Certain Women

I enjoy the slow telling of human stories in a minimalist form, especially in a village setting with snow-covered hills in the background. But there has to be something to tell about. Certain Women is composed of a few characters’ stories that would have ended up on the floor if the most interesting stories had been selected for filming. What drove the director to film these in particular remains a mystery to me. Jane Campion’s films in a similar vein, for example, are something else entirely both formalistically and in terms of content. (02/25/2023)

A great Laura Dern, an uninteresting Michelle Williams, and an overly classic and increasingly masculine Kristen Stewart in a film that told itself that slow pacing is the direction of art films that have big ambitions. It’s too bad that not even one fate or one character were able to really engage me. I don't know why the film would be worth watching. (10/30/2017)