Monday, October 31, 2022
Barbarian (2022)
This movie reminds me of Wrong Turn. The first half is an exquisite psychological thriller drama, and the second half is a cancel-culture-satire-inbred-zombie (spoiler) mishmash. The juxtaposition of pseudo-philosophical social commentary and total B-movie horror schlock works very well as comedy. I feel like the comedy was piled into the second half to make the film more marketable or explain the plot.
The movie sends messages, but the messages get muddled by scenes like a zombie beating a guy with his own severed arm. My main reaction to this movie is “what the fuck?” But I liked it, so good job.
Sunday, October 2, 2022
Pearl (2022)
Girl meets boy, boy fucks off to WWI and leaves girl with her shitty German immigrant parents in the middle of Kansas, chaos ensues.
I don’t love or hate this movie, but it’s interesting to study. The film makes a valiant effort to present character melodrama with the vibrancy of multi-strip color. It achieves all that and more, but my biggest complaint with this performance-oriented picture is how the performances are put to film. The directing and editing soured my experience somewhat, and the film feels like it runs at least 10 minutes too long.
I went out of my way to appreciate this movie. The least it could do is entertain me, which it did in the first half. Then it bored the fuck out of me, so I call it break-even.