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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The Bling Ring (2013)

Sofia Coppola's movie based on a Vanity Fair article about a spate of celebrity home robberies that occurred across Calabasas, California in 2008, is a breezy work of 86 minutes that presents the thieves, a gang of petulant fame- and fashion-fixated high schoolers, in their own superficial light, as wilful narcissicists who rifle through celebrities' private homes and personal belongings in the same way they browse glossy magazines or click through the TMZ website.

★★★☆☆

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Lost In Translation (2003)

Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson float around Tokyo detached and lost but end up connecting and in a country as inaccessible to outsiders as Japan - a country that Director Sofia Coppola clearly knows well - the connection they form is a strong one.

★★★★☆

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