Red Sparrow is a 2018 spy-thriller film directed by Francis Lawrence who worked with Jennifer Lawrence (the star here) on a couple of the Hunger Games movies, but this is a very different beast. Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova (in, it has to be said, a not entirely convincing Russian accent), and Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenarts and Charlotte Rampling star as the film's secondary characters. This one is a pretty big departure from what Lawrence has done in the past, although it has to be said that she's making some pretty bold career choices. I'm not the first one to say that, and for a good reason: it's true. After last year's Mother! it appeared as if she was trying purposefully trying to appear in more "mature" films, and believe me, it doesn't get much more mature than Red Sparrow. The film plays out like one of those schlocky exploitation from the seventies, in that there's sexual violence, sex, violence, torture, and all manner o
Surburbicon is a 2017 film directed by George Clooney and written by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Julianne Moore and Matt Damon as a fairly well-to-do married couple (well, Julianne Moore plays his wife and his sister-in-law.) Oscar Isaac has a small roll in this, too. In terms of genre, this is...a thriller? a black comedy? a satire? It's all three and none of them at once, but more on that later.
I walked into the screening of this knowing nothing about it other than it stars Matt Damon and Julianne Moore. I hadn't really paid attention to much of the marketing for this because I wanted to go into it and be surprised. For the entirety of this film (bear in mind, I didn't know this was directed by the Coens at the time), all I could think was that this is just like Fargo with a lot of heavy-handed symbolism.
Imagine my disappointment when I realised the truth. I was just left thinking, how on earth could they have let something like this out into the world? I am a white man, and there are people who are more qualified to speak about the race problems with the film than me, but just know that they are pretty present, and also presented in a very heavy-handed way.
Now, let me get to the narrative structure of this film. It's just all over the place. It starts off with a scene showing a bunch of suburbanites being racist, and then it turns into a black comedy (if there are jokes, there are no funny ones), which is basically just Blood Simple crossed with Fargo. This film doesn't have a genre - it's just a mish-mash of a bunch of different films spliced together.
Which begs the question, who is this for? If you wanted to see a film like this, then you could just watch one of the aforementioned Coen Brothers films. If you wanted to watch a film about racism, then you could choose from so many that are better. If you wanted to watch an edge-of-your-seat thriller, you could watch Zodiac or Nightcrawler.
Here's another thing: George Clooney also has a writing credit on this, and I sincerely hope all of this heavy-handed political commentary shoved in at the beginning and the end which has very little to say was his idea.
The only thing about this film I truly liked was Oscar Isaac, and he's only in around two scenes. Before the credits rolled, I was left cold by this, but when I realised who wrote this I was just disappointed. I don't know why this film exists, and I don't know why the Coens agreed for this script to be turned into a film. There's really no reason to see this film. It's one of the worst films the Coen Brothers have ever been involved in.
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