Insecure people are very dangerous, aren't they?

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2023

#28 :  May December

Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman potent in Todd Haynes’ drama, with Portman as an actor spending time with Moore’s married sex offender as research for playing her in a film.

I know this had a lot of awards buzz, but there would have been no chance of me watching it otherwise - although I quite liked Carol, I've not generally got on with Todd Haynes's films and I can't say the subject matter particularly drew me in.

And all I can say is that I really tried, but eventually I just accepted that life's too short to watch yet another film I really wasn't enjoying. It's all looks very nice and it's, of course, well acted - but all the characters seem to be both unhappy and unpleasant and I just thought "why am I doing this to myself?" (and I'm running out of time this year). I did check the plot on Wikipedia (apparently it's a "black comedy" - spoiler alert, it isn't) and in giving up it doesn't sound like I missed out on any sudden conversion to an enjoyable watch.

As I previously mentioned, it is well acted - you'd certainly expect nothing else from Julianne Moore and Natalia Portman but Charles Melton also deserves a name check in the role of the husband (and to be fair to him, he's only unhappy and seems perfectly pleasant).

I may not have liked it, but the critics most certainly did with some of them going out of their way to praise the humour - critics are odd people, aren't they? On Rotten Tomatoes, it has got a lower audience rating than critic rating but it's still surprisingly high, so maybe I'm wrong and it's a great film. If you wish to find out, then you're welcome to do so and it's available to stream on Sky or to rent in all the usual places - but you'd obviously have to be in a more receptive mode than I was.

#29 - Unfortunately underwhelming
#27 - Perfectly fine