2 things you could take Riley to task for:

-Corvette's revelation after the factory workers help her is that their struggles all come from the same contradiction... true but, this film is determined not to make the imperial labour force too uncomfortable about the massive benefit we reap from this contradiction, relative to the periphery. he seems to be going in this direction when Corvette first says they're only concerned about their own goals, with the factory strike relegated to…

honestly wasn't expecting this to be good but it's quite beautifully made and the meticulous pace at which we learn the real parameters of Cenci's life makes even the smallest moments riveting. the misstep, and it's rather a damning one, is killing her off in the end -- as usual it is impossible to imagine an incest victim who lives to adulthood, infinitely moreover in a vehicle such as this one that has some genuine interest in how she played…

This film sets itself up as a critique, or at least an interrogation of, 18th-19th century proto-eugenic discourses about meliorism. Bella, like the hybrid animals she lives amongst, is the product of a scientific attempt to improve upon biology (though the film visually suggests a late-Victorian setting, the use of electricity to re-animate the bodies is clearly a reference to Frankenstein, and Dafoe's character is named after Mary Shelley's father, the utopian socialist William Godwin). Bella is also a tabula…

this film has an ongoing meanness in the way it looks at bodies (compare the way the tooth gap is shot in the first sex scene vs the way the camera sees Allerton's body), and at gay men (generously we can say this is how Lee sees the men around him, as more pathetic the gayer they are). it also lives somewhere in the space between total disregard for its setting (Spanish is not even subtitled) and racist exotification of…