2 Best Movies to Watch by Keith Jardine

Staff & contributors
After years of relatively tame, tearjerking LGBTQ+ dramas, finally comes a sexy, erotic thriller made for and by sapphic women that pushes past convention. Love Lies Bleeding is an unexpected sophomore film from British director Rose Glass, not just because it’s set in New Mexico, but because of the 80s B-movie vibe literally on steroids that seems drastically different from her debut film Saint Maud. But both have the altered, surreal moments that blur the line between real and imagined, this time with a desperate edge of star-crossed lovers and the rage fuelled by familial trauma, jealousy, and overdosing on steroids. Kristen Stewart and new leading lady Katy O’Brian are delightful to watch with their immediate chemistry.

Genre: Crime, Romance, Thriller

Actor: Anna Baryshnikov, Catherine Haun, Dave Franco, David DeLao, Ed Harris, Jamie Javier Guerreo, Jena Malone, Jerry G. Angelo, Katy O'Brian, Keith Jardine, Kristen Stewart, Matthew Blood-Smyth, Orion Carrington, Tait Fletcher

Director: Rose Glass

Rating: R

Surrounded has the bones of a revenge-style Western. It turns the table on the white cowboy hero and gives us (on paper, at least) complex leads in Mo and Tommy. Mo is a young Black woman whose experience as a Buffalo Solider lends her not only the skills of an expert gunslinger but also the anger and motivation to push through any obstacle, while Tommy is the enigmatic thief who Mo reluctantly relies on in her quest for freedom. With all this pent-up tension, the film should work, and it does occasionally thanks to Wright and Bell’s deft performances (Bell is especially exceptional), the stunning mountainous terrains, and the worthy attempts at race and class commentary. But for the most part, the film's ambitions fall flat. The monologues are overlong and too evocative of modern speech to be historically believable. The action scenes, while exciting, only sputter here and there and never gain the momentum the film needs to genuinely thrill. And the thin backstories of Mo and Tommy raise more questions than answers. More often than not, Surrounded looks like a couple of good scenes strewn together on a lousy string; the foundations are off but there’s some enjoyment to be found.

Genre: Action, Drama, Western

Actor: Austin Rising, Brett Gelman, David Manzanares, Jamie Bell, Jeffrey Donovan, Keith Jardine, Kevin Wiggins, Letitia Wright, Luce Rains, Lyle Sandoval, Mark Dalton, Michael Kenneth Williams, Nathaniel Augustson, Peter Diseth, Tatanka Means

Director: Anthony Mandler

Rating: R