Tag: natasha lyonne

Halloween Horror Week: #Horror (2015)

Girls dance in creepy masks in #Horror

To be quite honest about it, Tara Subkoff’s #Horror is a mess. I love that it’s a movie dominated by women, from the director, most of the creative team and the vast majority of the cast, but it’s mostly atmosphere hung around the thinnest of plots (which, upon reflection, doesn’t make too much sense) and characters who are barely there. But there’s something compelling about Subkoff’s vision and take on this material that transforms it into something beautiful and frantic.

In the Loop: Russian Doll

Image from Russian Doll

In the first episode of Russian Doll, Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) gets drunk, smokes a joint laced with cocaine, and ditches the 36th birthday party thrown in her honor by her friend Maxine (Greta Lee) to go have sex with a man she just met. Typically in most time loop narratives, these would all be examples of Nadia’s self-destructive tendencies that she’ll unlearn on the path to becoming a better person. But Russian Doll is smarter than that. Nadia is already pretty good to begin with. It is, as the title alludes to, about removing the layers of personality to find one’s hidden vulnerabilities.