Promising Young Woman (2020) Review

Time: 101 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence, deals with rape and suicide
Cast:
Carey Mulligan as Cassandra “Cassie” Thomas
Bo Burnham as Dr. Ryan Cooper
Alison Brie as Madison McPhee
Clancy Brown as Stanley Thomas
Jennifer Coolidge as Susan Thomas
Laverne Cox as Gail
Chris Lowell as Al Monroe
Connie Britton as Dean Elizabeth Walker
Director: Emerald Fennell

Nothing in Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) life is what it appears to be — she’s wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she’s living a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs from the past.

Promising Young Woman was one of my most anticipated movies of 2020. From the trailer it looked interesting and bold, and Carey Mulligan looked like she was going to be fantastic in the lead role. Despite it being released a bit later than was originally planned, I actually did manage to watch Promising Young Woman in cinemas and I’m glad I did. Promising Young Woman is stylistic, provocative, excellently made and acted, and it is one of the best movies of 2020.

I won’t say too much about the plot itself, because the less you know going in, the better the experience will be for you. The script from Emerald Fennell was great, I was invested for the entire of its runtime of 113 minutes. One thing worth noting is that the trailer is quite different and not quite representative of the movie. It’s not nearly as violent as I expected it to be (it was given a R18 in New Zealand). However, it was also more disturbing than I expected it to be. It is a little hard to categorise this movie, but the most accurate description I could give is that it is a dark drama and comedy with some thriller elements. The tone does jump all over the place sometimes, but for whatever reason, Fennell pulls it off. It was entertaining and funny at many points, and there’s even a prominent romantic subplot. At the same time the story is still very dark, and a lot of disturbing things happen in it. With the subject matter alone, I can see it potentially being a bit triggering for some people, so keep that in mind before watching. For the most part you don’t really see anything graphic, but rape and sexual assault are nonetheless very prominent aspects of the movie. I’ve seen some people call the movie a bit shallow and honestly I can see why to a degree, even though it was handled much better than I was expecting.

While Promising Young Woman is sort of a revenge movie, it’s a bit different from what you’d expect from it, taking some aspects in different directions. It might have you a bit confused in its first act as you try to figure out what’s happening, who the main character is, what is she doing, etc. I was on board with the movie throughout, but at a certain point it becomes much more mature and asks questions about the protagonist in a great way. With regard to the main character, the film does not demean her motivations, but it definitely asks if any of the things that she does is actually solving anything. It does slow down towards the middle of the film, but I still liked watching it. Then there’s the elephant in the room, the one aspect that could make or break the movie for many, the third act and particularly the ending. Without going into it too much, the ending goes in quite a different direction compared to the rest of the movie, and will be polarising for some people. Now I must admit that through certain circumstances, I already knew of the ending going into the movie, so it wasn’t as shocking for me like it was for others. Having said that, watching the movie from the perspective of someone who knew what was going to happen, to a degree I felt that it was the inevitable conclusion from looking at the overall story and the lead character. With that said, I can definitely see why some people take issue with it.

The casting of everyone was pitch perfect. Carey Mulligan gives quite possibly the best performance of her career as lead character Cassie, she was the perfect person to play this role. She covers such a range of emotions over the course of the movie, and there’s even moments where it’s almost like she switches between 2 different personalities in a single scene. The trauma that is a living part of Cassie’s life (which I won’t reveal) doesn’t feel forced when the viewer watches Mulligan act. There’s a lot of nuance to it, and it isn’t just sadness vibes to reflect her trauma. Overall, Carey Mulligan gave such a thrilling, complex performance, she completely owned the role and understood the character so well. The supporting cast really brought so much to the table to make this film work as well. Bo Burnham is surprisingly great as Cassie’s boyfriend. Even if his character’s fairly predictable from a plot perspective, Bo makes the character his own and has excellent chemistry with Mulligan. Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge were funny as Cassie’s parents, and their scenes helped fill out her character in a satisfying way. Other cast members like Alison Brie, Alfred Molina and more also do well in their few (but vital) scenes.

It’s not just the script from Emerald Fennell that was great, it was her direction of the movie too. This is her debut feature film, and it’s definitely a bold and impressive debut at that. Promising Young Woman is meticulously directed on all fronts. First of all, visually it’s absolutely stunning. The visual element of this film is intoxicating, and Fennell seems to have an already established style that feels signature to her. The use of colour is particularly fantastic. Fennell didn’t overlook one production element down to the set design, to the costume design. The sound design was great and stood out too surprisingly, seeing this in a theatre emphasised this and allowed me to really experience it. The use of music and the music choices themselves are fantastic across the board. The amount of well timed needle drops and the sound mix came together to put you directly in Cassandra’s headspace. For example, there’s one moment where it features a violin rendition of Brittany Spears’s Toxic, and it added so much to the scene it was included in.

Promising Young Woman is an unpredictable, well crafted, shocking, and timely movie. It’s excellently written and directed, and the casting is perfect, with Carey Mulligan giving her best performance yet. Now it’s for sure one of the most controversial and polarising movies of 2020, and it won’t work for everyone, but I think it’s one of the best movies from that year.

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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) Review

Time: 133 Minutes
Age Rating:
Cast:
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs
Willie Watson as The Kid
David Krumholtz as Frenchman in Saloon
E. E. Bell as Saloon Piano Player
Tom Proctor as Cantina Bad Man
Clancy Brown as Çurly Joe

Near Algodones
James Franco as Cowboy
Stephen Root as Teller
Ralph Ineson as The Man in Black
Jesse Luken as Drover

Meal Ticket
Liam Neeson as Impresario
Harry Melling as Artist (Harrison)

All Gold Canyon
Tom Waits as Prospector
Sam Dillon as Young Man

The Gal Who Got Rattled
Zoe Kazan as Alice Longabaugh
Bill Heck as Billy Knapp
Grainger Hines as Mr. Arthur
Jackamoe Buzzell as Boarder #3
Jefferson Mays as Gilbert Longabaugh
Ethan Dubin as Matt

The Mortal Remains
Tyne Daly as Lady (Mrs. Betjeman)
Brendan Gleeson as Irishman (Clarence)
Jonjo O’Neill as Englishman (Thigpen)
Saul Rubinek as Frenchman (René)
Chelcie Ross as Trapper
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

An anthology film comprised of six stories, each dealing with a different aspect of life in the Old West.

The Coen Brothers have done some good movies in the past but I can never tell how much I’ll like their movies. Hail Caesar wasn’t particularly liked loved a lot of people but I really liked it, whereas their beloved movies Fargo and Inside Llewyn Davis I liked but didn’t love, not to mention I didn’t like their comedy ‘classic’ Raising Arizona at all. This isn’t the first Western movie that they have done, with No Country for Old Men and True Grit showing that they are great with the genre, but it is the first anthology movie that they’ve done. It’s such a weird idea for them and I really didn’t know what to expect. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a odd mix of western stories written and directed by The Coen Brothers that range from okay to actually pretty good. I’m glad I watched it but it’s far from the filmmaking duo’s best.

Now the movie is split into 6 different chapters and it’s just impossible for me to talk about the movie on a whole without talking about them individually. Therefore, I’ll separate my review by the individual chapters. The first chapter is The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. It’s about Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson), a cheerful outlaw and singer who comes across other outlaws and hilarity and chaos insures. So much of this chapter is cartoonish and over the top, I was entertained by it but I was expecting much more. Really the highlight of this chapter was the titular character of Buster Scruggs played by Tim Blake Nelson. He’s so over the top and full of energy that it’s fun to watch him, he’s almost like a cartoon character put into live action. While all of the chapters were directed well, this was particularly well directed and put together. Though it was fun, by the end it just comes across as a fun skit written and directed by The Coen Brothers rather than them actually making part of a movie. I’m not exactly sure why they decided to name the whole movie after this chapter, it’s way shorter than I thought it would be and was just sort of funny and that’s it. While I had fun with this chapter, it did make me nervous about the rest of the movie, and whether it would be just fun western skits for the entirety of the movie. Know that despite what I said, I actually had a lot of fun with it and it’s really good. I just wish that it was longer and had more of a purpose.

The second chapter is titled Near Algodones and stars James Franco as a cowboy who tries to perform a robbery. The best thing I can say about it indicates at least that each chapter of this movie will have a different tone and story, it’s not cartoonishly goofy as Buster Scruggs and is a little more serious, yet it has some effective dark comedy and James Franco is also good in a role that we don’t usually see him in. Again though, it feels so incredibly short, around the length of Buster Scruggs and probably even shorter. The whole movie is 2 hours and 10 minutes long yet they couldn’t seem to make each of them at least 20 minutes long. The found footage anthology movie V/H/S seemed to have longer segments. However, it’s not just that it’s short, while Buster Scruggs can get by with it being a goofy comedic skit, Near Algodones is a more serious story, and so doesn’t have that to fall back on. While it wasn’t bad by any means, there wasn’t really anything particularly interesting or even that entertaining about this chapter, outside of some slightly humorous moments. Having watched this segment, I had even more worries about how the overall movie would be.

The third chapter is titled Meal Ticket, starring Liam Neeson as an travelling impresario with an armless and legless artist played by Harry Melling. Again, significantly different tone and type of story and it was such a weird choice of story to make in the western setting, especially in contrast to the previous two stories. However, it’s from this point that things started to look up for the overall movie. It didn’t really have any comedy whatsoever, thankfully though it is done much better than Near Algodones. It’s about as long as the Buster Scruggs segment yet we actually get to learn more about the characters and their situations. Both Neeson and Melling are also great in their roles and their subtle performances made the chapter even better. This story isn’t what you’d typically think of when it comes to western stories but it really works for this movie. It’s a lot more atmospheric and darker from the others, also with a rather bleak ending which fits right along with The Coen Brothers’ other dark endings, all around Meal Ticket was pretty decent.

The fourth chapter is titled All Gold Canyon and is about Tom Waits as a prospector who arrives in a mountain valley and decides to dig for gold, again, very different kind of story compared to the others. Something that’s immediately different is the setting. The first two segments were very desert-western based, and the third mostly took place at towns in night. The fourth chapter however takes place in a beautiful and green field, making it by far the most visually stunning of all the segments. It’s longer than the previous segments and is the easiest to watch of all the segments. It’s really just Tom Waits in the story in terms of characters, and he carries it very well. Overall one of the better chapters of the movie.

The fifth chapter is titled The Gal Who Got Rattled, which is about a woman (Zoe Kazan) and her brother (Jefferson Mays), who are traveling in a wagon train towards Oregon. Now I heard from some people how the movie falls apart from this segment as well as the 6th chapter. It doesn’t feel like a typical Coen Brothers’ movie, both in concept and in terms of writing and dialogue. It is also the longest of the 6 segments, and is more drawn out with a slower pace, which feels really jarring compared to the prior segments which moved rather fast. I will say that it does feel like the most well rounded of the stories. Most of the other chapters feel like either brief snapshots of what the stories as full complete movies could be, or random skits. The Gal Who Got Rattled on the other hand actually works as a short film on its own, with characters effectively fleshed out. You could probably even see the segment turned into a full length movie. The actors all did a great job with their performances particularly Zoe Kazan, Bill Heck and Grainger Hines. Although it’s very out of place compared to the other chapters, The Gal Who Got Rattled is at the very least one of the better segments.

The sixth chapter is titled The Mortal Remains, and is about five people who ride in a stagecoach together to Fort Morgan. It feels like such a weird story to end the movie. Admittedly while I was on board with every chapter leading up to this, when it got to this one I sort of switched off. After the 30+ minute long segment of The Gal Who Got Rattled which was on such a large scale, it felt like an alright place for the movie to stop. However it was immediately followed by 5 people just talking, and through a lot of it, I just didn’t care what was going on, at least before the halfway point. That’s not to say that there aren’t some good moments to it though, after the halfway point it does pick up quite a bit, also Jonjo O’Neil, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, Tyne Daly and Chelcie Ross were quite good in their roles. However it still is one of the weaker of the stories.

To summarise: whether you like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs or not, there’s no arguing that it really feels like a Coen Brothers movie… well there are at least plenty of glimpses of it. A lot of the direction and writing, especially the dialogue and dark comedy feels quite a bit like The Coen Brothers’ work. I can see some of these segments working as entire full length stories. Since they titled the movie after the first chapter, I couldn’t see why they didn’t just make the whole movie about that. And if The Coen Brothers’ were committed to doing a bunch of short stories, it might’ve been better if they just made it a mini series, 6 episodes with each episode ranging from 40 minutes to an hour. They don’t really have any connections to each other whatsoever, and each of the stories don’t really seem to serve any point except to every time come to the conclusion that it was rough living in the Wild West. That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of good things to this movie. It is visually stunning throughout all the segments and are directed well, and the actors do great jobs, particularly Tim Blake Nelson, James Franco, Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan and Bill Heck.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a bit of a mixed bag, while all the chapters are well directed and acted, much of the segments are way too short and aren’t interesting enough and as mentioned above aren’t as great as you’d hope given who worked on them. If you’re a fan of The Coen Brothers, I’d say definitely check it out, it’s on Netflix and will just be 2 hours and 10 minutes of your time. As for the rest of you, I’m not entirely sure I can recommend it. Despite my thoughts on some of the segments and the overall movie, I will praise the Coen Brothers for at least trying something different. It is one of their weakest movies though.