Saltburn is a shitton of fun, and no amount of hemming and hawing will ever take away how much fun this film is. The lighting is cool, the characters are silly, and there’s some marvellous unusual beats. It’s hard film to rate because it’s so dang fun.
But it’s also frustratingly empty. In the year of our lord 2023, if you’re making a movie about rich weirdos, there’s an expectations that’s your going to critique structures of class or capital…
That foreign movie your uncle saw once, a decided he didn’t like foreign movies? Yeah, this is it. Well, one of them, anyway. Not bad, mind – there’s are smatterings of brilliance here: the Mongolian countryside is photographed beautifully, and the two central performances, particularly the child lead, are exceptional – but the film is deathly dull on almost every other front. The drawn-out shots are shallow rather than speaking to any specific longing or anguish. The characters are blank slates, and the film achieves little besides convincing me I should visit Mongolia.
Great tourism ad, mediocre film.
Broke: Moffat canonizing Big Finish’s Eighth Doctor Adventures for the 50th Anniversary minisode.
Woke: RTD decanonizing Big Finish’s I, Davros for a poo joke for the 60th Anniversary minisode.
