May December

“Insecure people are very dangerous. I’m secure”

Possibly the cuntiest movie ever?

I ate this shit up. This, first and foremost, is an Acting, capital A, film. Not a single performance was out of place, everyone was giving their all, even people in the smallest of roles. However, it’s clear the attention here will be on the main three and rightly so, they are phenomenal. Each in their own right brings so much to their performance, every scene, every line delivered feels like it has so much subtext underneath each decision they were making.

I truly believe this is why the film was so immersive as you spend a large majority of the film not piecing together plot points or story but trying to understand who these people are. It’s wildly entertaining just being throw in the deep end of a world and learning the idiosyncrasies of these people and digging deeper.

Julianne Moore and Charles Melton are wonderful. Moore plays a woman who is clearly not right in the head, but the way in which she plays her, always on the edge but trying to fake this under a vail of security, is fascinating to watch as you truly never know when the act will give up. Also it leads to just some purely ridiculous and wonderfully funny scenes.

Melton is equally as brilliant and plays a complete opposite to Moore. He is quiet and contemplative, someone who has had their entire adulthood defined by a single event that he is lost, he doesn’t know who he is without the drama around him. There is so much to digest with his role and the journey he goes on, it’s such a nuanced story. I honestly think it’s a disservice summarising their roles here as there is so much detail in their performances and the film lets everyone be multifaceted.

Melton has been getting a lot of buzz and deservedly so but I think this opinion has came from him being in Riverdale. Far and away the standout of this film is Natalie Portman. Possibly her best performance and given her roles that’s not an easy remark. Just wow. She is saying lines and meaning completely different things. She’s so cutting and kind at once. She’s funny when she needs to be and is able to be dramatic in the next line. With so much of the film focusing on her journey it’s just wildly fascinating learning more about who she is and her process.

The film as a whole feels like it’s doing so much and never feels overwhelming. It’s a cutting look at actors and their processes, a scathing portrayal of how we as a society are commodifying infamous people, it’s a critique of biopics and films about actual people, it’s a criticism of tabloids and most of all it’s a amazing comedy. Haynes you’ve done it again, you’ve made another gay film