9/30/22 - Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2022) - 4+/5-/10

There were flourishes of beauty and quirk, but it felt light and incomplete. An idea that was interesting but lacked polish or the elegance to evolve. The journey was truncated and fairly ineffectual.

The concept was intriguing, girl with mind control powers escapes a mental hospital to the streets of New Orleans, but it lacked a potent narrative journey. Jeon Jong-Seo is solid, but perhaps a bit adrift, both as an actress with this script and as a character. Craig Robinson was engaging as the afflicted audience avatar policeman and Ed Skrein was oddly captivating in his Spring Breakers-esque neon-hazed helper-with-a-heart-of-silver role.

The film hovers around the nastiness and unsightliness of human nature that Amirpour so often tickles, but like her previous effort The Bad Batch, it slips into the muck of mankinds’ filth. I wouldn’t mind the vileness it manages through if it delved more into the psyche and sojourn of the protagonist or her cadre of accomplices. I just wanted more from her and of the film, as I felt we just got an outline rather than a fleshed out & realized exploration. So much capacity but no consummation.