Trey Rosemond

Sure, it’s a little rinse-and-repeat and pretty hokey at times, but I’m not embarrassed to say this movie kind of scared the shit out of me. The sound in this movie is its biggest strength, and watching in a DOLBY theater made for an especially horrifying experience.

What a treat to see one of my favorite Ghibli movies (and possibly one of my favorite *movies* ever) in gorgeous 4K IMAX restoration. Life is worth living.

Rounding out my watchlist of the full Best Foreign Film category just in time for The Oscars, I finally got a chance to see *Sirāt*. The sound work, unsurprisingly, was the clear and immediate standout in this film, and of course it looks amazing and is full of great performances, too. This movie is shocking, intense, and mostly downright miserable. Even before the ‘jaw-dropping’ moments in it, I found myself going stir-crazy. What I felt was most interesting as the film went on was its ability to make me feel confined and trapped, even in a vast desert landscape.  Now, I just don’t think I was able to connect with it in the way many others did. While I thought it was shocking at first, as it went on I felt it really jumped the shark for me. It just felt like an absurd and cartoonishly cruel revolving door of trauma that lost its luster the more that happened. I also understand that it was 100% the point to drop certain plot lines and make way for the story to develop into something else, but for me it felt like a bit of a disappointment to abandon certain character motivations that seemed like were going somewhere also very interesting. While still a great film, this was my least favorite of the films in its category, and it easily could’ve been swapped for *No Other Choice* and I wouldn’t have lost a wink of sleep.

I was severely disappointed by this film. I felt much of this to be some of the most hot topic joker-core, wannabe subversive, fake edgy horseshit I’ve seen since *Suicide Squad *(2016). I found The Bride’s split-personality schtick to be more irritating than charmingly quirky. And on that note, the Mary Shelley shit did not work for me for even a SECOND. It’s also sorely missing is any sense of what our title character was like prior to her transformation. With no reference point to track her development, it makes it difficult to connect with her and almost completely defeats the point of this kind of story. I say all of this, but where it won me over, it *really* won me over. I really enjoy pockets of absurdism in an otherwise somewhat grounded narrative, and this movie has plenty. It also has a lot of very interesting visual ideas in general, specifically in the character/costume design. And I just really liked the premise: a modern take on *The Bride of Frankenstein as a *surreal, Bonnie & Clyde-style thriller from the perspective of the Bride. And when this movie is that is when it was most fun for me, I especially admired its ability to craft a genuinely touching romance without diluting the horrific nature of the characters’ original dynamic. Overall, there was definitely fun to be had, I just don’t think it was for me.