Sundays are for waking up at six am to work yet another shift, rising from your bed, and blinking your eyes at the horror of still being alive. It may not be much of a life, but at least it’s mine.
It’s also a good time to read everything you missed out on over the week.
Logan is James Mangold’s second go at the character and (I think) Fox’s ninth. I think it really admires trash filmmaking, it just has the good sense not to become trash itself.
Is it any surprise she is being hunted by a cabal of old white men? Men who believe to have ownership of her body, her autonomy, her decisions, and who are happy to behave as immorally as they damn well please in order to get her back under control. It’s not surprising at all.
Gurinder Chadha’s Viceroy’s House could be quite a fun diversion in another reality. Its unfortunate intersection with the current political landscape means it fails to bear the weight it was never built to handle.
The Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) and his family (because yes, in the 1940s the queen’s cousin could be set to rule a whole country by virtue of that lineage) are unquestionably portrayed as noble, good people. They become symbolic of her majesty’s wrongful dominion, and their arrival at the grand manse that is to be their home sweeps aside the almost hundred years of prior subjugation in the mind of the audience.
Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women is an exceptional look at the shapes of women’s lives in the modern world and the vast emptiness of the Montana plains.
The film knows where its gold is though, that third story is priceless, relative newcomer Lily Gladstone giving a performance that stands up there with the established stars of this joint. its distance from town life too elevates cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt’s spare, static frames into things of beauty.
The Student is a film about Russian orthodoxy and political discourse. Kirill Serebrennikov’s direction is fearless, but is there such a thing as enjoying yourself too much?
A high school student has found Jesus, the extent to which this belief is sincerely held verses it being a socially mandated way for him to unleash his hate and antipathy to the world and everything in it is left to the audience to decide. Hell, why not both?
This advert for Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a racist piece of shit. I haven’t had a chance to play the game yet but what I’m hearing isn’t great.
“I don’t really have a conclusion here. The terribleness of this goddamn thing should be pretty obvious and I honestly ain’t feeling all that great today. Why don’t people think? Who could have though this might be okay ever?”
Coming up in the next week we got reviews of Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island and Paul Verhoven’s Elle, alongside some writing about Telltale’s Game of Thrones: Season 1.
Thank you all so much for reading. If you enjoy my work, sharing it with your friends would mean the world.
-E
Music for the week is Stormzy’s debut album, Gang Signs and Prayer
A Grand Quiet 
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