Blonde

It blew me away. This might be the best film of 2022. What's it all about? Marilyn Monroe of course. But it's really about a girl named Norma Jeane (Ana de Armas - I will come back to her in a minute) who had a mentally ill mother and no father; so a girl with daddy issues invents and lives inside a character by the name of Marilyn Monroe. That's the movie, based on the novel by Joyce Carol Oates. I was glued to it. As I type my little blog review, I have not one, but two Marilyn Monroe posters adorning my film nerd workspace. Marilyn has always been a tragic figure in my mind; someone who represents all the glitz of Hollywood and all the behind-the-scenes, suffering-in-silence that goes on in the land of studio make-believe. Again, this is the movie, all the suffering and anguish, the mental breakdown of Norma Jeane. Ana de Armas, who has been in both The Gray Man and No Time to Die, is far more than a pretty face. She gave everything to this performance and if she doesn't get an Oscar for it, well the Academy will have lost its way. And the look of this movie - it's like a newspaper collage of black and white, colour, dream sequences, quirky film techniques and styles; if that sounds arty, well it is. For me, it worked. I loved it. Andrew Dominik has crafted one of the best movies of the year. Catch it now streaming on Netflix.