The Power of the Dog (2021)

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Campion's solemn and unaffecting Western, an adaptation of a novel by Thomas Savage, reminds me of the movies of Paul Thomas Anderson — The Master and Phantom Thread, for example — in the way its gorgeous, elaborate evocation of a world — cattle ranching in (New Zealand standing in for) Montana — ends up being for nought, the grand staging in the end unwarranted by what turns out to be just a queer little episode of crime involving four characters all so deeply repressed that their motivations scene-to-scene — if they are not vanished completely in one of the choppy-changey tv-series-style chapters — remain a mystery — in lieu of personality is offered up homosexuality and alcoholism, as if this is all we need to know.

★★★☆☆

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The Beguiled (2017)

In her movie based on Thomas Cullinan's novel, is Sofia Coppola commenting on the fortitude and independence of women as men all around them tear each other apart in the American Civil War, or suggesting women make really bad rash decisions in the absence of men, or is Coppola's equally celebrated and lamented light touch as a director in fact a fear of saying anything at all, and had Annie Wilkes hobbled Paul Sheldon to save his life, would 'Misery' have been a thriller of greater psychological depth, are the sorts of questions that come up while watching this beautifully acted, stunningly photographed (the scene in which Kirsten Dunst picks flowers in the overgrown garden of a great southern plantation house is alone worth the price of admission), occasionally amusing, but mystifying and very slight, slice of feminist, no, anti-feminist, no, fem...gothic period drama.

★★★★☆

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Hidden Figures (2016)

The moving moments in this crowdpleaser about three women who performed important work for NASA in the 50s and 60s are when someone offers a piece of chalk to a 'computer' or grants permission for a gifted student to study further - moments that should be unremarkable but sadly aren't; the lunacy of segregation is nicely countered with scenes of joyous family- and love lives.

★★★★☆

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Midnight Special (2016)

Some sort of commune, the government and a mum and dad vie to get their hands on a young boy whose eyes and hands glow and who seems to have an otherworldly ability to cause destruction, in this morose scifi road chase movie stuck in low gear, that goes nowhere slowly with only glum monotone passengers.

★☆☆☆☆

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All Good Things (2010)

I was not familiar with the actual Robert Durst or his bizarre true story of double (triple?) murder, and having watched this perfectly suspenseful thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst, I am none the wiser - it is acted beautifully, the details of the case are laid out suspensefully, but it feels like a mere highlight reel from an unsolved case, one that frustrates by being neither outright fact nor outright fiction.

★★★☆☆

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Melancholia (2011)

Stultifying in its attempts at sumptuousness and profundity, particularly in its first half, Melancholia, a melodrama about the world's least fun wedding played out as a planet heads on a collision course with Earth, is nonetheless so stunningly photographed, so well-acted by Kirsten Dunst, and so curious a work that it manages to overcome its many failings to be, well, watchable.

★★☆☆☆

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The Two Faces of January (2014)

This hugely enjoyable, old school suspense drama about a tour guide in Greece who becomes embroiled in the lives of an American couple, is based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith and as is her wont, centres on the power struggle and criminality of the two men as the trio traverse beautiful Greek and Turkish locations.

★★★★☆

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Spider-Man (2002)

Unusual casting choices (Tobey McGuire in the title role and Kirsten Dunst as his love interest) pay off in this hugely successful blockbuster treatment of the Marvel superhero comicbook character, one made before the incredible superhero glut of more recent times.

★★★★☆

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