Ian Thomas Malone Ian Thomas Malone

Tuesday

14

September 2021

TIFF Review: Jagged

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

It barely takes a second into any of Alanis Morissette’s songs to understand her abounding success. As a musician, Morissette wields this acute ability to speak universal truths to audiences who may know nothing about rainy wedding days or movie theatre hookups. When she tells you that you ought to know, you believe her.

Alison Klayman’s documentary Jagged unpacks the layers of Morissette’s smash hit Jagged Little Pill, the twelfth best-selling album of all time and second-best by a female artist. Powered by iconic anthems such as “You Ought to Know,” “Hand in My Pocket” and “Ironic,” the album grew to become one of the 90s defining pieces of popular culture, inspiring a musical that debuted on Broadway in 2019. While the album’s success seems like destiny in hindsight given Morissette’s commanding talent, the documentary presents a more sobering look at the challenges she faced in her early career.

Breaking into the music industry while barely a teenager, Morissette ran into no shortage of powerful men who viewed her as little more than a commodity. Klayman reveals Morissette’s struggles with sexual harassment just after puberty, developing an eating disorder as at the urging of those in the business ostensibly there to safeguard her interests. Morissette is open and generous with her testimonies, a damning and deeply moving indictment on the industry as a whole.

The choice to confront the heavy stuff early on gives Klayman the runway to achieve Jagged’s primary objective as an unadulterated celebration of Morissette and all her glory. Most of the documentary’s 97-minute runtime is upbeat in nature, a narrative full of anecdotes from the making of the album and its subsequent 18-month tour. By keeping the narrative mostly confined to the Jagged Little Pill era, Klayman manages to present what feels like a pretty complete perspective on the definitive period of her subject’s career, a pretty gargantuan task for any single film.

While most of the interview footage comes from Morissette, Klayman does include testimony from music journalists and 90s icons like director Kevin Smith, speaking to Alanis’ star power and the impact it had on music as a whole. Interviews with two former members of her touring band, bassist Chris Chaney and drummer Taylor Hawkins, supply some of the film’s meatiest material. A broader theme in Jagged is the rampant sexism throughout the industry, decades before events like the #MeToo movement started to shine a spotlight on the need for reform.

The Jagged Little Pill tour presented a unique situation for Morissette’s all-male backing band, musicians with close proximity to one of the biggest stars on the planet, able to reap the benefits of “being in the band,” swarms of groupies in all. That kind of chauvinistic mindset runs countercurrent to the underlying feminism powering her whole career. A few interviews hint at some strife between Morissette and her employees over their behavior, but Klayman is a bit too conflict-adverse to pursue this narrative strand very far.

Jagged is essentially a victory lap for one of the most talented female musicians of all time. It’s hard to go more than a few minutes without some music putting a smile on your face, the kind of film that begs you to sing along. Klayman understands the magic of Morissette, leaving the audience with the kind of feel-good feature that’s perfect for a pandemic-plagued nation in need of some comfort.

Tuesday

14

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: The Power of the Dog

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

The past twenty years have seen the rise of the antihero, protagonists who are easy to love in spite of their moral ambiguity. With that narrative trope firmly played out, Jane Campion ups the ante with The Power of the Dog, a film that largely operates without any specific character for the audience to identify with. The picturesque queer Western is a remarkable return to feature films for the director after a twelve-year absence.

Based on the 1967 novel of the same name, the film follows Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), a colorful yet highly unpleasant rancher, working with his brother, George (Jesse Plemons), raising cattle and horses 1925 Montana. George is the opposite of Phil, polite and soft-spoken, determined to not let his brother’s rude demeanor soil their family name. It is during one of these image rehabilitation tours that George makes the acquaintance of Rose (Kirsten Dunst), quickly falling in love. The two marry, bringing Rose and her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), permanently into Phil’s orbit.

Structured with numbered chapter markers breaking up the film, Campion untethers her narrative from any set anchor point. Cumberbatch is the closest thing the film has to a true lead, but much of the first half is spent focusing on Rose, before setting up the eventual pairing of Peter of Phil, the latter of whom spends much of the narrative mocking the former’s awkwardness and fragrant homosexuality. Phil is pretty gay too, a reality that clearly rips him apart.

Campion’s slow-burn refuses to conform to any conventions of narrative, backed by a career-best performance from Benedict Cumberbatch. Phil is not a protagonist, giving the audience nothing to root for, existing for nothing other than cruelty. There is also a sweet side to Phil, with Cumberbatch finding easy chemistry with Smit-McPhee. Campion assigns no ulterior motive to Phil’s softer demeanor for story purposes, instead of giving Cumberbatch the floor to use his ample acting talents.

The Power of the Dog is reluctant to fully commit to any single narrative strand. Much of Rose’s arc follows her gradual decline into alcoholism, but Campion seems to lose interest in exploring this story, sidelining George for most of the second half. Filmed in her native New Zealand, its breathtaking beauty constantly on display through the luscious cinematography, the ranch essentially functions as a character in its own right.

The loneliness of rural living is well-documented. Adding a layer of repressed homosexuality in 1925 into the equation, it’s easy to see how isolation can warp one’s entire existence until there’s nothing left but bitter resentment. As Phil, Cumberbatch so beautifully embodies that angst. He’s easy to hate because he’s a pretty bad person, but neither Campion nor Cumberbatch are super invested in making you feel otherwise.

Many may find Campion’s approach to storytelling off-putting, a singular approach to pacing that’s never in a hurry to get anyway in particular. The story leaves a bit to be desired by the time the credits roll, but with the top-notch acting and beautiful cinematography, it’s hard to care. Few films so abundantly translate the message of a director who takes such joy in her craft.

Tuesday

14

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: Benediction

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

There are future generations of LGBTQ coming that will grow up never knowing life in the closet. A once universal sensation for gay people will fade from our collective consciousness, the passing of time blunting the pain of old wounds. The English poet Siegfried Sassoon carried with him not only the burden of the closet, but also the scars of service in World War I, later becoming a vocal dissenter of the prolonged conflict.

Terence Davies’ film Benediction captures the complicated, tragic life of Sassoon. Played predominantly by Jack Lowden, with a brief appearance by Peter Capaldi covering the last chapter of the poet’s life, the narrative delicately explores the emotional turmoil that came to define Sassoon’s career. For a man who experienced such sadness so early on in his life, Davies narrows in on the metastasized trauma and the way its evolution became his subject’s defining characteristic.

Lowden’s Sassoon is deliberately stoic, a man in constant conflict between his repressed emotions and the natural desire of the artist for free expression. The pressure valve has long seen its bursting people, with the poet often carrying himself more like a ghost than a functioning member of society. Sassoon is a very sad man, a notion reaffirmed by Davies at every turn. Lowden keeps the audience at a distance, demonstrating almost no range in his character’s demeanor until late in the third act. It’s unwelcoming but not necessarily off-putting, a strong performance hindered by the narrative’s brutal confines.

Davies is his own worst enemy, dragging out Benediction for so long that the payoff loses all its muster. The narrative has no idea what to do with its untenable runtime, a 137-minute slog. As a biopic, Benediction covers decades-worth of its subject’s life, but Davies is not really concerned with showing history or biography. He’s almost entirely preoccupied with Sassoon’s inner sense of turmoil, an exercise that would have been better suited by a more intimate scope.

The production appears to have been impacted by the pandemic, with a few scenes looking like their audiences were green-screened into the background. The actors almost always keep their distance, much of the narrative confined to conversations between two or three people in isolated spaces. Without much variety in its settings, the scenes often feel repetitive, hindered by Lowden’s reserved performance.

Gay people of faith will undoubtedly find much to contemplate. A convert to Catholicism late in his life, Davies finds much beauty in Sassoon’s sense of spirituality without trying to speak for him. The screenplay does an excellent job blending poetry into the narrative’s progression.

Davies’ cause is not exactly helped by the broader abundance of closet narratives. The director doesn’t really have anything interesting to say about being gay in a time when homosexuality was illegal, though he does have some fun with Sassoon’s voyeuristic male companions. For a film with so many gay characters, it feels oddly prudish, like Davies is holding out on the audience.

Benediction is a frustrating experience, strands of brilliance that never manage to come together. Davies doesn’t give his audience enough reason to sit through his overstuffed, meandering work. There’s so much talent on display here that seldom operates in sync.

Sunday

12

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: The Electric Life of Louis Wain

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

Cat pictures are one of life’s great simple pleasures. The artist Louis Wain helped popularize portraits of adorable felines in the 1800s, a time when they were regarded as nuisances, good for little other than mice control. The film The Electric Life of Louis Wain presents a colorful yet deeply sad perspective of his troubled career.

Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a solid yet abundantly predictable take on the eccentric artist, institutionalized late in his life with schizophrenia, a widely disputed diagnosis. The death of their father left Wain as the reluctant patriarch of his family, using his ability to draw at breakneck speed to find employment at The Illustrated London News working under Sir William Ingram (Toby Jones), a kind man with a heavy tolerance for Wain’s often outlandish behavior. Wain is under great pressure to provide for his mother and overbearing sisters.

The only person in the world who seems to appreciate Wain for all his eccentricities is Emily (Claire Foy), who works as a governess to his sisters. Wain quickly falls in love, despite the scandalous nature of a romance between lovers of differing social statuses, earning the scorn of his whole family. Louis and Emily have a happy, albeit brief marriage, tragically cut short by Emily’s terminal breast cancer diagnosis. It is in the wake of tragedy that Wain finds his greatest successes drawing pictures of cats, inspired by his wife’s love of felines.

Director Will Sharpe bites off more than he can chew with an overstuffed narrative that struggles to build off its whimsical first act. The film does an excellent job capturing the melancholic aura of Wain’s life, fleeting feel-good moments amidst an ocean of tragedies. The biographical nature of the story presents numerous pacing challenges that Sharpe manages to navigate with relative grace.

Sharpe deploys a narration by Olivia Colman that aims to give the narrative the feeling of a fairy tale, a device that feels a bit like a liability as time goes on. Wain’s life is not a good fit for a 111-minute runtime, a series of highs and lows that doesn’t flow well within a three-act structure. By the midway point, the narration feels almost obligatory, a weird reminder that this is all a performance.

Cumberbatch feels almost too comfortable playing yet another eccentric genius, bringing nothing new to the table. It doesn’t help that Cumberbatch’s best scenes are all opposite Foy, whose character dies halfway through the film. 111 minutes is a long time for a narrative that achieves most of it what it set out to achieve before the third act.

Sharpe can be forgiven for not necessarily knowing how to fit Wain’s whole life into a feature film. His biggest fault is in his failure to craft three-dimensional characters out of Wain’s sisters, who essentially function as the film’s antagonists. Wain is distant from his family in a way that feels more like an impediment for the narrative than an organic part of the story.

The Electric Life of Louis Wain is probably not more fun than spending two hours looking at cat pictures on Instagram, but it’s a competent biopic. Sharpe and Cumberbatch don’t exactly impress with their handling of the material, but the two make an admirable effort. Wain lived a tragic life, but there’s much inspiration to be found in the way he channeled his grief into a medium that brought so much joy to many.

Sunday

12

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: Murina

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

There is a great abundance of film narratives centered on extraordinary people or individuals who achieved great feats in unthinkable circumstances. The same cannot really be said of ordinary people wishing to lead ordinary lives. As children, we’re often told that we’re special, even as the vast majority of us grow up to lead fairly mundane existences.

Antoneta Alaman Kusijanović’s film Murina explores the life of a girl who never received any kind of positive affirmation from her parents. Julija (Gracija Filipović) is a 16-year-old girl living on an isolated Croatian island. Julija is not particularly special, her most noteworthy talent being that she can hold her breath for a long period of time, a skill she puts to good use while spear-fishing with her father, Ante (Leon Lućev), an insufferably mean man who makes life miserable for her and her mother, Nela (Danica Čurčić). Isolated from anyone her own age, Julija spends her time being objectified by the men around her, almost always sporting a one-piece bathing suit.

A visit from Ante’s old friend Javier (Cliff Curtis) reopens old jealousies, Ante nearly driven mad by Javier’s much more successful career. Ante takes out his anger on Julija, getting even more frustrated by the kindness that Javier shows toward his daughter. While quiet and soft-spoken, Julija sees in Javier new possibilities for life beyond her father’s constant abuse.

Kusijanović presents an illuminating portrait of the long-term effects of living under the male gaze, a slow-burn narrative completely in sync with Filipović’s lead performance. Julija begins the narrative seemingly at ease with her underwhelming life prospects, gradually awakened by the possibilities of a world her picturesque purgatory. Filipović captures that moment so beautifully.

An a-ha moment is not a roadmap for life. The real world is a much bumpier ride, a notion that Kusijanović never loses sight of in the narrative. Murina’s narrative takes place over the course of a few days, hardly enough time for a young girl to break a long-standing pattern of abuse and live a happily ever after. Such a payoff wouldn’t hit home as hard.

The 95-minute runtime gives the audience plenty to chew on, a good amount of time to spend within Kusijanović’s world. At its core, Murina is a film about agency, and the difficulties that one has to face in wielding it. Kusijanović makes a strong argument for the power of telling kids that they’re special. It’s a lot harder to reach one’s potential If you’ve never been told there’s any point in trying at all.

Saturday

11

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: Silent Land

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

Foreign travel is supposed to open one’s mind, and potentially heart, to new experiences and empathy for people of different cultures. Going abroad can certainly be scary when faced with trouble from local law enforcement, often operating under different investigative protocols. In general, one is supposed to feel bad when a stranger dies in a swimming pool barely fifty feet away.

Aga Woszczyńska’s Silent Land (original title Cicha Ziemia) follows a couple, Adam (Dobromir Dymecki) and Anna (Agniezska Žulewska), with some pretty rotten vacation luck. Staying at an Italian villa overlooking the ocean, the advertised pool is found empty. After prodding the owner to begrudgingly fill the pool, the maintenance man is found floating lifelessly inside, the couple blissfully ignorant nearby. Indifferent toward the plight of the deceased worker, the couple finds themselves increasingly agitated by the local police.

Throughout the narrative of her feature debut, Woszczyńska finds herself mostly concerned with the nature of empathy. The couple feels no remorse for the plight of the man, largely instead concerned with their own terrible fortunes. Woszczyńska has a knack for dramatic tension, lining up the audience’s sympathies for the tourists handed a raw deal abroad.

The trouble is, her protagonists are pretty insufferable people. Adam is particularly tiresome, his moods ranging from sullen to bothered. Dymecki and Žulewska have no chemistry as a couple. Whether that dynamic was intentional or not feels doesn’t really matter, as their obvious lack of compatibility is a major detriment to the narrative and its insufferable 113-minute runtime.

The real bummer with Woszczyńska’s film is that she does put forth some compelling questions about the nature of empathy, at least initially. She just doesn’t seem all that interested in exploring this as time goes on, spending much of the film’s second half on the nature of the couple’s relationship. Having not put in the work to sell either character, it becomes increasingly challenging to muster up any empathy for them. They seem like pretty terrible people, but not in a way that’s remotely entertaining to watch.

Painfully long, Silent Land squanders an interesting premise with a directionless narrative centered on insufferable people. In an abstract sense, one can relate to a couple merely wanting to enjoy a nice swim on their vacation. It’s another thing entirely to spend a duration of time with people so utterly detestable, instead filling you with the sense that karma served its justice to an odious pair of individuals.

Saturday

11

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: Comala

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

The question of nature vs. nurture is an alluring thought experiment that rarely provides any sense of definite conclusions. The past and present work often synchronize in unseen ways, an exercise that’s not really meant to be easily analyzed. The mere act of trying to uncover the various pieces of one’s self can be a more rewarding journey than any idea of a destination.

The documentary Comala follows director Gian Cassini as he explores the life and death of his estranged father El Jimmy, a hitman who was killed in Tijuana in 2010. Cassini travels throughout Mexico and the United States, interviewing members of his father’s extended family that he hadn’t seen in years, people he has little ties to other than through blood. El Jimmy left behind a complicated legacy, beloved by many who knew him in spite of his career choices and shaky sense of morality.

Cassini does a superb job handling his intimate material, conducting himself with the professional aura of an investigative journalist though no one would expect him to be objective. The documentary itself exists to bring its director closer to the subject, but Cassini understands the value of the distance between himself and his father. The outsider sense of perspective that Cassini brings is incredibly valuable toward making the material relatable to the audience.

Perhaps most shocking in Comala is the nonchalant way that Cassini’s subjects speak about their careers in the drug trade. For many, selling cocaine is not all that different from any other line of work, a stable way to make a living if one is smart about their savings. The interviews are both intimate and generous, people opening up about their darkest days, presented in a way that makes you feel like you’re sitting at the table with them.

El Jimmy does not seem like the greatest man in the world. As a character study, Comala isn’t interested in rehabilitating its subject. The record is what it is. The son never tries to carry water for the father, instead giving the audience space to draw their own conclusions.

Throughout its 98-minute runtime, Comala consistently impresses with its innate ability to capture the messy nature of family. Few can understand what it’s like to have a hitman as a father, but the desire to discover one’s roots is a far more relatable predicament. Cassini takes his wild story and unpacks its many layers, along the way demonstrating the power of simply engaging in these acts of self-discovery.

Saturday

11

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: Attica

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

The 1971 Attica Prison riot represents the bloodiest uprising in the history of the United States penal system, as well as one of the worst atrocities committed by the American government upon its own citizens. 43 people, including ten civilians and correction officers, as well as 33 inmates, lost their lives as state police, acting on orders from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, retook the prison on September 13^th. In the subsequent decades, countless people have asked the same question: why did it have to be this way?

Stanley Nelson’s documentary Attica provides an in-depth look at the riot and its root causes. Featuring ample archival footage and dozens of new interviews from eyewitnesses including prisoners, journalists covering the riot, and family members of the hostages, the film thoroughly explores the events of that chilling period from every angle. Few documentaries so effectively transport their audiences through space and time quite like Nelson’s work, a three-dimensional perspective on events that transpired fifty years ago.

The subjects of the interviews are generous with their accounts, clearly the product of decades of introspection. The demands of the inmates were quite benign in nature, desiring basic human necessities like decent food, toilet paper, and medical care. As a maximum security facility where a predominantly white male staff frequently abused the population that was more than 70% black and brown, it’s easy to see how tensions could fester in such an environment rotted to its core with institutional racism. With that in mind, the riot only seemed like a natural reaction to untenable circumstances.

Nelson’s great triumph is the way he manages to cut through the material to present a couple of key points that ultimately could have prevented the carnage of September 13, 1971. Days of negotiations between the inmates, the prison administration, and outside advocates brought in to help mediate, produced a list of demands that could have been reasonably implemented. Whether Rockefeller’s broader political ambitions, in sync with President Nixon’s “law and order” campaign platform, would have followed through on any substantive reform is a different story, but Attica does a fabulous job exploring the riot in real-time.

Though the documentary covers quite a bit of ground over its 116-minute runtime, there are two glaring areas in need of some additional context. Nelson spends little time focusing on the actual taking of the prison grounds, a potential product of the lack of archival footage. The death of correctional officer William Quinn from injuries sustained during the initial takeover of the prison, is described as the tipping point where the inmates’ hopes for clemency were taken off the table. The circumstances of Quinn’s death are a bit unnecessarily confusing, described in the documentary as a hostage when he died of his wounds in hospital. The whole situation could have been presented with more clarity.

Attica is a very impressive documentary that cuts through complex material with relative ease. If anything, Nelson’s work might have benefited from an extended run as a limited series rather than a film. The way the government handled Attica remains a national disgrace. It didn’t have to be this way.

Saturday

11

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: The Hill Where Lionesses Roar

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

The notion of feeling claustrophobic by the confines of one’s hometown is a fairly universal sensation across cultural barriers. For a region like Kosovo, whose status as an autonomous country is widely disputed throughout the world, teenage angst reaches a particularly high boiling point. The Hill Where Lionesses Roar (original title Luaneshat e kordrës) explores a group of teenagers fed up with their seemingly predetermined course in life.

Qe (Flaka Latifi), Li (Era Balaj), and Jeta (Uratë Shabani) live in a remote village with little in the way of entertainment or upward mobility. Choices for an evening activity include lying on a hill staring up at the sky, or throwing rocks at beer bottles in a derelict empty swimming pool. Though the film showcases plenty of Kosovo’s natural beauty, it’s understandable how such a quiet landscape might drive a young person insane.

The arrival of newcomers Zem (Andi Bajgora), who quickly forms a relationship with Jeta, and Lena (Luàna Bajrami, who also directed the film and wrote the screenplay), an expatriate visiting from Paris, stirs the cabin fever within the group. Fed up with being rejected for university study, the girls decide to form a gang. Bajrami’s skill as a filmmaker quickly erases any inkling to judge the girls for their haphazard career choices, made in the relative absence of solid alternatives.

The 83-minute runtime absolutely flies by in the blink of an eye. Bajrami crafts a delightfully charming narrative, bolstered by strong lead performances from her trio of lionesses. The remote village is boring enough that it would seem like the kind of place where you’d be friends with just about anyone, but the girls demonstrate a genuine sense of affection for each other that goes a long way toward endearing the film to the audience.

The narrative’s ambitions are a bit too constrained by the brief runtime. While Bajrami is clearly more interested in exploring youthful indiscretions than arriving at conclusions, she does wrap things up a bit too abruptly. There are more than a few plot strands left completely unresolved, leaving her own character Lena to feel a bit superfluous given the limited scope.

The Hill Where Lionesses Roar subverts the very nature of the coming of age narrative, for the village has nothing to offer those who reach maturity. It’s a bleak reality within a film that constantly manages to put a smile on your face. If the kids are going to be alright, it’s because of artists like Bajrami who press on even as their countries let them down at every turn. Films like this remind us all of why art matters.

Saturday

11

September 2021

0

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TIFF Review: Violet

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Courtesy of TIFF

Plenty of people can relate to the idea of having a voice in the back of one’s head spewing self-doubt and crippling negativity. Hollywood, hardly an industry known for its compassionate professionals, is not exactly the greatest environment for those carrying around that kind of baggage. Director/writer Justine Bateman’s Violet presents a unique perspective of a mind in turmoil when faced with nothing but rot.

Violet Calder (Olivia Munn) is a 32-year-old film executive who constantly hears a voice (Justin Theroux) pointing out all of her perceived flaws and deficiencies. Cursive text on the screen purports to share a different side of Violet’s personality, her inner desire to be something more than an awful person. Most of the people around Violet are pretty awful as well, especially her boss (Dennis Boutsikaris), who never misses an opportunity to humiliate her in front of clients or her coworkers.

With regard to Violet as a person, Bateman initially presents the text and Theroux’s voice as a kind of good angel, bad angel dynamic wrestling for control. As the film plays on, it’s clear that Violet is really more of a three headed Hydra, with Munn’s performance acting as a third form of driving force powering the character. The 92-minute runtime comes and goes without leaving any clear impression of the kind of person Violet wants to be.

Munn isn’t really a neutral arbiter between her two unseen voices, but her character never rises above a predictable trope. Other characters constantly talk about what a talented film executive Violet is, but we never see anything resembling genuine passion from her as a character. Even if you accept Violet as someone jaded by years in the business, she never comes across as someone who ever liked making movies. The cursive text designed to present an alternative to the jaded figure never feels like a genuine depiction of Violet’s character.

At times, it’s hard to tell if Bateman is trying to be satirical about the film industry, or if Violet is plagued with a bad supporting cast unable to deliver their lines in a convincing manner. There’s scene after scene of characters spouting generic Hollywood jargon into the abyss. Violet is far too pretentious to be aware of its own insufferable narrative, the worst kind of Hollywood film about Hollywood.

Much of the film’s core problem could have been alleviated if Munn or Bateman managed to give Violet a concrete point of view. Instead, it all plays out like watching an individual who knows that they’re a bad person but can’t do anything about it because they don’t care enough to change. For anyone who feels jaded at the idea that we’ll see a more inclusive, different film industry, Violet provides stark validation that the people in charge certainly won’t do anything to alter the status quo. If those findings felt at all earned as a result of the narrative and not in spite of it, maybe this might have been a worthwhile experience.

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