Make your teenagers watch this!
INGRID GOES WEST (15) is the blackest of comedies about a modern world skewed by an obsession with social media.
Aubrey Plaza excels as Ingrid, a disturbed young woman who is preoccupied with the Instagram feed of pretty, popular Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) and moves to California to be near her.
It’s easy to find Taylor; as with so many people of her generation, practically her entire existence unfolds on social media. So Ingrid concocts a way to meet the object of her obsession, in what is not simply a clever, often funny, always uncomfortable psychological thriller (a terrific debut feature by writerdirector Matt Spicer), but also a devastating warning about the dangers of living life in constant thrall to your smartphone. If your children are the same age as mine, i.e. young adults, try to make sure they see it.
MUDBOUND (15) is an excellent Netflix film set in Mississippi around World War II.
Carey Mulligan again proves she is a wonderful, natural actress, in the part of Laura, a farmer’s wife caught in a tumultuous tale of racial bigotry, whose father-in-law ( Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad) is a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Jason Clarke is brilliant as her unstable husband, ditto Garrett Hedlund as her brother-in-law, who returns from war emotionally bonded with another returning soldier (Jason Mitchell, similarly fine), who is the son of poor black sharecroppers.