Adapted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story, David Fincher’s THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (2008) is beautiful, wistful, and otherwise pretty empty.

The film begins with an old woman (Cate Blanchett) on her deathbed in a hospital that is about to be struck by Hurricane Katrina. She asks her daughter (Julia Ormond) to read a diary kept by a man named Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), who claims to have been born in his 80s and lived his life in reverse. Through this lens, we follow his strange life from beginning to end and his also the life of the old woman, whose life intersected Button’s while she was growing older and he was growing younger.

Through this lens, the film explores life and death and how to live a full life, as Button meets various characters who teach him lessons from their personal philosophies–e.g., embrace the body you were born with, become whatever you want to be regardless of outside pressure, and nothing lasts so live life to the fullest while you can. Meanwhile, Button meanders through early 20th century America like an inconsequential Forest Gump, learning and living and finally connecting with the love of his life.

It’s all quite beautiful, the device of aging backwards is interesting, emotionally there’s a soulful longing in the story, and the film leans toward the philosophical by asking the question, what does a human life mean when all life ends? But the answers are fairly vapid, and we never really see Button changing or growing based on what he learns, so we assume he’s become wise without knowing how or why or even to what effect. Everybody he meets is pretty kind to him, and he never really faces much adversity aside from his fundamental condition. As a result, I just couldn’t connect with the film emotionally aside from a general discomfort at being reminded of my own mortality.

At the end of the film’s nearly three hours, I asked the same questions of the film as I should probably ask of existence–what does it all mean? Is there a point?–but I will say I enjoyed the way the three hours passed. It really is a beautiful film, as charming as FOREST GUMP but not as saccharine, with superb acting and direction. So I guess I’d recommend a watch if you haven’t seen it yet. (Seen on Netflix)

GWEN (2018) is a British period film appearing to blend psychological and supernatural horror elements, but despite strong performances and a very moody atmosphere and Gothic flavor, its payoff was disappointingly mundane and not very satisfying for me.

Gwen lives with her mother and younger sister on a farm in the UK in the 1800s, and right away, we can see things are not well. The neighbors are dead, apparently from cholera. Dad is off fighting in a war. Mom’s mental health appears to be deteriorating. The owner of the nearby quarry wants to buy their land so they can expand the quarry. Quickly, it becomes apparent than someone or something wants to destroy their livelihood and drive them away.

There’s plenty of Gothic atmosphere, strange goings on, and mom’s spooky descent into madness, but it’s a very, very slow burn, with everything Gwen tries to do to show agency frustrated through design or chance, and any understanding frustrated by mom keeping secrets and otherwise holding back. The result is somewhat repetitive, culminating in a violent encounter that makes sense but wasn’t quite the payoff I was hoping to see. The result feels kind of like an odd period home invasion film where the invasion happens at the end not the beginning.

Still, despite these reservations, GWEN has a lot of strengths, notably its moody atmosphere and the performance of its young lead, Eleanor Worthington Cox. It wasn’t my cup of tea, overall, but I appreciated it for what it was trying to do. Check it out if you’re into moody, atmospheric, Gothic stories.

Streaming on Netflix, FREUD is an Austrian-German series re-imagining the life of a young Sigmund Freud. It’s over the top and has some very engaging elements, but it’s light on ideas, making it more ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER than LINCOLN.

Set in Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1886, the series centers on three characters, Sigmund Freud himself, a young psychiatric doctor who wants to make a name for himself so he can afford to marry his love; Fleur Salomé, a medium who appears to have genuine psychic abilities; and Alfred Kiss, a police inspector haunted by the war with Prussia some years earlier. Kiss is investigating a series of bizarre murders involving people who snap and go wild. Salomé is being used as a tool to entrance people so they can be hypnotized as part of a nefarious plot. And Freud becomes snarled as he seeks to save Salomé and foil the plot.

One thing you can bank on with a European historical drama, they know how to set the time period with fantastic world building. From costumes to sets, everything rings authentic. The story is sensational but engaging, providing an intriguing mystery as to what Salomé’s handlers are up to. Kiss steals the show, tough and unflinching and haunted by his war. It all comes together in a strong climax where all is revealed, and a very well put-together denouement that explores various consequences of what happened and completes Freud’s story. The show doesn’t blink at copious amounts of blood, murder, drug use, and nudity, making it a pretty sensational watch.

There’s something missing, though, which is any gravitas at all. While it’s accomplished in the denouement in the last episode, the rest of the series play it serious without really being such. Freud largely reacts to what happens to him, and he has really has no ideas of his own. These evolve over the course of the series, but it would have been great–seeing as this is a show about the father of modern psychology–if he started the series with any ideas other than believing psychological disorders can manifest as physical symptoms and that hypnosis works. He argues with the doctors who run the asylum where he works, but he never debates them, resulting in a missed opportunity to make the viewer think the way MINDHUNTER did.

The result is titillating if somewhat light fare, a story that fails to capitalize on what might have been accomplished by making Freud a stronger, more influential character. Still, while it’s not faring well with critics, I enjoyed it and found it worth a watch.