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Fairyland

Paul McAuley

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The 21st century. Europe is divided between the First World bourgeoisie, made rich by nanotechnology...

Regional Impacts of Resource Developments

C.C. Kissling, M.J. Taylor and N.J. Thrift

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Book

Originally published in 1984. Australia is a resource-rich country deriving a significant proportion...

Sewing, Fighting and Writing: Radical Practices in Work, Politics and Culture

Maria Tamboukou

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Book

Paris, along with New York, was one of the main centres of the fashion industry in the nineteenth...

Awix (3310 KP) rated The Square (2017) in Movies

Jun 30, 2020

The Square (2017)

2017 | Comedy, Drama, International

5.3

(4 Ratings)

Movie Rating

Another of those occasions where the Smashbomb rating scale falls a little short: 'shoddy' isn't how I'd describe this film as much as fundamentally somewhat misconceived. Anyway: award-winning satire of liberal pretensions and angst set in and around a Stockholm art gallery. Curator Christian gets mugged, leading him to make some very poor decisions; various installations and performances go horribly wrong; the gulf between the high-minded aspirations of the museum's patrons and their actual behaviour is repeatedly exposed.

The odd quite funny and on-point scene, but it doesn't half labour its points and at nearly two and half hours it feels much too long (I watched it in installments, which I never normally do). Bang is pretty good in the central role and the thesis of the film is certainly relevent to the modern world, but it could have been funnier, sharper, and less irritatingly weird in places. As it is, this is a film satirising pretentiousness which actually feels rather pretentious itself - so not a great look. Hard work, if you ask me,