She Said (★★★★☆): drama, directed by Maria Schrader, 129 min.
For more than twenty years, the misconduct of film producer Harvey Weinstein has been covered up. The fact that Weinstein was eventually sentenced to years in prison in 2020, including for rape, is partly due to the investigation of Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, two journalists from The New York Times. She Said is the film adaptation of the book of the same name that Twohey and Kantor, played by Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan, wrote about the Weinstein case.
What applies to the book also applies to the film, writes reviewer Pauline Kleijer: it is told calmly, detailed and yet exciting. Initially, Weinstein’s victims do not want to talk to the journalists: they know how far his power extends, not to mention any strangling contracts. But slowly but surely, Twohey and Kantor are chipping away at the defensive line. ‘She Said is modest rather than rousing, a pamphlet for the female voice rather than a barrel of testosterone.’
Look What You Made Me Do (★★★★☆): documentary, directed by Coco Schrijber, 83 min.
Thirty thousand women are murdered by their partners every year. Documentary maker Coco Schrijber shows in Look What You Made Me Do the devastating and still alive and kicking culture behind that icy fact. Clearly not a subject that lends itself to a balanced, nuanced documentary, writes Berend Jan Bockting, and that is not necessary at all.
The four women in front of Schrijber’s camera are able to forcefully tilt the image of perpetrators and victims. They all tell similar stories, ‘of love that turned into distrust and ended in hatred. With a knife, gun or poison they took the law into their own hands,’ according to our reviewer. With the punishments Look What You Made Me Do not quiet for long. ‘The madness of the world in which they committed their act of desperation weighs several times more heavily here.’
Pinocchio (★★★★☆): fantasy, directed by Guillermo del Toro, 117 min.
Already in 2008, Guillermo del Toro announced his adaptation of fantasy classic Pinocchio, about the doll boy with the long nose. Just the fact that it’s finally here makes it Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio a feast of a film, according to reviewer Kevin Toma. Del Toro wanted to create a gritty stop-motion adventure that moves the story to Mussolini’s Italy. Thanks to Netflix, viewers can see what the director had in mind all along.
‘Rarely was Pinocchio born so alienating,’ writes Toma. “A breathing heap of carving, wobbling and staggering with its bony limbs. A lonely creature too, which hardly seems related to the iconic, much more humane Disney variant.’ Yet the little guy knows how to win you over right away – with dancing, singing and even yodelling. Toma: This one Pinocchio has become exactly the uncompromising, touching and crazy treat it wants to be.’