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PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE is a simmering — and I do mean simmering — romance about a woman set to be married against her will and the artist hired to paint her official portrait. Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel both turn in great performances, and the movie is conspicuously short on male voices, which enhances the creeping fear that this whirlwind affair is an unsustainable escape from the real world and can’t survive. Everything is filmed with a loving, painterly eye (natch) and I really appreciated the careful, sparse use of music throughout. The story is short on surprises, but this is one of those movies that you just want to soak in. Recommended.

I’ve always liked the first GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, but I’ve never been able to love it the way so many people online seem to. First, the stuff I like: The soundtrack is incredible, the jokes are pretty good, and — most importantly — the visuals are striking. While most Marvel movies look “kind of ugly,” Guardians is colorful and inventive and really committed to the mission of being a different sort of movie from the preceding MCU flicks. That said, I have a hard time locating the characters that should be guiding us through this fantastic land because their motivations are so surface-level: Revenge, lust, greed, power, loneliness. The villain in particular, a wannabe-Space-Hitler named Ronan the Accuser, feels like a lesser Doctor Who villain-of-the-week, and never really coalesces into a believable threat. Also, special commendation to Dave Bautista as Drax, the absolute MVP of this movie. Every one of his line deliveries is gold.

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