"She Said" and "Women Talking"

I understand why "She Said" didn't get more awards attention.  It has excellent performances from Zoe Kazan, Carey Mulligan, Jennifer Ehle, and Samantha Morton, but those performances aren't very showy.  Likewise, the film is a very restrained journalism procedural, about New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor (Kazan) and Meghan Twohey (Mulligan) breaking the story about Harvey Weinstein at the start of the #Metoo movement.  It's very similar to Best Picture winner "Spotlight," with its grounded direction, strong ensemble, and focus on a group of dedicated reporters getting their jobs done.  Ehle and Morton play two of Weinstein's former assistants who are identified as victims, and have to be convinced to go on the record.   

Directed by Maria Schrader, who is making her English language film debut, "She Said" avoids sentiment and speechmaking in favor of the grim realities of sexual assault.  We never see any of the violence, and only get glimpses of Weinstein from behind, or hear him over the phone.  Instead, we're left with the dread and the shame and the uncertainty in the aftermath, which stays with the victims for decades.  Navigating this emotionally charged territory requires persistence, but also empathy.  It's significant that the two reporters are women, who both quietly navigate challenging personal lives while they're working on the story.  Both of them are working mothers, and Twohey is recovering from postpartum depression.  This isn't part of the story in any significant way, but rather simply the reality of the characters' lives.

   

However, like "The Post" a few years ago, "She Said" gives up too much narrative power by largely cutting its major antagonist out of the picture.  I admire the impulse to keep the focus on the victims, and on the consequences of the crimes and cover-ups.  However, this results in a film that is perhaps more staid and stripped down than it should be.  Several actresses who were victimized by Weinstein make minor appearances in the film, and one significantly does not.  You can see where the film's creators were struggling to address privacy concerns and keen on avoiding the sensationalism inherent in a story about Hollywood players.  However, the pendulum may have swung too far in the opposite direction.        

"Women Talking" is a significantly more successful attempt at talking about some of these issues through a more heavily fictionalized account of a real-life event.  A remote Mennonite commune discovers that a group of men have been drugging and raping the women and girls over an extended period of time.  The perpetrators have been arrested, and while the rest of the men are in town, trying to bail them out, the women are left with a few precious days to debate and vote over what to do - forgive the rapists, leave the commune, or stay and fight.

Written and directed by Sarah Polley, "Women Talking" is framed from the outset as a fantasy, an idealized version of an imagined debate among the women about addressing misogyny, covering a variety of different viewpoints and arguments.  The women are uneducated, but they are intelligent, thoughtful, and well spoken.  Multiple generations are represented, including two sets of adult women and their elderly mothers.  The three main positions are represented by three major characters.  Ona (Rooney Mara) is pregnant and wants to stay and fight, hopeful that the commune can change.  Mariche (Jessie Buckley) is fearful of worse consequences, and wants to forgive the wrongdoers.  Salome (Claire Foy), who has already resorted to violence, wants to leave.  A lone man, August (Ben Whishaw) the schoolteacher, has been allowed to remain to record the proceedings.

Though adapted from a novel, "Women Talking" often feels like a stage play.  The debate takes place over two days in a hayloft.  The long conversations are broken up by occasional flashbacks and interludes, but the film's major dramatic moments are all built on the actresses interacting in a limited space.  The cinematography is largely dim and dreary, despite the excellent production design.  The performances, however, are all excellent.  I want to single out Sheila McCarthy and Judith Ivey in particular, who play the older women, and provide a vital anchoring presence as tensions mount and everyone's emotions inevitably boil over.  

This film has all the hallmarks of typical awards bait, but Polley engages so earnestly with the material, and the characters are portrayed with such care and empathy that I prefer to laud its ambitions instead of focusing on its flaws.  The evenhanded treatment of so many thorny issues, including faith and community, set this apart from similar films of the post #Metoo era, and help it to feel more timeless.  "Women Talking" is one of those films that doesn't get everything right, but is so unique that I'm very glad it exists.

  

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The Posts I Almost Wrote Today, 2023

My limits as a blogger are never as apparent as when I try to write a post and fail.  Here are three recent attempts at blog posts where I sort through the detritus and see what went wrong.

Regulating Youtube - This is the most ambitious thing I've attempted in a while, trying to lay out the basics of how broadcast television content regulation differs from current attempts to regulate internet content, and how Youtube has essentially become the new dominant form of mainstream media.  I'd seen a couple of Youtubers I follow put out videos about the new content restrictions they were expecting to be implemented soon, and worrying over how that might affect their monetization.  There were also several recent reports from various tech watchdogs that were pointing out how much time children were spending watching Youtube and Tiktok compared to linear television.  On average, kids with access to Youtube are spending about an hour a day on the site.

I wrote about a thousand words before coming to the conclusion that this topic was way too broad.  I was trying to stuff too many things into a single post - my changing viewing habits, my kids' viewing habits, the history of television regulation, the history of internet regulation, and the history of Youtube - Elsagate, monetization, recent policy changes, etc.  The big point is that even though Youtube is so much more complicated to filter than traditional linear television, it's facing the same demands from viewers and advertisers that all major forms of media have faced over the years, and so it's inevitably moving toward tighter restrictions on its content.  Because it can't possibly vet all the uploaded videos individually, it depends on far less reliable AI and community self-policing, resulting in a lot of headaches for content creators. A figure drawing channel I follow had to rework and reupload several older videos, because they featured completely non-sexualised nudes.      

Film Critics - We lost Roger Ebert ten years ago this month, and the landscape for film critics has changed drastically in the interim.  Many entertainment websites and publications are gone, or are in the hands of people who do not value strong critical voices.  Many venerable critics have retired or have become freelancers. However, critics are as important as ever to the media discourse.  Critics are vital for championing smaller films like "Aftersun" that would have otherwise gotten lost in the crowd.  Critics have lost major platforms, but they're making inroads on social media, through podcasts, videos, substacks, newsletters, and other places on the internet.  Film Twitter would definitely be missed if the Elon Musk venture ends up going down in flames.

However, I really don't feel like I've got enough perspective on this topic.  Frankly, I don't keep up with the critical community as much as I keep up with a couple of adjacent film journalists these days.  I don't regularly read film reviews much anymore, preferring podcasts and videos because they allow for longer discussions.  I am absolutely part of the problem - and I'm still writing and blogging movie reviews!  So every time that I try to write about film critics, I end up self-interrogating myself out of it.  The anniversary of Ebert's passing was enough for me to make another attempt, but it went nowhere.  I'll just point out that RogerEbert.com is alive and well, and you can find the reviews of Christy Lemire and Matt Zoller Seitz and other talented critics there.

Blogging Into the Void - Finally, I've been considering various ways to address an existential question about this blog.  Why am I still writing this when it's clear that nobody is reading it, my writing isn't getting any better, and I'm doomed to mediocrity and irrelevance?  Well, because I enjoy writing this blog as a hobby, my ambitions have always been limited, and I do have an audience - me.  I go back and read the older entries on the blog all the time.  And I've been doing this long enough now that I've got a pretty good chronicle of my experience with media progressing through the last twelve-odd years.  Just browsing through the 2013 entries, I can see when "House of Cards" premiered and kicked off the streaming wars, that "Doctor Who" was in the Matt Smith era, Blockbuster was on its way out, and Spill.com had just closed up shop.  And of course there was "Frozen." 

Stephen King, when asked why he wrote horror, responded with a question - "Why do you assume I have a choice?"  Why am I still writing this blog?  Because I still want to.

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About That "Dungeons & Dragons" Movie

Even if I'm not the target audience for a film, it's always nice to see a long-suffering franchise get a new installment that finally gets it right.  "Dungeons & Dragons" has had a lot of ups and downs over the years, including a regrettable live action feature in the year 2000.  But now, here comes "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves," which has several "D&D" nerds among its creators, and it shows.  I can't speak to whether they got all the details right, but this certainly feels like stepping into a rich, storied fantasy world that runs by its own set of rules.  At the same time, the movie is pretty accessible for "D&D" newbies who have no idea what paladins or tieflings are, and just want to watch a band of adventurers go on an exciting quest together.

The movie does something that's not as easy as it looks, which is to balance earnest character drama and relationships with humor and silliness.  The silliness is inevitable when you've got characters like Edgin (Chris Pine), a bard and thief who spends the opening act of the movie trying to talk his way out of prison, and his best friend Holga (Michelle Rodriquez), a stoic barbarian warrior who gets the best fight scenes.  The two of them spend most of the movie trying to find a way to infiltrate the Kingdom of Neverwinter, currently controlled by Edgin and Holga's scummy former partner Forge (Hugh Grant) and the scary wizard Sofina (Daisy Head), who betrayed them on a previous job.  Forge has also adopted Edgin's daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman), and is lying to her about her father's motives.  Fortunately, Edgin and Holga have some promising allies, including a bumbling sorcerer named Simon (Justice Smith), a shapeshifter druid named Doric (Sophia Lillis), and a too-good-to-be-true paladin named Xenk (Rege-Jean Page). 

Once we get into the fantasy hijinks, the movie is a lot of fun.  The writers manage the trick of engineering an enjoyable adventure while also getting to quip and comment on that adventure, and also not making the meta elements too obnoxious.  By the end of the movie, I was surprised to find that I really cared about Edgin and Kira reconciling, Holga's love life, and Simon's progress as a sorcerer.  The actors do a lot of the heavy lifting, with Chris Pine turning up the charm, Michelle Rodriguez being very lovable, and Hugh Grant in "Paddington 2" villain mode.  The only trouble is that it takes a while for the movie to get to the hijinks.  There's a ton of exposition to set up the world, constant explanations of terms and items, and an awful lot of important characters to juggle.  D&D fans should have a ball picking out references and cameos, but I suspect younger viewers will need some patience to get through all the talky scenes.  

I thought the wait was worth it, for some genuinely clever action sequences, solid humor, and satisfying payoffs.  I like that the movie plays with our expectations, putting laughs where we don't anticipate them, and letting setups that initially seem comedic be played straight.  This isn't the most impressive looking fantasy universe from a production standpoint, but clearly a lot of care and attention went into the worldbuilding.  Many of the fantasy creatures and environments are created with practical costumes, for instance, which give them a nice throwback quality.  Some of the trickier effects don't come across well, like trying to have regular sized humans play hobbit-sized characters, but otherwise the visuals are very appealing.  There's a thin line between kitsch and the kind of generic medieval fantasy aesthetics that "D&D" has always used, and I think the filmmakers figured out a pretty good approach.  

It's unfortunate that the movie doesn't seem to be doing too well at the box office, because this is one of the better fantasy action films I've seen in a while, with a very appealing take on some very old tropes.  On the other hand, "Honor Among Thieves" is for the fans more than the general audiences, and was probably destined from the start to be best loved by existing D&D players and receptive fantasy nerds.  And maybe that is how it should be.       

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Trailers! Trailers! 2023 Summer Edition

It's been a while since I've done a trailer post.  I haven't had the chance to talk about some of these upcoming releases yet, so let's take a look before the summer movie season really gets underway.  All links below lead to Youtube.  

Barbie - This is the second trailer, after that fantastic "2001: A Space Odyssey" send-up last year.  Along with the recently released posters, we get to see more of the ridiculously talented cast, more of the "Barbie" universe, and more of a sense of the tone of the film.  Plot details remain scant, but I'm ready for Ryan Gosling in comedy mode, Margot Robie looking fabulous, and as much hot pink nonsense as the copyright lawyers will allow to be put onscreen.   

Elemental - I don't think that it's a good sign that the latest PIXAR movie looks so generically PIXAR after the more stylistically interesting "Turning Red" and "Luca."  This will be Peter Sohn's second turn in the director's chair after "The Good Dinosaur," and I honestly don't think it's going to do much better financially.  The film has no stars, a familiar premise of mismatched lovebirds, and beautiful visual aesthetics that are nonetheless awfully reminiscent of too many other recent PIXAR and Disney films.  I'm sure it'll be a good watch, as PIXAR's batting average remains very high, but right now nothing's grabbing my attention.       

Blue Beetle - This movie is in a tough spot, launching a new hero into the DCEU that's about to be totally rebooted by James Gunn.  We're also at a point where all of these origin stories are starting to look the same.  Sure, Jaime Reyes has the distinction of being a Latino kid with a big family, but his power set and costume look way too close to Spider-man in a summer that already has a Spider-man movie.  I'm not familiar with director Angel Manuel Soto or most of this cast, so we'll just have to wait and see.

Asteroid City - Boy, there are a lot of familiar faces in this movie.  All of Wes Anderson's films look alike too, but in this case that's a good thing.  Anderson has been so consistently good these past few years, I can't wait to get back to the Anderson-verse and see how he's going to fit new players like Maya Hawke and Hong Chau into it.  Maybe he'll even be able to boost the fortunes of Tom Hanks, who has weathered an awful run of disappointing performances lately.  

Knights of the Zodiac - I never watched "Saint Seiya," the anime series that this movie is based on, but I was aware enough of it during my otaku days to recognize it was your standard kid fantasy fight show.  And I couldn't have been more surprised that this was the property that TOEI decided to turn into a big, fancy, live-action film with a couple of bigger names participating in the ruckus, like Famke Janssen and Sean Bean.  It looks better than most of the  other Japanese produced live action adaptations of anime series, which isn't great, but potentially fun.  Add this to the list of movies where we'll just have to wait and see.  

The Last Voyage of the Demeter - I've been hearing about this movie for what feels like forever.  It's got a great premise: a period horror movie set on a ship during a transatlantic crossing - specifically the ship that carried Dracula to America.  However, I wasn't expecting that this was going to be so much of a creature feature, with the dark visuals to match.  I'm especially underwhelmed by the design of the creature, which is more bestial than I expected.  I'm not clear on whether Dracula is actually going to be a character in this movie.  Still, I'll see this for the excellent cast.   

The Marvels - Finally, here's one for the holiday season.  "The Marvels" is the only MCU project I'm remotely interested in this year, because it's the only one that actually has an interesting premise.  "Freaky Friday" with superheroes!  And I'm so glad to see Iman Vellani on the big screen, bringing a lot of Tom Holland-esque energy and more personality than Monica Rambeau and Carol Danvers put together.  

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Thru the Streaming Cracks

2022 was a strange and rather depressing year if you were a Disney/PIXAR animation fan.  "Turning Red" marked the third PIXAR film in a row that was released straight to Disney+, along with hybrid films "Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers" and "Disenchanted."  "Lightyear" did get a theatrical release, probably based on being part of the "Toy Story" franchise, but underperformed.  Then there was Disney's holiday release, "Strange World," which couldn't play in a few overseas markets because it has an LGBT main character.  It was also a flop, and upset fans suggested that a major contributing factor was that the film didn't enjoy the same marketing blitz that usually accompanies the release of Disney films.

Ex-CEO Bob Chapek definitely had a concerning attitude toward Disney's animated output, suggesting in October that he didn't think adult Disney+ viewers were watching the animated films, and that the success of "Encanto" on streaming after a weak box office performance pointed to a different potential model for Disney releases.  However, considering the big push to promote new streaming services over the past three years, his view was hardly unique.  A ton of films that would have gone to theaters in regular circumstances ended up premiering on streaming services, leaving theaters scrambling for content.  Ticket sales are still down significantly compared to where they were before the pandemic, though the recent success of films like "Avatar: The Way of Water" and "Top Gun: Maverick" suggest we're finally seeing some improvement. 

Premiering on streaming wouldn't be so bad for a film if it weren't for the drastically different treatment in regards to marketing and advertising.  There is so much competition for our attention that it is very easy for streaming content to get lost in the flood of options.  I've grumbled on this blog before that it's difficult to build up any kind of anticipation for some titles, because they're often dropped in our laps with little to no fanfare.  A "Beavis and Butt-Head" movie premiered in June on the Paramount+ service, which I didn't know existed until a trailer appeared three weeks ahead of its release date.  When a service like Netflix does commit significant resources to a film, like Guillermo Del Toro's "Pinocchio," pegged from early on as an awards contender, it often feels like it comes at the expense of others, like Henry Selick's "Wendell & Wild." 

It becomes very, very easy for smaller films to fall through the cracks.  I'm using animated films as an example, but this happens to media across all genres, and for all audiences.  Relying on word of mouth and only showing ads to subscribers of a particular service has its advantages, but too often this fails to connect the right piece of media with the right audience.  I can't count the number of times I've had to go through a laborious search process in order to find a movie or show I've been anticipating on a streamer that doesn't seem to want to acknowledge that it's there.  There's only a very short window for a new release to attract its audience.  And once a piece of content is no longer considered new, it's much harder for it to drum up any attention.  

Even when a film does well on streaming, it can be difficult to tell because the metrics are often so inaccessible.  "Turning Red" was the most streamed animated feature with a 2022 release date, but I have no idea how that compares to "The Sea Beast" on Netflix or "Hotel Transylvania: Transformania" on Amazon Prime.  Nielsen, the company that tracks television viewers, only started releasing streaming charts in September of 2020, and I've only seen the data more widely reported over the last year or so.  "Minutes watched" is the metric, which can be difficult to parse in some cases, though some alternatives like Flixpatrol use other criteria.  Also, we only tend to see data for the best performers instead of the data for everyone.

In theaters, however, the numbers are much more transparent.  The latest "Puss in Boots" movie was a modest hit after fighting its way back from a disappointing opening weekend - enough to give Universal the top two spots for highest grossing animated films at the 2022 domestic box office.  "Lightyear" just about made its money back, but "Strange World" was Disney animation's worst performer in ten years, actually making less than the studio-shuttering "Treasure Planet."  GKIDS anime titles had a great run, with "Dragon Ball: Super Hero" winning a slow weekend in August, while "One Piece: Red" and "Jujutsu Kaisen 0" both broke into the top five.

Of course, the box office numbers don't tell the whole story either.  "Lightyear" and "Strange World" were much more popular when they arrived on Disney+, and "Encanto" is the most streamed movie of 2022 on any platform.  Some have speculated that there's an expectation that Disney's animated films will inevitably be available on streaming, causing audiences to skip out on the theatrical run.  It's going to take a lot more time and a lot more movies to say anything for sure, but for now the low box office numbers sure make for bad optics.

At least Disney doesn't have to worry about their films truly becoming obscurities the way "Wendell and Wild" might.  "Strange World" still got a home media release and merchandise and a lot of people did see it on Disney+.  Disney has the resources and the incentive to keep their theatrical disappointments accessible, in the hopes of another "Encanto" style hit.  The features on Netflix and Amazon Prime and Paramount+ aren't nearly so lucky.  Did anyone see that new "Beavis and Butt-Head" movie?  Are we sure it really exists?

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My Favorite Guillermo Del Toro Film

I have a great fondness for cinema's fantasists, and there has been no modern creator of movie monsters and magic like Guillermo Del Toro.  I've followed his career since the 1990s, through the many announced projects that never got made, and all the long hiatuses between films.  He's one of the most recent directors I've written a "Great Directors" post for, but I honestly can't imagine the modern movie landscape without him.  

Del Toro's Spanish language films have always been better than his Hollywood output, because he's had far more creative freedom with them.  His films about the Spanish Civil War, "The Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth," are especially potent, offering a child's eye view of the horrors of war, through the lenses of a ghost story and a fairy tale narrative, respectively.  I had difficulty choosing between the two of them, but in the end I decided on "Pan's Labyrinth" because of the stronger characters.  By design, they're new takes on old archetypes - a little girl who must go on a quest, a trickster Faun who offers help, and several terrible enemies to overcome. 

Monsters are at the center of most Del Toro films, not just the creations of latex and fur, but the human beings who are capable of far worse horrors.  While the Faun and the Pale Man have become iconic, the movie's best monster is Captain Vidal, the evil Francoist who ruthlessly hunts down revolutionaries and subjugates everyone in his household.  Ofelia's private rebellion against him is mirrored in both her fight against the fairy tale monsters of the Faun's world, and in the actions of Mercedes and the other rebels working against Vidal.  What's so compelling and unexpected about the film is that "Pan's Labyrinth" is a grimly violent, unflinching war story and also a full throated fairy tale, full of fantasy flourishes, at the same time.  The two sides of the film complement each other, in a universe wide enough to accommodate them both.

I appreciate that Guillermo Del Toro has consistently claimed that everything that happens in "Pan's Labyrinth" is real, and not just a product of Ofelia's imagination - even though the film itself seems more undecided.  It reflects his commitment to the use of dream logic and the young child's viewpoint.  The different parts of the story, and different realities don't quite tie together as neatly as I expected, and some of the symbolism remains opaque, inviting plenty of personal interpretation.  I like that Del Toro lets parts of this universe remain mysterious and unknown, leaving little connections to other works, like the ruined labyrinth and the unfinished snippets of various stories, to point toward deeper, cavernous depths.  

Visually, the film is utterly stunning.  I love how the fantasy elements are realized in "Pan's Labyrinth" - full of danger and horror as much as awe and wonder.  There's always such an unreal, stylized look to Guillermo Del Toro's work, especially the use of color and lighting.  Not everything has a real world counterpart, and we see a mix of different influences, some literary and some mythological.  Here, the Faun and the other creatures are tied very closely to the natural world, an extension of the hidden, subterranean parts of the landscape that echo Ofelia's subconscious.  There are always little details and signs of extra effort put into every part of the frame.  A great deal of the film's marketing centered on the lengths Del Toro and Doug Jones went to in order to bring their wonderfully tactile monsters to life.  

Though the story is dark, the film is full of little pleasures - the murmured lullaby acting as a main theme, Ofelia's new dress turning her into an Alice in Wonderland figure (which is almost immediately subverted), and quick cameos by several familiar actors from other Del Toro projects.  Several motifs and design choices recur throughout his work, and are easily recognizable.  The nocturnal spirits in his recent "Pinocchio" film, for instance, immediately recall the design of the Faun.  However, as much as I've enjoyed Del Toro's recent films, I've been waiting for him to make another Spanish language film, something more personal.  A "Pan" sequel, "3993," was in the works for a while, but remains in limbo like so many of the other projects with his name attached over the years.

Despite all the setbacks, Del Toro has made a dozen films to date, and no one else could have made them.  And I hope we'll have many more in the years ahead.

What I've Seen - Guillermo Del Toro

Cronos (1993)

Mimic (1997)

The Devil's Backbone (2001)

Blade II (2002)

Hellboy (2004)

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

Pacific Rim (2013)

Crimson Peak (2015)

The Shape of Water (2017)

Nightmare Alley (2021)

Pinocchio (2022)

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Into the "Infinity Pool"

It takes a while for "Infinity Pool" to get to the big reveal of its premise, and for the movie to feel like it's a proper horror thriller.  I won't spill the details in order to preserve the surprise, but the trailer spells out everything, including a couple of the twists.  

Once it gets underway, however, this is definitely the work of Brandon Cronenberg, full of monstrously warped portraits of humanity, and unsettling imagery.  Like many other recent films, the story is about the class divide.  Here, our hero James (Alexander Skarsgaard) and his wife Em (Cleopatra Coleman) are vacationing at a resort in the fictional country of Li Tolqa.  They meet another couple, Gabi (Mia Goth) and Alban (Jalil Lespert), who influence James to indulge in his darker side.  Li Tolqa is a deeply religious country with a harsh judicial system.  However, the rich tourists can pay their way out of any consequences, including murder. 

I keep wanting to compare "Infinity Pool" to Alex Garland's "Men," though the two films are very different.  Both have a lot of good ideas, sometimes realized in brutally memorable ways.  Jessie Buckley's character keeps seeing visions of sinister men who mean to do her harm - all with the same face.  Alexander Skarsgaard's character also keeps seeing men with the same face, except that the context is totally different.  James is the one who is becoming dangerous.  These visions represent internal threats as well as external ones, and both movies rely heavily on metaphors and dream imagery.  The plots involve situations spinning out of the protagonists' control, a lot of shocking imagery involving violence and nudity, and unsettling, ambiguous conclusions.      

"Infinity Pool" doesn't have the visual or aural flair of "Men," but it's much more adept at provoking horror with similar concepts.  Its jaunts into surreal visuals tend to follow the same form as Cronenberg's previous work in "Possessor" - vertiginous, psychedelic manipulations of the film image in order to make human beings into alien grotesques.  To underline this, there are a few earlier scenes of the spoiled guests wearing striking, creepy masks.  I appreciate that the film isn't too interested in social commentary otherwise, and Cronenberg seems more  focused on coming up with disturbing scenarios to put onscreen.  The film is less about the injustice of the system that allows the bad behavior of the elites, and more about the effect this has on James' soul and psyche, so the struggle is mostly internal.  The more he dehumanizes others, the more he finds that he's dehumanizing himself.

Alexander Skarsgaard is perfectly fine here, and I applaud his willingness to participate in some extreme content.  Brandon Cronenberg is one of the few filmmakers today who embraces explicit sex scenes.  However, Mia Goth steals the picture, top to bottom.  She makes for a wildly entertaining manifestation of evil, whether it's her casual seduction tactics or her transformation into a jeering sadist, sipping wine atop a car hood as she torments her victim.  She has a bizarre breastfeeding scene late in the film that is one of the most unnerving things I've seen in ages.  After this and "Pearl," it's clear that horror is her genre, and I'm all for it.       

"Infinity Pool" has R and NC-17 cuts due to the sexual content, and I suspect that it's one of those films that some will adore and some will be turned off by completely.  I prefer cerebral horror, and have generally enjoyed the work of both Cronenbergs, so I knew what I was getting myself into.  I'll caution that this is definitely a more graphic entry, and I found myself comparing some scenes to Gaspar Noe's output, specifically "Enter the Void."  With that in mind, I don't think that "Infinity Pool" is Cronenberg's best, but I still enjoyed it thoroughly.  It presents a lot of thoughtful material to chew on, along with some well-deployed shocks to the system. 

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