Jade
After the aggressively negative critic and audience response to 1980’s Cruising, William Friedkin took a curious “hell with it, I’m going to do whatever I want” approach to projects. None of what he directed over the next decade, save for To Live and Die in L.A., came close to receiving the kind of acclaim his early 70s career did. If anything, it seemed as though he had given up his precise, occasionally unreasonable eye for perfection in favor of churning out the most generic cable-friendly nonsense possible. Continue Reading →
Falcon Lake
SimilarBridget Jones's Diary (2001), Desert Hearts (1985), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Strange Days (1995),
In Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman, we see a young girl meet another in the woods. Soon we learn the latter girl happens to be a literal younger manifestation of the former’s mother. In Charlotte Le Bon’s debut film, Falcon Lake, a pre-pubescent boy falls in love for the first time with the daughter of a family friend in a campsite supposedly haunted by a ghost. Continue Reading →
Monday
Let’s be clear from the start: there is nothing especially unique about Monday’s plot. Chloe (Denise Gough) is an immigration lawyer from America planning to return home from Greece in just a few days. Mickey (Sebastian Stan) is another ex-pat, well-rooted in Greece by now, DJing and waiting for more time with his young son. Mickey’s uncouth privileged by birth friend Argyris (Giorgos Pyrpasopoulos) introduces them in the worst way at a dance party. Mickey’s interested but embarrassed by his friend’s behavior, while Chloe is offended, but a little bit drunk and a lot angry at her ex, Christos (Andreas Konstantinou). Despite starting as a fairly ill-advised one-night stand, the two hit it off and begin to alter their plans and rearrange their lives to make a go of it. Continue Reading →