Vox Lux

Very strange, not wholly successful, but Jude Law is fantastic in it, and I'd always rather watch a filmmaker take a risk..."A Dark Star is Born."

It's episodic by design. Even so, the plot is prone to unnerving lurches, like a baked and boozed Celeste struggling to walk on high heels and spaghetti legs.

Beautifully directed by the former actor Brady Corbet...this is a dark and sometimes unnerving dissection of contemporary culture, and the violence and sensuality that drive it.

An unflinching cautionary tale on the price of fame.

Corbet's thesis that a world in thrall to spectacle risks conflating hedonism with horror has a strong whiff of the undergraduate about it. In practice, though, his movie is a satisfying experience that consistently resists hysteria.

Vox Lux does what good pop songs do - it shushes your doubts and quickens your pulse.

What makes Vox Lux so unique and perhaps even provocative is that it is up to us to establish when, how and in what way exactly her insecurities took over. The most important moments of [...] the whole film - are the ones we don't get to see on the screen

However superbly shot, acted, and well-intentioned its message, Vox Lux remains somewhat puzzling, if admirable for its commitment to unconventionality.

Episode 23: Vox Lux / The Guilty / Shoplifters / The Mule / Rififi

Despite the film's conversations on violence, art, and the commodification of stars, Corbet does not turn Vox Lux into a sermon on the dangers of fame. It simply observes.