular audience, specifically one that very much enjoys a brand of dry murder mystery. Interestingly, it also requires one that enjoys metafictional commentary on dry murder mysteries (or of any genre, presumably). I was not ready for the latter, though it is a brand of comedy I have loved for many years, since seeing the original Scream. It's all a performative pastiche, camp in delivery if not in form, and earnest in its efforts to delight more than mystify.

Take the opening sequence, which like most classic British murder mysteries assaults you with a sudden onslaught of introductions for all the main characters and their basic issues with each other before revealing that one of them -- of course, the most unlikable one -- has been murdered. It's Adrien Brody, oddly enough, playing American film director Leo Kopernick. He's also supplying the voiceover, an ironic twist that slaps hard once he's been done in. Kopernick, a sleazy and drunken opportunist, joins the celebrations of the success of Agatha Christie's knockout West End play The Mousetrap, having recently reached 100 performances in the year 1953. He's not particularly welcome, as film and theatre artists don't quite see eye-to-eye, and his pushy demeanor offends the producer, female lead, and her husband and co-star, the latter two of whom turn the situation into a brawl. Shortly after, Kopernick is murdered backstage.

After the dramatic and kinetic setup, which really needs a scene or two for us to come down from due to its speed and wit, we're introduced to the heroes of our tale. Inspector Stoppard (Sam Rockwell) and Constable Stalker (Saoirse Ronan) are the oddest pair you might expect in a film like this. Stoppard's heavy drinking makes him unreliable in multiple ways, though his world-weariness suggests he's seen more than his share of crime. Stalker is a hopeful cinephile and earnest note-taker, making meaning through the screen and the page, though she's not adept yet at seeing connections in real life around her. They're investigating the death of a director who was pretty hated -- blacklisted in Hollywood and sent to London to film something he considers the death of theatre and cinema -- and they're not particularly invested either. But it's a job, and between Stoppard (whose job is on the line) and Stalker (who wants to work her way up), they'll slowly and surely get it done. That is to say, to learn whodunnit.

There are lots of theatrical in-jokes, including Stoppard's name and reference to The Real Inspector Hound, and it's a hoot if you get it. Otherwise, I imagine it just feels tacky and weird. Harris Dickinson, who has really been impressing me lately, plays a young Richard Attenborough, star of the play, and his work in channeling the late great actor is really quite impressive and heartwarming. There are references to Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park) and even Agatha Christie herself makes a hilarious appearance, played to iconic and poisonous effect by Shirley Henderson. Some of the jokes are real groaners -- calling the murder "staged" because it happened, in fact, on stage -- but it adds to the offbeat and dry charm of this insanely-paced mystery comedy. While this wasn't always my cuppa (I'm excited for the similarly meta sequel to Knives Out coming soon to Netflix), it's still a fun romp and curious exercise in what amounts to fanfiction. Even if it never really feels as interesting or important as the yarns Christie herself spun.

Where the Crawdads Sing (2022)

Score: 3 / 5

Seemingly taking some inspiration from To Kill a Mockingbird, this source material was destined for the big screen. Where the Crawdads Sing has been on just about every best-seller list and book club list since it was released in 2018, and then Reese Witherspoon and Taylor Swift got involved with the film adaptation. I haven't read the novel yet, but the film is a strange hybrid between two storytelling traditions: the first, as I mentioned, is a kind of courtroom mystery-drama in the vein of Harper Lee's masterpiece, and the second is the sort of location-based romantic shlock that made Nicholas Sparks famous. It wouldn't have bothered me so much except that director Olivia Newman (in her second feature after Netflix's First Match) and her team seem intent on making the film also look like a Sparks adaptation rather than just feel like one. Some people will like the aesthetic; I find it repugnant.

In October 1969, in the marshy coves of the North Carolina coast, some kids discover the dead body of Chase Andrews, a young local man held in high esteem due to his family's money and his celebrity turn as high school quarterback. Authorities immediately come to arrest Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones, really breaking out this year in this and Under the Banner of Heaven), a young woman living alone in a shack in the swamp, known pejoratively as the "marsh girl." She's a little rough around the edges, you might say, or perhaps boggy, keeping mostly quiet in her cell, even when a benevolent lawyer (David Straithairn, in the kind of role he's made a career of mastering) comes to offer his help. He's a thoughtful, reserved Atticus Finch figure, coming out of retirement to help the outsider from becoming the local scapegoat. Even when it's frustrating that his defendant won't open up to him.

We launch back and forth in time throughout the two-hour film, experiencing various testimonies and defense strategies in and around the courtroom in '69/'70 just as we learn all about Kya's past, starting with her childhood almost twenty years prior. Her abusive, alcoholic father drove her mother away and then each of her siblings until only Kya was left alone at the age of seven when her father, too, disappeared. The child harvests mussels from the marsh and sells them to the only kindly people she knows, an older Black couple (Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt) who run the convenience store and give her helpful advice and gifts. Kya tries to go to school but flees almost immediately. Jojo Regina plays Kya at this age, and she's utterly incredible to behold; these scenes are perhaps the film's most emotionally resounding, even if they do smack of poverty porn.

Speaking of which, screenwriter Lucy Alibar certainly had her job cut out for her in terms of adapting the beloved text. Her only previous work I've seen is the original Beasts of the Southern Wild, with which this story shares several similarities. Unfortunately, due to the nature of a courtroom drama and the source material, Alibar is forced to jump back and forth in time; I'm not entirely sure if it's her or Newman that makes this process laborious, but almost every time we jumped I lost any sense of momentum in the story. It starts to feel inevitable rather than exciting or revelatory. Maybe it's partly cinematographer Polly Morgan (A Quiet Place Part II and upcoming The Woman King), who douses everything in warm amber lights (or faded blues at night) so that different scenes are visually interchangeable. But her intense efforts to bring the ethereal, complex beauty of the marshes onto the screen are indisputable, so I don't want to harp on that. Maybe it's Mychael Danna's very pretty score, which doesn't seem to differentiate between time periods. Regardless, another viewing would see me focus my attention on the screenplay and direction for answers to why the jumps were so jarring, as I'm not even convinced it is really the editing at fault (as one would typically assume), though upon some research, the editor for this is Alan Edward Bell of The Hunger Games movies, and some of the editing in those was a bit jarring as well.

Edgar-Jones takes over as Kya before long, and her performance is really rather wonderful. But then the Sparks-esque storyline pops in, as she is courted first by the angelic Tate (Taylor John Smith of Sharp Objects), who befriended her in childhood and has since taught her to read and write. They're just perfect together -- he even stops their burgeoning love from becoming sexual until he can ensure their life together will be what they both need it to be -- until he leaves for college. In Tate's absence, which remains quite uncomfortably unexplained, Kya is courted by the eventually ill-fated Chase. His interactions with her are perhaps the best feature of the screenplay and the best acting in the film from both Edgar-Jones and actor Harris Dickinson (Beach Rats, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, The King's Man). He's arrogant and entitled, pushy and even occasionally bullying, and it's clear almost from the start that he's bad news; the casting is especially interesting because the two suitors look so similar that they could be Hitchcockian doubles.

The climax and denouement and ultimate twist of a solution are all quite wonderful in theory, and I was completely gobsmacked by the ending. It's too bad the filmmakers squished so much of the most exciting parts of the story into the last thirty minutes or so; after such an ominous opening act and several red herrings and significant clues early on, most of the film wallows in a sort of melancholic "which guy should I pick" mentality for Kya, who is much more fascinating than that characterization allows. Edgar-Jones is at her best when she's alone, watching the horizon and drawing her magnificent pictures of wildlife; she also does really well when interacting with the townsfolk, awkward as the interactions are. She should be brave and unpredictable, much like her home, but the film is so conventional and tired in its approach to her story that much of her raw power is diminished by the presentation. I wish the filmmakers had taken the story to the titular place beyond the reach of norms and expectations and let her shine the way she clearly deserves.

The King's Man (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

This series is so very strange. Back when The Secret Service launched in 2014, it seemed that Matthew Vaughn just wanted to make a silly, vulgar James Bond movie for a new age. And that's fine, just like the first two films. Wild and wacky, they stop just shy of full camp due to the earnestness with which they lean into their action sequences (not to say that Elton John flirting with Colin Firth after kicking ass in a parrot costume in The Golden Circle isn't camp). Overplotted and overwritten, they toy with larger ideas to validate their often cringey comedy moments, which makes for solid entertainment if not always anything more. And you can hardly fault the series for its considerable body count, which often includes main cast members.

The King's Man, the prequel origin story of the Kingsmen organization, is much more tame than the two that came before. Perhaps this is due to its setting, on the brink of war in 1914, when much of the smash-bang, gadget-driven action of the modern installments by definition can't happen. This one is much more of a spy movie, concerned with actual historical characters and events and the political games that led to open war. 

Ralph Fiennes (who finally proves his mettle at the kind of Bond character he could have played so well) plays the protagonist, Orlando Oxford, a VC-decorated former army officer and now sworn pacifist. Having lost his wife in the Boer War, Oxford has become more reclusive, determined to protect his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) at all costs. Covertly, he has recruited two of his household servants (the excellently cast Djimon Hounsou and Gemma Arterton) to help him start his own spy network, hoping to head off unnecessary conflicts before they erupt. Oxford mentions more than once that they are able to hide in plain sight as servants ignored by the privileged. He, however, is an important advisor to King George (Tom Hollander, who deliciously also plays Kaiser Wilhelm and Czar Nicholas) in the time leading up to the Great War, and so hiding is not an option for him.

After setting itself up as a measured commentary on colonialism and pacifism, the film does inevitably turn toward violence, and it's not as classy as one might have hoped. A primary delight in the first film was seeing Colin Firth's character go from dapper gentleman to bloodthirsty maniac. Here, Fiennes is more restrained, which is great, but the film itself is about as bonkers as ever. To try and prevent Russia from leaving the war and opening the Western Front, the team journeys to Russia to stop Rasputin (an almost unrecognizable Rhys Ifans). The mad monk is working for the mysterious Shepherd (a sort of Moriarty or Blofeld figure), who is orchestrating the world war. Oxford's confrontation of Rasputin is an amazing sequence that blends actual history with bizarre action fantasy -- and a particularly uncomfortable scene in which Rasputin heals Oxford's leg wound by licking it -- and is a highlight of the film.

I found myself wondering more than once if this was initially conceived as a standalone WWI film before Vaughn co-opted or pirated it and then shoehorned it into his burgeoning and unlikely franchise. Some of the spy stuff and most of the war stuff is really solid filmmaking, with another excellent sequence taking place in a no-man's land hellish field of mud and blood; it reminded me of Wonder Woman and 1917 perhaps more than it deserved. But because of its greater emotional intelligence and slightly more accessible tone, The King's Man might be my favorite of this franchise yet. 

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

The second Maleficent works as a fairly typical sequel to its predecessor, meaning that it is similar to the first in style, function, and theme, while expanding its world and heightening its effects. The problem with that this time around is that the first one already had a bit too much breadth and artificial imagery.

Set five years after the first dark fantasy (appropriate, since it has been five years since the first movie), Mistress of Evil begins with Prince Phillip asking Queen Aurora to marry him. Maleficent and Ingrith -- Phil's royal mother, played by a particularly delicious Michelle Pfeiffer -- are not too happy about this arrangement, and at a family dinner they verbally spar to provoke violent reactions. The dinner ends disastrously: Maleficent is wounded fleeing the castle, and Ingrith is revealed to be a bigoted, genocidal villain. Maleficent rallies the fairy forces and launches an assault on Ingrith's castle Ulstead, unaware that the bitch has discovered a way to kill fairies.

And if a plot that goes from an awkward dinner party to fairy genocide seems bizarre to you, that's only the beginning. Maleficent, in reimagining the fairytale, mostly told a familiar story from a different angle. This sequel, however, adds to an ended story a wholly new chapter, a thankless task that tries desperately to combine fan service, artistic integrity, and novel entertainment. What it accomplishes more successfully, however, is artistic excess and a dizzying mix of impressionistic shorthand in both plot and design. If only it had leaned in and embraced its own heady weirdness, we could have had a new camp masterpiece.

Alas that we are left with the sundry pieces of disparate fantasies. While the central story is thick enough -- mother/daughter relationships, geopolitical strife, racist allusions, genocide and war -- it packs in suggestive imagery and themes that are as bizarre and unwelcome as they are clever and interesting. The Dark Fey, as the race of Maleficent-like horned fairies are apparently called, live in what appears to be a giant floating cocoon of woven reeds with a magical cave with various biomes packed tight together. Their leaders (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ed Skrein) have a strange MLK/Malcolm X approach to their human oppressors. It seems the flowers that bloom where fairies have died can be crushed into a dust that can kill other fairies. A particularly weird subplot involves a little mushroom pixie and a porcupine imp getting abducted and tortured before falling in love. In the climactic battle, Ingrith locks a bunch of lovely forest creatures in a church and gasses them to death using organ music.

The list goes on, and each example gets a bit weirder. Perhaps the most irritating to me are the two big plot points late in the film. First, Ingrith's scheme to frame Maleficent for cursing her husband is undone when it is revealed that she herself pricked the king with the same spindle that cursed Aurora. So, apparently, even though Maleficent's curse specifically identified Aurora as the recipient, somehow it also worked against her soon-to-be father-in-law? Second, when Maleficent sacrifices herself to save Aurora, she is revived from death due to her bloodline, apparently passed down from a legendary Phoenix. She is revived as a giant phoenix, and really it's just awful that she didn't get to become a giant dragon.

Despite its maze of half-baked allegories and attempts at relevant imagery, Mistress of Evil manages to keep its pace, its sense of style and fun, and our interest. It continues to make an iconic villain a misunderstood antihero, which I'm ambivalent about, but certainly can't be said to be forgettable.

Beach Rats (2017)

Score: 3 / 5

This is exactly the kind of movie I normally like. Artsy and pretentious, it has almost nothing to do with plot and everything to do with feeling. Gorgeously photographed on 16mm with the trippy lights of Coney Island in the background, Beach Rats feels like a dream that's not quite a nightmare yet but is both erotic and deeply uncomfortable. A claustrophobic snapshot of a life on the brink, the film is a character study that never quite makes the cut, but remains fascinating as an exercise.

Harris Dickinson plays Frankie, the teenager with apparently no responsibilities, enjoying his life on the Brooklyn summer beach. He escapes his mother and sister by hanging out with his male friends and doing a lot of drugs, walking around and sulking shirtless to gawk at girls, and playing ball. By night, he holes himself up in his basement room and logs into online sex-chatrooms via webcam with older men. He'll occasionally meet up with them in the shadowy recesses of the beach for hookups and drug deals. While he'd never identify as "gay" or "bi" or whatever he might deem cool, Frankie doesn't seem to feel the fear or constraints of a typical queer protagonist.

Then again, he doesn't seem to feel much of anything. It's all a lovely film, but there's nothing to sink your teeth into. We've seen half of this before (done better, too), and the other half doesn't make you interested enough to care. When the older men lasciviously gaze at Frankie's smooth, muscular body, you get the distinct impression the director is mocking her own audience. It's all a meditation on voyeurism and we are complicit. I'm all for objectifying male bodies for a change, but also can we make it consensual and legal and not creepy?

It doesn't help that the dialogue in this film is so sparse and the actors so stoic. For example, Frankie's girlfriend get upset that he blows her off and doesn't open up. We don't feel sorry for him because he's an asshole. And then he comes back multiple times -- while she's at work -- to whine and beg her to give him another chance. It's pathetic. I was also totally turned off by his drug consumption, partly because it results in a climactic hookup gone horribly wrong. But also partly because I'm tired of watching movies about unrequited queer desires that marry stupid characters to bad situations where nothing will end well.

Then again, as an exercise in loneliness and longing, the film is undeniably beautiful to watch. It provocatively suggests that longing is both agonizing and pleasurable, and that longing can be at least partially assuaged by watching. Too bad the characters are all jerks that I didn't really want to watch.

IMDb: Beach Rats