3 Best Movies To Watch After Marie Antoinette (2006)

The remaining festival offerings in horror are satisfyingly gory, but some fall short in plot & characterization. (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) After a strong beginning, South by Southwest’s “Midnighters” category wraps up with more ecohorror, an animated fantasy epic, and yet more small town folks acting weird. Gorehounds will be pleased to know that over the top violence seems to be making a comeback in horror, if some of the films featured here are any indication. Regrettably, in some cases it’s at the cost of a cohesive, fleshed out plot. Continue Reading →

Mira Nair’s 2004 adaptation of Vanity Fair opens with our famous heroine, Becky Sharp, as a young child tearfully watching her father sell off a portrait of her deceased mother. The portrait, a dark Gainsborough-esque profile with its sut-colored background, dusty white skin, and faintly rosy cheeks, means so much for young Becky, and us in Nair’s audience. As the camera tracks at child-height, watching the portrait leave the shop, Becky loses the last connection to a lineage that will both help and hinder her social mobility.  Continue Reading →