By: Trevor Chartrand I recently covered 2023’s A Disturbance in the Force, the documentary about the Star Wars Holiday Special. Now, if there’s anything to take away from that doc, it’s that bipedal apes grunting at each other for 90 minutes doesn’t exactly qualify as captivating entertainment. It’s a lesson directors David and Nathan Zellner would have benefited from before making Sasquatch Sunset.
Golda kicks off a season of “Oscar bait”, movies that try very hard to make an impression towards the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As much as Guy Nattiv’s film may have been conceived from a good place, with the movie’s heavy use of make-up and prosthetics to transform Oscar-winner Helen Mirren into Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, it’s hard for viewers to dismiss this possible pandering.
The World to Come, the second feature from Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold (The Sleepwalker), is a plodding meditation on love and grief that is salvaged from mediocrity by the palpable chemistry between its lead actors. Still, the film doesn’t offer much that is fresh of exciting and rehashes some tired lesbian period piece tropes.
Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) has recently dodged being typecast as timid characters, but he leans back into those traits to headline The Art of Self-Defense.
