Navigating the Marvel Cinematic Universe — or is it a Multiverse now? In some ways, the blockbuster follows the MCU template in terms of style and story, but it also introduces something bold and new: a superhero saga where Black power is the subject both behind and in front of the camera. Catnip for English majors? No question. For that alone, the film — whose director recently became the first African American woman and queer woman of color to get a Criterion release — is well worth seeing.
Up until her quietly heartbreaking fifth feature, French director Mia Hansen-Love was something of a specialist in stories about young people experiencing life-changing events, whether breakups, the deaths of loved ones or careers cut short by failure.
In Things to Come , she tackles the same themes from the perspective of a much older character, and the result finds her reaching an impressive new level of maturity. Treadwell was killed in by one of the bears he spent many summers observing, filming, interacting with and obsessing over. A troubled man-child given to anthropomorphizing the carnivores around him, Treadwell comes across as at once ridiculous, likable and tragic in footage he shot himself, edited together with interviews Herzog shot for the film.
I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. It introduced film watchers to two exceptionally gifted actors who etch an indelible portrait of friendship — Sidney Flanigan as the resilient high schooler who needs the procedure, and Talia Ryder as the cousin who goes to heroic lengths for her.
In her readiness to meet a charged issue head-on, and her agile melding of civic alarm with a beautifully observed coming-of-age narrative, Hittman took the American abortion drama to places it had never before gone.
