TRIANGLE OF SADNESS | AMSTERDAM | HELLRAISER
Pop Culture Weekly Round-Up 07/10/2022
Happy Friday, everyone! I’m back with some Pop Culture recommendations for your weekend. In this week’s newsletter, I share some thoughts on three movies. Hulu’s horror flick HELLRAISER. The very messy AMSTERDAM and the thought-provoking and hopefully Oscar-winning TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. There is also a playlist with five songs I listened to during the week.
QUICK THOUGHTS
HELLRAISER is surprisingly better than I was expecting. Mainly because the director David Bruckner provided the structure that was lacking in the many sequels of this franchise. The plot is straightforward, a young woman fighting addiction acquires an antique puzzle box. But of course, she is unaware that it will summon the Cenobites, a gang of nasty supernatural monsters from another dimension. I liked how this has the original's flick morbid atmosphere but with a slasher spin on it. The first two acts of HELLRAISER are enjoyable but somewhat formulaic. And if the third act had gone in the route it looked it was going, I would probably be writing a very different review of it. However, Bruckner puts one well-timed twist that takes us all in a deliciously interesting direction. Overall, David Bruckner's HELLRAISER is perfect for the spooky season and will be a treat for some of the franchise's faithful followers. After a string of poor sequels that failed to live up to the original, we finally have something worth watching.
AMSTERDAM was written and directed by David O. Russell (JOY, AMERICAN HUSTLE) and has a star-studded cast that includes Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, and Taylor Swift. The film has a rich and unsettling true story. Rich American businesspeople planned to stage a coup against newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Unfortunately, the combination of AMSTERDAM's many high-profile actors and its intricate plot resulted in a film that was inferior to my expectations. The first 40 minutes kind of held my attention since it introduced an intriguing narrative, but after that, it goes on and on to nowhere and feels just like a tangled mess of occurrences. The pacing is terrible, the acting is uneven, and the story is lackluster. Visually the movie is quite pleasant. You can get through it by admiring the clothes, the lighting design, and the cinematography. It's a shame that is so confusing and never manages to be as entertaining as it claims to be. Despite being a genuine attempt to do something great, AMSTERDAM is one of the year’s biggest wasted opportunities.
TRIANGLE OF SADNESS was the winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year and it was written and directed by Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund (THE SQUARE). The film is a fun/crazy ride and follows models Carl and Yaya when they are invited to join a group of extremely wealthy guests on a luxurious cruise. Initially, everything seems worthy of an Instagram post, but the cruise ends tragically, leaving the passengers stranded on a desert island. Nothing that I will write here can properly prepare you for the intensity of this film. Because the shocking degree to which it accurately describes our current reality is unsettling. TRIANGLE OF SADNESS is a hilarious, sarcastic, and caustic parody of social roles and class. It is wildly amusing but also disgusting and nauseating at times. The film is well-directed and the cast does a truly exceptional job. It could have been a bit shorter, but it's still very entertaining. A nearly flawless strike on the mega-rich.
TOP 5 SONGS
These were the 5 songs on heavy rotation in my house last week. You can listen to them on Spotify and YouTube.
We had a date night Thursday to see the highly anticipated (at least by us) Amsterdam. I gave a nod to the experience in a footnote of today’s newsletter:
“If you have not already given up your hard-earned money on this trainwreck, I beg you: do not. The plot was convoluted, and the actors seemed to have only gotten the script the morning before shooting their scenes. We walked out after suffering an hour of the mess, and that’s saying a lot since we have sat through some really terrible movies like You Don’t Mess with the Zohan and To Rome with Love.”
So, Triangle of Sadness is “Gilligan’s Island”, but the Howell’s aren’t kinda funny?