Here are the three movies that I watched this week that I found most interesting to share:
Hunted (2020)
A modern take on The Little Red Riding Hood tale. Hunted is a 2020 thriller from French director/comic artist Vincent Paronnaud, who also brought us the beautiful Persepolis. Eve goes for a night out at a bar and meets a charming man. They dance, have fun and end up making out in his car. Suddenly another man enters the car and starts the engine. They want to take Eve somewhere where they can harm her… and film it. On their way there, though, they have a car accident and Eve escapes running through the forest with the two men chasing her. Eve must run for her life or try to fight back. The men keep getting closer and closer, but the forest is on Eve’s side.
I enjoyed Hunted a lot; I felt it was different from the same old “killer hunts woman in the woods” premise. The movie has almost no graphic violence and is very metaphorical and trippy. It was cool to see a violent portrayal (a horror movie) about the strong connection between women and nature.
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Another movie with almost zero graphic violence in it. Promising Young Woman was a strange movie. It transitions from thriller to romantic comedy and back in a pretty cool way, making you switch from liking a character to hating him along the way. In the past, Cassie went to med school with her best friend Nina. After one of the other students rapes Nina, Cassie drops out of school to take care of her but eventually Nina commits suicide. All this we don’t see; it’s just alluded in the film.
Years after, Cassie works at a coffee shop and still lives with her parents. At night she goes out to bars and pretends to be drunk, waits for some guy to approach her pretending to take care of her and when he eventually takes her to his home to have sex with her, she breaks her act and scares the living crap out of the dudes. We, again, don’t see if she’s ever harmed one of these guys, but you can guess she has. Cassie meets a guy who used to go to med school with her and they start dating out. He tells Cassie that the man who raped Nina is very successful now and will be getting married soon. This is when Cassie starts her revenge.
Cassie's revenge is smart and a lot of fun to watch, you absolutely get the feeling her situation leading up to her revenge has happened to a lot of women everywhere.
I found the rom-com cast & aesthetic of the movie to be very cool, but some things in the plot and the ending felt a bit flat.
Beowulf (2007)
Damn do I love this movie! I recently re-watched this 2007 animation classic and fell in love with it again. With the exception of the slow-ish part between Grendel’s death and the arrival of the dragon, Beowulf is non-stop sword action and bloody fun. I think Zemeckis was trying to create a flick as epic as possible and, with the budget he had, he absolutely succeeded. At least as much as one could with the CGI technology they had in 2007. When I watched Beowulf this last time, I felt I was watching an R-Rated version of Shrek. The cast is amazing (Jolie; Hopkins; Malkovich…) and the animation is fantastic.
After Beowulf kills Grendel, a monster that has been terrorizing a small Norwegian village, he is crowned king. Years after, Grendel's mother will come back to claim what's hers.
I probably love this movie so much out of nostalgia, because it came out when I was a teenager and it was one of the first movies I went to the cinema to watch by myself. But don’t be fooled, Beowulf is not only one of the most entertaining animation pictures of all time, it also delves in philosophical, religious and historical themes.
Although I will admit it's a tough read, anyone who enjoys this movie and the epicness of those times should read the original Beowulf poem.
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